Chapter 11
May, 1921
Gassmann family homestead
Renate had dinner ready shortly after the Viktor and Hans returned from their trip to the Kropp family in Bockhorn. Both washed up, and Hans also managed to have a quick word with Ulrich.
Viktor had learned the previous day that the seat assignments at meals were permanent: moving clockwise from Ulrich at the head of the table, near the window that looked out into the yard. Ethel came next, with Renate at the other end, nearest the stove, and then Viktor and Hans on the other side. The table was large, a typical wooden farm table, nothing fancy – certainly no intricate carving. It was wide and long enough to accommodate at least three more people, should the need arise. Judging by the wear on the table’s top and edges, Viktor guessed that it had been standing in this very spot for many years, decades, probably. Made of pine, it was nonetheless in good shape, given the softness of the wood. It was old, but had been well cared for. There were only a couple of dents to be seen.
The meal was similar to the previous day’s dinner, with sausages of a different type. But today’s potatoes had been made into a vinegary salad with a sweet touch and bits of fried onion. A bowl of radishes – first of the season? Viktor wondered– stood near the plate of cheese and a small bowl with butter for the sliced bread.
As the men walked in, Ethel and Renate were bustling about the kitchen, setting this or that bowl down, holding the edges with dishtowels to guard against heat or moisture. The napkins that lay by each plate had been very simply embroidered with a spiral and flower pattern that reminded Viktor of the pillowcase on his bed.
But any ruminations on those designs had to be set aside for later. As soon as Ulrich took his seat, he shook out his napkin before laying it once again next to his plate, ready for duty. Then he started right in about the morning visit to the Kropps.
“All went well with the postmaster, I hear?” he asked. It was clear that he was addressing Viktor.
Hans did not make eye contact with Viktor, turning his attention instead to a nearby sausage.
“Seemed so to me,” Viktor replied. He started with a radish, taking a bite once he’d answered.
Renate, who had not yet been informed of the morning’s goings on, glanced at Hans, recognizing at once that her son’s silence and subdued manner indicated some tension between him and Ulrich. As Viktor spoke, she shifted her glance back and forth between the two young men, who sat side by side. Worlds apart, she thought to herself.
Ulrich nodded. “To me, too, judging by Hans’ report.” Hans’ fork paused as he lifted a sausage from the platter, but he said nothing.
“What made you think to suggest the carving?” Ulrich continued, in a neutral tone.
Viktor rested his sausage-bearing fork on the side of his plate and shifted a bit on his chair. “Well,” he began, “it just seemed to me that they would appreciate that kind of detail.”
“It seemed to you?” Renate asked. “How do you mean?” Her tone was curious, not accusatory or suspicious, so Viktor felt comfortable answering.
Chewing a bite of sausage before he replied, Viktor said, “I just noticed some things in the house. The flowers, the pattern on the lace curtain, the way the flowers were arranged in the vase.” He looked from one to the other of them in turn, then continued. “I had the feeling they like pretty things in the house. I thought that adding the carving to the sideboard would help them feel kind of special with their friends and neighbors.”
“You just picked it up, right?” Hans said, the beginning of a sneer on his face.
“That’s right.” Viktor gave no more explanation, and his tone didn’t betray any annoyance with Hans.
There was silence for a bit as the family members chewed their food and also chewed over this bit of information. Then Ethel asked, “How did you pick it up?” Her sincere curiosity was evident.
When Viktor glanced at her, seemingly perplexed, she clarified: “What I mean is, was it a feeling? Or did you hear words? Did you just know?”
Hans snorted. “Come on, Ethel. It’s a load of –“
“Hans!” Renate said sharply, as if Hans were still a boy she could chastise for bad language. But he shifted his tone, out of deference for his mother.
“All right,” he said. “But Ethel, do you really believe that’s possible?”
His sister raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “Could be possible. Why don’t we let Viktor tell us what he means?”
Hans attacked his sausage and looked at the table, as if to say, Fine. Have it your way.
“Well,” Viktor began, “It’s not so easy to say. I notice something, see something, a detail. That gives me a thought. It’s as if I can feel what a client wants, and then I get a thought about how to put that into wood.”
“Thank you,” Ethel said. “That’s so interesting.” She had more questions she wanted to ask, but she knew this was not the time. She could see Hans’ wide-eyed look. His mouth had fallen open in disbelief.
