Accident (2 page)

“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 ...

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?”