Chapter 38 – The Devil’s Daughter

“Rollo, are you out of your mind? You can’t possibly be planning to send money to that man again, can you?”

From downstairs came Grandma Elodie’s voice of shock. Sasha quietly listened to that voice rising through the gaps between the wooden floorboards.

“If I don’t send the money, he’ll file a suit demanding his daughter be returned to him. He’s exactly the sort of man who would do that.”

Grandma Rollo answered firmly. To Sasha, it was a familiar voice, always calm and composed.

“Oh, Rollo. I can’t believe Sasha was born under a disgusting creature like him.”

“Quiet. The child is sleeping upstairs.”

Clutching the blanket, Sasha still blinked her heavy eyelids. Did her grandmothers not know she was awake. Should she go downstairs and tell them. No matter what, pretending to be asleep and eavesdropping on other people’s conversation was probably not something a good granddaughter ought to do.

Now the grandmothers began lowering their voices to whispers. She could no longer hear what they were saying, but Sasha guessed what had happened while she had been lying sick in bed. Another letter had come from Laurent. A letter asking for money to be sent, using Sasha as leverage.

Her father always needed money for drink, and he also needed settlement money to patch up the trouble he caused after drinking. That man had always lived in want of money, and Sasha knew better than anyone in the world except one that, whenever he was like that, he angered easily. The first person would probably be Mother.

‘If I could sell paintings, we could send the money and still live comfortably……’

Carefully turning over so as not to make a sound, Sasha played with the soft pillowcase. Grandma Rollo, upright as a bamboo rod, would absolutely never touch even a single bit of Sasha’s sponsorship money. That money could be used only to buy painting supplies.

But Sasha also knew very well that the circumstances of the Vinoche household were by no means comfortable. It already took quite a large amount of money just to pay for Enzo’s studies abroad. The sighs of Madame Vinoche that she sometimes heard, and her father’s letters that flew in like an annual event, made Sasha uneasy.

That man could invade this place at any time. He knew this house, and when they had once failed to send the money before, he had come in person and caused a disturbance. Her biological father could mercilessly trample the peace and comfort of Sasha and her family whenever he pleased.

‘Father will follow me forever. If I die first, would he let me go then?’

Lying on her back and looking at the ceiling, Sasha stared blankly at the rippling pattern of the wallpaper. Grandma Elodie had been right. Why did I have to be born under a father like that. It felt as though a heavy shackle had snapped around her ankle. So that no matter how hard she swam, she would never be able to rise above the surface.

<You’re the devil’s daughter. Every time I look at you, I feel sick with revulsion. Why is it that you had to take after that devil of a man instead of resembling me?>

The childhood memories that often drifted through her mind were, for the most part, times spent with her mother. When her father came storming in out of nowhere, took the money, and left the house, her mother changed completely. After a storm-like stretch of time had passed, she would sink down on the kitchen floor in despair and lament in a hopeless voice.

Holding her throbbing cheek, Sasha would smile brightly. Because when she smiled, she looked a little more like her mother. Because her mother liked that. Tomorrow her cheek would be swollen red, but that was all right. If she was unlucky, there would be a purple bruise, but that was all right too. Her mother would come back tomorrow. Her mother would surely apologize, saying she was sorry, and embrace her. In truth, her mother’s hands were much weaker than her father’s, but even so, Sasha had hurt the most when her mother hit her. It hurt very, very much.

Those were the people who had given birth to Sasha. Damien did not know that fact. He also did not know that Sasha’s mother was shut away in Bénével. The people of Manolie only thought Sasha’s biological parents were poor and that Mr. Vinoche had brought his niece to Manolie for that reason.

‘If Damien saw Father, would he still want to marry me then?’

She did not want to blame him, but it was true that doubt crept in quietly. If Mr. and Madame Green, who had welcomed her in Laurent, knew of a father who was an alcoholic and came asking for money, they would no longer be able to gladly receive the woman their nephew had brought. Who could wholly love the daughter of such a man? Even her mother, even the mother who had given birth to Sasha, had hated her for being her father’s daughter.

“Sasha? Are you still asleep?”

Just then, a careful knocking sounded from outside the door. Sensing that her grandmothers had come upstairs, Sasha quickly shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep. Swallowing a deep sigh, Grandma Elodie pulled the blanket back up over Sasha, where it had slipped down, and spoke.

“Rollo, no, even so, this won’t do. Those earrings are a keepsake your mother left behind. No matter how badly we need money, we cannot sell something like that. I’ll write to my elder sister instead. If I tell her it’s urgent, we should at least be able to borrow some amount.”

