The Post Office Girl (29 page)

“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!”

She was still clutching him, but now her arms stiffened.
Silently
she let go.

“Don’t you understand how I feel?” he asked, raising his eyes calmly. “You’ve always been honest with me.”

After a moment she said simply, “From time to time it
crosses
my mind too. Only I never dared to think about it so clearly. You’re right—there’s no sense in going on this way.”

He looked at her uncertainly. He desperately wanted to
believe
. He said, “You would too?”

“Yes, with you.”

She said it calmly and firmly, as though she were talking about going for a walk. “By myself I’m not brave enough, I don’t know … I haven’t given any thought to how it’s done, or I might have done it a long time ago.”

“You’d …” He was stammering with happiness as he seized her hands.

“Yes,” she repeated calmly, “whenever you want, but
together
. I won’t lie to you any longer. The transfer to Vienna wasn’t approved, and here in the village I’m perishing. Better quickly than slowly. And I never did write to America. I know they won’t help me, they’ll send ten or twenty dollars—what good’s that going to do? I don’t want to agonize, I’d rather it was quick, you’re right!”

He gazed at her for a long time. He’d never looked at her with such feeling. His hard face relaxed, and a smile began to
show behind the challenge in his eyes. He stroked her hands. “I never thought that you … that you’d go so far with me. Now it’s twice as easy for me. I was worried about you.”

They sat with fingers entwined. A passerby would have taken them for newly engaged lovers who had walked up the little Stations of the Cross path to seal their betrothal. They’d never felt so untroubled, so confident together; for the first time they were sure of each other and sure of the future. They sat for a long time gazing at each other, their expressions calm, clear, and at peace, their hands joined. Then she asked quietly, “How … how do you want to do it?”

He reached into his back pocket and brought out an army revolver. The November sun glinted on the polished barrel. There was nothing frightening about the weapon.

“In the temple,” he said. “Don’t be afraid, I have a steady hand, I won’t shake … And then in my heart. It’s an army
revolver
of the heaviest caliber, you can feel safe. It’ll be all over before they hear the two shots in the village. There’s no reason to be afraid.”

She looked calmly at the gun, with practical curiosity but without agitation. Then, glancing up, she glimpsed the man of sorrows and the cross rising massively above the stone bench on which they sat.

“Not here,” she said quickly, “not here and not now.
Because
…” (she looked at him, her hand tighter than his) “first I’d like to be together again … really together, without fear and without loathing … A whole night … Maybe we’ve still got something to say to each other … Those last things that people otherwise never get to say … And then … I’d like to be with you once, with just you for one night … Then they’ll find us in the morning.”

“Yes,” he replied. “You’re right, one should get the best out of life before throwing it away. Forgive me for not thinking of that.”

Again they sat in silence. A breeze caressed them, the sun was warm and pleasant. They felt good—happy and
miraculously
untroubled. Then the church bells in the village rang, once, twice, three times. She gave a start. “A quarter of two!”

A bright laugh lit up his face. “See, that’s what we’re like. You’re brave and you’re not afraid to die, but you’re afraid of being late for work. That’s how enslaved we are, that’s how ingrained it is. It really is time to shake all that nonsense off. Do you really want to go back there?”

“Yes,” she said, “it’s better that way. I’d like to put
everything
in order first. It’s silly, but I don’t know…I’ll feel
better
once I’ve straightened things up and written a few letters. And then…if I’m there until six this evening, no one will
suspect
and go looking for me. And tonight we can go to Krems or St. Pölten or to Vienna. I still have enough money for a good room, and we’ll have dinner and do what we want to do for once…It has to be nice, completely nice, and when they find us tomorrow morning nothing will matter. Come by at six. It won’t make any difference if they see me, let them say and think whatever they want…Then I’ll close the door
behind
me and everything else will be behind me too…Then we’ll really be free.”

He kept gazing at her. Her unexpected resolve made his heart lift.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll come at six. Until then I’ll go for a walk and have one more look at the world. So—
auf Wiedersehen
.”

She ran down the path, feeling serene and lighthearted. When she looked back, he was watching. He pulled out his handkerchief and waved it. “
Auf Wiedersehen! Auf Wiedersehen
!”

Christine went in. Now everything was easy. The desk, the chair, the counter, the scale, the telephone, the piles of paper, all the
objects no longer lay in wait for her like enemies. They did not mock her silently (
thousands, thousands, thousands of times
): she knew now that the door was open. One step and she’d be free.

She felt wonderfully calm, as serene as a meadow falling into shadow in the evening. Work seemed as easy as play. She wrote a few letters—one to her sister, one to the post office, one to Fuchsthaler to say goodbye—and she marveled at the clarity of her handwriting, the evenness of the lines, the
precise
calligraphic spacing of the words, as effortlessly neat as her homework had been back in school. All the while people were coming in with their mail or requesting telephone connections, piling up parcels on the counter, paying bills. And each time she helped them with special attention and courtesy. Without being aware of it she wanted these insignificant people who meant nothing to her—Thomas, Frau Huber, the forest ranger’s
assistant
, the grocer’s apprentice, the butcher’s wife—she wanted them to have a pleasant memory of her; it was her last trace of feminine vanity. And when one of them said “
Auf Wiedersehen
” and she responded “
Auf Wiedersehen
” with twice as much feeling, she smiled a special little smile because now she was
breathing
a different air, the air of deliverance. Then she took up the unfinished backlog, counted and estimated, put everything in order. Her desk had never been so neat. She even wiped off the ink stains and straightened the calendar on the wall—her
successor
would have nothing to complain about. No one would have anything to complain about, because she was happy now. She was putting her life in order and everything here should be in order too.

