A Young Girl's Diary · Chapter 7Second Year, Age Twelve to Thirteen (2)
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But what annoys me most of all was this piece of cheek of Dora’s; she says that Lizzi said: “We used to delight in those things at one time,” but I was in such a rage that I did not hear it. But to eat all the best things off the Christmas tree on the sly!!! I saw it myself, that is nothing. That’s quite fit and proper for a girl of 15. After supper yesterday I asked: But what’s become of the second marzipan sandwich, I’m sure there were two on the tree. And I looked at her steadily till she got quite red. And after a time I said: the big basket of vegetables is gone too. Then she said. Yes, I took it, I don’t need to ask your permission. As for the sandwich, Oswald took that. I was in such a temper, and then Father said: Come, come, you little witch, cool your wrath with the second sandwich and wash it down with a sip of liqueur. For Grandfather sent Father a bottle of liqueur.
December 30th. This is a fine ending to the year. I’ve no interest in the school any longer. We’re silly little fools, love-sick and forward minxes. That’s all the thanks we get for having gone every Tuesday and Friday to the school at half past 8 to arrange everything and dust everything and then he can say a thing like that. I shall never write he with a big h again; he is not worthy of it. And I had to swallow it all, choke it down, for I simply must not excite Hella. It made me frightfully angry when Mother told me, but still I’m glad for I know what line to take now. Mother was paying a call yesterday and the sister of our gymnastic master, who is at the —— High School, happened to be there, and she told Mother that her cousin Dr. W. is so much annoyed because the girls in the high school are so forward. Such silly little fools, and the little minxes begin it already in the First Class. For that reason he prefers to teach boys, they are fond of him too but they don’t make themselves such an infernal nuisance. Well, now that I know I shant make myself a nuisance to him any more. On Friday, when the next lesson is, I shall go there 2 minutes before nine and take the things into the class-room without saying a word. And I shall tell Kalinsky too that we’re such an infernal nuisance to him. Just fancy, as if we were in the First Class!
January 1st, 19—. This business with Prof. W. makes me perfectly furious. Hella kept on asking yesterday what was the matter, said I seemed different somehow. But thank goodness I was able to keep it in. I must keep it in for the sake of her health, even if it makes me ill. Anyway what use is life now. Since people are so falsehearted. He always looked so awfully nice and charming; when I think of the way in which he asked how Hella was and all the time he was so false!!! If Hella only knew. Aha, to-morrow!
January 2nd. I treated him abominably. Knocked at the door—Good-morning, Herr Prof. please what do we want for the lesson to-day? He very civilly: Nothing particular to-day. Well, what sort of a Christmas did you have—I: Thank you, much as usual.—He turned round and stared at me: It does not seem to have been; to judge from your manner. —I: There are quite other reasons for that. He: O-o-h? He may well say O-o-h! For he has not the least idea that I know the way in which he speaks of us.
January 6th. To-day Hella was able to go out for her first drive. She’s much better now and will come back to school by the middle of the month. I must tell her before that or she’ll get a shock. Yesterday she asked: Does not S. C. ask about me any more?—Oh yes, I fibbed, but not so often as before. And she said: That’s the way it goes, out of sight out of mind. What will happen when she learns the truth. Anyhow I shan’t tell her until she’s quite strong.
January 10th. I’ve had to tell Hella already. She was talking so enthusiastically about S. G. At first I said nothing. And then she said: What are you making such a face for? Are not you allowed to arrange the things any more?—I: Allowed? Of course I’m allowed, but I don’t want to any more. I did not tell Hella how bad I feel about it; for I really was madly in love with him.
January 12th. Hella must have been madly in love with him too or rather must be in love with him still. On Sunday evening she was so much upset that her mother believed she was going to have a relapse. She had pains and diarrea at the same time. Thank goodness she’s got over it like me. She said to-day: Don’t let’s bother ourselves about it any more. We wasted our feelings (not love!!) on an unworthy object. At such moments she is magnificent, especially now when she is still so pale. Besides in the holidays and now since she has been ill she has grown tremendously. Before I was a little taller and now she is a quarter head taller than me. Dora is frightfully annoyed because I am nearly as tall as she is. Thank goodness it makes me look older than 12 1/2.
