Chapter 9
May, 1921
Gassmann family homestead
Despite what he had promised his parents, Hans did not find it easy to give Viktor Bunke a chance. The tall man, whose hair was sandy-colored, like Ulrich’s, but wavy rather than curly like the older man’s, walked into the Gassmanns’ yard on that day in May, not long after Hans and Ulrich had finished breakfast and headed into the workshop. Viktor stood in the dirt driveway, a canvas pack on his back, a leather satchel in one hand, and his cap in the other. For a May morning, it was surprisingly warm, and the dust on his boots and sweat that showed through his worn, white work shirt indicated that he had come a distance and had been walking for quite some time.
Although two years younger than Hans, Viktor had the presence of someone much older. Was it a confidence and ease that he’d acquired in the course of several years of wandering for employment, and of valuable experience gained as he worked with a series of masters? Or was it a tense wariness that had developed as Viktor move from place to place in his efforts to support himself? A guardedness based in certain incidents of childhood and war, that had taught him lessons just as valuable as those he learned at the side of those he toiled alongside? In fact, it was both. Viktor had a resoluteness to his gaze and facial expressions, and the firmness that characterized his physical body was evident also in his air. Guarded and, at the same time, open, even somehow charismatic.
No one was out in the yard when he arrived. This gave him the chance to survey this spot where he’d landed, unobserved by the people who had agreed to take him on and who were, as yet, a mystery to him.
But, as he cast a glance methodically around the yard, the log home, the low house, the goats in their pen, the chickens, the woodpile, the line with its bag of clothespins awaiting today’s laundry, and the garden, the haze of mystery began to dispel for Viktor. Good, solid people, he concluded. Everything in complete order, despite the recent war, despite the shortages. These Gassmanns had held it all together. A good sign, he thought. There might be much to be gained from working and living here. Viktor breathed in and caught the mingled scent of the animals, the wood, the morning’s breakfast, and the young garden, still damp from the previous night’s rain. He felt a calm and lightness here that surprised him. He even had trouble identifying it at first, since it had been such a long, long time since he’d sensed anything like it. He felt joy, too.
Hearing voices coming from the low house, Viktor turned to walk in that direction. But by then, Renate had seen him from the kitchen window. So had the brown and white dog that had emerged from the low house, tail wagging. Dog and matriarch approached Viktor from two directions, both walking at a leisurely pace, both seemingly friendly in intent. Viktor consciously softened his face and bearing a bit as he tipped his cap to the matriarch.
“Mrs. Gassmann?” he asked. “I’m Viktor Bunke, come to work for Mr. Gassmann.”
“Yes, welcome, Mr. Bunke. We’re expecting you.” She took him in with a quick glance. “You must have gotten out early this morning.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I slept overnight in Varel and then set out.”
“Have you eaten?”
“A boiled egg and a roll.”
Renate nodded, and her mouth formed something a bit reminiscent of a smile. “Well, that’s a start.” She indicated the low house with a vague motion of her arm. “Ulrich and our son, Hans, are in the workshop. Come on, I’ll take you to them.”
She led him through the small, side door of the workshop. Introductions were made, and all three men took stock of each other openly, but kindly, first with their eyes, and then through words. But even as the first words were being exchanged, Viktor already felt that he would be able to work with Ulrich and Hans. He could tell that he had correctly intuited their forthrightness from his initial survey of their homestead. Their kindness was evident, too. Less so in Hans, who, though he warmly shook Viktor’s hand, held back in a way that Viktor noticed, but didn’t take personally. A little caution is a good thing these days, he thought. He, himself, had the habit of bringing more than a little caution to every encounter.
“Here’s where we work,” Ulrich said, moving further into the workshop. He led Viktor into the large, open area full of neatly-arranged and organized wood – blocks, planks, turned pieces, pieces waiting to be turned – workbenches, woodworking equipment, a stretch of wall hung with tools, and a section of counter occupied by papers stacked in piles and weighted down with stones, and two projects in progress. Viktor followed Ulrich, taking note of the workshop’s contents, and of its master, too. Ulrich had a heaviness of spirit to him, despite being physically rail-thin, a melancholy that translated into a certain ponderousness of movement. As if he were one of the tall pines that were his charges, rooted to the ground, but vulnerable to toppling due to shallow roots.
“Come on,” Ulrich said, once he’d completed the general tour. “I’ll show you where to stow your gear. He turned around and walked back past the small side door. “That’s the store room,” he said, pointing to the room on the left, where Wolf had lived out his last years, where Ulrich had ridden the sawhorses at his grandfather’s encouragement. Ulrich opened the door of the second door at this end of the workshop and stepped through a doorway into the large, corner room. It had one window, Viktor noted, on the outside wall that faced the yard, and a small wood stove. He saw the simple, but solidly-built wooden bed frame with a pieced quilt and wool blanket atop a mattress that seemed soft when Viktor sat down on it later. A pillow in an embroidered pillowcase lay propped up against the headboard. In the corner stood a similarly plain chair and table, with a kerosene lamp and matches atop it. On a nearby washstand: a tin basin and large water pitcher. Two towels – one narrow, short, and thin, one thicker, wider, and longer, hung from pegs protruding from the underside of the washstand’s top. Several more pegs on the wall beneath one long shelf just inside the door completed the décor.
“Your room,” Ulrich announced. “Pump just out your window there. Outhouse across the yard.”
Viktor nodded. He’d seen them both when he arrived. “Thank you. Are you sure you can spare me this much space?”
