The Accident

I

SHE DIDN’T KNOW HOW MUCH TIME had passed. A few seconds? A few long minutes?

She felt nothing. Around her she heard voices, footsteps, people calling out, but all muted and grey, like a sort of auditory paste, from which occasionally a tram-bell or a shout shook loose with unexpected clarity, only to fade away again into the suffocated commotion.

They’ll say it’s an accident, she thought very calmly, almost with indifference.

The thought made her feel neither alarmed nor hurried. She had a very vague impression that she must be stretched out next to the sidewalk with her head in the snow. But she didn’t try to move.

A stupid, senseless question passed through her mind: What time is it?

She strained to listen to the tick-tock of her wristwatch, but couldn’t hear it. It must have been smashed. Then, in an effort to concentrate, as though immersed in herself, she observed that in fact she heard nothing of her own being; not her pulse, not her heart, not her breath.

I’m…, she reflected. I’m like a clock. And it seemed to her that she was smiling, although she couldn’t feel her lips, for whose outline she searched in vain somewhere in that familiar yet vanished space that was her unfeeling body.

She remembered suddenly the moment of the fall, so suddenly that she had the impression that she was falling again, and she heard again the brief noise, like that of a shattered spring, that she had heard then.

She hadn’t dwelt on it at the time, but now it returned with an absurd precision: the dry sound of a tearing ligament, of a snapping bow. In truth it seemed to her that somewhere in the intimacy of this body that she no longer felt, something had been ripped out of its natural place.

She tried to review her being, with a brisk inward glance, in order to identify, as though on an X-ray screen, the exact spot of the dislocation.

The collar bone? The aorta? The kneecap?

For each word, it seemed to her that she had to find a response in her inert body, which she listened to again, forcing herself to explore it with her hearing down to its most remote fibres.

All right, something’s broken. But what?

Voices rose and fell on the street around her in noisy outbreaks that suddenly became distant. They reached her as though passing through mist or steam.

All at once she overcame the penetrating cold and at the same time she felt her right knee naked against the snow, as though it alone in all her body had awoken her from a powerful anaesthetic. So far away, yet how intensely she felt it! She concentrated her thoughts on this sensation for a moment. This single sensitive point felt extremely strange to her, detached from her swoon like a little island of life.

Then, like a wave of blood, the cold rose above her knees and spread like a fine net through her calf, calling back to life new regions of her flesh. The snow was fluffy, soothing, and it had the softness of chilled bedclothes. She plunged her leg with caution straight into that snow and felt its utter nakedness, her stocking having fallen to her ankle.

In that moment, the tearing sensation of a few seconds earlier flashed through her again. Her mind, which had hesitated until now, located the exact point of the torn piece of her anatomy: her garter. Having broken loose, its metallic spring pressed up against her calf like a small round signet.

I must be half-naked, she thought without panic. She had barely lifted her head when the voices grew clearer, as though the mist had suddenly dispersed.

“Criminals!” an old man shouted. He blustered, suffocated by the violence of his anger, at a tram driver, who stood in dazed silence. “You don’t look in front of you, you don’t look around you, you don’t give a hoot about your passengers, about women or children…”

The tram driver gestured, trying to explain.

“Well, if she’s getting off…”

“So what if she’s getting off? Doesn’t she have the right?”

“She doesn’t have the right because this isn’t a stop,” somebody else said, in a tone of indifference.

From the ground, she tried to see the person who had spoken, but in the darkness she could only make out an expression lacking in curiosity.

“Of course it’s not a stop,” the driver repeated, mildly encouraged.

The elderly gentleman, indignant, refused to back down.

“It’s a damned shame it isn’t. It should be. We pay for this service. You know they take our money, but they don’t lend a hand to build new stops. Criminals, bandits… You’ve got rich on the money from our pockets.”

She became aware of a smile that fluttered in the dark and, without raising her head far enough to receive this smile full in the face, was certain that it belonged to the indifferent voice of a moment earlier.

“… Yes, that’s how they get us, we deserve it, we’re dumb and we don’t respond…”

He was stupid, certainly, but she realized that, sprawled there in the snow, she wasn’t listening to the strident voice of the outraged old man, but rather to the other man’s distant silences.

“… Yes, gentlemen, we fail to respond. Let’s call a police officer and we’ll send you off to see a judge, you lawbreaker…”

Finally she heard again the other man’s voice, that slightly deaf, slightly lazy voice. He was probably speaking to the tram driver.

