The Post Office Girl (11 page)

At six, after another shopping trip, they’re back at the hotel. Christine’s friendly benefactress has discovered all sorts of new fripperies that she needs. Now her aunt, who has been
continually
delighted to see Christine’s amazing passage from down in the dumps to high spirits, pats her hand gently: “So now you can do something for me, something hard! Are you brave?” Christine laughs. What could be hard here? Everything’s fun up here in this blissful world. “No, don’t think it’ll be that easy! You’re going to go into the lion’s den and carefully pry Anthony loose from his game. I repeat, carefully, because he can really snarl if anyone bothers him there. But I can’t let him be, doctor’s orders are that he has to take his pills at least an hour before meals, and gambling from four to six in a stifling room is more than enough anyway. Number 112 on the first floor, the suite of Mr. Vornemann of the great Petroleum Trust. Knock on the door and just tell Anthony I sent you—he’ll understand. He might growl—no, he wouldn’t growl at you! Toward you he’s still respectful.”

Christine accepts the assignment without much enthusiasm. If her uncle likes to gamble, why should she be the one to nag him! But she doesn’t dare to argue. She knocks lightly. The gentlemen all look up from their table, a long rectangle with
strange diamonds and numerals on its green cloth. It seems young women don’t intrude here very often. Her uncle, taken aback at first, laughs out loud. “Ah, Claire put you up to it! She’s taking advantage of you! Gentlemen, this is my niece! My wife sent her to break it up. I propose” (he pulls out his watch) “exactly ten more minutes. You’ll permit that?” Christine smiles uncertainly. “Well, I’ll take full responsibility,” Anthony says, proud to show off his authority in front of the
gentlemen
. “Hush now! Sit here next to me and bring me luck, I need it today.” Christine sits down timidly behind him. She understands nothing of what’s going on. Someone’s holding a long thing like a shovel, or a toboggan, and deals out cards with it; someone says something and then celluloid disks, white, red, green, slide here and there; a rake gathers them up. It’s actually boring, Christine thinks, it’s funny that such rich, distinguished men would be playing for these round things. But in some way she’s still proud to be sitting here in her uncle’s broad shadow, close to men who undoubtedly have influence in the world, you can tell from their big diamond rings, their gold pencils, their hard, emphatic features, even their fists, which could probably pound the table like hammers during meetings. Christine glances respectfully from one to another, paying no attention to the game she doesn’t understand, and looks rather foolishly taken aback when suddenly her uncle turns to her and asks, “Should I take it?” Christine has grasped at least that one of them is the banker and is fending everyone off, so he’s
playing
a difficult game. Should she say yes? She’d prefer to whisper “For God’s sake, no!” so as not to have any responsibility. But she doesn’t want to seem fainthearted, so she stammers an
uncertain
“Yes.” “Good,” her uncle teases, “it’s on your shoulders. We’ll go fifty-fifty.” The incomprehensible cartomancy starts up again. She understands none of it, but thinks she can tell that her uncle is winning. His movements are becoming quicker, he’s making strange gurgling sounds in his throat, he seems to
be enjoying himself thoroughly. Finally, passing the toboggan on to someone else, he turns to her: “You did great work. And since we’re sharing equally, here’s your half.” He pulls some chips out of his pile—two yellow ones, three red ones, a white one. Christine takes them with a laugh, not thinking anything. “Another five minutes,” he reminds her (he has his watch in front of him). “Come on, come on, tiredness is no excuse.” The five minutes pass quickly. They all get to their feet, gather up their chips, and cash them in. Christine is waiting diffidently at the door; her chips are on the table. Her uncle calls out: “Well, what about your chips?” Christine steps closer, not
understanding
. “Cash them in.” Christine still doesn’t understand; he takes her to one of the men, who looks briefly, says, “Two hundred fifty-five,” and puts down two hundred-franc bills, a fifty-franc bill, and one of those heavy silver coins. Christine gazes with surprise at the foreign money on the green table, then looks at her uncle uncertainly. “Just take it,” he says, almost annoyed, “that’s your share! And now let’s go, we have to be on time.”

