The Post Office Girl

by Stefan Zweig

  They were deceiving each other, but not really. They both knew how senseless it was to be sitting in a noisy room full of people when what they really wanted was to be alone together; to be telling each other transparent lies when body and soul yearned for truth and deeper intimacy.

  “Next Sunday it’s sure to be nice out,” she said. “The rain can’t go on forever.”

  “Yes,” he replied, “I’m sure it’ll be nice out.” But they were too dejected to care; they knew that winter, the enemy of the homeless, was coming, and that nothing would get better for them. From one Sunday to the next they waited for a miracle, but no miracle came. They walked together, ate together, talked, and gradually their companionship became more a misery than a joy. They had a few quarrels, but they were ashamed because they knew they were really angry at the meaninglessness they’d slid into, not at each other. All week long they looked forward to their day together, but by Sunday evening they always felt something was wrong, something made no sense. Poverty was crushing all the feeling they had. It was intolerable to be together this way, and yet they tolerated it.

  One gray November day, with dull noonday light filtering through the dirty office windows, Christine was doing figures at her desk. Since she’d started going to Vienna on Sundays, she’d barely been able to get by on her earnings. The train tickets, coffeehouses, streetcars, lunches, and odds and ends—it all added up. She’d torn an umbrella getting on a train, she’d lost a glove, and (being a woman) she’d bought herself a little something now and then before seeing Ferdinand: a new blouse, nicer shoes. Her calculations showed her coming up short. Not by much, twelve schillings in all, what remained of her Swiss francs would cover that easily, but still, how could she keep going into the city every Sunday without an advance or without sinking into debt. Three generations of bourgeois instinct made her dread either alternative. She sat and brooded: Where is this going? The last time, four days ago, it had rained and stormed once again and they’d sat in coffeehouses the whole time or stood under eaves, even taken shelter in a church, and she’d come home with damp, crushed clothes, full of a pervasive exhaustion and misery. Ferdinand had been strangely distracted. There must have been trouble at the site or something—he’d been sharp and unfriendly. Half an hour would pass without his saying a word, and they walked together in silence like a couple of strangers. What could have upset him? Was he angry because she hadn’t steeled herself to going to another one of those awful hotels with him (the memory still made her shudder)? Or was it just the weather and the hopelessness of their aimless wandering from café to café, the enervating and soul-killing homelessness that took all the meaning and joy out of their time together? Something was beginning to go dead between them, she felt. Not the friendship, the fellow feeling, but both of them were losing heart somehow. They no longer had the strength to go on lying to each other. Once they’d imagined they could help each other, make each other believe there was a way out of this impasse of poverty, but they no longer believed it themselves now, and the dank specter of winter was approaching.

  She no longer knew where to look for hope. The left drawer of her desk contained a typewritten letter; it had arrived yesterday from the post office administration in Vienna. “In response to your application of September 17, 1926, we regret to inform you that the requested transfer to the Vienna postal district is not a possibility at this time, as an increase in the number of positions in the Vienna Post Office within the terms of Ministerial Decree BDZ/1794 is not projected; nor are any posts currently vacant.”

  She’d expected nothing else. Perhaps the privy councillor had intervened, perhaps he’d forgotten; in any case he was the only one who could have helped. There was no one else. So that meant staying here for a year, five years, the rest of her life perhaps. The world was senseless.

  Should she tell Ferdinand, she wondered, her pencil still in her hand. Strangely, he’d never asked what had become of her request. Probably he hadn’t believed in it anyway. No, best not to tell him—he’d get the idea even if she never brought it up. Telling him would only add to his torment. It just made no sense. Nothing made sense anymore, nothing.

  She heard the door. Instinctively she became alert and began straightening things up around her, something she did mechanically to bring her out of dreamland and back to work whenever someone came. But the sound of the door caught her ear—it was oddly indecisive and cautious. The peasants usually slammed it open like a stable door and then slammed it shut behind them, but now it might have drifted open in the breeze, with only a slight creak of protest from the hinges. Glancing through the window, she was stunned to see the person she’d least expected: Ferdinand.

  Christine’s mouth opened. The shock was not pleasant. Ferdinand had sometimes offered to come and visit in order to spare her the trip to Vienna. She’d always refused, perhaps because she would have been embarrassed to be seen in the shabby little office wearing the apron she’d sewn herself. It was pride, perhaps, or some unutterable shame. Perhaps too the neighbors might talk. What would they say, the innkeeper’s wife or the woman next door, if they saw her out in the woods with a stranger from Vienna? And Fuchsthaler’s feelings would be hurt. But now here he was. It couldn’t be good.

