Accident

by Mihail Sebastian

  Nora watched him sleeping. For a long time she had pretended that she was reading, but now, when she knew that she was protected at last by his slumber, she raised her eyes from the book and watched him.

  They had passed through Câmpina, maybe even through Cormarnic. Only the blue night lights continued to burn in the carriage. Everyone seemed to be sleeping, with a single regular breathing. Now and then, from a carriage behind them, came the sound of a harmonica, covered up in a second by the noise of the wheels. Nora waited for it to return. At least there’s one other person in this train who’s standing watch ... She felt as though she were standing watch in a shelter.

  Paul had fallen asleep with his head resting softly on his shoulder and propped up with his temple against the window. How young he is and how tired he looks! Nora thought. From beneath his closed eyelids, she still felt last night’s misty stare. Only the bitter smile had vanished from his lips, almost without a trace. It pleased her to observe the relaxed state of his mouth, which now could neither soothe nor wound.

  “You were born to be a nurse on a night shift,” Grig used to tell her. Nora remembered these words, which had probably been an insult. Poor old Grig! He never knew how to offend me. The truth was that Grig had never known about her habit of watching him in his sleep. He would wake up in the middle of the night beneath her attentive gaze, beneath her wide-awake eyes, which were focused on him, and would ask her in a blustering way: “What do you want?” Her reply was always the same: “Nothing. I want you to sleep.”

  She might make the same response to the man who was now sleeping in front of her, and whom she had been watching for such a long time. “I want you to sleep, I want you to forget, I want you to sleep.”

  In Predeal the two skiers’ carriages were left half-empty. Nora wondered whether they shouldn’t have got off, too. They could have found spots in the bivouac at Onef, or gone on with the sleigh to Timiş, where so many small hotels had opened. But she was afraid he would have been uncomfortable in the bivouac, and Timiş was too expensive. She counted her money in her mind and remembered that Paul owed her 282 lei for their train tickets. We’ll have to make sure we keep our accounts clear.

  Coloured posters and signs in the station announced competitions, both slalom and ski jumping, for the days around Christmas. Instead of Predeal at dawn, deserted, its streets empty, paralysed by deep snow, Nora saw the modern Predeal of the days of the championship, full of cars, dress clothes and acquaintances; a Predeal that was beginning to resemble a casino, a dance hall or a reception room.

  From the window of the carriage, her gaze turned backwards in the direction of the peak of Mount Omului, lost in the clouds as though in an immense avalanche of snow. She looked in the blackness for the distant point where she knew the cabin must be. She would have liked to ascend there, or maybe somewhere lower down, in the direction of Ialomicioara, in the direction of Bolboci. But from wherever she might have set out, from Buşteni or from Sinaia, the trek would have had to be made in a group and with serious equipment. She looked with a smile at Paul’s new skis, with the varnish intact, the metal bindings gleaming, without a scratch, without a speck of rust. What would he have done with them on Piatra Arsă?

  The train, meanwhile, headed off again. A few skiers prepared to get off at Timişul-de-Jos. “Are you climbing Piatra Mare?” Nora asked them. She knew the trail and, so far as she could recall, it was very easy. She had done it in 1929, in the summer, after her last exam at university, and had slept there in a sort of wooden shed where dozens of beds had been lined up on two storeys.

  “There’s a new chalet there now,” someone told her.

  “But I don’t think there’s a ski trail,” Nora observed. “Piatra Mare is more of a summer mountain. I’d like something wider, more open.” And farther away, she added in her mind.

  Daylight was starting to break and she would have liked the day that was beginning to find her far away.

  The windows turned a smokey blue. They emerged from the night as though from a long tunnel.

  VIII

  THEY CLIMBED UP TO POIANA BRAŞOV in the “caterpillar,” a truck whose wheels were ringed with chains so that it didn’t bog down in the snow.

  “I think Poiana is the best spot,” Nora said. “I should have thought of it from the start. It’s open, it’s wide, it has gentle slopes. Have you never been here? You don’t know the Braşov area?”

