“Are you ready for adventure, Paul?”
“Ready.”
In response, she set out ahead of him, shouting now and then to tell him that the trail was clear and that he could follow. His poor old snowplow collapsed at the point of departure. His skis skidded incessantly. There was no way to collect himself, to stop the skid. For a distance of several hundred metres the trail wound between the pine trees with tight, unexpected curves. Paul didn’t succeed in taking a single curve on his feet. At each one he was hurled into the snow, falling, rolling over. At regular intervals he heard Nora’s shout and replied to her.
“Are you coming?”
“I’m coming.”
In fact, he was coming. He couldn’t do anything else but keep coming. Sometimes he got snagged on a pine tree or a rock, but the skis carried him forward.
“It’s been hellish,” he told Nora, when he finally caught up with her. His forehead and cheeks were scratched, his breath shook with effort. “It’s been hellish,” he repeated, “but we’re moving faster.” He knew there was no room to choose or turn back. They were in the middle of the forest and, whatever the price, they had to get out of there. Dusk was nipping at their heels.
Now the trail ran straight downhill without any detours, cutting crossways through the forest. The slope was much steeper than it had been until now, but at least there were no violent changes of direction. The rustling of the skis on the snow became progressively harsher as, at sunset, an icy crust formed on the surface. They stopped at the junction of two trails where a board put up by the Touring Club, half covered in snow, pointed out to the left a path marked with yellow crosses in red squares: To Poiana.
“If you want,” Nora suggested, “we can take it to Poiana. There we can pick up the caterpillar to take us to Braşov.”
“And if it’s not there?”
“Then there’s nothing we can do.”
Paul thought for an instant, then rejected this idea. “No, Nora, we’ve started a game. I want to play it to the end. I want to enter Braşov on skis. On my skis.” He wasn’t even joking. He was grim and intent. “Shall we go?”
One could say that only there did their run truly begin. They travelled at a short distance from each other, crouched over their skis with their foreheads thrust forward, their shoulders slightly raised, as though they were on the verge of spreading their wings. Their ski boots danced on the snow in small leaps and lifted the powder, which the wind flung in their eyes. Nora continued to maintain the lead, bareheaded, with her hair tossed about around her temples. Now and then she shot a quick glance in his direction to check that he was following her. Their eyes met for a second, or even less. Paul leaned ever farther forward, bent his knees ever more deeply. There were moguls that shook him, as though they were going to fling him over backwards. He received the impact in his chest and crouched lower over his skis.
He didn’t know how long they had been following this trail nor how much more lay ahead of them. He had fallen a number of times, but each time he got up immediately and set off again, feeling that if he delayed he would no longer have the courage to get up. The light of the cloudy dusk dwindled without a glimmer. The fir trees were wrapped in their evening mist, as though in smoke.
Up ahead, Nora shouted something. It sounded like a cry for help, but he didn’t hear it clearly: it seemed to reach him from a great distance.
Paul hurled himself to the right and slid through the snow for a few seconds. He hit his elbow and knees, but somehow managed to bring himself to a halt. He got up, dizzy, staggering on his skis. “What happened?”
Nora pointed between the pine bows in the direction of nearby lights. “We’ve arrived. We’re at the edge of Braşov.”
On the streets of the town they stopped in front of shop windows, they ran into pedestrians, they watched buses, cars and sleds passing in front of them, they read cinema billboards, they listened to the shouts of newsboys selling the evening newspapers — and yet they didn’t come to their senses, ambling along confused and deaf. The silence of the woods lingered in him like the extended note of an organ.
He went in to buy their concert tickets, chose their seats, received his change, asked questions, replied — all in an absent, mechanical way.
“What’s wrong with you, Paul? Don’t you want to wake up?”
“Of course, but I can’t.”
Braşov, with its evening lights, its streets thronged with people, its glowing shop windows, its whole Christmas Eve bustle, was unreal to him.
“You know how I feel, Nora? Like a wolf that’s come down from the woods to the edge of town… And now I don’t dare go any farther.”
There wasn’t a single free spot at the Coroana. The hotel was full, while in the lobby people who had come in on the last train waited without hope, their baggage not yet unpacked. They left their skis there and went to ask at the smaller hotels and holiday villas in the vicinity.
“You’re wasting your time,” someone told them. “There’s not a bed to be had in the whole city. People are sleeping wherever they can: in restaurants, in cafés, at the train station…”
Braşov had the appearance of a town taken over by a training camp. Entire regiments of skiers seemed to have occupied the citadel. Blue peaked caps were everywhere.
“Did so many people come here to listen to the Christmas Oratory?” Nora said in surprise, laughing.
Above all, people had come for the skiing competitions at Predeal, which started in two days’ time. The teams of competitors, who until now had been training in the mountains throughout the region were beginning to gather down in the town
On the boulevard, across the street from the post office, the municipal train, with its stubby railway engine and little yellow carriages looked like a toy stuck in the snow. The engine’s whistling, calling late passengers, could be heard from far away. Many people were going to look for shelter for the night in Dârste, Cernatu and Satu-Lung.
“If we don’t find anything anywhere else,” Nora said, “and if there’s still time before the concert, it might not be a bad idea for us to go to Satu-Lung too, on the last run.”
“No, not Satu-Lung,” Paul refused.
“Why not?”
“It’s too far… It’s too late.” For a moment he considered telling her frankly: There are too many memories there that I don’t want to get close to. Then he realized that this wasn’t even true. It seemed to him that he could stare those memories, which felt healed now, straight in the eyes, without danger or apprehension. No, that train was not going in the direction of his past…
“The line’s blocked on the other side of Dârste,” someone shouted from the window of a carriage.
Yes, it’s blocked, Paul repeated in his mind. It seemed to him as though there really were broken connections in his memory, blocked lines, roads that had closed forever. With an effort, the train set itself in motion with a noise of frozen old fetters. The engine fought to break out of the ice, to push through the snow.
The passengers were singing out the windows, waving their ski caps, shouting, greeting those who were staying behind with exaggerated gestures. At the back of the train, a few skiers were straining with mock effort to push it out of the snow.
“Skiing turns everyone into a child,” Paul said.
It wasn’t only skiing. It was that whole Christmas Eve, with its holiday mood, its deep snows, its vacation bustle.
Hagen had told the truth. The address he had given them was far away, while the house really did look very old. The wooden door in a grey wall, locked with large iron bars like the door of a fortress, was deaf to all of their knocking. One might have thought that no one had come here since time immemorial.