Accident by Mihail Sebastian Page A

through these marginal streets with him, above all because old classmates of hers might see her if they happened to return home from work through this neighbourhood.
    In this way, “to go out for the cause” ceased to be, as before, a pleasant opportunity for a meeting; it even became an obstacle, so far removed from their shared life that Ann used to invoke her work, her art, and, as the final argument, her “career.” “I can’t see you tomorrow: I’m going out for the cause,” or “Sorry I wasn’t there yesterday: I was at the cause,” were explanations that admitted no response.
    Paul tried to confirm where Ann’s “causes” were now. But she gave him only vague directions (“You know I haven’t decided yet, I’m not sure, we’ll see ...”) and even if, out of carelessness or indifference, she told him with precision of the spot where her current
cause was located (“Look, towards Filaret, past the yellow house, where I fell last autumn – you remember? – when I tore the buckle off my antelope pumps”), he knew all too well that it would be useless to look for her because he wouldn’t find her there and because two days later she would be sincerely surprised: “What? You went? Oh, how silly you are ... I got a headache ... I changed my mind at the last minute ... I couldn’t go ... Didn’t I tell you not to go?”
    Ann’s causes had become a pretext and now “to go out for the cause” was the most comfortable way for her to lie to him.
    Â 
    Â 
    He hadn’t seen her for a week when one morning, glancing at a newspaper, her name, printed in small letters in the news section, jumped out from the page. It was an article on the Romanian pavilion at the 1934 Liège World’s Fair, a sort of official press release to the World’s Fair Organizing Committee through which it was announced that painters and sculptors charged with decorating the interior of the pavilion would be leaving for Brussels in five days: Saturday, May 12 at 9:50 AM . Among the decorators chosen was Ann.
    Paul had thought it was a mistake, as he couldn’t imagine that Ann would have left him to find out something so important from the newspapers nor that with such an important departure so close at hand she would have let a whole week go by without seeing him, even if for some stupid reason, they had quarrelled recently.
    â€œIs this true? You’re leaving?” he asked her on the phone, with the newspaper still in his hand and his eyes fixed on the astonishing news.
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” Ann replied evasively, “it’s not certain yet, it could be, but for the time being nothing’s finalized. If something happens, I’ll tell you. Look, let’s meet tonight ... Or no, not tonight, in fact I’m meeting the architect of the pavilion, but call me tomorrow morning, or, better yet, let me call you ... I’ll be sure to call you, all right?”
    The five days prior to the departure had passed slowly, waiting every second, holding his breath at each footstep on the stairs,
each rumble of the elevator, each ring of the telephone, for the question was no longer whether Ann was going to leave for Liège, but rather – more simply, more urgently and more painfully – whether she was going to come to see him, whether she was going to call him, whether she was at least going to send him some word, some sign. He was afraid of leaving home or leaving the office – the only two places where she could phone him – in case her long-awaited call should finally come in his absence, and when in spite of this he was obliged to go out into the city, he drove cab drivers to distraction by telling them to get him home in a hurry, where the same waiting, the same watch, would begin again. Hundreds of times he had lifted the receiver to call Ann, hundreds of times he had started