Inert picture of hardware store
The hardware store thrives and life hums along. Papa magnanimously houses some of the family at 17 Breitenseerstrasse…his brothers Max and Marcus, Marcus’s wife, Regina . He and Mela have two maids and never use the Oriental orange furniture in the parlor. At some point, Papa’s younger sister, Berta, comes to stay and feels like a maid too. For a year, they treat her as a servant. She never forgot. Her son Fredi, now in his 80’s, carries her bitterness forward. He was never allowed to sit on that furniture either.
The store provides an upper middle class life. Mela greets Papa in a fancy carriage one day as he comes home. A country boy, he looks at her with disdain.