Christine clutches the three bills and the silver coin in
bewilderment
, still incredulous. Back in her room, she examines over and over the three rectangular rainbow-hued slips of paper that have come her way. Two hundred fifty-five francs. She does the conversion quickly—about three hundred fifty schillings. To make this much money at home, she’d have to work for four months, a third of a year, sitting at the office from eight until noon, from two until six precisely, and here it just flies into your hand in ten minutes. Can it be true, was there some mistake? Incredible! But the bills rustle in her fingers just like real money, and they’re hers, her uncle said, they belong to her, to her new self, this new, unfathomable other person. These crackling banknotes—she’s never had so much money at one time. As she anxiously and reverentially hides the bills like loot in her suitcase, shivers of dread and pleasure run down her spine. Her conscience can’t grasp this contradiction: at home
money has to be saved so patiently, coin by dark heavy coin, while here it casually flutters into your hand. A violent, fearful shudder runs through her entire being—as though she’d been witness to a crime. Something in her would like to understand this, but there’s no time, she has to get dressed, choose a dress, one of the three exquisite dresses, has to go back downstairs to feel things, experience things, to enter the trance, to dive down into the wonderful fiery current of extravagance.

Names have a mysterious transforming power. Like a ring on a finger, a name may at first seem merely accidental, committing you to nothing; but before you realize its magical power, it’s gotten under your skin, become part of you and your destiny. During the first few days Christine heard the new name von Boolen with secret glee. (Oh, they don’t know who I am! If they only did!) She wore it thoughtlessly, like a mask at a costume ball. But soon she forgets the unintentional deception and begins to deceive herself, becoming what she feigns to be. If at first it was embarrassing to be addressed as a rich aristocratic stranger, a day later it’s a thrill, and after two or three days it seems the most natural thing in the world. When she was asked her first name by one of the gentlemen, “Christine” (she goes by “Christl” at home) didn’t seem impressive enough for the borrowed title; “Christiane,” she answered daringly, and thus she’s now known at every table as Christiane von Boolen. She’s introduced and
addressed
as Christiane von Boolen and has had no trouble getting used to the name, just as she’s gotten used to the room with the soft colors and polished furniture, the luxury and comfort of the hotel, the unquestioning matter-of-fact attitude toward money, and all the intoxication of desire, felt in so many ways. If someone who was in on it all suddenly addressed her as Fräulein Hoflehner, she’d wake up like a sleepwalker and tumble off the roof of her dream, so completely has the new name become a part of her, so
passionately is she convinced that she’s another person, that other person.

But haven’t these few days in fact already turned her into another person? Hasn’t the Alpine air actually pumped new blood into her veins, hasn’t the more plentiful and more
luxurious
food stirred it, fortified it? Undeniably Christiane von Boolen looks different now, younger, fresher than Postal Official Hoflehner, as different as Cinderella from her ugly
stepsisters
. The mountain sun has tanned her once-pale, slightly sallow skin as brown as an Indian’s; the muscles of her neck are tauter; her new clothes have given her a new walk, more casual, an easy stride with a sensual swing to the hips and a surge of self-confidence in every step. Frolicking about outside has done wonders to revitalize her, dancing has toned her, and her newly discovered vigor, the youth she’d forgotten was there, pushes her again and again to test her powers: her heart beats harder, she’s constantly aware of an effervescence, a ferment expanding and contracting inside her, an electric thrill she senses to the tips of her fingers—a strange, strong, new pleasure. Suddenly it’s hard to sit still; she always has to be outside frisking about. She’s like a gusting wind, always busy, always driven by
curiosity
, now here, now there, indoors, outdoors, upstairs and downstairs. She never takes the stairs one step at a time, but always three at once, as though she might be missing
something
, always impelled by inner excitement. Her urge to play, her need to express affection and gratitude is so strong that her hands are always grabbing someone or something. Sometimes she has to spread her arms and look off into the distance to keep from laughing or crying out. Her youthful energy is a force field around her: anyone near her is immediately caught in the whirlpool of high spirits in which she moves.
Conversations
brighten when she takes part, always sunny and
lighthearted
, and not only her aunt and uncle but total strangers observe her uninhibited enthusiasm with pleasure. She hurtles
into the hotel lobby like a stone through the window, the revolving door whirling behind her; she gives the little bellhop tugging at her sleeve a cheerful slap on the shoulder with her glove. Off with the hat and the sweater, it’s all oppressive and constraining. She carelessly fixes herself up at the
mirror
: the dress smoothed down, the tousled hair shaken back, and that’s it: still disheveled, her cheeks pink from the wind, she heads straight for one of the tables (she knows everyone now) to report on what she’s been doing. She always has something to report, she’s always just experienced something, it was
always
terrific, wonderful, indescribable, everything fills her with ardent enthusiasm; even a perfect stranger feels that here is a person full to bursting who can endure her excess of gratitude only by passing it along to someone else. She can’t see a dog without patting it, she lifts every child onto her lap to kiss its cheeks, she has a friendly word for every maid and waiter. If someone is grumpy or apathetic, she soon lifts his spirits with good-natured kidding; she admires every dress, every ring, every camera, every cigarette case, she picks up everything and gazes at it enthusiastically. She laughs at every joke, is enchanted by everything she eats, likes everyone she meets, finds every
conversation
amusing; everything, everything is wonderful in this singular, lofty realm. Her passionate goodwill is irresistible,
everyone
around her feels her ardor; the grouchy privy councillor in her armchair looks cheerful behind her lorgnette when she sees her, the desk clerk greets her with special friendliness, the starchy waiters adjust her chair attentively, and even the sterner older people are gladdened by so much joy and responsiveness. There’s some shaking of heads when she’s naïve or gushy, as she can be at times, but she encounters warm and welcoming faces on every side, and after three or four days everyone from Lord Elkins down to the last bellhop and elevator boy has decided that this Fräulein von Boolen is an enchanting creature, “a charming girl.” And she feels their looks of approbation and
takes pleasure in being looked at, feels it as an intensification of her own existence and her daring to exist, and the affection that surrounds her makes her happier still.