  “Of course,” Paul replied, “but only the part around the Seven Towns. I spent a vacation there a long time ago. In Cernatu, in Satu-Lung ...”

  And he fell silent with a vague stare that revealed something uncertain beyond the woods, like a lost sense of direction. He would have liked to lift his shoulders with his customary gesture of indifference and distaste, but the weight of his backpack prevented him from completing the movement.

  “See how good that pack is?” Nora said. “Wear it on your back for ten days and you’ll lose that habit of making apathetic gestures.”

  Only after she had uttered these words did she realize how intimately she had spoken to him. (Last night, when we were leaving, I was still more formal with him.) It was as if the night on the train had made him into an old acquaintance, that night during which, never the less, she had not heard him speak two consecutive sentences. She fell silent, embarrassed by this familiarity, which seemed to be pushing things too quickly. She glanced at her watch and made a rapid calculation: I’ve known him for thirty-one hours. She was alone with him in this open truck that was carrying them through the morning woods, she was alone with him and she didn’t even know if she had the right to lean on his arm.

  “In fact, I think Poiana is a good choice. You’ll see. I hope we can make a skier out of you.”

  She repeated in her mind the sentence she had just spoken, congratulating herself on the solution she had found: “we can make a skier out of you” was so intentionally ceremonious that it lightened their intimacy with a joking tone. “Yes, I promise you that in three days at most we’ll be skiing all the way down to Râşnov. It’s a good straight trail without too many turns.”

  She tried to arouse sporting ambitions in him, a taste for competition, a certain determination. He’s too much of a child for that, she thought, watching him.

  There wasn’t a single room available at the Saxon hotel.

  “Try in Turcu, try in Cercetaşi, but don’t count on it. Since we got the big snowfall, all of Poiana has been full.”

  “Stay here, Paul. I’ll go look. We have to be able to find something.”

  She put on her skis, stamped the snow a few times and set off with long strides, propelled by her poles, which she thrust into the snow with regular, oar-like movements. Due to the morning frost, the snow had a thin crust of ice and the skis slid without softness, with a harsh sound, leaving a glassy powder in their wake.

  In the big chalets there wasn’t a single place left, while the little villages hadn’t yet woken from their slumber. Even so, Nora knocked on their shuttered windows; but sleepy voices told her to go away.

  “You’re tiring yourself out for nothing, Miss,” a man who was shovelling snow said to her from his yard. “You’re tiring yourself out for nothing. We’ve even got people sleeping in the garage.”

  Annoyed, she returned to the Saxons’ hotel, not knowing what to do. She could no longer hope to find free spaces downhill in the Prahova Valley if there were so many people here in Poiana, which was more difficult to reach. The only thing to do, maybe, was to go back down to Braşov and take a train from there in the direction of the Făgăraş Mountains. It was more likely that they would find lodging in Bâlea, in Muntele Mic, but she didn’t know the area and didn’t know how long it would take to get there. She could get down to Braşov in half an hour on her skis, but Paul would need at least a week of training in order to do this kind of trail. One didn’t put on skis for the first time to do a six-kilometre downhill race. As for the caterpillar, it would make the return run only in the aftern
oon and then they risked being caught by nightfall in a train once again. I don’t know if he’ll put up with it, Nora thought, pondering his lack of conviction.

  She found him at the Saxons’, in the dining hall, facing a poster pinned to the wall. The Black Church, December 23, 1934. 8 PM. Religious concert. The “Christmas Oratory,” by J.S. Bach. He turned towards her with a glimmer of curiosity, indicating the poster. “Interesting, no?”

  “No. Absolutely not interesting. We didn’t come here to listen to oratories. There’s only one interesting thing here.”

  And she pointed through the window towards the snow, the fir trees, the white-hooded chalets.

  “You’re harsh.”

  “I’m harsh because I’ve got big responsibilities.”

