Accident by Mihail Sebastian

silence. She raised her hands to her breast in order to suppress her gesticulations, a tactic which only gave her once more a school-girlish air.
    â€œIt’s difficult for me to believe you’re here. I’ve thought so many times that you might possibly come, but I’ve never dared to hope for it. I know so many things about you. I know the books you read. I know who you went to Balcic 8 with last summer. I know that last Thursday evening you went to the Philharmonic orchestra and left during the intermission. Don’t you want us to be friends? Don’t you want to try? So many times, when I’m painting something, I wonder: would he like it? So many times I read a book and I wonder: what would he think of it? I’d like to see you more often. I don’t like my extravagant gestures, how I don’t sound serious when I talk. I’d like you to think I’m less scatterbrained than even-handed, less superficial ... I promise you I’ll be a good girlfriend. I won’t pry, I won’t nag. Come over whenever you want. Or, better yet, let’s set a day for you to come over every week. We’ll try it for a little while. If it works – good; if not, we call it quits.”
    In their memory of that day, the lilac remained their flower.
    Later, in the winter, Paul stopped with amazement on a January day in front of the window of a flower shop, where he glimpsed a few white lilac branches. He hadn’t realized until then that it was possible to find them in the middle of winter, and the sight behind the frozen window pane struck him as unreal. He stroked it with delicacy, as though afraid that it would come apart beneath his
fingers. The white winter lilac didn’t have the violent aroma of the spring variety, but rather a faint, extinguished odour, like breath or smoke.
    When they quarrelled it was their habit to send or receive a lilac branch because in that way, without words or explanations, the rift of several days would come to an end. Both of them regarded the lilac as a superstition that disarmed them, that helped them rediscover each other. He could not suspect then that another Ann would exist, one for whom those flowers would lose all meaning, like an object without a name, without memories.
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    The first days of their love had taken place in Sibiu, a city neither of them knew.
    â€œI don’t care where, my dear. Somewhere where I can be alone with you for a few days. Anyway, after that you’ll leave me.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause you don’t love me.”
    He responded neither yes nor no – and, in any event, she did not seem to expect a reply.
    They had chosen Sibiu at the last moment, in the station, because the next departure was for Sibiu.
    Everything delighted her in the Transylvanian city: the broad streets, the shop windows, the German signs, the Saxon dialect, lunch at the restaurant, the menu with types of food she didn’t know and which she chose at random, closing her eyes and placing her finger on the menu: “Let’s see what this is like.”
    In the mornings, when she woke from her slumber, she liked to look out the hotel window at the children walking to school with their satchels on their backs, the gleaming Saxon women who returned from the market with their baskets in their hands and stopped on the street corners in groups of three or four, speaking with passion, the shutters of the shop windows that rose with a rattle ... Everything struck her as honourable and severe.
    â€œWe’re the only people in this city who are in love,” she said.
    Then, as if only in that moment had she realized that she was naked, she rushed back to bed with a shudder of alarm in order to
hide and cover herself. She was so white that when she was nude her blonde hair was drained of its colour by the glare of her naked body.
    When they went down to the lobby of this small provincial hotel she was intimidated by the