He blinked his small eyes and carefully rubbed his red beard.
“But what’s up with Hagen?” Nora asked, going straight to the point.
The man laughed again, with his odd laugh. “Did I say something was up with Hagen? Have you heard anything about him? Hah, lots of things have been said, but who’s to believe them…” He laughed fiendishly, the thick brows above his small eyes raised into a meaningful arch.
He took the axe, which he had propped up against the chair, and got up.
“I’m going to chop wood. I’ve talked plenty for today.”
From the SKV chalet a lateral trail opened through the woods towards the Glade of the Three Maidens, a smooth, even trail with benches along the edges like a path in a park. Snow had covered everything, burying the rocks and the benches. The wild, uncharted trail’s course through the pine trees could barely be discerned.
The slope was gentle, scarcely noticeable. Skiers headed out with a silky glide. There was no need either for braking or exertion. Nora and Paul descended at a short distance from one another, in silence. The curtain of clouds was falling lower on one side and the other, ashen, dense, stretching down to the ground like a wall. Braşov, Râşnov, all of the Burzenland, were on their right, covered in mist, vanishing into clouds.
In the morning they had left the cabin going north and now they had returned from the south. They almost didn’t recognize the cabin. Viewed from behind, it was bolstered by ramparts of snow, like a small fortress. Faffner barked, surprised to hear sounds coming from the deserted forest. Nora called out to him, and the dog recognized her. He came towards them, swimming through the snow, his muzzle poking up above the white drifts, struggling as though he were about to be submerged. Gunther, too, came out to meet them. He was pale and looked tired, but his eyes conserved a youthful twinkle that lighted up his whole face.
“If you’ve been ill, why are you going bareheaded in the cold?” Nora asked him. “Do you want me to scold you?”
“It’s not cold at all. But you can scold me. I like it. Nobody ever scolds me.”
His smile was luminous, childlike. Then it became dejected. He had these unexpected alterations of expression, from the greatest exuberance to silence.
“I have to ask your forgiveness for my behaviour. I’m acting like a badly brought-up host. But yesterday I couldn’t come downstairs. Thank you for staying here. I was uneasy all morning. I was afraid you’d left and that you weren’t coming back. I wanted to come after you, look for you, and ask you to come back. I don’t know where Hagen hid my skis… He always hides them on me… Without skis, in such deep snow, you’re stuck…”
He was dressed in a grey ski suit with large pockets. He’s too young for his clothes, Nora thought. She tried again to imagine him in a high-school uniform. It would have fit better with his childlike face, and the blond hair falling over his forehead that he kept brushing back with a gesture of boyish impatience.
“You’ll have to help me set the table,” he said. “Hagen is in Braşov. He went shopping. This evening you’ll have newspapers and cigarettes.”
“I’ll look after the table,” Nora said decisively. “You two behave yourselves and just stay where you are.”
She’s such a woman! Paul reflected. In a single instant, with adroitness and intimacy, she had become “the mistress of the house.” She seemed to know all these strange things, and acted as if they, too, were acquainted with her. She sliced bread with a domestic air, as though from familiar habit.
“Why didn’t you tell us that you were a painter?” Nora asked, as they were eating.
“Because I’m not.” The boy’s reply was almost a shout. A wave of blood rose into his pale forehead. His whole being trembled with rage, with resistance. Then, with the same change of expression, his face lighted up again in an ironic smile. “No, I’m not. I was. I wanted to be.”
There was silence. A heavy silence, that lasted for several long seconds, and which they didn’t know how to break.
Faffner arrived just in time to save them.
“Poor thing, he’s hungry. We have to give him food.”
In the afternoon, Nora remained alone with Gunther. Paul put on his skis and practised his turns close to the cabin. He took Faffner along to keep him company.
Gunther, in his armchair next to the fireplace, was scribbling on a notepad.
“I think I’ve made you angry,” Nora told him. “Please excuse me. They were silly questions that upset you and I didn’t even know why.”
The boy was calm. Without paying much attention, he was sketching a woman’s profile, which he left undefined. He started again in the other corner of the sheet. His smile was now devoid of sadness or irony. “I have to tell you something,” he said, “but promise me that you won’t be frightened.”
“I can’t promise, but I’ll try,” Nora joked.
“The other night when you arrived, do you know why I opened the door? Do you know why I let you in?” His voice was soft, almost a whisper. He asked the question with an intense look. “I thought you were Mama. You understand? Mama.”
He pointed to the portrait on the bookshelf without even turning his head in that direction. Nora came closer to him. She wanted to console him.
“I knew you wouldn’t be frightened. Do you believe in ghosts? I do. You see, since Mama’s death, I’ve been waiting for her. Sometimes I go to the window, sometimes I open the door… I wonder why she doesn’t come…”
“Maybe she’s here…” Nora said simply, without lowering her voice. She grasped that after hearing such things she must speak with familiarity and without mystery.
“Yes…” Gunther said. “In a certain way, she is here. Here with us: Hagen, Faffner, me… She loved all three of us… She’s here but I don’t see her. I’d like to see her, I feel I should be able to see her… I’ve told you that I believe in ghosts. I think about her long dresses, I think about her blonde hair, which she wore in an old-fashioned hairdo, even though she was so young…”
Nora walked towards the bookshelf and picked up the portrait. She observed it closely, with great attention. The lips were poorly drawn, the high, sad forehead resembled that of the boy, there was a light wave in the hair on her temples. In the corner was written in penciclass="underline" Mittwoch, den 5 Mai 1932.20 Gunther.
“It was a very sunny day,” Gunther said. “I remember it very clearly. She was wearing a white dress, her first white dress of that summer. As a joke, I’d made a lot of meaningless sketches. I wanted to throw them out. She took them all and asked me to sign this one. She liked to see me drawing. She thought…she thought I had talent. She thought I was going to be a painter.”
“And you no longer want to be one?”
“I can’t.”
“Even so, if she believed… Maybe you should, in her memory…”
Gunther got up from the armchair, barely restraining a fresh outburst of anger.
Again Nora had tugged on gnarled ropes, knocked at locked doors.
The rapidity with which this blond boy could pass from one expression to another, from one mood to another, was amazing. One moment his nerves were choking him, the next he rediscovered his glowing ironic smile. “Do you know what a cardiogram is?”
Nora hadn’t understood the question and didn’t know to reply. “Wait and see,” Gunther said.
He opened a drawer, hunted through notebooks and sketch pads and pulled out a small scroll of paper, which he unfurled in front of her. It was a thick, glossy paper of photograph quality, containing black rectangles crossed by two thin lines that went up and down in zigzags at tight angles. It looked like the inscription of seismograph readings, such as she remembered having seen in geology books at school. “You see those white lines? They’re heartbeats.”