pretends it doesn’t matter. Will he join me in my work? No. Will he cease his ridiculous and expensive entertaining? No. He could have at least remained single; indeed, he should have joined the priesthood before he married that mother of yours.”
Josefa had drawn herself up now so much she seemed twice her height. “You can say what you may against our mother, though it’s unjust, unjust, but you won’t speak of our darling papa,” she shouted. “Can’t you see I’m sincere? You don’t; you don’t believe me.”
“Sincerity does not buy firewood; I certainly do not believe you.”
“It’s futile to come to you; you have no heart. Papa’s a saint. We’ll get on without you. I’ll make my way in the world, I swear, and won’t turn my back on my family. Aloysia will become a great singer and make an advantageous marriage, as will my younger sisters. She will make one soon; see how beautiful she is!”
Uncle Joseph smiled crookedly and sadly. “A great singer?” he murmured. “An advantageous marriage? You’ll starve on music as your father’s done, and where is the splendid suitor to climb all those flights of stairs to marry one of you? Men of good fortune want modest women; modest women don’t sing in public. Heinrich, pack the pork pies for them.”
“Stuff the pies up your arse!”
“Fine words, young woman! Get out! Good day to you.”
Josefa rushed out of the house and down the street, with Aloysia running behind her. After some streets, she managed to pull her older sister to a stop. “I’m cold, so cold,” Aloysia panted. “My legs aren’t as long as yours; I can’t run so fast. Let’s have a coffee. It’s not real coffee, only roasted barley with syrup, but they also give you a crescent roll. Did you have breakfast? I didn’t. I have two kreuzers. It’s all I have left from the last time we sang.”
Shivering, they drank their bowls of coffee in the wood shack while the old vendor spoke to some workmen who had also come in. Aloysia ate her roll slowly, pulling off fragments bit by bit. “We should have taken Uncle Joseph’s pork pies,” she said sadly.
“Let him choke on them!”
“Josefa, you scared him. You scared me.”
“I hate him. It would have been a wonderful music shop. I was going to call it Weber and Daughters—Music, Instruments, and Sundries. I will call it that. I’ll find someone else to sponsor it. ”
“Josy, we can’t go back there again to ask. You’re too horrible to have told our uncle to stuff the pork pies up his ...” She glanced at the workmen and ate the last crumb of her roll. “Que tu es horrible de dire à notre oncle de s‘enculer avec sa tourte au porc! C’est terrible, c’est très impoli! It was very impolite.” Aloysia suddenly burst into giggles and then struggled for poise.
“I’d die before going back. He’s a turd.”
“Still, thank you for saying I’m beautiful.”
“You are, you know,” said Josefa angrily, then she squeezed her sister’s arm warmly. “Though between you and Mother you’ll make something wretched out of it. Come on. We can’t go home to the others without some shred of good news. Let’s try to think something up.”
The sisters linked arms and hurried on, their cloaks whipping out behind them, until they found themselves before the Christuskirche with its statue of the Archangel Michael blowing his horn to the heavens high above the dome. Their father had played violin there often for choral masses.
Catching her breath, Josefa still nursed her anger. “How dare our uncle speak badly of Papa? He works so hard for us; he buys us hose when his are in tatters, he watches up for us all night when we’re sick and then goes to his work. No one understands how much he does, but I do. I’ve seen it as long as I can remember.”
She folded her arms and stared up at the trumpeting archangel. Her eyes narrowed. “Still, Uncle’s right in one thing,” she muttered. “What chance do we have of making things better at home? Perhaps the music shop would cost too much. There’s not even much work singing in churches; the priests prefer the singing of the old castrati. Come, let’s go in. At least we’ll be out of the wind.”
They pushed open the heavy doors and curtseyed slightly to a few elderly priests in narrow black cassocks. One of the wizened castrati, with his throat wrapped in an enormous gray scarf