The way in which my request was received became the first rather bitter experience of my life. My father, despite his characteristic vehemence nevertheless so lenient concerning the inexperience and foolishness of his children in other respects, – he was unrecognizable to me!
And even now, more than 60 years afterward, I dwell rather reluctantly on how mercilessly he laughed at my childish-fatuous idea, as he called it.
[ . . . ]
[Pushed into the ranks of the grown-ups]
[ . . . ]
It was around the time of Saint Dominic’s Day [August 8]; in the course of the previous month, I had completed my thirteenth year, and I began considering myself a rather grown-up girl, even though I had not yet broken off all dealings with my dolls: for the sake of my sister Lotte, as I wished to persuade myself and others.
[ . . . ]
On a rather hot, sunny morning my mother accordingly stood in our cool hallway, engaged in eager negotiations with a Bohemian glass trader concerning the procurement of her table glasses. With burning cheeks, breathless, hurrying like a bird escaping from the net, I flew down the stairs, right into her arms.
“Mother,” I gasped frightened, “the Candidate wants to marry me,” clinging more firmly to her; startled, she dropped the glasses she was holding in her hand. However, she soon pulled herself together, the glass trader was seen off for the time being and asked to come again at a more convenient time, the little daughter, however, interrogated for the moment. Nothing much emerged from this; whatever lamentations and sob stories I might have told her, I do not recall them any more, but they did prompt her to go see the Candidate in the room where I had left him, as I ran away in the midst of the lesson. I, on the other hand, totally intimidated, stole myself to the nursery, which was still my actual home, my refuge in all distress.
Not I, as my mother may have feared in her initial fright, but my good Philoteknos [friend of children] had lost the Tramontane, his head, a bit, to put it politely. The cordial love that I showed him quite openly at every opportunity, the genuine joy with which I performed everything that he asked me to do, in addition my childish way to lean out of the window as far as I could to gaze after him when he left, and, whenever possible, to wave a farewell to him, all of this combined had given good Kuschel – with his lack of knowledge of the world and experience of life – cause for a total misunderstanding. It had induced him to forget that with my thirteen years I was nothing but a good-natured, grateful child.
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