The Accident

IX

NORA STOOD IN THE DOORWAY for a few minutes, hesitating to go inside. It was lighted, it was warm. She lifted her hand to her throat to touch her woollen scarf and didn’t find it. I probably lost it on the trail.

Next to the window was a table and a lamp with a round white glass cover. Someone was sitting in an armchair and watching her, while the man with the lantern stood in the shadows. He should have extinguished it, Nora thought, looking towards that still-burning light. On the table was a knife, a book with a yellowing cover and a clock showing an impossible time: ten minutes after nine. She looked at each object attentively.

“That clock has stopped,” she said and pointed at it with her finger, without knowing to whom she was speaking.

Then she went to pieces, realizing that she was going to pieces and still having time to think: I shouldn’t fall, I shouldn’t cry. She cried in a loud sob, with her head in her hands, her tears boiling, burning her frozen cheeks, her stiffened fingers.

She heard steps approaching, voices that dwelt above her. Someone stroked her snow-laden hair. A youthful voice whispered half-chanted words as though they were a poem.

“Wanderer tritt still herein;

Schmerz, versteinerte die Schwelle”

She stifled her crying for a moment in order to hear better and to understand, but the tears, held back for an instant, burst forth as though she were falling again.

Two powerful arms lifted her to her feet. Someone pulled an armchair towards the fireplace.

As though through a mist, she discerned big logs reduced to embers burning silently in the mouth of the fireplace. Confident, attentive hands pulled off her snow-dampened coat and slid a heavy, velvety jacket — a hunting jacket — which smelled vaguely of tobacco, over her shoulders.

Nora opened her eyes. At her feet a young man watched her in silence as though he had been looking at her for a long time.

“Sie haben wahrscheinlich den Weg verloren. Wohin waren Sie denn unterwegs? Von wo kommen sie?”¹⁵

Nora didn’t reply. The young man had wide blue eyes, a high, sad forehead, illuminated by the light of the fire and a slightly ironic smile. He’s a child, she thought, and turned her head to look for someone else in this strange house, someone of whom she could ask forgiveness for all that had happened. But there was no one, not even the man with the lamp.

“Don’t be afraid. You’ve found shelter here. You need to rest. If you want, you can sleep.”

This time he spoke in Romanian, with a Saxon accent, but without haste, with a kind of ponderousness that separated the syllables one from another.

He stood up. Now that he was beyond the range of the flickering of the fire, his forehead was pale, but his eyes became cheerful in their childlike blueness. Nora remembered that from the doorway she had seen a clock, but she couldn’t recall where to look for it.

“What time is it?”

“Nine-thirty.”

She repeated the words without understanding them. Nine-thirty… What sort of nine-thirty…? Her troubled gaze was awaiting a reply, asking for help.

He leaned towards her again and looked her in the eyes, speak-ing slowly and shaking her shoulders gently, as though he wished to awake her from a dream.

“It’s nine-thirty in the evening. You understand? Today is Thursday, December 20, 1934, it’s night, and it’s nine-thirty.”

Nora lifted her hands to her temples as if to gather her thoughts. “It’s unbelievable. I had the impression that I’d lost whole hours. I thought it must be very late, that the night must be almost over…”

She halted with a dizzy, puzzled motion… The youth was still listening to her. Nora continued with some difficulty, in a voice she herself didn’t recognize. “I came from the Touring Club chalet. There are a lot of people there. I went out for some exercise, some fresh air, to be alone… When I tried to return, I couldn’t find the trail. My skis slipped, I fell. I had a flashlight with me, but it broke or maybe I lost it… After that, I don’t know what happened. I kept going and going…”

She was silent for a moment, then asked, with a certain uneasiness: “Is it far away?”

“What?”

“The Touring Club chalet.”

“A few hundred metres.”

“Could someone accompany me back there, or show me the trail?”

“Naturally, but don’t you think it would be better to stay here? At least until tomorrow morning?”

Nora read a certain anxiety in his stare, although his relaxed, ironic smile persisted. My God, the state I must be in!

“I don’t wish to upset you, but I think you need rest. There’s a free room upstairs. I’ve told them to light the fire.”

Nora ran her right hand slowly across her face, her cheeks. “Do you have a mirror?”

“I said I didn’t wish to upset you and now I’ve upset you. It’s nothing serious. A scratch on your right temple and another one here, on your forehead. There’s a little blood. Let’s find some cotton wool and rubbing alcohol.”

“I have some in my backpack. Up at the Touring Club chalet.”

“We’ll send someone to bring it.”

Nora remained doubtful for a moment, on the verge of accepting the offer; but then she refused it. “No, I can’t stay.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not alone. I left without saying that I was leaving. I have to go back. He may have realized that I’m missing, he may be looking for me…”

“Your husband?”

Nora looked at him, surprised by this word, which had never crossed her mind, and which now rendered any reply impossible. Can I tell this child, can I tell him that…?

He didn’t let her finish her thought.