Hella is not to come to school on January 15th, for her mother is going to take her to Tyrol for 2 or 3 weeks.
January 18th. It’s horridly dull with Hella away. Only now do I realise, since her illness. I am always feeling as if she had fallen ill again. Her mother has taken her to Meran, they are coming back in the beginning of February.
January 24th. Since Hella has been ill, that is really since, she went away, I spend most of my time with Fritzi Hubner. She’s awfully nice, though I did not know it last year. Till Hella comes back she and I sit together. For it’s horrid to sit alone on a bench Fritzi knows a good deal already. She would not talk about it at first because it so often leads to trouble. Her brother has told her everything. He’s rather a swell and is called Paul.
January 29th. Yesterday was the ice carnival and Dora and I were allowed to go. I skated with Fritzi and Paul most of the time and won 2 prizes, one of them with Paul. And one of them skating in a race with 5 other girls. Paul is awfully clever, he says he’s going into the army, the flying corps. That’s even more select than being on the general staff. Her father is a major and he, I mean Paul, ought to have gone to the military academy, but his grandfather would not allow it. He is to choose for himself. But of course he will become an officer. Most boys want to be what their father is. But Oswald is perhaps going into the Navy. I wish I knew what Father meant once when he said to Mother: Good God, I’m not doing it on my own account. I’m only doing it because of Oswald. The two girls won’t get much out of it.
February 3rd. I’ve just been reading what I wrote about Father. I am wondering what it can be. I think that Father either wants to win the great prize in the lottery or is perhaps going to buy a house. But Dora and I would get something out of that, for it would not belong to Oswald only.
February 4th. Yesterday I asked Mother about it. But she said she didn’t know; if it was anything which concerned us, Father would tell us. But it must be something, or Mother would not have told Father in the evening that I had asked. I can’t endure these secrets. Why shouldn’t we know that Father’s going to buy a house. Fritzi’s grandfather has a house in Brunn and another in Iglau. But Fritzi is very simply dressed and her mother too.
February 9th. Thank goodness Hella is coming back to-morrow, just before her birthday. Luckily she can eat everything again so I am giving her a huge bag of Viktor Schmid’s sweets with a silver sugar tongs. Mother and I are going to meet Hella at the station. They are coming by the 8.20.
February 10th. I am so glad Hella is coming to-day. I nearly could not meet her because Mother is not very well to-day. But Father’s going to take me. Fritzi wanted to come and see Hella to-morrow afternoon, but she can’t. She’s an awfully nice girl and her brother is too, but on the first day Hella is back we must be alone together. She said so too in the last letter she wrote me. She’s been away more than 3 weeks. It’s a frightfully long time when you are fond of one another.
February 15th. I simply can’t write my diary because Hella and I spend all our free time together. Yesterday we got our reports. Of course Hella has not got one. Except in Geography and History I have nothing but Ones, even in Natural History although since New Year I have not done any work in that subject. I detest Natural History. When Hella comes back to school we are going to ask the sometime S. G. to relieve us from the labours of looking after the things. Hella is still too weak to do it. Hella is 13 already and Father says she is going to be wonderfully pretty. Going to be, Father says; but she’s lovely already. She’s been burned as brown as a berry by the warm southern sun, and it really suits her, though only her. I can’t stand other people when they are sun-burned. But really everything suits Hella; when she was so pale in hospital, she was lovely; and now she is just as lovely, only in quite a different way. Oswald is quite right when he says: You can measure a girl’s beauty by the degree in which she bears being sunburned without losing her good looks. He really used to say that in the holidays simply to annoy Dora and me, but he’s quite right all the same.
February 20th. The second half-year began yesterday. They were all awfully nice to Hella, and Frau Doktor M. stroked her cheeks and put her arm round her so affectionately. Now for the chief thing. Today was the Natural History lesson. We knocked at the door and when we went in Prof. W. said: Ah I’m glad to see you Bruckner; take care that you don’t give us all another fright. How are you? Hella said: “Quite well, thank you, Herr Prof.” And as I looked at her she put on a frightfully serious face and he said: It seems to me that you’ve caught your friend’s ill humour.—Hella: “Herr Prof., you are really too kind, but we don’t want to trouble you. What things have we to take to the class-room? And then we beg leave to resign our posts, for I don’t feel strong enough for the work.” She said this in quite a soldierly way, the way she is used to hear her father speak. It sounded most distinguished. He looked at us and said: “All right, two of the other pupils will take it over.” We don’t know whether he really noticed nothing or simply did not wish to show that he had noticed. But as we shut the door I felt so awfully sorry; for it was the last time, the very last time.
