Accident

by Mihail Sebastian

  But nothing disturbed the resignation of this return through the woods, which resembled so closely a return to slumber.

  The climb to Wolf’s Precipice was tough. Deceptive snow covered boulders and dips in the earth, concealing in its depths unseen changes in the terrain. It was as though puddles remained intact in the middle of a river. Beneath their mirrored surface, an invisible chasm pulled them down to the river bed.

  They wallowed forward through the snow with the instinctive movements of people who were swimming. Here and there, the depressions fell away like broken steps. There was an unmistakable sinking feeling. The waves of snow seemed to be surrounding and burying them. They struggled with their knees, their arms, in a kind of thrashing-on-the-spot that helped them to remain on the surface, as though they were swimming against the current. Now and then a reef-like frozen outcropping rose up in front of them, and they were able to stop for a minute on this island of ice, in order to gauge how much of the trail now lay behind them.

  It’s madness what we’re doing, Nora thought; but, now there was no way back from this madness. Each metre of ground they gained had something irrevocable about it. Their feet could not return to where they had already trodden. The climb was difficult, but a descent from here would have been impossible.

  At its upper edge, Wolf’s Precipice opened onto a clearing. The first fir trees were visible on the lip of the cliff above them. They didn’t look like they were far away, but time passed and the distance remained ever the same, as though their journey through the snow had been useless, as though hidden powers, much greater than their futile struggle, were eternally bringing them back to their point of departure.

  As long as it’s daylight, everything’s not lost, Nora thought, to steel herself. She was terrified by the possibility that the mist might envelope them before they could reach the top. In the darkness, on the flank of the bluff, they would be unable to take even one step forward. A single false move would suffice for them to fall. Do I really need to tell him this? Nora wondered, not daring to speak to him. She didn’t want to alarm him, but neither could she let him continue with the somnambulistic carelessness with which he was climbing behind her.

  From the summit came a stirring, as if of great gales not yet aroused to their full fury. The daylight had a diffuse, whitish quality, as though lacking in transparence.

  “Listen, Paul!” Nora suddenly made up her mind to speak to him. “In half an hour at the most we’ll be at the top. If darkness or mist catch us here, we’re lost. I don’t know what’s going on with you and I’m not going to ask. But now I want to ask you to wake up. When we get to the top you can do what you like.”

  Everything suggested that a blizzard was on the way. Gusts of wind not yet at full force whistled over the snows, raising it into small eddies of powder. The trees became heavy against a leaden grey-white background.

  Paul was the first to reach the head of the trail. The final metres of the ascent were the hardest to complete. The lip of the precipice was a nearly vertical frozen parapet. The crampons on their boots gripped like claws to prevent them from sliding. A fall remained a danger until the last moment. In that final moment, their entire struggle was revealed as futile. Wolf’s Precipice, glimpsed from these final infernal steps, had a sombre indifference that awaited the fulfillment of luck.

  Having escaped from danger, Paul watched helplessly as Nora took her final steps. He could do nothing for her: offer neither an extended hand nor a word of support. They were only a few paces apart, yet they were on two different coasts, each alone. He watched how she struggled with the snow, the ice, stunned by exhaustion yet with a kind of intent despair. When she reached his side, she threw down her skis from her shoulders, took off her backpack. Only then, uncovering her head, did she run her hand over her face in a gesture that signalled her return to life. They were both pale, with their eyebrows and temples whitened by snow, their stares not yet freed from the intense concentration that had been carrying them forward until now.

  “You’re a brave girl, Nora. I want to thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “For your courage. If I were able to love, I’d love you.”

  “I’m not asking you for that, Paul. All I ask is that you be a little less unhappy. That’s enough for me.”

  Once again he gave a disillusioned shrug of his shoulders.

  “I also ask,” Nora added, “that you stop making that gesture of a guy who’s finished. Is it really so hard?”

  “I don’t know. I think you’re wasting your time with me.”

  “Yet when we left here yesterday you were a man who’d been cured.”

  “I thought I was. But it’s enough for a shadow to step out in front of me on the street for everything to fall to pieces.”

  “Are memories that hard to forget?”

  “I don’t even know if they’re memories. It’s a terrible tiredness. An enormous repulsion. And a deep disgust.”

  “Deeper than Wolf’s Precipice?”

  They both turned again in the direction of the precipice that opened in front of them.

  “Look how deep it is,” Nora said, “and yet you climbed the whole thing. Don’t you want to try it again some day?”

  They arrived at the cabin at nightfall. Gunther, paler than before, was waiting for them at the window. Hagen, who had gone out to meet them on the other trail, wasn’t back yet.

  “We have to put on the light in the tower to give him the news that you’ve returned. Why did you come back so late? I’ve been waiting all day. I thought you weren’t coming. I thought I’d lost you.”

  He spoke quickly, in broken sentences, with a strange nervous agitation beneath his great pallor. His eyes gleamed feverishly, too intensely to smile. Faffner sniffed their clothes, lay down at their feet, tossed off a curious snarl of pleasure and rediscovery, which, at the same time, was almost despairing. With an effort, Nora succeeded in calming him and making him lie down in front of the hearth with his snout on his paws; but even from there the dog regarded her with his gaze of animal restlessness.

