The Post Office Girl (23 page)

What he’d said was just what Nelly was thinking, and she hid her anger. “No, no, you’re always welcome here, and it’s good for him to have someone around. Why don’t you come for lunch some Sunday. We’d all be happy to have you.”

But the word “happy” came out flat, it sounded false, and when he took her hand it was cool, a stranger’s hand. He took
his leave from Christine without a word. She felt his eyes just for a second, curious and warm; then he went to the door, with Franz behind him.

“I’ll walk you out.”

Nelly flung open the window as soon as they were gone. “The smoke is enough to make you suffocate,” she said to Christine by way of excuse. She dumped the full ashtray on the sill
outside
, the banging sound echoing the harshness in her voice. Christine could see she was trying to get rid of any trace of the man. Her sister was a stranger to her, she thought. How hard she’d become, how skinny and dried-up. She used to be so buoyant and lively. But she was grasping at her husband like someone grasping at money—that was why. She didn’t want to give up any of him, not even to a friend. He had to be all hers, under her thumb, go on working and saving like a good fellow so she could be Frau District Chairman. Christine had always looked up to her sister, but for the first time in her life she viewed her with contempt and hatred—because she didn’t understand, because she didn’t want to understand.

It was a good thing Franz was back now, but then the silence between them grew dangerous again; the room was thick with it. He approached the two women uncertainly, with small
gingerly
steps, as though the floor were unsafe.

“The two of you sang another long duet downstairs. Well, that’s fine with me, I’m sure we’ll have the pleasure often now. If someone’s down, he likes to climb up where the others are.” “But Nelly,” Franz said, shocked, “what are you thinking? You have no idea what kind of a person he is. If he’d wanted
something
from us, he would have shown up a long time ago. He could easily have found my address in the government
directory
. Don’t you see, the fact that he’s in trouble is exactly why he didn’t come. He knows I’ll give him whatever he needs.”

“Yes, you’re pretty free and easy when it comes to people like that. You can go see him as far as I’m concerned, I’m not going to say no. But here in the house, never again. Look at the hole he burned with his cigarette, and look at the floor, he didn’t even wipe his boots, your friend, leaving us to sweep up after him. Well, if you like that kind of thing I’m not going to stand in your way.”

Christine’s fists were clenched. She was ashamed for her
sister
, ashamed for her brother-in-law standing there so
submissively
, trying to explain something that only fell on deaf ears. The atmosphere was intolerable. She stood up. “I’d better go now too or I’ll miss the last train. I’m sorry I stayed so long.”

“No, no,” her sister said. “Come back soon.”

It was like saying goodbye to an acquaintance. One
rebellious
, the other complacent: each hated what the other had become.

On the stairs Christine had a premonition that this stranger would be waiting for her at the bottom. She tried to push the thought away. The man had given her no more than a fleeting glance of curiosity and he hadn’t said a word to her, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to run into him. But the notion wouldn’t leave her mind, becoming stronger with every step until it was nearly a certainty.

So she wasn’t really surprised when she came out of the building to see that inverness coat wafting toward her from the other side of the street, and then to find the stranger’s subdued and troubled face before her.

“Forgive me for waiting for you, Fräulein.” He blurted it out in a changed voice, one that seemed practically brand-new—diffident, embarrassed, remotely stricken, nothing like the bleakly hard, forceful, aggressive tone he’d used before. “But I was worried the whole time that you wouldn’t … that your
sister was annoyed with you … I mean, because I was so rude with Franzl and because you … because you agreed with me … I’m sorry myself that I went after him so harshly. I know it’s bad manners when you’re a guest and in the presence of strangers, and I assure you I didn’t mean any harm, quite the contrary … He’s just such a prince of a guy, such a terrific friend, a totally good person like you hardly ever run across … Really, when I suddenly saw him there in front of me I felt like falling on his neck and smothering him with kisses or
somehow
showing my happiness the way he did. But, you’ve got to understand, I was shy … shy in front of you and your sister—nobody wants to see me get sloppy … That’s the only reason I got my back up with him, it was stupid, but I was shy … I can’t help it, I can’t … But it got to me when I saw him sitting there fat and happy with his great potbelly, his cup of coffee, and his gramophone, and I had to rag him a little … You didn’t know him out there. He used to be the most rabid one of all, talking of nothing but revolution and destroying and
rebuilding
from morning till night, and now, when I saw him all soft and dopey, so content with everything, his wife, his kids, his Party, and his council flat with flowers on the balcony, so
all’s-right
-with-the-world and petty bourgeois … well, I just had to needle him, just a little, and your sister naturally thought I was jealous that he has it so good … But, I swear, I was just happy he has it so good, and if I went after him a little … well, it was … it was only because I wanted to clap him on the shoulder so much or seize him by the arm or poke him in the belly, old Franzl, and I was shy in front of you …”

