The Post Office Girl Read online

  The Post Office Girl

  STEFAN ZWEIG

  Translated from the German by

  JOEL ROTENBERG

  with an afterword by

  WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  Afterword by William Deresiewicz

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  ONE VILLAGE post office in Austria is much like another: seen one and you’ve seen them all. Each with identical meager furnishings provided (or rather issued, like uniforms) during Franz Josef’s rule, all drawn from the same stock, their sad look of administrative stinginess is the same everywhere. Even in the most remote mountain villages of the Tyrol, in the shadow of the glaciers, they stubbornly retain that unmistakable odor of old Austrian officialdom, a smell of stale cheap tobacco and dusty files. The layout never varies: a wooden partition perforated by glass wickets divides the room, according to a precisely prescribed ratio, into This Side and That Side—the public sphere and the official one. The state’s failure to give much thought to the significant amount of time spent by its citizens in the public area is clear from the absence of seating or any other amenities. In most cases the only piece of furniture in the public area is a rickety stand-up desk propped against the wall, its cracked oilcloth covered with innumerable inkblots, though no one can remember finding anything but congealed, moldy, unusable goo in the recessed inkwell, and if there happens to be a pen lying in the grooved gutter, the nib is always bent and useless. The thrifty Treasury attaches as little significance to beauty as to comfort: since the Republic took Franz Josef’s picture down, what might be called interior decoration is limited to the garish posters on the dirty whitewashed walls inviting one to attend exhibitions which have long since closed, to buy lottery tickets, and even, in certain neglectful offices, to take out war loans. With these cheap wall coverings and possibly an admonition not to smoke, heeded by no one, the state’s generosity to the public ends.

  But the area beyond the official barrier evidently demands more respect. Here the state arrays the unmistakable symbols of its power and reach. The iron safe in the corner may actually contain considerable sums from time to time, or so the bars on the windows seem to suggest. The centerpiece gleaming on the wheeled worktable is a well-polished brass telegraph; next to it the more unassuming telephone receiver sleeps on a black nickel cradle. These two items are accorded a certain amount of space betokening honor and respect, for, via copper wires, they link the tiny, remote village with the width and breadth of the Reich. The other postal implements are forced to crowd together: the package scales and weights, the letter bags, books, folders, brochures, and index files, the petty cash, the black, blue, red, and indigo pencils, the clips and clasps, the twine, sealing wax, moistening sponge, and blotter, the gum arabic, the knives and scissors, the bookbinder’s bone folder, all the varied equipment of the postal service lies in a jumble on a desk hardly broader than a forearm is long, while the many drawers and boxes hold an inconceivable profusion of papers and forms, each different from the last. But the seeming extravagance with which these objects are scattered about is deceptive, for every last piece of this cheap equipment is stealthily and inexorably enumerated by the state. From this pencil stub to that torn stamp, from the frayed blotter sheet to the used bar of soap in the metal sink, from the lightbulb illuminating the office to the iron key for locking it up, the Treasury is unyielding in demanding that its employees account for each and every piece of public property either in use or consumed. Next to the iron stove hangs a detailed inventory, typewritten, officially stamped, and bearing an illegible signature, which catalogues with relentless precision even the humblest and most worthless items in the post office in question. No object not on this list has any place in the official area, and, conversely, every item entered on it must be present and to hand at all times. Orderly and by the book—that’s the official way of doing things.

  It stands to reason that this typed inventory would also specify the individual whose job it is to raise the wicket every day at eight o’clock, the one who sets in motion the inert implements, who opens the mailbags, stamps the letters, pays the postal orders, and writes the receipts, who weighs the packages and deploys the blue, the red, the indigo pencils to scrawl strange hieroglyphics on them, who lifts the telephone receiver and switches on the telegraph machine. But for some reason the name of this individual, known to the public as a postal official or the postmaster, is not listed there. The name is on another official record, in another drawer, in another section of the postal administration, but is similarly kept on file, updated, and subject to review.