“Unless you’d rather sleep in the hay loft, you’re welcome to it,” Ulrich replied, smiling, but still with a hint of the melancholy.
“I’m grateful,” Viktor told him. He meant it. This room was a great improvement over the bare-bones lodgings he’d held in his previous workplaces: drafty, unclean, and generally miniscule spaces. They often had no real bed and barely any bedding, much less bed linens.
“You’ll take your meals inside with us,” Renate told him, rising up on her tiptoes to speak to him from behind Hans’ shoulder. They were both standing in the doorway. When she spoke, Hans turned sharply to look at her, too surprised to even try to hide his annoyance. He said nothing, but Viktor got the message.
“I’m happy to eat out here,” he told them. No use making ripples right at the outset.
“Nothing of the sort. That’d be more work for us,” Renate joked. “Bringing the food out, taking it back in. No, you’ll take your meals with us.”
She didn’t return Hans’ gaze, and he realized, when he saw his father nod, that Ulrich and Renate had come to this decision earlier, without discussing it with him or Ethel. Okay, give him a chance, he thought to himself. You said you would.
“That’s very kind,” Viktor said. He meant that, too. He was, in fact, stunned by this. As stunned as Hans was, and for a similar reason, it turns out. Why? Hans thought. Why would you let this stranger into our home? To sit at our family table?
This is basically what Viktor was wondering, too. Why be so kind to me? They don’t know me. No reason yet for them to show such kindness. But it was settled.
During his first conversation with these members of the Gassmann family, Viktor noted in them varying degrees of the calm and lightness that he’d perceived upon entering the yard, but only the barest hint of the joy he’d picked up on in those first minutes. Who is the joyful one in this family?
For the rest of the morning, Ulrich thoroughly acquainted Viktor with everything in the barn, discerning, in the process, Viktor’s knowledge of tools and methods, but all in a very gentle way.
“Not a test,” Ulrich assured him. “Just so I’ll know what you know and what you don’t.”
This comment astonished Viktor, although he didn’t show it in his expression. He just nodded. The men he’d formerly worked with had also wanted to figure out right away what skills he did or didn’t have. But, without exception, they had met him with gruffness and suspicion. One told him outright, “Don’t try to put anything over on me, Son. I’ll find out your weakness soon enough, no matter what you do. Hiding them’ll just make things harder for both of us. Mostly for you.” Being addressed as “Son” by a man who clearly felt no affection for him felt, for a moment, until he stuffed the hurt deep down inside, like a conscious attempt to wound him. This conversation took place less than a year after his father, Karl-Heinz, died on the battlefield, and Viktor was still feeling that loss keenly at this point. At least when he allowed himself to do so, which was rarely.
Ulrich knew that Viktor had worked with a variety of carpenters, both masters and journeymen, over the past three years, but not as part of any formal apprenticeship. And that he’d also spent some time earlier, working at a factory in Oldenburg during the last year of the war, before he’d been drafted. Nothing connected to carpentry at all, but, rather, a way to make more money for his family back in Schweiburg, since his father was gone. That’s how Viktor had told it, although he hadn’t explained in what way his father had been “gone”. And even though Viktor hadn’t served as an official apprentice, he had supplied Ulrich with letters from the men he’d worked for and with. They attested to his fine skills and good work ethic. Far more than a lot of men had these days, Ulrich reasoned. An eager and decent worker’s hard to come by. And so, Ulrich took him on. But the only way to get a sense of what Viktor knew, was to put tools and wood into his hands and see what he did with them. So, he’d hand Viktor this or that piece of scrap wood and ask him to plane or trim or measure and cut it for this or that purpose.
For the first time in the years he’d been working away from Schweiburg – he wouldn’t have referred to that town as “home” anymore, since he hadn’t lived there since his father’s death in 1917 – Viktor didn’t feel nervous about this process. Something in Ulrich’s tone allowed him to take the older man’s words at face value. Some master carpenters had said very similar words to Viktor, but they had always meant something different: It was as if they each were setting out to catch him in some kind of lie about his skills. Pleasant words, but with a threatening intent underlying them. Viktor had grown very skilled at ferreting out people’s true intent – the one that lay behind or beneath their words – and he had so often found that intent to be critical or even malevolent. But with Ulrich Gassmann… Here Viktor felt that the words and the intent matched: kindness. So, as he worked away, to show this new master what he was capable of doing with the various tools, Viktor made no effort to cover up the gaps in his knowledge or skill. After all, he knew that at 18, he couldn’t be expected to have already mastered every instrument and technique. He knew that, but Ulrich was the first man he’d worked for who also seemed to recognize that. At one point, his mind drifted a bit, and he wondered, Who are these people? How did I land here? And, Now what?
Hans watched the non-examination with an eye that was just as sharp as his father’s, but more colored by a quickness to pinpoint lack of skill and criticize it. He had something more in common with Viktor’s previous employers, but, since he wasn’t actually in the position of being Viktor’s employer, or even supervisor, he tried to be as accommodating as he could see his father was being. He didn’t utter a single word. Give him a chance. But, in his mind, Hans noted down Viktor’s every shortcoming (and Hans did see them as shortcomings) for future reference – as ammunition, should he decide he needed to employ it.
* * *
The Gassmann men and their new helper were summoned to the mid-day meal not by the clanging of some heavy bell, but by the ringing of Ethel’s voice. Viktor felt her presence before he saw her. Not that he knew who she was, of course. Or at least, not in his mind. But he recognized her in his soul, by her voice. Viktor and Ulrich were standing at one of the workbenches, their backs to the open double door, when Ethel spoke to them ,quietly, in a lilting tone.