“Hit the road, lad. Get back into your tram and hit the road.”

“Sure, let him hit the road and leave her there dead in the snow.”

Everyone gazed in her direction. In the heat of the argument she had been forgotten, but now she once again became the central character in the drama.

She felt ridiculous, sprawled out as she was — who knew how long she’d been there? — in the middle of the street amid a group of curious bystanders. She would have liked to get up, but she knew she couldn’t do it alone.

She glanced around in a circle, seeking a familiar figure among those grey faces, and stopped at the man whose lazy voice had caught her attention. She recognized him by his uncaring gaze, which bore a strong resemblance to his voice.

“Rather than having a fight, why don’t you help me get up?”

The man didn’t look at all surprised. Without haste, he took a step towards her, paused, kneeled, placed his hand beneath her right arm and lifted her firmly, if without great deftness.

She was unable to suppress a small cry of pain when, reaching a standing position, she was left with her full weight on her right leg.

“Does it hurt?”

“I don’t know. I’ll see later.”

What should she do now? The circle of curious bystanders tightened around her. Her hat slipped onto the nape of her neck, her right stocking had slid down her leg, her overcoat was covered with snow, her gloves were soaked…

She felt that getting up had been a mistake: she had been more comfortable lying in the snow. For a moment she was tempted to tumble back down on the spot, a thought that made her smile and recover her calm. I’ve got to escape from this, she said to herself, confronting the group’s curiosity with courage.

She returned to the man at her side, who also seemed rather embarrassed by the spectacle.

“Would you like to take a few steps with me?” The suggestion seemed to bore him. She hastened to calm him. “Just a few, as far as the car.”

She didn’t wait for his reply. She took his arm and set out alongside him, treading with care in order not to reawaken the pain of a few moments earlier.

Neither a car nor a taxi could be seen. The young gentleman made no effort to conceal his boredom. He remained stubbornly silent, distracted.

She would have been happy to leave him and continue on her way alone, but she didn’t trust her right leg. Twice she tried to tread with her full weight, and the pain sliced into her ankle like a blade.

He’s been badly brought up, but I need him. She took his arm more firmly, as though she wished to show him that she wasn’t going to allow herself to be intimidated by his bad upbringing and that she wasn’t giving up.

She walked a little behind him, not daring to tell him to take shorter steps. She was able to scowl at him in profile without his noticing. A drab guy, with undefinable features, young-looking, although not of any precise age; his hair looked blond, although it wasn’t of any clearly defined colour. Maybe I’ve seen him before somewhere.

Was he tall? Short? She wouldn’t have known what to say. He looked tall in that loose, grey overcoat with large pockets into which he had thrust his hands with a self-assured air.

He remained silent, in the silence of a long journey, reserved, enduring, expressionless.

It’s as if he were alone. As if I weren’t here by his side. As if he had forgotten that I was by his side. What if he really has forgotten? What if he wakes up and finds us arm-in-arm and asks me what I’m doing here, hanging onto his arm?

She decided to break the silence.

“I don’t know how it happened. I slipped, you see, on the step of the tram. I was trying to get off.”

“While the tram was moving?”

Hearing his voice surprised her. She thought he hadn’t heard her, that he wasn’t going to respond. Her surprise made her animated.

“Yes, while the tram was moving. I always get off when the tram’s moving. Otherwise it doesn’t work. I live near here, on Bulevardul Dacia, and the number 16 tram only stops on Donici or on Vasile Lascăr. It’s too far away. That’s why I get off at the turn, where the tram goes onto Orientul. Not just me. Everybody who lives around here does it. And nothing ever happens. Except for today… I don’t know how it happened.”

They were passing beneath the pulsing of a streetlight. In the light, his face again looked distracted.

What an unpleasant guy! Even so, she summoned the courage to stop.

“Don’t be troubled by what I’m about to ask you. I want you to pull up my stocking. I’m completely frozen.”

She bent over, realizing only now that she was bleeding: her right knee was red, but lower down, towards her ankle, where the scrape was deeper, frozen blood plastered the stocking’s fabric to the wound.

“Is it serious?”

“I don’t know. For the time being it’s not hurting. I should go to the pharmacy. Will you come with me?”

He didn’t reply, but he took her arm and asked with his eyes: Which way?

