The Post Office Girl (20 page)

Christine kept to herself for four weeks in this morbidly
overwrought
and foul-tempered state. Then her dreams were spent,
she’d recalled every last second of her experiences, the past could no longer sustain her. Tired, depleted, with a constant pain between her temples, she went to her work, doing it half consciously, asleep on her feet. In the evening sleep refused to come. Her nerves jangled in the quiet of the crypt-like garret; her body was hot in the cold bed. It had become
unendurable
. She suddenly felt an overpowering desire to look through another window at something other than the hideous tavern signboard of the Golden Ox, sleep in another bed, experience something else, be someone else for a few hours. She was roused to action: on Friday she took the two hundred-franc notes left over from her uncle’s winnings out of the drawer, put on her best dress and her best shoes; she went straight from work to the station and bought a ticket to Vienna.

She didn’t know why she was going there, had no clear idea what she wanted, other than to get away, away from the village, from her work, from herself, from the person she was condemned to be. She just wanted to feel wheels turning beneath her again, see lights, see different people, ones with more intelligence and style, to put up some resistance to the whims of chance, not be trampled underfoot; to move again, feel the world and herself, to be a different person, not the same old one.

It was seven in the evening when she arrived in Vienna. She left her suitcase at a small hotel on Mariahilfer Strasse and quickly found her way to a hairdresser’s before the shutters rolled down. She had a mad hope that a pair of skilled hands and a bit of red would do it again, would turn her into the person she’d been. Again the waves of warmth spilled over her; again the clever hands caressed her hair. Lipstick deftly redrew the lips that had once been desired and kissed. Some color brightened her cheeks and a shadow of powder on her pale tired face conjured up her Engadine tan. When she stood up in a cloud of fragrance, she felt the old power in her knees, and she went down the street confidently, her back straight; if her clothes had been right, she
might have believed she was Fräulein von Boolen. There was still a late glow in the September sky. It was good to walk in the cool of the evening, and with excitement she registered the brush of an interested glance now and then. I’m still alive, she thought, I’m still here. Occasionally she paused in front of a shopwindow to look at the furs, the dresses, the shoes, her eyes burning through the glass. Perhaps I can do it again after all, she thought; her spirits rose. She walked along Mariahilfer Strasse and onto the Ringstrasse. Her eyes brightened as she looked at the people strolling there, chatting and carefree and a good many of them truly attractive. They’re the same, she thought; there’s not much between us. There’s a way up somewhere, a little step to climb, you’ve just got to find it. She paused in front of the Opera. The performance was evidently about to begin, cars were driving up, blue, green, black, with glinting windows and shiny paint, to be met at the entrance by a liveried valet. Christine went into the foyer to look at the attendees. Strange, she thought, the papers talk about Viennese culture, the
sophisticated
public and the opera it’s created—I’m twenty-eight years old now, I’ve lived here all my life and this is the first time I’ve been here. But I’m still on the outside, only in the foyer. Out of two million people, a mere hundred thousand have seen this building. The others read about it in the papers and hear about it and look at the pictures and they never dare to come in. And who are these people? She looked at the women, and was not just disturbed but indignant. No, they aren’t any more beautiful than I was, they don’t move more lightly and freely than I did, all they have are the gowns and the invisible
advantage
of their confidence. Just a short step up, another step inside, and she’d be with them; up the marble staircase and into the loge, into the gilded music box, into the carefree realm of pleasure.

The warning buzzer sounded and the late arrivals hurried to the cloakroom, taking off their coats as they went. The room
was empty again and Christine heard the music starting. It was over; the invisible barrier came up again. She walked on. The white moons of streetlamps swayed over the Ring. The avenue was still filled with people. Christine followed the crowd along the Opernring, with no particular destination in mind. She stopped in front of a large hotel, as though drawn to it. A car had just driven up. The liveried bellhops rushed out for the suitcases and handbag of a somewhat Oriental-looking lady and the revolving door swallowed her up. The door was like a whirlpool; Christine was unable to resist a desire to observe the longed-for world for a minute. I’m going to go in, she thought, what could happen to me if I ask the desk clerk whether Frau van Boolen from New York has arrived, it ought to be possible. Just one look, only one, to bring it all back, to really make it come back, to be that other person for a moment. She went in. The desk clerk was talking to the woman who had just arrived. No one stopped Christine from walking through the vestibule, looking at everything. Gentlemen in smart, well-tailored
traveling
clothes or smoking jackets and handsome little patent
leather
slippers sat in the armchairs, smoking cigarettes and
chatting
. In an alcove sat a conclave of three young women loudly haranguing two young men in French, laughing all the while, that careless casual laughter, that music of the carefree that she found so intoxicating. At the rear of the hotel was a broad marble-columned court, the dining room. Waiters in tails kept watch at the entrance. I could go in and eat, Christine thought, automatically checking the leather handbag for the two
hundred
-franc bills and the seventy schillings that she’d brought. I can eat here, what will it cost? If I could just sit in a big room again, be waited on, looked at, admired, pampered. And the music, here too there was music coming from inside, breezy and low. But the old fear was back. She didn’t have the right dress, the talisman that would open the door. She felt uncertain, and the invisible barrier rose again, that impassable magic pentagram 
of fear. Her shoulders shook and she left the hotel quickly as though fleeing from it. No one had stopped her. No one had even seen her, and that made her feel even weaker than before.

