But we stand together with you there. Together with them.

We feel exactly the same as they do, about the darkness and the arrows and all the rest of it.

It’s no use, they tell themselves. They’ll link us with Father as long as anyone remembers him.

They cannot bring themselves to believe in the friendship in those words. It seems so hopeless. The collapse was too complete. They have only one wish: to be able to disappear without trace, to get so far away that no one will know them. A futile and impotent wish, poor as they are, and lacking friends. They are lying far down. It is useless to look into the future; the future is nothing but a blank wall.

But someone is calling them again, calmly and seriously, calling them by name.

Hold up your head, Freda.

Hold up your head, Frank.

What? they think, wearily. The call reaches them clearly enough and yet…. No abyss is so deep that this call does not reach into it.

You’re not to blame for what has happened, it tells them, calling them by name in order to encourage their weary footsteps.

What? they think, deep in misery, it’s no use telling us that. It feels as if it is our fault. When we look at the faces we meet, it overwhelms us. Then we feel we’re to blame, whether it’s true or not.

They know how hard they tried to struggle against what their father involved himself in, how shocked they had been, but at the same time bound by the fact that they were his children and forced to stay with him and be fed and clothed by him – on what he earned from polishing the arrows. With all their hearts they had wanted to get out of this situation, but their hearts were powerless. Countless things from their childhood bound them to this loving father whose greatest wish was to give them gifts. When this evil time began, they had not known what to do about him. They showed him that they didn’t approve of it, but they hadn’t the heart to attack him in anger or despair in order to frighten him. A helpless little vacuum was created between him and themselves: their grudging expressions, and an occasional nervous comment. But he had become so deeply involved that this reluctance was not enough. He did not give it up. And then it began to look as if it really had become more important to him than to be affectionately united with the family he was working for. He knew he was hurting them, but he continued just the same.

How could that have had such power over him? they ask. He became a different person.

But now they have been dragged down with him in his fall.

No, says a voice in them that is demanding elbow-room and the chance to be heard – it’s not true. We weren’t involved in this thing that Father let himself be captured by. We were against it the whole time.