Christine had to smile. She understood it all, even the wish to poke her brother-in-law in his fat belly. “No,” she said to put his mind at ease, “I understood it right away. It was sort of embarrassing, even, his being that happy to see you, wanting to treat you like a king the way he seemed to—I know why you felt shy.”

“I’m…I’m glad to hear you say that. Your sister, she didn’t see it, or maybe she saw him turn into someone else the
moment
he laid eyes on me…Someone she doesn’t know at all, and she doesn’t have a clue that he and I go back to when we were locked up together in a cell like criminals, day and night and night and day, and that we know things about each other that a wife never could, and that I can make him do anything I want and vice versa. She felt it, even if she tried to hide it and make out that I was angry with him, or envious…Well, maybe it’s true, I am full of anger…But I don’t envy anyone, I mean the kind of envy where I’d say I’d like myself to be better off and others worse off…Of course I don’t begrudge anyone their happiness…I can’t help it, no one can help asking ‘why not me’ now and then when they see other people living high on the hog…You know what I’m driving at…I don’t mean ‘why not me instead of him’…Just ‘why not me too.’”

Christine was taken aback. The man beside her had said just what she’d been thinking all this time; he’d expressed clearly what she’d dully felt—the wish to be given one’s due, not to take anything from anyone, but to have some kind of life, not to be left out in the cold forever while the others were warm inside.

He thought her silence must mean she’d had enough of his company and wanted to be on her way. He stood before her irresolutely and reached up as if to tip his hat. Her eyes followed the gesture, rapidly taking in his cheap, worn-out shoes and threadbare, unpressed pants, and she realized it was his shabbiness and poverty that made this otherwise vigorous man so unsure of himself in her presence. In that second her mind flashed back to the hotel; her hand, the one that had carried the suitcase, trembled as it had done then, and she understood his uncertainty as though they’d switched bodies. This man was herself, and she felt she had to help him.

“I have to catch a train now,” she said. His evident dismay
gave her a small surge of pride. “But if you’d like to come to the station with me …”

“Oh, if you don’t mind, I’d like that.” Once again she was gratified by the hint of surprise and pleasure in his voice.

He walked beside her now, but he kept on apologizing. “I was an idiot, and it bothers me, I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have been talking and thinking as though your
sister
weren’t there, she’s his wife, after all, and I’m just some stranger. What I should have done first was ask about the kids, whether they were doing well in school, what grade they were in—something about the kids. But I got so carried away when I saw him that I forgot all that. I had such a great feeling all of a sudden—after all, he’s the only person who knows anything about me and understands me … Not that we’re really the greatest match … He’s another sort of person entirely, much better, much more respectable than I am … And then he’s got completely different things on his mind, and he doesn’t
understand
anything about what I really want … But we were thrown together, two years, day after day and night after night, so far outside the world that we might as well have been on an island … Probably I wouldn’t be able to explain any of what really matters to me, but he’d probably get it deep down, and better than anyone. We don’t even have to say anything, all we have to do is be together. I knew everything about him the minute I walked into that room—maybe more than he knows about himself, and he realized that … And that’s why he was so embarrassed, as though I’d found him out and he was ashamed … I don’t know about what, maybe his big gut, or that he’s become such an upstanding citizen … But right then he became his old self, and his wife wasn’t there, and you weren’t there, and both of us would rather have gotten rid of you two so we could talk, we would have had stories to tell all night long—yes, and of course your sister felt that—and yet still it’s
better
for us now, because he knows I’m there and I know he is.
We both feel there’s someone to go to if something’s bothering us. Because everyone else—no, you’d never understand, and anyway maybe I can’t explain it properly, but ever since I got back from those six years in a different world I’ve had the
feeling
I’m back from the moon. There’s something foreign about these people I used to live with. When I have lunch with my relatives or my grandmother, I don’t know what to say, I don’t understand the things they’re interested in, and everything they do seems so strange, so pointless. It’s as if … it’s like being on the street and looking through the glass at people dancing in a café, and you can’t hear the music, you can’t hear the beat, and you don’t have any idea why they’re all spinning around with such ecstatic expressions. There’s just something about them you can’t understand and vice versa, and they think you’re
envious
or angry, and it’s really just because you don’t understand them and they don’t understand you anymore … It’s as though you speak different languages, want different things out of life … But forgive me, Fräulein, I’ve been talking at you so much and it’s all nonsense. I don’t expect you to understand it.”