She continued along the streets. Where should I go? Where am I now? The streets were gradually emptying out. A few people hurried past, intent on getting their dinners. I’ll go into some café, Christine thought, not a fancy restaurant where
everyone
will look at me. Some bright place full of people. She found one and went in. Almost all the tables were taken, but she found an empty one and sat down. No one took any notice of her. The waiter brought her something and she chewed it nervously and indifferently. I came for this, she thought, what am I doing here? You can’t sit looking at the tablecloth.
Ordering
and eating only takes so long, you’ve got to get up
sometime
and go on. But where? It’s only nine. A newspaper vendor came to her table—a welcome interruption. She bought two or three of the evening papers, not to read but to have something in front of her and look like she was busy, or maybe waiting for someone. She glanced through the news without interest. What did any of it matter, problems in forming the
government
, a murder and robbery in Berlin, stock market quotes, what’s the point of this gossip about the singer at the Opera, whether she stays or goes or sings twenty times or seventy times a year, I’ll never hear her. When she put the paper down, the bold heading
ENTERTAINMENT
on the back page leaped out at her. “What’s on Tonight?” And underneath, things to do,
theaters
, dance halls, clubs. She picked up the newspaper nervously and read the ads. “Dance Music: Café Oxford”; “The Freddi Sisters, Carltonbar”; “Hungarian Gypsy Band”; “The Famous Negro Jazz Band, Open Until 3:00, Where Vienna’s Best
Society
Meets!” It would be wonderful to be back among people who were enjoying themselves, to dance, relax, throw off her hated coat of armor. She made a note of a bar, two bars; both were nearby, the waiter told her.

She handed in her coat at the cloakroom, feeling
better
when the hated carapace was gone and she could hear the fast, aggressive music coming from below. She went down to the cellar. Disappointingly, it was mostly empty. Some
white-jacketed
lads in the orchestra were giving it all they had,
apparently
trying to make the few people sitting self-consciously at the tables get up and dance, but there was only a taxi dancer—plainly for hire, with hints of black eyeliner, a bit too soigné and too mincing in his dancing style—guiding one of the barmaids listlessly up and down the middle of the square dance floor. Fourteen or fifteen of the twenty tables were empty. One was occupied by three ladies, doubtless professionals, one with dyed ash-blond hair, another in a mannish outfit with a clinging overgarment cut like a smoking jacket over her black dress, the third a fat, heavy-breasted Jewess sipping whiskey through a straw. All three looked at her, their glances oddly
appraising
, and then began laughing quietly and whispering, their well-trained eyes having spotted her for a novice or a provincial. There were men sitting alone at a number of tables, apparently business travelers, ill-shaven, tired, and waiting for something to startle them out of their lethargy, slouched over coffee or little glasses of schnapps. Entering this place, Christine felt like someone who descends a flight of stairs only to step into empty space. She would have liked to turn around again, but the waiter swooped down, asking solicitously where the
gnädige
Frau would like to sit, so she took a seat somewhere and waited for something to happen like everyone else in this cold hot spot. One of the gentlemen (actually a dry goods agent from Prague) got up heavily at one point and hauled her around the floor
before
parking her again. Apparently he wasn’t up to it, wasn’t interested enough. In some way too he must have felt this strange woman’s ambivalence, her odd indecisiveness, her willingness and unwillingness, and it was too much for him to deal with (he had to catch the express train back to Zagreb at 6:30 in
the morning). But Christine sat there for an hour. By that time two new gentlemen had sat down with the ladies and were
making
conversation. She was the only one who was alone. Abruptly she summoned the waiter and paid. She was in a state of
hopeless
fury as she left, pursued by curious gazes.