She worked so happily, so briskly and diligently, that she lost track of time and was surprised to hear the door.

“Is it really six already? My goodness, I hadn’t noticed.
Another
ten, twenty minutes and I’ll be finished with everything, I’d like to leave everything just so, you see. Let me close out the books and lock up the cash and I’ll be all yours.”

He was going to go wait outside. “No, no, sit down, I’ll
lower
the shutters outside, and it doesn’t matter if they see us leave together, tomorrow they’ll know it all anyway.”

“Tomorrow,” he smiled. “I’m glad there won’t be a
tomorrow
. For us anyway. The walk was wonderful, the sky, the
colors
, the woods. He was quite an architect, old God, a little
old-fashioned
, but better than I ever could have been.”

She took him into the inner sanctum behind the glass, where no other outsider had ever set foot. “I don’t have a chair to offer you, our Republic isn’t that generous, but sit down on the windowsill and have a smoke. I’ll be done in ten minutes” (she breathed a sigh of provisional relief) “done with everything.”

She added the columns one after another; it went quickly and easily. Then she took the black money pouch out of the till and balanced the books. She stacked up the banknotes—the fives, tens, hundreds, and thousands—on the desk, moistened her index finger on the sponge, and counted the blue bills with practiced deftness, quickly and mechanically, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty; she jotted down the total for each
denomination
, already impatient to check the figure in the books against the cash on hand and draw the bottom line, that final, liberating stroke of the pencil.

She heard a sound behind her and glanced up to find
Ferdinand
looking over her shoulder. He was breathing hard.

“What is it?” she said in alarm.

“Allow me” (his voice was dry) “allow me to look for a
moment
. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a thousand-schilling note and I’ve never seen so many all at once.”

He held one delicately between his fingers as though afraid it would break, and she saw his hand trembling. What was wrong with him? He was looking so oddly at the blue bill. His narrow nostrils quivered and there was a strange light in his eyes.

“So much money … Do you always have this much here?”

“Yes, of course, and this isn’t even that much, 11,570
schillings
. At the end of the quarter, when the winegrowers pay their taxes or the factory sends out wages, it can be as much as forty, fifty, even sixty thousand. Once it was eighty thousand.”

He stared at the desk. He kept his hands behind his back, as though he were frightened.

“And it doesn’t … it doesn’t make you nervous to have all that money in your desk? You’re not afraid?”

“Afraid? Of what? The building is protected—see those thick iron bars—and Weidenhof and his family live over the grocery next door, they’d certainly hear if someone broke in. And at night it’s always put away. No, nothing’s going to happen.”

“I’d be afraid,” he said tensely.

“Nonsense. Of what?”

“Of myself.”

Glancing at him, she saw that his mouth was half open. His eyes avoided hers. He began to pace.

“I couldn’t stand it, not for an hour. I couldn’t breathe with so much money around me. All the time I’d be thinking, that’s a thousand schillings, just a rectangular scrap of paper, and if I stuffed it in my pocket I’d be free, for three months, half a year, a whole year, I could do what I wanted and have my own life, and with that much—what did you say?—11,570 schillings, we could live for two years, three years, we could see the world and really be alive for every minute of it, not the way we’ve been living but the way we want to live, we could live the lives of the people we were born to be, let those people come out of us, become those people, instead of being stuck. All you’d have to do is reach out and take it, like this, one little
movement
and off you’d go, free. No, I never could have stood it, it would have driven me mad looking at it, having it so close, smelling it, feeling it, knowing it belongs to that idiot puppet, the government, which doesn’t breathe and isn’t alive and
doesn’t want or know anything, the stupidest thing people have ever invented, something that crushes people. I would have gone out of my mind … I would have locked myself in at night to stop myself from taking the key and opening the drawer, and you—you were able to live with it! Haven’t you ever considered it?”

“No,” she said, shocked. “Never.”

“Well, the government was just lucky. Scoundrels always are. But finish up now” (he said it almost angrily) “finish up, put the money away. I can’t look at it any longer.”

She closed the drawer quickly, with shaking fingers. Then they left for the train station. It was already dark. Through the lighted windows people could be seen at their dinner tables, and as they passed the last window a soft, rhythmic murmur rolled out: the evening prayer. He said nothing, she said nothing—it was as if they were not alone. There was an idea traveling with them like a shadow. They felt it in front of them and behind them, inside them, and it was still with them as they took the road out of the village and without thinking quickened their pace.

Beyond the last house, they were in darkness. The sky was brighter than the earth, and the trees along the road stood out against its glassy light; like charred fingers, the black skeletons of the bare branches reached into the still air. Scattered
peasants
and wagons moved along the road, heard more than seen. Footsteps and the rumbling of the heavy carts told them that they were not alone.

“Isn’t there a path across the fields to the station? A path no one uses?”

“Yes,” said Christine, “turn here, off to the right.” She was glad he’d said something. For a second she could stop thinking about the dangerous, shadowy idea that had been silently
dogging
them since they left the post office.

Ferdinand walked alongside her in silence, as though he’d forgotten her. His hand never brushed hers. Then abruptly he asked (the words fell heavily, like a stone), “Do you think that at the end of the month there might be as much as thirty thousand?”

She knew what he had in mind, but she controlled her voice to keep from showing it. “Yes, I think so.”

“And if you delay the deposits too … If you hold on to the taxes or whatever you’ve got there for a few extra days—they won’t be keeping such close track of things if I know anything about Austria—then how much would you be able to scrape together?”