Nora strained to listen. She would have liked to understand the question under discussion. Above all, she would have liked to be able to look Paul in the eyes while he was speaking. The things he was talking about appeared to enthrall him. Now and then he turned his head towards a lawyer on the opposing bench, who was interrupting him, and then Nora read in his uncaring eyes a sparkle of conviction, maybe even of combativeness.
She glanced at her watch: twenty past four. Yesterday at this time we hadn’t met yet. Everything that had happened since seemed remote and incomprehensible. That man speaking in an unfamiliar voice and whose appearance she couldn’t remember if she closed her eyes, that man was her “lover.” This was still a word that, even at her age, Nora was unable to contemplate without terror. Long ago, in her hometown in the provinces, “lover” was a word that was spoken in a whisper.
The presiding judge uttered a few words, which were inaudible at the back of the courtroom, and wrote something in the register. The court clerk called another case, while Paul bundled up his books and papers and, with an unhurried motion, slid them into his briefcase.
Nora was going to let him leave the courtroom, she was going to remain here a little longer to be sure of not running into him, and then she, too, was going to leave. A guy you slept with one night by chance and who, after that, you never saw again. The horrible thoughts, which appalled her, and which she nevertheless tried to think with out caring, went around in her head.
“Are you staying here?”
He was wearing a black-patterned red tie with a badly tied knot. It was first thing Nora noticed. Why doesn’t this man know how to tie his tie?
Paul took her arm and led her to the door. She followed him without looking at him. How nice it was there next to the window. How did he spot me? Why did he come in my direction? She was afraid of him; she would have liked to be alone, she would have liked with all her heart to be alone.
“... Honourable gentlemen, an incorrectly introduced motion cannot replace ...” From the doorway, Nora heard a few words spoken by a man at the bar, who was waving a file, but the end of the sentence was lost, since in that moment they left the building through a narrow corridor that was more brightly lit than the courtroom.
“An incorrectly introduced motion ... an incorrectly introduced motion,” she repeated mechanically, trying to prolong her thoughts in order to postpone the explanation that was approaching.
How long this man is able to remain silent, Nora thought on the street, walking beside Paul. Nothing on his blank face displayed the slightest curiosity or pleasure or worry. She had been afraid that her presence would anger him. Not even that so much, no, not so much. It’s as if I wasn’t here.
Dusk was falling, the snow had stopped, but it was very cold.
“You shouldn’t think I came to look for you.” All of a sudden she started to speak. “I pass by here in front of the courthouse every afternoon. I have a few hours of French in a private school in the neighbourhood. Maybe I didn’t tell you I’m a teacher. We haven’t had time – ”
She stopped in mid-sentence, surprised by her own words. She hadn’t had time to tell him the most basic things about herself – maybe, if her name hadn’t been engraved on the metal plate next to her apartment door, he wouldn’t have remembered that, either – but in a matter of hours she had become his lover. How stupid you are, Nora! She would have liked to fall silent, but now that she had begun to speak and had interrupted herself suddenly, without any reason, remaining silent felt more difficult than before.
“Please forgive me for looking through your papers on the desk. I flipped through your agenda and I saw that you had to be in court this afternoon. At first I didn’t understand what was written there. Your writing is a mess, but I’m used to all sorts of handwriting ... I told you I’m a teacher ... I tried to imagine what C.C. II meant. It had to be Commercial Court, Section Two. I didn’t think I’d be able to come. Nor could I have done so. I’m usually in class on Tuesday afternoons from three to five. Today I’m taking a vacation ... I started to go home, and, I don’t know how, passing in front of the courthouse, I told myself that I could go in ... You don’t know how lost I got wandering through all sorts of rooms and corridors. I didn’t think you’d see me. I would have liked you not to see me ...”