  “Now look how surprised you are, it was the last thing you expected!” He was trying to sound cheerful, but his voice was grating.

  “What’s the matter? … What is it?” she asked with alarm.

  “Nothing. What do you mean? I had some time off, so I thought I’d come out. Aren’t you glad?”

  “Yes, yes,” she stammered, “of course I am.”

  He looked around. “So this is your kingdom? The reception room at Schönbrunn is prettier, grander, but still you’re all by yourself and there’s no one to lord it over you. That’s nothing to sneeze at!”

  She was silent. What does he want?

  “Isn’t it your lunch break? I had the idea that at twelve we might go for a walk and talk.”

  Christine looked at the clock. It was past 11:45. “Not yet, but soon. Only … only I think … it would be better … it would be better if we don’t go out together. You don’t know what it’s like here when they see you with someone, they ask right away, the grocer, the women, every Tom, Dick, and Harry, they ask who’s that, who have I got there with me; and I hate to lie. It’s better if you go on ahead, along the parish road to the right. At the bottom of the hill you’ll see the Stations of the Cross path—it leads up to St. Michael’s Church at the top. And at the edge of the forest there’s a big cross, you’ll see it as soon as you leave the village, with benches for pilgrims. Wait for me there—no one will be there at noon, they’re all having lunch. A stranger won’t attract attention. Wait for me there, will you, I’ll be along in five minutes and we’ll have until two o’clock.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll find it. See you then.”

  He closed the door behind him. The brief bang went straight through her. Something must have happened. He wouldn’t have come if he didn’t have some reason. What about his work? And the train costs money … six schillings, and then the return trip. There must be a reason.

  She lowered the wicket. Her hands shook; she could hardly turn the key to lock up. Her legs were like lead.

  “So where are we off to?” asked Frau Huber, a peasant woman just back from the fields, when she saw the post office girl heading toward the woods—an unusual sight at midday.

  “I’m going for a walk,” Christine said. You had to make excuses for every step you took, they were watching you every second. She hurried on anxiously, almost running up the last steps of the Stations of the Cross path. Ferdinand was sitting on a stone bench under the cross. The man of sorrows hung high in the air, arms twisted by the nails, his head with the crown of thorns slumped sideways in tragic resignation. Ferdinand’s profile merged with the tableau as he sat on the stone bench under the outsize crucifix. His head was bowed solemnly; his form was rigid with fanatical concentration. He held
a walking stick, which he’d jabbed into the ground. At first he didn’t hear her come up. But then he started, pulled the stick toward him, turned, and stared, without curiosity, enthusiasm, or affection.

  “There you are,” he said simply. “Sit down, we’re alone.”

  Her whole body was quivering with anxiety. She couldn’t suppress it any longer.

  “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” he replied, staring in front of him. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t torture me. I can tell, I can see. Something must have happened for you to be free today.”

  “Free. You’re right there. Yes, I’m free.”

  “But why … They haven’t fired you, have they?”

  He gave an unpleasant laugh. “Fired, no, not at all, you couldn’t really say that. The construction is simply done.”

  “Done? What do you mean? How can it be done?”

  “Done, I mean done. Our company is broke, and Herr Contractor has disappeared. A con man, they’re saying now, a cheat, and the day before yesterday he was still the gnädiger Herr. Saturday I noticed something was up, he was on the phone all day back and forth with people until the workers’ wages arrived, and then he only paid us half—an accounting error, it was supposed to be, that was what the company secretary said, they’d withdrawn too little and the rest would be paid on Monday. But on Monday nothing and nothing on Tuesday or Wednesday, and today the jig was up, the boss gone, construction stopped, you see, and that’s why people like us can go for a nice walk for once.”

  She looked at him numbly. What was most frightening was the way he talked about it with such scornful composure.

  “Yes, but aren’t you legally entitled to severance?”

  He laughed. “Yes, yes, I believe the law does say something about that, and we’ll see, won’t we. For the time being they haven’t got a postage stamp, their credit is wiped out—even the typewriters are in hock. We can wait. We’ve got time, after all.”

  “And what … what are you going to do now?”

  He stared straight ahead without answering. He poked about in the dirt with the stick, digging out little rocks and heaping them up. This was too painful to watch.

  “Please … What … what are your plans now … What are you going to do?”

  “Do?” He laughed again—that strange bark. “Well, what a person does in these cases. I’ll draw on my bank account. I’ll live off my ‘savings.’ Though I don’t know how. Then after six weeks I’ll probably be permitted to make use of the unemployment compensation provided by our beneficent Republic. I’ll try to live on that just like the other three hundred thousand in our blessed nation on the Danube. And if that glorious endeavor comes to nothing, well, I’ll just die in the gutter.”

