Mihail Sebastian - The Accident

“All trails are good around here,” she replied vaguely.

She wasn’t worried, but she realized that they had strayed from the trail. She knew well enough that it was impossible to get lost in these mountains with their easy trails, and she told herself that whichever way they went they would end up at the chalet. As long as we keep climbing, keep moving upward . They hadn’t seen a sign for a while. The little red-and-white flags had become less frequent, and now they had vanished completely.

“Maybe the snow has covered them.”

“Yes, maybe…”

The light had grown lower. The snow had lost its lustre, and was more ashen than white.

“It’s still too early to stop for the night,” Nora said.

It was a gloomy light that spread over things like a metallic film. The trees were extinguished by leaden shadow that fell over them without a glimmer.

“Do you hear that?”

Paul had stopped short, laying his hand on her shoulder. From somewhere above them came a metallic rustling, a murmuring of branches, a hurried fluttering of metallic wings. Heavy unseen strides or woods ripped away from their roots descended, striking against the branches.

“Could it be an avalanche?”

“Impossible,” Nora said.

She was pale and strained to listen. She felt Paul’s hand on her right shoulder. If only he would leave it there.

The light slid lower. It was almost dark, and yet objects remained visible with an absurd precision. Stoney fir trees stood stock-still around them, as though in a grotto. For a moment everything seemed to be frozen in place, detached from time and shifted into another world…

“We’re on another planet,” Paul whispered. He pulled Nora against him. “Are you afraid, Nora?”

“No. I don’t think so. I’m cold. I’d like to get there.” She spoke in a low, serious, intense voice. He felt the heat of her face.

“Get there? Don’t you want to stay here? Never leave here, never arrive anywhere again… Just stop… just stop…”

Shivering, Nora turned her head towards him. There was something feeble, muted yet warm in his voice. She had just enough time to think, This man wants to die , when a sudden sense of peace enveloped her, as though in a single instant she had grasped all of his thoughts down to their roots. She hugged him and closed her eyes with a drowning sensation.

Somewhere in the air above them, huge waves slammed together and the sound radiated downwards, as though reaching the bottom of the sea. Cold, damp, hazy mist streamed between the fir trees. Unmoving branches resounded with a noise like the clashing of weapons.

“The clouds are coming down from the summit,” Nora whispered.

On her lips, her eyelids, she felt snow sliding over her like smoke.

Paul shook her by the shoulders. She opened her eyes with difficulty. Without a word, he pointed out to her with his hand an object that was only a few steps away, but which she could barely discern, as though in a dream: on the bark of a tree, a white-red-white rectangle.

The SKV 14chalet was still smoking between the fir trees, as though after a recently extinguished fire. Clouds flowed down towards Poiana like buoyant lava. Isolated puffs of mist lingered, hanging from the cliffs and the trees… Nora and Paul emerged from the clouds, as though from a different winter. From the direction of the chalet they heard voices, a workhorse’s bell, the sound of a saw. Someone shouted out the window: “Gertrude! Gertrude!”

Nora thought of the hot tea that awaited her above and looked for her backpack, thinking of the bottle of French rum she had bought before leaving. It was a heavy, intoxicating aroma. I have to sleep… I have to sleep…

“Are guests welcome?”

“Welcome, except there’s nowhere to stay.”

Nora gave the man who had spoken to her a long, silent look. He was a red-haired Saxon with a small, pointed, slightly fiendish beard, and a cold stare, devoid of hostility but also of kindness. He seemed rough, perhaps as a result of the accent with which he spoke, in correct Romanian, giving a short stress to the first syllable.

“All the rooms are full. There’s not even a free bed. Try up above at the Touring Club. You’ll find something there.”

He had small green eyes, like two slivers of a bottle, beneath bushy, pale brows. Nora regarded him with attention, telling her-self: He has the eyes of a badger! She thought of the stuffed badger she had once found on the teacher’s desk, left behind by the natural science class. She would have liked to say to the man in the doorway, “We know each other, we’ve seen each other before”; but she felt at once the pressure of her backpack bearing down on her shoulders, like a pain awakened from sleep. Her clothes were heavy, damp. Her hobnailed boots felt as though they were made of iron.

“I’m not going any farther. Let’s go in… Let’s rest…”

There was a large dining room with wooden tables and many windows, an immense wood stove built into the wall around which ageless Saxon women, tall, blonde, possibly young, were crocheting. At one table chess was being played; at the other, cards. From an adjoining room came the sound of a game of Ping-Pong. Upstairs on the next floor someone was shouting at intervals the same name to no response: “Gertrude… Gertrude…” Next to the window, a few young boys were waxing their skis, as though polishing weapons. Outside on the deck hobnailed boots could be heard climbing or descending the stairs. Now and then the door opened, and at the appearance of the new arrival guffaws of laughter and shouts of recognition — “Hans!” “Willy!” “Otto!” — rang out.

Nora and Paul’s entrance was greeted with a moment of silence, after which the dining room’s hubbub continued undisturbed and without taking them into account. Next to the wall, the small wooden grandfather clock showed five o’clock.

Nora thought for a moment, trying to remember which five o’clock. Was it morning? Or evening? She came to believe that she had lost several hours in the woods and the clouds.

Someone brought her a large white cup of tea.

“You know, Paul, we should hurry up. We don’t want night to overtake us on the trail.”

She showed him the map pinned to the wall: the trail up from Poiana was drawn with a thick, white line, meandering like a river.

“You see? We’re at 1510 metres. The Touring Club chalet is at 1700. The hard part’s behind us.”

Paul glanced incuriously at the map, which he didn’t understand very well.

“Personally, it’s all the same to me. I’ll go wherever you want, as far as you want…”

Nora gave him a stealthy look from over her teacup. There were light lines on his forehead, which the snow had drawn more deeply. His ski mitts, which he had set on the table, looked like two big bear paws. There was something peaceful, conciliatory, in his eyes, as though in a dream. She seemed to hear him whispering once again: “Never leave here, never arrive anywhere again…”

It was pitch black when they reached the Touring Club chalet. They had done the final part of the trail with their pocket flashlights, guiding themselves more by the shouts they heard from the summit of the mountain than by the signs on the trees, which they could no longer see in the darkness.

The only free places were in the dormitory room.

“If you stay longer, then after the holidays we’ll be able to give you a room with two single beds,” said the man who was showing them around. They followed him in silent resignation.

The “dormitory room” was a long lumber room of wooden beams. An acetylene gas lamp was burning in the middle of the room.

“Is there no fireplace?” Nora asked with indifference.