February 27th. In Natural History to-day I got Unsatisfactory. I was not being questioned, but when Klaiber could not answer anything I laughed, and he said: Very well, Lainer, you correct her mistake. But since I had been thinking of something quite different I did not know what it was all about, and so I got an Unsatisfactory. Before of course that would not have mattered; but now since . . . Hella and Franke did all they could to console me and said: “That does not matter, it wasn’t an examination; he’ll have to examine you properly later.” Anyhow Franke thinks that however hard I learn, I shall be well off if he gives me a Satisfactory. She says no professor can forget such a defeat. For we told her about the silly little fools. She said, indeed, that we had made it too obvious. That’s not really true. But now she takes our side, for she sees that we were in the right. Verbenowitsch and Bennari bring in the things now. They are much better suited for it. Hella’s father did not like her doing it anyhow; he says: The porter or the maidservant are there for that—we never see them all the year round, that’s a fine thing.
March 8th. Easter does not come this year until April 16th. I am going with the Bruckners to Cilli, outside the town there they have a vineyard with a country house. Hella needs a change. I am awfully glad. All the flowers begin to come out there at the end of March or beginning of April.
March 12th. Hella is not straightforward. We met a gentleman to-day, very fashionably dressed with gold-rimmed eyeglasses and a fair moustache. Hella blushed furiously, and the gentleman took off his hat and said: Ah, Fraulein Helenchen, you are looking very well. How are you? He never looked at me, and when he had gone she said: “That was Dr. Fekete, who assisted at my operation.”—“And you tell me that now for the first time?” Then she put on an innocent air and said: “Of course, we’ve never met him before,” but I said: “I don’t mean that. If you knew how red you got you would not tell me a lie.” Then she said: “What am I telling you a lie about? Do you think I’m in love with him? Not in the very least.”—But when one is not in love one does not blush like that. Anyhow I shan’t tell everything now either; I can hold my tongue too.
March 14th. Yesterday we did not talk to one another so much as usual; I especially was very silent. When the bell rang at 5 and I had just been doing the translation Hella came and begged my pardon and brought me some lovely violets, so of course I forgave her. This is really the first time we’ve ever quarrelled. First she wanted to bring me some sweets, but then she decided upon violets, and I think that was much more graceful. One gives sweets to a little child when it has hurt itself or been in a temper. But flowers are not for a child.
March 19th. Frieda Belay is dead. We are all terribly upset. None of us were very intimate with her, but now that she is dead we all remember that she was a schoolfellow. She died of heart failure following rheumatic fever. We all attended her funeral, except Hella who was not allowed to come. Her mother cried like anything and her grandmother still more; her father cried too. We sent a wreath of white roses with a lovely inscription: Death has snatched you away in the flower of your youth—Your Schoolfellows.
I have no pleasure in anything to-day. I did not see Frieda Belay after she was dead, but Franke was there yesterday and saw her in her coffin. She says she will never forget it, it gave her such a pang. In the church Lampl had a fit of hysterics, for her mother was buried only a month ago and now she was reminded of it all and was frightfully upset. I cried a lot too when I was with Hella. She fancied it was because I was thinking she might have died last Dec. But that wasn’t it, I don’t think about that sort of thing. But when anyone dies it is so awfully sad.
March 24th. I never heard of such a thing. I can’t go to Cilli with Hella. Her mother was at her cousin’s, and when she heard that she was going to Cilli at Easter she asked her to take Melanie with her. That is, she didn’t ask straight out, but kept on hinting until Hella’s mother said: Let Melanie come with us, it will help to set her up after her illness. In the winter she had congestion of the lung. Hella and I can’t bear her because she’s always spying on us and is so utterly false. So of course I can’t go. Hella says too she’s frightfully sorry, but when she is about we could never say a word about anything, it would drive us crazy. She quite agrees that I had better not come. But oh I’m so annoyed for first of all I do so like going away with Hella and secondly I should like to go away in the holidays anyhow for nearly all the girls in our class are going away. Still, there’s nothing to be done. Hella’s mother says she can’t see why we can’t all 3 go though it simply would not work. But we can’t explain it to her. Hella is so poetical and she says “A beautiful dream vanished.”
