Accident (15 page)

“What's with this car?”

“It's mine. An old heap.”

“Where did you get it?”

Ann turned her head towards him, without losing control of the wheel. She headed in the direction of Piaţa Romana along the boulevard, which was nearly deserted on that grim November Sunday morning.

“Is that your only question? It's the first one you've asked me, Paul.”

“And the last. I have nothing to ask you.”

Ann braked abruptly. The machine came to a rough stop, skating over the damp paving stones. The right mudguard slammed into the edge of the sidewalk. Ann, crestfallen, lifted her hands from the steering wheel. She stared straight ahead through the windshield, where the raindrops were sliding into hurried little streams. For a few minutes nothing was audible between them but the rhythmic sound of the windshield wiper on the glass. At last Ann lifted her eyes towards Paul, with the return of that decisive expression she assumed in serious moments.

“Maybe I made a mistake in phoning you, Paul. Maybe everything's really finished between us. But since you came, since you're here, I'd like to ask you to stay and to be quiet. I want to know you're next to me. Tomorrow, if you want, an hour from now, if you want, we can go our separate ways. But for the moment, be quiet ...”

She set off again. A cold, damp wind came shivering in through the open window on the driver's side, hurling sparse raindrops into Ann's face; she let them trickle down her cheeks and forehead without wiping them away, without seeming to feel them. Her hands clenched the steering wheel with the exaggerated tension of a long drive. The needles of the gauges on the dashboard oscillated with restless nervousness. The speedometer slid across the dial at between 80 and 90 kilometres an hour. On the right and the left, the bare linden trees that lined the road cast out a smokey mist. Farther along, beyond Băneasa Airport, there was an odour of dishevelled fields, of sodden grass, of earth tilled right down to the roots. The rain was falling more softly here, less rushed, calmer and more patient than in the city. The noise of the engine didn't completely block out its thin rustling sound, like the approaching voice of the forest.

They left the sleeping airport, with its shuttered hangars, the radio station, the Otopeni forest, the road to Snagov, far behind them. The gleaming road unfolded before them through the open countryside. Whitish haze floated low over the black earth like fallen cloud making a futile attempt to raise itself ... On the horizon, the greyness of the November day descended into a smokey, opaque whiteness.

Paul turned his head towards Ann. He had forgotten that she was next to him. This whole drive through the rain had the savour of awaking from a troubled sleep.

Ann bit her lower lip with a strained gesture that Paul didn't recognize.
It's a recent gesture
, he thought,
a driving gesture
. Her cheek betrayed no tremor: her eyes, slightly dilated with attentiveness, her forehead, tilted forward, lent a feeling of intensity and yet also of absence to her pale face. Only now had he noticed that she didn't have her overcoat; she was bareheaded, with an open
collar, exactly as she had left the exhibition, in a tailored brown suit (
Since when does she wear brown?
) with a gauzy scarf, wet from the rain, fluttering over her shoulders.

“I'd say it's time for us to go back, Ann.”

She reduced their speed, uncertain at first, and then she stopped. She laid her forehead against the steering wheel and stayed that way, with her arms drooping, her hair ruffled by the cold wind, which continued to blow with ebbing force now that the car was parked. Paul straightened her up with difficulty, taking her head in his hands to draw her towards him: Ann's half-closed eyes had a dull look, her lips were blue, her hands cold.

“What's the matter with you? Are you cold? Are you feeling bad?”

“No,” she whispered. “I'd like to cry.”

“That's good – cry,” he encouraged her, and he pulled her closer, sheltering her against his chest and covering her with his right arm as though he were wrapping a shawl around her shoulders. “Cry if you want. Go ahead – cry.”

In the small white car, parked alone on the road in the open countryside, Ann shook with childish, hiccuping tears.

In fact, nothing had changed, and Ann's return was not a return. A caprice, a moment's folly, maybe even more trivial than that ... “She fled on the morning of her opening, like the bride on the wedding night,” the painters would joke among themselves. The truth was that she had left behind her a room full of guests and that her sudden departure gave rise to endless fascinated comments. Two days later, in a society column, it was said that Ann's absence from her own opening was a
delightful whim of the sort that an artist confident of the public's affection can allow herself, with the result
, the columnist added maliciously,
that the majority of the works exhibited sold on the spot
.

Everything that Ann did now, Paul observed, was destined to become the subject of publicity.
And it doesn't even worry her
, he thought with a shake of his head. He had the hideous suspicion that her departure from the opening had been prepared in advance to intrigue the public and arouse curiosity in order to bring an “original note” to the all-too-banal tradition of the opening of
an exhibition. Having rediscovered her for an instant, he was losing her again to a thicket of secrets and mysteries that she rushed through with an offhand gesture: “Forget it, I'll explain.”

She was so distant, so strange had she become to him during their months of separation, that the paintings in her new show looked excessively good to him. Even if it hadn't been for those four or five portraits, and sketches of portraits, of Dănulescu, ostentatiously exhibited, as if she wished to forestall or confront all that was being said about their liaison (and Paul had been annoyed above all by the title of those portraits in the exhibition catalogue:
Portrait of the Architect D.
, an initial which, rather than being a sign of discretion, seemed like one of intimacy) – even if it hadn't been for those portraits, everything in Ann's painting was unknown to him now; it all breathed memories, events, emotions experienced in his absence, far away from him. Most of the landscapes were of Sainte-Maxime, a Belgian fishing village where Ann had loaded her palette with the greys and blues of a cloudy sea. How long she had been in Sainte-Maxime, with whom, what she had been doing there, were questions she invariably deflected by telling him: “Forget it, someday I'll tell you the whole story.” A day that had become more difficult to pin down the less he saw of her, always in a hurry, always in passing, particularly now that she had this blue car – bought? received as a gift? even she didn't seem to know for sure – with which she ran innumerable errands, all of them urgent and all of them without explanation. For Paul it was a fresh source of pain to run across that small automobile, which he recognized from a distance by its colour – a light navy blue – heading along the streets only to disappear around a corner or beyond a crossroads – towards what unknown destinations? towards which clandestine encounters?

