Accident

by Mihail Sebastian

  “I can’t promise, but I’ll try,” Nora joked.

  “The other night when you arrived, do you know why I opened the door? Do you know why I let you in?” His voice was soft, almost a whisper. He asked the question with an intense look. “I thought you were Mama. You understand? Mama.”

  He pointed to the portrait on the bookshelf without even turning his head in that direction. Nora came closer to him. She wanted to console him.

  “I knew you wouldn’t be frightened. Do you believe in ghosts? I do. You see, since Mama’s death, I’ve been waiting for her. Sometimes I go to the window, sometimes I open the door ... I wonder why she doesn’t come ...”

  “Maybe she’s here ...” Nora said simply, without lowering her voice. She grasped that after hearing such things she must speak with familiarity and without mystery.

  “Yes ...” Gunther said. “In a certain way, she is here. Here with us: Hagen, Faffner, me ... She loved all three of us ... She’s here but I don’t see her. I’d like to see her, I feel I should be able to see her ... I’ve told you that I believe in ghosts. I think about her long dresses, I think about her blonde hair, which she wore in an old-fashioned hairdo, even though she was so young ...”

  Nora walked towards the bookshelf and picked up the portrait. She observed it closely, with great attention. The lips were poorly drawn, the high, sad forehead resembled that of the boy, there was a light wave in the hair on her temples. In the corner was written in pencil: Mittwoch, den 5 Mai 1932.20 Gunther.

  “It was a very sunny day,” Gunther said. “I remember it very clearly. She was wearing a white dress, her first white dress of that summer. As a joke, I’d made a lot of meaningless sketches. I wanted to throw them out. She took them all and asked me to sign this one. She liked to see me drawing. She thought ...she thought I had talent. She thought I was going to be a painter.”

  “And you no longer want to be one?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Even so, if she believed ... Maybe you should, in her memory ...”

  Gunther got up from the armchair, barely restraining a fresh outburst of anger.

  Again Nora had tugged on gnarled ropes, knocked at locked doors.

  The rapidity with which this blond boy could pass from one expression to another, from one mood to another, was amazing. One moment his nerves were choking him, the next he rediscovered his glowing ironic smile. “Do you know what a cardiogram is?”

  Nora hadn’t understood the question and didn’t know to reply. “Wait and see,” Gunther said.

  He opened a drawer, hunted through notebooks and sketch pads and pulled out a small scroll of paper, which he unfurled in front of her. It was a thick, glossy paper of photograph quality, containing black rectangles crossed by two thin lines that went up and down in zigzags at tight angles. It looked like the inscription of seismograph readings, such as she remembered having seen in geology books at school. “You see those white lines? They’re heartbeats.”

  He was still smiling. He spoke calmly and without discomfort. After a moment’s silence, he added: “The beating of my heart.”

  Nora thought of his pallor, his nervous trembling, the sudden changes of light and shadow on his childlike face. She tried to take this lightly, not to insist, to brush it off. “You’re joking, Gunther.”

  He replied with laughter, a laugh in which nothing was forced, nothing constrained.

  “Of course it’s a joke. Much more than a joke: a farce. It’s the most terrible farce I could play on the Grodeck family.” He seemed to find the thought sincerely amusing. “Look, a painter in the Grodeck family would have been shameful. A cardiac patient in the Grodeck family is a scandal. This is the first time this has happened since there have been Grodecks on the earth. Their hearts have always beaten strongly. Their hearts have been true.” The word amused him. He noticed it and took pleasure in repeating it. “Yes, yes, true hearts. Hearts that have beaten like clocks. Never too fast, never too slow. Hearts that beat for one century, two centuries, three centuries and don’t ask anybody anything. Grodeck hearts are guaranteed. Solid and discreet. Nobody hears them.”

  He unfurled the cardiogram again and showed her the two white lines that went up and down. He followed their delicate course, their rhythmic fall, with his finger. “You see, here the angles are tight and even. But when you look more closely, you can see that sometimes the line darts up and then it drops a little lower down. It’s not a lot. A tenth of a millimetre, maybe not even that ... But it’s enough. Enough to be audible.”

