Free Silver Wattle by Belinda Alexandra Page B

rolled it into a tube and lit it with the wick of his lamp. The paper flared brightly and I thought he was intent on burning the house down. But before the flame reached his fingers, he extinguished it. He dropped the remains to the floor and stomped on them before taking up his lamp again and leaving.
    I remained in my hiding place for half an hour after I heard the door to Milosh’s room close and quiet descended on the house. As dawn broke in the sky, shedding silvery light through the dormer window, I crept out and picked up the blackened remains of the letter. There was one piece that had been unharmed by the flame. I gently unfolded it, afraid it would crumble in my hand, and read the words my mother had written:
    Whispered of love the mosses frail,
    The flowering tree as sweetly lied,
    The rose’s fragrant sigh replied
    To love songs of the nightingale.
    I recognised the lines—they were from the famous love poem ‘May’. It was about a young man with an unfaithful lover. He kills his rival and later learns that it was his own father.
    I wondered why my mother would have included the poem in a letter to Uncle Ota. I leaned forward and the letter Mother had addressed to Aunt Josephine jabbed me in the chest. Perhaps the answers would lie there.
    Aunt Josephine sat in the courtyard garden and read the letter from Mother. I chased Frip around the fountain. I did it to keep warm, but also to stop myself from interrupting Aunt Josephine before she had finished. I thought she would call when she had read the letter and was surprised when I turned around and saw her with the letter on her lap, staring out in front of her. One look at the grim expression on her face and I understood it had revealed something terrible.
    ‘Aunt Josephine?’ I sat down beside her. Frip sensed the gravity of the moment and sat still.
    Aunt Josephine did not move. Whatever she had read in Mother’s letter had come as a blow.
    ‘What is it?’ I said, gripping her arm and feeling the tremor there. ‘Read it to me.’
    She shook her head. ‘I can’t. You must read it for yourself,’ and she handed me the letter.
    I was so afraid, I had to inhale a few times before I could focus on the words.
Dear Josephine,
    I am writing to you because I know that you do not like to visit us when Milosh is at home—and, as you know, he is at home more often than not these days! At first I thought this change was due to a recovery of his devotion to me, or perhaps because he had given up the ‘thorn in my side’. For that immoral woman has ceased to appear at social functions, so I am free from her stares, and no longer reserves seats at the theatre so near to us that I can feel her breathing down my neck. Lída tells me that she has been seen folding bandages at the veterans’ hospital—an occupation much more suited to a widow of her position than pursuing other women’s husbands.
    But it appears my husband’s attention is not so endearing. He watches me with an interest that suffocates me. I cannot leave the house or make contact with a friend without a dozen of his questions. I do not flatter myself that this watchfulness is a sign of jealousy. No, he is studying me, but for what reason I do not know. I have these spasms of anxiety in my stomach that the doctor cannot cure, although I know the cause: the daily state of being in fear.
    What is worse is that this watchfulness now extends to my daughters. He teaches Klarinka to play chess and Adelka to dance, but not from fatherly tenderness, as I had once hoped. I am sure he has some other purpose in mind. I have seen Emilie in my dreams. She stands on the other side of a river and calls out to me, warning me of something, but I cannot hear what she is saying.
    My dear friend, I almost smile as I imagine you shaking your practical head, wondering if I am reaching the troublesome stage of motherhood when the children are growing up and one sees danger in every corner as a result of their increasing