Accident (30 page)

More difficult to persuade was Gunther, who didn't want to leave the cabin at any price. “There are too many people. I don't want to see them. I don't want them to see me. I know them too well.”

Even so, Nora prepared his skis, which the boy hadn't yet put on this winter. She was certain that he would resist this temptation.
I have to get them outside
, she thought, looking at the two men.

Hagen, who was alone in the cabin, whispered worriedly to Nora: “Be careful. Gunther doesn't have the will or the energy to go fast.”

“Don't worry. I'll be right beside him.”

 

 

The program hadn't yet started at the Touring Club. They were still doing maintenance work on the ski run, especially on the mound for the ski jump, where several volunteers were digging with shovels. All the accordion players from the two chalets were brought together with their instruments into a kind of village orchestra that was set up next to the jurors' table to play “Long Live the Winner!” in Romanian and German when the prizes were handed out. Meanwhile, to soothe the audience's impatience, they played various hymns and “ouvert-ures.”

Gunther's arrival caused astonishment among the Saxons on
the rostrum. The news passed from person to person by way of signs and whispers:
”Der junge Grodeck, der junge Grodeck ...”
²⁵
Intrigued stares turned from him to his companions. For a moment, all attention was diverted from what was happening on the ski run. Gunther became the highlight of the show, like a crown prince who makes an appearance on the balcony at a concert. Nora felt herself to be the object of dozens of questions. Gunther, invigorated by the cold morning air, held her arm and made lively conversation with her.

“Tomorrow the whole Grodeck family will know that we came out together. They'll open an inquiry to find out who you are, where you're from and what your intentions are. A young woman in the Grodeck family is an affront. The Grodecks don't tolerate young women. There was one once, and they never forgave her, even after her death.”

Nora enjoyed facing the wave of surprise and curiosity that rose up around them. Only Paul remained indifferent to the pointing and the stares, not even noticing them.

The first event was the relay race. The route went from the Touring Club to the SKV chalet and, from there, through the Glade of the Three Maidens back to the Touring Club. The starting signal was given amid a general silence blasted by the report of a pistol that resounded through the mountains. The rostrum broke out in applause, while the teams, bearing large numbers on their backs, visible from the start, set off; friends and supporters shouted out their names. Gunther, too, took sides openly in the battle and began passionately shouting out the number of one of the pack of racers. “Two-oh-three! Two-oh-three!”

“Why two-oh-three?” Nora asked in surprise.

“I don't know. I chose it by accident, like in roulette.”

He looked up with a bright face, a child once again, while he clung to her left arm with all his force.

“What number are you betting on, Paul?” Nora asked. She turned her head to the right, where he had been walking silently beside her, but she didn't find him.

Had he left? It was certainly possible. The whole time she had felt him there on her right, locked in his oppressive silence like a piece of stone. She didn't know at what point he might have slipped away without telling her.

So he's left without a word
, she thought bitterly.

 

 

Paul's first thought, on leaving the scene, was to return to the cabin. He wanted to be alone. The throng of noisy people made him ill. Nora was irritating him with her exaggerated insistence on including him in a game that had no charm for him this morning. Standing between Gunther and him, attentive to all of their movements, Nora gave the impression of being a governess who was supervising two convalescents. He felt oppressed by her fixed gaze, even when it wasn't directed at him. In the second's swirl of confusion produced by the firing of the starting pistol, he had found the opportunity to break away unnoticed.

Everybody's a patient for her
, he thought as he walked away.
I'm wrong, I'm being unfair to her
, he added in his customarily intimate voice of a reasonable man, without being able to feel the slightest penitence. Words, thoughts, passed through him bleakly. He felt like an instrument with snapped chords, lacking warmth or resonance. Nothing elicited a response in him, neither thoughts nor memories.

He knew one name that in the past had made him feel nervous aches, unavoidable reflexes: Ann. He spoke it now in a loud voice, out of curiosity, as if pushing a button to see whether there was a response: “Ann, Ann, Ann.” The name fell from his lips, as inert as a stone.

He stared in the face images that even yesterday would have struck him as unbearable: Ann undressing with her untidy immodesty at the same time that whatever man she was with regarded her while smoking a cigarette or leafing through a book. For a long time he had felt tortured by the tale of a journey Ann had made to Greece with one of her first lovers, long before meeting him. “It was so hot,” she said, “that we spent the whole day naked together in the boat's cabin and only in the evening did I get
dressed to go out on deck.” Ann in her entirety pursued him in that image, which tormented him with lethal precision. It wasn't the thought that Ann had slept or was sleeping with other men that was unbearable, but rather the certain, irrefutable physical details, the movements with which she unrolled her stockings or pulled her blouse over her head.

Now he watched all these formerly painful images with open eyes and found them incredibly stupid.

He saw Ann down in Braşov in a hotel room with Dănulescu or another man, he saw her naked in his arms, he followed her without horror, without revulsion, in her most secret motions, he heard her excited laughter, her sensual sigh, and it all flowed through him with deathly indifference.

At first he had set out for the cabin, but now he let his skis take him wherever they wished. A cutting wind struck him in the face and temples. If the trail to the SKV chalet hadn't been taken over by that ridiculous competition, he would have allowed himself to be carried downhill by the slope, all the way to Poiana, to Braşov, to the national capital ...

 

 

The Touring Club program was about to finish. During the wait for the downhill finals, the crowd on the rostrum followed the final ski jumps with guffaws of laughter. The competitors fell, one after another, as if someone were pulling the snow out from under their feet. Only very rarely did one of them succeed in staying on his skis and pulling to a stop in front of the rostrum to receive volleys of applause. Gunther followed each new jump with enthusiasm or indignation. His sympathies shifted unpredictably from one competitor to another. He shouted encouragement in the moment the competitor took off or called out reprimands when they fell. Nora was afraid that all this excitement would wear him out, and now and then she laid her hands lightly on his shoulders to calm him.