He happened to come across it with the doors closed and the headlights out, in obscure neighbourhoods, on the corner of an unfamiliar street, parked there who knew how long ago. He would approach it and look in the windows to see that Ann had left her gloves, or a book, or a package. Leaning over with his face against the windowpane, he would gaze for a long time at those forgotten objects. Sometimes they were left next to the car's front grille.
Maybe she's coming back
. She never came. He waited for hours on end, and still she didn't come.

He looked in detail at the surrounding houses. It was possible she was around here somewhere, for a visit or a romantic rendezvous, possibly behind the curtains in one of those windows where the lights were on, not wishing to come down right now because she had seen him waiting in the street.

One evening in Filipescu Park, on a little semicircular street that ran off Strada Sofia like a sort of interior courtyard, Paul had found the blue car across from a house whose rolling shutters were drawn, but through which strips of light fell. He had passed there by chance, coming from the Saint-Vincent sanatorium, where he had an ill friend, but Ann's car stopped him in his tracks. For more than two hours he had remained still, leaning over the grille of the car. He had the impression that behind the house's shutters shadows were moving. He seemed to hear footsteps, whispers, even laughter, which then faded away. It was as though every now and then, about every quarter of an hour, someone was coming to the window to see if he was still there, if he had left yet. After a long time, an absurd thought passed through his head: to ring the doorbell and ask for Ann.

The door opened after a long wait, and after he had rung several times: in the doorway was a greying man, with the entrance behind him, who asked him who he was looking for and obliged him to repeat Ann's name twice, as though he hadn't heard it clearly.

“No, sir, you're mistaken. She doesn't live here.” And he closed the door, leaving Paul on the stone step, confused, stuttering excuses that no one heard.

That evening he vowed that he would never see her again.

I have to forget you, Ann. I absolutely have to forget you
.

IT WAS A SMALL, NARROW ROOM with a smoke-blackened ceiling and wooden benches, and a door that was constantly opening and shutting. Nervous figures would appear in the doorway, toss a hurried glance inside and disappear. If it hadn't been for the magistrates and the court clerk in their black robes, Nora wouldn't have believed that she was actually in a courtroom.

All kinds of people sat on the benches: anxious girls with tired eyes, and a mixture of bewilderment and indifference. There was the incessant sound of whispering, muffled hisses, shuffling paper. From time to time a bell sounded, rung out of habit and without conviction by the presiding judge. There was a moment's silence, and then nothing more was heard but the voice of the lawyer who was speaking.

Nora found a seat at the back of the room, next to the window. Outside it was snowing softly. Senate Square looked white, like a postcard of winter.

Paul was right at the front, in the first row of benches, bent over what looked like a file. In order to see him, Nora had to stand up, and then she saw only his back, with his shoulders bent forward in the direction of the desk facing him.
As long as he doesn't turn his head
, she thought, chilled by the thought that he might see her. She pressed against the window, hiding as well as she was able.

Paul got up from his seat. Nora had the impression that he had seen her and was coming towards her. She remained stock-still, like the pupil who feels that the teacher has seen her copying from his desk, and is waiting for the inevitable scandal to break.

No. She was losing her nerve foolishly, for no good reason. Paul hadn't seen her and in any event was not looking her way. He had
merely gone to the court clerk's desk, picked up a file and now, with the file in his hand, was speaking.

Nora heard only parts of the sentence, of which she understood nothing. She repeated his words in her mind and was surprised that Paul could speak with such conviction. His voice from the previous evening was unrecognizable: this was a firm, certain voice, with maybe a certain deep-seated indifference, but not the sleepy, drawling indifference with which Nora was familiar.

“... The simple deposition of the reasons for appealing this case not only is insufficient, but is null and void ... The court will be obliged to consider this appeal as lacking due cause ... A single valid cause ... indicated by Article 98 of the law governing circuit court judges ... Implied and without having been specified by prior documentation ... Procedurally speaking, this appeal does not exist ... It is in direct contradiction of Article 69 of the civil code, section D, clause 2 ...”

Nora strained to listen. She would have liked to understand the question under discussion. Above all, she would have liked to be able to look Paul in the eyes while he was speaking. The things he was talking about appeared to enthrall him. Now and then he turned his head towards a lawyer on the opposing bench, who was interrupting him, and then Nora read in his uncaring eyes a sparkle of conviction, maybe even of combativeness.

She glanced at her watch: twenty past four.
Yesterday at this time we hadn't met yet
. Everything that had happened since seemed remote and incomprehensible. That man speaking in an unfamiliar voice and whose appearance she couldn't remember if she closed her eyes, that man was her “lover.” This was still a word that, even at her age, Nora was unable to contemplate without terror. Long ago, in her hometown in the provinces, “lover” was a word that was spoken in a whisper.

The presiding judge uttered a few words, which were inaudible at the back of the courtroom, and wrote something in the register. The court clerk called another case, while Paul bundled up his books and papers and, with an unhurried motion, slid them into his briefcase.

Nora was going to let him leave the courtroom, she was going
to remain here a little longer to be sure of not running into him, and then she, too, was going to leave.
A guy you slept with one night by chance and who, after that, you never saw again
. The horrible thoughts, which appalled her, and which she nevertheless tried to think with out caring, went around in her head.

“Are you staying here?”

He was wearing a black-patterned red tie with a badly tied knot. It was first thing Nora noticed.
Why doesn't this man know how to tie his tie?