Mihail Sebastian - The Accident

“Have you ever gone skiing?”

“No.”

“You should try it.”

And a moment later, suddenly taking him by the hand and forcing him to turn back towards her, she looked him in the eyes and said: “Come to the mountains with me. We’ll go skiing.”

This time she was staring at him too intently for him to reply with silence. “It’s childishness, Nora.”

“That’s exactly why I’m suggesting it to you: because it’s childish. Listen to me, Paul: give me your vacation. A minute ago, believe me, I wouldn’t have asked you for it, but now I’m asking you for it: give it to me.”

He didn’t respond. At least he hasn’t said no , Nora consoled herself. On the bridge, the evening wind blew, reawakening from the calm that had surrounded them until now. The white chestnut trees shook snow onto the sidewalk like overly fragile flowers.

They followed Bulevardul Elisabeta downtown. The lights, the first shop windows, the world made swift by frost, gave Nora the impression of returning to the city. She continued talking, grateful that his silence was delaying his reply.

“I’ve never really known what to do with my vacation. I only knew I didn’t want to spend it here in Bucharest. I feel really good living up there on Bulevardul Dacia, but not in the holidays, when I have the impression that everybody’s left town and I’m here alone. Worse than alone: abandoned…”

She tried to say the last word in an ironic tone, but her voice didn’t help her. “Abandoned” was a word that gave her childish tears. Fortunately, he was too tired, or too distracted, to notice.

“I’ve been thinking of getting away, too. I’m not sure where… Maybe Predeal, the ski lodge at Onef… If I’d found travelling companions, I would have preferred to go up to a cabin with a small group… In Ialomicioara or Postăvar or Bâlea… Somewhere remote, anyway… Why don’t you want to be my companion? Let’s be clear: what’s happened between us until now…”

Nora hesitated a moment. She would have liked to say “last night,” but the detailed allusion frightened her.

“… it’s erased, it’s forgotten. It’s ‘null and void,’ as you said in court. I’m suggesting this to you as a comrade. Let’s take off with hobnailed boots on our feet and packs on our backs.”

“Take off?” he repeated. “When do we take off?”

“This evening,” Nora said, only then realizing that his question might be an acceptance, even though he had asked it vaguely, with the same eternal lifting of his shoulders. “So it’s true? You accept? You want to leave?”

“No, Nora. Why do you keep asking? It’s useless. Everything’s useless.”

His voice disheartened her. There was something irrevocably crushed, irrevocably broken, in the exhaustion with which he was speaking to her. And yet, for a moment, he had seen leaving as a possibility…

“Why are you so stubborn, Paul? You’re a man who’s lost every game he’s played. Just now you were saying: ‘I have nothing to give, nothing to lose.’ Well then, since in any case you have nothing more to lose, nothing more to put at risk, accept this departure as a game and let me, too, play on your behalf…”

She stopped on purpose in front of a shop window full of sporting goods, on Bulevardul Elisabeta, at the corner of Calea Victoriei. Skis, skates, steel-tipped poles, hobnailed boots, a whole arsenal of wooden and metal instruments in the display window, glimmered on the artificial snow made of cotton wool and white mats. A mannequin dressed as a skier, with the full range of equipment, ready for the trail, smiled with a happy, movie-star smile. Paul looked, practically without seeing them, at all these instruments that struck him as complicated and, above all, uninteresting.

“Please don’t laugh at me, Paul, but when I’m very unhappy…because it does happen to me sometimes…”

She couldn’t finish her sentence. Again, unexpected tears filled her eyes. Abandoned… unhappy… so many words that were difficult to speak! She tried to correct herself: “When things are going badly for me, when everything turns out wrong, when I feel weighed down by bad luck… well, then I buy myself something new… a dress, or, if I don’t have much money, a scarf, a trinket… Not out of frivolousness nor out of shallowness. More out of superstition. In order to change fate. To outwit it. I think that, if I’m dressed differently, it won’t be able to recognize me, it’ll mistake somebody else for me, or go past without seeing me… Since you’re a superstitious man, why don’t you have a superstition about beginning something new? Why don’t you want to try something you’ve never tried until now?”

… He had gone in unconvinced. Nora spoke for him, took the information, examined with attention the items they were shown. It was a bookstore that had been taken over by sporting enthusiasts. The floors that contained books were abandoned; everyone crowded into the sports department. On the eve of the vacations there was a rustling of escape here, a clinking of skates, a perpetual feverishness. Enormous hobnailed boots, with the edges of their soles clamped between metal pincers, smelled of thick, recently cured hides. Black skis, leaned against the walls with the tips pointed up, looked like so many slender fishing boats brought ashore to dry. Everything had a harsh smell of leather, of waxed wood, of waterproof cloth. Brightly coloured jackets and sweaters lent the whole store a festive, decorated air.

A radio was broadcasting the six o’clock sports report: “Predeal, a 46-centimetre base… Sinaia, a 30-centimetre base… Good skiing conditions…” The voice coming from the speaker mingled with the clients’ questions and the sales clerks’ answers.

“Lift your right arm, okay?” Nora asked him.

He submitted with good will, although with a certain awkwardness. He saw himself in the mirror measuring the length of the skis, which were taller than he was. The tip of the ski reached to the palm of his hand. “It has to be at least 40 centimetres taller than the person who’s using it,” she explained to him, absorbed in her work.

Now and then she looked at him with an expression of concern, as though seeking a sign of approval or consent. He’s intimidated , she thought, seeing him standing with the skis in his hand and not knowing what to do with them. “Intimidated” struck her as a sign of progress; it was, at least, something other than indifference.

“What’s that for?” Paul asked her, seeing that she had in her hand several loops of steel, which she was forcing herself to screw to a flat base that resembled the sole of a skate. He seemed to have asked the question with passing interest, in any case with little perplexity. He regarded all these unfamiliar objects as though at a loss, as he might before the dismantled parts of an engine. Nora hastened to provide him with explanations, which he didn’t understand very well.

“There are two types of binding. Diagonal and straight. I have more confidence in a diagonal binding. It’s not very flexible, but it’s firm. It’s a bit of an obstacle if you try to telemark, but you’re not going to start telemarking in your first days of skiing. The main thing is to have your boot tightly interlocked with your ski…”

A sales clerk called Paul into a fitting booth to try on his ski suit and boots.

“Call me when you’re ready,” Nora said. She was afraid of leaving him alone. The feeble glimmer of interest she had started to read in his eyes must not be lost. This was a game he must play to the end. But wasn’t he going to get depressed? Wouldn’t he, who fled so easily, run away again?

The blue ski suit transformed him. How young he is , Nora thought. Behind his fatigue she rediscovered his undefined boyish expression, which she had noticed last night the first time that their glances had crossed.