“It’s not far. Look, over there on the other sidewalk.”

They crossed the street. From afar she found it difficult to recognize herself in the reflection in the pharmacy’s windows next to this man, who looked even stranger in the distant image on the glass. As she approached, she smiled with compassion at her own face. How pathetic I look, poor me! She took off her hat with a brisk motion and stood with it in her hand, dismayed.

“I can’t go into that shop. The pharmacist knows me, he’ll ask, I’ll have to explain… Will you…?”

He accepted unenthusiastically, frowning with his brows.

“What do you need?”

“A little iodine and… I don’t know, a little oxygenated water.”

She was about to open her handbag to give him the money, but, without waiting, he pushed open the door of the pharmacy and went inside.

From outside, she watched him through the pane of the display window: how he entered, how he took off his hat, how he said good evening, how he approached the pharmacist in his white lab jacket. She found it odd to watch him opening his mouth and uttering words that she couldn’t hear. What a peculiar voice he had! A little muffled, a little quashed, and yet with a rough tone. The pharmacist was pouring the tincture of iodine into a bottle.

Why was he taking so long? It must be as hot as a greenhouse inside. The metal scales were still. The heavy liquids, as though drowsy, slept on the shelves in solemn crystal flasks.

The pharmacist was asking him something and he was replying with plenty of enthusiasm. He was more talkative inside in the heat than he had been out here in the cold. And if she were to leave him? If she walked away now, without waiting for him? How astonished he would be at not finding her here, but what a feeling of relief he would have, the saucy devil!

Her knee started to hurt. To sting more than to hurt. She thought again of the lovely warmth on the other side of the display window and closed her eyes. She felt as though she were slipping into a kind of slumber…

“Did I take too long?”

It was his voice. That uncertain voice, which didn’t stress his words and gave her the impression that he was walking at her side without paying attention to her.

She didn’t reply and didn’t open her eyes.

“Are you feeling ill?”

“I’m not ill. But I’d like to get home. I’m freezing.”

“You said it wasn’t far…”

“Don’t worry, it isn’t. Another twenty paces and you’re free.”

She didn’t expect even a polite denial from him. She took his arm, determined not to say anything more to him; she was impatient to be left alone. She forced herself to take ever longer strides, although her right leg was still hurting.

For the first time since that stupid accident had happened, she felt like she wanted to cry.

She finally stopped in front of a multiple-storey building, leaned against the glass front door and extended her hand…

“This is it. You can go now. Thank you.”

He squeezed her hand for a second without holding it, then touched a finger to his hat, sketching a vague half-wave.

She wanted to tell him: You’re the most unpleasant man in the world. But she was too tired to tell him anything. She left him there in front of the building, and went into the bright foyer, where an enervating wave of heat received her.

… She was alone in the elevator. She pressed the button for the top floor, the sixth, then fell onto the bench with a relieved sigh. She promised herself she would cry with all her heart once she got to her apartment. She felt that nothing could be better for her: a good cry followed by a steaming hot bath.

Somewhere between two floors the elevator stopped with a brusque shudder. At first she thought she had arrived, but she realized that in fact she was suspended in the air.

This is the day for accidents. She tried to make a joke in her mind. She pressed for a long time on the alarm button.

She remembered that last summer the old lady from the third floor had spent a whole morning locked in the elevator between two floors. The thought terrified her. She pressed again, with a long, nervous, harsh start of panic, on the red button. In the deep silence, everything was motionless; somewhere far away, as weak as a call from another world, the alarm bell rang without anyone responding to it.

She could no longer hold back her tears. She looked at herself in the elevator’s rectangular mirror and felt pity for the state she was in: dishevelled, ragged, dirty, frozen. The hot tears welled from her eyes, and she received them with a sudden pleasure, as if she had drawn near to a warm hearth.

From below someone, probably the porter, shouted: “Hey, third-floor door. Who opened the third-floor door?”

The third-floor door was closed: the elevator set off noiselessly on its way. She would have liked not to stop again, to travel like that forever, and to be able to cry peacefully to the slow, silent movements of the elevator.

On the top floor the young gentleman in the grey overcoat was waiting for her. She looked at him in astonishment, unable to understand what was going on.

“You?”

“Me. I forgot to give you the iodine tincture and the oxygenated water.”