“Dinner is on.”
Three words. Viktor didn’t need to turn around to see who was there. He knew who it was: the source of the joy and lightness that he’d felt upon arriving in this place. This same feeling came over him so strongly again now that he didn’t want to move, lest the kindness fade. He paused before turning around, as if continuing to study the plans Ulrich had been showing him for the wardrobe he and Hans had gotten an order for. But really, he was just noting the feeling of that voice and continuing to take in the energy that flowed from it. A few seconds later, he began trying to picture in his mind how these features of energy and sound might be reflected in the young woman’s physical appearance.
Ulrich had already set down his pencil, and Hans was on his way toward the door. When Viktor didn’t move and didn’t even acknowledge the announcement, Ulrich clapped him on the shoulder.
“You must be hungry. I know I am. Come on.”
Then Viktor turned. Ethel had already started to leave, too, so he caught only her profile in the doorway. The sunlight outside illuminated the edges of the curly blonde hair she’d pulled back in a braid, and highlighted the edge of her forehead, nose, parted lips, and her chin that seemed to slightly recede. An angel, he thought, at the sight of her hair, but not just because of the hair. He knew for certain that he had never sensed such kindness and joy from anyone, whether directed at him or someone else. And he was certain that only angels would be that kind to anyone who had just happened to turn up.
* * *
Dinner was as satisfying and tasty as this family was congenial, in Viktor’s estimation. Soft farm cheese and bread, pickles, boiled potatoes, sausages. All very simply prepared. But, as Viktor had learned in the past three years, first in the army and then at the various lodgings he found during his itinerant work, simple food could be slop, or delicious, or somewhere in between. Rarely had he experienced delicious food in the past three years. Many of his fellow workers blamed this on the war, on the constant food shortages. But Viktor didn’t accept this. He was convinced that when the people doing the cooking were happy, most anything they cooked was tasty, even if it was prepared with the most basic ingredients.
He gained his first clue about this in his very own household. When his step-mother, Sabine, first came to them – back before she became his step-mother and, was, instead, just his aunt – she made the most delectable stews and breads and pastries. She had a way with half-sour pickles. No one else’s in the neighborhood could match hers. But after Viktor’s father went off to war, Sabine’s dinners lost their spark, almost overnight. Near the end, they became practically inedible. Viktor’s siblings, Hannelore and Walter, noticed it, too, but being younger than Viktor, they couldn’t see past the war shortages down to the deeper explanation that Viktor detected. He could easily understand people in that way, see connections others didn’t. He’d always been able to do so, from the time he was little. He was keenly aware of what others needed and wanted, even when they themselves didn’t or couldn’t articulate this, and without even consciously trying to figure it out. He just knew. And he gradually learned to make good use of what he was able to sense in people.
Here, in the Gassmann home, the cooks were happy. Even if Viktor had not ever met Renate or Ethel, he would have been able to tell this from the first mouthful of boiled potatoes. Yes! Even just boiled potatoes contained the joy he felt coming from Renate. But it was when he tasted the cheese and the bread that he sensed Ethel’s hand – and her vivaciousness – in their preparation. But Viktor’s ruminations did not prevent him from taking part in the dinnertime conversation. Indeed, his analyses took place on the intuitive level, while he was listening and talking with the family.
“Your father had a carpentry workshop in Schweiburg?” Hans asked him at one point, just as Renate handed Viktor the plate of sausages, and urged him to place another on his plate.
“That’s right,” Viktor replied, nodding. At the same time, he was staring at the sausages, amazed, even before he tasted them. There had been no sausages like this in the other places he’d worked. He’d been lucky to have dry scraps of boiled meat.
“Gone now?” Hans continued.
Ethel, sitting next to him at the table, wasn’t pleased with the questioning. It wasn’t that she felt any need to protect Viktor. She certainly didn’t feel one way or the other about him yet. But she did feel it was simply bad manners to interrogate the new woodworker over what might well be his first good meal in weeks, if not months.
“Goodness, Hans!” she laughed. “Can he at least have a bite between questions?”
She turned her gaze toward Viktor, who was sitting across from her, next to Hans. Her father sat at one end of the table, her mother at the other end, which meant that Viktor was sitting nearest Renate.
He put down his fork that had just moved a second sausage off the platter, raised his gaze from the food, and smiled. “Questions are fine. No problem. Maybe I’ll be able to ask some, too.”
Hans’ eyebrows went up, and then he knitted his brows. “What questions might you have?”
Viktor sliced off an end of one sausage, but waited to put it into his mouth until he’d finished speaking. “Well, you and Mr. Gassmann have given me a good tour of the the workshop and the projects you’re working on, but I’m wondering who’s responsible for the nuts and bolts of this feast.”
Hans shook his head and suppressed a frown. Christ. Does the man really have to try to flatter his way into the household at the very first meal?
But Viktor had correctly surmised that both Renate and Ethel would be pleased by his sincere – if also calculated – inquiry. And he was taking the equally calculated risk of seeking to establish a good connection with them from the start, even if this ruffled Hans’ feathers a bit. He’d make it up to Hans later, in other ways. That wouldn’t be a problem.
“Oh, Ethel’s the baker in the family,” Renate answered. “And I turned the cheese over to her a couple of years ago already.”
Viktor raised a piece of bread that he’d spread with the soft cheese, as if toasting Hans’ sister. “And you, Mrs. Gassmann, what’s your specialty? Are the sausages yours?”
