Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

been difficult to explain to the sergeant that his pallor was not caused by any concern for his father, but by his secret hope that there would be enough evidence to sentence him to the firing squad. When, instead, Carlé was consigned to six months of forced labor in the mines of the Ukraine, Jochen and Rolf considered it an unbelievably light punishment, and secretly prayed that Lukas Carlé would die in that faraway land and never come back.
    Hunger did not end with the peace; for years foraging for food had been their first priority, and that did not change. Jochen could scarcely read, but he was strong and persistent, and after his father left and after the shelling had destroyed the fields, he had taken charge of providing for his family by cutting wood, selling blackberries and wild mushrooms, and hunting rabbits and partridges and foxes. Soon Rolf was a partner in his brother’s efforts and, like him, learned to pilfer odds and ends in the neighboring villages—always without the knowledge of his mother, who even during times of greatest hardship acted as if the war were a remote nightmare that had nothing to do with her; she was not, furthermore, one to compromise when it came to instilling moral values in her children. The boy became so accustomed to the gnawing in his innards that long afterward, when the markets were overflowing with the earth’s bounty and fried potatoes and sweets and sausages were being sold on every street corner, he continued to dream of stale bread hidden in a hollow in the floorboards beneath his bed.
    Frau Carlé succeeded in maintaining her serenity and her faith in God until the day her husband returned from the Ukraine to claim his rightful place in the household. Then her courage deserted her. She seemed to shrivel up, and she withdrew, engaged in an unending dialogue with herself.The fear that had always been present finally crippled her; she had no outlet for her hatred, and it destroyed her. Unshirking, she continued to carry out all her responsibilities, slaving from dawn to nightfall, tending to Katharina, serving the rest of her family, but she stopped smiling or speaking—and she did not return to church, because she was not willing to get down on her knees to a merciless God who had ignored her just prayers that Lukas Carlé burn in hell. She also gave up trying to protect Jochen and Rolf from their father’s excesses. The yellings, the beatings, the quarrels, all came to seem normal to her, and evoked no response. She sat and stared out the window with vacant eyes, escaping into a past where there was no Lukas Carlé and she was still a young girl untouched by affliction.
    Carlé held the theory that human beings are divided into anvils and hammers: some are born to beat, others to be beaten. Naturally, he wanted his male children to be hammers. He would tolerate no weakness in them, especially in Jochen, on whom he experimented with his theories on teaching. He was infuriated when the boy’s stuttering only grew worse and he began to chew his fingernails. Desperate, Jochen would lie awake at night inventing ways to free himself once and for all from that torment, but with the light of day he would bow to reality, hang his head, and obey his father, never daring to stand up to him, even though he was twenty centimeters taller and as strong as a workhorse. His submissiveness lasted until one winter night when Lukas Carlé felt the mood coming over him to use the red boots. The boys were old enough to guess what that oppressive atmosphere meant, those strained looks, the silence heavy with portents. As he always did, Carlé ordered the children to leave them, to take Katharina and go to their room and notcome out for any reason. Before they left, Jochen and Rolf glimpsed the terror in their mother’s eyes, and saw her shivering. Soon afterward, lying rigid in their beds, they heard the Victrola blaring at full volume.
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