XII

EVENINGS IN THE CABIN WERE LONG, in spite of the fact that at ten o’clock they extinguished the lights, closed the shutters and all went to bed. But the evenings started early, when darkness fell, and passed slowly. The twilights were white from the snow, which continued to shimmer for a while after the sun set. Finally this sheen, too, disappeared. Sometimes the mist continued to smoulder from the summit. The clouds piled up closer to the cabin. The fir trees turned black. The darkness was deep and dense.

The mountains, which roared all day with the sounds of shouts and cries, returned to their stoney silence. Not a whimper or a crackle from anywhere. Far away in the distance, they heard a muted inrush, like a slamming on the earth, like the falling of a tree. They all poked their heads up to listen. The silence seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth.

Gunther was playing chess with Paul. Nora, sitting in the armchair, read next to the fireplace with Faffner lying at her feet. Only Hagen was restless. Sometimes, unexpectedly, he tossed the ash-coloured cape over his shoulders, lifted the hood and went out into the night with the lighted lantern.

“He’s going to look for her,” Gunther would say.

Faffner trembled, got up from his spot and went to the window, to the door, scratching at the threshold, waiting.

As evening fell, Nora became silent. There are two Noras, Paul thought. The daytime Nora and the nighttime Nora. Curled up in the armchair next to the fireplace, lost in the book she wasn’t even reading, she seemed to be waiting, inviting him.

“Are you tired, Nora?”

It was something other than tiredness. It was a kind of capitulation. Everything in her being was setting out for the night. Only when Hagen extinguished the lights, when Gunther said goodnight, did she open her eyes.

“You’re going already? Is it that late? Have you finished your game of chess?”

She climbed the stairs, leaning on Paul’s arm. Sometimes, in bed, she lay her head on his right shoulder. It wasn’t a gesture of tenderness: it was a gesture of disbelief, of anticipation.

She undressed slowly, with lazy movements, lost in her thoughts and still silent. She had a stern, alert expression; not dreamy but turned inward towards her own thoughts.

“You’re beautiful, Nora.”

Only after thinking this over did she reply. She took seriously the things that were said to her.

“I’m thirty-two years old, my love. And I’m dark. I don’t know if I can still be beautiful… Maybe I was at twenty, at twenty-two… It’s a flash that passes and leaves something else in its place…”

Her body was strong, with a slight heaviness in its long, firm lines. Nothing adolescent here, Paul thought, watching her. Nothing was uncertain, everything was filled out. Broad, serene knees, foreign to uneasiness. Long thighs, full hips.

“You’re beautiful, Nora. You’re pure harmony between yourself and yourself, and that harmony is called beauty.”

She stood in front of the mirror and brushed her hair, which fell over her shoulders. She stopped, with the brush in her hands, and turned towards Paul. She was naked and at peace.

“I’m afraid I have to complain.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re telling me something that was one of my secrets. Something I always hoped, with a tiny anxiousness, that someone would understand and tell me.”

She had tears in her eyes.

Her embrace withheld nothing. In the most intense moments she kept her eyes open, with a deep, attentive gaze, as though she were listening. She remained for a long time with her head on his right arm, in an endless silence.

“I like your hands, Paul. They’re big, heavy, rough. I like to feel them on my shoulders, on my hips. They don’t know how to caress or they don’t want to caress. But I like their weight.”

She took a long look at those boney hands which, even in their present domesticated state, retained a certain hardness. She kissed them. She poured her whole female sensual gravity into this act. Paul was unable to suppress a twinge of embarrassment.

“No, Nora.”

She didn’t understand. “How stupid men can be, Paul! So many superstitions, so much fear… You’re afraid of the simplest things. Only a woman knows how to really kiss hands, my love, and make it into something beautiful.”

She approached him with her eyes closed. She showed neither hysterical haste nor bashful modesty. Every movement of her body spoke of authenticity and conciliation.



Morning revealed again the sharp, alert Nora, ready for the trail. In her blue jacket with her peaked cap pulled over her forehead she was, like him, a skier.

No troubled feelings lingered between them from the night, which had passed without leaving behind a trace.

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