Accident

by Mihail Sebastian

  “Do you think they’ll let us in?”

  The man who tore their tickets at the entrance looked a little surprised by their clothes. But there were a few other skiers who had come from Poiana and Timiş. The blue jackets and cloth blouses were soon lost to sight among the frock coats and fur.

  The violins were tuning up in the shadow of the great organ, which dominated everything by its silence. The church was filled with the bated-breath hubbub of the orchestra, testing their instruments in the final moments before the concert began. A flute or a horn lifted its voice for a second, then disappeared, covered by that generalized, “Yes,” transmitted like an appeal by the violins and cellos.

  Silence fell at last. They felt the sound of the invisible director, who had raised his baton.

  First the flute and then the oboe entered timidly into the game, with something questioning in their sound; but after the first notes the violins fell silent and, almost in the same instant, they heard the trumpets – unexpected, triumphant trumpets. The musical phrasing was powerful, self-assured, tightly integrated into a piece that from the beginning announced victory and light. The flute and the oboe ran a subterranean course beneath this line that was barely audible in the moments of breathing space between the dominant motifs. When the violins and brasses fell silent, their silence was protective: only with their indulgence were the fragile flute, the pensive oboe, able to rise again.

  The game didn’t last long. The strings, woodwinds and trumpets were covered as the choir burst out: “Jauchzet, frolocket auf, preiset die Tage!”23

  The song was simple, but the holiday began with those words. It was a great cry of joy which, in a second, flung the orchestra into the background. The whole choir was but the voice of a single herald. It seemed to lift the vaulted ceiling, to open the windows, to create light.

  Nora sought out Paul’s eyes. She wished to know that she wasn’t alone before this annunciation. He placed his hand – his heavy hand – on her shoulder, but did not turn his head. The gesture spoke to her without words: yes, Nora, I’m here, I’ve heard, I’ve understood ...

  The violins and the brasses, at first overwhelmed, found each other again. The trumpets spread the news announced by the choir. The flutes and oboes hurried on, with their finer sound, between that of the chords and that of the brasses. The solitary organ was neither surprised nor rushed. Its low tones seemed to support the entire oratory like a living cathedral. The violins and the voices grew out of it, as though out of rich earth. The organ bore them on without a smile, without harshness, with a dash of sadness, because it alone knew their destination.

  Paul listened with his eyes closed. He was still in the forest, still alone. For him, the organ’s deep voice perpetuated the silences that continued to vibrate in its ever lower chords. The orchestra and the choir, brought together in a single musical phrase, now climbed as one to the final step: the doors of the Oratory were open.

  A tenor voice was thrown into relief by the ensuing silence. Without melody, it recounted the departure from Galilee. Simple, slightly monotone scales swung like ivy on the central sound of the organ. The tale was then taken up by a woman’s voice, with the same narrative monotony, until the oboe and the violin persuaded her to sing. The transition from the recitation to the aria was marked, over several chords, by the harpsichord, which seemed to demand that they listen to it. On a few occasions, as though the harpsichord’s sound had been too feeble to maintain the bridge between the choral song and the aria, the whole orchestra came to its assistance.

  Never, it seemed to Paul, had he heard such clear violins. Maybe it was because of that evening, which for him was unlike any other from his past. Maybe it was because of the forest through which he had come, the solitude in which he had descended ... Never had he heard purer, more effortless, more transparent violins. The symphonic sections of the Oratory did not feel at all liturgical. When the orchestra played together, everything seemed to contract into a luminous ring of intimacy. Even the organ, tamed, fell silent in order to listen.

  The second part of the Oratory opened with the symphony, from which, after a brief recitative by the tenor, a choral song, which Nora and Paul received with the same surprised motion, broke out.

  “Brich an, du schönes Morgenlicht,

  Und lass den Himmel tagen.

  Du, Hirtenvolk, erschrecke nicht

  Weil dir die Engel sagen ...”

