She would have been happy to leave him and continue on her way alone, but she didn’t trust her right leg. Twice she tried to tread with her full weight, and the pain sliced into her ankle like a blade.
He’s been badly brought up, but I need him. She took his arm more firmly, as though she wished to show him that she wasn’t going to allow herself to be intimidated by his bad upbringing and that she wasn’t giving up.
She walked a little behind him, not daring to tell him to take shorter steps. She was able to scowl at him in profile without his noticing. A drab guy, with undefinable features, young-looking, although not of any precise age; his hair looked blond, although it wasn’t of any clearly defined colour. Maybe I’ve seen him before somewhere.
Was he tall? Short? She wouldn’t have known what to say. He looked tall in that loose, grey overcoat with large pockets into which he had thrust his hands with a self-assured air.
He remained silent, in the silence of a long journey, reserved, enduring, expressionless.
It’s as if he were alone. As if I weren’t here by his side. As if he had forgotten that I was by his side. What if he really has forgotten? What if he wakes up and finds us arm-in-arm and asks me what I’m doing here, hanging onto his arm?
She decided to break the silence.
“I don’t know how it happened. I slipped, you see, on the step of the tram. I was trying to get off.”
“While the tram was moving?”
Hearing his voice surprised her. She thought he hadn’t heard her, that he wasn’t going to respond. Her surprise made her animated.
“Yes, while the tram was moving. I always get off when the tram’s moving. Otherwise it doesn’t work. I live near here, on Bulevardul Dacia, and the number 16 tram only stops on Donici or on Vasile Lascăr. It’s too far away. That’s why I get off at the turn, where the tram goes onto Orientul. Not just me. Everybody who lives around here does it. And nothing ever happens. Except for today… I don’t know how it happened.”
They were passing beneath the pulsing of a streetlight. In the light, his face again looked distracted.
What an unpleasant guy! Even so, she summoned the courage to stop.
“Don’t be troubled by what I’m about to ask you. I want you to pull up my stocking. I’m completely frozen.”
She bent over, realizing only now that she was bleeding: her right knee was red, but lower down, towards her ankle, where the scrape was deeper, frozen blood plastered the stocking’s fabric to the wound.
“Is it serious?”
“I don’t know. For the time being it’s not hurting. I should go to the pharmacy. Will you come with me?”
He didn’t reply, but he took her arm and asked with his eyes: Which way?
“It’s not far. Look, over there on the other sidewalk.”
They crossed the street. From afar she found it difficult to recognize herself in the reflection in the pharmacy’s windows next to this man, who looked even stranger in the distant image on the glass. As she approached, she smiled with compassion at her own face. How pathetic I look, poor me! She took off her hat with a brisk motion and stood with it in her hand, dismayed.
“I can’t go into that shop. The pharmacist knows me, he’ll ask, I’ll have to explain… Will you…?”
He accepted unenthusiastically, frowning with his brows.
“What do you need?”
“A little iodine and… I don’t know, a little oxygenated water.”
She was about to open her handbag to give him the money, but, without waiting, he pushed open the door of the pharmacy and went inside.
From outside, she watched him through the pane of the display window: how he entered, how he took off his hat, how he said good evening, how he approached the pharmacist in his white lab jacket. She found it odd to watch him opening his mouth and uttering words that she couldn’t hear. What a peculiar voice he had! A little muffled, a little quashed, and yet with a rough tone. The pharmacist was pouring the tincture of iodine into a bottle.
Why was he taking so long? It must be as hot as a greenhouse inside. The metal scales were still. The heavy liquids, as though drowsy, slept on the shelves in solemn crystal flasks.
The pharmacist was asking him something and he was replying with plenty of enthusiasm. He was more talkative inside in the heat than he had been out here in the cold. And if she were to leave him? If she walked away now, without waiting for him? How astonished he would be at not finding her here, but what a feeling of relief he would have, the saucy devil!
Her knee started to hurt. To sting more than to hurt. She thought again of the lovely warmth on the other side of the display window and closed her eyes. She felt as though she were slipping into a kind of slumber…
“Did I take too long?”
It was his voice. That uncertain voice, which didn’t stress his words and gave her the impression that he was walking at her side without paying attention to her.
She didn’t reply and didn’t open her eyes.
“Are you feeling ill?”
“I’m not ill. But I’d like to get home. I’m freezing.”
“You said it wasn’t far…”
“Don’t worry, it isn’t. Another twenty paces and you’re free.”
She didn’t expect even a polite denial from him. She took his arm, determined not to say anything more to him; she was impatient to be left alone. She forced herself to take ever longer strides, although her right leg was still hurting.
For the first time since that stupid accident had happened, she felt like she wanted to cry.
She finally stopped in front of a multiple-storey building, leaned against the glass front door and extended her hand…
“This is it. You can go now. Thank you.”
He squeezed her hand for a second without holding it, then touched a finger to his hat, sketching a vague half-wave.
She wanted to tell him: You’re the most unpleasant man in the world. But she was too tired to tell him anything. She left him there in front of the building, and went into the bright foyer, where an enervating wave of heat received her.
… She was alone in the elevator. She pressed the button for the top floor, the sixth, then fell onto the bench with a relieved sigh. She promised herself she would cry with all her heart once she got to her apartment. She felt that nothing could be better for her: a good cry followed by a steaming hot bath.
Somewhere between two floors the elevator stopped with a brusque shudder. At first she thought she had arrived, but she realized that in fact she was suspended in the air.
This is the day for accidents. She tried to make a joke in her mind. She pressed for a long time on the alarm button.
She remembered that last summer the old lady from the third floor had spent a whole morning locked in the elevator between two floors. The thought terrified her. She pressed again, with a long, nervous, harsh start of panic, on the red button. In the deep silence, everything was motionless; somewhere far away, as weak as a call from another world, the alarm bell rang without anyone responding to it.
She could no longer hold back her tears. She looked at herself in the elevator’s rectangular mirror and felt pity for the state she was in: dishevelled, ragged, dirty, frozen. The hot tears welled from her eyes, and she received them with a sudden pleasure, as if she had drawn near to a warm hearth.
From below someone, probably the porter, shouted: “Hey, third-floor door. Who opened the third-floor door?”
The third-floor door was closed: the elevator set off noiselessly on its way. She would have liked not to stop again, to travel like that forever, and to be able to cry peacefully to the slow, silent movements of the elevator.