  “Faffner knows where you’re coming from,” Gunther said. “You’ve been in the house on Strada Prundului and you’re carrying odours he recognizes ...”

  Hagen returned later and didn’t speak a word as he came in the door. His cape and hood were white with snow. He stopped in the entrance and, at first, white as he was, with his big boots, his hood pulled down over his forehead, he resembled a Santa Claus who was hiding his face. After he had brushed off the snow and had revealed his sad face and, above all, that cold, white recluse’s gaze, the congenial initial image was extinguished, banished, and in its place stood the severe man with whom they were familiar.

  Nora thought of going up to him and telling him: “Relax. We’ve left everything in the house exactly as you like it. Nothing has budged from its place. The door is bolted, the windows are locked. Nobody’s going to cross that threshold and not even a shadow will leave the place.”

  But Hagen’s silence asked no questions and invited no friendly words.

  The three men fell silent, and Nora felt very alone among them. She looked at each of them in turn, and each seemed to her to have disappeared into his own thoughts. She opened her backpack and took out without pleasure the gifts she had bought them in Braşov. Now they struck her as useless, too childish for men who were so despondent. Next to the window, the fir tree decorated for the modest Christmas celebrations waited to be lit up. Nora hung her presents from its drooping boughs, and then lit the candles one by one. Tapered flames began to play over the insides of the balls of coloured glass.

  Gunther was the first to approach the tree. He’s still enough of a child that it makes him happy, Nora thought. She saw a flicker of curiosity return to his pallid cheeks. His eyes recovered their beautiful ironic clarity.

  “Won’t you come and stand next to our Christmas tree, Paul?” Nora risked asking.

  Over the lighted tree, she saw his old hazy
expression of indifference betray a timidity, an insecurity.

  Hagen joined them with more difficulty, not even approaching the tree. He stood a few steps away from it, as dark and severe as ever.

  They gathered around the fir tree as if gathering around a campfire in the woods.

  XV

  ON THE MORNING OF THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS, the ski run resembled a peasant festival. Some devoted skiers were setting out through the morning light for Predeal, descending the slope from Timiş to watch the official competitions. Many more, however, had stayed put, while groups of boys and girls who struggled against the blizzard to reach the top of the hill continued to arrive from Braşov. The forest resounded with the din of people as though it were a holiday town. At the Touring Club, a committee that had been improvised overnight was organizing a few “trials” for downhill racing and the slalom. It was only a game, but they all agreed to play it seriously. Distances were measured, blue pennants were set out, contestants were given numbers, a system of points and classification was established. The judges and site commissioners, with armbands and whistles, walked back and forth among the skiers to give orders and get the teams into formation. A young doctor was setting up a medical station and, to complete the scene, someone had made a small white flag with a red cross that fluttered in the wind. In front of the chalet a rostrum of wooden planks had been hastily constructed for the public and a long table for the jury. The “trophies,” crowns of pine boughs, tin cups, a few bottles of wine and beer, an electric flashlight with batteries and – the first prize! – an alarm clock, had been lined up on the table.

  The entire competition was organized half-jokingly, as a parody of the real competitions in Predeal, but it was a joke which drew everyone in with excessive conviction. Above all, the Saxons from the SKV, who arrived in a compact group, were as grave and resolute as if they were preparing for a great battle. They had put together a five-man team and had sent a written challenge to the students from the Touring Club, stating that the upcoming downhill race would be the “final test” of the day, the culmination of the struggle between the SKV and Touring Club. The whole mountain echoed with shouts and songs. When the wind dropped, the noise carried as far as Gunther’s cabin. Hagen, who had returned from his customary morning walk in the woods, told them all that was happening.

  “Let’s go, too!” Nora suggested.

  Paul, as grey-faced as the previous evening, neither accepted nor refused. He couldn’t care less whether they went or not. For him, the night had passed in a kind of numbed peace, as though he were under anaesthetic.

  More difficult to persuade was Gunther, who didn’t want to leave the cabin at any price. “There are too many people. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want them to see me. I know them too well.”

  Even so, Nora prepared his skis, which the boy hadn’t yet put on this winter. She was certain that he would resist this temptation. I have to get them outside, she thought, looking at the two men.

  Hagen, who was alone in the cabin, whispered worriedly to Nora: “Be careful. Gunther doesn’t have the will or the energy to go fast.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be right beside him.”

  The program hadn’t yet started at the Touring Club. They were still doing maintenance work on the ski run, especially on the mound for the ski jump, where several volunteers were digging with shovels. All the accordion players from the two chalets were brought together with their instruments into a kind of village orchestra that was set up next to the jurors’ table to play “Long Live the Winner!” in Romanian and German when the prizes were handed out. Meanwhile, to soothe the audience’s impatience, they played various hymns and “ouvert-ures.”

