real reason I don’t want to leave Munich is because I have a lover here.”
Her three sisters and mother all looked at one another; Maria Caecilia, her dull gold wedding ring still on her finger, covered her mouth with her hand.
Constanze leaned forward, blinking. “You can’t mean what you’ve said, Josefa,” she said practically. “You don’t know what you’re saying ... you’ve said a terrible thing. It’s wrong for a girl to speak that way and make people think badly of her reputation; you shouldn’t joke about such things.”
“I have no reputation; I have a lover, Stanzi.”
“You mean there is some man here in Munich whom you went to bed with? You can’t mean that. That’s not possible. I know you. You’re my sister. Good women don’t go to bed with men until they’re married. You can tell. We would have known. What you say isn’t possible.”
Josefa suddenly slammed both her hands on the table; Sophie jumped. “Is it so impossible for you all to believe that someone loves me?” she cried. “Why do you all stare at me? It’s true, it’s true. I met him at the bookstall. We’ve been lovers since the summer. He’s twice my age and has all the money he needs.” She stood up, her large hands opening and closing rapidly as the words poured out, and stared at them all scathingly. “Where do you think I got the silver locket I always wear? It was his present to me. Yes, if you must know, he’s married. His wife’s sickly and is always away taking the baths, and when she dies he’s promised to marry me. He will marry me; he keeps his word. So you see, I’m not going to Vienna to help my sister curl her hair for her performances. No, I’m not following you anymore, Aloysia Weber; I’m not picking up your scraps and crumbs. Someone loves me. Mother, you have never believed it could be true, and I hate you for that. Have any of you thought it? Now I’ve proven it’s possible.”
Only then did Maria Caecilia manage to rise to her feet. “How dare you stand there,” she gasped, “in my very kitchen ... and say that you have given all honor away, thrown away your good name? How dare you boast of it? Who is this person? I’ll have the law on him. What, have you made yourself a hussy and a whore? I’ll beat you with my wooden spoon. Your father would die if he had not passed already from this earth; yes, he would die of shame. What, a lover? Are you with child? Are you with child?”
“Indeed not,” said Josefa scornfully, putting her chair between them. “Don’t you think I have enough sense not to get with child?”
Sophie was balling up her apron as she fought tears, her throat contracting as if she were trying to swallow something large and bitter. “What are you saying, Josy?” she stammered. “Oh, what have you done? What will people say of us? And even if you do have a lover, we can’t go without you. No, Mother, leave her alone; you’re always saying cruel things to her. Oh, Josefa, married lovers never marry the girls they lie with. Even you told us that once.”
By that time Maria Caecilia had found her wooden spoon, but Josefa dodged her, knocking over the bowl of milk, which splashed down her father’s blue dressing gown, and ran from the kitchen. Their shouts and cries echoed through the rooms, and the girls could hear the voices of their neighbors leaning out the windows in the house next door, trying to discover what the noise was about. Sophie was now crying openly as she knelt to mop up the spilled milk. “It’s not true; it can’t be true,” she repeated again and again.
Josefa disappeared that afternoon, and they searched the city for her, running up stairs to ask friends, inquiring at the three bookstalls they knew she liked. The third seller, scratching his head, said he did recall an unusually tall young woman talking for a long time with a man, but he did not know their names. The man bought a great many books, he said. He had no idea if the young woman had been wearing a silver locket. He said he had seen the couple a few times since the summer.
It was the worst Christmas of their lives. For the first time no one baked the festive weihnachtsgebäck, the honey pastry made