They had stopped for a few moments in front of the window of a flower shop on Senate Square. Nora was talking and realized that he wasn’t listening. What could he be looking at with such intensity? In the window there were several sprigs of white lilac, as white as the newly fallen snow. Very tender and very droopy, the sprigs were slender, green, bent beneath the weight of their white bouquets. Paul’s gaze had settled there with its usual air of absence, but with the beginnings of a misty smile, which came with difficulty, from far away.
If I leave now, I don’t think he’ll even notice that I’m not beside him any more, Nora thought. And it might even be the wisest thing she could do. She wasn’t angry, she wasn’t hurt, but she was aware that this man was a stranger to her and that nothing could wrest him from his silence. Whatever I say, whatever I do, that stare is not going to change.
She moved slowly away, attentive to her movements, as though she had just awoken from a deep sleep, and crossed the tramline in the direction of the Senate Bridge.
“Nora!”
He called her name for the first time. He was beside her, holding her arm, and looked her straight in the eyes with a gaze that saw her at last.
“Nora, please forgive me. I’m a fool, I don’t have any manners.”
“No, Paul. You’re neither foolish nor lacking in manners. Maybe you’re unhappy.”
He lifted his shoulders. (If he gave me the time, Nora thought, I’d make him get rid of that habit.)
“Let’s not talk about unhappiness. It’s a word I don’t like. And I don’t think I am. More like weary ... yes ... very weary ...”
He continued to hold her arm with his heavy hand, with his clenched fingers, in a grip that was overly emphatic but in which she found – at last! – a flicker of intimacy. They were walking up from the quai, along the December Dâmboviţa River, which the twilight, the cold, the winter all made look a little less dirty. The evening’s first streetlights came on, and their shadows on the water were whitish in the light of this uncertain hour.
“You could easily hate me, Nora. People like me don’t have the right to get mixed up in accidents in the street. I shouldn’t have been the one to pick you up out of the snow yesterday evening.”
“People like you ... Why are you talking about things that make me afraid? I’m bewildered, you know. What kind of person are you?”
“A person who last night you were able to believe might commit suicide. Isn’t that enough?”
They had crossed the Schitu Măgureanu Bridge: passersby were few, the street was empty.
And why was he silent now? He was capable of silences that seemed as though they would never end. How far away was he? How could she call him back? Only his hand, as heavy as ever, retained its grip on her right arm. But just when she believed that all was lost, his voice returned, its flat, even tone no louder than before, as closed off as the silence from which it broke free.
“I have nothing to say to anyone and I have nothing to learn from anyone. Do you understand, Nora? Do you understand why I wanted to run away last night? This morning I still didn’t think it was too late to run away. And now, look – even now, there’s still time. Why did you come to look for me? You could have just forgotten that we ever met. You could have wiped yesterday out of your memory.”
“And last night?” Nora asked, mainly for herself.
“Yes, and last night. We’re both mature enough not to regard that kind of random occurrence as a tragedy. I don’t want to offend you, believe me, but I’d rather offend you than deceive you. You need some friendship, some intimacy. You’re making a mistake in asking that of me. I have nothing to give anyone.”
He was still looking
straight in front of him, without turning his head in her direction for even an instant. His lips were still twisted in an expression of vague bitterness.
With that stare that doesn’t look anywhere, with that muffled voice that neither rises nor falls, he can probably say the most horrible things in the world without even realizing it, Nora thought.
“You say that you looked in my agenda on the desk. No doubt you noticed that all the pages between today and the end of the year are blank. That’s what you call a vacation. For every blank page an empty day ... What do you think I should do with them?”
“Try to give them away.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You said just now that you had nothing to give. Even so, you’ve got some free time ... You call them empty days ... Give them to someone ... Maybe you’ll find somebody who’ll receive them and do something with them ...”
He stopped in mid-stride, and beneath the throbbing of the streetlight he gazed at Nora, thinking he could read in her eyes all that seemed unclear in her words.
“If that’s an invitation, it’s better that I tell you that I can’t accept it.”
“It’s not an invitation. It’s advice. Get away. You’ll be less alone. Go and forget, maybe ...”
“Forget what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it is you have to forget ...”