Indeed, he pulled two bottles out of his pocket enveloped in the pharmacy’s multicoloured paper.

“And how did you get up here?”

“By the stairs.”

“Six floors?”

“Six.”

What an odd guy! she thought, watching him for a moment, intrigued again by his lack of expression. Now, too, he had that far-away, unquestioning gaze, which she had first seen when she had raised her head from the snow.

She remembered that she had been crying. Embarrassed, she lowered her eyes; but it was too late: he had noticed.

“You were crying?”

“No… Well, yes. A little. But it’s not important! It’s never important when I cry…”

She took the key out of her handbag.

“Do you want to come in for a moment?”

He responded by lifting his shoulders.

“Does that mean Yes, or does that mean No?”

“I don’t know what it means. It’s a habitual gesture. Let’s say Yes.”

“So come in.”

Next to the door was a small, metal plate: Nora Munteanu. He asked the question with his eyes and she confirmed: “That’s me.”

The water was boiling. She had thrown a handful of lavender into the pot, and the apartment was full of warm, aromatic vapours.

“Can you smell it over there?”

“What?”

“The lavender.”

“It’s lavender? Yes, I can smell it.”

His voice, even more muffled than usual, came from the adjoining room, through the door that Nora had left ajar in order to be able to speak to him while she ran her bath.

“You’re not bored?”

“No.”

“Are you comfortable?”

“Yes.”

In fact, she had sat him down in an arm chair and set a pile of illustrated magazines in front of him. “Like at the dentist,” he observed meekly, occupying his assigned place.

“Yes, just like at the dentist. I’ll ask you to behave yourself until I’ve finished. Then we can talk.”

The bath was soporifically good. Nora closed her eyes, overcome by the heat that she felt suffusing in a sweet torpor through her entire body. Deep inside her, fine blood vessels, which she thought that the cold had frozen shut, began to open.

Nora felt an access of companionship for this body of hers, well-known, familiar and reliable. It felt like a rediscovered old acquaintance and she caressed it with comradely sympathy. Her hand lingered on her breast, as on a round cheek. She would have liked to fall asleep…

In the adjoining room she heard a chair move.

“Did you want something?”

“No. I was looking at the photograph on your desk. Who is it?”

“Me.”

“In that costume?”

“It’s a ski costume. I was at Predeal. Do you like it?”

He didn’t reply. Maybe he hadn’t heard the question, which she had asked in an offhand tone, her voice dropping. She heard him turning a page: he must be reading.

Nora thought about him and realized with surprise that she had forgotten him. She knew he was in the next room, sunken in her armchair, on the other side of the door she had left ajar, yet she was unable to remember what his face looked like. His features melted into uncertainty under a vague smile, as though under a diffused light.

On the other hand, she remembered clearly the tie he was wearing, a green tie of rough wool, with tiny oblique parallel seams…

It’s a nice tie, but he doesn’t know how to tie it. The knot’s crooked. I’ll have to teach him how to knot a tie like a normal person.

In the next room, the telephone rang loudly.

“What should I do?” her quiet guest asked from the sofa.

“Nothing. Let it ring.”

The ringing continued, ever longer, ever harsher. Nora smiled with fatigue. Only one person would let the phone ring that long.

“Be a good boy and answer.”

He lifted the receiver, said, “Hello,” then, after a pause, replaced it.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Nobody answered. And somebody hung up without a word.”

“It must be Grig.”

“Grig?”

“Yes, a friend. He must have been surprised to hear a man’s voice here. He probably thought he’d got a wrong number.”

Nora’s supposition seemed to be correct because the phone rang again.

“Don’t be offended. Please answer it. Tell him that I’m in the bath and that he should call me in five minutes.”

She held her breath and listened with her ear cocked towards the next room so that she could also catch the voice coming from the receiver. She heard it vibrating metallically, as far away as though it came from a minuscule gramophone record.

“Hello. Is that 2-65-80? Are you sure it’s not a wrong number?”

“No, sir. It’s not a wrong number.”

“Then who’s speaking?” the little metallic voice asked.

“Miss Nora asks that you…”

“I’m not interested in what Miss Nora asks. I want to know who’s speaking.”

“Sir, Miss Nora is in the bath and she asks you…”

“I don’t want to know where Miss Nora is. I want to know who you are, buddy.”

A moment’s silence followed, then a brief noise, cut off as the receiver dropped into the cradle somewhere far away, breaking the connection.