Renate nodded. “When Ulrich brings down a boar, or my sister’s farm slaughters a pig, then I get busy. On sausage days, it’s all hands on deck,” she explained, and Ethel nodded.
“Those days,” Ulrich joked, with a wink, “seems I’ve always got to be out in the forest with a tree that needs felling.”
Viktor saw Ulrich’s eyes lighten up when Renate spoke, and he felt his own heart lighten a bit as he witnessed this bit of family intimacy. Clearly, the parents loved each other very much. Whatever the source of the husband’s melancholy was, it wasn’t Renate. They were the kind of husband and wife who would manage to die within days of each other, unable to bear the separation brought about by death. He’d always heard of such loves, but had never witnessed one in his life. Aunt Sabine’s fading culinary skills were the closest he’d witnessed to such a thing.
“And you?” he asked Hans. “You don’t mind the sausage making?”
Hans shrugged. “Lots of carving of the meat to be done, chopping. I like to eat ‘em, so I might as well use the ax and knives. And I don’t have to measure twice and cut once with the pork bones!”
The three woodworkers laughed, and the women smiled, pleased that these men were already sharing carpentry-related jokes. With the mood now lightened, Viktor decided he could throw Hans a bone.
“You asked about my father’s shop,” he said.
Hans nodded.
“Well, you’re right. It’s gone.” He stopped and took a bite of potato, but everyone could tell he would continue once he’d swallowed it.
“We had a plan, my father and I. From when I was a boy. He made furniture, but what he really loved, what he was really good at, was carving. Gingerbread house kind of thing. He’d fill in with furniture-making when the other work was slow.”
He looked from Ulrich – gauging the level of the older man’s respect for that kind of work, which he could immediately see was very high – to Hans, in whose eyes he detected a certain skepticism. He correctly surmised that Hans was trying to determine, by running through in his mind all the possibilities, whether Viktor was any good at the carvings. Whether he should feel threatened by this young man whose confidence made him seem so much older than his eighteen years. But Viktor allayed his fears. Or, at least, those particular fears.
“I never got to learn that from him, except for the most basic of skills. Like I said, we had a plan: I’d finish school and apprentice with him, then go off on my journeyman’s walz, learn a bigger range of skills. Then, three years and a day later, I’d come back and we’d run the shop together. Bunke and Son.” Viktor paused, seeming to look thoughtfully at the one remaining sausage on his plate.
“And then the war happened?” Ethel asked quietly.
No one prompted Viktor further. They all turned their attention to a potato, a bit of butter, or an appealing pickle, allowing him to pick his own time to go on.
Finally, fork still poised above an edge of his plate, Viktor nodded.
“My father enlisted right at the beginning. Convinced he’d be home by Christmas.”
“Like everyone,” Ulrich said.
Viktor nodded. “Enlisted at the beginning. Killed in action, August of ’17.”
No one spoke. The Gassmanns knew any number of similar stories about men from their area, about their own relatives. Different dates, but essentially the same outcome.
“Then I was drafted. Beginning of October, 1918. Five weeks into boot camp when it ended. I came home.”
Hans felt a sudden sense of relief upon hearing this. At least this Bunke’s not some decorated war hero come to show me up with his military prowess.
“And the rest of your family?” Renate asked softly. “Who do – did you – have?”
“Lost my mother when my sister Hannelore was born. I was three. My mom’s sister came to help us. Became my step-mother. My half-brother was born two years later.”
Viktor stopped speaking without clarifying who was or was not still among the living and turned his attention back to his plate. “This is the most delicious food I’ve had in years,” he said to them all. He meant it. He was also happier than he could recall feeling for many years, perhaps even since he was a young boy, before his mother died. What is it about this place? These people? He couldn’t explain it, but he could detect the joy inside him. He had no doubt that it resided most powerfully in Ethel. That he’d already determined. But was that all there was to it? How could she alone infuse the entire place with such joy? Then again, he reminded himself, as he took his last bite of her bread and cheese, She is an angel.
Follow-up questions hung in the air. How could they not? But no one could bring themselves to ask them. Not even Hans, who was, not for the first time since the war had ended, grateful to be sitting at his own table, alive, with his living father, even though the war had left its scars on both his body and his mind. His spirit, too. Give the man some peace, he thought. He needs it. We all do.
Chapter 10
May, 1921
Gassmann family homestead
Viktor woke early, happy and well-rested, with a feeling of gratitude for a comfortable bed and for the meals that had nourished him the day before. It was a new sensation, and one he welcomed, after three years of sleeping on straw mattresses with thin, itchy blankets over thin, scratchy sheets – if there even were any sheets in the first place.
Lying on his side, he caught sight of the embroidery on the edge of the white pillowcase. He brought it into focus: a whimsical pattern of small blue flowers punctuating an undulating design of green plant tendrils and leaves. It made him smile. So did the quilt that had kept him warm all night, despite the spring chill. Pieced together of mismatched scrapsof fabric of varying sizes and shapes, its design, so lacking in geometrical order, surprised him. He’d seen so-called crazy quilts now and again, but here there was an underlying artistry he hadn’t seen before. The quilting pattern itself seemed unusual, too. Instead of running around the edges of the pieces, or in some fixed and regular design, the white stitches that joined the quilt top to the bottom and the stuffing traced a series of spirals of seemingly random placement and size. Viktor sat up in bed and leaned over to study the quilt, bringing this or that part of it up close to his face. Yes, reminded him of a shallow river seen from above: rocks of various shapes clustered together, and the water swirling above and between them. Solidity and fluidity combined. Definitely Ethel’s creation. No wonder he’d slept so well.
