The Post Office Girl (18 page)

Ah, the engineer thinks. It’s all clear now. Just a while ago he’d gotten a report of the talk that was going around about the van Boolens and was shocked despite himself; he’d almost asked her to marry him! But now he realizes that her uncle and aunt are sending the poor thing away as fast as they possibly can so she won’t cause further embarrassment. The bombshell has dropped.

Keep out of it, he reflects quickly. Change the subject! He ventures a few generalities: Oh, surely that’s not the last word, maybe her relatives will reconsider, and next year … But Christine isn’t listening or thinking. Her pain has to come out, a child’s rage, and she stamps her foot. “But I don’t want to! I don’t want to … I’m not going home now … What will I do there, I can’t stand it now … I can’t … That’ll be the end of me … I’ll lose my mind there … I swear to you, I can’t, I can’t, and I don’t want to … Help me … Help me!”

It’s the cry of someone drowning, shrill and half choking, her voice flooded by tears, a fit that shakes her so much that his own body absorbs it. “No, don’t cry,” he pleads, moved despite
himself, automatically drawing her closer to soothe her. She slumps against his chest, out of sheer exhaustion, just to have a living person to lean on, someone to stroke her hair, so she isn’t so terribly, helplessly alone and rejected. Bit by bit the convulsive sobbing subsides, becoming more inward, a quiet weeping.

To him this is strange: here he is hidden in the shadows just twenty paces from the hotel (someone might see them, might walk by any time), holding a sobbing young woman in his arms, feeling the warmth of her heedlessly pressed up against him. He’s overcome with sympathy, and a man’s sympathy for a
suffering
woman is always tender. Just soothe her, he thinks, calm her down! With his left hand (she’s still holding on to his right hand to keep from falling) he strokes her hair, bends to kiss it to still the sobs, then her temples, and finally her mouth. But what she says is wild.

“Take me with you, take me along … Let’s go … wherever you want … Let’s just go and never come back … Not back home … I can’t bear it … Anywhere, just not back here … Anything but back here … Wherever you want, for however long you want … Let’s just go!” She shakes his arm like a tree. “Take me along!”

Break it off, thinks the sensible engineer, now alarmed. Break it off, quickly and decisively. Calm her down somehow, take her back inside, or things will get awkward.

“Yes, darling,” he says. “Of course … But it’s no good
rushing
into things … We’ll talk it over. Why don’t you sleep on it … Maybe your relatives will change their minds and regret what they said … Things will be clearer tomorrow.” But she quivers urgently: “No, not tomorrow, not tomorrow!
Tomorrow
I’ll have to leave, tomorrow morning … They’re pushing me away … Sending me off like a package, express mail, special delivery … I won’t be sent away like that … I won’t …” And, taking hold of him more fiercely: “Take me with you … right away … Help me … I … I can’t bear it any longer.”

This has to stop, the engineer thinks. Don’t get mixed up in it. She’s not in her right mind, she doesn’t know what she’s saying. “Yes, yes, dear, of course,” he says, stroking her hair, “I understand … We’ll talk it all over inside, not here, you can’t stay here any longer … You might catch cold … in that thin dress without a coat … Come along, we’ll go in and sit in the lounge …” He carefully removes his arm. “Come on now, dear.”

Christine stops sobbing and stares at him. She hasn’t heard or understood a word, but her body knows the warm arm is gone. She knows physically, instinctively, and finally intellectually that this man is withdrawing, that he’s cowardly, cautious, and afraid, that everyone here wants her gone, all of them. Now she snaps out of it. “Thank you,” she says shortly. “Thank you, I’ll go on my own. Forgive me, I was feeling out of sorts for a
moment
. My aunt was right: the air up here isn’t good for me.”

He starts to say something but she ignores him and goes on ahead, her shoulders rigid. Just so I never see his face again, no one’s, never see any of them again, be gone, never again
humiliate
myself in front of these arrogant, cowardly, self-satisfied people, get out of here, take nothing more from them, no more gifts, never be taken in again, never betray myself to them, any of them, anyone, go, better to die in some corner. And as she moves through the hotel that dazzled her before, through the lounge she adored, past the people like so many painted and well-dressed stones, she feels only one thing: hate for him, for everyone here, for all of them.