But, surprising Hans, Ulrich nodded. “I do believe it’s possible to sense things from other people.” Then he turned his attention to his full plate.
Or from the trees and plants, Renate thought, but she kept her thoughts to herself. She did allow a slight smile to come to her lips, and she met Ulrich’s gaze, knowing he’d see it and correctly interpret her expression.
“I realize maybe I’d have done better to keep what I felt to myself,” Viktor said to Ulrich. “Seeing as how you and Hans had already worked out that job.”
Ulrich nodded again. “Maybe. But it’s true that Kropp and his missus were pleased with your idea. So it looks like it paid to strike while the iron was hot.”
Hans turned to his father, as if he wanted to object, but then turned back to his potato salad.
“Next time – ” Ulrich began.
Next time? thought Hans. There’s going to be a “next time”?
“Next time, when you and Hans go to do a first visit with a client, you go ahead and pick up what you pick up, but then discuss it with him and me before we present the plans to them.”
“Yes, Mr. Gassmann. Sure will,” Viktor replied, inwardly relieved and outwardly polite and firm in his reply. “Thank you.”
Ethel smiled as she looked at Viktor and noticed that he was absently rolling a chunk of potato around his plate in a small loop, the only thing about him that betrayed any lack of composure.
“I do have a question for you,” Ulrich continued. “Now, I’ve been wondering,” he asked, with a slight smile, “who will be doing that carving the Kropps are paying extra for? Because that’s not Hans’ specialty, and not mine.”
Viktor wiped his mouth with the napkin and felt the embroidery on its corner against his lips. “I can manage it, Sir,” he said, clearing his throat.
Ulrich gave a wry smile. “Well, I sure as –“
“Ulrich!” Renate admonished him.
“I sure hope you can, Viktor. Because we have a good reputation here, Hans and I. I never did an apprenticeship myself. Learned at my dad’s side. He was not your average guy. He had his own thoughts about the way things should be, including this house.” He waved his fork, pointing at various parts of the kitchen. “My father’s father had built the traditional low house for his family. The one that’s our workshop now.” He served himself some potato salad and continued. “That’s what everyone did then. Still do, as a matter of fact. But my father, he heard about America, about the West. God knows where he got the books, but he did. He read about log cabins. And when he grew up and took over the forestry job from his father, he took it into his head to build this place to live in.” He raised his chin, indicating the house they were now sitting in.
“Grandpa was always a little unpredictable,” Ethel said, a wry smile on her lips.
“And you hardly knew him,” Hans added. “He died when you were about two. Not that I knew him that much longer. But sometimes it seemed like whatever anyone wanted, he’d do the opposite, just to be contrary.”
Renate nodded and laughed. “Now, that’s an understatement, I think! Ulrich, remember the time, when we were first married, when he brought the baby goats into the house – this house – for a few days? All because Mr. Wagner, down the road toward Bockhorn, said Detlef – that was Ulrich’s father’s name, Viktor – was getting too uppity to have anything to do with the livestock, that that was why he built the log house.”
“Sure do remember,” Ulrich said. He pointed to a crescent-shaped dent at one end of the table. “That’s from one of ‘em. Dad and I were out in the forest. We came back in to dinner, and the goats were leaping up and down, all over the room, on and off the table.” He laughed. “And my young wife,” he said, pointing at Renate, “well, she was just standing there by the stove, cooking some stew. Didn’t shoo the goats off. Didn’t say a word.”
“I knew better,” Renate exclaimed, shaking her head. “Even by then, I knew him well enough. The goats in the house – that was his idea, and I could tell that getting them out had to be his idea, too. Wouldn’t have done for me to object.”
“That day,” Ulrich continued,“ he came in for dinner and found the table dented, the stools overturned, the goats’ mess on the floor. And that was that.”
Renate nodded. “Mmhmm. I think it was the table that did it. His father made that table, and Detlef was quite partial to it. I was instructed to always put down a towel under a hot pot. No scorching of the table. And then – goat hoof prints! That was the end of trying to make an impression on the neighbors.”
“Not that he changed,” Hans said. “Right, Dad? I mean, he got an idea in his head, and you better not object. That’s what I recall.”