  All at once he lifted his head from the cardiogram and stared fixedly at Nora. “Don’t you hear it? I do. Especially in the evening, especially at night. It’s like a little hidden motor. In the middle of the night, when everything’s still, I feel like it’s audible all over the house. A Grodeck heart that’s audible ... It’s unbelievable. The Grodeck fortune has been made with everything you can name, but not with the heart ...”

  He rolled up the scroll as it had been before and placed it carefully back in the drawer. Then he returned to the fireplace and leaned there with his arms at his sides, a posture that helped him breathe.

  Nora sensed that the boy expected neither compassion nor support. He was very calm, and his blue eyes resembled lights. “What are you thinking of doing?” she asked.

  “I want to turn twenty-one.”

  “You’ll do it,” Nora said.

  He was shaken by the soft conviction of her words. Suddenly, his gaze became intense, pleading, full of doubts and uneasiness. “Do you think so? Tell me, do you really think so?”

  “I’m certain, Gunther. Absolutely certain.”

  Hagen returned late, in the dark. All three of them waited for him, taking turns looking out the window in the tower for his lantern to appear in the distance through the woods. Faffner had disappeared while it was still daylight, heading off down the valley.

  “He feels him coming,” Gunther said. “Whenever he returns from Braşov the dog goes down to Ruia and waits for him there. One evening, Hagen took a different route and returned by way of Wolf’s Precipice. Faffner spent the whole night in Ruia, howling ...”

  Now they saw the two of them coming through the deep snow: the man and the dog. Hagen dragged the flat wooden sleigh, full of packages, behind him. They opened them all around the table, curious to discover what lay inside. They were objects that smelled of the city, of winter display windows, of holidays. Gunther regarded them with boyish pleasure, he weighed them in his hand, and observed them under the light. He liked best the coloured glass balls, red candles and sparklers for the Christmas tree.

  Faffner circled the table, smelling the objects, sniffing them.

  Only Hagen’s brow remained dark ...

  That man knows, Nora thought.

  XII

  EVENINGS IN THE CABIN WERE LONG, in spite of the fact that at ten o’clock they extinguished the lights, closed the shutters and all went to bed. But the evenings started early, when darkness fell, and passed slowly. The twilights were white from the snow, which continued to shimmer for a while after the sun set. Finally this sheen, too, disappeared. Sometimes the mist continued to smoulder from the summit. The clouds piled up closer to the cabin. The fir trees turned black. The darkness was deep and dense.

  The mountains, which roared all day with the sounds of shouts and cries, returned to their stoney silence. Not a whimper or a crackle from anywhere. Far away in the distance, they heard a muted inrush, like a slamming on the earth, like the falling of a tree. They all poked their heads up to listen. The silence seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth.

  Gunther was playing chess with Paul. Nora, sitting in the armchair, read next to the fireplace with Faffner lying at her feet. Only Hagen was restless. Sometimes, unexpectedly, he tossed the ash-coloured cape over his shoulders, lifted the hood and went out into the night with the lighted lantern.

  “He’s going to look for her,” Gunther would say.

  Faffner trembled, got up
from his spot and went to the window, to the door, scratching at the threshold, waiting.

  As evening fell, Nora became silent. There are two Noras, Paul thought. The daytime Nora and the nighttime Nora. Curled up in the armchair next to the fireplace, lost in the book she wasn’t even reading, she seemed to be waiting, inviting him.

  “Are you tired, Nora?”

  It was something other than tiredness. It was a kind of capitulation. Everything in her being was setting out for the night. Only when Hagen extinguished the lights, when Gunther said goodnight, did she open her eyes.

  “You’re going already? Is it that late? Have you finished your game of chess?”

  She climbed the stairs, leaning on Paul’s arm. Sometimes, in bed, she lay her head on his right shoulder. It wasn’t a gesture of tenderness: it was a gesture of disbelief, of anticipation.