All night Christine sits motionless in the chair by the table, her thoughts revolving dully around the feeling that everything is over; not an actual pain so much as a drugged awareness of something painful going on deep down—the way a patient under anesthesia might be aware of the surgeon’s knife cutting
into him. She sits there in silence, empty eyes on the table, but something’s happening, something beyond her benumbed awareness: that new creature, the manufactured changeling that had taken her place for nine dreamlike days, that unreal yet real Fräulein von Boolen, is dying in her. She’s still sitting in that other woman’s room, with that other woman’s pearls around her frozen neck, a bold slash of red lipstick on her lips; the beloved dragonfly-light gown is still on her shoulders, but now it’s like a winding-sheet. It’s no longer hers, nothing here, nothing in this other, exalted, more blessed realm belongs to her anymore, it’s all as borrowed and alien as on the first day. Nearby is the bed, smoothly made up with its white flowered coverlet, soft and warm, but she doesn’t lie down: it’s no longer hers. The gleaming furniture, the gently suspiring carpet, the brass, silk, and glass on every side, none of it belongs to her now. The gloves on her hands, the pearls around her neck, everything belongs to that other one, that murdered
doppelgänger
Christiane von Boolen who is no more, yet lives on. She tries to push the artificial self aside and find the real one again; she forces herself to think about her mother, keep in mind that she’s sick or maybe even dead, but no matter how she prods she can’t muster any pang or feeling of concern. One feeling drowns out all the others, a boundless rage, a dull, clenched, impotent rage without outlet or object (her aunt, her mother, fate), the rage of someone who has suffered an injustice. All she knows is that something has been taken from her, that now she must leave that blissfully winged self to become a blind grub crawling on the ground; knows only that something is gone forever.

She sits all through the night, frozen with fury. None of the life of the hotel reaches her through the upholstered doors; she doesn’t hear the untroubled breathing of sleepers, the moans of lovers, the groans of the sick, the restless pacing of the sleepless, doesn’t hear through the closed glass door the morning breeze
that’s already blowing outside; she’s aware only that she’s alone in the room, the building, all of creation, a bit of breathing, twitching flesh like a severed finger still warm yet without
feeling
or strength. It’s a cruel death-in-life, a gradual freezing to death; she sits rigidly as though listening for the moment when that warm von Boolen heart will finally stop beating. Morning comes after a thousand years. The staff can be heard sweeping the hallways, the gardener is raking the gravel in front of the hotel. It’s beginning, inescapably: day, the end, the departure. Now she must pack her things, leave, be that other, Postal
Official
Hoflehner of Klein-Reifling, forget the one whose breath had quickened to see the finery that is now no longer hers.

Christine gets up stiffly. She’s exhausted, light-headed; the four steps to the armoire seem like a great journey. She weakly pulls the door open and is shocked to see the Klein-Reifling dress and the hated blouse she came in, dangling there as white and ghastly as a hanged man. Taking them off the rod she
shudders
as if touching a dead thing. She is going to have to get back into that dead Hoflehner person! But there’s no choice. The dress rustles like satiny paper as she takes it off. One after another she sets aside all the other new clothes, the underthings, the sweater, the pearls, the ten or twenty pretty things she’s acquired. The shabby straw suitcase is quickly packed. She takes only the genuine gifts, a mere handful that fit easily.

Done. She surveys the room again. Dress, dancing shoes, belt, pink chemise, sweater, gloves—all lie helter-skelter on the bed as though an explosion had ripped that fantastic creature Fräulein von Boolen to shreds. Christine shudders at the
remains
of the phantom that she was. She looks around to make sure she hasn’t forgotten anything that belongs to her. But nothing does. Others will sleep in this bed, others will see the golden landscape through this window, others will see
themselves
reflected in this mirror, but not her, never again. This isn’t goodbye, this is dying.

The hallways are still empty as she steps out with her ancient little suitcase. She goes to the stairs automatically, but in her poor clothes she feels that she, Christine Hoflehner, no longer has the right to use the carpeted, brass-railed steps, the grand staircase. Instead she takes the winding cast-iron servants’ stairs near the lavatory. In the lobby downstairs, gray and only half cleaned, the nodding night clerk starts up suspiciously. What was that? A young woman, indifferently or even poorly dressed, a shabby suitcase in hand, is darting shamefacedly to the door like a shadow, without a word to him. He leaps forward and blocks the revolving door with a shoulder.

“Excuse me, where do you wish to go?”

“I’m leaving on the seven o’clock train.” The clerk is stunned to realize that a hotel guest (a lady!) wants to carry her own luggage to the station. He asks suspiciously, “May I … may I have your room number?”