Ulrich affirmed this statement with a nod. “Not an easy man. Not at all. But a good man. With good ideas. At least some of them.” He smiled. “But he was too independent and stubborn to sign on for an apprenticeship. Besides the fact that it was expensive – still can be! – and that he’d have to have been away from home, when what was needed was for him to be here and learn the forestry work. So that’s what he did. Trained as a forester with his father and learned everything about carpentry from him, too.”
“Built this house even though your grandpa grumbled, right Dad?” asked Ethel.
“That’s right. Studied the illustrations in those books, even wrote away to somebody. Who knows who? Came up with his plans and built the place, using logs from our forest here.”
“Detlef’s father thought this house was a real waste of good lumber,” Renate said. “So Detlef said, right until the end of his life. His father thought the low house was good enough. But Detlef stuck to his guns. And it wasn’t about this design being somehow better or warmer or anything like that, either – although it surely takes less upkeep than the low house. More efficient to heat, too.”
“Even I remember Grandpa gloating every time you had to re-plaster or fix up the workshop,” Hans said, animated by his memories of his grandfather. “He’d stand by this house and slap his palm against the logs and call out to whoever was working on the repairs in the shop, ‘Never have to do that over here! This darling will stand forever. A bit of new moss now and then, and she’s good to go. Take a rockslide and avalanche together to bring her down!’”
Ethel clapped her hands gleefully. “That’s right! That’s right! I remember one time when I was really tiny. He walked me over to the outside of the house and told me to push as hard as I could against the log wall. ‘Come on, girlie, push ‘er over!’ he said. And when I pushed, and nothing happened, and I said, ‘Grandpa, I can’t!’ he said, ‘Well, of course y’ can’t, Ethel, Honey. ‘Cause this’s the strongest house you’ll ever see.’ And when I protested that I was just a little girl, that of course I couldn’t push down a house, he brought over one of the billy goats and got it to push against the wall. I don’t know how, but he got it to. ‘Just like the three billy goats gruff, isn’t he?’ he asked me. And then I was impressed, because I knew how strong the goats were. At least in the fairy tales. If the wall could stand up to them, then it really must be the strongest house in the world.”
“And it is still standing,” Renate said, nodding. “I’ve always loved this house. As unusual as it is.”
“He built it this big?” Viktor asked, amazed.
Ulrich shook his head. “Not at first. The first part was just this one big room. That room there,” he said, pointing to the bedroom that now occupied one corner of the original house, “it was just curtained off as a sleeping area when my brother and I were little. He built those walls there at some point. I don’t remember when that was. But then, after my mom passed away… once he and my step-mother got married and there were more of us, he built the two-storey addition, through that door.“ The whole family, plus Viktor, gazed around the room, although everyone except Viktor was intimately familiar with each detail of the original house.
“The stove and the oven, they were just the way they are now. The fireplace, too. But next to the fireplace, where there’s the door now, there was just a wall then, and that door, the one that goes to the other part of the house now, it used to be the door to the outside.”
“Well, it’s sure beautiful, solid work,” Viktor acknowledged. “Don’t imagine there’s a goat today that could push it down, either.” He was happy to know the history of the house. It only strengthened his impression that the Gassmanns were a strong and solid a family, every bit as durable as this house and table. He felt sure the family’s life was marked by its share of dents. But he was equally sure that they hadn’t destroyed the love and closeness of everyone here, any more than the baby goats had been able to destroy the table.
In fact, Viktor sensed that the story of the dented table, although it had seemingly come up by chance, was meant to communicate something very important to him, even if Ulrich hadn’t consciously been aware of it. The message Viktor picked up from the story was this: We’ve let you in here, at least for now. But don’t take advantage of us. We won’t tolerate any damage to our precious family. You’ll be out in a flash, like those baby goats, if you push us too hard or make a mess of things.
“Your father learned his carpentry skills from his father?” Viktor asked, eager for Ulrich to continue his story.
But Ulrich turned his focus back to business. “Yes. And I learned from him. No apprenticeship for me, either, just like I said earlier. But we both learned well.” He paused to look Viktor in the eye, fully cognizant that the rest of the family was aware that they’d reached a serious point in the conversation. “And I have the feeling – judging by what I saw yesterday, and by your references – that you’ve learned well, too, without a formal apprenticeship. So, here’s your chance to show us what you can do.”
Ulrich and Renate exchanged glances. Ulrich knew his wife was wondering what he was up to, being so encouraging to Viktor.