Back onto the street. Night had fallen. She had no idea where she was going. Did it matter? Would it matter if
someone
grabbed her and tossed her into the canal, or if the car now braking on the bridge to avoid hitting this preoccupied
pedestrian
went ahead and ran her down? She didn’t care now. She noticed suddenly that a policeman was giving her a funny look, as if he wanted to come over and ask her something. Maybe he took her for one of those women, she thought, the ones who slunk out of the shadows to accost men. She went on. I ought to go back home now. What am I doing here, what’s the point of this? Abruptly she sensed a step behind her. A shadow
appeared
next to her, followed by its proprietor, who looked her full in the face. “Going home so soon, Fräulein?” She didn’t answer. But the man didn’t go away and he began to speak,
insistently
and cheerfully; she couldn’t help feeling better. Didn’t she want to go somewhere else? “No, I don’t.” “Come on, it’s too early to go home. Just to a café.” Finally she relented, just for the company. He was quite a nice fellow, a bank official, as he told her, but certainly married, she thought. In fact he had a ring on his finger. Well, so what, she just wanted a
little
company. Nothing wrong with absently listening to a few jokes. Now and then she glanced over at him. He was no longer young; he had crow’s feet, and he looked overworked, exhausted, somehow rumpled and crushed, like a suit of clothes. But his talk was nice. For the first time she was talking with
someone
again, or letting him talk, yet she knew that wasn’t what she wanted. And somehow his cheerfulness hurt her. A lot of what he said was amusing, but she felt the gall in her throat—gradually she was overcome by something like hatred for this
stranger who was so happy and unconcerned while everything in her was mired in fury. When they left the café he took her arm and held it. That other man, in front of the hotel up there, had done the same thing, and the excitement scalding her now had nothing to do with this nattering little fellow next to her, but came from that other man, from a memory. Fear abruptly seized her. She might give herself to this stranger, throw
herself
at someone she didn’t want at all, out of mere fury, out of impatience. Just then a taxi drove by and she raised her arm, tore herself away from the baffled man, and jumped in.

In the strange room she lay awake for a long time, listening to the traffic outside. It was over, she couldn’t get around or through the invisible barrier. In sleepless agitation she lay in bed, listening to the coming and going of her breath and
wondering
why.

Sunday morning was as interminable as the confused and
sleepless
night. Most of the shops were closed, their allure hidden behind lowered shutters, so she killed time in a café, leafing through the newspapers. What had she been looking forward to? She’d forgotten why she came to Vienna, where no one was waiting for her, where no one wanted her. It occurred to her that she’d have to visit her sister and her brother-in-law sometime. She’d promised to pay them a visit, and of course she should. It would be best to go right after lunch, certainly not before, or they might think she was there for the food. Her
sister
was so strange now, ever since she’d had her children—she thought only of herself and scrimped on every soup bone. But there were still two hours, three hours until then. Wandering aimlessly, Christine noticed on the Ringstrasse that admission to the Gemäldegalerie was free today. She walked incuriously through the rooms, sat down on a velvet bench, watched the people, and continued on to a park, feeling lonelier every
minute
.
At two o’clock, when she finally arrived at her brother-
in-law’s
house, she was exhausted, as though she’d been wading through snowdrifts. At the front door she encountered the
entire
family, her brother-in-law, her sister, the two children, all clearly in their Sunday best and honestly glad to see her—that cheered her up a little. “Why, what a surprise! Just last week I was saying to Nelly that we ought to write to find out what’s going on, because we never see you. You really should have been here for lunch, but how about coming along with us now? We’re going out to Schönbrunn so the kids can see the animals, and it’s such a nice day.” “I’d like to,” said Christine. It was good to have somewhere to go. It was good to be with people. Her brother-in-law hooked his arm in hers and told her all sorts of stories while her sister took charge of the children. As he talked, his broad, good-humored face was never still and he patted her arm in a friendly way. He was doing well, you could tell at two hundred paces, he was content and took a naïve pleasure in his contentment. They weren’t at the tramway yet, so he confided in her his great secret that the next day he’d be elected district chairman by the Party, but he had it coming to him, he’d been a representative practically from the minute he came back from the war, and if all went well and the right-wingers were brought to heel he’d be on the next municipal council.