Christine understands now. Ah, the man takes her for an intruder. And he’s right too! But the thought doesn’t anger her. On the contrary, she has an unpleasant desire to be mistreated. Give me trouble, make it hard for me, all the better. She answers calmly, “Room 286, billed to my uncle, Anthony van Boolen. Christine Hoflehner.”

“One moment.” The night clerk releases the door to check his book, but she feels his eye on her. Then he gives a nervous bow and says politely, his tone different now, “Oh, madam, I beg your pardon, I see the day clerk was informed that you’d be checking out … I thought, because it’s so early … and also … madam will surely not be taking her own luggage, the car will bring it twenty minutes before the train leaves. Please proceed to the breakfast room. Madam has plenty of time for breakfast.”

“No, nothing more. Goodbye!” She leaves without a glance. He gazes after her in astonishment, shakes his head, and goes back to his desk.

Nothing more. Good. Nothing, from anyone. She keeps her eyes down as she walks to the station, the suitcase in one hand, the umbrella in the other. The mountains are already bright and in a moment the blue will break through the
restless
clouds, the wonderful gentian blue of the Engadine that, without putting a name to it, Christine loved, but perversely she keeps her eyes down, to see nothing more, receive
nothing
more, from anyone, even God. She doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want to be reminded that from now on and forever these mountains are for other people, the playing fields and the games, the hotels and their glittering rooms, the thundering avalanches and the hushed forests, not for her, ever again! As she passes in her cheap raincoat, with her old umbrella, on her way to the station, she averts her eyes from the tennis courts, where, she knows, proud bronzed people in glowing white, cigarettes in their mouths, will soon be exercising their supple limbs; from the shops, still closed, with their thousands of luxuries (for other people, other people), the hotels and markets and cafés. Away from here, away from here. Don’t look, forget it all.

At the station she hides in the third-class waiting room. Here in the eternal third class, the same all over the world, with its hard benches, its shabby neutrality, she feels almost at home. When the train pulls in, she hurries to board: no one must see her or recognize her. But suddenly she hears her name—is it a hallucination? Hoflehner, Hoflehner. Someone’s calling her name, her hated name—is it possible?—the length of the train. She trembles. Is someone still jeering at her, even as she’s
leaving
? But it comes again clearly, so she leans out the window. The desk clerk is standing there waving a telegram. She must excuse him, he says, it came yesterday evening, but the night clerk didn’t know where to deliver it; he just now learned that madam was leaving. Christine opens the envelope. “Sudden deterioration, come quickly, Fuchsthaler.” And then the train leaves … It’s over. Everything is over.

There’s an inherent limit to the stress that any material can bear. Water has its boiling point, metals their melting points. The elements of the spirit behave the same way. Happiness can reach a pitch so great that any further happiness can’t be felt. Pain, despair, humiliation, disgust, and fear are no different. Once the vessel is full, the world can’t add to it. Thus the telegram causes Christine no new distress. Her intelligence grasps clearly that she ought to feel shock, alarm, anxiety, but however alert she is the emotions don’t function.

They don’t acknowledge the message, don’t respond, like a numb leg that the doctor sticks with a needle. The patient sees the needle, knows perfectly well that it’s sharp, knows it will hurt terribly as it goes in, and he tenses for a pain that must
convulse
him. But the glowing needle goes in, the paralyzed nerve doesn’t respond, and the patient realizes with horror that part of his body has no feeling, that he’s carrying a little bit of death in his own warm body. In the same way Christine is horrified by her indifference as she reads and rereads the letter. Mother’s ill, she must be in a desperate state or those penny-pinchers back home wouldn’t have spent so much on a telegram. Maybe she’s already dead, chances are she is. But not a finger trembles, her eyes remain dry, though just yesterday the mere thought had overwhelmed her. Total paralysis—a paralysis that spreads to everything around her. She doesn’t notice the rhythmic clangor of the train beneath her, the red-faced men eating wurst and laughing on the wooden seat opposite her, the cliffs outside the window becoming little hills covered with flowers and washing their feet in the white froth of streams—all these prospects, so vivid on Christine’s first journey, are numb to her numb eyes. When the passport official barges in at the border she finally feels something: she wants something hot to drink, something to thaw out this terrible frozenness a little, relax her clenched and seemingly swollen throat, so that she can breathe, let it out at last.