The Post Office Girl

by Stefan Zweig

  Christine bows her head over her plate in order not to look at her aunt. Something in her tone bothers her, the brightness of her talk, every word artificially brisk and full of false enthusiasm. There has to be something behind it. Something else must be coming, and it comes: “Of course it would have been best for you to come along,” her aunt goes on, pulling off a chicken wing. “But I don’t think you’d like Interlaken, it’s no place for young people, and one has to consider whether all that toing and froing in the last few days of your vacation would really be worth the trouble. You’ve picked up fabulously here, this powerful fresh air has done wonders for you. Yes, I always say there’s nothing better than the high mountains for young people, Dickie and Alvin ought to come here sometime. Obviously for worn-out old hearts like ours the Engadine is all wrong. So as I say, of course we’d love it, Anthony’s so used to having you around, but on the other hand it’s seven hours each way, that would be too much, and anyway we’ll be back next year. But of course if you want to come along to Interlaken …”

  “No, no,” Christine says, or rather her lips say it, the way a patient going under anesthesia might continue counting after losing consciousness.

  “Myself, I think you’d be better off going straight home. There’s a wonderfully comfortable train that leaves around seven in the morning—I asked the desk clerk. That would put you in Salzburg by late tomorrow night and back home the next morning. I can picture how happy your mother will be, you look so tanned and fresh and young, really magnificent, and the best thing would be for you to go right home and show them.”

  “All right,” Christine hears herself say quietly. Why is she still sitting here? They just want her gone, and fast. But why? Something must have happened, something. She eats mechanically, tasting bitterness in every bite. I have to say something, something casual, she thinks—she doesn’t want them to see that her eyes are stinging, that her throat is quivering with anger. Something matter-of-fact, something cool and indifferent.

  Finally she has a thought. “I’ll go get your clothes so we can pack them,” she says, standing up. But her aunt pushes her back gently.

  “No, child, there’s still time for that. I’ll pack the third suitcase tomorrow. Just leave everything in your room, the maid will bring it.” And then, suddenly embarrassed: “By the way, you know that dress, the red one, why don’t you keep it, I really don’t need it anymore, it fits you so well, and of course the odds and ends too, the sweater, the underthings, that goes without saying. The other two gowns are all I’ll be needing for Aix-les-Bains, it’s wonderful there, you know, a fantastic hotel too, I’m told, and I hope Anthony will feel well there, the warm baths, and the air is much milder and…” Now that the hard part is over, her aunt rattles on. Having gently broken it to Christine that she’ll be leaving tomorrow, she knows it’s smooth sailing from here, and she perks up as she talks about hotels and traveling and America—the most wounding stories—and Christine, downcast, sits through them meekly though her nerves are strained by the shrill, desperately blasé stream of talk. If only it were over. Finally a brief pause. “I don’t want to keep you up. Uncle should rest and you too, Aunt, you must be tired from your packing. Is there anything else I can help with?”

  “No, no.” Her aunt stands up too. “I can easily pack the last few things myself. But it would be better for you too if you got to bed early. You’ll have to be up by six, I think. You won’t be mad if we don’t take you to the train, will you?”

  “No, no, there’s no need for that, Aunt,” Christine says tonelessly, looking at the floor.

  “And you’ll write to tell me how Mary is doing, won’t you, write as soon as you get there. And as I say, we’ll see each other next year.”

  “All right,” Christine says. Thank God I can go now. A kiss for her uncle, who is strangely embarrassed, a kiss for her aunt, and then she moves toward the door (go now, quickly!). But at the last moment—her hand is on the doorknob—her aunt rushes up with fear in her heart (though for the last time). “You’ll be going to your room now, won’t you, Christl,” she says urgently, “go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. Best not to go down again, you know, or … or … or tomorrow morning everyone will come to say goodbye to us … And we don’t like that … It’s better just to go without a big song and dance and then send a few postcards later … I can’t bear it when people give you flowers and … come to see you off. So you won’t go down, will you, just go right to bed … You’ll promise me?”

  “Yes, of course,” says Christine with the last of her voice and pulls the door shut. Not until weeks later does she realize she hadn’t spoken even a word of thanks.

  Outside the door the strength that Christine summoned with so much effort deserts her. Holding on to the wall, she makes it back to her room in a daze, the way an animal that’s been killed by a shot lurches on for a few steps before falling. In her room she drops into a chair and doesn’t move. She doesn’t understand what has happened. Behind her forehead she feels the pain of an unexpected blow, but who dealt it? Somebody did something, did something to hurt her. She’s being chased off, but doesn’t know why.

