The platforms hummed with people. Youthful voices of students and soldiers who were leaving for the provinces gave the whole station a sound of the vacations. Groups of skiers hurried towards the platform where the train to Braşov was leaving. Heavy hobnailed boots resounded on the stones with the regular beat of a march. Among the hurried travellers and the baggage-laden carriages, the skiers separated from one another, jostling each other like so many masts.
At the far end of the platform, next to the engine, were two third-class carriages reserved for skiers. “There’s no place here for civilians,” a boy in a blue jacket on the ladder said to a gentleman in an overcoat and a homburg, who was trying to climb up. Paul listened to the words in silence, and smiled. The boy was right: these two wagons really looked like a military train. Girls and boys dressed in the same clothes, as though in uniform, resembled a young company leaving on manoeuvres. On the last carriage’s ladder, a girl stopped to light a cigarette. For the first time, this gesture struck Paul as lacking in femininity. It was a curt, rushed, soldier-like movement.
“Can you let us get past, miss?”
The girl lifted her head in surprise, looking in his direction, and he glimpsed the glow of her lighter, which was still flickering in her hand. They both burst out laughing. Nora, following behind him, smiled at this first victory: she had finally heard him laugh.
It was a slow night train, resembling a convoy more than a train. It had dozens of carriages which could be heard knocking against each other all the way back to the last carriages, lost in the darkness, whenever the train stopped in who-knew-what nameless station in the middle of the countryside.
“Where are we going? When will we arrive?” He was thankful not to know.
He sat alone by the window with his eyes closed, allowing himself to carried away by the noise of the wheels, which he felt passing through him with the regular beat of a pulse. It was deafening and calming. At times he tried to distinguish a single beat within this din and follow it as it passed with a knocking sound from one carriage to the next, like a wave flowing away.
Suddenly, without any transition in his thoughts, he saw himself on a street corner in Bucharest remembering that it was late and time to go home. He struggled against drowsiness with an acute sensation of pain (no! no! no!) and opened his eyes: through the half-iced-up window he caught sight of the winter countryside and a few sparse trees or houses melting smokily into the night. So I’ve left… So I’ve left, he thought several times, following with his gaze a fixed point in the darkness where it seemed that he might still be able to discern some shred of that which he had left behind. He didn’t know anyone in this skiers’ carriage, but he had the impression that he could speak intimately with all of them. They spoke loudly, they called out to each other by name, they were constantly opening their backpacks to show each other all sorts of utensils and provisions.
“Is that sealskin?” somebody near him asked, stroking the glossy sole of his new skis. Paul didn’t know how to reply and, at a loss, shot a glance in Nora’s direction. She replied on his behalf, explaining that she didn’t have a lot of confidence in sealskin and preferred a rough wax for the ascent. The whole theoretical debate about the ascent heated up, drawing in everyone sitting nearby, who passionately defended different opinions.
“It’s heresy. Yes, yes, heresy!” shouted the defender of sealskin.
“Take a look at what Dumény says,” a very young boy, probably in high school or a first-year university student, asserted with even more stubbornness. Ransacking his backpack, he pulled out a book, which he flipped through nervously until he found the page he had mentioned: “Il n’y rien qui puisse remplacer, dans une ascension difficile, l’usage des peaux de phoque. L’incommodité apparente du procédé est largement rachetée par l’assurance et la stabilité acquises.”13
Nora listened with her patient smile to the reading of entire pages. Alone in this group of impassioned skiers, she remained calm and spoke in a measured voice, without excitement. She really is a teacher, Paul thought, watching her. Everything she said was clear, she asked questions with precision, looking the person whom she was addressing in the eyes. She spoke in an unhurried way about matters she knew well.
Paul thought about the night they had spent together. I had that girl naked in my arms. Yet he was unable to remember her body. It all seemed to have happened once upon a time, years ago. He looked attentively at her lips, which he had kissed, and sought in his memory their forgotten taste. Nothing in her manner betrayed the fact that she was his lover. She spoke with a quiet distance, her great tranquillity harbouring a protectiveness, and paid equal attention to each word. She could be a colleague, Paul thought, looking at her tightly zipped coat, the heavy boots on her feet.
He was sorry for all that had happened. He would have liked to wipe away the useless night of lovemaking that lay between them, which had both brought them together and kept them apart.
Nora watched him sleeping. For a long time she had pretended that she was reading, but now, when she knew that she was protected at last by his slumber, she raised her eyes from the book and watched him.
They had passed through Câmpina, maybe even through Cormarnic. Only the blue night lights continued to burn in the carriage. Everyone seemed to be sleeping, with a single regular breathing. Now and then, from a carriage behind them, came the sound of a harmonica, covered up in a second by the noise of the wheels. Nora waited for it to return. At least there’s one other person in this train who’s standing watch… She felt as though she were standing watch in a shelter.
Paul had fallen asleep with his head resting softly on his shoulder and propped up with his temple against the window. How young he is and how tired he looks! Nora thought. From beneath his closed eyelids, she still felt last night’s misty stare. Only the bitter smile had vanished from his lips, almost without a trace. It pleased her to observe the relaxed state of his mouth, which now could neither soothe nor wound.
“You were born to be a nurse on a night shift,” Grig used to tell her. Nora remembered these words, which had probably been an insult. Poor old Grig! He never knew how to offend me. The truth was that Grig had never known about her habit of watching him in his sleep. He would wake up in the middle of the night beneath her attentive gaze, beneath her wide-awake eyes, which were focused on him, and would ask her in a blustering way: “What do you want?” Her reply was always the same: “Nothing. I want you to sleep.”
She might make the same response to the man who was now sleeping in front of her, and whom she had been watching for such a long time. “I want you to sleep, I want you to forget, I want you to sleep.”
In Predeal the two skiers’ carriages were left half-empty. Nora wondered whether they shouldn’t have got off, too. They could have found spots in the bivouac at Onef, or gone on with the sleigh to Timiş, where so many small hotels had opened. But she was afraid he would have been uncomfortable in the bivouac, and Timiş was too expensive. She counted her money in her mind and remembered that Paul owed her 282 lei for their train tickets. We’ll have to make sure we keep our accounts clear.