  “Nonsense.” His icy calm enraged her. “Stop talking nonsense. How can anyone take things so hard. Someone like you … You’ll find a job, I’m sure you will.”

  He jumped to his feet and banged the stick on the ground.

  “But I don’t want another job! I’ve had it! The word makes me scream. Eleven years now I’ve had one job after another, always getting by but never getting in, always there but not really anywhere. I was in the war for four years, then after that death factory more factories, one place after another. I’ve always put my nose to the grindstone for someone else, never for myself, and then they blow the whistle: Out! That’s enough! Go somewhere else! Start over, square one over and over. But now I can’t go on. I’ve had enough, I’m through.”

  Christine was about to say something, but he cut her off.

  “I can’t go on, Christine, believe me, I’ve had it, I can’t go on, I tell you I can’t. I’d rather die in the gutter than go back to the employment agency and stand in line like a beggar and wait for a ticket and then another one. And then go running up and down stairs, write letters that never get answered and fill out applications that the street sweeper picks out of the horseshit in the morning. No, I can’t bear it any longer, cringing in the outer office and then finally being let in to see some petty official who blusters and looks at you with that experienced, cool, indifferent smile just to let you know that he has hundreds to choose from and is doing you a favor by even listening to you. And then feeling your heart skip a beat, every single time, when someone carelessly leafs through your file and looks at your references as though he were spitting on them, and then says, ‘I’ll put you down, you might check in tomorrow.’ And then again the next day no dice and the day after that, until finally you find something somewhere, you’re on the job, and then you’re yanked off it again. No, I can’t bear it any longer. I’ve taken a lot, I’ve marched for seven hours on Russian country roads with split shoes and torn soles, I’ve drunk sewer water and carried three machine guns on my back, begged for bread as a prisoner and shoveled bodies and been beaten by a drunken guard. I’ve cleaned the boots of the entire company and sold dirty pictures so I’d have food for three days, I’ve done everything, and I put up with it all because I believed that eventually it would be over, eventually I’d get a job, climb the first rung and the second. But I always got knocked back down. I’ve gotten to the point now that I’d rather kill someone, gun him down, than beg from him. I can’t go on now. I can’t go on lingering in outer offices and standing around waiting for work. I’m thirty years old today, and I can’t go on.”

  She touched his arm. She didn’t want him to guess how terribly sorry she felt for him, but he noticed nothing. She might as well have been shaking a tree.

  “So now you know, but don’t worry, I didn’t come here to whine. I don’t want sympathy. Save it for other people—maybe it’ll help. It doesn’t help me anymore. I came to say goodbye. It doesn’t make any sense for us to go on. I don’t want to have to depend on you, I’ve still got my pride. I’d rather starve to death! The best thing is to break up like adults and not burden each other. That’s what I wanted to tell you, and thanks for everything—”

  “But Ferdinand.” She gripped his arm more tightly. She was hanging on to him with all her strength, actually trembling. “Ferdinand, Ferdinand, Ferdinand.” She felt such mindless, helpless fear that it was all she could think of to say.

  “No, you tell me—honestly, does it make sense? Doesn’t it hurt you too to see us looking so shabby in the streets and the coffeehouses and neither of us able to help the other and both of us lying to each other? How long is that going to go on, what is it we’re waiting for? I’m thirty now and I’ve never had a chance to do anything I wanted. Hired, fired, and every month I age another year. I’ve seen nothing of the world, I’ve never had a life, I’ve just gone on believing that at last it’s starting, now it’s going to begin. But now I know there’s nothing else, nothing else ever. I’m worn out, I can’t take anymore. And that kind of person should be avoided … I know it doesn’t do anybody any good, your sister figured that out right away and put herself between Franzl and me so I wouldn’t get hold of him and drag him down with me. And you, I’d only be dragging you down too. It makes no sense. Why don’t we do the friendly thing and put a decent end to it.”

  “Yes, but … what are you going to do?”

  He sat rigidly and said nothing.

  She looked up and was shocked. With the stick gripped in his fist he’d dug a little hole in the ground in front of him, and now he was staring at it as though he wanted to dive into it. It seemed to be pulling him down. Christine understood. Everything was clear.

  “You mean …”

  “Yes,” he replied calmly. “It’s the only thing that makes sense, I’ve had enough. I don’t want to start over, but I’ve still got what it takes to put an end to it. There were four of our group who did it in Russia. It goes fast. I saw their faces afterward, calm, clear, at peace. It’s not hard. It’s easier than going on like this!”