"Well, screw you!!! I never cared anyway!!!!!!!"
"Don't you talk that way to-"
An old wood door slammed shut, echoing throughout the house.
"...me," the man's voice finished.
"Calm down, calm down. I'm sure she'll mellow out in a bit. You know how she is. It's going to be like last time, dear. There's no problem...." a woman's voice chimed in.
These were the sounds that filled the large, old fashioned cottage-like house on the vineyard. There is a very old novel that begins by saying that happy families are like one another, but unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways. In this case, the family here was unhappy for the same reason over and over again.
Kai, the helper on the vineyard, sighed as he made this observation. He was slumped in a wooden chair in the corner, watching the master, Gotz, and his wife, Sasha, talking about their daughter who had just slammed the door and went off to wherever she did when these arguments rose up. Kai also observed that Gotz was always a gruff-looking person, having thick, bushy brown eyebrows and a beard to match. The vineyard master was somewhat short and very round. The way he carried his huge, fat muscular arms was intimidating too, and they almost always rested on his hips. Sasha, however, was something else. She was fair and thin, and he guessed that she was once very pretty, having golden-blond hair. Kai never saw that much of it because it was pulled back. Her hairstyle and the worry-lines in her face were making her appear old before her time. She always stood in the corner sighing to herself. Sasha was a very kind and welcoming woman, but now she had to struggle to be kind because of all the tension in the house.
Kai had come to this village years and years ago. The master and his wife were very, very kind to him and made him feel quite at home, and this was why he decided to stay instead of moving on to the big city, which was the desire he was still yearning for. Only now he wanted it more and more, specifically because of the quarrels between Gotz and his daughter Karen that had started up only about two to three years ago. Karen, as well, wanted to leave here and that was the root of all the arguments. Karen was already seventeen years old and it was high time she had gotten married (the marriageable age in Flower Bud Village was between fifteen and sixteen) but suddenly these quaint fancies had risen inside her, and this is what her father did not understand.
So the helper just sat in the corner, retying the purple bandanna around his head uneasily. He surely knew better than to sit around while the family was arguing, but he was given permission by the master to have a break. Plus all the tension and negative feelings going around made him feel physically troubled, so just sitting here stiffly could not be helped. Besides, Kai had witnessed so much more that it wouldn't matter to Gotz or Sasha anyway. Only this time it was a bit worse than usual because Karen had never said "screw you" to her father before. Still, it was no surprise. Karen could be very, very rude when she wanted to, and it was only a matter of time before she said "screw you" anyway.
Finally deciding to get up, Kai left the house unnoticed and found Karen walking outside, apparently headed nowhere. Karen was very beautiful, with her green eyes like her mother, and long chestnut-brown hair with golden bangs. She was thin but carried the disposition of her spiteful father, but that quality she did not realize. Kai wondered just what Karen was thinking (besides hatred for her father, of course) and what she was all about.
Karen was thinking, as her favorite brown boots crunched into the dry soil, about the cruelty she was being faced with. As a thousand times before, she weighed the situation in her mind and firmly decided that she was completely in the right and that her father was too stubborn and blind (in a figurative sense) to see that she was being totally fair and just about it. For one thing, the vineyard was doing terrible. For some reason the grapes just simply would not grow, and it's not like staying there would help it in the least. Furthermore, her father himself was always different from everybody else, so it was unfathomable to her why he would want to keep up with the old traditions. In her eyes, she wouldn't get married if she did not want to, and she wouldn't stay on the same chunk of soil just because her ancestors did instead of doing something else with her life if she didn't want to.
Tears had sprung up in the corners of her pretty green eyes and in her opinion, her father was teasing her dreams and she was doomed to have her life under his control forever. Seconds later she grumbled at herself for becoming so sentimental about it. Karen felt that her father was simply dumber than she was, and that there was no need for her to suffer because of it. Leaving, itself, was the problem.
Then Karen came across the memory that also made her feel sentimental. There was no denying that her father drank too much sometimes, and when she was younger her father used to dance with her when he drank. It stung her now that he had to intoxicate himself to show any sign that he loved her, and he never did that anymore. This was so long ago that Karen had become immune to this occurrence, and it had become part of her life, but when she deliberated on the subject like now, it made her all the more miserable.
She hadn't realized this, of course, but she made a habit of using the psychological displacement method, and never noticed just how stupid the picket fence looked. Its ugliness irked her further and she decided to follow it out to see where it finally ended. In a matter of seconds she had stalked off the vineyard and was facing the pathway to Moon Mountain, one of her favorite refuges from her family life. Instead of taking the route up there, as Moon Mountain was a popular spot for several people in the village, she faced the opposite direction and walked off toward the beach. Even in the perfect springtime temperature few people went there, so she could exhale all her strife out into the whispers and caresses of the moist sea air.
Karen never cried. At least not in a long time. She was almost always emotionally strong because she had a habit of carrying out an argument to its full climax, never wanting to let her guard down. The harder she tried not to cry on her trip to the beach, the harder her masculine boots crushed into the earth. Her hair whipped in the wind and she tenderly brushed her distinguishable beauty, her blonde bangs, out of her face, but was not quite so gentle with the dull chestnut-brown length of it in the back. The tears that escaped her eyes sluiced through her hair in the rush of the crisp spring air when she moved so swiftly. As her nerves settled down, she thought it disgusting for her family to act so spiteful when it wasn't two days after the New Year's Day festivities. The alcohol, the cheerfulness, the alcohol, the greetings, and the alcohol altogether made people in the village raring to start the year off well, and already her father provoked the aggressive side of Karen that she'd tried so hard to tuck away, to settle at the bottom of her soul to be weighed down by happier things.