  She should have been able to say the final words in a joking voice, but looking closely at his eyes, those sad eyes, she thought that she really had taken on a big responsibility. If I leave this man alone, he’s going to run away. She couldn’t have said exactly why, but she felt that any flight might be a disaster for him, and that she was indispensable in preventing it. “Are you in good physical condition, Paul?”

  “Really good physical condition?”

  “No. Middling.”

  “We can give it a try ...”

  “We have to leave Poiana. There’s not a room here anywhere. For a moment I thought we should go farther, towards the Făgăraş, but it seems to me that it’s simpler to stay right here. Do you know Postăvar?”

  “Where is it?”

  “There.”

  She pointed with her hand to the curtain of clouds that was streaming downhill along the edge of the woods facing them, blanketing the entire horizon.

  “Is it high?”

  “About 1800 metres. Here we’re at about a thousand. In the summer it’s a three-hour hike. Let’s say we can do it in four. Anyway, we’re not even going all the way to the summit. There are two large chalets on the trail. When there aren’t any clouds, you get an amazing view from there.”

  “So, Nora, you’re the girl who falls off the tram in Bucharest, and here you want to cross the Carpathians? Don’t you think that’s a little ambitious? Don’t you think it’s a bit much for those knees of yours, which yesterday you were cleaning with iodine ...?”

  He stopped for a moment, thinking.

  “Strictly speaking, when was that? Yesterday or the day before?”

  Nora took his arm, pulling him towards the trail. “Stop counting! We’ll do it another time. It wasn’t yesterday or the day before ... It was a month ago, a year ago, many years ago ...”

  From the doorway they looked again towards the tissue of clouds that was hiding Postăvarul.

  “I haven’t seen it for a week,” the porter said. “Since those snows came, I’ve forgotten what the peak looks like. As though it had disappeared completely.”

  The trail was blazed with coloured rectangles – one red stripe and two white ones – like so many small flags daubed on the trees and the rocks. They could see them in the woods, in the ins and outs, like the fluttering of a handkerchief. It was as though a travelling companion had gone ahead of them, stopping sometimes to wait for them to follow and to show them the way: over here ... over here ...

  They walked with their skis over their shoulders, crossed behind their backs to maintain their equilibrium. Now and then the point of a ski struck the branch of a fir tree and shook off the snow, with a faint, metallic, rustling spray as if ringing out to all the crystalline snowflakes. There were immense, snow-immured trees, with their branches sagging beneath the burden of the snow, like heavy wings on a spiralling flight. Lonely, one by one, they rose from the rocks, springing up in lines; but their robust trunks, in their white garb, had the unexpected delicacy of the stems of flowers. Everything appeared grandiose, not at all ornamental, as in an immense, decorated park.

  Nora turned back towards Paul, who had stopped at a turning point in the path and was taking a long look around him.

  “Is it beautiful?”

  “It’s too beautiful. A little too beautiful. As if it had been made in advance, prepared beforehand; there are too many trees, there’s too much snow ... And the silence, such a colossal silence ...”

  They both listened, trying to catch from far away, from very far away, a sound, a crackle, a step ... But nothing penetrated the vast stillness.

  “I can’t get it into my head that it’s real. It’s like I’m in a photograph or a poster. It’s like I’m in that display window last night, with artificial snow ...”

  Nora remembered the well-equipped skier who had smiled at passersby from the display window. With his new ski suit, a blue scarf around his neck and his skis on his shoulders. Paul was starting to look like a poster boy for skiing. Not even the smile is missing.

  “Do you think we’re on the right trail?” Paul asked.

  The afternoon passed and the chalet didn’t appear. We should have got there a long time ago, Nora thought. Her boots felt heavy on her feet and she had the impression that their whole weight was pressing down on her ankle. Awaking to a forgotten pain, her left knee began to ache.

  “Do you think we’re on the right trail?” Paul asked.

  “All trails are good around here,” she replied vaguely.

  She wasn’t worried, but she realized that they had strayed from the trail. She knew well enough that it was impossible to get lost in these mountains with their easy trails, and she told herself that whichever way they went they would end up at the chalet. As long as we keep climbing, keep moving upward. They hadn’t seen a sign for a while. The little red-and-white flags had become less frequent, and now they had vanished completely.