  The whole choir, the whole orchestra, could not cover the distant sound of Gunther’s voice.

  “Do you hear him?” Nora asked in a whisper. In the same moment she looked towards the third window on the right, where young Mrs. Grodeck should have been, smiling at her son. But there wasn’t a single young woman beneath the third window and in the whole Black Church not one person was smiling.

  Watch them carefully this evening, Gunther had said. The whole clan will be gathering there. Dozens, hundreds of members of the Grodeck family. Not one of them smiles.

  And, in fact, not one of them did. They all sat on their benches, intent, stoney-still, without a tremor, without brightness, possibly deaf, possibly absent, possibly dead, while the music of the Christmas Oratory flowed past without touching or awakening them.

  As they came out of the church, they found a still nocturnal Braşov with the lights out and the streets deserted. Saxons who had emerged from the concert walked home in silent groups. The city regained its air of a provincial outpost with the Black Church, in the centre, resembling an immense organ.

  On Strada Prundului a double-surprise awaited them: an improved Frau Adelle and a welcoming house, each of which had undergone a miraculous change in a matter of hours. The fire had been burning in the fireplace for a long time when they arrived, and it was possible that this alone had succeeded in softening the woman’s heart and tempering the forbidding surroundings. Nora had not looked carefully at the large pieces of dull oak furniture which at first glance had struck her as being, like their hostess, hostile. Only now did she discover them, still severe in appearance, yet amiable. Books and carpets were everywhere. In a corner were a piano and books of sheet music. She leafed through them with surprise: Schumann, Brahms, Schubert.

  “Who plays the piano?” she asked Frau Adelle.

  “Since young Mrs. Grodeck died, no one plays it any more,” the woman said.

  “She used to come here?”

  “Who?”

  “Young Mrs. Grodeck.”

  At once the woman’s gaze became suspicious again. “Yes, she came.”

  Nora realized that the question had been a mistake. She must not give the impression that she had prior knowledge. “I have to say, dear Frau Adelle, that at the beginning you frightened us.”

  “And you me. When I heard the knocking on the door, I didn’t know who it could be. Nobody comes here, and nobody has to knock on the door. Mr. Klaus, when he comes, lets himself in. He has his own key.”

  “Who’s Mr. Klaus?”

  “What do you mean, who is he? Didn’t he send you here? Didn’t you have a letter from him?”

  “Of course, of course,” Paul said soothingly. “Only we didn’t know that his name was Klaus. We call him Hagen.”

  “She called him that, too ...”

  She pointed to the wall over the piano, where there was an aged-looking photograph of young Mrs. Grodeck.

  “Maybe you didn’t meet her. Maybe you didn’t know how pretty she was.”

  The photograph resembled the portrait Gunther had sketched, but it looked less sad. It was probably an enlargement of a shot taken with an instant camera. The young woman seemed to have been heading through the woods and to have stopped for a moment to gather her hair. The photograph had caught her in the midst of that movement, which had opened her arms and lifted her forehead towards the sunlight.

  Frau Adelle said goodnight and left them alone.

  Nora was at the piano, with her hands on the keys, those soundless keys that she didn’t dare to rouse from their silence.
>
  “Do you think he loved her?”

  Paul didn’t reply. He had been asking himself the same question. They were both looking up at the portrait on the wall.

  “I don’t know if he loved her,” Nora went on. “But she was here. I’m starting to understand why that door opened so slowly. It was the door that should have protected her, should have concealed her ... She was here. Like Gunther, I’m starting to believe in ghosts.”

  Nora’s fingers sought in the keys the opening notes of this evening’s song: “Brich an, du schönes Morgenlicht – Young Mrs. Grodeck, you knew that song. I’m singing it for you. Maybe you can hear it, maybe you’ll be happy to hear it.”

