That day her left nipple had been inflamed, and breast-feeding was so painful that tears had sprung to her eyes. Thomas hadn’t offered a single word of comfort, hadn’t taken her in his arms and told her that he loved her. No, he had looked right past Wanda’s tiny body and stared at Ruth’s bare breast as though he had never seen it before. When she had gone to bed at seven o’clock that evening, tired to the bone, he had followed her into the bedroom.
“Now there’s no more big belly to get in the way!” he said as he undid his trousers. For a moment Ruth didn’t understand what he wanted of her. He couldn’t possibly mean to sleep with her? Today of all days, when she felt so miserable?
But that was exactly what he meant to do. And Ruth had been too weak to put up a fight. He had been enraged by the way she just lay there. “Are you my wife or a lifeless doll?” he had shouted as he thrust away.
Ruth had closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, hoping that he would be done soon, crying a thousand tears inside.
She hadn’t expected him to hit her. First across the right cheek, then the left. Slap. Slap. With no warning at all. She had opened her eyes in shock, and, for a moment, she sensed that he was at least as surprised as she was.
“You brought that upon yourself,” he had shouted in her face. “Next time you look your husband in the eye when he takes what’s his by right of marriage. You can keep your airs and graces for outside!”
From that day forward, he hit her again and again. Never so hard that the marks were visible—God forbid Thomas Heimer would become known as a man who beat his wife.
Unconsciously Ruth put a hand behind her ear, to the bruised spot where he had drawn blood earlier that evening.
She hadn’t even had a chance to explain to him about the new bed when he gave her a clip on the ear.
“Where do you even get these crazy ideas?” he had yelled, as if she were a naughty schoolchild.
She still couldn’t believe this was happening to her. To her, Joost’s daughter. Her father had always treated women with such respect.
She was so ashamed that she couldn’t bring herself to tell Johanna or Marie about it. What good would it have done? Nobody had forced her to marry Thomas. She had accepted him of her own free will, with all her heart. And that meant she had accepted the Heimer family as well, none of whom had even bothered to come to Wanda’s baptism. There had been some “important business” to take care of, that day of all days. If it hadn’t been for her sisters, she would have been alone with Wanda and the pastor.
She still hadn’t gotten over the disappointment, but whenever she looked into the cradle or put Wanda to her breast, she felt a warm wave of happiness. She loved this child. How she loved this child! The baby was a Steinmann, like her and her sisters.
When she thought of Johanna and Marie she had to smile. Her sisters made up for all of the Heimers’ neglect. Wanda was hardly a week old when Marie drew the first of many portraits of her, and she had captured every important moment in Wanda’s young life from that point on. Ruth didn’t dare hang Marie’s beautiful drawings up around the house, but she took them out of the drawer to admire them time and time again. And Johanna! Not a weekend went by that she didn’t come home with some darling little dress. Only last week she had brought a solid silver teething ring, and the little one hadn’t even begun teething yet!
Ruth’s features grew hard. As far as she was concerned, Johanna could spoil the baby rotten. Very soon after Wanda was born, she had resolved that she would be proud of her daughter, as proud as Joost had been of her and her sisters. Wanda should lack for nothing. She was her little princess.
2
Sketches and drawings lay everywhere: on the floor, on Joost’s workbench, on the other benches where the girls had once worked. There were winter landscapes, angels, a Christmas crib in miniature—all themes that would go well on Christmas baubles. But instead of being pleased at all that she had accomplished, Marie felt disgusted as she looked at the mess in the workshop. Did she call this progress? It was laughable.
Her gaze fell on the book that Peter had given her for Christmas. A Handbook of Art and Design. Sometimes she wished she had never looked inside. It had become her bible, her best friend. And her enemy. Especially that, just recently. She couldn’t help but wonder whether art could really be understood the way this book prescribed. Could an artist simply carve up a drawing like a Christmas goose, lay bare its bones, and then revel in its naked details? Was that what art was really about?
Marie had her doubts.
Of course there was a certain appeal in how the book described the logic of shapes. A circle was simply a point, enlarged. Several points next to one another yielded a line. Four lines of equal length yielded a square and the center of the square could also be used as the center of a cross whose arms would divide the sides of the square . . . everything could be broken down into shapes, lines, and angles. It was a whole new experience for Marie to see how art could be described with such precision. She had begun to check all her designs using the rules laid out in the book, but she hadn’t gotten far since it didn’t mention spheres at all. A sphere had no beginning and no end, no corners and no angles. It couldn’t be divided up with rectangles or points. She couldn’t even say, “This is up and that is down” or “This part is rounder than that part.” Like the soap bubbles Joost used to blow for her, a glass ball was a world unto itself. The fact that it was self-contained was exactly what had fired Marie’s imagination.