“Please forgive my stupid question. But whoever it may be, he should come here.”

He had an unexpected self-assurance. He dealt with the uncomfortable moment with the discretion of an old man. Only a slight flush in his until-now pale face betrayed his adolescence. What grade is he in? Nora wondered. He wore a long-sleeved red pullover, and a woollen scarf, also red, but of a dark red that was almost black. His blond hair, cut short in the German style at the back and sides, fell over his forehead in front. He must look good in his school uniform.

In that moment the man with the lamp came in the door. Nora recognized him by his gigantic stature. In his arms he carried logs for the fire. He was dressed in a hunter’s sack coat, buttoned up to the neck like a minister’s vestments. His legs were garbed in high boots, while on his shoulders he wore a long cape of an ash-coloured fabric with the hood falling behind him. The blond boy spoke to him in a language Nora didn’t understand. The vowels were heavy and muted. It sounded like Dutch, or a Flemish dialect

… He laughed at this suggestion.

“O nein! Est is nur Sächsisch! Wir beide reden immer Sächsisch miteinander.”¹⁶

But the man with the lamp understood Romanian, he even spoke it with a certain difficulty, although he pronounced it clearly. Nora explained to him where he would find her backpack and what he should say to the gentleman who was sleeping at the Touring Club in bed number 15.

I should write him a note, she thought. He may not want to come.

But the man with the ash-coloured cape had pulled on his hood and left. The sound of his boots outside remained audible.

“My name is Gunther Grodeck,” said the blond boy, who had remained alone. “I’m twenty-one years old. Or, to tell the truth, I haven’t turned twenty-one yet.” He fell silent for a moment, with an unexpected darkening of his mood, and whispered: “Unfortunately, not yet.” Then he shook himself out of this sadness and added abruptly, with bitterness, as though someone had threatened him: “But I will soon!”

Nora smiled. “When?”

“In March. At the end of March.”

“We should always be patient. What’s the hurry? Is it urgent?”

A translucent pallor crossed his face without, however, blurring the clarity of his eyes.

“You must be hungry,” he said, with an obvious desire to change the subject. “Please forgive me for not having asked you until now. I’ll go see what I can find.”

She would have liked to stop him (“No, I’m not hungry, I was hungry but it’s passed”), but he had stepped out of the room, leaving her alone.

It was a large room with white, illuminated walls and smokey black beams. On one wall was a red rug and two old carbines. The armchairs and the couch were made of a brightly coloured, flower-patterned cretonne and the curtains on the windows were of the same cretonne. It was a peasant home, with the big open fireplace looking as though it were the entrance to another room. The whole room resembled at once a hunter’s lodge and an entrance hall. On a shelf were a few books in German and a portrait of a woman drawn in pencil. The drawing was delicate and indistinct, as though it had been blurred by time.

Gunther, returning to the room, found Nora in front of the portrait.

“That’s Mama,” he said.

“Does she live here?”

The boy fell silent for a moment. Then, as though returning from distant thoughts, he said: “Nobody lives here but Hagen and me.”

“Hagen?” Nora asked, not knowing who he was talking about.

“Hagen is the man who let you in. The man with the black cape. You should be familiar with the name. Don’t you remember? From the The Ring of the Niebelung? From The Götterdämmerung? Dark Hagen!”

“That’s his name?”

“That’s the name I’ve given him. I think it suits him. Please don’t call him anything else. Here on the mountain everybody knows him by that name.”

“Here on the mountain…,” Nora repeated pensively. “Strictly speaking, I don’t where I am. I only knew of the two chalets on the whole mountain. No one’s ever spoken to me about this house.”

“Because hardly anybody knows about it. We built it this autumn. It wasn’t even ready for the first snowfall in November. Even now, we haven’t got everything ready. At night, in the dark, it’s not so evident, but in the morning you’ll see that many things are missing. We may finish it in the spring, if we still need it. Yes, maybe…”

A bitter expression came over his face again, like a threat addressed to someone who wasn’t present. Then his ironic smile brought some peace to his troubled child’s face.

“You should know that nobody comes in here. Faffner wouldn’t let them.”

“Faffner?”

“Faffner is my dog. You may have seen him outside just now. He’s a big sheep dog. I wonder why he didn’t attack you.”

“Does it seem wrong to you that he didn’t?”

“No. I have faith in him. In our family, in the Grodeck family, Faffner and I have the same dislikes. Faffner hates the people I hate.”

Beneath his childish pallor, there were short, intense outbursts of rage, which lasted only a second and then died out into a great sadness. “It’s been three whole days,” Gunther said, “in which I’ve neither heard a stranger’s voice nor seen a person I didn’t know.”

“Even so, you said that you’re not far from the Touring Club chalet.”

“Not far, but well hidden. Do you know Dreimädlerweise?”

“The Glade of the Three Maidens?”

“If you prefer… I call it by its Saxon name. That’s what I’m used to. Well, my chalet is a little above that, towards the north, the northwest.”