  “Maybe the snow has covered them.”

  “Yes, maybe ...”

  The light had grown lower. The snow had lost its lustre, and was more ashen than white.

  “It’s still too early to stop for the night,” Nora said.

  It was a gloomy light that spread over things like a metallic film. The trees were extinguished by leaden shadow that fell over them without a glimmer.

  “Do you hear that?”

  Paul had stopped short, laying his hand on her shoulder. From somewhere above them came a metallic rustling, a murmuring of branches, a hurried fluttering of metallic wings. Heavy unseen strides or woods ripped away from their roots descended, striking against the branches.

  “Could it be an avalanche?”

  “Impossible,” Nora said.

  She was pale and strained to listen. She felt Paul’s hand on her right shoulder. If only he would leave it there.

  The light slid lower. It was almost dark, and yet objects remained visible with an absurd precision. Stoney fir trees stood stock-still around them, as though in a grotto. For a moment everything seemed to be frozen in place, detached from time and shifted into another world ...

  “We’re on another planet,” Paul whispered. He pulled Nora against him. “Are you afraid, Nora?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I’m cold. I’d like to get there.” She spoke in a low, serious, intense voice. He felt the heat of her face.

  “Get there? Don’t you want to stay here? Never leave here, never arrive anywhere again ... Just stop ... just stop ...”

  Shivering, Nora turned her head towards him. There was something feeble, muted yet warm in his voice. She had just enough time to think, This man wants to die, when a sudden sense of peace enveloped her, as though in a single instant she had grasped all of his thoughts down to their roots. She hugged him and closed her eyes with a drowning sensation.

  Somewhere in the air above them, huge waves slammed together and the sound radiated downwards, as though reaching the bottom of the sea. Cold, damp, hazy mist streamed between the fir trees. Unmoving branches resounded with a noise like the clashing of weapons.

  “The clouds are coming down from the summit,” Nora whispered.

  On her lips, her eyelids, she felt snow sliding over her like smoke.

 
; Paul shook her by the shoulders. She opened her eyes with difficulty. Without a word, he pointed out to her with his hand an object that was only a few steps away, but which she could barely discern, as though in a dream: on the bark of a tree, a white-red-white rectangle.

  The SKV14 chalet was still smoking between the fir trees, as though after a recently extinguished fire. Clouds flowed down towards Poiana like buoyant lava. Isolated puffs of mist lingered, hanging from the cliffs and the trees ... Nora and Paul emerged from the clouds, as though from a different winter. From the direction of the chalet they heard voices, a workhorse’s bell, the sound of a saw. Someone shouted out the window: “Gertrude! Gertrude!”

  Nora thought of the hot tea that awaited her above and looked for her backpack, thinking of the bottle of French rum she had bought before leaving. It was a heavy, intoxicating aroma. I have to sleep ... I have to sleep ...

  “Are guests welcome?”

  “Welcome, except there’s nowhere to stay.”

  Nora gave the man who had spoken to her a long, silent look. He was a red-haired Saxon with a small, pointed, slightly fiendish beard, and a cold stare, devoid of hostility but also of kindness. He seemed rough, perhaps as a result of the accent with which he spoke, in correct Romanian, giving a short stress to the first syllable.

  “All the rooms are full. There’s not even a free bed. Try up above at the Touring Club. You’ll find something there.”

  He had small green eyes, like two slivers of a bottle, beneath bushy, pale brows. Nora regarded him with attention, telling her-self: He has the eyes of a badger! She thought of the stuffed badger she had once found on the teacher’s desk, left behind by the natural science class. She would have liked to say to the man in the doorway, “We know each other, we’ve seen each other before”; but she felt at once the pressure of her backpack bearing down on her shoulders, like a pain awakened from sleep. Her clothes were heavy, damp. Her hobnailed boots felt as though they were made of iron.