The Accident

240 Pages·1986·0.94 MB·English

by  Mihail Sebastian

Annotation
In the tradition of Sándor Márai, Mihail Sebastian is a captivating Central
European storyteller from the first half of the twentieth century whose work is
being rediscovered by new generations of readers throughout Europe, Latin
America, and the United States. The 2000 publication of his Journal 1935–1944:
The Fascist Years introduced his writing to an English-speaking audience for the
first time, garnering universal acclaim. Philip Roth wrote that Sebastian's
Journal "deserves to be on the same shelf as Anne Frank's Diary and to find as
huge a readership."
Outside of the English-speaking world, Sebastian's reputation rests on his
fiction. This publication of The Accident marks the first appearance of the
author's fiction in English. A love story set in the Bucharest art world of the
1930s and the Transylvanian mountains, it is a deeply romantic, enthralling tale
of two people who meet by chance. Along snowy ski trails and among a
mysterious family in a mountain cabin, Paul and Nora, united by an attraction
that contains elements of repulsion, find the keys to their fate.

Mihail Sebastian
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TRANSLATOR’S AFTERWORD
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
NOTES
Mihail Sebastian
The Accident
I

SHE DIDN’T KNOW HOW MUCH TIME had passed. A few seconds? A
few long minutes?
She felt nothing. Around her she heard voices, footsteps, people calling out,
but all muted and grey, like a sort of auditory paste, from which occasionally a
tram-bell or a shout shook loose with unexpected clarity, only to fade away
again into the suffocated commotion.
They’ll say it’s an accident, she thought very calmly, almost with
indifference.
The thought made her feel neither alarmed nor hurried. She had a very
vague impression that she must be stretched out next to the sidewalk with her
head in the snow. But she didn’t try to move.
A stupid, senseless question passed through her mind: What time is it?
She strained to listen to the tick-tock of her wristwatch, but couldn’t hear it.
It must have been smashed. Then, in an effort to concentrate, as though
immersed in herself, she observed that in fact she heard nothing of her own
being; not her pulse, not her heart, not her breath.
I’m…, she reflected. I’m like a clock. And it seemed to her that she was
smiling, although she couldn’t feel her lips, for whose outline she searched in
vain somewhere in that familiar yet vanished space that was her unfeeling body.
She remembered suddenly the moment of the fall, so suddenly that she had
the impression that she was falling again, and she heard again the brief noise,
like that of a shattered spring, that she had heard then.
She hadn’t dwelt on it at the time, but now it returned with an absurd
precision: the dry sound of a tearing ligament, of a snapping bow. In truth it
seemed to her that somewhere in the intimacy of this body that she no longer
felt, something had been ripped out of its natural place.
She tried to review her being, with a brisk inward glance, in order to
identify, as though on an X-ray screen, the exact spot of the dislocation.
The collar bone? The aorta? The kneecap?
For each word, it seemed to her that she had to find a response in her inert
body, which she listened to again, forcing herself to explore it with her hearing
down to its most remote fibres.
All right, something’s broken. But what?
Voices rose and fell on the street around her in noisy outbreaks that
suddenly became distant. They reached her as though passing through mist or
steam.
All at once she overcame the penetrating cold and at the same time she felt
her right knee naked against the snow, as though it alone in all her body had
awoken her from a powerful anaesthetic. So far away, yet how intensely she felt
it! She concentrated her thoughts on this sensation for a moment. This single
sensitive point felt extremely strange to her, detached from her swoon like a little
island of life.
Then, like a wave of blood, the cold rose above her knees and spread like a
fine net through her calf, calling back to life new regions of her flesh. The snow
was fluffy, soothing, and it had the softness of chilled bedclothes. She plunged
her leg with caution straight into that snow and felt its utter nakedness, her
stocking having fallen to her ankle.
In that moment, the tearing sensation of a few seconds earlier flashed
through her again. Her mind, which had hesitated until now, located the exact
point of the torn piece of her anatomy: her garter. Having broken loose, its
metallic spring pressed up against her calf like a small round signet.
I must be half-naked, she thought without panic. She had barely lifted her
head when the voices grew clearer, as though the mist had suddenly dispersed.
“Criminals!” an old man shouted. He blustered, suffocated by the violence
of his anger, at a tram driver, who stood in dazed silence. “You don’t look in
front of you, you don’t look around you, you don’t give a hoot about your
passengers, about women or children…”
The tram driver gestured, trying to explain.
“Well, if she’s getting off…”
“So what if she’s getting off? Doesn’t she have the right?”
“She doesn’t have the right because this isn’t a stop,” somebody else said,