  Gunther’s arrival caused astonishment among the Saxons on the rostrum. The news passed from person to person by way of signs and whispers:”Der junge Grodeck, der junge Grodeck ...”25 Intrigued stares turned from him to his companions. For a moment, all attention was diverted from what was happening on the ski run. Gunther became the highlight of the show, like a crown prince who makes an appearance on the balcony at a concert. Nora felt herself to be the object of dozens of questions. Gunther, invigorated by the cold morning air, held her arm and made lively conversation with her.

  “Tomorrow the whole Grodeck family will know that we came out together. They’ll open an inquiry to find out who you are, where you’re from and what your intentions are. A young woman in the Grodeck family is an affront. The Grodecks don’t tolerate young women. There was one once, and they never forgave her, even after her death.”

  Nora enjoyed facing the wave of surprise and curiosity that rose up around them. Only Paul remained indifferent to the pointing and the stares, not even noticing them.

  The first event was the relay race. The route went from the Touring Club to the SKV chalet and, from there, through the Glade of the Three Maidens back to the Touring Club. The starting signal was given amid a general silence blasted by the report of a pistol that resounded through the mountains. The rostrum broke out in applause, while the teams, bearing large numbers on their backs, visible from the start, set off; friends and supporters shouted out their names. Gunther, too, took sides openly in the battle and began passionately shouting out the number of one of the pack of racers. “Two-oh-three! Two-oh-three!”

  “Why two-oh-three?” Nora asked in surprise.

  “I don’t know. I chose it by accident, like in roulette.”

  He looked up with a bright face, a child once again, while he clung to her left arm with all his force.

  “What number are you betting on, Paul?” Nora asked. She turned her head to the right, where he had been walking silently beside her, but she didn’t find him.

  Had he left? It was certainly possible. The whole time she had felt him there on her right, locked in his oppressive silence like a piece of stone. She didn’t know at what point he might have slipped away without telling her.

  So he’s left without a word, she thought bitterly.

  Paul’s first thought, on leaving the scene, was to return to the cabin. He wanted to be alone. The throng of noisy people made him ill. Nora was irritating him with her exaggerated insistence on including him in a game that had no charm for him this morning. Standing between Gunther and him, attentive to all of their movements, Nora gave the impression of being a governess who was supervising two convalescents. He felt oppressed by her fixed gaze, even when it wasn’t directed at him. In the second’s swirl of confusion produced by the firing of the starting pistol, he had found the opportunity to break away unnoticed.

  Everybody’s a patient for her, he thought as he walked away. I’m wrong, I’m being unfair to her, he added in his customarily intimate voice of a reasonable man, without being able to feel the slightest penitence. Words, thoughts, passed through him bleakly. He felt like an instrument with snapped chords, lacking warmth or resonance. Nothing elicited a response in him, neither thoughts nor memories.

  He knew one name that in the past had made him feel nervous aches, unavoidable reflexes: Ann. He spoke it now in a loud voice, out of curiosity, as if pushing a button to see whether there was a response: “Ann, Ann, Ann.” The name fell from his lips, as inert as a stone.

  He stared in the face images that even yesterday would have struck him as unbearable: Ann undressing with her untidy immodesty at the same time that whatever man she was with regarded her while smoking a cigarette or leafing through a book. For a long time he had felt tortured by the tale of a journey Ann had made to Greece with one of her first lovers, long before meeting him. “It was so hot,” she said, “that we spent the whole day naked together in the boat’s cabin and only in the evening did I get dressed to go out on deck.” Ann in her entirety pursued him in that image, which tormented him with lethal precision. It wasn’t the thought that Ann had slept or was sleeping with other men that was unbearable, but rather the certain, irrefutable physical details, the movements with which she unrolled her stockings or pulled her blouse over her h
ead.

  Now he watched all these formerly painful images with open eyes and found them incredibly stupid.

  He saw Ann down in Braşov in a hotel room with Dănulescu or another man, he saw her naked in his arms, he followed her without horror, without revulsion, in her most secret motions, he heard her excited laughter, her sensual sigh, and it all flowed through him with deathly indifference.

  At first he had set out for the cabin, but now he let his skis take him wherever they wished. A cutting wind struck him in the face and temples. If the trail to the SKV chalet hadn’t been taken over by that ridiculous competition, he would have allowed himself to be carried downhill by the slope, all the way to Poiana, to Braşov, to the national capital ...

  The Touring Club program was about to finish. During the wait for the downhill finals, the crowd on the rostrum followed the final ski jumps with guffaws of laughter. The competitors fell, one after another, as if someone were pulling the snow out from under their feet. Only very rarely did one of them succeed in staying on his skis and pulling to a stop in front of the rostrum to receive volleys of applause. Gunther followed each new jump with enthusiasm or indignation. His sympathies shifted unpredictably from one competitor to another. He shouted encouragement in the moment the competitor took off or called out reprimands when they fell. Nora was afraid that all this excitement would wear him out, and now and then she laid her hands lightly on his shoulders to calm him.

  The space on her right was still empty. Paul hadn’t returned, and Nora wondered whether he was ever going to come back. It didn’t seem impossible to her that he might have left for good. Maybe a note would be waiting for her in the cabin, one of those short, curt notes which that idle men knew so well how to leave on a corner of the table just before fleeing ...