  Within this official area sanctified by the bureaucratic aristocracy, no visible change is allowed. The eternal law of growth and decline is suspended at the barrier of officialdom; while outside, around the building, trees come into bloom and become bare again, children grow up and die old and gray, buildings fall into ruin and rise again in another form, the bureaucracy demonstrates its more than earthly power by staying the same forever. For any object within this sphere which is used up or worn out or lost is replaced by another identical object, requisitioned and delivered by the appropriate agency, thus providing the inconstant world with an example of the superiority of the powers that be. The substance passes, the form remains. On the wall hangs a calendar. Each day a page is torn off, seven times a week, thirty times a month. By December 31 the calendar has been used up, but a new one has been ordered, in the same format, the same size, the same style; the year changes, but the calendar remains the same. On the table is a columned ledger book. When the left side is filled, the amount is carried to the right, and so on from one page to the next. When the last page is full and the end of the book has been reached, a new one is begun, of the same type, in the same format, indistinguishable from the old one. Whatever disappears is back the next day, as unchanging as the work of the office, and thus the same objects lie immutably on the same tabletop, always the identical pages and pencils and clips and forms, always different and always the same. Nothing leaves this realm of the Treasury, nothing is added to it, life goes on here without fading or flowering, or rather death never ends. The many kinds of objects differ only in their rhythm of attrition and renewal, not in their fate. A pencil lasts a week; then it has run its course and is replaced by an identical new one. A postal service manual lasts a month, a lightbulb three months, a calendar a year. The rush-seat chair is allotted three years until it’s due to be replaced, the individual who sits out his life on it some thirty or thirty-five years of service; then a new individual is seated on the chair, just the same as the old one.

  In 1926, in the post office in Klein-Reifling, an inconsequential village not far from Krems, some two hours by train from Vienna, this interchangeable fixture “civil servant” is a member of the female sex and, as this facility belongs to a lower census class, has the bureaucratic designation of postal official. Not much more of her is visible through the wicket than the pleasant profile of an ordinary young woman, somewhat thin-lipped and pale and with a hint of circles under the eyes; late in the day, when she turns on the harsh electric lights, a close observer might notice a few slight lines on her forehead and wrinkles around her eyes. Still, this young woman, along with the hollyhocks in the window and the sprig of elder that she has put in the metal washbasin today for her own pleasure, is easily the freshest thing in the Klein-Reifling post office; she seems good for at least another twenty-five years of service. Her hand with its pale fingers will raise and lower the same rattly wicket thousands upon thousands of times more, will toss hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of letters onto the canceling desk with the same swiveling motion, wil
l slam the blackened brass canceler onto hundreds of thousands or millions of stamps with the same brief thump. Probably the wrist will even learn to function better and better, ever more mechanically and unconsciously, detached more and more completely from the conscious self. The hundreds of thousands of letters will always be different letters, but always letters. The stamps different stamps, but always stamps. The days different, but each one lasting from eight o’clock until noon, from two o’clock until six o’clock, and the work of the office, as the years come and go, always the same, the same, the same.

  Perhaps, behind her wicket on this soundless summer morning, the ash-blond postal official herself is musing about these events to come, or perhaps she’s just lost in a languid daydream. In any case her hands, unoccupied, have slipped off the worktable and into her lap, where they rest, folded, slender, tired, pale. On this blue, stiflingly hot July morning, there’s little to do in the Klein-Reifling post office. The morning’s work is done, the hunchbacked, tobacco-chewing postman Hinterfellner has long since delivered the letters, there will be no packages or trade samples from the factory arriving for shipment before evening, and the country people have neither the time nor the inclination to write to anyone just now. The peasants are far off in the vineyards, hoeing under the shelter of their yard-wide straw hats, while the children on summer vacation romp bare-legged in the brook, and the irregular pavement outside the door lies empty in the seething, brassy noontime blaze. It’s good to be inside now, good to dream. The papers and official forms doze in their drawers and on their shelves in the shadows cast by the lowered blinds, the metal office equipment glints feebly and lazily through the golden half-light. Silence covers everything like thick golden dust, except for a miniature summer concert: the thin violins of the gnats and the dusky cello of a bumblebee caught between the windowpanes. The only thing in constant motion in the room (somewhat cooler now) is the wood-framed clock on the wall between the windows, which gulps down a drop of time every second. But it’s a weak, monotonous sound, lulling rather than stimulating. Thus the postal official sits in a kind of pleasant waking paralysis at the center of her little sleeping world. She’d meant to do some needlework—this is clear from the needles and scissors there at hand—but she has neither the will nor the strength to pick up the embroidery lying rumpled on the floor. She leans back comfortably in her chair, hardly breathing, eyes closed, and basks in the strange and wonderful feeling of permissible idleness.