Sasha, having unintentionally learned that Grandma Rollo had even meant to sell the earrings she cherished, struggled desperately to keep her eyelids from trembling. The two old women exchanged heavy looks in silence. After touching Sasha’s forehead and finding her fever gone, they left the room a little later. Left alone, Sasha once again used the ceiling as a canvas and painted in her imagination. And then, and then, and painted again. She painted until her head felt ready to burst.

She wanted to sell her paintings somehow. Now she wanted to sell paintings and earn money. But who would want to buy the work of an amateur painter who had never even once placed in a competition? So far, there had been only two people who had recognized the works Sasha painted. Baron Auguste, her generous patron, and the person who had bought Sasha’s painting for the first time long ago.

As much as, or perhaps a little more than, her longing for other people to recognize her paintings, Sasha felt a strong curiosity to know the someone who had first bought her work. If she ever met that person in person, there was something she absolutely wanted to ask. Why had you liked my painting, which was nothing at all.

‘If that person never reveals it first, then I’ll never know who it is.’

She had already sent letters to the Royal Academy of Arts several times, but they had all been refused. The buyer of the painting did not want it known who they were. There was no way for Sasha to find the person who had hidden themself so carefully behind the shadows.

* * *

That night, Rollo was unable to sleep until very late. Her heart was heavy with guilt over the fact that she had weighed Sasha against even a single pair of earrings, if only for a moment.

She still remembered the day Sasha’s biological father had first come to this house, demanding his daughter back. It had not been long after Benoit brought Sasha to Manolie. Seeing the house in Laurent empty, the man had realized what had happened and come shouting for them to hand over the daughter they had kidnapped. To escape her biological father as he made a scene, Sasha had swiftly run off into the Manolie forest. No one there had been able to stop that child.

‘Who could have known. That such a young child would suddenly hide herself in the forest.’

The niece Benoit had brought from Laurent had never caused trouble even once. Little Sasha smiled easily and listened well to what adults said. So from the beginning, no one had imagined she would flee like a cornered field mouse.

Sasha lived in the forest for three days. After giving money to Sasha’s biological father and sending him away, the Vinoche family searched the entire forest, but they could not find so much as a single strand of the child’s hair. Where in the world had she hidden herself. In the end, after three days, Sasha came down to the village because she was hungry, hovered around in front of the bakery, and was caught by the shop owner and brought home.

The Vinoche family learned that Sasha was afraid of her father, but there was no other solution. After all, that man was Sasha’s father both biologically and legally. What happened between close family was not something more distant family could step into as they pleased. Knowing that, the man periodically took money from them while threatening to sue and take Sasha away.

‘For now I may be protecting her, but that man will live far longer than I will.’

Whenever she thought of that, Rollo’s vision dimmed. If she were to die. If she could no longer be the fence around her granddaughter. That stubborn man would somehow snatch Sasha away and think of using her to make money. For now, at least, it was fortunate he did not know, but if he ever learned that his daughter was being sponsored by a nobleman, he was the sort who would immediately go demanding that money be sent to him, the biological father.

‘Poor child. How did she happen to be born under such a man. Why did she have to be born at all……’

Rollo pitied her granddaughter beyond measure. Before she died, she wanted to build her a new shelter. Sasha deserved that. Of all the girls Rollo had ever seen in her life, that child was the loveliest. From the very first day, when she had stepped hesitantly out from behind Benoit returning from Laurent and given a bright smile, until now.

* * *

“Sasha, there’s mail for you too.”

It was the next day that an envelope arrived at the Vinoche house. Sasha, whose fever had completely gone down, had come downstairs and was wandering about looking for something to help with when she heard her grandmothers calling after returning from the mailbox, and poked out her head.

“For me? Mail?”

Sasha took the envelope, bewildered. It bore a Laurent postmark. The recipient clearly said ‘Sasha Vinoche.’

“Who is it from?”

The other family members gathered too, curious. Sasha quickly tore open the envelope. It was a letter from the Royal Academy of Arts. It said that the painting Sasha had submitted to a competition eight years ago had sold at an exhibition, and that there had been an error on the part of an intermediary administrator in the process of paying her compensation for it.

“With our apologies, enclosed is the remainder of the compensation that was unpaid at the time, though belatedly…….”

When she turned the flat envelope upside down, a remaining sheet of paper fluttered out and landed on the table. It was a check with a number written on it unlike any Sasha had ever seen in her life. For a while, they all stared at the check in silence. Wondering whether it might be forged, or whether they had read the number wrong. At last, once the Vinoche family realized it was real and not a forgery at all, they were aghast.