The Post Office Girl (27 page)

He tried to calm her. “But where, darling … It’s not even 4:30 and your train doesn’t leave until 5:30. Where can we go? Don’t you want to rest?”

“No, no, no.” Loathing filled her as she looked at the
rumpled
bed. “Can’t we just get away, away from here, let’s just get away! And never again … never again … like this … somewhere … never again!”

He obeyed. In the desk clerk’s cubicle a policeman was still poring over the hotel register and jotting down notes. His sharp glance was like a blow. Christine swayed and Ferdinand
steadied
her. The policeman bent over the register again. Outside in the alley, fresh air and freedom. She breathed deeply as if restored to life.

Morning was still far off, but the streetlamps already seemed to be burning low. Everything looked tired, the empty lanes, the dismal buildings, the shuttered stores, the few people
wandering
about. Farmers’ horses plodded heavily by with bowed heads, pulling long vegetable carts to market and trailing a rank, humid smell. Milk wagons clattered over the cobblestones, the tin milk cans rattling; then the grim, gray quiet returned. There were a few people about, bakers’ boys, canal cleaners, other laborers of one kind or another, with drowsy, shadowy faces, looking gray and wan, vaguely unrested and resentful, and Ferdinand and Christine couldn’t help sensing the natural animosity between those who slept and those who were stirring in the sleeping city. Without speaking they moved through the
darkness to the train station. There anyone could sit down and rest: a home for the homeless.

They sat in a corner of the waiting room. Men and women lay on the benches, sleeping with mouths open and bundles next to them, themselves like battered bundles that destiny had deposited nowhere in particular. From outside came an
occasional
reluctant wheezing, puffing, and groaning: engines were being shunted about, the stoked-up boilers tested. Otherwise it was quiet.

“Stop thinking about it,” he said to her, “there was no harm done. Next time I’ll make sure nothing like this happens. You don’t mean to, but I think you’re holding it against me, and it’s not my fault.”

“Yes,” she said half to herself, “I know that, I know … It’s not your fault. But whose fault is it? Why are we always the ones who suffer? We didn’t do anything, we didn’t do anything to anyone, but every step we take is a trap. I’ve never asked for much, once I went on vacation, and I wanted to be like the
others
, free and easy, eight days, two weeks, and then all that with my mother happened … And once I …” She broke off.

He tried to soothe her. “But darling, it turned out all right, be sensible … They were looking for someone, and they just took down the particulars, it was just bad luck.”

“I know, I know. Just bad luck. But what happened there … You don’t understand—no, Ferdinand, you don’t, you have to be a woman to understand. You don’t know what it’s like as a young girl, a child even, before you understand anything, to
already
be dreaming about what it would be like to be with a man that you loved … Everyone dreams about it … And you don’t know what it’s like and what it will be like, you can’t imagine it no matter how much your girlfriends talk about it. But every girl, every woman thinks of it as a great event … as something beautiful … the most beautiful thing in her life … in a way, I can’t express it very clearly, as what, yes, as what you’re actually
living for … as what’s going to lift you up above all the
meaninglessness
… For years, years, you dream about it and imagine it … No, you don’t imagine it, you don’t want to and you can’t, you just dream about it, as something beautiful, so very, very indistinctly, like when … And now it turns out to be so … so horrible, so appalling, so dreadful … No, you just can’t absorb it when that’s been destroyed, because no one will ever be able to give that back to us once it’s been ruined, sullied …”

He stroked her hand, but she stared down at the dirty
floorboards
without paying any attention.

“And to think that it all turns on nothing but money, filthy, low-down, vile, despicable money. With a little money, two or three banknotes, I could have been among the blessed, I could have left, driven somewhere in a car … somewhere where no one could come after me, where I was alone and free … Oh, how wonderful it would have been just to relax, for you too … It would have made all the difference for you, you wouldn’t be so glum and distracted … But we’re like dogs, people like us, crawling into other people’s stables, getting whipped … No, I never thought it could be so awful.” When she looked up and saw his face, she added quickly, “I know, I know, you can’t help it, and maybe I haven’t gotten over it, the horror … You’ve just got to understand why it was so awful for me. Give me a little time, it’ll pass … ”

“But you’ll come … you’ll come again?”

His anxious question did her good. It was the first warm word.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll come again, you can count on that. Next Sunday, only … You know … That’s all I ask … ”

“Yes,” he whispered, “I know what you mean.”

She left on the train. He went to the buffet and quickly drank a few shots of brandy. His throat was parched. The
brandy
went down like fire and he could move his limbs again. He went along the street faster and faster, swinging his arms against
an invisible enemy. People looked after him in astonishment, and at the construction site people noticed how furious he was, how unpleasant and dismissive, though before he’d always been so unassuming. Christine sat in the post office as always,
depressed
, silent, watchful. And when they thought of each other, it wasn’t with feelings of passion or love, but with something like pity—not the way you think of a lover, but of a friend in trouble.

