The Post Office Girl Read Free Page A

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, traveledacross 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.
    But now the invitation was to be passed on to the daughter. Mrs. van Boolen had only to beckon: the liveried bellhop was there like a brown ramrod. He heard and obeyed the brief request for a telegraph form and sprinted finally with the completed sheet to the post office, his cap tight over his ears. A few minutes later the symbols sprang from the clattering telegraph up to the roof and into the vibrating strand of copper, and, more quickly than the rattling trains, inexpressibly morequickly than the automobiles with their trails of swirling dust, the message flashed through a thousand kilometers of wire. In no time it had crossed the border, had passed through Vorarlberg with its thousand peaks, through cute little Liechtenstein, the many valleyed Tyrol, and already the magically transformed communication was whizzing down from the glaciers into the middle of the valley of the Danube and into a transformer in Linz. There it paused a moment; then, quicker than quick, the message shot through the rooftop circuitry in Klein-Reifling and into the startled telegraph receiver, and from there straight into a heart that was stunned, confused, and brimming with feverish curiosity.
     
    Around the corner, up a dark creaky staircase, and Christine is home in the small-windowed attic room she shares with her mother in a narrow farmhouse. A broad projecting gable, though it helps to keep the snow away during the winter, also deprives the upper story of any ray of sun; not until evening does a weak sunbeam sometimes creep as far as the geraniums on the sill. It’s always musty and damp in this gloomy garret, it smells of decayed roofing and mildewy varnish; ancient odors permeate the wood like fungus. In ordinary times the room would probably have been used only for storage, but the severe housing shortage of the postwar period has made people accept modest living conditions. It’s a good thing only two beds, a table, and an old chest have to