The Post Office Girl (30 page)

She considered. “Well, at least forty thousand. Maybe even fifty … But why?”

He was almost stern. “You know why.”

She didn’t dare to contradict him—he was right, she did know why. They went on in silence. They passed a pond where frogs were croaking madly. Their snoring, taunting sound was almost painful. Abruptly Ferdinand stopped.

“Christine, let’s not kid each other. Things look bad for both of us, really bad, so we’ve got to be really straight with each other. Let’s think clearly and calmly.”

He lit a cigarette, and in the light she could see the tension in his face. “Let’s think, yes. Today we made up our minds to end it all, we were going to ‘take our lives,’ to use that cliché. But that’s not true. We didn’t want to take our lives, you and I. We just wanted out of our ruined lives at last, and there was no other way out. It was poverty we wanted out of—not life but this life, the senseless, abominable, unbearable, inescapable life we have. That’s all. And we thought the gun was the only way. But that was wrong. Now we know there’s another way after all, one last chance. The only question is whether we have the courage to seize the opportunity, and how to go about it.”

She was silent. He dragged on his cigarette.

“It’s going to have to be thought through and worked out completely coolly and realistically, like a mathematical problem … I won’t keep anything from you—frankly, I have to say that this is probably going to take more guts than the other way. The other business is easy. Twitch one finger, a flash, and it’s over. This way is harder, because it’s longer. You’re kept in suspense, not just for a second but for weeks, months, and all the time you’ve got to be hiding, you’ve got to be looking out for yourself. Something indefinite is always worse than
something
definite, a strong fear that doesn’t last very long is easier than one that’s nebulous but doesn’t go away. So what we’ve got to do first is consider whether we’re strong enough, whether we can stand up to the strain, and whether it’ll be worthwhile. Whether to end our lives smoothly and quickly, or start again. That’s the concern I have.”

He started walking again and she followed automatically. Her legs were doing the walking; her mind waited helplessly for what he was going to say next. She was so appalled, so drained of will that she couldn’t think.

Now he stopped. “Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t have a trace of moral scruple, when it comes to the state I feel
completely
free. It’s committed such terrible crimes against us all, against our generation, that we have a right to anything. I’m not worried about doing it damage, we’ll just be recovering some damages for our entire battered generation. Who taught me how to steal, who made me do it, if not the state? Commandeering, that’s the word they used during the war, or expropriating—Versailles called it reclamation. Who taught us how to cheat if not the state—how else would we know that money saved up by three generations could become worthless in a mere two weeks, that families could be swindled out of pastures, houses, and fields that had been theirs for a hundred years? Even if I kill someone, who trained me to do it? Six months on the drill field and then years at the front! We have an excellent case against
the state, by God, we’ll win in every court. It can never pay off its terrible debt, never give back what it took from us. Once there might have been a reason to have some qualms, back when the state was a good custodian, thrifty, decent, proper. Now that it’s behaved like a hoodlum, we have the right to be hoodlums too. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? There’s no reason for us not to even the score—I don’t have the tiniest doubt about that, and I don’t think you should. Why shouldn’t I go ahead and take my disability pension? It’s mine by rights, though the hallowed Treasury denies it, along with the money that was stolen from your father and mine and the living birthright that I and everybody like me was robbed of. No, I’m telling you my conscience is clear. Does the state worry about whether we live or die, and die a wretched death too? And if we steal a hundred slips of blue paper or a thousand or ten thousand, nobody in the country’s going to be any poorer for it—they’ll feel it as little as the meadow misses the grass the cow grazes on. So that doesn’t disturb me at all, and I think if I stole ten million I’d sleep as soundly as a bank director or a general who’s lost thirty battles. All I’m thinking about is us, you and me. We can’t go off half-cocked like some fifteen-year-old sales clerk who steals ten schillings from the till and blows it an hour later without ever knowing why or what for. We’re too old for that kind of thing. We’ve got just two cards left to play and it’s one or the other. A decision like this has to be made carefully.”

He walked on to collect his thoughts. She could feel his
concentration
, and his cool logic chilled her. She surrendered as never before to her sense of his superiority.