* * *
After breakfast, out in the workshop, Ulrich laid out the plan for the morning.
“The Kropp family wants a sideboard. Hans is headed over there this morning to work out the final arrangements with them and get the first payment. You go along, too. You’ll see how we do things.”
Viktor nodded. “This okay to wear?” he asked Ulrich, indicating his neat, but worn, white work shirt and black, bell-bottomed corduroy work pants – with the red seams inside – his one nod to the pre-war dream he had cherished of joining the ranks of the journeymen carpenters.
Some men he’d encountered in recent years had derided him for adopting a version of the journeymen carpenters’ “uniform”, since he was, in fact, not one of them. Why “impersonate” them – and incompetently, at that, since his “getup”, as they often called it, lacked the flat hat and vest and belt buckle emblazoned with a carpenter’s square? Not to mention the fact that his left ear lobe showed no sign of the requisite earring, in the form of a nail hammered through the ear before the journeyman set off on his travels. But Viktor always replied that he wore these clothes to show his respect for the trade, and to express his hope of one day officially joining the ranks of his travelling fellow carpenters.
The fact that Viktor had persisted in dressing this way for several years now, despite the flack he caught for it from actual journeymen and even from some of the masters he trained with, could have indicated stubbornness, or a lack of respect for tradition and rules in this society that so demanded that its members do what was expected. Or even simple-mindedness. But spend even a little time with Viktor, and you would understand that he was in no way feeble-minded. Far from it. Certainly, there was some stubbornness, but not the type born of a simple desire to assert one’s own opinion or desires without any sense of underlying purpose or reason. Viktor was assertive. And goal-oriented. Was he calculating? Definitely. But not entirely in the way you might think. If you looked at the course of Viktor’s life, and the actions he’d taken thus far, you’d see that there was a reason for each step he took, probably even for each sentence he uttered. A desire to elicit a certain response. But you’d be mistaken if you concluded from this that Viktor always acted with an eye solely toward self-benefit. Or that he was always consciously aware of the reasons and desires motivating his choices. Calculation can take place not simply on the level of the conscious mind, but also on the soul level, and on the heart level. Thus, for a variety of reasons, both known and unknown to Viktor, both consciously understood and understood on the soul and heart levels, Viktor stuck to his habit of the white shirt and black corduroy pants of the journeymen carpenters.
“Yes, that’ll be fine,” Ulrich replied, smiling slightly. “We don’t dress like dandies to discuss orders. Don’t want the customers to think we’re asking too much for the job – so that we can buy fancy clothes.” Ulrich glanced at Viktor’s pants, but not to chastise him. He recognized the trade pants and appreciated that this young man showed his pride in his profession by wearing part of the wandering tradesmen’s “uniform”, even though he had been unable to follow his intended path. Viktor sensed Ulrich’s tolerance in his voice and his words, and appreciated this. He’d learned, over the past few years, that a master’s response to his choice of work clothes was a good barometer of how the man would treat him going forward.
Hans came into the barn wearing just everyday work clothes, too, albeit cleaner than Viktor’s. Hans also recognized the traditional carpenters’ pants Viktor wore, but he, unlike his father, saw them as a sign of deception. After all, Viktor was not a journeyman and had, in fact, barely cobbled together something only vaguely resembling an apprenticeship. What’s he trying to make himself out to be? There was something about Viktor’s choice of the pants, in particular, that made Hans suspicious of him. Questions for another time, he told himself.
He and Viktor were turning to head out when Renate walked in.
“It’s laundry day,” she announced, addressing Viktor. “What do you have for me?”
Thinking she must have been speaking to Hans, Viktor didn’t reply immediately. But then he saw clearly that she was looking at him.
“Come on. We haven’t got all day. The water’s already near to boiling.” And she held her hand out to him.
Taken aback, he opened his mouth to object, but then thought the better of it. He quickly collected his two other shirts, his socks and underwear – although he hesitated at first, to hand over the latter, out of a sense of privacy and modesty – and his spare pair of pants. All grimy from months in other peoples’ houses, where he’d had access only to small, enameled tubs and cold water for washing.
“Thank you,” he said simply, handing his bundle to Renate.
“Here I do all the laundry. Don’t want anyone messing with my order, hanging things every which way on hooks in the workshop to dry.” Her voice was strong and matter-of-fact, even a little rough, but she couldn’t disguise the kindness beneath it. Viktor nodded and smiled. Who are these people??
“Wouldn’t think of messing with your order, Mrs. Gassmann,” he assured her. Which wasn’t actually true, although he never thought of his actions as messing. They were just what he did.
* * *
The client they were headed to visit – Johann Kropp, the postmaster in the small town just to their west – lived only a few miles from the Gassmanns’ place, so Hans and Viktor walked. It was less than a quarter mile from the Gassmanns’ to the so-called “main road”, Plaggenkrugstrasse, the one Viktor had walked in along the day before, and then they headed in the opposite direction from Varel. The long expanse of woods along which they walked, looked the same to Viktor as the forest he had passed the day before: a sea of old pines and spruce, with stands of birch nearer the stream that passed through the land. There were many beeches, too, and oaks. These latter, through their beech nuts and acorns, along with the deer and boar that would come to feed on them, had helped sustain the Gassmann family during the war. They’d been able to sell the acorns to neighboring farmers (or just pass them along, in the case of Renate’s family’s farm, now run by her sister Lorena and her husband) to feed the pigs. The beechnuts they sold in Varel and Bockhorn, where they were pressed for the oil. Hans told Viktor all of this as they made their way toward Bockhorn: the history of his family’s connection to this forest.