  XIV

  BRAŞOV, IN THE FIRST HOURS OF THAT MORNING, seemed to be preparing for the opening of a country market. From Bran, from Râsnov, from all of the seven towns24, from the whole region, came trucks, buses, sleighs, private cars, bringing in people who had spent the night outside of town. The streets were full of people from Bucharest who greeted each other with cries of surprise, noisily introducing one group to another. Nora and Paul passed by hurriedly, waving, replying to waves, enjoying this influx of Bucharest cheerfulness. When they couldn’t avoid it, they stopped to exchange a few words with an over-enthusiastic acquaintance. Nora introduced him simply, without bashfulness, as, “A skiing buddy.”

  They had decided to leave on the 11 AM caterpillar to Poiana, so that they could start the ascent from there before noon. They still had some shopping to do and, to gain time, they divided up the chores.

  “You get the cigarettes, magazines and books. I’ll look after the rest,” Nora said.

  They arranged to meet at a set time in the lobby of the Coroana, where they had left their skis the night before. Nora wandered from shop window to shop window in search of crampons for hobnailed boots. She was thinking about taking a shortcut on the way back, climbing up Wolf’s Precipice, and she knew that the trail was strewn with rocks and ice. But above all she was drawn by the idea of getting away from Paul and being alone for a few minutes in order to be able to buy in secret a few surprises for the Christmas tree, small trifles which she would take out of her backpack tonight at the lighting of the candles. She returned to the Coroana breathless from running around and afraid that she was late.

  “You didn’t forget anything, Paul? You got everything you were looking for? You’re ready to go? Shall we leave?”

  She was shaken to see him watching her with that despondent gaze. It was his gaze from the evening they had met, that enervated stare that did not even have the strength to ask for help.

  “Aren’t we leaving, Paul? Don’t you want to leave any more?”

  He replied with his old shrug of the shoulders, which spoke of his indifference to everything.

  How quickly this man has gone back to his old habits! Nora thought.

  It was Ann’s car. Paul had walked past without seeing it, then, on the steps of the hotel, he had turned his head, as though towards a passerby who had greeted him, and to whom he hadn’t replied. Yes, it was Ann’s car.

  He had gone towards it with an explosion of joy, as though it were a person, a friend. He would have liked to speak to it, to ask it: When did you get here? Is Ann here, too? Yes, of course she was. What a stupid question to ask!

  The doors were locked, the windshield was iced up, the whole radiator was covered in snow; the motor was still warm. The car had probably just stopped. It looked as though it had made a difficult drive. In any case, it hadn’t been here yesterday evening, nor earlier this morning. If it had only just arrived, if it had stopped just now, then Ann must be nearby. She had got out for a moment to ask for information, to buy cigarettes, to drink tea. She might be in the hotel lobby, in the restaurant, in the café.

  Paul paced back and forth all over the area. Ann was nowhere to be found. The café was full of people, familiar faces were visible at almost every table, but Ann was nowhere to be found.

  “Are you looking for someone?” the porter asked.

  “No, no ...”

  He went back out into the street and stopped in front of the blue car again. I have to wait, she has to come back.

  He saw her walking through Braşov making chaotic purchases, laughing in all the mirrors that she crossed along the way, stumbling over her tall overshoes as though they were high-heeled boots. How well he knew that Ann of winter days! Last year she had worn an astrakhan bonnet pulled down over her forehead and an overcoat, also of astrakhan, which she succeeded in making into something unpretentious, like a garment she had grabbed off a peg in the hall at the last minute and put on in a rush to get her shopping done in town in a hurry.

  He walked around the car several times, looking attentively at each part of it. He wished he could guess from the fenders, the tires, where it had come from. Certainly not from Bucharest, since it was too early in the morning to have made such a long trip. Maybe she had spent the night in Bran or in Satu-Lung, that Satu-Lung that was so full of memories. So many Anns from distant times came to life for him and called him back into the past!

