“It hurts him,” Gunther said. “After such a long time, it still hurts him ... It’s five years ago now. It was in September, I think ... Yes, in September ... I was coming back from town with Mama. We found Faffner in the yard in a pool of blood. He’d shot him with his rifle and then left him there, thinking he was dead. You understand? With his rifle ...”
“Why?” Nora asked.
“Because Mama loved him. He’s never tolerated beings that Mama loved, or those who loved her. He would have murdered them all, with his rifle or some other way ... The Grodecks sometimes know how to kill without using rifles ... They kill discreetly and then they wear their mourning clothes with dignity.”
Faffner, as if he had understood that they were talking about him, moved closer to the fireplace.
XVII
NEW YEAR’S EVE WAS CELEBRATED IN THE MOUNTAINS with bonfires and shouts. From the Touring Club and the Saxons’ chalet cries came echoing through the woods, covered only by the metallic whizzing of the wind. A blizzard raged all day, but later on the storm began to subside. A heavy, dense mist descended peacefully over the rocks and the fir trees.
As soon as evening fell, a gigantic bonfire was set on the summit of the mountain and drew people from both chalets to gather around it. Figures with pitch-torches in their hands were visible climbing up the slope; their voices and laughter were audible from far away. When they reached the top they fell silent and approached the fire with sincere, earnest faces.
“If it weren’t for the mist, we’d be able to see the fire on Piatra Mare,” someone said.
Wherever there was a cabin, a bonfire was lighted that night, and silent people assembled around it in the final hours of the year. Big fires burned on all the ridges of the Bucegi Mountains, like so many signals seeking each other in the night; but the mist covered everything.
“You’re like the bonfire on Piatra Mare, Paul. I know you’re there somewhere in the mist, but I can’t see you.”
“Why do you say that, Nora? Am I not right beside you? Aren’t we here together?”
“Together, yet alone.”
“We’re all alone, Nora. Look carefully at everyone here and tell me if there’s one of them who’s not alone.”
In the light of that evening’s flames there were only sad people, serious faces, gazes that crossed without meeting. The same expression of attention arrested and then brought back into focus floated on all the girls’ faces as though on the surface of a bottomless pond. The bonfire made everyone reflective. Immense beech logs burned to embers but continued to cohere in their incandescence. People kept hurling branches onto the fire. At first the fire sputtered, but then the flames roared up powerfully like the sound of a burning house. The junipers and smaller firs became luminous in a second, flaming up, as enchanting as phosphorescent plants. Quick sparks flitted upwards with the delicate noise of metallic rain, then everything melted together into the embers that glowed like golden lava.
Paul had stopped a few steps from the fire, as though he didn’t dare to move closer. He took off his peaked cap with a humble gesture and stood there bareheaded.
“It’s time to go,” Nora said.
“Not yet,” he objected.
He couldn’t bring himself to break away from there. It seemed to him that this fire needed him to keep burning. It seemed to him that, without people surrounding it, it would go out.
Gunther was waiting impatiently for them in the cabin. In the three days that had passed since Old Grodeck’s departure, he had fallen ill. That evening he came down from his room for the first time.
“Do you still have a fever?”
“Not this evening. I don’t want to have a fever on New Year’s Eve.” He was still very pale, but his eyes had regained their former glow. “Do you like what I did while you were away?”
The house was decorated with wreaths of coloured paper. Gunther was very proud of his work. On a large piece of white cardboard, inscribed, as though in an American movie, with pretty patterned letters, were the English words: Happy New Year 1935.
“If we had champagne and music, it would be a real réveillon,” he said with a mischievous air.
“We don’t have champagne, but we do have wine. As for music, if we keep still, we can hear the music from the Touring Club very clearly.”
In fact, a distant accordion tune was audible. Then the nocturnal rustle of the forest covered it. For the first time, Nora took off her ski costume. She had a black dress in her backpack that she hadn’t put on until now because she felt better in the cabin in a ski vest and long trousers. She liked walking in her hobnailed boots and felt that her heavy step gave her more security in the presence of these three men.
But tonight the hobnailed boots tired her and the ski vest was too heavy. Her heavy woollen stockings scratched her. She took them off as though at the end of a long march and then, after so many days of rough clothing, she put on silk stockings, the only pair she’d brought with her from Bucharest, and felt their chill on her legs like a caress.
I’ve been a boy for too long, Nora thought, looking at herself in the mirror. Since donning her ski costume, she had been wearing her hair up, pinned in place beneath her peaked cap. Now she undid it and let it fall to her shoulders. Her black dress had a red leather belt and a narrow white collar that showed no cleavage. It seemed wrong that the dress had long sleeves. She would have liked to wear an evening dress that left her arms bare, a dress that could be heard shimmying as she walked, as though at a dance. But even in that modest black dress, Nora felt herself becoming a woman again. Her high-heeled shoes made her taller. Her hair, loose on her shoulders, liberated her forehead, and in its deep, dark brown depths her whole face became whiter and more luminous than before.
She felt free and easy and rushed downstairs – she who usually walked without haste or noise. She stopped only on the final stair, surprising herself with this unexpected change. What’s with you, Nora? It’s as if you’re drunk, she scolded herself.
