legs ache; the boarders tire her. I do what I can. Speaking of marriage, she has plans again. I heard her talking with Uncle Thorwart the other day from behind closed doors, something about the cousin of a count who has a small estate. She doesn’t give up; she doesn’t understand. When I marry it will be for love.” She raised her face, and, in that moment, there was an unusual radiance in her heart-shaped face.
She flung herself down on the bed, pushing aside the dresses. “The last time Mama tried was in the autumn, and he was old enough to be my grandfather. He had to help himself up from the chair with his cane, though Mama said he owned four houses.” Through her now loosening hair, Constanze gazed at her younger sister, beginning to laugh all over again. “And we laughed so hard, Sophie and I, we had to excuse ourselves. We collapsed on the stairs outside the sewing room, laughing. I know he heard us, but we couldn’t help it! Sophie said, ‘If he can’t stand by himself, what will he do in bed?’ and that made me laugh so hard I nearly fell over. It’s true; the child did say it. Don’t deny it, Sophie! Oh, heavens—”
“Oh, how ridiculous,” Aloysia cried. “Sophie, how do you know such things? What use will they be in a convent? What a waste! Darlings, poor mice! Move over; don’t squash my dresses.”
The three sisters tumbled over one another on the bed, lying on their sides amid the pillows, hearing Joseph Lange’s humming as he painted in the next room. Aloysia said, “You know, our Josefa never comes to see me, or at least hasn’t in this last month. She can’t make up her mind if she loves me or resents me. But she does have a lover. I know people who sing with her. It’s one of the tenors, the one from Prague. The city’s small; you can’t blow your nose without someone noticing it, and gossip’s the very bread and butter of life. Some people say two lovers. She’s doing it to get back at Mother, to show others she can, to show me.”
Lying on her side, Aloysia hesitated, her face taking on an unusual severity. “And if she doesn’t watch it, she’ll find herself where I was, with a bun in the oven, and she’ll have to marry. Not that I didn’t want to; I wouldn’t trade Lange for the world. But there I was, so swollen with child, so distorted I hardly knew myself, and I kept saying, really, is this creature me?” Now she was laughing again, flinging back her hair. “Can you imagine our proud Josefa in that state? Children are lovely, but with the bickering and quarreling Mother and Father engaged in over us, and their concerns about how to cut the slices of meat small enough to go around. Oh mice, do you remember the hours and hours we hid on the stairs while they raged and shouted? With all that, should we be hasty to get ourselves with child?” Her voice trailed off, and she caressed the bodice of the pink dress.
Sophie lay silent in thought. Josefa did not come home often. She was singing in another opera house, where her rich voice with its deep low notes fascinated some even though her roles were small. She had made close friends with two women who lived together, one a rather mannish portraitist and the other a young composer; she was often at their house, and stayed away for days without explanation. Their mother looked at her angrily with a furrowed brow, daring to challenge her only in short barbs, then looking away, gnawing her lip, afraid of losing her. But could Aloysia’s words be true? Two lovers? What did a woman do with two lovers? I am losing her; I am losing her, Sophie thought. Josefa will go just like Aly, and leave us.
Vaguely Aloysia’s words floated over her, and Sophie turned to look at the young singer who now leaned back dreamily, pillow in her arms. “She’ll come back, Sophie,” she murmured. Aloysia knelt for a moment and touched the younger girl’s freckled cheek as she had years before when Sophie was ill and she had sung her lullabies. Then she said, with slow tenderness, “Oh mice, do you ever wonder what life is for? In the end what it’s really for, what’s the reason for it, and how are we