“We’ll take it slow, Christine, step by step. No diving into this. No fantasies or false hopes. Let’s think. Pack it in today and we’re finished with everything. One little movement and life is over. Actually a wonderful idea—I still remember the way my high-school teacher used to preach that the only respect in which man is superior to animals is that he can die when he
wants to, not just when he has to. Maybe it’s the one freedom you can always count on—the freedom to throw your life away. But the two of us, we’re still young, we don’t know what we’d be throwing away. We’d just be throwing away a life we didn’t want, a life we rejected, and yet it’s conceivable there’s another we might welcome. Life is different with money—at least I
believe
it is, and so do you. And if we believe in something—you do understand me?—then our ‘no’ to life isn’t completely true, and we’d be destroying something we have no right to destroy, the unlived life in us, the chance for something new, maybe something magnificent. That handful of money might allow something still unrealized inside me to flourish, something that can’t emerge now, that’s wilting like this stalk I’ve broken off, wilting just because I’ve broken it off. Something that would grow in me. And you? You might have children, you might … Who can say? … And the very fact that there’s no way to know is wonderful … You understand me, I think … The kind of life that’s behind us isn’t worth living, scraping along
miserably
from one week to the next, from one day off till the next one. But maybe, maybe it’s possible to make something of it, it would just take courage, more courage than the other way. And if it goes wrong after all, a gun isn’t hard to find. So what do you think … if the money’s pretty much there for the taking, why not just take it?”

“Yes, but … but where would we go with the money?”

“Abroad. I know foreign languages, I speak French, I even speak it very well, I speak excellent Russian, a little English too, and the rest can be learned.”

“Yes, but … they’ll investigate, don’t you think they’d find us?”

“I don’t know, no one can know that. Possibly, even
probably
, but maybe not. I think it depends more on us—whether we can stick it out, whether we’re smart enough, careful enough,
whether we think things through properly. Of course it’ll be a terrible strain on us—probably not a good life, with people hunting us, being eternally on the run. I can’t speak for you. Do you have the guts? You’ve got to be sure.”

Christine tried to think. It was all so sudden. She said, “On my own I don’t have the courage for anything. I’m a woman—I can’t do anything just for myself, I can only do something for someone else, with someone else. But for two people, for you, I can do anything. So if it’s what you want … ”

He picked up his pace.

“That’s just it, I don’t know if it’s what I want. You say it’s easy for you with someone else. For me it would be easier alone. I’d know what I was getting into. A ruined, mangled life—fine, chuck it. But I’d be worried about dragging you along. It wasn’t your idea, it was mine. I don’t want to drag you into anything, I don’t want to seduce you into doing anything, and if you’re going to do something, you’ve got to do it for your own sake, not for mine.”

Little lights emerged behind the trees. They were coming to the end of the path across the fields. Soon they’d be at the station.

Christine was still dazed. “But … how are you going to do this,” she said anxiously. “I don’t understand. Where will we go? I always read in the paper about how they catch all these people. So what are you picturing?”

“I haven’t even begun to think about it. You overestimate me. Ideas come in a flash, but only fools act on them
without
thinking. That’s why they always get caught. There are two kinds of crimes (to use the word conventionally): crimes of
passion
and crimes that are premeditated, thought out beforehand. The crimes of passion may be more beautiful, but most of them go wrong. Those clerks who raid the till in order to go to the races, sure they’ll win or somehow the boss won’t notice, they
all believe in miracles. But I don’t believe in miracles, I know that the two of us are completely alone, all alone against a vast organization that’s been built up over centuries and commands the expertise and experience of thousands of individual
investigators
. The individual detective may be an idiot and I may be a hundred times smarter and more cunning, but they have
experience
and the system is behind them. If we—notice I’m still saying ‘if’—if we really decide to do this, it can’t be reckless or childish. What’s done rashly is done badly. It has to be planned down to the last detail—every contingency has to be worked out. It’s a matter of probabilities. Let’s think it all through
carefully
and precisely. Come to Vienna on Sunday and we’ll decide then, not now.”

