Child of the Journey by Berliner Janet & Guthridge George

Author:Berliner, Janet & Guthridge, George [Berliner, Janet & Guthridge, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction.Dark Fantasy/Supernatural, Fiction.Horror, Fiction.Historical, History.WWII & Holocaust
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2011-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Lately, the Rathenau rose garden had become Miriam's place for private and often dangerous thoughts. No one interfered with her inside the house, but that did not diminish her feeling that somehow her mental plotting and scheming could be overheard.

It was, she knew, a monumental foolishness. The only person who could possibly know what she was thinking was the baby, if, in fact, fetuses, embryos--whatever it was at this stage--could know anything.

Sitting in the rose garden at sundown on the day of summer solstice, she contemplated her future. She could see herself, with Erich; in her more optimistic moments she could see herself with Sol. But she found it almost impossible to place a child, her child, in the picture.

If by now, almost six months into her pregnancy, she was supposed to be feeling maternal, something had gone wrong. If she were master of the universe, she decided, the first thing she would do would be to make men's bodies capable of childbearing.

Even feeling the way she did, she could not help but smile at the very idea. Husband, home, children--weren't those what women were supposed to want? When this was over, this black period in German history, there would surely be those who would tell her that she should have been satisfied with what she had. It was, after all, so much more than most.

Maybe so, but she wanted more.

Had she fought against the flow, and failed, she might have been content. Or maybe she was just being optimistic and naïve, the inveterate performer thinking that life was going to work out with the form and balance of a play. Poverty did not appeal to her, but it had never frightened her either. At least, having tried and failed, her failure would have been of her own volition. But the Nazis had come, and taken away her will. They tore her mansion from her womb, and tore her from her mansion. Her birthright. She was back again, but it was not the same, for it was no longer hers. Its walls did not enclose and protect her, they were her cage--as her body was the child's.

One thing she did know: men would surely be more careful about making babies if there were no way to know before the fact who had to go through nine months of physical changes and emotional instability.

"What you're feeling is perfectly normal," the doctor kept saying. "Your body chemistry is not the same as it was, why would you expect to feel like yourself? Get out more, Frau Alois. Walk in the rose garden. Occupy yourself. Knit baby clothes."

Frau Alois.

There was never a time that she could hear herself called that without cringing. She kept telling herself that a rose was rose was a rose, but it didn't work.

Knit baby clothes! She should sit and knit when her world was falling--had long since--fallen apart.

Well, at least one thing had gone right. Erich had managed to remove the threat of the blood transfusion. Never

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