Page 146 - harryDEC12_clean.iba

“After all, she’s your daughter. If something happens to you she’ll have no rights. I can’t offer her anything, can’t even feed her because I had to give up my profession for your sake .That’s not fair. You ought to at least adopt her and acknowledge your paternity.”
Ceaselessly she heaps on me accusations accompanied by outbreaks of rage or fits of weeping. It is hell, and I want to be far away - too late. My business trips offer a certain relief and a welcome change – but also offer Martha a welcome excuse to evoke the dangers our living together was in, and to lecture me on all sorts of things. Finally I meekly submit. I go to the registry office in Altona, acknowledge my paternity without second thoughts - that is how stupid I can be, and adopt my own daughter. All of that I feel to be extremely embarrassing, but I do not brood further on the matter.
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Life was otherwise good, I thought, the business was going well, and after the divorce from Beatrice, we would anyway get married. There seemed to be no other path open to me at this moment, without causing major turmoil, that was my thought in my blinded vision and I took my fateful choice. We know lots of things in retrospect; We do not listen to the warning voices, the well-intentioned advice, especially not when one is a romantic idealist who is flying high up in the sky and, like Icarus, does not notice that the wings are melting. That was I at that time. Inexperienced in dealing with nature of evil, like most people, I did not see the coming signs, not even when I met for the first time my future parents-in-law. That occurred, as Martha wished, only after I agreed to marry her. Both witnesses to the wedding were arranged by Martha, Frenzie, her alleged girlfriend, and her partner. Of my friends none was prepared to come forward - odd I thought.
oOo
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