  Clack! She starts. And again, harder, more metallic, more insistent: clack, clack, clack. The telegraph hammers wildly, the mechanism whirs: that rare visitor to Klein-Reifling, a telegram, is requesting a respectful reception. The postal official pulls herself out of her lazy half sleep, moves quickly to the wheeled table, and starts the tape. But no sooner has she deciphered the first words of unwinding type than she feels herself flushing to the roots of her hair: she’s never seen her own name on a telegram here. Now the entire dispatch has been banged out. She reads it once, twice, three times and still doesn’t understand. What can this be? Who could be sending her a telegram from Pontresina? “Christine Hoflehner, Klein-Reifling, Austria, Welcome, come any time, choose your day, wire arrival time in advance. Best, Claire—Anthony.” She ponders: Who is this Anthony who’s expecting her? Is somebody in the office playing a silly prank? But then she remembers something her mother said weeks ago, that her aunt would be coming over to Europe this summer, and, that’s right, her name is Klara. And Anthony, that must be Klara’s husband, Anton is the name her mother has always used. Yes, now it’s coming back, a few days ago there was a letter for her mother from Cherbourg—Christine herself took it to her. She was tight-lipped about it, didn’t say what it was. But this telegram is addressed to her, Christine. Does it mean she’s supposed to go up to Pontresina to see her aunt? There’s been no mention of it. Her eyes return to the still-unglued tape, the only telegram she’s ever received in her own name here. She reads and rereads the strange document, at a loss, curious, disbelieving, confused. No, it can’t possibly wait until her lunch hour. She has to ask her mother what it all means right now. She snatches up the key, locks the office, and runs home. In her excitement she neglects to disconnect the arm of the telegraph; the brass hammer, forgotten in the empty room, goes on clacking and clattering furiously over the blank and unmarked tape.

  Electricity moves at a speed greater than thought, a speed too great for thought to grasp. These twelve words, which have landed like a white, soundless thunderbolt in the airless humidity of the Austrian post office, were written only minutes before and three countries away, in the cool blue shadow of glaciers, under the clear violet Engadine sky, and the ink was not even dry on the telegraph form when the message, the summons, burst upon a bewildered consciousness.

  Here’s what happened. Anthony van Boolen, born in Holland but for many years an established cotton broker in the American South; Anthony van Boolen, a good-natured, phlegmatic, and when you come down to it utterly insignificant man, had just finished his breakfast on the terrace (all glass and light) of the Palace Hotel. Then came the nicotine-laden culmination of the meal, the tuberous brownish-black Havana that he’d had specially imported in an airtight tin. This rather stout gentleman rested his legs on a wicker chair as he took the first and most invigorating puff with the schooled pleasure of the experienced smoker, then unfurled the paper spinnaker of the New York Herald and sailed off into the vast typeset sea of the stock market and brokerage listings. Meanwhile, across from him at the table, his bored wife, Claire (formerly Klara), divided her grapefruit into sections. She knew from many years of experience that any conversational sally against the usual early-morning wall of paper would have no hope of success. Thus the comical bellhop, brown-capped and apple-cheeked, was not unwelcome when he suddenly pivoted sharply in front of her with the morning mail. The tray held a single letter. But it was evidently something of great interest, for, ignoring long experience, she tried to interrupt her husband’s morning reading: “Anthony, excuse me a moment,” she said. The newspaper did not move. “I don’t want to disturb you, Anthony, but listen for just a second, it’s urgent. Mary” (she automatically gave the name its English form) “Mary has just sent her regrets. She can’t come, she says, she’d like to but she’s in a bad way with her heart, it’s serious, and her doctor thinks she couldn’t stand the two thousand meters. He says it’s out of the question. But if it’s all right with us she’d be glad to send Christine here for two weeks in her place, you know who that is, the youngest one, the blond. You saw a photo of her once before the war. She works in a post office, but she’s never taken a proper vacation, and if she puts in for it she’ll get it immediately, and of course after so many years she’d be glad to ‘pay her respects to you, dear Klara, and Anthony,’ etc., etc.”

  The newspaper did not move. Claire became impatient. “So what do you think, should we ask her to come? … It wouldn’t hurt the poor thing to get a breath or two of fresh air, and anyway it’s only right. As long as I’m over here I really ought to meet my sister’s child, we’re hardly family anymore. Do you have any objections to my inviting her?”

  The newspaper rustled a little. A smoke ring rose over the top edge of the paper, round, a pretty blue; then, in a ponderous and indifferent tone: “Not at all. Why should I?”

