A Young Girl's Diary

by Unknown

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.