“It’s eleven hectares,” he said, “a bit larger than most private forests around here,” he added with pride.
“Your family’s owned it for a long time?” Viktor asked, his voice and demeanor displaying the proper level of respect and awe, which he also genuinely felt. His own family had never had any land. He didn’t know what it meant to stand on earth that belonged to your family. What must it feel like to have a sense of home like that? Viktor had never felt firmly rooted anywhere. Always a transplant, and one seemingly ever in transit. No wonder Hans is so protective of his family and their space, Viktor mused.
Hans nodded. “Three generations. I’m the fourth.” And whereas his gait, when they’d first started out, had been a little slow, now, as he began speaking of the forest, his steps grew lighter and quicker. Viktor had noted that Hans’ right leg was weaker than his left, and had silently adjusted his own pace to match Hans’, not wanting to let the other man know he’d noticed it. But he tucked the fact away for future inquiry. The war? A forest accident?
“Big forest, big job: keeping an eye on the trees, seeing which are sick, deciding which can be cut and turned into firewood or furniture or outbuildings.”
Viktor, although he understood woodworking, knew little about the nature of the wood before it came to him in the form he’d use for furniture making. Certainly, his father had taught him which types of wood were most suitable for which kinds of projects, but that was the extent of it. Now, walking these miles along the edge of the forest, he felt drawn to learn about its inhabitants.
“And that knowledge, the forestry, I mean. That was passed down?” he asked Hans, in a tone that kept his true, strong interest hidden and suggested that the question was purely casual.
“Yep. From my grandfather to my father, and from my great-grandfather to my grandfather before that. And so on,” he explained. “And on down to me. We all of us grew up with these trees as our many brothers and sisters.” He smiled and shook his head, as if remembering something.
“What was that like?” Viktor inquired. He needn’t have done any prompting, though. It was clear that Hans was happy to reminisce.
“From the time I was a couple of years old, I’d into the forest with my dad. That was back in the days before the war, when we had a little more help. Things were quieter then. He’d take me through the forest, teach me all the names of the trees. Teach me about the lichens and how the beeches decide when to put out their nuts or when to wait ‘til the next year.”
“So you’ll be continuing the family tradition?” Viktor asked.
Hans shrugged. “I loved growing up with the trees. But I love the wood more. The actual furniture making. Building something with the wood once it’s cut.” He turned to Viktor, feeling more expansive and relaxed, now that he could see his companion’s sincere interest.
“Just ask Ethel,” he continued. “She’ll tell you. By the time she was two – I was five then – I was taking her out into the woods, teaching her all the names, too. It was kind of like a game. She’d point to a tree and I’d tell her what it was. Then I’d quiz her when we came to another one further along. Same with the lichens and the mushrooms. The bugs, too. She’d always ask me what the bugs were. Kept me on my toes. I didn’t know them all, of course. Christ, I was just a tyke myself! But we’d haul a live specimen back home and ask Mama and Papa. You can imagine how that went over!”
Both men laughed, very genuinely, the two of them now gazing at the trees on the edge of the forest with affection (on Hans’ part) and curiosity (on Viktor’s).
“When did you start with the carpentry?” Viktor asked.
“Age seven, I’d say.” Then he added, “Honestly!” when Viktor raised one eyebrow. “Not fancy furniture or anything. Lean-tos in the forest first. Ethel would help me. I’d tell her what size fallen branch I was looking for – ‘as long as your bed’ or ‘as big around as your ankle’ – and she’d find it and bring it to me. We spent a lot of hours in those huts, as we called them. We collected moss for a soft floor, more branches or a fallen tree trunk for a bench.
“We graduated to a tree house… When?” He paused, and then stopped walking for a few moments, as he calculated. “I think I was nine, Ethel six. Father and I built it in a beech tree. Hexagonal, with railing, and an overhanging roof of branches, with some thatch. And a rope ladder with rungs knotted every foot along its length.” He showed with this hands the spacing of the rungs.
“Now, Ethel, she wasn’t happy with the ladder,” he continued. “But she loved that treehouse. We spent hours and hours up there when we were young.”
Viktor smiled and looked into the forest as Hans continued talking. He imagined what it would have been like to have that kind of childhood: a treehouse, and a father to teach you everything about the forest – about your family’s forest. A sister you could have those kinds of adventures with. In short, a happy home, a happy childhood. Clearly, that was what Ethel and Hans had had. Viktor barely noticed the constriction that began rising up in his chest as Hans told of his childhood – he’d grown so skilled at pushing it out of his consciousness, that it barely registered any more. And yet, something did register: a feeling of wanting to be like these people. Joyful, in a harmonious family filled with love. This was something outside Viktor’s experience, and he sorely wanted it. Not that he allowed that thought to take clear shape in his mind, either, but it was there, in his soul. And this thought – this deep heart’s wish – pulled his gaze to the forest and its depths, as if he might somehow catch a glimpse of one of the long-toppled lean-tos where Ethel and Hans had played on a bed of moss, the air filled with the buzzing and chirping of the beetles and bugs whose names the two children knew.
