Mihail Sebastian - The Accident

“ Mancher auf der Wanderschaft

Kommt aus Tor auf dunklen Pfaden…” 17

Auf dunklen Pfaden. By dark paths… In fact, Nora thought, looking at Paul, who was coming in the door; in fact, no one has passed through a darker night, by way of darker paths, than that man .

She went towards him to greet him.

“If only you knew all that’s happened!”

It seemed as though she hadn’t seen him in a long time, that she had found him again after a lengthy separation. She wished she could do something for him — make a sign of tenderness or recognition, show mutual understanding — but his silence deterred her. She took his arm to introduce him to Gunther; the young man, however, had exited from the cabin without a word, leaving them alone.

“Come here next to the fire, Paul.”

She made him sit down in the armchair.

“How tired you are! You must hate me! I lead you through the woods for hours, through the snow. How many hours did we hike uphill? It seems like days and nights have passed since we left. Come on, you hate me, don’t you?”

He kept his eyes fixed on the flames in the fireplace.

“No, Nora. I’d like to preserve this trip forever. I wish we never had to go back home.” He extended his right hand towards the blaze as though he would have liked to seize it between his open fingers. “There’s only one thing I’m afraid of: that it’s not real… that we haven’t left… that all this has happened in a dream… the woods, the mountains, the night… that it’s all nothing but a dream from which I could awaken.”

He was speaking in a whisper, as though he feared that his own words might disturb this dream.

“Look at that fire burning there… Does it resemble a real fire? Where, other than in a dream, have you seen a fire so white, so bright…? Look, I pass my fingers through it, and it doesn’t burn them.”

With a swift movement, Nora gripped his hand and stopped him in time. “Paul, you’ve got a fever. You don’t know what you’re saying. You need to go to bed, to sleep.”

He seemed not to hear her and continued speaking in the same muffled voice. “When that man in the black cape came and hit me on the shoulder and told me to come with him, I didn’t ask him anything because again it seemed to me that everything was happening in a dream.”

He lifted his eyes towards her. “And you, Nora, aren’t you with me, too, in the same dream? Where did that wound on your temple come from? And the blood on your face,” he said, “are you sure we’re not fooling ourselves? Are you sure it’s real?”

“Do you want it to be real?” she asked him in a whisper.

“I want it to last. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to go back.”

“Back where?”

He made a vague motion with his hand, pointing somewhere beyond the window, somewhere beyond the night…

The three of them sat at the table in silence. Only Hagen’s footsteps could be heard, as he brought them bread and wine. A log that had been reduced to embers collapsed in the fireplace with a dull thud. They all turned their heads towards it: the flames, leaping up for a moment, subsided softly into the burning heap of hot coals and ash.

Outside, beneath the window, heavy breathing, like that of a bear, was audible.

“It’s Faffner,” Gunther said. “He can’t sleep. He senses that something unusual is happening.”

The table was between Nora and Paul. He looked from one person to another with a serious expression that caused his blue eyes to lose their smile.

“In fact, it would be difficult for me to tell you just how unusual your arrival here is… how unusual for the three of us, for Hagen, for Faffner, for me…”

He got up from the table, walked towards the window and stood there for a while with his forehead pressed against the glass, looking out into the night. His voice changing, he whispered, as if to himself, as though it were a spell:

“ Wanderer tritt still herein;

Schmerz versteinerte die Schwelle

Da erglanzt in reiner Helle

Auf dem Tische Brot und Wein” 18

Then he let the silence grow deeper, after which Nora, still whispering, asked: “What’s that?”

“A poem. It was written a long time ago by a young Austrian who died in the war. 19It’s called Ein Winterabend … A Winter Evening …” And, turning towards them again, he asked: “Don’t you think it resembles this one?”

THE MORNING WAS CLOUDY, BUT THERE WAS NO FOG. It was snowing softly. The overnight snow had blotted out last night’s footprints and trails.

Paul found Nora outside, talking with Hagen. Faffner was lying at their feet. When he saw him, he slowly stood up, with the majestic indolence of a drowsy lion. Hagen spoke a word to him in an incomprehensible language and the dog lay down on the spot, with its muzzle in front of its paws.

“You slept for eleven hours,” Nora said to Paul.

“That’s all?” In reality he had the impression that he had slept several nights in a single night: a slumber as long as the winter.

Nora motioned to him to speak quietly. “Gunther’s sleeping.” She pointed to a small tower with a window, isolated from the rest of the cabin, where the boy’s room was located.

The cabin was built of stone and wooden beams, with green shutters and red roof tiles, but the two colours were dark: a green of dark pines and a burnt, extinguished red. Only the cretonne curtains brought a touch of light to the windows, with their patterns of bowls of flowers.

Their skis were ready for the trail. Hagen had looked for Nora’s skis in the woods as soon as daylight broke, and had found them far away, in a clearing, with the tips run up against a juniper tree. Her poles remained lost. Using a clasp knife, Hagen had made Nora new poles out of two branches of a pine tree, and had taken the trouble to attach two small loops of hazel fibre at the tops.

“By tomorrow I think you’ll be able to put them to use. Tomorrow I’m going to Braşov to do shopping and I’ll buy you some more.” Hagen still looked dark in the morning light. He wore the same cape of ashen fabric on his shoulders, with the hood hanging down his back.

He resembles a woodsman and a priest at the same time , Nora thought, not daring to look him in the eyes. He spoke quietly, heavily, with a certain awkwardness. His face was pale, framed by a prickly, badly groomed, black beard.

“It’s better if you put on your skis right here,” he said. “You won’t be able to move on foot. The snow’s too deep.”

On his skis, Paul felt as though he were on a narrow bridge, which he was crossing on tiptoe.

“Not like that, Paul,” Nora called out. “Press down on the skis with your full weight. Have faith in them.”

She came alongside him and grabbed him by the shoulders, hauling him downwards. “Let your weight fall on the heels and the soles. You shouldn’t be staggering.”

She showed him how to make his first progress across the snow, taking slow, step-by-step movements.

“We’re on even ground here. So sliding and falling are out of the question. Take it easy and above all place your feet firmly. First push the right ski ahead with the knee bent and the left leg stretched. Like that! Now, pull the left ski even with the other one… good…! And push forward on it… Perfect.”

“That’s all?”

“For the time being,” Nora said, laughing.

Yet Paul was puzzled. “What do I do with the poles?”

“You support yourself on them, but not too much. You help yourself more when you drag your back leg forward. Take a few steps as I’ve shown you, and check that your movements suit you in a natural way. Let’s go.”