Viktor, who had not known quite what to expect from Ulrich at this juncture, and so, had begun to feel a bit anxious, felt his pulse slow now, and he nodded.
“But I thought you didn’t learn carving from your father,” Hans piped up.
“Not the house carving,” Viktor replied. “But he started me on the furniture carving from the time I was a tyke. Don’t know why he trusted me with those tools.” Here he smiled, shaking his head as he remembered his small hands with the sharp tools. “But he did. And I learned a bit.”
“Let’s hope it’s enough,” Hans shot back, without even looking at Viktor. He’d shifted out of the relaxed state he’d been in during the family reminiscences. But Viktor took this change in stride. He understood now that Ulrich would not hesitate to rescind his work invitation, if he felt it necessary. And instead of angering him, Viktor somehow found this news comforting, although he didn’t quite understand why. (He was less in tune with himself and his own thoughts and feelings than he was with others’.) Strong house, strong family. That appealed to him. He already wanted to be part of that. That much he was aware of.
As for Renate, her husband’s response to Viktor surprised her. She couldn’t recall a time when he had ever reacted positively to someone going against a plan he’d already laid out. At the same time, she felt a lightness in her husband that she hadn’t noticed in years. Some small measure of happiness. And barely a trace of his usual melancholy.
Chapter 12
May, 1921
Gassmann family homestead
As proud as Ulrich was of the house he and his family lived in, this log home his father had built was also tied to the greatest unhappiness of his childhood years. Ulrich’s seemingly off-hand mention of the timing of the addition to the house – “once he and my step-mother got married and there were more of us” – had given no hint of what that time in his life had really been like.
As Ulrich had mentioned at dinner, his father, Detlef, had been stubborn. That’s the way Ulrich always thought of him. Detlef himself, however, had always considered himself independent, an innovator, a creative thinker, and this at a time when these qualities were not so very valued. Not that they necessarily were valued now, either, but then, back in the 1880s, not many people who knew Detlef appreciated his creativity. His first wife, Iris, the daughter of a cobbler in Bockhorn, and mother to Erich and Ulrich, had evidently valued Detlef’s creative approach to life, or at least to his physical surroundings. Detlef had mentioned to Ulrich more than once how happy Iris had been to move out of the low house and into the log home, where they didn’t have to share their living space with the animals. Ulrich wondered when his mother had stopped appreciating his father’s creative urges. He knew that she certainly would not have gone for those baby goats in the kitchen! But what about his step-mother? Ulrich didn’t think Claudia had ever loved that side of Detlef. Her main goal in life had been to squelch all creativity – in her husband and in his sons. That was how it seemed to Ulrich, anyway, as he thought back on his father’s life – at least what of it he himself remembered – that evening as he and Renate lay in bed, she already fast asleep, he far from it.
Ulrich had lived in the log home all his life. Forty-one years, and counting, during which time he’d experienced a cascade of various feelings and memories connected to these walls that were so solidly built that nothing could push them down. Many times, Ulrich had wished for a wind or avalanche strong enough to do precisely that, just so that he could build a new home from scratch, one without the negative associations this one brought up for him.
Ulrich didn’t remember the days before the house was built, of course, but his older brother, Erich, had told Ulrich about it. Erich was born in the room where Viktor was now staying. Back in those pre-log cabin days, Detlef’s father (Wolf), Detlef and his wife, Iris, and their young son, Erich ,lived in that room. Everything connected to the wood took place in the rest of the low house, where the small number of animals they owned also lived.
Then, as now, the men of the Gassmann family worked the family’s eleven hectares. Detlef and Wolf looked after the forest and cut a certain number of trees each year. Some they sold for firewood – the ones not suitable for building or furniture-making – and the rest they sent off to the Schleichert’s mill in Varel. The lumber would come back to them, ready for whatever the local folks contracted with them to build.
At least that’s the way things went until Detlef hatched his “scheme”, as his wife took to calling it.He laid it out to Wolf and Iris one day over supper, in 1880. Visionary that he was (that was his word, although he never uttered it aloud to anyone), this plan had come to him that morning in the forest, in a vision; several visions actually. He saw a picture in his mind’s eye of their old low house, just as it was now. But then, he noticed big saws inside the house, where the livestock were now housed, and an expanded workshop in the main area. Next he saw a new house, a small log home like the one he’d seen in a little book about the American West. Smoke was coming out the brick chimney on the back of the house, just the way it did in the illustration in the book. Inside the log cabin, he saw a fireplace and stove and room for him and Iris and the whole family to live.