“Now what…?” he asked Nora, with a calmness that suggested that the strange conversation hadn’t bothered him.

“Nothing. Go back to your spot in the armchair and wait for me. I’ll be there in a second.”

Nora came in dressed in a white bathrobe that was a little too big for her.

She made straight for his armchair, switched on the small, shaded lamp on the the nearby sofa and slid it close to him, abruptly illumining his face.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing. I want to see you. Imagine that, I’d forgotten what you looked like. The whole time I was in the bath I was racking my brains trying to remember.”

She scrutinized him with great seriousness while he calmly put up with her scrutiny.

“Have you finished?”

“Yes, for the time being. Your face isn’t strongly defined. Difficult to remember.”

He lifted his shoulders. She recognized the gesture.

“I don’t like that lifting of your shoulders.”

He didn’t reply, while she watched him at greater length, tracing his vaguely outlined features, in which she discerned a blend of fatigue and boyishness.

“You’re a murky kind of guy. I bet you came out of the fog.”

On the sofa were the two bottles purchased at the pharmacy. Nora took them and went to the side of the night table in order to dress her “wounds,” as she called them, exaggerating to make a joke.

She pulled aside the bathrobe with a considered modesty and unveiled her right leg up to the knee, only as far as was necessary to put on the bandages. Properly speaking, she wasn’t wounded. They were more like scratches, although very bad ones, since even after her steaming hot bath they were still bleeding slightly.

He followed the operation from the armchair, waiting as if to hear her cry when she pressed the iodine-soaked swab against her bleeding ankle. But her gestures had the polite, objective quality of those of a nurse bending over an unfamiliar patient. Her black hair fell over her forehead in a gesture absent of flirtatiousness.

She continued for some time to run the cotton swab over her ankle, then over her knee, completely absorbed in what she was doing. Finally she interrupted her movements as though she had just remembered a forgotten matter of business. “You weren’t bothered by that phone call just now?”

“No.”

“Just as well. I’m… I’m used to it.”

She took up again her delicate operation, cleaning with oxygenated water then with the iodine tincture a small cut she had not noticed until now.

“Yes, I’m used to it. To that and to other things. Look, Grig… You’d have to meet him.”

“Isn’t he coming here this evening?”

“He was supposed to… But now he won’t be coming. Not this evening and not many other evenings…”

“I’m sorry, believe me.”

“I’m not. I swear I’m not.”

“Do you love him?”

Nora sensed an ironic undertone in his question. She was convinced that he was smiling just as he had smiled on the street, amid that group of bystanders in which he alone had been indifferent.

She raised her head quickly, in order to surprise him, and was astonished on looking at him to see that she had been wrong. He wasn’t smiling.

“No, I don’t love him. I don’t think I love him. He comes here… to this apartment… He comes, he leaves, he phones me, he gets angry, he makes up… That’s him. I think you’d find him amusing.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. It seems like he’s the exact opposite of you.”

“And how do you know that?”

“For lots of reasons. Your voice. Your tie.” She got up and came towards him. “Yes, your tie. His is always perfectly tied. Yours is crooked. You don’t know how to tie it. Will you let me?”

She sat down on the low back of the armchair and undid the knot of his tie with fluid, measured movements. He didn’t resist. He waited dutifully for her to finish. The aroma of lavender passed through her porous bathrobe, bearing a wave of heat in which she felt something like a distant beating of her blood, the fine throbbing of her pulse.

When she had finished knotting the tie, Nora stepped away from him and observed him to see how he looked.

“No, it doesn’t work. It’s perfect, but it doesn’t look right on you. It’s too perfect for you.”

And, with that worry, she was compelled to ruin the too-perfect knot in his tie in order to restore his negligent air.

He was ready to leave. He put on his hat. My God, how tall he looks in that hat! He was preparing to bid her good evening.

“Are you really going?”

“It’s late.”

“You haven’t even introduced yourself.”

“Do you need to see my identity papers?”

“There’s no harm in our looking at them.”

He searched with a serious expression in the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out an I.D. card, which he held out to her.

Nora looked it over for a moment, as though she wished to verify the photograph, the personal information, the signature. Then she looked at him in sudden surprise.

“You were born on December 18^th?”

“Yes.”