He lifted his shoulders again, with the same gesture of negation, of doubt, of uselessness.
“Leaving ... I’ve thought about that, too. Yesterday I even went to a travel agent to ask for information. I had taken my passport with me in the morning, for the visas. That’s why it was in my pocket last night.”
Nora saw again the blue passport, the photograph, the identifying signs, the visa page, Hegenrath, 23 juillet. Again it seemed to her that in the name of that border crossing, in that forgotten date of July 23, 1934, lay his whole mystery.
“Then I decided not to go. Why bother? I’m too lazy, it’s too complicated and above all, I feel that it’s useless. I think I probably don’t even have enough money.”
They were on the Elefterie Bridge. He had leaned over the parapet and was looking in the direction of the two major streets that opened diagonally in front of them: on the left, Bulevardul Elisabeta, lighted up by distant neon signs and the red eye of the Number 14 tram that ran downhill towards Cotroceni, and, on the right, Splaiul Independenţei, snowbound, silent, almost un-Bucharest-like. On the stone parapet the snow had piled up into a foamy, fragile roundness. Nora reached out with her hands and took snow in each hand, holding it carefully in her open palms as though it were a fine powder.
“Have you ever been in the mountains in the winter?”
Nora’s question brought him back from who-knew-what far-away thought. His response was delayed by an excessively lengthy silence.
“No, never in the winter. I’ve climbed Peşteră and Omul a few times, but never in the winter.”
“What a shame! It’s so beautiful! Look, that’s where you should go. To the mountains.”
He didn’t even bother to reply. With a lift of his shoulders, everything became useless. Nora persisted.
“Have you ever gone skiing?”
“No.”
“You should try it.”
And a moment later, suddenly taking him by the hand and forcing him to turn back towards her, she looked him in the eyes and said: “Come to the mountains with me. We’ll go skiing.”
This time she was staring at him too intently for him to reply with silence. “It’s childishness, Nora.”
“That’s exactly why I’m suggesting it to you: because it’s childish. Listen to me, Paul: give me your vacation. A minute ago, believe me, I wouldn’t have asked you for it, but now I’m asking you for it: give it to me.”
He didn’t respond. At least he hasn’t said no, Nora consoled herself. On the bridge, the evening wind blew, reawakening from the calm that had surrounded them until now. The white chestnut trees shook snow onto the sidewalk like overly fragile flowers.
They followed Bulevardul Elisabeta downtown. The lights, the first shop windows, the world made swift by frost, gave Nora the impression of returning to the city. She continued talking, grateful that his silence was delaying his reply.
“I’ve never really known what to do with my vacation. I only knew I didn’t want to spend it here in Bucharest. I feel really good living up there on Bulevardul Dacia, but not in the holidays, when I have the impression that everybody’s left town and I’m here alone. Worse than alone: abandoned ...”
She tried to say the last word in an ironic tone, but her voice didn’t help her. “Abandoned” was a word that gave her childish tears. Fortunately, he was too tired, or too distracted, to notice.
“I’ve been thinking of getting away, too. I’m not sure where ... Maybe Predeal, the ski lodge at Onef ... If I’d found travelling companions, I would have preferred to go up to a cabin with a small group ... In Ialomicioara or Postăvar or Bâlea ... Somewhere remote, anyway ... Why don’t you want to be my companion? Let’s be clear: what’s happened between us until now ...”
Nora hesitated a moment. She would have liked to say “last night,” but the detailed allusion frightened her.
“... it’s erased, it’s forgotten. It’s ‘null and void,’ as you said in court. I’m suggesting this to you as a comrade. Let’s take off with hobnailed boots on our feet and packs on our backs.”
“Take off?” he repeated. “When do we take off?”
“This evening,” Nora said, only then realizing that his question might be an acceptance, even though he had asked it vaguely, with the same eternal lifting of his shoulders. “So it’s true? You accept? You want to leave?”
“No, Nora. Why do you keep asking? It’s useless. Everything’s useless.”
