Coloured posters and signs in the station announced competitions, both slalom and ski jumping, for the days around Christmas. Instead of Predeal at dawn, deserted, its streets empty, paralysed by deep snow, Nora saw the modern Predeal of the days of the championship, full of cars, dress clothes and acquaintances; a Predeal that was beginning to resemble a casino, a dance hall or a reception room.
From the window of the carriage, her gaze turned backwards in the direction of the peak of Mount Omului, lost in the clouds as though in an immense avalanche of snow. She looked in the blackness for the distant point where she knew the cabin must be. She would have liked to ascend there, or maybe somewhere lower down, in the direction of Ialomicioara, in the direction of Bolboci. But from wherever she might have set out, from Buşteni or from Sinaia, the trek would have had to be made in a group and with serious equipment. She looked with a smile at Paul’s new skis, with the varnish intact, the metal bindings gleaming, without a scratch, without a speck of rust. What would he have done with them on Piatra Arsă?
The train, meanwhile, headed off again. A few skiers prepared to get off at Timişul-de-Jos. “Are you climbing Piatra Mare?” Nora asked them. She knew the trail and, so far as she could recall, it was very easy. She had done it in 1929, in the summer, after her last exam at university, and had slept there in a sort of wooden shed where dozens of beds had been lined up on two storeys.
“There’s a new chalet there now,” someone told her.
“But I don’t think there’s a ski trail,” Nora observed. “Piatra Mare is more of a summer mountain. I’d like something wider, more open.” And farther away, she added in her mind.
Daylight was starting to break and she would have liked the day that was beginning to find her far away.
The windows turned a smokey blue. They emerged from the night as though from a long tunnel.
VIII
THEY CLIMBED UP TO POIANA BRAŞOV in the “caterpillar,” a truck whose wheels were ringed with chains so that it didn’t bog down in the snow.
“I think Poiana is the best spot,” Nora said. “I should have thought of it from the start. It’s open, it’s wide, it has gentle slopes. Have you never been here? You don’t know the Braşov area?”
“Of course,” Paul replied, “but only the part around the Seven Towns. I spent a vacation there a long time ago. In Cernatu, in Satu-Lung…”
And he fell silent with a vague stare that revealed something uncertain beyond the woods, like a lost sense of direction. He would have liked to lift his shoulders with his customary gesture of indifference and distaste, but the weight of his backpack prevented him from completing the movement.
“See how good that pack is?” Nora said. “Wear it on your back for ten days and you’ll lose that habit of making apathetic gestures.”
Only after she had uttered these words did she realize how intimately she had spoken to him. (Last night, when we were leaving, I was still more formal with him.) It was as if the night on the train had made him into an old acquaintance, that night during which, never the less, she had not heard him speak two consecutive sentences. She fell silent, embarrassed by this familiarity, which seemed to be pushing things too quickly. She glanced at her watch and made a rapid calculation: I’ve known him for thirty-one hours. She was alone with him in this open truck that was carrying them through the morning woods, she was alone with him and she didn’t even know if she had the right to lean on his arm.
“In fact, I think Poiana is a good choice. You’ll see. I hope we can make a skier out of you.”
She repeated in her mind the sentence she had just spoken, congratulating herself on the solution she had found: “we can make a skier out of you” was so intentionally ceremonious that it lightened their intimacy with a joking tone. “Yes, I promise you that in three days at most we’ll be skiing all the way down to Râşnov. It’s a good straight trail without too many turns.”
She tried to arouse sporting ambitions in him, a taste for competition, a certain determination. He’s too much of a child for that, she thought, watching him.
There wasn’t a single room available at the Saxon hotel.
“Try in Turcu, try in Cercetaşi, but don’t count on it. Since we got the big snowfall, all of Poiana has been full.”
“Stay here, Paul. I’ll go look. We have to be able to find something.”
She put on her skis, stamped the snow a few times and set off with long strides, propelled by her poles, which she thrust into the snow with regular, oar-like movements. Due to the morning frost, the snow had a thin crust of ice and the skis slid without softness, with a harsh sound, leaving a glassy powder in their wake.
In the big chalets there wasn’t a single place left, while the little villages hadn’t yet woken from their slumber. Even so, Nora knocked on their shuttered windows; but sleepy voices told her to go away.
“You’re tiring yourself out for nothing, Miss,” a man who was shovelling snow said to her from his yard. “You’re tiring yourself out for nothing. We’ve even got people sleeping in the garage.”
Annoyed, she returned to the Saxons’ hotel, not knowing what to do. She could no longer hope to find free spaces downhill in the Prahova Valley if there were so many people here in Poiana, which was more difficult to reach. The only thing to do, maybe, was to go back down to Braşov and take a train from there in the direction of the Făgăraş Mountains. It was more likely that they would find lodging in Bâlea, in Muntele Mic, but she didn’t know the area and didn’t know how long it would take to get there. She could get down to Braşov in half an hour on her skis, but Paul would need at least a week of training in order to do this kind of trail. One didn’t put on skis for the first time to do a six-kilometre downhill race. As for the caterpillar, it would make the return run only in the afternoon and then they risked being caught by nightfall in a train once again. I don’t know if he’ll put up with it, Nora thought, pondering his lack of conviction.
She found him at the Saxons’, in the dining hall, facing a poster pinned to the wall. The Black Church, December 23, 1934. 8 PM. Religious concert. The “Christmas Oratory,” by J.S. Bach. He turned towards her with a glimmer of curiosity, indicating the poster. “Interesting, no?”
“No. Absolutely not interesting. We didn’t come here to listen to oratories. There’s only one interesting thing here.”
And she pointed through the window towards the snow, the fir trees, the white-hooded chalets.
“You’re harsh.”
“I’m harsh because I’ve got big responsibilities.”
She should have been able to say the final words in a joking voice, but looking closely at his eyes, those sad eyes, she thought that she really had taken on a big responsibility. If I leave this man alone, he’s going to run away. She couldn’t have said exactly why, but she felt that any flight might be a disaster for him, and that she was indispensable in preventing it. “Are you in good physical condition, Paul?”
“Really good physical condition?”
“No. Middling.”
“We can give it a try…”
“We have to leave Poiana. There’s not a room here anywhere. For a moment I thought we should go farther, towards the Făgăraş, but it seems to me that it’s simpler to stay right here. Do you know Postăvar?”
“Where is it?”
“There.”
She pointed with her hand to the curtain of clouds that was streaming downhill along the edge of the woods facing them, blanketing the entire horizon.