The house was decorated with wreaths of coloured paper. Gunther was very proud of his work. On a large piece of white cardboard, inscribed, as though in an American movie, with pretty patterned letters, were the English words: Happy New Year 1935.
“If we had champagne and music, it would be a real réveillon,” he said with a mischievous air.
“We don’t have champagne, but we do have wine. As for music, if we keep still, we can hear the music from the Touring Club very clearly.”
In fact, a distant accordion tune was audible. Then the nocturnal rustle of the forest covered it. For the first time, Nora took off her ski costume. She had a black dress in her backpack that she hadn’t put on until now because she felt better in the cabin in a ski vest and long trousers. She liked walking in her hobnailed boots and felt that her heavy step gave her more security in the presence of these three men.
But tonight the hobnailed boots tired her and the ski vest was too heavy. Her heavy woollen stockings scratched her. She took them off as though at the end of a long march and then, after so many days of rough clothing, she put on silk stockings, the only pair she’d brought with her from Bucharest, and felt their chill on her legs like a caress.
I’ve been a boy for too long, Nora thought, looking at herself in the mirror. Since donning her ski costume, she had been wearing her hair up, pinned in place beneath her peaked cap. Now she undid it and let it fall to her shoulders. Her black dress had a red leather belt and a narrow white collar that showed no cleavage. It seemed wrong that the dress had long sleeves. She would have liked to wear an evening dress that left her arms bare, a dress that could be heard shimmying as she walked, as though at a dance. But even in that modest black dress, Nora felt herself becoming a woman again. Her high-heeled shoes made her taller. Her hair, loose on her shoulders, liberated her forehead, and in its deep, dark brown depths her whole face became whiter and more luminous than before.
She felt free and easy and rushed downstairs — she who usually walked without haste or noise. She stopped only on the final stair, surprising herself with this unexpected change. What’s with you, Nora? It’s as if you’re drunk, she scolded herself.
Gunther came towards her and took her hand, regarding her with an expression of childlike astonishment. “How beautiful you are! I didn’t know you were so beautiful. Where did this come from? What happened?”
“I’m not beautiful, Gunther. But this evening I’m trying, I’d like to be beautiful. For the year ahead. We have to greet it with friendship, with some courage, above all with confidence. We have to have confidence in it and the things it brings us.”
Paul approached Nora. “Gunther’s right. You really are beautiful. Skiing made you look like a boy as long as we were dressing boyishly. But look now, you’re intimidating us. We’d like to kiss your hand and we don’t know how. We’ve taught ourselves to let you fall in the snow without stopping to check on you. You always manage on your own, and we go on ahead. We’ve taught ourselves to answer you with grunts, or sometimes not to answer at all. You’re patience, Nora. You’re obedience. You’re simplicity. We receive it all with indifference, as if it we were owed it, as if we had an ancestral right to it. But tonight you’ve suddenly reminded us that you’re beautiful, and your beauty is a gift too great for us. You disarm us, you give us the jitters, you make us babble all sorts of nonsense.”
“Really, Paul — only nonsense?” She had never heard him speaking with such unpretentious, untroubled emotion. Never had she discerned in his gaze the twinkle of tenderness with which he now approached her. If we were alone, I think I’d kiss him. “Babble nothing but nonsense, my dear. What’s happened to you? What will these people think of us?”
She was thinking less of Gunther, who had taken all this as a game from the beginning, and more of Hagen who, standing in motionless silence, had not budged from his spot next to the window. This evening his hard blue eyes had what might be the beginnings of dreamy tolerance…
It was still long before midnight when Faffner, who until now had been lying next to the fire, suddenly got up as though from a dream with a tremor of attention and uneasiness. He listened for a while, with his snout raised in the air and his ear cocked in the direction of who-knew-what distant noise, then walked puffing and snarling towards the door.
“What is it, Faffner?”
The dog stood up with his paws against the door, trying to open it by himself, yet when Hagen opened it and motioned for him to go outside he stayed on the threshold as though not daring to go any farther. He barked in the direction of the woods, more with uneasiness than anger.
“Are you afraid, Faffner?”
He would not go back inside but neither would he consent to leaving the cabin completely. He had an unusual bark, as though someone had asked him a question to which he didn’t want to reply.
“Let’s go see what it is,” Hagen said.
He put his cape over his shoulders, lighted his lantern, then took one of the two carbines down from the pegs overhead. They saw him armed for the first time, a sight that surprised them even more because until now they had believed that those two guns hanging on the wall were more decorations than actual old weapons. This man is really a hunter, Nora thought. The gun in his hand seemed to complete him. He looked less strange now. His ash-coloured cape, like his high boots, looked normal.
“Come, Faffner,” Hagen said, and set off. The dog followed behind with his muzzle in the snow, seeking the scent…
They came back half an hour later. Time had passed slowly in the cabin, in a strained expectation that intensified the silence. Gunther didn’t separate himself from the window for a moment. Not a single cry or call was audible from the forest. Only from time to time did they hear noise — growing ever fainter — from the parties at the Touring Club and the SKV chalet. Paul wanted to go looking for the two who had left.
“Maybe they need help. There’s still one carbine here.”
“We have it here, and it’s good for it to stay here,” Nora said to stop him from leaving.
The wait was so difficult, filled with so many presentiments and unasked questions, that at first not even Hagen’s return laid them all to rest.
“I’m bringing you a bear cub,” he said, as he entered.
In fact, he was carrying on his arm a frozen baby bear, its pelt white with snow, its eyes half-shut with cold or exhaustion, its front paws tucked beneath its coffee-coloured muzzle, as though it were trying to warm itself up on its own.
“It must have left its mother’s lair in daylight and then not been able to find its way back. I’m going to try to find it for him, but I’ve brought him here first so that you can see him.”
“Are there bears around here?” Nora asked, astonished.
“Only in one spot, down towards the sheep-run. I think there aren’t very many of them. This summer the shepherds were talking about a she-bear, a single one, who would come out at night now and then at the sheep-run.”
Hagen had set down the bear cub on the carpet. They all gathered around to look at it. Only Faffner had to be kept away, since he was barking incessantly and showing his fangs as if he wanted to tear the cub open.
“He smells of the wilderness,” Hagen said.
Nora remained puzzled. Long ago she had learned at school that bears hibernated in total lethargy. She didn’t understand by what miracle this cub had reached their hands alive in the depths of winter.
“But that’s not true at all,” Hagen said. “You can’t even talk about total lethargy. It’s a kind of slumber, a kind of drowsiness, from which the bear awakes now and then, and — but of course usually not when there’s a blizzard — sometimes goes outside into the daylight. Especially when he’s restless, like this little brute.”