He stopped, his voice suddenly brighter. It was his other voice, the child’s voice hidden inside him that she loved.

“Isn’t it amazing? This afternoon you went back to work and I went for a walk. I looked at the world again—it was the last time, I thought. There it was, so bright and beautiful, so full of warm sunny life, and there I was, still fairly young and quick and spirited. I reckoned everything up and asked myself what I’d actually accomplished in this world, and the answer was painful. Sad to say, I haven’t acted or thought for myself at all. At school I studied what the teachers wanted me to study and thought what they wanted me to think. In the war they gave me orders and I went through all their drills and paces. When I was a prisoner I had just one wild dream—someday I’ll be out!—but doing nothing wore me down, and when I got home I toiled for other people, mindlessly, aimlessly, just for a scrap of food and a pittance so I could go on breathing. Sunday will be the first time I’ve had a chance to think for a while about something that concerns me alone, me and you; and I’m looking forward to it. You know, I’d like us to build it like a bridge, a structure where every nail and screw has to be in its place and a millimeter’s
difference
is enough to bring it down. I want to build this thing to
last for years. It’s a great responsibility, I know, but for the first time it’s my responsibility—yours too—not some squalid little responsibility like what they give you in the military or in those companies where you’re just a nobody answering to
somebodies
you don’t even know. Whether we do it or not, we’ll have to see—but still, just to have an idea, to think it through, work it out, and calculate the alternatives down to the ultimate
consequences
, that’ll be a pleasure I’d never expected to have. It’s good I came today.”

They were near the station; they could make out the lights distinctly. They stopped.

“Better not come with me. Half an hour ago it wouldn’t have mattered whether anyone saw us together. Now I can’t be seen with you—that’s” (he laughed) “part of our great plan. Nobody can suspect that you have an accomplice, and if someone was able to describe me that wouldn’t help us a bit. Christine, we have to start thinking of everything now, I told you it won’t be easy, the other way would have been easier. But on the other hand I’ve never known, we’ve never known, what it is to be alive. I’ve never seen the ocean, I’ve never been abroad. I’ve
never
known what life is—always thinking about what everything costs means we’ve never been free. Maybe we can’t know the value of life until we are. Sit tight and stay calm, don’t worry, I’m going to work everything out down to the last detail, on paper even, and then we’ll review it point by point and weigh the possibilities. And then we’ll decide. Do you want to?”

“Yes,” she said, loud and clear.

The wait until Sunday was unbearable for Christine. For the first time she was afraid of herself, afraid of people, afraid of things. It became a torment to unlock the till in the morning, handle the banknotes. Were they hers, or were they
government
property? Were they all still there? She counted and
recounted 
the blue bills and never got to the end of it—either her hand began to tremble or she lost track of the total. Her
confidence
was gone, and with it any objectivity. She was
uncertain
, confused: she thought everyone must know her intentions, be in on her fears, be watching her and spying on her. “This is madness,” she reasoned with herself. “I’ve done nothing. We’ve done nothing. Everything’s in order, every banknote’s in the safe, the accounts balance, let anyone inspect them.” But it did no good: she couldn’t bear people’s eyes on her, and when the telephone rang, she quailed and needed all her strength to lift the receiver to her ear. And she nearly passed out when, on Friday morning, the policeman came in unexpectedly, his tread heavy and his bayonet clanking. She clutched the table with both hands as though hanging on for dear life, but the
policeman
, his Virginia cigar in the corner of his mouth, only wanted to send a money order to the young mother of his illegitimate child, his monthly payment, and he joked with good-natured acerbity about how long he’d be paying for his brief pleasure. But she couldn’t laugh, and her hand shook as she filled out the money order. Only when the door banged shut behind him was she able to breathe again, pulling out the drawer to
convince
herself that the money was still there, 32,712 schillings and 40 groschen, precisely as entered in the ledger. At night she couldn’t sleep, and when she did she had frightful dreams, since imagination is always more terrible than reality, and what has yet to happen is more dreadful than what already has.