Free The Luck of the Weissensteiners (The Three Nations Trilogy) by Christoph Fischer Page A

golden boy herself and she deliberately neglected the care for Greta in the hope that this would prolong the mother's incapacity and foster Johanna's own relationship with little Karl.
    T he farm was missing three women doing work and Benedikt had to bite the bullet and hire more external seasonal workers. In the absence of a better alternative, he employed Jewish peasants from the east who were stuck in Bratislava, where even the large Jewish community could not help all of them to find jobs. Benedikt was very concerned about their work ethic and worried he might waste too much of his own productive farming time by having to control and supervise these 'shlemiels', but against his expectations the workers proved very experienced and efficient. They had to be desperate for more work in the future if they could overcome their lazy nature, he thought, but he still did not trust them enough to leave them to their work without breathing down their necks.
    As things seemed to be working out , Benedikt did not put immediate pressure on Johanna to bring Greta or Roswitha back to do the farm work. Little Karl became the light of Johanna's life. Even on days when Greta felt physically strong, Johanna made her stay away from her own son until she had mentally recovered and was less miserable. The poor and isolated mother was too weak to successfully protest against the arguments and after hearing again and again how incapable she was to attend to her own son’s needs, she started to believe that she was too fragile and even agreed with the separation. Without contact to the people closest to her, it took her much longer to return to her feet, exactly as Johanna had planned.
    Wilhelm buried his grief about the miscarriage in a sudden burst of religious practice. He started to go to morning mass in Bratislava every day and left the house in the hours of darkness. When he came home he hardly spoke to anyone and just fell into bed. With both of his parents being unavailable , Johanna became the main adult figure in Karl’s life and because her infatuation with him was so strong, he soon learned how to manipulate her to get his way. Johanna’s happiest moments were when she had succeeded in making him smile or laugh and he carefully used this tool to his advantage.
    Greta found the situation increasingly difficult to bear. Her sadness and isolation dro ve her into a downward spiral and when she finally built up the courage to confide her feelings to Wilhelm, he was cold and unwilling to deal with her misery as well as his own. To get her out of his way, he suggested that she should go and stay at her father’s place until she had recovered mentally. That should cure her isolation.
    Johanna loved this idea and imme diately suggested it to Benedikt who was happy to go along with it and ordered her to go and join her family in Bratislava. He felt that all the crying over spilt milk could become disruptive to his life and might demand too much of his attention which he exclusively had reserved for the running of the farm.
    During his supervision of the new labourers , in two of the Jews he had recognised surprising talent and commitment to the farm. He now felt comfortable enough to entrust them with supervising the others. This had worked out very well and he calculated that it was worth the expense of giving them the little he had to pay them instead of returning the tasks to the cheaper yet more inefficient family members.
    He chose Maria to work with them, knowing that her quiet and hardworking nature would be enough to keep them on their guard. The men were married and too desperate for work to get fresh with his daughter, but he often also showed up unannounced to impress on them that he was still watching them. Maria was pleased that she was permitted to keep working outdoors. She had expected and feared to be put back into the kitchen under the scolding hand of her mother. Since Elizabeth had left, the atmosphere in the house had