The entire competition was organized half-jokingly, as a parody of the real competitions in Predeal, but it was a joke which drew everyone in with excessive conviction. Above all, the Saxons from the SKV, who arrived in a compact group, were as grave and resolute as if they were preparing for a great battle. They had put together a five-man team and had sent a written challenge to the students from the Touring Club, stating that the upcoming downhill race would be the “final test” of the day, the culmination of the struggle between the SKV and Touring Club. The whole mountain echoed with shouts and songs. When the wind dropped, the noise carried as far as Gunther’s cabin. Hagen, who had returned from his customary morning walk in the woods, told them all that was happening.
“Let’s go, too!” Nora suggested.
Paul, as grey-faced as the previous evening, neither accepted nor refused. He couldn’t care less whether they went or not. For him, the night had passed in a kind of numbed peace, as though he were under anaesthetic.
More difficult to persuade was Gunther, who didn’t want to leave the cabin at any price. “There are too many people. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want them to see me. I know them too well.”
Even so, Nora prepared his skis, which the boy hadn’t yet put on this winter. She was certain that he would resist this temptation. I have to get them outside, she thought, looking at the two men.
Hagen, who was alone in the cabin, whispered worriedly to Nora: “Be careful. Gunther doesn’t have the will or the energy to go fast.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be right beside him.”
The program hadn’t yet started at the Touring Club. They were still doing maintenance work on the ski run, especially on the mound for the ski jump, where several volunteers were digging with shovels. All the accordion players from the two chalets were brought together with their instruments into a kind of village orchestra that was set up next to the jurors’ table to play “Long Live the Winner!” in Romanian and German when the prizes were handed out. Meanwhile, to soothe the audience’s impatience, they played various hymns and “ouvert-ures.”
Gunther’s arrival caused astonishment among the Saxons on the rostrum. The news passed from person to person by way of signs and whispers:”Der junge Grodeck, der junge Grodeck…”25 Intrigued stares turned from him to his companions. For a moment, all attention was diverted from what was happening on the ski run. Gunther became the highlight of the show, like a crown prince who makes an appearance on the balcony at a concert. Nora felt herself to be the object of dozens of questions. Gunther, invigorated by the cold morning air, held her arm and made lively conversation with her.
“Tomorrow the whole Grodeck family will know that we came out together. They’ll open an inquiry to find out who you are, where you’re from and what your intentions are. A young woman in the Grodeck family is an affront. The Grodecks don’t tolerate young women. There was one once, and they never forgave her, even after her death.”
Nora enjoyed facing the wave of surprise and curiosity that rose up around them. Only Paul remained indifferent to the pointing and the stares, not even noticing them.
The first event was the relay race. The route went from the Touring Club to the SKV chalet and, from there, through the Glade of the Three Maidens back to the Touring Club. The starting signal was given amid a general silence blasted by the report of a pistol that resounded through the mountains. The rostrum broke out in applause, while the teams, bearing large numbers on their backs, visible from the start, set off; friends and supporters shouted out their names. Gunther, too, took sides openly in the battle and began passionately shouting out the number of one of the pack of racers. “Two-oh-three! Two-oh-three!”
“Why two-oh-three?” Nora asked in surprise.
“I don’t know. I chose it by accident, like in roulette.”
He looked up with a bright face, a child once again, while he clung to her left arm with all his force.
“What number are you betting on, Paul?” Nora asked. She turned her head to the right, where he had been walking silently beside her, but she didn’t find him.
Had he left? It was certainly possible. The whole time she had felt him there on her right, locked in his oppressive silence like a piece of stone. She didn’t know at what point he might have slipped away without telling her.
So he’s left without a word, she thought bitterly.
Paul’s first thought, on leaving the scene, was to return to the cabin. He wanted to be alone. The throng of noisy people made him ill. Nora was irritating him with her exaggerated insistence on including him in a game that had no charm for him this morning. Standing between Gunther and him, attentive to all of their movements, Nora gave the impression of being a governess who was supervising two convalescents. He felt oppressed by her fixed gaze, even when it wasn’t directed at him. In the second’s swirl of confusion produced by the firing of the starting pistol, he had found the opportunity to break away unnoticed.
Everybody’s a patient for her, he thought as he walked away. I’m wrong, I’m being unfair to her, he added in his customarily intimate voice of a reasonable man, without being able to feel the slightest penitence. Words, thoughts, passed through him bleakly. He felt like an instrument with snapped chords, lacking warmth or resonance. Nothing elicited a response in him, neither thoughts nor memories.
He knew one name that in the past had made him feel nervous aches, unavoidable reflexes: Ann. He spoke it now in a loud voice, out of curiosity, as if pushing a button to see whether there was a response: “Ann, Ann, Ann.” The name fell from his lips, as inert as a stone.
He stared in the face images that even yesterday would have struck him as unbearable: Ann undressing with her untidy immodesty at the same time that whatever man she was with regarded her while smoking a cigarette or leafing through a book. For a long time he had felt tortured by the tale of a journey Ann had made to Greece with one of her first lovers, long before meeting him. “It was so hot,” she said, “that we spent the whole day naked together in the boat’s cabin and only in the evening did I get dressed to go out on deck.” Ann in her entirety pursued him in that image, which tormented him with lethal precision. It wasn’t the thought that Ann had slept or was sleeping with other men that was unbearable, but rather the certain, irrefutable physical details, the movements with which she unrolled her stockings or pulled her blouse over her head.
Now he watched all these formerly painful images with open eyes and found them incredibly stupid.
He saw Ann down in Braşov in a hotel room with Dănulescu or another man, he saw her naked in his arms, he followed her without horror, without revulsion, in her most secret motions, he heard her excited laughter, her sensual sigh, and it all flowed through him with deathly indifference.
At first he had set out for the cabin, but now he let his skis take him wherever they wished. A cutting wind struck him in the face and temples. If the trail to the SKV chalet hadn’t been taken over by that ridiculous competition, he would have allowed himself to be carried downhill by the slope, all the way to Poiana, to Braşov, to the national capital…
The Touring Club program was about to finish. During the wait for the downhill finals, the crowd on the rostrum followed the final ski jumps with guffaws of laughter. The competitors fell, one after another, as if someone were pulling the snow out from under their feet. Only very rarely did one of them succeed in staying on his skis and pulling to a stop in front of the rostrum to receive volleys of applause. Gunther followed each new jump with enthusiasm or indignation. His sympathies shifted unpredictably from one competitor to another. He shouted encouragement in the moment the competitor took off or called out reprimands when they fell. Nora was afraid that all this excitement would wear him out, and now and then she laid her hands lightly on his shoulders to calm him.