  She undressed slowly, with lazy movements, lost in her thoughts and still silent. She had a stern, alert expression; not dreamy but turned inward towards her own thoughts.

  “You’re beautiful, Nora.”

  Only after thinking this over did she reply. She took seriously the things that were said to her.

  “I’m thirty-two years old, my love. And I’m dark. I don’t know if I can still be beautiful ... Maybe I was at twenty, at twenty-two ... It’s a flash that passes and leaves something else in its place ...”

  Her body was strong, with a slight heaviness in its long, firm lines. Nothing adolescent here, Paul thought, watching her. Nothing was uncertain, everything was filled out. Broad, serene knees, foreign to uneasiness. Long thighs, full hips.

  “You’re beautiful, Nora. You’re pure harmony between yourself and yourself, and that harmony is called beauty.”

  She stood in front of the mirror and brushed her hair, which fell over her shoulders. She stopped, with the brush in her hands, and turned towards Paul. She was naked and at peace.

  “I’m afraid I have to complain.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re telling me something that was one of my secrets. Something I always hoped, with a tiny anxiousness, that someone would understand and tell me.”

  She had tears in her eyes.

  Her embrace withheld nothing. In the most intense moments she kept her eyes open, with a deep, attentive gaze, as though she were listening. She remained for a long time with her head on his right arm, in an endless silence.

  “I like your hands, Paul. They’re big, heavy, rough. I like to feel them on my shoulders, on my hips. They don’t know how to caress or they don’t want to caress. But I like their weight.”

  She took a long look at those boney hands which, even in their present domesticated state, retained a certain hardness. She kissed them. She poured her whole female sensual gravity into this act. Paul was unable to suppress a twinge of embarrassment.

  “No, Nora.”

  She didn’t understand. “How stupid men can be, Paul! So many superstitions, so much fear ... You’re afraid of the simplest things. Only a woman knows how to really kiss hands, my love, and make it into something beautiful.”

  She approached him with her eyes closed. She showed neither hysterical haste nor bashful modesty. Every movement of her body spoke of authenticity and conciliation.

  Morning revealed again the sharp, alert Nora, ready for the trail. In her blue jacket with her peaked cap pulled over her forehead she was, like him, a skier.

  No troubled feelings lingered between them from the night, which had passed without leaving behind a trace.

  XIII

  IT WASN’T SNOWING. The light was like cinders, but the clouds seemed to be farther away and the horizon more open.

  They left their skis at the Touring Club, stuck into the snow with the tips facing up, and climbed to the summit of the mountain.

  “Maybe we’ll see Braşov,” somebody said.

  They couldn’t see anything. Postăvar floated alone amid an ocean of clouds. The pine forests that covered the opposite slope in the direction of Timiş melted after a few hundred metres into a whitish fog.

  “Down below us is the Timiş Valley. Over there is Piatra Mare. To the left is Braşov.” Nora pointed out with her hand places that were lost in the mist, enveloped in nothingness. “You know what’s happening in Braşov tonight?” she asked suddenly. Still smiling, she replied: “They’re performing the Christmas Oratory at the Black Church.”

  “Is it the twenty-third already?” Paul said, surprised.

  “Yes.”

  He remained still for a time with his gaze trained in the direction of Braşov, invisible behind the mist. The haze seemed to soften the distances. “What do you say? Would it be madness if we went down to Braşov this evening?”

  “It might not be madness,” Nora said, “but it would certainly be daring.”

  “Is it that hard?”

  “Hard, no. It’s long.”

  “And you don’t want us to try it?”

  “Of course, Paul. If we do a morning of serious training beforehand.”

  He accepted all of her conditions. After the long run that lay before them, the evening’s concert would be a reward.

  Gunther received without pleasure the news of their departure.

  “We’ll be back tomorrow,” Nora assured him.

  All through lunch, the boy continued to frown. Only towards the end of the meal did he brighten up. “I’ve sung in the Christmas Oratory, too. In a choir, of course. I was in grade seven and we were asked by the school to perform. I think I still remember a few things today.”