"Don't you talk that way to-"
An old wood door slammed shut, echoing throughout the house.
"...me," the man's voice finished.
"Calm down, calm down. I'm sure she'll mellow out in a bit. You know how she is. It's going to be like last time, dear. There's no problem...." a woman's voice chimed in.
These were the sounds that filled the large, old fashioned cottage-like house on the vineyard. There is a very old novel that begins by saying that happy families are like one another, but unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways. In this case, the family here was unhappy for the same reason over and over again.
Kai, the helper on the vineyard, sighed as he made this observation. He was slumped in a wooden chair in the corner, watching the master, Gotz, and his wife, Sasha, talking about their daughter who had just slammed the door and went off to wherever she did when these arguments rose up. Kai also observed that Gotz was always a gruff-looking person, having thick, bushy brown eyebrows and a beard to match. The vineyard master was somewhat short and very round. The way he carried his huge, fat muscular arms was intimidating too, and they almost always rested on his hips. Sasha, however, was something else. She was fair and thin, and he guessed that she was once very pretty, having golden-blond hair. Kai never saw that much of it because it was pulled back. Her hairstyle and the worry-lines in her face were making her appear old before her time. She always stood in the corner sighing to herself. Sasha was a very kind and welcoming woman, but now she had to struggle to be kind because of all the tension in the house.
Kai had come to this village years and years ago. The master and his wife were very, very kind to him and made him feel quite at home, and this was why he decided to stay instead of moving on to the big city, which was the desire he was still yearning for. Only now he wanted it more and more, specifically because of the quarrels between Gotz and his daughter Karen that had started up only about two to three years ago. Karen, as well, wanted to leave here and that was the root of all the arguments. Karen was already seventeen years old and it was high time she had gotten married (the marriageable age in Flower Bud Village was between fifteen and sixteen) but suddenly these quaint fancies had risen inside her, and this is what her father did not understand.
So the helper just sat in the corner, retying the purple bandanna around his head uneasily. He surely knew better than to sit around while the family was arguing, but he was given permission by the master to have a break. Plus all the tension and negative feelings going around made him feel physically troubled, so just sitting here stiffly could not be helped. Besides, Kai had witnessed so much more that it wouldn't matter to Gotz or Sasha anyway. Only this time it was a bit worse than usual because Karen had never said "screw you" to her father before. Still, it was no surprise. Karen could be very, very rude when she wanted to, and it was only a matter of time before she said "screw you" anyway.
Finally deciding to get up, Kai left the house unnoticed and found Karen walking outside, apparently headed nowhere. Karen was very beautiful, with her green eyes like her mother, and long chestnut-brown hair with golden bangs. She was thin but carried the disposition of her spiteful father, but that quality she did not realize. Kai wondered just what Karen was thinking (besides hatred for her father, of course) and what she was all about.
Karen was thinking, as her favorite brown boots crunched into the dry soil, about the cruelty she was being faced with. As a thousand times before, she weighed the situation in her mind and firmly decided that she was completely in the right and that her father was too stubborn and blind (in a figurative sense) to see that she was being totally fair and just about it. For one thing, the vineyard was doing terrible. For some reason the grapes just simply would not grow, and it's not like staying there would help it in the least. Furthermore, her father himself was always different from everybody else, so it was unfathomable to her why he would want to keep up with the old traditions. In her eyes, she wouldn't get married if she did not want to, and she wouldn't stay on the same chunk of soil just because her ancestors did instead of doing something else with her life if she didn't want to.
Tears had sprung up in the corners of her pretty green eyes and in her opinion, her father was teasing her dreams and she was doomed to have her life under his control forever. Seconds later she grumbled at herself for becoming so sentimental about it. Karen felt that her father was simply dumber than she was, and that there was no need for her to suffer because of it. Leaving, itself, was the problem.
Then Karen came across the memory that also made her feel sentimental. There was no denying that her father drank too much sometimes, and when she was younger her father used to dance with her when he drank. It stung her now that he had to intoxicate himself to show any sign that he loved her, and he never did that anymore. This was so long ago that Karen had become immune to this occurrence, and it had become part of her life, but when she deliberated on the subject like now, it made her all the more miserable.
She hadn't realized this, of course, but she made a habit of using the psychological displacement method, and never noticed just how stupid the picket fence looked. Its ugliness irked her further and she decided to follow it out to see where it finally ended. In a matter of seconds she had stalked off the vineyard and was facing the pathway to Moon Mountain, one of her favorite refuges from her family life. Instead of taking the route up there, as Moon Mountain was a popular spot for several people in the village, she faced the opposite direction and walked off toward the beach. Even in the perfect springtime temperature few people went there, so she could exhale all her strife out into the whispers and caresses of the moist sea air.
Karen never cried. At least not in a long time. She was almost always emotionally strong because she had a habit of carrying out an argument to its full climax, never wanting to let her guard down. The harder she tried not to cry on her trip to the beach, the harder her masculine boots crushed into the earth. Her hair whipped in the wind and she tenderly brushed her distinguishable beauty, her blonde bangs, out of her face, but was not quite so gentle with the dull chestnut-brown length of it in the back. The tears that escaped her eyes sluiced through her hair in the rush of the crisp spring air when she moved so swiftly. As her nerves settled down, she thought it disgusting for her family to act so spiteful when it wasn't two days after the New Year's Day festivities. The alcohol, the cheerfulness, the alcohol, the greetings, and the alcohol altogether made people in the village raring to start the year off well, and already her father provoked the aggressive side of Karen that she'd tried so hard to tuck away, to settle at the bottom of her soul to be weighed down by happier things.