in a tone of indifference.
From the ground, she tried to see the person who had spoken, but in the
darkness she could only make out an expression lacking in curiosity.
“Of course it’s not a stop,” the driver repeated, mildly encouraged.
The elderly gentleman, indignant, refused to back down.
“It’s a damned shame it isn’t. It should be. We pay for this service. You
know they take our money, but they don’t lend a hand to build new stops.
Criminals, bandits… You’ve got rich on the money from our pockets.”
She became aware of a smile that fluttered in the dark and, without raising
her head far enough to receive this smile full in the face, was certain that it
belonged to the indifferent voice of a moment earlier.
“… Yes, that’s how they get us, we deserve it, we’re dumb and we don’t
respond…”
He was stupid, certainly, but she realized that, sprawled there in the snow,
she wasn’t listening to the strident voice of the outraged old man, but rather to
the other man’s distant silences.
“… Yes, gentlemen, we fail to respond. Let’s call a police officer and we’ll
send you off to see a judge, you lawbreaker…”
Finally she heard again the other man’s voice, that slightly deaf, slightly
lazy voice. He was probably speaking to the tram driver.
“Hit the road, lad. Get back into your tram and hit the road.”
“Sure, let him hit the road and leave her there dead in the snow.”
Everyone gazed in her direction. In the heat of the argument she had been
forgotten, but now she once again became the central character in the drama.
She felt ridiculous, sprawled out as she was — who knew how long she’d
been there? — in the middle of the street amid a group of curious bystanders.
She would have liked to get up, but she knew she couldn’t do it alone.
She glanced around in a circle, seeking a familiar figure among those grey
faces, and stopped at the man whose lazy voice had caught her attention. She
recognized him by his uncaring gaze, which bore a strong resemblance to his
voice.
“Rather than having a fight, why don’t you help me get up?”
The man didn’t look at all surprised. Without haste, he took a step towards
her, paused, kneeled, placed his hand beneath her right arm and lifted her firmly,
if without great deftness.
She was unable to suppress a small cry of pain when, reaching a standing
position, she was left with her full weight on her right leg.
“Does it hurt?”
“I don’t know. I’ll see later.”
What should she do now? The circle of curious bystanders tightened around
her. Her hat slipped onto the nape of her neck, her right stocking had slid down
her leg, her overcoat was covered with snow, her gloves were soaked…
She felt that getting up had been a mistake: she had been more comfortable
lying in the snow. For a moment she was tempted to tumble back down on the
spot, a thought that made her smile and recover her calm. I’ve got to escape from
this, she said to herself, confronting the group’s curiosity with courage.
She returned to the man at her side, who also seemed rather embarrassed by
the spectacle.
“Would you like to take a few steps with me?” The suggestion seemed to
bore him. She hastened to calm him. “Just a few, as far as the car.”
She didn’t wait for his reply. She took his arm and set out alongside him,
treading with care in order not to reawaken the pain of a few moments earlier.
Neither a car nor a taxi could be seen. The young gentleman made no effort
to conceal his boredom. He remained stubbornly silent, distracted.
She would have been happy to leave him and continue on her way alone,
but she didn’t trust her right leg. Twice she tried to tread with her full weight,
and the pain sliced into her ankle like a blade.
He’s been badly brought up, but I need him. She took his arm more firmly,
as though she wished to show him that she wasn’t going to allow herself to be
intimidated by his bad upbringing and that she wasn’t giving up.
She walked a little behind him, not daring to tell him to take shorter steps.
She was able to scowl at him in profile without his noticing. A drab guy, with
undefinable features, young-looking, although not of any precise age; his hair
looked blond, although it wasn’t of any clearly defined colour. Maybe I’ve seen
him before somewhere.
Was he tall? Short? She wouldn’t have known what to say. He looked tall
in that loose, grey overcoat with large pockets into which he had thrust his hands
with a self-assured air.
He remained silent, in the silence of a long journey, reserved, enduring,
expressionless.
It’s as if he were alone. As if I weren’t here by his side. As if he had
forgotten that I was by his side. What if he really has forgotten? What if he
wakes up and finds us arm-in-arm and asks me what I’m doing here, hanging
onto his arm?
She decided to break the silence.
“I don’t know how it happened. I slipped, you see, on the step of the tram. I
was trying to get off.”
“While the tram was moving?”
Hearing his voice surprised her. She thought he hadn’t heard her, that he
wasn’t going to respond. Her surprise made her animated.
“Yes, while the tram was moving. I always get off when the tram’s moving.
Otherwise it doesn’t work. I live near here, on Bulevardul Dacia, and the number
16 tram only stops on Donici or on Vasile Lascăr. It’s too far away. That’s why I