  He looked through the side windows of the automobile, that automobile that felt like an inhabited house. On the seat in front of him, next to the steering wheel, was a white plaid blanket, a pile of magazines and an open metal box full of Chesterfield cigarettes. Since when had she smoked Chesterfields? The last time he’d seen her she was smoking unfiltered Bucurestis. Had she switched brands? When? Why? And was this the only thing that had changed in her life?

  But they might not be her cigarettes or, in any case, not hers alone. It was ridiculous to think that Ann would be by herself. It was ridiculous to think that a new cigarette case would enter Ann’s life without bringing with it a new man, a lover, a relationship, a fling ... He kept his eyes fixed on that metal case, which struck him as both hiding and revealing everything. He felt the old pain reawakening close to his heart.

  When Nora asked him whether he still wanted to leave, he didn’t know what to say to her. He could stay, he could leave; it was all the same to him.

  Once again they were in the caterpillar that was taking them back to Poiana.

  So we have to take it all from the beginning again, Nora thought. In front of her was the same morose man, with the same hazy stare and the same uncaring lift of his shoulders. If only he would at least tell me what happened. If only I could understand.

  She was starting to be afraid of this man, who was subject to such profound changes from one minute to the next. It was as though his hair had turned white in an instant. It was as though he had received an announcement of his death. He felt strange to her. Stranger than on the day when she had met that absent gaze for the first time. Since then they had been brought together by several days of shared life, several nights of lovemaking. It was all wiped out.

  She felt that he was lost to her, that he had fled from her side. Once again, he had fled from her side. And she could no longer find in herself sufficient strength to stop him.

  It’s time to give up, Nora. This man’s not coming back.

  She thought of saying to him: “That’s enough, Paul. That’s enough and it’s pointless. You want to leave? Leave. I’m tired out. Realize that something like that can happen to me, too: I can get tired out.”

  Then, without knowing why, she thought of his hands. She felt pity for his big hands, too rough and hard for a sad man. She would have liked to feel them on her bare shoulders again, with their indifferent, protective heaviness. You’re beautiful, Nora. You’re pure harmony between yourself and yourself, and that harmony is called beauty. His words ran through her mind again, and once more she was astonished by them. You’re the man who spoke those words to me. No one might ever have said them to me, not once until my death, and he said them. I might have carried that secret inside me without anyone seeing it, and he saw it. And that’s the man I’m losing.

  A wise, patient Nora tried to gather her courage again. She promised herself that she would wait, that s
he would resist, that she wouldn’t give up yet.

  They climbed as far as Wolf’s Precipice wearing their skis, but from there on they had to take them off and carry them on their shoulders.

  They had been on the move for about two hours without having exchanged a single word in all that time. Only once, by mistake, had their eyes met, but they had turned their heads away in the same instant with a startled, self-protective reflex. “Don’t be afraid, Paul, I have nothing to ask: you’re free to keep your secrets,” Nora would have liked to say to him; but she feared that, after the first word she uttered, the silence between them would grow ever heavier.

  She went in front so as not to give him the impression that she was spying on him. A number of times she heard him stopping at one spot or another, but she kept moving forward, even though she sensed in his stopping a hesitation, an impulse to flee. She no longer heard him moving behind her, and yet she didn’t dare look back. Maybe this time he’s left. Maybe he’s really left. She told herself that there was still time to call out to him, that there was still time to turn around. She told herself that she was leaving behind a wounded man, a crushed man, a man who needed her help even if he wasn’t asking for it, even if he didn’t want it. Yet she continued to move forward, looking straight ahead as though she were indifferent to whether or not he went any farther. You’re acting like a woman who’s been jilted, Nora. You’re starting to love him out of pride. She went over in her mind the possible reasons that might convince her to stop and wait for him, but they only deterred her from making this decision. If he’s coming, he should come of his own free will. It’s up to him to choose.

  He came without having chosen to do so. He came with exhaustion, with apathy. He came because he had been seized by the idea of coming. If the woman in front of him, who had suddenly become an unknown, nameless woman, had turned her head towards him and called out to him, this act might have awakened in him his last urge to break away and free himself.