Accident by Mihail Sebastian Read Free Book Online Page B

and put it back on her left wrist.
    â€œThat’s all. Now I’ll leave you.”
    She approached him, extended her hand, but in that moment she glimpsed last night’s flower in the buttonhole of his shirt, that pathetic flower, now faded and shrivelled. She removed it with infinite care, with an endless series of precautions, afraid of breaking its overly long stem, and looked around for a vase. But there was only one, too big for a single flower. “Better a glass,” she said, and went into the bathroom in search of water, but the cold water was like ice and the hot water tap didn’t work. ( What a mess this apartment is! How obvious it is that he lives alone! ) She opened a door which gave onto an office, where she found a bottle of drinking water. She returned to the other room, poured the water, then put the flower in the glass. She placed the glass on a small table next to his bed, kneeling and balancing the glass carefully between her palms, as if to infuse the flower’s pallor with the warmth of her hands.
    She stood up and headed towards the entrance hall.

    On the threshold she found Paul, his arms spread wide as though to block her passage. He looked as though he wanted to say something to her but was at a loss and didn’t know how.
    â€œThank you for coming. Now ... If it weren’t too late, I’d ask you to stay.”
    As if that “too late” referred to the time and not to what had occurred until now, she looked at her watch. “In fact, it is very late. Ten past four. Even so, if you want, we could wait for daybreak together. It won’t be long.”
    There was a calendar on the desk. She tore off the sheets for days that had passed and read from the coming day’s page: December 19 th . Sunrise: 7:41 AM.
    â€œWe have two hours and thirty-nine minutes left.” The torn sheets from the days that were over remained in her hand. She offered them to him, smiling. “You see? It’s over. It was hard, but it’s over.” Then, with unaccustomed gravity: “I don’t think you’ll ever forget me. I’ll always be the woman you met the night you turned thirty.”
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    They faced each other in semi-darkness. They had turned out all the lights except for the shaded lamp on the desk. He was in the armchair where she, with an authoritarian voice, had ordered him to sit. She was in the corner next to the sofa, where she had piled up some pillows. Between them was the tea table, the hot, white cups like feeble globes of light.
    â€œIt’s cold in this apartment,” Nora said, and in a few seconds the water boiled and the apartment filled with the smell of tea, lemon, rum – all of which she had found without asking him. She wandered among his belongings with a light, sure hand, as though she was going through them by instinct or from old habit.
    Paul was listening to her speaking without paying much attention to what she was saying. She spoke calmly, slowly, without raising her voice, almost monotonously. It was a serious voice, excessively serious, without marked alterations, without liveliness, almost inexpressive. How relaxing it was to listen to her. He felt he had known her for a long time and that nothing was hidden
between them. Not a single mystery. Not a single question to ask. Nothing to find out.
    He took her left hand in his and turned it over with the palm facing the light.
    â€œDo you know how to read palms?” Nora asked.
    â€œNo, but I like to look at them.”
    Hers was a simple hand, with a few regularly curved lines like rivers on a map. Paul looked at it for a while, then closed it like a book he had finished reading.
    â€œAren’t you going to tell me what you’ve found?”
    â€œThere’s nothing to find. It’s your hand. It suits you. A serious hand. Calm ... And yet ...”
    â€œAnd yet?”
    â€œOnly one thing remains inexplicable: the fact that you came