across the room from her father and glared at him.
“Then you sleep with him. I won't let him touch me. I don't love this man, and I won't marry him because you say so. I won't be sold into slavery to a stranger like a herd of cattle, Papa. You can't do that to me.”
“I will not tolerate you speaking to me that way,” he boomed at her, shaking with rage. “What would you have me do? Allow you to live here as an old maid for the rest of your life? What will happen to you when your mother and I die and you are without protection? This man will take care of you, Beata. That's what you need. You cannot sit here and wait for a handsome prince to find you, and carry you away, a prince who is as intellectual as you are, as serious, as fascinated by books and studies as you are. Perhaps you'd prefer a university professor, but he couldn't afford to support you in the way you're accustomed to and deserve. This man has means comparable to what you grew up with. You owe it to your children to marry someone like him, Beata, not some starving artist or writer who will leave you to die of consumption in a garret somewhere. Beata, this is reality, marrying the man I choose for you. Your mother and I know what we're doing, you're young and foolish and idealistic. Real life is not in the books you read. Real life is right here, and you will do as I say.”
“I will die first,” she said, her eyes never leaving her father's, and she looked as though she meant it. He had never seen her look as fierce or as determined, and as he saw her, he thought of something that had never crossed his mind, particularly not with her. He asked her a single question, and his voice was shaking as he did so, and for the first time in his life with her, he feared what he might hear.
“Are you in love with someone else?” He couldn't imagine it. She never left the house, but the look in her eyes told him that he needed to ask her, and she hesitated before she spoke. She knew she had to tell him the truth, there was no other way.
“Yes.” She stood still and stiff before him as she said the single word.
“Why have you not told me?” He looked both heartbroken and livid all at once, and more than that, he looked betrayed. She had allowed him to go forward with this charade, merely by never telling him that there was someone she cared deeply about. Enough to jeopardize the match he had made, the one he knew was right for her. “Who is it? Do I know him?” He felt a shudder run through him as he asked her, as though someone had walked on his grave.
She shook her head in answer and spoke softly. “No, you don't. I met him in Switzerland last summer.” She was determined to be honest with him. She felt she had no other choice. This moment had come sooner than she wanted or expected, and all she could do now was pray that he would be reasonable and fair to her.
“Why didn't you tell me? Does your mother know about this?”
“No. No one knows. Mama and Brigitte met him, but he was just a friend then. I want to marry him when the war is over, Papa. He wants to come and meet you.”
“Then let him come.” Her father was furious with her, but nonetheless willing to be honorable about the matter, and reasonable with his child, although he was deeply upset with her for this profession of love at the eleventh hour.
“He can't come to see you, Papa. He's at the front.”
“Do your brothers know him?” She shook her head again, and said nothing. “What are you not telling me about him, Beata? I sense that there is more here than you're saying.” He was right, as he so often was. She felt her whole body shake in terror as she answered him.
“He's from a good family, with a large estate. He's well educated and intelligent. He loves me, Papa, and I love him.” There were tears running down her cheeks.
“Then why have you kept this a secret? What are you hiding from me, Beata?” His voice was bellowing, and Monika could hear him from upstairs.
“He is Catholic, and French,” Beata said in a whisper, as her father let out a sound like a wounded lion. It was so awful that she took several steps backward as he advanced on her without thinking. He stopped only when he had reached her and grabbed her small frame in both his hands. He shook her so hard by the shoulders that her teeth rattled as he shouted into her face.
“How dare you! How
“You can't do that to me, Papa,” she said, sobbing, choking for lack of air. She could not give up Antoine, nor marry the man her father had chosen, no matter what her father did to her.
“I can and I will. You will marry Hoffman in one month.”
“Papa, no!” She fell to her knees, sobbing, as he stormed out of the library and went upstairs. She knelt there for a long time, crying, until her mother finally came to her in tears. She knelt beside her daughter, heartbroken over what she had just heard.
“Beata, how could you do this? You must forget him…I know he's a good man, but you cannot marry a Frenchman, not after this terrible war between us, and you cannot marry a Catholic. Your father will write your name in the book of the dead.” Monika was beside herself with anguish, as she saw the look on her daughter's face.
“I will die anyway, Mama, if I don't. I love him. I can't marry that awful man.” He wasn't awful, she knew, but he was old in her eyes, and he was not Antoine.
“I'll tell Papa to tell him. But you can never marry Antoine.”
“We have promised to marry each other after the war.”
“You must tell him you can't. You can't deny all that you are.”
“He loves me as I am.”
“You are both foolish children. His family will disown him, too. How would you live?”
“I can sew…I could be a seamstress, a schoolteacher, whatever I have to be. Papa has no right to do this.” But they both knew he did. He could do whatever he wanted, and he had told her that if she married a Christian, she would be dead to them. Monika believed him, and she couldn't bear the thought of never seeing Beata again. It was far too high a price for her to pay for a man she loved.
“I beg you,” she implored her daughter, “don't do this. You must do as Papa says.”
“I won't,” she said, sobbing in her mother's arms.
Jacob was not entirely foolish. He told Rolf Hoffman that afternoon that Beata was young and foolish and appeared to be afraid of the…physical obligations… of marriage, and he was not sure that his daughter was ready to marry anyone. He didn't want to mislead the man, nor tell him the whole truth. He told him that perhaps after a long courtship, and if they got to know each other, she would feel more comfortable with all that marriage entailed. Hoffman was disappointed, but said he would wait as long as he had to. He was in no hurry, and he understood that she was an innocent young girl. He had been well aware of her shyness the night they met. And even an obedient daughter deserved the opportunity to become acquainted with the man who was going to wed her and take her to his bed. At the end of the conversation, Jacob was grateful to him for his patience, and assured him that Beata would come around in time.
She did not come to dinner that night, and Jacob didn't see her for several days. According to her mother, she had not left her bed. She had written Antoine a letter, telling him what had happened. She said her father would never agree to their marriage, but she was prepared to marry him anyway, either after the war or before that, whatever he thought best. But she no longer felt at ease in her home in Cologne. She knew that her father would continue to try to force her to marry Rolf. She also knew it would be weeks before she had a response from Antoine, but she was prepared to wait.
She did not hear from him for two months. It was May when she finally got a letter from him, and for the entire time she had been terrified that he had been hurt or killed, or that hearing of her father's rage, he had decided to back out and never write to her again. Her first guess had been correct. He had been wounded a month before, and was in a hospital in Yvetot, on the Normandy coast. He had very nearly lost an arm, but said that he would soon be all right. He said that by the time she got his letter, he would be at home in Dordogne, and would speak to his own family about their marriage. He would not be going back to the front, or even to the war. The way he said it made her fear that his injury had been worse than he said. But he repeated several times that he was doing well, and loved her very, very much.
Beata answered his letter quickly, and sent it, as always, via his cousin in Switzerland. All she could do after