Gunther came towards her and took her hand, regarding her with an expression of childlike astonishment. “How beautiful you are! I didn’t know you were so beautiful. Where did this come from? What happened?”
“I’m not beautiful, Gunther. But this evening I’m trying, I’d like to be beautiful. For the year ahead. We have to greet it with friendship, with some courage, above all with confidence. We have to have confidence in it and the things it brings us.”
Paul approached Nora. “Gunther’s right. You really are beautiful. Skiing made you look like a boy as long as we were dressing boyishly. But look now, you’re intimidating us. We’d like to kiss your hand and we don’t know how. We’ve taught ourselves to let you fall in the snow without stopping to check on you. You always manage on your own, and we go on ahead. We’ve taught ourselves to answer you with grunts, or sometimes not to answer at all. You’re patience, Nora. You’re obedience. You’re simplicity. We receive it all with indifference, as if it we were owed it, as if we had an ancestral right to it. But tonight you’ve suddenly reminded us that you’re beautiful, and your beauty is a gift too great for us. You disarm us, you give us the jitters, you make us babble all sorts of nonsense.”
“Really, Paul – only nonsense?” She had never heard him speaking with such unpretentious, untroubled emotion. Never had she discerned in his gaze the twinkle of tenderness with which he now approached her. If we were alone, I think I’d kiss him. “Babble nothing but nonsense, my dear. What’s happened to you? What will these people think of us?”
She was thinking less of Gunther, who had taken all this as a game from the beginning, and more of Hagen who, standing in motionless silence, had not budged from his spot next to the window. This evening his hard blue eyes had what might be the beginnings of dreamy tolerance ...
It was still long before midnight when Faffner, who until now had been lying next to the fire, suddenly got up as though from a dream with a tremor of attention and uneasiness. He listened for a whi
le, with his snout raised in the air and his ear cocked in the direction of who-knew-what distant noise, then walked puffing and snarling towards the door.
“What is it, Faffner?”
The dog stood up with his paws against the door, trying to open it by himself, yet when Hagen opened it and motioned for him to go outside he stayed on the threshold as though not daring to go any farther. He barked in the direction of the woods, more with uneasiness than anger.
“Are you afraid, Faffner?”
He would not go back inside but neither would he consent to leaving the cabin completely. He had an unusual bark, as though someone had asked him a question to which he didn’t want to reply.
“Let’s go see what it is,” Hagen said.
He put his cape over his shoulders, lighted his lantern, then took one of the two carbines down from the pegs overhead. They saw him armed for the first time, a sight that surprised them even more because until now they had believed that those two guns hanging on the wall were more decorations than actual old weapons. This man is really a hunter, Nora thought. The gun in his hand seemed to complete him. He looked less strange now. His ash-coloured cape, like his high boots, looked normal.
“Come, Faffner,” Hagen said, and set off. The dog followed behind with his muzzle in the snow, seeking the scent ...
They came back half an hour later. Time had passed slowly in the cabin, in a strained expectation that intensified the silence. Gunther didn’t separate himself from the window for a moment. Not a single cry or call was audible from the forest. Only from time to time did they hear noise – growing ever fainter – from the parties at the Touring Club and the SKV chalet. Paul wanted to go looking for the two who had left.
“Maybe they need help. There’s still one carbine here.”
“We have it here, and it’s good for it to stay here,” Nora said to stop him from leaving.
The wait was so difficult, filled with so many presentiments and unasked questions, that at first not even Hagen’s return laid them all to rest.
“I’m bringing you a bear cub,” he said, as he entered.
In fact, he was carrying on his arm a frozen baby bear, its pelt white with snow, its eyes half-shut with cold or exhaustion, its front paws tucked beneath its coffee-coloured muzzle, as though it were trying to warm itself up on its own.
“It must have left its mother’s lair in daylight and then not been able to find its way back. I’m going to try to find it for him, but I’ve brought him here first so that you can see him.”
“Are there bears around here?” Nora asked, astonished.
“Only in one spot, down towards the sheep-run. I think there aren’t very many of them. This summer the shepherds were talking about a she-bear, a single one, who would come out at night now and then at the sheep-run.”
Hagen had set down the bear cub on the carpet. They all gathered around to look at it. Only Faffner had to be kept away, since he was barking incessantly and showing his fangs as if he wanted to tear the cub open.
“He smells of the wilderness,” Hagen said.
Nora remained puzzled. Long ago she had learned at school that bears hibernated in total lethargy. She didn’t understand by what miracle this cub had reached their hands alive in the depths of winter.
“But that’s not true at all,” Hagen said. “You can’t even talk about total lethargy. It’s a kind of slumber, a kind of drowsiness, from which the bear awakes now and then, and – but of course usually not when there’s a blizzard – sometimes goes outside into the daylight. Especially when he’s restless, like this little brute.”
He spoke about these matters with a certain passion. For the first time since she had met him, his speech, normally harsh and cold, began to have a friendly air. He remained bent over the sleeping little brute with the attentive gaze of a man tamed.
Midnight found them silent and watchful around the bear cub who had entered the house with the new year.