The man in the hotel who most clearly demonstrates a
personal
interest, a romantic inclination, is, unexpectedly, General Elkins. With the diffidence of age, the delicate and touching uncertainty of a man long past the perilous fifty-year mark, he’s been trying to find inconspicuous opportunities to get near her. Even Christine’s aunt notices that he’s dressing more brightly, more youthfully, is choosing more colorful ties. She may be wrong, but she even thinks his temples have become less white, evidently by artificial means. He’s been coming to Christine’s aunt’s table with noticeable frequency, finding all sorts of
pretexts
; every day he sends flowers to both women’s rooms (so as not to be too obvious); he’s been bringing Christine books, German ones bought specially for her, mostly about climbing the Matterhorn (just because she once happened to ask who was the first to brave it) and about Sven Hedin’s Tibetan expedition. One morning when a sudden cloudburst has kept everyone indoors, he sits with Christine in a corner of the lounge, showing her photographs—his house, his garden, his dogs. He lives in an odd tall castle, dating perhaps to Norman times, the round ivied towers making it look like a fort. The pictures of the inside show great halls with old-fashioned
fireplaces
, framed family portraits, model ships, and heavy atlases. It must be dreary living there alone during the winter, she thinks, and as if he’s guessed her thoughts, he says, pointing to a pair of hunting dogs in the photos, “If not for them I’d be completely alone.” This is his first allusion to the death of his wife and son. She shivers slightly as his eyes avoid hers
self-consciously
(he goes back to the photos immediately): Why is he telling me all this, showing me all this, why does he ask with
such strange solicitude if I could be comfortable in an English house like that, is he trying to tell me, a rich, distinguished man like him … She doesn’t dare to finish the thought. She’s too inexperienced to realize that this lord, this general, who seems remote, far above her world, is waiting, with the
faintheartedness
of an older man who isn’t sure he’s still in the running and is terrified that he’s about to make a fool of himself in courtship, for any tiny sign, for some encouraging word. She’s afraid to believe in herself, so how could she understand? His hints both please and disturb her; she feels them as tokens of special sympathy but doesn’t dare to put too much stock in them, while he for his part struggles to find the right
interpretation
of her noncommittal embarrassment. She comes away quite moved from any time spent with him. Sometimes she thinks she sees romantic intentions in his shy sidelong glances, but then his brusque formality muddles things again (the old man has retreated abruptly, though she doesn’t realize that). This needs to be pondered. What does he want from me, can it be what it seems? This needs attention—calm consideration and clear thinking.