In Hella’s mouth such fine words sound magnificent, but when Dora uses such expressions they annoy me frightfully because they don’t come from her heart.
March 26th. The school performances finish today with Waves of the Sea and Waves of Love. I’m awfully fond of the theatre, but I never write anything about that. For anyhow the play is written by a poet and one can read it if one wants to, and one just sees the rest anyhow. I can’t make out what Dora finds such a lot to scribble about always the day after we’ve been to the theatre. I expect she’s in love with one of the actors and that’s why she writes such a lot. Besides we in the second class did not get tickets for all the performances, but only the girls from the Fourth upwards. Still, it did not matter much to me anyhow for we often go in the evening and on Sunday afternoons. But unfortunately I mayn’t go in the evening as a rule.
March 29th. To-day something horrible happened to Dora and me. I simply can’t write it down. She was awfully nice and said: Two years ago on the Metropolitan Railway the same thing had happened when she was travelling with Mother on February 15th, she can never forget the date, to Hietzing to see Frau v. Martini. Besides her and Mother there was only one gentleman in the carriage, Mother always travels second class. She and Mother were sitting together and the gentleman was standing farther down the carriage where Mother could not see him but Dora could. And as Dora was looking he opened his cloak and — — —! just what the man did to-day at the house door. And when they got out of the train Dora’s boa got stuck in the door and she had to turn round though she did not want to, and then she saw again — — —! She simply could not sleep for a whole month afterwards. I remember that time when she could not sleep but I did not know why it was. She never told anyone except Erika and the same thing happened to her once. Dora says that happens at least once to nearly every girl; and that such men are “abnormal.” I don’t really know what that means, but I did not like to ask. Perhaps Hella will know. Of course I did not really look, but Dora shivered and said: “And that is what one has to endure.” And then, when we were talking it over she said to me that that was why Mother was ill and because she has had five children; Then I was very silly and said: “But how from that? one does not get children from that?” “Of course,” she said, “I thought you knew that already. That time there was such a row with Mali about the waistband, I thought you and Hella had heard all about everything.” Then I was silly again, really frightfully stupid; for instead of telling her what I really knew I said: “Oh, yes, I knew all about it except just that.” Then she burst out laughing and said: “After all, what you and Hella know doesn’t amount to much.” And in the end she told me a little. If it’s really as Dora says, then she is right when she says it is better not to marry. One can fall in love, one must fall in love, but one can just break off the engagement. Well, that’s the best way out of the difficulty for then no one can say that you’ve never had a man in love with you. We walked up and down in front of the school for such a long time that we were very nearly late and only got in just as the bell rang. On the way home I told Hella the awful thing we’d seen the man do. She does not know either what “abnormal” really means as far as this is concerned. But now we shall use it as an expression for something horrible. Of course no one will understand us. And then Hella told me about a drunken man who in Nagy K. . . . was walking through the streets like that and was arrested. She says too that one can never forget seeing anything like that. Perhaps the man this morning was drunk too. But he didn’t look as if he were drunk. And if he hadn’t done that one would really have taken him for a fine gentleman. Hella knows too that it is from that that one gets children. She explained it all to me and now I can quite understand that that must make one ill. Yesterday it was after 11 at night and so I’m finishing to-day. Hella says: That is the original sin, and that is the sin which Adam and Eve committed. Before I had always believed the original sin was something quite different. But that—that. Since yesterday I’ve been so upset I always seem to be seeing that; really I did not look at all, but I must have seen it all the same.
March 30th. I don’t know why, but in the history lesson to-day it all came into my head once more what Dora had said of Father. But I really can’t believe it. Because of Father I’m really sorry that I know it. Perhaps it does not all happen the way Dora and Hella say. Generally I can trust Hella, but of course she may be mistaken.
April 1st. To-day Dora told me a lot more. She is quite different now from what she used to be. One does not say P[eriod], but M[enstruation]. Only common people say P—. Or one can say one’s like that. Dora has had M— since August before last, and it is horribly disagreeable, because men always know. That is why at the High School we have only three men professors and all the other teachers are women. Now Dora often does not have M— and then sometimes it’s awfully bad, and that’s why she’s anemic. That men always know, that’s frightfully interesting.