get off at the turn, where the tram goes onto Orientul. Not just me. Everybody
who lives around here does it. And nothing ever happens. Except for today… I
don’t know how it happened.”
They were passing beneath the pulsing of a streetlight. In the light, his face
again looked distracted.
What an unpleasant guy! Even so, she summoned the courage to stop.
“Don’t be troubled by what I’m about to ask you. I want you to pull up my
stocking. I’m completely frozen.”
She bent over, realizing only now that she was bleeding: her right knee was
red, but lower down, towards her ankle, where the scrape was deeper, frozen
blood plastered the stocking’s fabric to the wound.
“Is it serious?”
“I don’t know. For the time being it’s not hurting. I should go to the
pharmacy. Will you come with me?”
He didn’t reply, but he took her arm and asked with his eyes: Which way?
“It’s not far. Look, over there on the other sidewalk.”
They crossed the street. From afar she found it difficult to recognize herself
in the reflection in the pharmacy’s windows next to this man, who looked even
stranger in the distant image on the glass. As she approached, she smiled with
compassion at her own face. How pathetic I look, poor me! She took off her hat
with a brisk motion and stood with it in her hand, dismayed.
“I can’t go into that shop. The pharmacist knows me, he’ll ask, I’ll have to
explain… Will you…?”
He accepted unenthusiastically, frowning with his brows.
“What do you need?”
“A little iodine and… I don’t know, a little oxygenated water.”
She was about to open her handbag to give him the money, but, without
waiting, he pushed open the door of the pharmacy and went inside.
From outside, she watched him through the pane of the display window:
how he entered, how he took off his hat, how he said good evening, how he
approached the pharmacist in his white lab jacket. She found it odd to watch him
opening his mouth and uttering words that she couldn’t hear. What a peculiar
voice he had! A little muffled, a little quashed, and yet with a rough tone. The
pharmacist was pouring the tincture of iodine into a bottle.
Why was he taking so long? It must be as hot as a greenhouse inside. The
metal scales were still. The heavy liquids, as though drowsy, slept on the shelves
in solemn crystal flasks.
The pharmacist was asking him something and he was replying with plenty
of enthusiasm. He was more talkative inside in the heat than he had been out
here in the cold. And if she were to leave him? If she walked away now, without
waiting for him? How astonished he would be at not finding her here, but what a
feeling of relief he would have, the saucy devil!
Her knee started to hurt. To sting more than to hurt. She thought again of
the lovely warmth on the other side of the display window and closed her eyes.
She felt as though she were slipping into a kind of slumber…
“Did I take too long?”
It was his voice. That uncertain voice, which didn’t stress his words and
gave her the impression that he was walking at her side without paying attention
to her.
She didn’t reply and didn’t open her eyes.
“Are you feeling ill?”
“I’m not ill. But I’d like to get home. I’m freezing.”
“You said it wasn’t far…”
“Don’t worry, it isn’t. Another twenty paces and you’re free.”
She didn’t expect even a polite denial from him. She took his arm,
determined not to say anything more to him; she was impatient to be left alone.
She forced herself to take ever longer strides, although her right leg was still
hurting.
For the first time since that stupid accident had happened, she felt like she
wanted to cry.
She finally stopped in front of a multiple-storey building, leaned against the
glass front door and extended her hand…
“This is it. You can go now. Thank you.”
He squeezed her hand for a second without holding it, then touched a finger
to his hat, sketching a vague half-wave.
She wanted to tell him: You’re the most unpleasant man in the world. But
she was too tired to tell him anything. She left him there in front of the building,
and went into the bright foyer, where an enervating wave of heat received her.
… She was alone in the elevator. She pressed the button for the top floor,
the sixth, then fell onto the bench with a relieved sigh. She promised herself she
would cry with all her heart once she got to her apartment. She felt that nothing
could be better for her: a good cry followed by a steaming hot bath.
Somewhere between two floors the elevator stopped with a brusque
shudder. At first she thought she had arrived, but she realized that in fact she was
suspended in the air.
This is the day for accidents. She tried to make a joke in her mind. She
pressed for a long time on the alarm button.
She remembered that last summer the old lady from the third floor had
spent a whole morning locked in the elevator between two floors. The thought
terrified her. She pressed again, with a long, nervous, harsh start of panic, on the
red button. In the deep silence, everything was motionless; somewhere far away,
as weak as a call from another world, the alarm bell rang without anyone
responding to it.
She could no longer hold back her tears. She looked at herself in the
elevator’s rectangular mirror and felt pity for the state she was in: dishevelled,
ragged, dirty, frozen. The hot tears welled from her eyes, and she received them