“I’m older already,” Sophie said. “Troubles age one, but what can be done? We live in a fallen world. If we were still in the Garden of Eden, there would be no need for money. May I share Mama’s shawl, Aloysia? We’ll be here an hour or two, maybe more, and I’m freezing.”
“Sit closer. There’s a little coal left in the parlor, but I can’t bear to be there. I thought you were good at making them stop quarreling, Sophie! Can’t you make them?”
The youngest girl shook her head and wiped her nose. “You go,” she muttered. “Mama melts for you.”
“I tried, but they didn’t pay any attention to me. I even cried. I won’t go in, though I’ll catch a wretched cold here and won’t be able to sing even if anyone asked me, which they haven’t since Christmas.”
Sophie said, “It always gets worse in winter. Have you noticed it’s always this time of year it happens? We must just somehow hold out until spring comes and there’s more work. I suppose other people’s parents quarrel also.” She sighed, looking about her as if astounded to be able to see the world so clearly with her spectacles. “Uncle Thorwart doesn’t quarrel with his wife.”
Aloysia answered sharply, “He doesn’t speak to his wife; he’s had a mistress for years. How can Mother and Father forgive him so easily about setting my hopes up for a Swedish marriage and then dashing them again? He should have known the Baron was already married. Don’t you dare laugh at me, any of you!”
The shouts arose even louder from the depths of the rooms within, with their father’s defensive, breaking voice, followed by their mother’s accusations. Aloysia pressed her hands over her ears.
At that moment Josefa came up the steps, her market basket swinging from one hand and an open book in the other. She was always reading, sprawled on the bed, hidden on the roof, finding a better world. Now she read so intensely that she bumped a little into one wall, then glanced at it in disgust. Her face filled with more disgust on seeing her three sisters huddled there and hearing the shouting from within. “Oh saints above,” she cried. “Everyone on the street will be talking about us now; I guess we’ll have no dinner. Why must she always berate Papa? He does the best he can.”
Constanze clutched the sewing against her dress. “It makes Mama sad having always to make do. Still, I think that man and wife should never turn on each other, even in the worst of times. It’s providing for all of us that does it. If they married us off, they wouldn’t have to feed and clothe us.”
Sophie stood up. Since Christmas her tiny chest had developed some roundness, but not enough to make her sisters hope she would ever have any real curves, not that she minded in the least. “I refuse to see us as merely mouths to feed,” she said. “We each have our own sacred purpose.”
Josefa closed her book with a snap. “Marriage? No, thank you, I’ve seen enough of marriage not to want it. This is how it ends up; you hear the quarrels down the street. Ugh! And Mama’s no saint; do open your eyes, Constanze Weber. Papa is what he is, and never promised more. If she wanted wealth, she shouldn’t have married him. But likely he’s the only one who asked her; that’s what Aunt Gretchen said.”
“That’s not true! Dozens asked her!” Aloysia cried.
“Again, the differences of story.”
“Earth doesn’t promise happiness,” said Sophie. “I was reading Josefa’s Rousseau. ‘Mankind is crushed by a handful of oppressors, a famished crowd vanquished by sorrow and hunger, a multitude whose blood and tears the rich drink peacefully ...’ Oh, never mind. Josy, tell us what to do.”
Josefa glanced toward their rooms. “I’ll do what I must, and God help me,” she said. “Constanze, take this food inside; Sophie, you tell them we’ve gone out. Aloysia and I are going to see Father’s brother, our Uncle Joseph. It’s time I brought out my plans.”
Joseph Weber’s office was on the second floor of his large house in a more elegant neighborhood of Mannheim. It was filled with heavy antique German furniture, large portraits of severe strangers, and a few shelves of well-thumbed ledger books tucked near others of theology and law. On the mantel above the fire stood an engraved silver cup given years before by his merchants’ guild.