“It’s not possible!” Nora exclaimed.

“Why isn’t it possible?”

“Because I don’t understand anything any more… I thought I was on a completely different part of the mountain, on the other slope. When I left, I know I took the trail towards the summit, with the idea of looking for the trail that goes down to Timiş. I don’t understand how I ended up here.”

“By getting lost.”

Nora repeated his words. “Yes… By getting lost…”

Gunther took a pencil and a notepad and approached Nora. “It seems it’s not all clear to you yet. Here you go! Let’s say that the SKV chalet is here, the TCR chalet is here, Dreimädlerweise is here…”

His pencil drew a thin line on the paper. Nora followed his small improvised map with attention.

“Well, if we join these three points with a line we have a triangle, and sort of in the middle of this triangle, right here, is our cabin.”

Outside, beneath the window, the dog snarled.

“Hagen’s coming back,” Gunther said.

“Alone?” Nora asked, with a fear she could not hide.

“No. If he were alone, Faffner wouldn’t have woken up. There’s someone with him.”

They both listened in silence to the approaching footsteps. Gunther was leaning against the fireplace with his arms spread. He looked towards the door and, in a whispered voice that Nora remembered having already heard that night, said:

“Mancher auf der Wanderschaft

Kommt aus Tor auf dunklen Pfaden…”¹⁷

Auf dunklen Pfaden. By dark paths… In fact, Nora thought, looking at Paul, who was coming in the door; in fact, no one has passed through a darker night, by way of darker paths, than that man.

She went towards him to greet him.

“If only you knew all that’s happened!”

It seemed as though she hadn’t seen him in a long time, that she had found him again after a lengthy separation. She wished she could do something for him — make a sign of tenderness or recognition, show mutual understanding — but his silence deterred her. She took his arm to introduce him to Gunther; the young man, however, had exited from the cabin without a word, leaving them alone.

“Come here next to the fire, Paul.”

She made him sit down in the armchair.

“How tired you are! You must hate me! I lead you through the woods for hours, through the snow. How many hours did we hike uphill? It seems like days and nights have passed since we left. Come on, you hate me, don’t you?”

He kept his eyes fixed on the flames in the fireplace.

“No, Nora. I’d like to preserve this trip forever. I wish we never had to go back home.” He extended his right hand towards the blaze as though he would have liked to seize it between his open fingers. “There’s only one thing I’m afraid of: that it’s not real… that we haven’t left… that all this has happened in a dream… the woods, the mountains, the night… that it’s all nothing but a dream from which I could awaken.”

He was speaking in a whisper, as though he feared that his own words might disturb this dream.

“Look at that fire burning there… Does it resemble a real fire? Where, other than in a dream, have you seen a fire so white, so bright…? Look, I pass my fingers through it, and it doesn’t burn them.”

With a swift movement, Nora gripped his hand and stopped him in time. “Paul, you’ve got a fever. You don’t know what you’re saying. You need to go to bed, to sleep.”

He seemed not to hear her and continued speaking in the same muffled voice. “When that man in the black cape came and hit me on the shoulder and told me to come with him, I didn’t ask him anything because again it seemed to me that everything was happening in a dream.”

He lifted his eyes towards her. “And you, Nora, aren’t you with me, too, in the same dream? Where did that wound on your temple come from? And the blood on your face,” he said, “are you sure we’re not fooling ourselves? Are you sure it’s real?”

“Do you want it to be real?” she asked him in a whisper.

“I want it to last. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to go back.”

“Back where?”

He made a vague motion with his hand, pointing somewhere beyond the window, somewhere beyond the night…

The three of them sat at the table in silence. Only Hagen’s footsteps could be heard, as he brought them bread and wine. A log that had been reduced to embers collapsed in the fireplace with a dull thud. They all turned their heads towards it: the flames, leaping up for a moment, subsided softly into the burning heap of hot coals and ash.

Outside, beneath the window, heavy breathing, like that of a bear, was audible.

“It’s Faffner,” Gunther said. “He can’t sleep. He senses that something unusual is happening.”

The table was between Nora and Paul. He looked from one person to another with a serious expression that caused his blue eyes to lose their smile.

“In fact, it would be difficult for me to tell you just how unusual your arrival here is… how unusual for the three of us, for Hagen, for Faffner, for me…”

He got up from the table, walked towards the window and stood there for a while with his forehead pressed against the glass, looking out into the night. His voice changing, he whispered, as if to himself, as though it were a spell:

“Wanderer tritt still herein;

Schmerz versteinerte die Schwelle

Da erglanzt in reiner Helle

Auf dem Tische Brot und Wein”¹⁸

Then he let the silence grow deeper, after which Nora, still whispering, asked: “What’s that?”

“A poem. It was written a long time ago by a young Austrian who died in the war.¹⁹ It’s called Ein Winterabend… A Winter Evening…” And, turning towards them again, he asked: “Don’t you think it resembles this one?”