Mihail Sebastian - The Accident

“In fact, I think Poiana is a good choice. You’ll see. I hope we can make a skier out of you.”

She repeated in her mind the sentence she had just spoken, congratulating herself on the solution she had found: “we can make a skier out of you” was so intentionally ceremonious that it lightened their intimacy with a joking tone. “Yes, I promise you that in three days at most we’ll be skiing all the way down to Râşnov. It’s a good straight trail without too many turns.”

She tried to arouse sporting ambitions in him, a taste for competition, a certain determination. He’s too much of a child for that , she thought, watching him.

There wasn’t a single room available at the Saxon hotel.

“Try in Turcu, try in Cercetaşi, but don’t count on it. Since we got the big snowfall, all of Poiana has been full.”

“Stay here, Paul. I’ll go look. We have to be able to find something.”

She put on her skis, stamped the snow a few times and set off with long strides, propelled by her poles, which she thrust into the snow with regular, oar-like movements. Due to the morning frost, the snow had a thin crust of ice and the skis slid without softness, with a harsh sound, leaving a glassy powder in their wake.

In the big chalets there wasn’t a single place left, while the little villages hadn’t yet woken from their slumber. Even so, Nora knocked on their shuttered windows; but sleepy voices told her to go away.

“You’re tiring yourself out for nothing, Miss,” a man who was shovelling snow said to her from his yard. “You’re tiring yourself out for nothing. We’ve even got people sleeping in the garage.”

Annoyed, she returned to the Saxons’ hotel, not knowing what to do. She could no longer hope to find free spaces downhill in the Prahova Valley if there were so many people here in Poiana, which was more difficult to reach. The only thing to do, maybe, was to go back down to Braşov and take a train from there in the direction of the Făgăraş Mountains. It was more likely that they would find lodging in Bâlea, in Muntele Mic, but she didn’t know the area and didn’t know how long it would take to get there. She could get down to Braşov in half an hour on her skis, but Paul would need at least a week of training in order to do this kind of trail. One didn’t put on skis for the first time to do a six-kilometre downhill race. As for the caterpillar, it would make the return run only in the afternoon and then they risked being caught by nightfall in a train once again. I don’t know if he’ll put up with it , Nora thought, pondering his lack of conviction.

She found him at the Saxons’, in the dining hall, facing a poster pinned to the wall. The Black Church, December 23, 1934. 8 PM. Religious concert. The “Christmas Oratory,” by J.S. Bach. He turned towards her with a glimmer of curiosity, indicating the poster. “Interesting, no?”

“No. Absolutely not interesting. We didn’t come here to listen to oratories. There’s only one interesting thing here.”

And she pointed through the window towards the snow, the fir trees, the white-hooded chalets.

“You’re harsh.”

“I’m harsh because I’ve got big responsibilities.”

She should have been able to say the final words in a joking voice, but looking closely at his eyes, those sad eyes, she thought that she really had taken on a big responsibility. If I leave this man alone, he’s going to run away . She couldn’t have said exactly why, but she felt that any flight might be a disaster for him, and that she was indispensable in preventing it. “Are you in good physical condition, Paul?”

“Really good physical condition?”

“No. Middling.”

“We can give it a try…”

“We have to leave Poiana. There’s not a room here anywhere. For a moment I thought we should go farther, towards the Făgăraş, but it seems to me that it’s simpler to stay right here. Do you know Postăvar?”

“Where is it?”

“There.”

She pointed with her hand to the curtain of clouds that was streaming downhill along the edge of the woods facing them, blanketing the entire horizon.

“Is it high?”

“About 1800 metres. Here we’re at about a thousand. In the summer it’s a three-hour hike. Let’s say we can do it in four. Anyway, we’re not even going all the way to the summit. There are two large chalets on the trail. When there aren’t any clouds, you get an amazing view from there.”

“So, Nora, you’re the girl who falls off the tram in Bucharest, and here you want to cross the Carpathians? Don’t you think that’s a little ambitious? Don’t you think it’s a bit much for those knees of yours, which yesterday you were cleaning with iodine…?”

He stopped for a moment, thinking.

“Strictly speaking, when was that? Yesterday or the day before?”

Nora took his arm, pulling him towards the trail. “Stop counting! We’ll do it another time. It wasn’t yesterday or the day before… It was a month ago, a year ago, many years ago…”

From the doorway they looked again towards the tissue of clouds that was hiding Postăvarul.

“I haven’t seen it for a week,” the porter said. “Since those snows came, I’ve forgotten what the peak looks like. As though it had disappeared completely.”

The trail was blazed with coloured rectangles — one red stripe and two white ones — like so many small flags daubed on the trees and the rocks. They could see them in the woods, in the ins and outs, like the fluttering of a handkerchief. It was as though a travelling companion had gone ahead of them, stopping sometimes to wait for them to follow and to show them the way: over here… over here…

They walked with their skis over their shoulders, crossed behind their backs to maintain their equilibrium. Now and then the point of a ski struck the branch of a fir tree and shook off the snow, with a faint, metallic, rustling spray as if ringing out to all the crystalline snowflakes. There were immense, snow-immured trees, with their branches sagging beneath the burden of the snow, like heavy wings on a spiralling flight. Lonely, one by one, they rose from the rocks, springing up in lines; but their robust trunks, in their white garb, had the unexpected delicacy of the stems of flowers. Everything appeared grandiose, not at all ornamental, as in an immense, decorated park.

Nora turned back towards Paul, who had stopped at a turning point in the path and was taking a long look around him.

“Is it beautiful?”

“It’s too beautiful. A little too beautiful. As if it had been made in advance, prepared beforehand; there are too many trees, there’s too much snow… And the silence, such a colossal silence…”

They both listened, trying to catch from far away, from very far away, a sound, a crackle, a step… But nothing penetrated the vast stillness.

“I can’t get it into my head that it’s real. It’s like I’m in a photograph or a poster. It’s like I’m in that display window last night, with artificial snow…”

Nora remembered the well-equipped skier who had smiled at passersby from the display window. With his new ski suit, a blue scarf around his neck and his skis on his shoulders. Paul was starting to look like a poster boy for skiing. Not even the smile is missing .

“Do you think we’re on the right trail?” Paul asked.

The afternoon passed and the chalet didn’t appear. We should have got there a long time ago , Nora thought. Her boots felt heavy on her feet and she had the impression that their whole weight was pressing down on her ankle. Awaking to a forgotten pain, her left knee began to ache.

“Do you think we’re on the right trail?” Paul asked.