His voice disheartened her. There was something irrevocably crushed, irrevocably broken, in the exhaustion with which he was speaking to her. And yet, for a moment, he had seen leaving as a possibility ...
“Why are you so stubborn, Paul? You’re a man who’s lost every game he’s played. Just now you were saying: ‘I have nothing to give, nothing to lose.’ Well then, since in any case you have nothing more to lose, nothing more to put at risk, accept this departure as a game and let me, too, play on your behalf ...”
She stopped on purpose in front of a shop window full of sporting goods, on Bulevardul Elisabeta, at the corner of Calea Victoriei. Skis, skates, steel-tipped poles, hobnailed boots, a whole arsenal of wooden and metal instruments in the display window, glimmered on the artificial snow made of cotton wool and white mats. A mannequin dressed as a skier, with the full range of equipment, ready for the trail, smiled with a happy, movie-star smile. Paul looked, practically without seeing them, at all these instruments that struck him as complicated and, above all, uninteresting.
“Please don’t laugh at me, Paul, but when I’m very unhappy ...because it does happen to me sometimes ...”
She couldn’t finish her sentence. Again, unexpected tears filled her eyes. Abandoned ... unhappy ... so many words that were difficult to speak! She tried to correct herself: “When things are going badly for me, when everything turns out wrong, when I feel weighed down by bad luck ... well, then I buy myself something new ... a dress, or, if I don’t have much money, a scarf, a trinket ... Not out of frivolousness nor out of shallowness. More out of superstition. In order to change fate. To outwit it. I think that, if I’m dressed differently, it won’t be able to recognize me, it’ll mistake somebody else for me, or go past without seeing me ... Since you’re a superstitious man, why don’t you have a superstition about beginning something new? Why don’t you want to try something you’ve never tried until now?”
... He had gone in unconvinced. Nora spoke for him, took the information, examined with attention the items they were shown. It was a bookstore that had been taken over by sporting enthusiasts. The floors that contained books were abandoned; everyone crowded into the sports departm
ent. On the eve of the vacations there was a rustling of escape here, a clinking of skates, a perpetual feverishness. Enormous hobnailed boots, with the edges of their soles clamped between metal pincers, smelled of thick, recently cured hides. Black skis, leaned against the walls with the tips pointed up, looked like so many slender fishing boats brought ashore to dry. Everything had a harsh smell of leather, of waxed wood, of waterproof cloth. Brightly coloured jackets and sweaters lent the whole store a festive, decorated air.
A radio was broadcasting the six o’clock sports report: “Predeal, a 46-centimetre base ... Sinaia, a 30-centimetre base ... Good skiing conditions ...” The voice coming from the speaker mingled with the clients’ questions and the sales clerks’ answers.
“Lift your right arm, okay?” Nora asked him.
He submitted with good will, although with a certain awkwardness. He saw himself in the mirror measuring the length of the skis, which were taller than he was. The tip of the ski reached to the palm of his hand. “It has to be at least 40 centimetres taller than the person who’s using it,” she explained to him, absorbed in her work.
Now and then she looked at him with an expression of concern, as though seeking a sign of approval or consent. He’s intimidated , she thought, seeing him standing with the skis in his hand and not knowing what to do with them. “Intimidated” struck her as a sign of progress; it was, at least, something other than indifference.
“What’s that for?” Paul asked her, seeing that she had in her hand several loops of steel, which she was forcing herself to screw to a flat base that resembled the sole of a skate. He seemed to have asked the question with passing interest, in any case with little perplexity. He regarded all these unfamiliar objects as though at a loss, as he might before the dismantled parts of an engine. Nora hastened to provide him with explanations, which he didn’t understand very well.
“There are two types of binding. Diagonal and straight. I have more confidence in a diagonal binding. It’s not very flexible, but it’s firm. It’s a bit of an obstacle if you try to telemark, but you’re not going to start telemarking in your first days of skiing. The main thing is to have your boot tightly interlocked with your ski ...”
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