After this, Christine went to Vienna every Sunday. It was her only day off, and she’d used up vacation days for the summer. She and Ferdinand got along well. Too tired, too disappointed for passion, for a love affair with any excitement and optimism in it, they considered themselves lucky just to have found
someone
to confide in. They saved up all week for their Sundays, wanting to spend this one day together without constant
penny-pinching
, to go to a restaurant or coffeehouses, to the pictures, to drop a few schillings without constantly counting and
calculating
. And they saved up words and feelings too, thought about what they’d tell each other, and they were both glad to have someone who listened intently, with sympathy and
understanding
, no matter what happened to them. After so many months of privation this was enough, and through Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and with increasing restlessness through Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, they awaited this small joy with
impatience
. A certain restraint remained. They didn’t utter words that are usually on the lips of lovers. They didn’t speak of
marriage
or staying together forever. Everything seemed so vague and far away, and they hadn’t made enough of a beginning for any of it to be real. Usually she arrived around nine (she didn’t want to spend Saturday night in Vienna; it was too expensive to get a hotel room for herself, and the memory of her ordeal still made her shrink from sharing). He’d pick her up, they’d walk
through the streets, sit on benches in the Volksgarten, take the metropolitan railway out of town somewhere, have lunch, stroll through the woods. It was nice, and they were still grateful to see each other’s faces when they sat down together, happy to walk through a field with someone else for a change and enjoy those little things that even the poorest people are permitted: a blue autumn sky, the golden September sun, a few flowers, and a free day that was special from beginning to end. It meant a great deal to them, and during the week they looked forward to the next Sunday with the patience of people whose troubles have taught them to keep their expectations low. On the last Sunday in October, autumn had turned mean: winds swept through the streets, clouds sped overhead; it rained from
morning
until night, and all at once they felt alien and useless. They couldn’t wander through the streets all day with no umbrella, just the inverness coat for shelter. Yet it seemed pointless and unpleasant to sit at congested coffeehouse tables, just bumping knees underneath from time to time as a sign of intimacy, not being able to speak because of all the strangers, but not
knowing
where else to go. Eventually they found that time weighed heavily upon them, even though it was so precious.

They both knew what they needed. It was ridiculously little—a room, a room of their own, a few square feet of privacy, four walls that were theirs for the day. They knew how senseless it was, two young bodies that were attracted to each other dragging about aimlessly all day in damp clothes or sitting on chairs in overcrowded rooms, but they were afraid to risk
another
night in a hotel. The simplest thing would have been for Ferdinand to get a place so she could visit him there. But he earned only 170 schillings a month. He lived in an old woman’s house and to get to his little cell he had to go through her room, but he wasn’t about to leave. During his months out of work she’d trusted him to pay the rent and expenses later, and now he owed her two hundred schillings which he was
paying off month by month, and there was no hope of being out of debt for another three months. He didn’t tell Christine, he didn’t explain; despite their intimacy, he was still too ashamed to reveal his poverty or acknowledge his debts. But Christine had an idea it was money that was preventing him from moving out and getting a room, and she would have liked to lend him some, but the woman in her worried that she might wound him by seeming to be paying for the privilege of having him all to herself. She said nothing and they sat hopelessly in
smoke-filled
cafés, watching the windows, waiting for the rain to stop. The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don’t, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it—they felt this as never before and were filled with bitter rage when, in the dark of the early morning, they saw the brightly lit windows and knew that those glowing gold curtains gave shelter and freedom to hundreds of thousands of people, men with women they desired, while they themselves were
homeless
, plodding blindly through the streets, through the rain; it was cruel as only the sea could be cruel—the sea in which a person can die of thirst. Quiet, secluded rooms with light and warmth and soft beds, tens of thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, innumerable unused and unoccupied rooms, and only they had nothing, no place where they might lean close and brush lips for so much as a second, no help for their raging thirst, their fury at the senselessness of it all, except to delude themselves that it couldn’t go on like this forever, and so they both began to lie. In the coffeehouse he’d go over the classifieds with her; she saw him write letters of application, and then he said he had splendid prospects for a splendid job. A friend of his, a war buddy, was going to find him an administrative job in a large construction company. He’d make so much money that he’d be able to catch up with his engineering studies and become an architect. She said (this was not a lie) that she’d
requested a transfer to Vienna, formally applying to the head office, where her uncle had a lot of pull. In a week or two she was sure to get the good news. What she didn’t say was that in fact she’d surprised her uncle one evening. She’d rung the bell at eight thirty after listening at the windows: the family was at home. The bell had rung in the hall and then her uncle himself had appeared, looking somewhat nervous. It was too bad she’d come today, he said, her aunt and her cousins were away (from the coats in the hall she knew this was untrue) and he had two friends there for dinner, otherwise he’d ask her in, but was there anything he could do for her? She’d explained and he’d
listened
, saying, “Yes, yes, yes of course,” and she’d had no doubt that he was afraid she needed money and that he just wanted to send her on her way. None of which she told Ferdinand; why discourage him even more? Nor did she tell him that she’d bought a lottery ticket, and that she, like all poor people, expected a miracle. It was better to lie, to say she’d written her aunt to help her find work or come to America; when she was there she’d bring him over too and get him a job, they needed capable people there. He didn’t believe her; she didn’t believe him. So they sat around idly, their joy washed away by the rain and their eyes dimmed by the dimness, aware of the
hopelessness
of their situation. They talked about Independence Day and Christmas when they’d have two days off and go somewhere together, but November and December were far off: there was a long, empty, hopeless stretch of time to fill before then.

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.