April 4th. We talk a lot about such things now. Dora certainly knows more than I do, that is not more but better. But she isn’t quite straightforward all the same. When I asked her how she got to know about it all, whether Erika told her or Frieda, she said: “Oh, I don’t know; one finds it all out somehow; one need only use one’s eyes and one’s ears, and then one can reason things out a little.” But seeing and hearing don’t take one very far. I’ve always kept my eyes open and I’m not so stupid as all that. One must be told by some one, one can’t just happen upon it by oneself.
April 6th. I don’t care about paying visits now. We used always to like going to see the Richters, but to-day I found it dull. Now I know why Dora hates going second class on the Metropolitan. I always thought it was only to spite me because I like travelling second. She never likes going second since that happened. It seems one is often unjust to people who never meant what one thought. But why did she not tell me the truth? She says because I was still a child then. That’s all right, but what about this winter when I was cross because we went Third class to Schonbrunn; I really believed she did it to annoy me, for I could not believe she was afraid that in the second class, where one is often alone, somebody would suddenly attack her with a knife. But now I understand quite well, for of course she could not tell Mother the truth and Father still less. And in winter and spring there are really often no passengers to speak of on the Metropolitan, especially on the Outer Circle.
April 7th. Mother said to-day that at the Richters yesterday we, especially I, had been frightfully dull and stupid. Why had we kept on exchanging glances? We had been most unmannerly. If she had only known what we were thinking of when Frau Richter said, the weather to-day is certainly quite abnormal; we have not had such abnormal heat for years. And then when Herr Richter came home and spoke about his brother who had spent the whole winter at Hochschneeberg and said: Oh, my brother is a little abnormal, I think he’s got a tile loose in the upper storey, I really thought I should burst. Luckily Frau R. helped us once more to a tremendous lot of cake and I was able to lean well forward over my plate. And Mother said that I ate like a little glutton and just as if I never had any cake at home. So Mother was very unjust to me, for the cake had nothing at all to do with it. Dora says too that I must learn to control myself better, that if I only watch her I’ll soon learn. That’s all very well, but why should one have to bother? If people did not use words that really mean something quite different then other people would not have to control themselves. Still, I must learn to do it somehow.
April 8th. We were terribly alarmed to-day; quite early, at half past 8, they telephoned from the school that Dora had suddenly been taken ill in the Latin lesson and must be fetched in a carriage. Mother drove down directly in a taxi and I went with her because anyhow my lessons began at 9 and we found Dora on the sofa in the office with the head sitting by her and the head’s friend, Frau Doktor Preisky, who is a medical doctor, and they had loosened her dress and put a cold compress on her head for she had suddenly fainted in the Latin lesson. That’s the third time this year, so she must really have anemia. I wanted to drive home with her, but Mother and Frau Dr. P. said I’d better just go to my lessons. And as I went out I heard Frau Dr. P. say: “That’s a fine healthy girl, a jolly little fellow.” Really one should only use that word of boys and men, but I suppose she has got into the way of using it through being with men so much. If one studies medicine one has to learn all about that and to look at everything. It must be really horrid.
Dora is kept in bed to-day and our Doctor says too that she’s anemic. To-morrow or the day after Mother is going to take her to see a specialist. Dora says it’s a lovely feeling to faint. Suddenly one can’t hear what people are saying and one feels quite weak and then one does not know anything more. I wonder if I shall ever faint? Very likely when — — — We talked a lot about everything we are interested in. In the afternoon Hella came to ask after Dora, and she thinks she looks awfully pretty in bed, an interesting invalid and at the same time so distinguished looking. It’s quite true, we all look distinguished.
April 9th. To-day is Father and Mother’s wedding day. Now I know what that really means. Dora says it can’t really be true that it is the most lovely day in one’s life, as everyone says it is, especially the poets. She thinks that one must feel frightfully embarrassed because after all everyone knows. . . . That’s quite true, but after all one need not tell anyone which one’s wedding day is. Dora says she will never tell her children which her wedding day is. But it would be a great pity if parents always did that for then in every family there would be one anniversary the less. And the more anniversaries there are, the jollier it is.