“December 18^th? You’re sure?” Without waiting for his reply, she turned her head towards the calendar on the wall. “You did realize that today is your birthday? You realized that you’re turning…” She stopped, opened again the I.D. card in her hand, read his birthdate… “You knew that you were turning thirty today? Exactly today?”

He didn’t look surprised. He looked far more amused by her open stupefaction. She insisted. “Tell me, you did know?”

He lifted his shoulders; again, his indifferent lifting of his shoulders. “No.”

Nora tried not to believe him.

“It’s not true. Isn’t that right — it’s not true? And isn’t somebody waiting for you somewhere this evening? Your wife, your girlfriend. Someone who knows…”

She came to a halt. There was something in his hazy, settled silence that made her suddenly certain that she would not be able to wrest a reply from him.

He took a step towards the door. Nora seized his arm. “Don’t leave yet.”

On a bookshelf, in a glass vase, were three carnations with long stalks. She took a carnation and offered it to him without smiling, almost with gravity.

“For your birthday.” Then, with unexpected enthusiasm, she pressed even closer to him. “Stay here. As you can see, it’s bright, it’s warm. We can call the porter and send him to the grocery store. We’re going to make a big dinner and clink our glasses. That’ll bring us luck.”

“You think so?” he said, distracted.

“I’m sure.”

A boyish sparkle lighted up his eyes. “I accept. But you’ve got to let me go down to the shop.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t come back.”

“Of course I will.”

… And she had no more time to refute him because he had opened the door and disappeared down the stairs in a tempestuous rush.

Nora remained on the threshold, listening to his steps fading away.

She looked restlessly at the clock on her desk: twenty minutes had gone past. He may not come back.

An immense silence filled the entire building. From somewhere on a distant floor came the feeble sound of a song on a gramophone or on the radio:

Goodnight, Mimy,

And sweet dreams

Goodnight, Mimy

And deep sleep…

Nora thought about that Mimy, who no doubt had been sleeping for a long time as a result of the song’s persuasion.

She would have liked to sleep, too. It seemed wrong to have taken off that soft bathrobe in which she had felt so warmly embraced. In this evening dress she had the uncomfortable impression of being a visitor in her own apartment. But she had seen that he took with complete seriousness the “dinner” for which she was preparing, and she thought with pleasure that when he returned he would find a stunning woman… Stunning. She repeated the word in her head and smiled with slight fatigue.

A dull hum cut through the silence of the building. Someone was coming up in the elevator.

Acquainted with the building’s most intimate secrets, Nora’s ear followed the sound as it would have followed the rise of mercury in an oversized thermometer.

First floor, second floor…

As it approached, the hum of the elevator vibrated like the lower chords of a piano, prolonged by the pressure of the pedals. Would it stop on the third floor…? No, it had continued upward.

At each floor there was a brief thunk, like a pulse beating harder.

Nora closed her eyes. She felt the rising of the elevator inside her, as though a secret driving-belt had taken over her blood and nerves.

Fourth… Fifth… Had it stopped?

It seemed as though, within the silence that had existed until now, a new, deeper zone of silence had opened.

Had it stopped?

Yes. It had stopped. The interior lattice work, made of wood, clattered back with a meshing shudder, the door opened and closed mechanically, the hum of the elevator’s chords fell away, dwindled…

It’s pointless to wait for him. He’s not coming back.

Nora got up from the armchair and approached the mirror. She observed herself for a long time. “How absurd you are, my dear girl. How absurd you are!” she said to herself in a loud voice.

She felt pity for her black dress, her bare arms, for those two carnations that she could see in the mirror trembling in the glass vase, too heavy for their slender stalks as though they, too, were tired from waiting.

She lifted the telephone receiver and kept it in her hand for a while, without a thought. Then she put it back, not knowing why she had picked it up.

“No, he’s not coming back.”

She leaned against the wall and looked at her apartment, pausing for a long time over each item, astonished that these objects were at the same time so familiar and so strange.

She glimpsed his I.D. card lying on the desk. She took it in her hand, realizing only now that it was a passport. She hadn’t seen these new passports, with their long outer covers. She opened it.

