Accident Read Free Page A

Nora smiled with fatigue. Only one person would let the phone ring that long.
    â€œBe a good boy and answer.”
    He lifted the receiver, said, “Hello,” then, after a pause, replaced it.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œI don’t know. Nobody answered. And somebody hung up without a word.”
    â€œIt must be Grig.”
    â€œGrig?”
    â€œYes, a friend. He must have been surprised to hear a man’s voice here. He probably thought he’d got a wrong number.”
    Nora’s supposition seemed to be correct because the phone rang again.
    â€œDon’t be offended. Please answer it. Tell him that I’m in the bath and that he should call me in five minutes.”
    She held her breath and listened with her ear cocked towards the next room so that she could also catch the voice coming from the receiver. She heard it vibrating metallically, as far away as though it came from a minuscule gramophone record.
    â€œHello. Is that 2-65-80? Are you sure it’s not a wrong number?”
    â€œNo, sir. It’s not a wrong number.”
    â€œThen who’s speaking?” the little metallic voice asked.
    â€œMiss Nora asks that you ...”
    â€œI’m not interested in what Miss Nora asks. I want to know who’s speaking.”
    â€œSir, Miss Nora is in the bath and she asks you ...”
    â€œI don’t want to know where Miss Nora is. I want to know who you are, buddy.”
    A moment’s silence followed, then a brief noise, cut off as the receiver dropped into the cradle somewhere far away, breaking the connection.
    â€œNow what ...?” he asked Nora, with a calmness that suggested that the strange conversation hadn’t bothered him.
    â€œNothing. Go back to your spot in the armchair and wait for me. I’ll be there in a second.”

    Nora came in dressed in a white bathrobe that was a little too big for her.
    She made straight for his armchair, switched on the small, shaded lamp on the the nearby sofa and slid it close to him, abruptly illumining his face.
    â€œWhat’s up?”
    â€œNothing. I want to see you. Imagine that, I’d forgotten what you looked like. The whole time I was in the bath I was racking my brains trying to remember.”
    She scrutinized him with great seriousness while he calmly put up with her scrutiny.
    â€œHave you finished?”
    â€œYes, for the time being. Your face isn’t strongly defined. Difficult to remember.”
    He lifted his shoulders. She recognized the gesture.
    â€œI don’t like that lifting of your shoulders.”
    He didn’t reply, while she watched him at greater length, tracing his vaguely outlined features, in which she discerned a blend of fatigue and boyishness.
    â€œYou’re a murky kind of guy. I bet you came out of the fog.”
    On the sofa were the two bottles purchased at the pharmacy. Nora took them and went to the side of the night table in order to dress her “wounds,” as she called them, exaggerating to make a joke.
    She pulled aside the bathrobe with a considered modesty and unveiled her right leg up to the knee, only as far as was necessary to put on the bandages. Properly speaking, she wasn’t wounded. They were more like scratches, although very bad ones, since even after her steaming hot bath they were still bleeding slightly.
    He followed the operation from the armchair, waiting as if to hear her cry when she pressed the iodine-soaked swab against her bleeding ankle. But her gestures had the polite, objective quality of those of a nurse bending over an unfamiliar patient. Her black hair fell over her forehead in a gesture absent of flirtatiousness.
    She continued for some time to run the cotton swab over her ankle, then over her knee, completely absorbed in what she was
doing. Finally she interrupted her movements as though she had just remembered a forgotten matter of business. “You weren’t bothered by that phone call just