Again Christine stopped and looked at him. “You’re wrong,” she said, “I know exactly what you’re saying, every word of it. That is … A year ago, even a few months ago, maybe I wouldn’t have understood you, but since I got back from …”

She thought better of it.

She’d nearly started telling this stranger everything. She quickly began again in another tone: “By the way, there’s
something
else. I’m not going directly to the station—first I have to get my bag from the hotel where I spent the night. I came yesterday evening, not this morning as they thought … I didn’t want to tell my sister, she would have been insulted that I didn’t stay with them. But I don’t like to be a burden. I just wanted to ask you … If you talk to my brother-in-law, don’t mention it to him.”

“Of course.”

She could tell he was pleased and grateful that she trusted him. They went in together to get her suitcase. He wanted to carry it, but she stopped him: “No, not with your hand, you said yourself …” He was mortified, she saw, and she fell
silent
. I shouldn’t have said it, she thought, shouldn’t have shown that I remembered there might be a problem. She let him carry the suitcase. At the station they had three-quarters of an hour before the train was due in, so they sat down in the waiting room to talk. They talked about impersonal things: about her brother-in-law, about the post office, about the political
situation
in Austria, about trivialities and superficialities. There was no intimacy between them, but they spoke plainly and seemed to see eye to eye; she noted the sharpness and quickness of his intelligence and respected him for it. Finally it was time. “I’d better go,” she said, getting to her feet.

He stood up too, looking almost distressed. And she was pleased—and moved—to see that he found it hard to break off their conversation. Tonight he’ll be alone, she thought, and she felt a kind of pride: here at last, unexpectedly, after all this time, was someone who wanted to win her over; she, an insignificant postal official who sold stamps, dated telegrams, and made
telephone
connections, meant something to someone. Seeing his crestfallen face, she was full of sympathy and, suddenly
remembering
, said, “Or I could take the later train—there’s another one at 10:20. We could go for a walk and have dinner
somewhere
here … If you don’t have other plans, that is …”

Again she took pleasure in the joy that radiated outward from his eyes and suffused his face as she spoke, and then his happy exclamation: “Oh, nothing whatever.”

They checked the suitcase at the station and walked for a while among lanes and streets, with no destination in mind. A blue mist gradually darkened the September evening;
street-lights
hovered between the buildings like little white moons. They strolled side by side and chatted about nothing in
particular. Somewhere beyond the city center they came across a cheap little restaurant where they could sit outside on a patio with small artificial arbors and ivied trellises between the tables, so that you were alone, yet not alone; you could be seen by other people, yet not overheard. They both felt happy when they found a free corner. Buildings rose all around them. From an open window came an indistinct waltz on a gramophone. Laughter and the quiet peaceful sounds of contented solitary drinkers could be heard nearby. Each table had a lantern
standing
on it like a glass flower, with small inquisitive black insects buzzing around it. It was pleasantly cool. Franz took off his hat, and Christine saw his face clearly in the light of the steady flame. It was a hard, bony Tyrolean face with chiseled features, little lines and wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and around the mouth, a taut, severe, yet somehow worn face. But behind that face there seemed to be a second face, just as there was a second voice behind his angry one, a second face that appeared when he smiled, when the wrinkles lengthened and the
aggression
in his eyes softened to a glow. Then something boyishly docile came out, and it was almost a child’s face, trustful and sensitive. That was how her brother-in-law had known him, she remembered. That was how he must have been then. The two faces alternated strangely as they talked. Shadows appeared the moment he knitted his eyebrows or pursed his lips bitterly, and it was like a cloud passing over the green of a meadow. Strange, she thought, how is it possible? There seem to be two people in him. Then she recalled her own transformation, and thought of the mirror now being used by other people in a room far away.