The Accident

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.

“Bravo! Very good,” he heard Nora shouting from behind him. He didn’t have time to reply to her, nor to recover his breath. Ahead of him were several metres of straight downhill after which, ominously, there was another turn, this time to the right. He made his turn a little less slowly, a little less raggedly, than the first time.

He felt himself coming out of the curve at greater speed. Let’s not go overboard, he thought. He clutched the poles’ handgrips, determined to resist. He let his weight fall on both skis and opened his snowplow wider. He went into the next turn with all the resistance he could muster. His arms, his knees, his ankles, strained to stop, to brake, his onward motion. The skis stalled for a moment in the middle of the turn, as if they had been locked into place, but then they pulled out of it and, in a moment of release, set off downhill.

His speed increased. Paul opened his snowplow wider. The tips of his skis almost knocked against each other, while their back ends slid apart until they spanned the breadth of the track. Yet he felt the wind beating more sharply against his cheeks. He didn’t understand what was going on. The snowplow no longer helped him at all. It was like a leaking brake that no longer transmitted the driver’s commands. The curves became more and more frequent, and even faster. He came out of the turns now in a kind of automatic twisting of his body. Paul felt himself jerked now to the right, now to the left. At each new curve he had the impression that he was about to be hurled onto the packed snow of the trail, but at the last moment an unexpected strength would lift him out of the fall and set him upright again on his skis. Not a single thought was in his head: his whole being was in a tumult, overridden, as if by a shout, by the will to stay on his feet.

In front of him, at a distance he couldn’t judge — was it far away? close up? — a tree branch heaved into sight, blocking his path. He crouched down on his skis, closed his eyes and plunged forward without paying attention, even in that same second, to whether he had struck it, whether he had fallen. His skis dashed ahead now — as though on their own, detached from his body — into a new curve that pitched him to the right, but by a miracle in that instant the trail came out of the woods and widened into a great expanse of white. He didn’t realize what was happening. He had the feeling that he was flying over a level surface. The wind, which until now had been gusting violently into his face, seemed to subside. The edges of his skis no longer cut obliquely into the snow, but rather settled, as if floating, with the length of their undersides flat against the snow.

Once again Paul tried to recover his lost movements. To his amazement, his skis responded to him. The snowplow opened with ease, and, during a final turn to the right, the two skis had stopped, unresisting, one alongside the other.

“We’re in Ruia,” Nora shouted from far away.

She came towards him, swinging easily on her skis, as though she were skating.

“It went really well, Paul. If we keep going like that all the way down, we’ll reach Braşov in daylight.”

“If we keep going like that all the way down, I’ll end up flat on the trail, hanging from a tree or falling over a precipice.”

Nora thought he was joking. He tried to explain to her the sensation of nothingness from which he had just emerged. He felt as though he were on the outer edges of human life.

“Well, the trail back is very short,” Nora laughed. “Do you know how long it took us to get here from up there? Four minutes.”

He couldn’t believe it. As in those fleeting dreams that make us traverse the entire space of a life in a few seconds, Paul had the feeling that he was going around and around in an endless race.

“I assure you that you’re exaggerating, Paul. Everything went really well. I followed you the whole time. Your turns were steady, your speed was under control. A little fast sometimes, but under control.”

“Under whose control? I felt like I was in a whirlpool, a chaos. I couldn’t see anything.”

“Because the light was too strong. Skiing is an enormous light; you said it yourself. Your eyes have to get used to it.”

They didn’t have much time to spend in Ruia. They hadn’t foreseen this break. Before leaving, however, they took a look in the direction of the broad clearing, which they had just crossed without observing it. Gripped on all sides by woods, Ruia, with its pristine snows, was as white as a frozen alpine lake.

Gunther’s map showed the trail winding more from here on. The little blue-and-white signs sprang up at regular intervals, spaced at equal distances, like coloured windows cut into the bark of the fir trees. The trail descended in a gentle slope devoid of sudden changes of direction. The curves were wide and visible from far away. Paul waited for them with the same attentive concentration. He threw his whole body into braking his speed, as though a single movement had passed through him from his shoulders to his ankles. Then, in the instant in which the skis slipped out of the braking posture, he had a sudden sensation of release.

Now and then he dared to close his eyes. Only for a few seconds. He felt weightless, without memory, without a past…

Sometimes Nora went first. He saw her heading away at high speed with her knees barely bent, her poles held behind her and lifted a short distance above the snow like two oars frozen for a second in midair. He would find her farther down the trail, waiting for him. They didn’t speak to each other. He would pass close to her with a salute or a look. They understood one another very well with their eyes. Both knew that there were no words for what they wished to say to each other.

They made a brief stop at the point indicated by Gunther on the map, more to check their itinerary than to rest. On their left they passed a trail marked with red rectangles that went to Poiana, while on the right, a bit farther along, a trail marked with a red cross inside a blue square ran downhill towards Timişul-de-Jos. Not one of these trails had the gentle, restful slope of their trail. It unfurled before them, white between the pine trees, with barely perceptible undulations.