The space on her right was still empty. Paul hadn't returned, and Nora wondered whether he was ever going to come back. It didn't seem impossible to her that he might have left for good.
Maybe a note would be waiting for her in the cabin, one of those short, curt notes which that idle men knew so well how to leave on a corner of the table just before fleeing ...

The ski jump competition ended. The trail was cleared for the last downhill race. The judges shouted their instructions through cardboard bullhorns that were audible from one side of the ski run to the other. The crowd returned to the rostrum. In a second, the entire ski run was vacant and strained silence muffled the noise of a moment earlier.

The two five-man teams, from the SKV and the Touring Club, were going to descend the slope beneath the mountain peak in a straight line that would end in front of the rostrum. The regulations called this
Schuss
, a dash. The distance wasn't long, not even 600 metres, but the slope was precipitous and any kind of stop – snowplow, stem-christi or telemark – was forbidden. The scene surrounding the competition contributed to the generally emotional atmosphere: pennants waved in silence, accordions that had been playing the whole time now stopped at a sign from the judges. At the base of the cliffs below the peak of Postăvar, the two teams could be seen lined up like black spheres on the white snow.

The report of the starting pistol opened the competition.

In the first seconds all that could be seen was a cloud of snow that billowed like an avalanche as it rolled down the slope. Then, one after another, the racers broke out of the blur, a tiny distance separating each one from the next. They were impossible to recognize or follow. Fans of both teams fell silent with the same troubled intensity. It was like a game played in the dark: nobody knew who was leading, who was winning, who was losing.

A cry went up from the rostrum: one of the racers had fallen. He fell head-first, rolling over down the slope, with his skis jammed across each other. His team was lost. The rules eliminated from the competition any team all of whose members didn't cross the finish line. People rushed across the rostrum to the judges' table seeking explanations and asking questions: “Who? Who? Who?”

The man continued to roll down the slope while the other racers swept past close by him, heading downhill.

The arrival of the competitors took place amid a general uproar. Each team member who reached the finish line was mobbed by the crowd, who recognized him and called out his name. There were five from the SKV, but only four from the Touring Club ... The Touring Club was eliminated from the competition! But no! There were also five racers from the Touring Club. In the crush of people, they had counted wrong. All ten racers had completed the course. The results would be decided by the stopwatch.

Who, then, was the fallen racer? Who was that eleventh, unregistered competitor who now lay in the snow halfway down the run? The first-aid team headed towards the site of the accident. Nora could not prevent an absurd thought from entering her head.

“Please wait for me here,” she said to Gunther. “I'll be right back.”

 

 

Paul had set out towards the mountain's summit without any clear thought in his mind. He wanted only to get away from the Touring Club and that rowdy crowd. On the slope from Timiş the mountainside was silent and deserted. The forest took on the savagery of a forgotten time. He stood for a few moments on the frozen rocks of the summit, white like huge blocks of ice. The Timiş, Valley, invisible and covered by clouds, vibrated far below with the rustling sound of running water. The horizon was blotted out by the same dense mist, as though between walls of smoke.

He didn't know how long he had been there. Minutes or hours flowed by him with a taste of slumber. He had dropped down a few steps to make a detour around some icy boulders that blocked the way to the Timiş slope, and had found among the pine trees a wide path set like a saddle on the neck of the mountain. His skis were gliding forward on their own at an easy pace, when suddenly they twisted violently to the right. In the same instant they stopped him with a reflexive shudder that made him feel a lunge in his chest, as though someone behind him had pulled a secret brake lever.

In front of him the almost vertical path opened like a clear
drop, at the bottom of which he could see the rostrum of the Touring Club. Coloured pennants were flying over the ski run and as their shapes changed they exchanged incomprehensible waves. The sound of voices came from below, but then suddenly nothing was audible, as though the Touring Club chalet with its rostrum and people had vanished into the distance.

He set out downhill with his eyes open.
If I want, I can still stop
, he thought. For the first few seconds the skis were sliding with difficulty over the frozen snow.
Yes, I can still stop
. The weapon's report broke the silence. Only then did he realize that he wasn't alone. Silhouettes rushed past very close to him one after another, lifting the curtain of snow that covered everything. Finally it got lighter, a torrent of white solar light through which he himself passed luminously, like a lighted torch. His eyes remained wide open, but the sun was too strong to allow him to see anything.

The fall struck him like a deflection into flight. He had the violent sensation of being swept off his intended trajectory and hurled in another direction, like a ricocheting projectile ...

 

 

He was brought to the rostrum on a stretcher made out of pine bows.

“I think you don't even think you have a fracture, but it's better for us not to tire you out,” the young doctor said, taking seriously his role as the head of the first-aid team.

Paul had initially lost consciousness, but then he had opened his eyes, unaware of what was going on. Above him were several unfamiliar faces, including Nora's: the severe, sad Nora at whom he would have liked to smile.

He had received a blow in the right eye, his lower lip was bleeding, his forehead and cheeks were raw with scratches.

“That's not the important thing,” the doctor said. “If there's no fracture, nor an internal hemorrhage, we're home-free.”

Nothing was hurting. He just felt that he couldn't get up. Nora was rubbing him with her handkerchief.

“It's your turn to get me up out of the snow,” he said. “Now you don't owe me anything: an accident for an accident.”

She bent over him even farther and whispered in his ear, so that no one would hear: “Why did you do that, Paul? Why?”