Letter from an Unknown Woman

The well-known novelist R returns to Vienna early in the morning after a three-day trip in the mountains. When he arrives at the station, he takes a newspaper from the station and looks at the date on the newspaper. When he looks at the date, he realizes that today is his birthday. It was his forty-first birthday. He glanced briefly at the pages of the newspaper and took a taxi to his house. The butler at novelist R's house brought Mr R a pile of mail after he had informed him of the two visitors and a few phone calls while he was away. After examining the mails that came before him, he opened a few envelopes because the senders were interested. He had set aside the letter, which sounded foreign in handwriting and was rather thick. Then Mr. R read and studied a few pages from the newspaper he had brought with him. Then he picked up the rather thick letter that he had set aside. He realized that the letter, which was written by a woman he did not know, was written in a hurry, and he looked inside the envelope again, thinking that maybe there was something about the sender, but the envelope was empty and there was nothing written on the envelope. Strange, thought Mr. R. And he took the letter in his hand and began to read it. The title of the letter read to you, who never knew me. And he began to read the letter.

My child died yesterday, I fought to the death for a life that hangs by a thread, for forty hours I sat by his bed as the flu shook his poor body with a fit of fever. On the third day, I collapsed in the evening. My eyes were now exhausted and closed before I knew it. I fell asleep in a hard chair for three or four hours while death took him from me. He was still lying exactly the same, however, when that sweet, poor boy died. I didn't dare look there, for when the candles flickered shadows rush over him, and I was surprised that his features would move and he would wake up again, saying childish things to me in his sweet voice. But I know he's dead, I don't want to look back at him anymore, so as not to lose hope once again. I took my fifth candle and placed it here on the table where I wrote to you. Because I can't be alone with my dead child drowning out my soul's cries, and who can I talk to but not you in these terrible hours. I want to tell you about my whole life, the life that truly began the day I met you for the first time. Before that, there were only fuzzy and confused things. A cellar in my dark heart full of objects and people, none of which knows. Then you came out. I was thirteen when you came and lived in the same building as you. I was absolutely sure that he no longer remembered us. My child died, our child. You, who pass by me as if passing by a puddle that never, never knew me. Who are you for me? I only have to speak to you once, and then I'll go back to my darkness mute, just as I've always been mute next to you. But you won't be able to hear my cry as long as I live, but when I die, what's left of me will reach you. If my death was going to hurt you, then I wouldn't have died.

Mr R put down the letter with trembling hands. He had read every line of the two-dozen letters. Then he thought for a long time. Some moments flashed in his memory. It was as if he had seen all the people in a dream. In fact, although the woman is always in the man's life, the man never remembers the woman. Even when the letter is over and everything is revealed, the woman is always a ghost to the man. The woman, who has been invisible all her life, lives as if her life is trapped in a dimly lit cave when her mother marries someone else and has to move to another place. The woman is nothing but a ghost to the man.