Cynthia’s Fate

One year after my first birth, it was Cynthia’s turn. The wedding to Eliah was even more magnificent than mine, yet Cynthia seemed like a stranger that day. Eliah was a stern man, even more unyielding than Adam. He saw Cynthia as "rebellious," someone who had to be tamed through motherhood.

Cynthia proved to be exceptionally fertile. In the first eight years of her marriage, she bore Eliah seven children. Thus, the seventh child was already named Gustav.

I visited her often when Eliah was out in the fields. We would sit in her kitchen, surrounded by screaming toddlers. Cynthia had grown thinner, her face lined by hard labor and short nights.

"Do you remember, Amalia," she whispered one day while nursing little Gustav, "how we gathered mushrooms in the forest? How freedom felt?"

I looked at her sternly, even though my heart ached. "Those were childish things, Cynthia. Look at your children. They are the arrows that make Eliah proud."

She nodded silently, but I saw her close her hand tightly around the baby’s small body. Eliah tolerated no weakness. If Cynthia fell behind in the household chores or if one of the children did not obey, he still reached for the strap—this time, however, not publicly in the village square, but behind the closed doors of their home, as was a husband's right.