Free Accident by Mihail Sebastian

was the only person I knew on the whole train. Why don’t you come to the restaurant car with me? We can have a tea and chat ...”
    He had refused out of boredom, giving vague excuses: there were too many people in the restaurant car, he preferred to stay in the compartment, he had reading to do ...
    At that time he wasn’t sure what her name was.

    That she was a painter he didn’t find out until much later, and only by chance.
    It was at an official art exhibition (one of the first official exhibitions, organized on the Şosea), to which he had come with a friend. He stopped in front of a group of watercolours in which he was startled by an outburst of blue, a little bit metallic, in indelible pencil. The drawing was uncertain, nervous, tangled by her capricious lines like hurried handwriting, but with an unexpected exactness of detail, as though from time to time her brush had halted to dot an i or insert a comma in a confused sentence. These small touches seemed to be orthographic clues to the meaning of a mysterious writing.
    There was a collection of street scenes – houses, trees, carriages
    â€“ all seen from above, and what seemed oddest in them was precisely the elevated vantage point from which they were observed. The gaudy aniline blue gave them an early morning air, full of sun, full of light.
    â€œIt’s amusing and trivial,” Paul said. “I have the impression, too, that they’re works I’ve seen before.” He thought of certain paintings by Raoul Duffy 7 : race tracks, decorated doorways, images of the same childlike disorder.
    He was just preparing to move away when Anna, who happened to be near them, and whom he had greeted in passing, stopped him.
    â€œForgive me for being indiscreet, but I heard you talking about my paintings and I’d like to know what you thought.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, your paintings? Do you paint?”
    â€œYou didn’t know?”
    He tried to make excuses for the double faux pas of having shown her that he knew her so little, to the point of not even knowing that she was a painter, and of having said unpleasant things about her work in a loud voice. He wished he could retract or explain his words, but she didn’t let him finish.
    â€œPlease, don’t go on. You made me happy, and now you want to spoil it for me. You’re the first person I’ve heard speaking openly
about my work. Here everyone’s kind to me and compliments me. It’s more comfortable for them, but it’s not at all useful to me. Go on, tell me what you really think. Above all, be hard on me. Please be hard on me.”
    She was speaking without flirtatiousness, with sincerity and a serious gaze, like a pupil waiting to show him an exercise book that she knew contained an error.
    Paul told her again that he wasn’t competent to speak about painting, that anyway he’d liked her paintings, especially that bold blue and her spiritual drawing, which had the daring to be so casually artless.
    â€œThat’s very nice and I thank you. But I sense that you’re keeping to yourself some things that you don’t want to say to me. Why? I would have been so grateful to you! Go on, try to be frank.”
    At a loss, he looked again at the paintings, trying to find one appropriate word. “All right, since you insist, look: I have the impression that they’re too verbose.”
    Ann didn’t understand the word because, certainly, among all the possible objections, only this one could not have been anticipated.
    â€œDon’t ask me to say more,” Paul excused himself. “I don’t think I could. I have the impression that there’s something gesticulating in your paintings. They’re too hearty, too talkative, too familiar at the first glance ... But at the end of the day, is that a fault?”
    Ann stood thinking for a moment. Afterwards, she barely responded to his questions. “Yes, I