“No, nothing like that. In addition to the paying lover mother always
had one, a purely heart affair, on the side. It was funny! The men
always brought us candies and all sorts of presents. When we grew older
mother became a little more careful. Still, there was enough going on to
bring shame as I look back. And so there came into our house also a
young lieutenant whom mother had picked up—God knows where. This fellow
was mother’s avowed lover and could do as he pleased. The terrible thing
was that he began to pursue also sister and after a few jealousy
quarrels mother had to put up with it,—she perhaps even encouraged the
affair. For I overheard once a talk between them and heard mother
reproach ‘Shikki,’—that was the lieutenant’s nickname,—that he had used
sister. She could have obtained a large sum of money for the girl
because she was a virgin and the girl would have been provided for. Then
there followed bitter quarrels between mother and sister.”
I interrupt the conversation at this point. It turns out that she, too,
was in love with the lieutenant, and so were the others of the
household, including the father and the brother; she was also jealous of
her mother. Her jealousy opened her eyes. That is how it happened that
she heard the unpleasant rumors about her mother circulating among the
neighbors. She began hating her mother, but that continued only for a
short time. Then her hatred turned to children. She hated first herself,
the child who bore no respect for the mother. She did not want to be
like her mother and her sister. She knew that she would have to submit
to similar experiences; that her fate was sealed. She strove against her
feminine and motherly instincts. But the analysis disclosed that she
really entertained one supreme wish which she was unwilling to
countenance openly: she wanted to be a mother and to bear many, many
children. But the neurotic reaction thwarted her powerful motherly
instinct. To be a mother meant identification with the despised mother.
Her better feelings prompted her to draw herself far apart from the
mother.
She did not want to be a woman. She did not want to be so easy-going as
her mother. At that time her brother also showed a temperamental change.
He became serious-minded, began to write verses, and to take an interest
in all sorts of idealistic endeavors. She linked herself to him and
before long she differentiated herself completely from the rest of the
household, and particularly from the mother. She sought earnest-minded
girl friends and came into frequent contact with her brother’s
companions, but was unapproachable, even though she expressed herself
freely and frankly about all subjects. Her strongly sensuous temperament
threw her next into the arms of the Frenchwoman and she preferred that
to a love affair with a man as she was afraid of children. After the
Frenchwoman’s breach of loyalty she fell into her depression.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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