“I’m afraid of falling asleep on my skis,” he told Nora before heading out again.

“Why?”

“I don’t know how to describe it. I feel myself soaring. It’s a kind of bliss.”

They reached Crucur at four o’clock. More sprawling than Ruia, the clearing looked wilder, more abandoned. It might also have been an effect of the light, which was beginning to weaken. The fir trees in Ruia had been green: a vivid green. Here their green had begun to shade towards black.

The lead-grey mist sometimes faded away with evening, which wasn’t far away.

They went into the forest ranger’s cabin to ask about the weather. The door was open, but they didn’t find anyone inside. It seemed to be more a mirage than a house. Only a few extinguished coals in the fireplace — who knew how long they’d been there? — showed that human steps had once passed this way.

“I wouldn’t want dusk to overtake us on the trail,” Nora said.

They opened the map, measuring the length of the trail that remained before them. The itinerary Gunther had established for them made long detours and went to Braşov, by way of the foot of Tâmpa Hill.

“It’s too much. We should try something else.”

From Crucur a trail blazed with yellow-and-blue signs set out downhill to the right through the woods. It wasn’t, properly speaking, a trail: more a path, likely the route to a natural spring now vanished beneath the snow.

“Are you ready for adventure, Paul?”

“Ready.”

In response, she set out ahead of him, shouting now and then to tell him that the trail was clear and that he could follow. His poor old snowplow collapsed at the point of departure. His skis skidded incessantly. There was no way to collect himself, to stop the skid. For a distance of several hundred metres the trail wound between the pine trees with tight, unexpected curves. Paul didn’t succeed in taking a single curve on his feet. At each one he was hurled into the snow, falling, rolling over. At regular intervals he heard Nora’s shout and replied to her.

“Are you coming?”

“I’m coming.”

In fact, he was coming. He couldn’t do anything else but keep coming. Sometimes he got snagged on a pine tree or a rock, but the skis carried him forward.

“It’s been hellish,” he told Nora, when he finally caught up with her. His forehead and cheeks were scratched, his breath shook with effort. “It’s been hellish,” he repeated, “but we’re moving faster.” He knew there was no room to choose or turn back. They were in the middle of the forest and, whatever the price, they had to get out of there. Dusk was nipping at their heels.

Now the trail ran straight downhill without any detours, cutting crossways through the forest. The slope was much steeper than it had been until now, but at least there were no violent changes of direction. The rustling of the skis on the snow became progressively harsher as, at sunset, an icy crust formed on the surface. They stopped at the junction of two trails where a board put up by the Touring Club, half covered in snow, pointed out to the left a path marked with yellow crosses in red squares: To Poiana.

“If you want,” Nora suggested, “we can take it to Poiana. There we can pick up the caterpillar to take us to Braşov.”

“And if it’s not there?”

“Then there’s nothing we can do.”

Paul thought for an instant, then rejected this idea. “No, Nora, we’ve started a game. I want to play it to the end. I want to enter Braşov on skis. On my skis.” He wasn’t even joking. He was grim and intent. “Shall we go?”

One could say that only there did their run truly begin. They travelled at a short distance from each other, crouched over their skis with their foreheads thrust forward, their shoulders slightly raised, as though they were on the verge of spreading their wings. Their ski boots danced on the snow in small leaps and lifted the powder, which the wind flung in their eyes. Nora continued to maintain the lead, bareheaded, with her hair tossed about around her temples. Now and then she shot a quick glance in his direction to check that he was following her. Their eyes met for a second, or even less. Paul leaned ever farther forward, bent his knees ever more deeply. There were moguls that shook him, as though they were going to fling him over backwards. He received the impact in his chest and crouched lower over his skis.

He didn’t know how long they had been following this trail nor how much more lay ahead of them. He had fallen a number of times, but each time he got up immediately and set off again, feeling that if he delayed he would no longer have the courage to get up. The light of the cloudy dusk dwindled without a glimmer. The fir trees were wrapped in their evening mist, as though in smoke.

Up ahead, Nora shouted something. It sounded like a cry for help, but he didn’t hear it clearly: it seemed to reach him from a great distance.

Paul hurled himself to the right and slid through the snow for a few seconds. He hit his elbow and knees, but somehow managed to bring himself to a halt. He got up, dizzy, staggering on his skis. “What happened?”

Nora pointed between the pine bows in the direction of nearby lights. “We’ve arrived. We’re at the edge of Braşov.”

On the streets of the town they stopped in front of shop windows, they ran into pedestrians, they watched buses, cars and sleds passing in front of them, they read cinema billboards, they listened to the shouts of newsboys selling the evening newspapers — and yet they didn’t come to their senses, ambling along confused and deaf. The silence of the woods lingered in him like the extended note of an organ.