Stature: medium. Hair: brown. Eyebrows: brown. Eyes: green. Nose: regular. Mouth: regular. Beard: shaven…

The last word made her tremble. In her bathroom, on the little metal shelf over the sink, was Grig’s shaving kit. “I should hide it,” she told herself, thinking that the other man, when he returned, might go into the bathroom and find such an indiscreet object there. But after the first step she thought again… What good was there in hiding it since he wasn’t coming back…

She recited again the “identifying signs” from the passport page. She would have liked to rediscover in each word the features of that uncertain curve of cheek, which was sinking again into the haze from which it had broken free for only a moment.

Hair, brown… Mouth… regular… What bored bureaucrat had lifted his eyes for a second from among his papers and observed him tentatively in order to write under the pertinent rubric the colour of his eyes, the line of his forehead, the shape of his lips?… She’d had him here, in her apartment, in broad daylight, under the full glow of a lamp, and she still wouldn’t have been able to say anything for certain about his face with its indefinite lines.

Mouth: regular… Nora closed her eyes and forced herself to remember that mouth, about which the passport said with indifference that it was regular, as though it weren’t possible to hide an infinity of lines behind that single word. She would have liked to be able to walk her forefinger over his lips and surprise in the slight gap between them that uncertain smile that spilled a thin, weary light over his whole face.

It seemed to her that the passport in her hand contained an unsolved mystery, and that the bureaucratic formulas, official seals and identifying signs made up a life that waited to be understood. She felt alone, horribly alone, in the apartment with all the lights on, holding in her hand a photograph, a name, a few personal details, beneath which she would have been delighted to hear the beating of a heart, a voice.

She was tempted to hold up the little booklet with the white cover to her ear and listen, as though in a conch shell, to the whispering of an unknown life.

The pages “reserved for visas” were full of sundry seals and stamps. Nora read the last row: Visa sous le no. 1464 à la Legation de Belgique à Bucarest pour permettre au titulaire…

Two smaller, rectangular stamps at the bottom of the pages attested to his border crossings, outbound and returning: Hegenrath, 23 juillet 1934. Contrôle des passagers. And later: Hegenrath, 12 août.

“Where was I between July 23 and August 12?” Nora wondered. She saw herself again on the beach at Agigea, under blazing sunlight, thirty days of safety while Grig played cards at the Casino in Eforie by day and they danced in the taproom at night. Some days, when the sea was calm, she could hear the jazz music in her tent in Agigea… At the same time, someone was crossing the border at Hegenrath on a July night, maybe on his way to Brussels, maybe on his way to a small provincial town, maybe alone, maybe with a woman, someone who five months later had picked her up out of the snow on a Bucharest street and looked her in the eyes with an indifferent lift of his shoulders…

She wished she could relive those days, July 23 to August 12, not in her tent at Agigea, but rather somewhere unseen, in the shadow of this unknown man. She would have liked to know what had happened during those nineteen days and see the small train station at the border by night, the customs officer’s manner, the stamp printing with red ink on paper the day that would not return…Hegenrath, 23 juillet. To Nora the words felt mysterious, impenetrable.

She plunged into the armchair, disheartened.

She should have undressed, gone to bed and slept.

But she felt that she would be unable to get to her feet, take off her dress and turn down her bed. She would have preferred to remain still and sleep as she was, as she might be in the waiting room of a train station. Hegenrath station…

The bell rang suddenly and loudly. For a second Nora didn’t realize what was happening. She let it ring for a long time, as though she wished to fill the whole apartment with the sound of its call. Then she headed for the door, forcing herself not to make any assumptions. She opened the door without emotion. He was on the threshold, loaded down with shopping bags.

The cork flew with a resounding bang, and the champagne overflowed the neck of the bottle while Nora looked up to follow the projectile’s trajectory.

“A direct hit!” he shouted victoriously.

Overhead on the ceiling, a coin-shaped white spot marked the point of impact.

“Two more hits like that and the landlord will evict me for causing serious damage,” Nora joked, not without a certain anxiety.

“Two more hits, you say? No, my dear friend. A hundred and one. Yes, a hundred and one sound blows. Like at Epiphany, like on January 24.”¹

And, putting aside the empty bottle like a discarded weapon, he took another bottle in his hands. This time the detonation was even louder. They looked at each other in surprise, no longer smiling. On the bookshelf, the two carnations shook, awoken from their slumber. The detonation seemed to radiate through the whole sleeping building from floor to floor.

“A hit!”

On the ceiling, a new white mark had appeared, a very short distance from the first one.

“A dead-eye marksman! What ease! What precision!”