It might be a sign, Nora thought.
He brought with him a smell of forest and earth. He looked ridiculous and dishevelled when he started to stretch and they all stared at him with amazement. He came from a mysterious life, hidden beneath the ice, beneath the snows. The stillness of the forest preserved roots and beasts. Everything appeared dead, yet underneath it was alive.
“Life’s always starting over,” Nora whispered, looking at the little beast, which she had bent over in order to caress its snow-damp muzzle. She wasn’t certain to whom or for whom she was speaking these words. For Paul, who had struggled so long to escape from his memories, as though they were a winter. For Gunther, who still had his eyes turned back in the direction of his vanished mother. For Hagen, who tried to conserve the image of the woman he had loved in a house with closed shutters. And for you, my poor old Nora, who’s believed so often that she has nothing more to expect from anyone.
“It’s midnight,” she said in a loud voice, and went to extinguish the lamp. Only the wood burning in the fireplace continued to toss its feeble reddish light over their faces, which took on more serious expressions in the darkness.
In the distance, on the summit of the mountain, they heard gunshots. Rifles were being fired off in honour of New Year. Faffner, who had been snarling the whole time, fell silent and listened.
When they had put the lights back on, they looked at each other for a few seconds without speaking.
“Life’s always starting over,” Nora said, mainly for herself. These words pleased her. She thought it was good that they were the first ones she had spoken in the new year.
“It’s time to go home,” Hagen said to the bear cub.
He got up and went into the woods again, carrying it on his arm. The dog followed calmly behind him. Nora, standing between Paul and Gunther, watched him leave from the doorway. The three of them stayed there for a long time. The night was peaceful and misty. They could still see Hagen’s lantern among the fir trees. His dark cape passed over the snow like a shadow.
XVIII
“THE CLOUDS ARE BREAKING UP!”
From the SKV chalet to the Touring Club, the news rushed through the woods like a yell: “The clouds are breaking up! The mist’s lifting!”
The morning was grey, the horizon was closed off, and the light still lacked the spark of brightness. The summit of Postăvar looked foreshortened beneath a damp, opaque sky that had fallen too low.
Yet from the Saxons’ chalet came shouts that announced sun and light.
“You can see Braşov! You can see Râşnov!” people coming down from the chalet recounted with astonishment. Groups of skiers rushed downhill towards the SKV chalet to ascertain that this miracle had actually happened.
Nora and Paul arrived too late.
“We had sun until a minute ago,” the man with the eyes of a badger said as he greeted them. He blinked repeatedly, as if he had been blinded by the light. The curtain of clouds, having lifted for a moment, had once again fallen towards the invisible world of the valley.
Everyone had squeezed onto the balcony as though onto the bridge of a steamship in order to follow the sun’s unexpected return. From that lookout point, when the sky was clear, one could see all of the Burzenland, all the way to the Făgăraş Mountains. It was like a window in the peak of Postăvar, open in the direction of the plain, a window lost in clouds since the onset of winter and through which, for a few seconds that morning, that sunlit vision of Braşov had appeared, only to vanish into nothingness once again.
People looked confused by that too-fleeting vision that had flashed in the distance then been extinguished. The mist settled over the pine forests and the cliffs again, with its hazy light, which snuffed out the last glimmering from the rocks.
“Look!” somebody shouted.
The murk blocking the horizon had divided and a floating ring of blue light had opened like a phantasmagoric town among the clouds. Smokey drapes were pulled aside, walls of mist collapsed. A steel-roofed citadel sparkled in the sun, with sp
ears and shields raised in the light.
It wasn’t Braşov. It was too far away to be Braşov, it was too dazzling.
Avalanches of clouds covered it, tossing it into darkness again, but a second later it sprang up once more in another spot, like a travelling island or a fantastic gulf in that ocean of smoke and mist. Sometimes the visions were sharp, simple, easy to recognize. Someone would point out Râşnov or Zizin, the winding road to Bran, or the glowing factory towers of Zărneşti, through the clouds. But in a single instant everything would disappear. Towns cut loose from their locations were buffeted from one streak of light to another, harbours of light opened and closed, passing mist evaporated in the sunlight ...
For two days the weather fluctuated between sunlight and blizzards. The mornings were luxuriant, as though experienced on the doorstep of an immense grotto. The clouds were torn, curving into distant Arcs de la Triomphe, blue vaults, brilliant costumes. From one second to the next, smokey continents took shape then melted over the flat Burzenland plain. Mountain ranges rose and fell in a magical light.
The mist swirled up from the forest like smoke from a great fire. Each fir tree seemed to burn in a cold flame, with a metallic sound. Mountains bucked to shake themselves free of cloud. There was sunlight all over the Burzenland, there was sunlight all over the Prahova Valley; only Postăvar, like a smoky bell, a citadel of blackness, remained enclosed in its winter walls.
In the morning the gates seemed to open and, through the torn tissue of clouds, as though via dozens of moving windows, visions of another world, another season, chased each other through the haze. Yet towards evening, as though the mountains, tiring of this turmoil, had surrendered to the victorious winter, the mist fell again, the clouds became heavy, the forest smoked feebly ...
Accident Page 24