He went in to buy their concert tickets, chose their seats, received his change, asked questions, replied — all in an absent, mechanical way.

“What’s wrong with you, Paul? Don’t you want to wake up?”

“Of course, but I can’t.”

Braşov, with its evening lights, its streets thronged with people, its glowing shop windows, its whole Christmas Eve bustle, was unreal to him.

“You know how I feel, Nora? Like a wolf that’s come down from the woods to the edge of town… And now I don’t dare go any farther.”

There wasn’t a single free spot at the Coroana. The hotel was full, while in the lobby people who had come in on the last train waited without hope, their baggage not yet unpacked. They left their skis there and went to ask at the smaller hotels and holiday villas in the vicinity.

“You’re wasting your time,” someone told them. “There’s not a bed to be had in the whole city. People are sleeping wherever they can: in restaurants, in cafés, at the train station…”

Braşov had the appearance of a town taken over by a training camp. Entire regiments of skiers seemed to have occupied the citadel. Blue peaked caps were everywhere.

“Did so many people come here to listen to the Christmas Oratory?” Nora said in surprise, laughing.

Above all, people had come for the skiing competitions at Predeal, which started in two days’ time. The teams of competitors, who until now had been training in the mountains throughout the region were beginning to gather down in the town

On the boulevard, across the street from the post office, the municipal train, with its stubby railway engine and little yellow carriages looked like a toy stuck in the snow. The engine’s whistling, calling late passengers, could be heard from far away. Many people were going to look for shelter for the night in Dârste, Cernatu and Satu-Lung.

“If we don’t find anything anywhere else,” Nora said, “and if there’s still time before the concert, it might not be a bad idea for us to go to Satu-Lung too, on the last run.”

“No, not Satu-Lung,” Paul refused.

“Why not?”

“It’s too far… It’s too late.” For a moment he considered telling her frankly: There are too many memories there that I don’t want to get close to. Then he realized that this wasn’t even true. It seemed to him that he could stare those memories, which felt healed now, straight in the eyes, without danger or apprehension. No, that train was not going in the direction of his past…

“The line’s blocked on the other side of Dârste,” someone shouted from the window of a carriage.

Yes, it’s blocked, Paul repeated in his mind. It seemed to him as though there really were broken connections in his memory, blocked lines, roads that had closed forever. With an effort, the train set itself in motion with a noise of frozen old fetters. The engine fought to break out of the ice, to push through the snow.

The passengers were singing out the windows, waving their ski caps, shouting, greeting those who were staying behind with exaggerated gestures. At the back of the train, a few skiers were straining with mock effort to push it out of the snow.

“Skiing turns everyone into a child,” Paul said.

It wasn’t only skiing. It was that whole Christmas Eve, with its holiday mood, its deep snows, its vacation bustle.

Hagen had told the truth. The address he had given them was far away, while the house really did look very old. The wooden door in a grey wall, locked with large iron bars like the door of a fortress, was deaf to all of their knocking. One might have thought that no one had come here since time immemorial.

Frau Adelle Bund was not home, or did not wish to reply.

All along the street astonished faces appeared at the windows, not knowing what was going on. From across the street the neighbours’ little girl asked them who they were looking for.

“Doesn’t anybody live here?” Paul asked.

“Of course, but…”

The little girl didn’t finish her reply and sped home, probably in order to spread the news about the incredible goings-on that were happening at number 26.

Yet the door had opened at last, although only half-way. On the threshold an old woman dressed in black prevented them from entering with a bitter glare that right from the start said: No! Paul offered her Hagen’s envelope, and she opened it, continuing to oblige them to stay outside, facing the door. From time to time she raised a suspicious glare in their direction, as though she were comparing them with what was written in the letter.

“It would be better if you found somewhere else to sleep,” she said in conclusion, never the less deciding to receive them indoors.

They went forward, entering first an interior courtyard lined with several shuttered windows, then a long, dark corridor. The house felt uninhabited. Neither a noise nor a whisper could be heard anywhere. The woman stopped in front of a door and tried a few keys in the darkness until she succeeded in opening it. It was a small, frozen room with rustic furniture covered in dust. When was the last time they opened the windows in here, Nora wondered.

Frau Adelle Bund seemed to understand the visitor’s thoughts. “I have to air it out and make a fire. I didn’t know you were coming. Nobody comes here.”

The shutters, like the front door, were closed with iron bars.

“We’ll leave our backpacks and go,” Nora said. “If you give us the key to the front door, you won’t have to wait up for us. We’ll be coming back late.”

She wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, to find herself outdoors again, on the other side of these chilly walls.

The Black Church was full of light.

“The Grodeck clan is gathering,” Nora said.

She saw them coming in from all corners of the town in family groups, sombre, silent, in heavy fur overcoats, moving with measured strides. They entered without haste and greeted each other without joy, making ceremonious salutations. On arrival they scattered to the left and the right, moving towards seats that must have been theirs, always the same, for years and years.

“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.”