* * *
The Kropps lived in a two-storey half-timber house adjacent to the post office. Viktor wondered, when Johann Kropp opened the kitchen door and they stepped inside, whether Kropp had become postmaster out of a love of order, or whether he had acquired this trait from his work in the post office. Either way, the man and his work seemed to Viktor a perfect match: Even in the entranceway to the kitchen, every cap, apron, coat, boot, and glove had its own section of the wall. Gloves lay in small, shallow boxes on shelves here, while caps hung up above the shelf, each on its own peg. Work gloves had separate boxes from ones worn to keep out the cold. Scarves also hung on pegs, several to a peg. Next were coats, also on individual pegs, neatly lined up, short ones to the left, longer ones to the right. It was as if everything was arranged to be donned in order as the residents made their way out of the house: coat, scarf, cap, gloves. Boots and shoes were lined up beneath the coat hooks. Viktor wondered which the Kropps were in the habit of putting on first: shoes or coats? Either way, he knew that they always did it in the same order, and that someone in the household had arranged the outerwear this way out of a desire for efficiency and to avoid wasting energy thinking about such mundane concerns. This efficiency had been fine-tuned by the ordering of men’s gear on the left side of the entranceway, and women’s on the right. There was no chance whatsoever of Mr. Kropp going out in Mrs. Kropp’s cap.
Even so, Viktor was struck by something not entirely utilitarian about the entranceway. The pegs were painted different, bright colors, and they were also color-coded: say, red for scarves, green for coats. Surprisingly, though, the colors seemed to have been randomly assigned. And above each peg, a single flower, surrounded by leaves, had been painted on the wall as a decoration.
Viktor was still pondering this seeming frivolity as Mr. Kropp showed the two furniture makers into the kitchen. Here, too, Viktor was struck by the orderliness of everything that surrounded him. Glasses on the open shelves were arranged according to height: tall on the right, shorter ones on the left, mimicking the arrangement of the coats. Cups had their own section of shelf. Plates were also arranged in stacks of ascending height, from left to right. This organizational structure repeated for the pots and pans that hung on the wall beneath the shelves. What about the dry goods? Viktor wondered. The organizing principle for the various sacks and crocks was unclear. It wasn’t determined by the size or height of container. As Kropp led them into the dining room, Viktor wondered whether they were arranged alphabetically by ingredient, or perhaps were numbered, like post office boxes, with a key to the arrangement written down on some sheet of paper tacked to the wall. #1: Flour, #2: Sugar…
The furniture here was simple and functional, arranged for efficient use, too, like everything else Viktor had seen in the house so far.
“Please,” Kropp said, indicating chairs at the table, “Have a seat. Coffee?”
“Thank you, yes,” Hans said, and Viktor, following suit, nodded.
Somehow Kropp’s wife Elke emerged magically and soundlessly from the kitchen a few minutes later with cups of coffee for each of them, and a plate of precisely-cut slices of pound cake. Viktor knew that if he were to measure them with his rule, he’d find them to be of equal thickness. Did the Mrs. get it from the Mr., or the other way around?
Napkins, their creases sharply-ironed (but with a small bunch of flowers embroidered on one corner) appeared next to small china plates with a simple floral pattern that recalled the painting in the entranceway. The Kropps were not fans of fussy designs, but neither were they total slaves to order and efficiency: Viktor took note of touches of beauty here and there, in the embroidered napkins and painted flowers; in the way the flowers were allowed to take their own shape in a vase, even if the vase itself stood exactly in the center of the table; and in the undulating pattern of the lace valance at the top of the window. In fact, he sensed a fluidity in the midst of an orderliness that might otherwise feel stultifying.
Over cake and coffee, Hans began detailing the plans for the sideboard. He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out on the table, so that Kropp could see the diagram Hans and Ulrich had drawn up after Hans’ initial meeting with the postmaster. As Viktor listened to Hans’ words and watched as he pointed out the proposed details of the cabinet, his gaze shifted from the drawing to the other elements of the dining room. And he found himself speaking.
“Mr. Kropp,” he began, when Hans paused, “What if we were to add in a decorative border up here, along the top?” He leaned over and pointed to a spot on the drawing. “About yay high, running the length of the sideboard.”
Mr. Kropp looked up to meet his eyes, surprised and, it seemed, somewhat suspicious. “What do you mean, a decorative border? What kind of decoration?”
Hans, dumbfounded by Viktor’s interference in a good business deal that was already nearly signed off on, could find no words.
Viktor gestured to the valance above the window. “That’s a lovely floral pattern in that lace,” he said. “We could bring that pattern into a wood border. To match the lace. And the embroidery.” He gestured at the napkins. “Someone here likes flowers,” he added, smiling.
Elke, who had come to check on whether any more coffee or cake might be needed, said nothing. But a slight smile appeared on her lips, and she laid a hand lightly on her husband’s shoulder.
Kropp shrugged. “That’s true. True. But we don’t need any fancy carvings here. It’s just a sideboard.”
Hans shifted in his chair, preparing to say something, but Viktor replied, in a relaxed tone. “Of course, you don’t need any decorations. It’s just going to hold your dishes and so on. But you folks clearly appreciate beauty, too. You’re not just about keeping things in order. Otherwise you could have hired any old man with a hammer and saw and nails to build you a cupboard.”
Hans frowned. This idiot is going to lose us this job.
But Kropp cocked his head to the side and waited to hear what Viktor would say next.
“How nice it would be if your neighbors and friends came in and could see, ‘Oh, everything here fits together! Not just random pieces collected from here and there. No, the Kropps thought it all through, with the lace curtains and the embroidered napkins and the carved sideboard.’” Viktor waved his hand pointedly, but softly in the direction of each object as he spoke.
