The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig Read Free Book Online

magnificence everywhere—here a white waterfall tumbling headlong into a valley, there neat little stone houses tucked into crevices like birds’ nests, farther off an eagle circling proudly over the very highest heights, and above it all a wonderfully pure, sumptuous blue whose lush, exhilarating power she would never have thought possible. Againand again she returns to these Alps sprung overnight from her sleep, an incredible sight to someone leaving her narrow world for the first time. These immense granite mountains must have been here for thousands of years; they’ll probably still be here millions and millions of years from now, every one of them immovably where it’s always been, and if not for the accident of this journey, she herself would have died, rotted away, and turned to dust with no inkling of their glory. She’s been living as though all this didn’t exist, never saw it, hardly cared to; like a fool she dozed off in this tiny little room, hardly longer than her arm, hardly wide enough for her feet, just a night away, a day away from this infinitude, these manifold immensities! Indifferent and without desires before, now she’s beginning to realize what she’s been missing. This contact with the overpowering is her first encounter with travel’s disconcerting ability to strip the hard shell of habit from the heart, leaving only the bare, fertile kernel.
    Forgetting herself completely in this first explosive moment, full of passionate curiosity, she continues to stand in front of the landscape, her flushed cheek pressed to the window frame. She no longer thinks about what she’s left behind. Her mother, the office, the village, all are forgotten; forgotten too is the tenderly drawn map in her handbag from which she could have learned the names of all the peaks, all the streams tumbling into the valleys; forgotten is her own self of the day before. All that’s left is soaking up this ever-changing magnificence, these shifting panoramas, and inhaling the freezing air, sharp and pungent like juniper, this mountain air that makes the heart beat faster and harder. Christine doesn’t move from the window during the four hours of the trip. She’s so absorbed that she loses track of time, and her heart gives a lurch when the engine stops and the local conductor, his words strangely accented but unmistakable , announces her destination.
    “Good Lord!” Abruptly she comes to herself. There alreadyand she hasn’t given a thought to anything, how to greet her aunt, what to say. Hurriedly she fumbles for her suitcase and umbrella—mustn’t leave anything behind!—and rushes after the other passengers who are getting off. With military discipline, two ranks of colorfully capped porters fan out and set upon the arrivees, while the station buzzes with shouted names of hotels and loud welcomes. She is the only one with no one to meet her. Increasingly uneasy, her heart in her throat, she looks in all directions, searching anxiously. No one. Nothing. Everyone’s expected, everyone knows where to go, everyone but her. The travelers are already crowding around the cars from the hotels waiting in a shiny, colorful row like a regiment at the ready, the platform is already starting to empty. Still no one: they’ve forgotten her. Her aunt didn’t come; maybe she left, or she’s ill; they wrote calling it off but the telegram didn’t arrive in time. My God, is there at least enough money for the trip back! But first she gathers her remaining strength and goes up to a porter with “Palace Hotel” on his cap in gold letters, and asks in a small voice if a van Boolen family is staying there. “Sure, sure,” replies the stout, red-faced man in a guttural Swiss accent. Oh, and he was told there would be a young lady at the station. If she’d just step into the car and give him the baggage-compartment receipt for her large bags. Christine flushes with mortification, noticing for the first time that her seedy