Accident by Mihail Sebastian

determined once before – a tree, a house, a stone – as delimiting “on the ground” the landscape she had begun to paint.

    Ann’s “causes” were impenetrable. For some of them, especially in the spring, or at the close of autumn, at the beginning of March or the end of October, when it was too early or too late to head off to Balcic, she pleaded with Paul, but particularly at the beginning of their love, when she had the feeling that she could ask him the biggest favours, she pleaded with him to take off with her to the outskirts of the city, beyond Herăstrău Park, or more frequently, because the spots were less well known, beyond Filaret, beyond the Ciurel mill, in search of “causes.”
    â€œI’ve done all the work I can at home. I want to go off to the country. Come with me, we’ll find something to paint.”
    There were long reconnaissance walks beyond the railway line, beyond the last hovels at the edge of Bucharest, through the barely thawed March countryside, or the dirty rust-colour of October. The region looked completely unknown. If there hadn’t been planes taking off and landing in the direction of Băneasa Airport, flying low, close to the earth with their engines throbbing like a factory, he could have believed he was anywhere, a long way from Bucharest. A few acacias growing close together marked the beginning of the woods, water rising from who-knew-where – perhaps from the last melting snows, perhaps from the last autumn rain – looked like a tributary wandering lost across the path. Paul never succeeded in understanding by which hidden logic Ann chose one spot rather than another, why where he saw nothing in particular she would suddenly stop, regarding with a kind of concerned attention a point that for him was invisible, which she signalled with a decisive gesture: “Here.”
    â€œWhat’s here, Ann?”
    â€œMy new cause.”
    She returned alone on the days that followed with her working instruments, but towards evening Paul would come to take her home since it was getting dark early. As it would have been too expensive to have a taxi waiting for her in the country all afternoon, they had to return a good part of the way on foot. Their passage through the slums on the edge of the city produced a certain sensation and, as during the days at Cernatu, housewives came out onto their doorsteps and children halted in their play to watch this
blonde girl in boyish slacks (since she wore shorts and a sports jersey, or, when it was cold, a blue woollen training suit) who was carrying an easel on her back, a paintbox, a canvas chair, leaving Paul to bring at most a blanket, a thermos containing hot tea or a bag of fruit. Sometimes, because they didn’t find an available taxi on the way – or purely and simply because Ann liked to challenge people and hear scandalized murmurs around her – she convinced Paul to go all the way back downtown by tram or bus, and then, to complete the scandal, to take transfer tickets and wait on the sidewalk at one of the downtown stations – at Carpaţi, at Strada Regală – until the tram came.
    â€œI want to compromise you, I want everyone to know that we’re in love, I never again want to lower my head in public,” Ann used to say when Paul gave her an irritated look, unaccustomed to facing down the curious stares of passersby, which she, on the contrary, put up with defiantly, and even provoked. Yet it was true that later, in a total about-face concerning what was or was not appropriate and thanks to a sudden access of respectability, Ann had completely suppressed such adventures. Not only would it have struck her as being in poor taste to take an easel on a tram, but she also forbade Paul from coming out to the countryside in the evening to bring her home from her work because – she said – in the final analysis it was uncomfortable always to wander