Accident by Mihail Sebastian Read Free Book Online

even so, with what impatience! The taxi flew down the deserted boulevard towards a miracle that with each passing second became more plausible, more heated, more convincing. Ann was at his place and was waiting for him.
    So many times, yes, so many times, although he had broken up with her only a few times before, he had found her sleeping in his
bed, in one of his pairs of pyjamas that were too long for her, in which she looked as lost as a child. So many times he had found her in his study reading a novel selected at random from among his books, or, when it wasn’t a novel, a book on commercial law, a legal journal, in which she was completely immersed. He remembered, he couldn’t prevent himself from remembering, that forgotten November evening in 1932 when, after he had stayed at home for two days to study the files for a trial, she had rung his doorbell at night. She had appeared on the threshold with a small overnight bag, in which she had a nightshirt, her toothbrush, a pair of stockings: “I’ve come to sleep at your place. They’re repairing the tramline on my street and the noise is deafening. You don’t mind, do you?”
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    He stopped the taxi in front of his building, paid the driver and waited for him to leave. He gave himself a few more minutes of hope. Nothing was yet decided, nothing was lost. As long as he remained there in front of the door, his destiny was frozen in place. It was still possible that Ann was upstairs.
    He looked up at his third-floor window, as though mulling this over, and trembled: there was a light in the window.
    He counted the floors again, he counted the windows – the second one from the right – and wondered whether he wasn’t fooling himself or dreaming. He kept his eyes locked on that eye of light that was awaiting him at the end of this terrible night. So it’s true . So she’s really there .
    He felt his eternal fatigue, as though all the pressure he had been under until now had burst in a single instant. For a moment the absurd impulse to leave, to remain alone, ran through his mind. Ann was upstairs, and this fact brought him an unexpected peace that answered all his questions as in a dream. He shook off thoughts of renunciation and set off madly up the stairs with the sudden, desperate need to see her, to hold her in his arms. Ann! Ann! Ann! Her name rushed ahead of him like a shout.
    He found the door open and pushed it with his shoulder. On a hook in the entrance hall hung a cloth coat he didn’t recognize.

    He stopped in the doorway of his study and took in the room with a single glance. In the study was a young woman with a book open before her. “It’s not Ann,” he whispered to himself, feeling dizzy.
    Only then did he recognize Nora.

III
    THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER IN SILENCE FOR A FEW MOMENTS. “What are you looking for here?”
    Nora stood up, leaning towards him, seemingly ready to come to his aid.
    As though he needed to examine the strange situation more closely, he repeated the question. “You’re here, at this time of night?”
    She didn’t recognize his voice. It was too guttural, too coarse. She didn’t recognize anything in his uncertain face.
    How he’s changed ! Nora thought. Where was the smile that had protected him so well, like a vizor, yesterday evening? Now his features looked devastated. What disaster had overtaken him, what had befallen him in the hours since their parting, to make him arrive here in this lamentable state?
    She waved in the direction of the armchair next to the desk. “Don’t you want to sit down?”
    â€œHey, you know you’ve got guts!” Paul exclaimed. “I find you at my place at four in the morning – and what for? So that you can offer me a seat?”
    She didn’t reply. She continued to regard him with the same surprised look, trying to decipher what had happened from that devastated face. She