I wondered if all my family would change and leave me behind. First my mother had changed into a corpse, now my stepsisters would become wives and mothers, and soon enough my father an old man. It was as though by losing my mother so young, motherhood was a foreign land I had no permission to enter. I had been marked out as different, and the lives my sisters expected for themselves were not available to me.
My father was at his desk in the library, poring over a folder of trade documents he had brought back from Berlin. On a chair beside him was a furl of wool samples, labelled with weight and dye and provenance. The line between his eyes was so deep, it was cast in shadow. One thick groove between his eyebrows, two deep scores either side of his mouth, and a fan of lines across his forehead. My father was not a young man, but I had never seen him look this worn.
I asked after his journey and he waved me into a chair with a dismissive hand. My father would bring me to his side occasionally when he felt like it, and I waited for those moments like drops of rain in a drought. For a moment I would feel like his daughter again, like the loss of my mother hadn’t fractured us.
When several minutes had passed without him looking up, I said, ‘Perhaps I could help you with your papers? I’ve said you need a secretary.’
‘You were quite right.’ He put down a letter and squeezed the bridge of his nose.
I began to gather the mess of papers. I saw a list of names, notes about a railway being built, a conference. ‘You have returned so soon. Is everything well?’ My eyes lingered on a letter signed by Bismark himself.
‘We are to host a conference for the Chancellor and his cabinet next month. There is much to prepare and little time. If all goes well, I believe we will be looked upon favourably for the location of the new locomotive line.’
A smile broke across my face. ‘I am happy for you. I know you have worked a long time for this.’
‘I have. We must all put our efforts towards the conference’s smooth running.’
‘Of course. You will need help.’
I sorted the documents into groups, arranging my father’s desk, but he stopped me with a confused smile.
The mistake dawned on us both.
He tried to hide his amusement. ‘Oh, no, leibchen. I hired a secretary in Berlin – perhaps you saw him? Klaus Ernhoff, newly graduated from Jena.’ He toyed with his pen for a moment then set it to one side. ‘You don’t want to be stuck in here with me.’
I flushed with humiliation. ‘Father—’
He regarded me softly and that was somehow worse. ‘Mina, you look to me too much. You must think to your own future.’
I was foolish to think he might want me with him.
My father was a man who managed people like the figures in his account books. After my mother died, I would come to him, deep in grief, looking for someone who might understand what I had lost. Instead he had told me that grief was a physiological process that lasted a year. It had comforted me at first to think there would be a neat end to my pain, but when a year arrived I understood what he had really meant: my allotted time was over and now my grief was not welcome at his door.
‘I want you to be happy,’ he continued. ‘Perhaps we can think again of a husband?’
I could not listen to his words. It was as though the rushing sound of water had risen up about me and numbed my senses.
He was correct that I had no easy prospect of a husband. The bloom of my youth had barely flowered before it seemed spent; I cannot say I noticed it passing, until I discovered in the way people looked at me that I had wilted and what small expectations there had been were gone.
‘I don’t think a husband will solve my unhappiness,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to make someone else responsible for that.’
‘I feel like you make me responsible.’
You’re my father, I wanted to say,who else is responsible for me, if not you?
‘I cannot be everything for you,’ he added and I wondered if he was willing to beanythingfor me. ‘I fail to understand you, Mina. You’re a clever girl, capable, but it feels as though you’re waiting for your life to begin.’
‘I see.’
His mouth turned down at the corners. ‘I’ve hurt you.’
‘No.’ Before he could say anything else, I got up, blood loud in my ears. ‘Good luck with your work.’
I should have gone somewhere. Back outside, hacking along the field boundaries looking for flints in the tilled soil, or into the forest to sink my boots in mulch, soft and loamy from the rain to pick mushrooms; something that took me out of myself. But the blow had come too hard, felled me too thoroughly.
My room was quiet when I reached it. On the mantel, the clock ticked. Outside the window I could hear the wind in the leaves, the call of birds and the voices of servants ferrying crates to and from the icehouse in preparation for the day’s meals. Everything was exactly the same as it had been. And always would be.
I kneeled by the ceramic stove that heated my room and folded back my sleeve. The enamel was painted glossy white with gold leaf along the rococo acanthus leaf scrollwork, lifted from the parquet on four ornate legs. It had been recently stoked and the heat rolled off it in waves.