  With this laconic decision the conversation ended and a fate began to take shape. After an interval of decades a family tie was being renewed, for, despite the almost aristocratic-sounding name with its impressive but actually quite ordinary Dutch “van,” and even though the couple’s conversation was in English, this Claire van Boolen was none other than the sister of Marie Hoflehner and hence incontestably the aunt of the Klein-Reifling postal official. Her departure from Austria more than a quarter of a century earlier had come in the train of a somewhat shady business which she recalled only vaguely (memory is always happy to oblige) and of which her sister too had never given her daughters a clear account. At the time, howeve
r, the affair had caused quite a sensation and would have had still greater consequences had not prudent and clever men soon deprived public curiosity of the spark that would have inflamed it. At that time Mrs. Claire van Boolen had been plain Fräulein Klara, a simple dress model in an exclusive boutique on the Kohlmarkt. But, flashing-eyed and graceful as she was then, she’d had a devastating effect on an elderly lumber baron who had gone along with his wife to a fitting. Full of last-ditch impetuosity, the rich and still fairly well-preserved businessman fell for the lively, shapely blond within a matter of days and began courting her with a generosity that was rare even in his circles. Before long the nineteen-year-old model, much to the indignation of her respectable family, was riding in a hackney coach wearing the finest clothes and furs, items which until then she’d only modeled in front of mirrors for finicky and usually hard-to-please customers, but which were now her very own. The more elegant she became, the more she pleased her elderly benefactor, and the more she pleased the old businessman, who’d been thrown into a complete tizzy by his unexpected success in love, the more lavishly he decked her out. After a few weeks she’d softened him up so thoroughly that divorce papers were already being secretly drafted and she was well on her way to becoming one of the wealthiest women in Vienna—but then the wife, alerted by an anonymous letter, intervened aggressively and foolishly. Understandably infuriated at being abruptly put out to pasture like a hobbled horse after thirty tranquil years of marriage, she bought a revolver and set upon the mismatched couple in their love nest, a recently established cheap hotel. She fired two shots at the home wrecker on the spot. One went wide; the other hit Klara in the upper arm. The wound would prove trivial, but everything else was awkward indeed: neighbors scurrying past, loud cries for help through smashed windows, doors flying open, swoons and scenes, doctors, police, investigations, and, looming at the end of it all, apparently unavoidable, the court hearing, feared by all parties because of the scandal. Fortunately, there are clever lawyers—not just in Vienna but everywhere—who are practiced in hushing up such troubling episodes for the well-to-do. Counselor Karplus, the proven master of them all, immediately dispelled the imminent dangers of the affair. He respectfully summoned Klara to his office. Looking extremely elegant, with a fetching bandage, she read with curiosity through the contract, which stipulated that she depart for America immediately, before anyone could serve her with a summons; once there she would receive a one-time payment for damages and a certain sum of money on the first of every month for five years, provided she kept her mouth shut. Klara, who in any case had little wish to go back to being a dress model in Vienna after this scandal, and whose own family had thrown her out, glanced through the four foolscap pages of the contract without protest, rapidly calculated the amount, found it surprisingly high, and thought she’d see what would happen if she demanded an additional thousand gulden. This too was granted. She signed the contract with a quick smile, traveled across the sea, and never regretted her decision. Even during the crossing all sorts of marriage opportunities presented themselves, and a decisive one soon came along: in a New York boardinghouse she met Anthony van Boolen. At the time he was only a minor commission agent for a Dutch exporter, but he quickly resolved that he would set up on his own in the South using the small capital which she contributed and whose romantic origin he never suspected. After three years she had two children, after five years a house, and after ten years a considerable fortune (the same war that was wrathfully crushing the wealthy in Europe was causing wealth to grow by leaps and bounds everywhere else). By now their two sons, grown up and business-minded, were already taking the reins at their father’s brokerage, and after so many years the two older people could permit themselves a relatively lengthy and leisurely trip to Europe. And strangely: when the low shores of Cherbourg emerged from the fog, in that fraction of a second Claire suddenly felt her sense of home change completely. She’d long since become deeply American, yet she felt an unexpected pang of nostalgia for her youth just because this bit of land was Europe. That night she dreamt of the little cribs in which she and her sister had slept side by side, a thousand tiny details came back to her; suddenly realizing she hadn’t written a word for years to her impoverished, widowed sister, she felt ashamed. The feeling gave her no rest. She went straight from the landing to send her the letter inviting her to come, enclosing with it a hundred-dollar bill.