  She tries to think, but she’s numb inside, filled with something dim, hard, unresponding. Around her there’s more hardness, a glass coffin more ghastly than a dank black one, its lights brilliant and taunting, its comfort mocking, and silent, horribly silent, while within her the question “What did I do? Why are they driving me away?” cries out for an answer. The dull pressure is intolerable, as though the entire hotel with its four hundred guests, its bricks and beams and huge roof lay on her chest, along with the poisonously cold white light and the beckoning chairs and mirror, the enticing bed with its flowered coverlet; if she goes on sitting in this chair she might freeze, smash the windows in fury, or scream, howl, weep so loudly that everybody wakes up. Just get away from here, leave! Just … she doesn’t know what, but get out, get out, to keep from suffocating in this dreadful airless silence.

  She jumps up and runs out with no idea what she’s doing, leaving the door swinging and the brass and glass glittering meaninglessly at each other under the light.

  She moves downstairs like a sleepwalker. Rugs and paintings, hotel equipment, steps and light fixtures, guests, waiters and chambermaids, objects and faces glide spectrally by. A few people look up, surprised she doesn’t acknowledge their greetings. Her gaze is closed off; she doesn’t know what she’s looking at or where she’s going or why but negotiates the stairs with inexplicable assurance.

  Some mechanism that regulates her actions is broken. She’s running blindly now, pursued by a nameless fear, with no goal in mind. She stops short at the entrance to the lounge; something stirs, some memory of dancing and laughing and cheerful socializing. “Why am I here? Why did I come?” she wonders, and the power of the room is gone. She can’t go on; the walls are swaying, the carpet is slipping, the chandeliers are swinging in wild ellipses. I’m falling, she thinks, the floor is moving out from under me. She instinctively grasps a curtain with her right hand and regains her balance. But her limbs have lost their strength. She can’t go forward, can’t go back. She stands with all her weight against the wall, face convulsed and rigid, eyes closed, breathing hard, unable to go on.

  Just then the German engineer runs into her. He’s hurrying to his room for some photos he wants to show a certain lady, but now he spots the figure oddly pressed against the wall, motionless, breathing heavily, with unseeing eyes; for a moment he doesn’t recognize her. But then his voice takes on its breezy boyish tone: “There you are! Why aren’t you coming to the lounge? Or are you on some secret mission? And why … What is it … Are you all right?” He stares with surprise. Christine has flinched at his first word. Now she’s trembling all over like a sleepwalker who hears her name called.

  Her eyebrows are arched in alarm; she looks frantic, stricken. She raises her arm as though to ward off a blow.

  “What’s wrong? Are you ill?” He steadies her, a
nd just in time, for Christine is swaying strangely—her head is suddenly spinning. But she gives a feverish start when she feels the warm touch of his arm.

  “I have to talk to you … right away … but not here … not in front of the others … I have to talk to you alone.” She doesn’t know what she wants to say to him, she just wants to talk, with someone, to let out a wail.

  Her voice, usually so calm, is shrill, and the engineer is taken aback. He thinks: She’s probably ill. They put her to bed, that’s why she didn’t come down, and she sneaked off—she must have a fever, you can tell by her glassy eyes. Or maybe it’s a fit of hysteria—women do have them—anyway easy does it, don’t let on she looks sick, just play along.

  “Of course, Fräulein” (he’s speaking to her like a child) “although…” (best not to be seen) “although why don’t we step outside … into the fresh air … I know it’ll do you good … The lounge is always so terribly overheated…” Soothe her, calm her down, he thinks, and as he takes her arm he casually checks her wrist for fever. No, her hand is ice-cold. Curious, he thinks with growing unease—very strange.

  The lamps in front of the hotel sway brightly overhead; to the left the woods are deep in shadow. That’s where she waited yesterday. It seems like a thousand years ago and the memory is gone from every cell in her body. He leads her there gently (quick, into the dark, who knows what’s wrong with her), and she allows herself to be led. First distract her, he reflects, keep it light, no serious discussion, just some casual chat, that’s the most reassuring thing.

  “This is much nicer, isn’t it … Here, put on my coat … Ah, what a marvelous evening … Look at the stars … Silly of us to spend the whole evening in the hotel the way we always do.” But Christine continues to shake and doesn’t hear him. What stars, what evening, she’s aware only of herself, the self suppressed, repressed for years, now rearing up to shatter her. She grips his arm fiercely, completely unaware of what she’s doing.

  “We’re leaving … We’re leaving tomorrow … forever … I’ll never come back, never … You hear, never again … Never … No, I can’t bear it … never … never.” She’s feverish, the engineer thinks, look how her whole body is shaking. She’s sick, I have to get a doctor right away. But she clutches the flesh of his arm savagely. “But why, I don’t know why … Why do I have to go so suddenly … Something must have happened … I don’t know what. At lunch they were both so nice and said nothing about it, and this evening … this evening they said I have to leave tomorrow … tomorrow, tomorrow morning … right away, and I don’t know why … why I have to go away so suddenly … away … away, like some useless thing you toss out the window … I don’t know why, I don’t know … I don’t understand it … Something must have happened.”

  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 s
till 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.