  He thought for a moment and finally, turning his gaze towards the window, as though he were seeking someone there, he began to sing:

  “Brich an, du schönes Morgenlicht,

  Und lass den Himmel tagen.

  Du, Hirtenvolk, erschrecke nicht

  Weil dir die Engel sagen ...”21

  He pitched his voice too high and the final note, although clear, made his cheeks turn red.

  “Mama was down in the church. I can see her now, next to the third window on the right. She was smiling. She was the only person in the whole Black Church who was smiling. I felt that she was listening to me. I felt that she was answering me.”

  He kept looking towards the window. Finally, he averted his gaze from there and spoke again with the grim tone that they had heard on other occasions. “A real Grodeck doesn’t smile. Watch them carefully this evening. The whole clan will be gathering there. Dozens, hundreds of members of the Grodeck family. Not one of them smiles.”

  Nora tried to soothe him, to bring some peace to his tormented child’s forehead. “Tell us the truth, Gunther. Do you want us to stay?” “No. But I want you to come back.”

  “Understood. Tomorrow evening we’ll be here to light the Christmas tree together.”

  Before they left, Gunther drew them a map of the trail. From the SKV chalet they would go down the leisure run, which would take them as far as the centre of Braşov. It was a groomed trail, with a gentle slope (the Saxons called it the Familienweg22), well marked with blue-and-white signs right to the end, but from which several smaller trails branched off towards Timişul-de-Jos, Noua and Honterus.

  “But if you pay attention, you can’t get lost.”

  The map he had drawn was clear and detailed. In the margins were all the landmarks that they might meet along the way and which he recommended they watch out for. In addition, he gave Paul a compass and showed him how to use it. Nora would have to carry bandages, cotton and vials of pills in her backpack.

  Their departure for Braşov was becoming a real expedition. “Is it that dangerous?” Paul asked.

  “In winter in the mountains you never know what’s going to happen.”

  They had barely set out when Hagen overtook them from behind.

  “Gunther wonders where you’re thinking of sleeping in Braşov this evening.”

  “In a hotel, of course.”

  “He doesn’t think you’ll find a room. He told you to give me
this.”

  It was an envelope on which Paul read a woman’s name – Frau Adelle Bund – and an unknown street: Strada Prundului, 26.

  “It’s my house,” Hagen said. “I wouldn’t advise you to go there. It’s an old house and it’s far away. But if you can’t find a room anywhere, don’t sleep in the street.”

  He spoke with ill will. It was clear that this turn of events did not please him.

  Nora made an effort to placate him. “We thank you, but I think we’ll leave Frau Adelle in peace. It can’t not be possible to find a room in town.”

  He didn’t look entirely placated. “Have a good trip,” he said.

  He looked after them for a long time as they headed off.

  They made a quick stop at the SKV chalet to consult the map. From there, they set off on a trail that was unknown to both of them. The run started behind the chalet. Gunther had drawn it in a meandering blue line that descended towards a circle that was coloured green. Inside this circle he had written in small block letters: Ruia.

  Nora let Paul go ahead in a snowplow.

  “Don’t leave the snowplow for even a second,” she told him.

  “Whatever you do, if you’re not going at high speed, nothing serious will happen.”

  Paul set off in a strained silence. He clutched the poles’ handgrips with closed fists. He had the impression that his whole effort was concentrated there, in the joints of his hands. His knees were bent as though he were preparing for a jump. His skis slid ahead of him, made heavier by his braking.

  He held his breath as he waited for the first turn. His head was bowed between his shoulders, but his attention was locked on the point ahead of him, coming closer every second, where the trail turned to the left. He felt his temples throbbing. Now, now, now ... He pushed the tip of his right ski ahead of the other one, then leaned with all of his weight towards the left. The snowplow opened to a enormously wide angle. The turn was completed gradually, like the gliding wheeling of a bird on unmoving wings. The left ski, which for a second supported his entire weight, skidded around with a harsh scraping sound, then, in the next second, his equilibrium returned.