The Accident

XX

ON THAT LAST DAy OF THE VACATIONS, Braşov was as lively and crowded as it had been at the beginning. The streets filled with skiers looked like immense platforms on which the hurried, restless, talkative throng awaited the arrival and departure of trains. The downtown travel agencies were besieged by people impatient to make reservations, buy tickets and ask for information. The human tide that had rolled down from the cabins in the surrounding mountains, or had come in from farther away — from the Făgăraş, from Bihor — after their skiing holidays, was gathering again in Braşov, where so many roads met. Sunburned faces smiled at each other on the street as if they had recognized old friends.

“Is it possible, Nora, that all these people are returning to their former lives? Is it really possible that after having been in the mountains they still believe in the things they left down below? Which they’ve got away from? Which they wanted to forget?”

“He who has been in the mountains is a free man,” Nora replied.

A free man. A free man. Paul repeated her words in silence. He felt that he was still very young, that he was coming back from a long, sunny vacation, and that all roads were open to him.

The trains came in from the rest of Transylvania as though from a frozen polar region, with long delays, laden with snow, the engines white like enormous ice-breaking ploughs.

“They’re organizing a skiers’ train this evening. It’s better if you wait for that one. You’ll never find seats in the regular carriages.”

They had a few hours left in Braşov and were thinking of spending them on the streets, particularly in the outlying neighbourhoods where the city preserved its air of an old fortress. But, before setting off on the road again, they went into the Hotel Coroana to leave their skis there and take a rest. In the café there was a motley intersection of city clothes and ski costumes, sullen townspeople and the bright faces of young people who had just come down from the forests.

With some difficulty, they found a free table in a corner where it appeared that the locals took refuge to immerse themselves in reading the afternoon newspapers, angry at the crush of youth that was disturbing their peace and their daily habits. They were all serious, silent, severe, and they all seemed to have the same blunt, resistant, undemonstrative forehead as Old Grodeck. They were reading Braşov’s German- and Hungarian-language newspapers, and they read them with a kind of uniform worried attention.

Paul noticed in passing a front-page headline in large letters: Létrejött Rómában a megegyezés!²⁶

He didn’t know what those words meant, and suddenly it passed through his mind that extraordinary events might have taken place in the world during the two weeks he had spent in the mountains, and that the headline, printed in large letters, might be announcing a crucial event that would change the fate of mankind.

“I’m going to buy newspapers,” he told Nora, and got up from the table with a certain restlessness.

He was close to the door, about to step out onto the street, when he heard the shout. He turned his head and looked with surprise at the nearby tables, but didn’t recognize anyone. Then he realized that someone was waving at him from farther back, next to the window.

“Is that you, Ann?”

She was alone at the table. In front of her were a few newspapers and magazines, which she seemed to have been reading.

“Do you mind?” Paul said, leafing through them in a hurry. He looked first at the headlines and the breaking news. He remained on his feet facing Ann, leaning over the table slightly, and in a few instants he had scanned the whole pile of papers.

“Are you looking for something?” she asked.

“No. Nothing in particular. I wanted to know whether anything had happened in the world. But I can see that nothing’s happened. Truly nothing…”

Only then did he raise his eyes to look at Ann. She was bareheaded and wore a blue scarf knotted around her neck like a tie.

“Where are you coming from, Paul? Have you been here long? Are you leaving for Bucharest? Someone told me they’d seen you on Christmas Eve, but I didn’t really believe it. I’ve been in Braşov the whole time. I’m staying here. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here. I came here to work. Don’t you want to sit down? How long has it been since we saw each other? Where did you disappear to?”

She spoke, as usual, with a multitude of short questions, which she tossed out negligently, without waiting for replies. Paul was still standing in front of her. He watched how she laughed, the gestures she made with her hands, how she spoke. What small eyes she has! Is it possible to have eyes that small?

Her questions suddenly stopped and she became unexpectedly attentive.

“What’s going on with you, Paul? Why aren’t you saying anything? Why are you looking at me like that? Something’s happened to you. You’ve changed. I don’t know how, but you’ve changed a lot. Maybe it’s because you’re all in black. Maybe it’s because you’re wearing those clothes…”

“Yes, Ann. Maybe.”

He was leaving without having asked her a single question. He wished he could think of a friendly word for her, but nothing came to mind.

“You’ve got a pretty scarf,” he said, as they separated.

Nora was waiting for him at the table in the corner, ready to leave.

“Who’s that blonde girl who stopped you?” she said, without much curiosity.

Paul thought for a second, then replied abruptly: “A girl from Bucharest. She’s a painter.”

There didn’t seem to be much more to say about Ann.

The train left Braşov with all the carriages full, yet at every station — at Dârste, at Timişul-de-Jos, at Timişul-de-Sus — more groups of skiers were waiting.

Everyone spoke about the snow and the weather. Those who had come down from Piatra Mare complained of too much mist and frost. Girls and boys coming from Bihor related that in Stâna de Vale it had been sunny the whole time. They were all astoundingly young and, surrounded by them, Paul, too, felt that he was their age. Something’s happened to you, Ann had said. Yes, it had happened. He looked at himself in the window of the carriage as though in a mirror, and he almost didn’t recognize himself. On his face were the tracks of small scratches, his right eye still retained the consequences of his terrible fall at the Touring Club, his lower lip was still slightly cracked, but the sun had passed over all of these wounds and healed them. Nobody in the carriage was darker than he was, nobody was more sunburned. It’s as if I only skied on the ridges, close to the light.

He felt a kind of childish exultation. He didn’t know exactly what he might want to do now. There were strengths in him with which he wasn’t familiar, impulses that were awaking from a long slumber.

“Nora, do you think that skiing can save a person? Can it change his life?”

“Dear Paul, I think that our lives are full of bad habits, compulsions and obsessions. Skiing cleanses us of them. In the end, the important thing is not to let ourselves be defeated again.”

“No, Nora. Never.”

He uttered the vow passionately, with exaggerated firmness.

He made his amends alone, repeating the words more calmly and decisively in his mind: Never. Never.