There was a gleam in his eye that Nora saw igniting for the first time. She almost didn’t recognize the silent man who had left her apartment half an hour earlier. Where was his heavy silence, where was that tired, indifferent smile? He was speaking now with a nervous animation that seemed strange in him.

The champagne was bubbling in their glasses. Nora raised hers with a certain gravity. “To your birthday. To your turning thirty.”

She noticed that her voice was trembling. She was ashamed of this childish emotion. He replied casually, joking: “To you. To the number 16 tram. To this evening’s accident.”

How many glasses had they drunk? She had been counting up to the fifth one, but after that she had lost track.

It was probably late. The radio (who had turned it on? when had it been turned on?) was tuned to the British national anthem. “That’s the end of our programming from Droitwich.”

Nora was making efforts to keep her eyes wide open, but she saw the objects in the room through a curtain of smoke.

Overhead on the ceiling, the marks from the direct hits looked too numerous to count.

Across from her, sometimes very close, sometimes immeasurably far away, as though seen through the lens of a field glass, was he. He was speaking, but although Nora heard each word distinctly, she wasn’t understanding anything that he was saying. As always, he was speaking in that suppressed, extinguished voice, with sudden outbreaks of brightness, which vanished in that tone of indifference…

A hit! How strange that brief, triumphant cry sounded in his nonchalant tones. A hit! What had been hit? Hit where? Right in the heart, yes, yes, she had really said the heart.

Nora let her head fall into her hands. She wished she could stop the disorderly succession of thoughts that were passing through her mind, she wished she could stop the pounding in her temples.

Let’s be reasonable, my dear girl, let’s not lose our head. This gentleman… what’s his name…? You see, you’ve forgotten his name… Anyway, whatever his name is, it’s time for him to leave. It’s late and he should leave… Unless… Unless you want him to stay. Do you want him to stay? Tell me, you can tell me… But we’ve only known each other for a few hours… Do you want him to stay?

He had got up from his place and come alongside her. She felt his breath on her back, very close. Abruptly, Nora stood up.

“Wait for me. I’ll be right back.”

She went into the bathroom, avoiding turning on the light out of a fear of surprising in the mirror the crumpled face that came from sleeplessness and wine, a troubled expression that she had been familiar with for a long time now from her rare all-night parties. She turned on the faucet and let cold water run over her cheeks, her eyes. A moment later, she dared to turn on the light; incredulously, she rediscovered her composed, everyday gaze. She looked at herself for a while, wondering what she should do. It would be so easy to go back into the room, tell him that it was late and she was tired and ask him to leave! If only she’d had the courage to say the same thing, in a former time, on a night like this, to Grig… That shaving kit would no longer be here — and a number of other things would be different than the way they were!

She took off her dress with slow, sluggish movements, uncertain until the final moment whether or not she was going to complete the gesture. She stood naked, with her bare feet on the cement floor; the stoney coldness spread through her whole being with a soothing calm. Against the white faience glaze of the walls, brilliant beneath the heat of the lamps, her body looked pallid and sad. She stared at herself with a shake of her head. My poor Nora, how strange you are! A wave of tenderness, and the confusing taste of unshed tears, enveloped her at the thought of her strangeness.

What was the use of resisting? She was going to walk out of here, she was going to turn out the lights, she was going to get into bed and wait for him to undress, she was going to kiss him first, on the lips, and she was going to find out everything about his bitter smile. Maybe he, too… yes, he, too, probably had a few things he wanted to forget…

She put on the white bathrobe and looked at herself again in the mirror since she didn’t want to avoid her own gaze.

She stopped on the threshold, unable to grasp what was happening. There was no one in the apartment. She stared fixedly at the empty armchair, the cigarette that burned abandoned in the ashtray, the overturned glasses. The door of the entrance hall was half open. She went through it, walked out into the corridor and listened incuriously for a moment. It seemed to her that from below, from the first floor, she heard steps going down.

She returned to the apartment and looked again with a kind of stupid attention at each object, as she if she could have asked them questions, as if she could have expected them to reply.

She opened the window. Below, in the street, on the opposite sidewalk, a gentleman in a grey overcoat was vanishing with long strides, his hands thrust in his pockets. Nora remembered the name she had read in the passport. She shouted without realizing what she was doing.

“Paul! Paul!”

Afterwards she stood at the open window, her arms limp at her sides.