Elke nodded and smiled, more broadly now. Still, she said nothing.
“What kind of design d’you have in mind?” Kropp asked, finally.
Viktor pulled a pencil out of his pocket and directed a quick look at Hans that asked for assent. Hans gave a curt nod. Viktor leaned over the paper and in a series of light, unhurried strokes, sketched the design that had come to him in the time he’d been sitting there.
Elke leaned over her husband’s shoulder, then glanced back and forth from the drawing to the curtains, then to the napkins. “Johann,” she said softly, “it’s very pretty.” Kropp leaned over the drawing, tapping his index finger lightly alongside the sketch of the sideboard. Then he finally straightened up and looked over at Viktor.
“And how much more would it cost to add that on?” he asked, narrowing his eyes a bit as he waited for the answer.
Here, Viktor deferred to Hans, who, bursting with annoyance at having to give a price on the spot – This just is not the way Father and I do things! – nonetheless managed to come up with a figure.
Kropp exchanged glances (and a wordless conversation) with Elke. “That will be fine.”
“Now, I wonder…” Elke added, softly and tentatively, raising her gaze to meet Viktor’s. “Could there also be some carving on the drawers?”
Viktor bent over the sketch once more. “Something along these lines?” He sat up and swiveled the drawing so that the Kropps could examine it.
“Yes!” Elke said with delight, her reedy voice full of joy.
“And how much more for that?” Kropp asked, his voice betraying no hint of how he felt about this add-on.
Hans made a second, quick calculation in his head and named a price.
Another exchanged glance between husband and wife, and the decision was made.
“Fine. That’ll be fine.”
* * *
Hans was fuming on the way home, despite the fact that the Kropps’ advance payment in his pocket was greater than he’d expected when he’d left home that morning. Viktor, sensing Hans’ mood, knew better than to try to return to the morning’s light-hearted conversation. Instead, he walked silently, waiting for Hans to choose his moment to speak. It didn’t take long.
“What did you think you were doing back there?” he asked, finally, his whole face tense, arms bent at the elbows, hands open wide, as he leaned a bit toward Viktor. “That’s not the way we do things.”
“What, in particular?” Viktor replied calmly.
Hans opened one hand out and brought it down in a chopping motion. “Changing the plan. And without discussing it with me.”
“How do you do it?”
Hans looked at him incredulously. “My father and I draw up a plan together and sketch it out and decide, together, how much to charge. And that’s what we present.”
Viktor nodded. “I get it.”
“But you don’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have pulled that stunt.”
“Stunt?”
“Jumping in with new ideas.”
“Ideas they liked. And were willing to pay for.” There was a slight joking edge to Viktor’s voice.
Hans shook his head. “Doesn’t make it right, doing it that way.”
“How should I have done it?” Viktor asked, calmly, but in a tone that was both inquiring and subtly challenging.
“The way we’d planned to do it.” Hans stopped and stood opposite Viktor, his whole body tense. “There has to be order, a plan. I mean, would you just pick up a piece of wood and start working without any plan at all?”
“I have done. Not much, but I’ve done it.”
Hans snorted. “I wouldn’t like to see how much wood you wasted doing that.”
Ignoring that remark, Viktor said, “I could tell what the Kropps were looking for.”
“They’d already told us what they were looking for,” Hans objected. “And we drew up the plan accordingly.”
“That’s what their words told you. But the atmosphere of the house and everything in it was asking for something a little different. That’s what I picked up on.”
“Picked up on?” Hans didn’t get it. He was all about words, clearly expressed. He didn’t even know where to start with what Viktor had said. The words didn’t make sense to him.
Viktor nodded. “I notice what people want, what they need. Even when they don’t always know it themselves.”
Hans still didn’t get it. It’s downright strange, he thought. Dangerous, even, maybe. But then he remembered the larger advance in his pocket. “How do you do that? Pick things up?”
“Can’t tell you,” Viktor replied with a shrug. “I mean, I can’t explain it,” he added, seeing Hans’ expression. “I’d tell you if I understood it myself. I felt that was what they’d want, so I suggested it.”
“Pick it up or not. Your choice. But don’t butt in like that again,” Hans told him, his voice stern, although it was clear even to him that he had no way of forcing Viktor to agree. After all, it was Ulrich who’d hired this man, and Ulrich who’d decide whether or not to keep him on. Father and son did discuss individual jobs, but even then, it was still Ulrich who always approved the final design and price, despite the way Hans had explained the process to Viktor. Hans was astute enough to guess that Viktor had probably “picked up on” that, too, even if he didn’t come right out and say it. As he was trying to decide what tack to take in continuing the conversation, Viktor spoke first.
“I’ve worked with different furniture makers. Every one of them has a way of talking to a client –“
“Which is why you came along today,” Hans broke in. “To see how we do it. Not to do it your way.”
“Fair enough.” Viktor nodded. “Now I know. And now you know how I like to do it.”
Hans fumed inside at this. Why is he pushing me? On his second day here? Does he really think he can walk in off the road and start doing things the way he wants? In our shop? He wanted to say, “My father will be the judge of your way.” But that made him sound like a whiny teenager. Damn it! He was backed into a corner.
“Why not see what Mr. Gassmann has to say?” Viktor offered. His conciliatory tone placated Hans a bit, although Hans could see he was still firmly wedged into the same corner, all his own power gone. Everything was always up to Ulrich, and Viktor had “picked up on” that, too.
Sue Downing 