This vision had come to him while he was notching a cedar, and he immediately understood that the new house was to be built of cedar logs. He didn’t question where the vision had come from. Detlef – unlike his son Ulrich, who would later feel so connected to the trees that, had he been the one to receive this vision, he would have definitely identified the cedar tree itself as its source – took these images as a sign from God that he was meant to utterly transform the way his family lived.
Detlef’s father, Wolf, was no fan of this idea. But what about Iris? It was Detlef’s vivaciousness that attracted her as soon as she met him. Back in the days of their courtship, she would have agreed with his portrayal of himself as a visionary: Here was a man with ideas! With plans! She adored that in him. His boundless enthusiasm about whatever he took on contrast starkly with her own family’s staid plodding way of moving through small town life in Bockhorn. As if wedded to his cobbler’s bench, her father seemed destined to pound nails and cut leather in the same spot for all of eternity. Detlef couldn’t have been more different: His grand ideas and the sky-high energy with which he strove to bring them into being energized Iris. This Gassmann fellow almost literally swept her away from her boring town life, as she eagerly allowed herself to be drawn into his vision for their life together. With him, excitement beckoned. It felt good to her to know someone who seemed always to be in motion, always smiling, always confiding his dreams to her with a kind of conspiratorial giddiness. With Detlef, she felt she would be part of something exciting! She easily agreed when he proposed to her, but she found it odd that as soon as the wedding had been announced and planned, Detlef seemed to shift his focus to his next big idea, and then to the next one after that…
Iris spent the months of her engagement imagining what it would be like to live in the fresh air next to the forest, with animals to provide them with fresh milk and eggs and meat, and potatoes and carrots fresh from the soil of their very own garden. It will be delightful! she concluded. But, five years on, in 1880, with one young son, another baby on the way, and the running of the household resting on her shoulders, she fully realized that she had in no way been prepared for the reality of life in the country as a forester-carpenter’s wife. She was so sick of the mess and smell that came with living under one roof with the animals. And clothing got so much dirtier here than it did when you were living in town! Her idyllic vision of a tidy garden that would miraculously provide vegetables for their table, of goats whose milk would magically transform itself into tasty cheese… Well, let’s just say that the veils were lifted from her eyes within her first weeks on the Gassmann homestead. How do country wives have time for everything?? Her simple town life as a cobbler’s daughter began to seem not boring, but peaceful and pleasantly predictable.
Nor was Iris prepared for the reality of living as Detlef’s wife. She initially found his boundless enthusiasm endearing, and happily allowed herself to be drawn into discussing and implementing her husband’s various innovations for the homestead. Wives are supposed to support their husbands, aren’t they? That’s what Iris asked herself whenever Detlef came to the supper table with yet another brainstorm and subjected both her and Wolf to endless details about what he envisioned.
It would have been tolerable, perhaps, if this happened once or twice a year, but no: It was nearly a daily feature of their lives. By now, in 1880, Iris was already long since aware of a tension between her vision of how a wife should behave in regard to her husband and how she actually felt inside as she moved through her daily routine. By mid-day, she would already be nearly dead tired from caring for Erich and the animals and the garden and doing the cooking and laundry and ….. Then here would come her husband with yet another idiotic scheme. And it wasn’t as if he confined discussion of his flights of fancy to the supper table. Not at all! Wolf had to hear about it all out in the forest, or while they were working on a piece of furniture. Then, Detlef also insisted on nattering on about everything to Iris quietly as they lay in bed at night, when all she wanted to do was just fall asleep. Sometimes she did just that, nodding off while nodding to show him she was still paying attention.
But when Detlef started talking about building a log home, about his vision – that’s when Iris began to actually listen to her husband’s ravings. Before he even had the vision, there were comments here and there about log cabins, as an abstract idea, comments such as, “They’re all over America, you know.” Or, he’d wave a book he’d come by who knows how or where and tell them, “Abraham Lincoln – he was their president, during their Civil War – and he grew up in one!” Next came the suppertime revelation of the vision. Then, finally, a few months later, he appeared at the table in the evening and waved a thick envelope that had arrived in the mail. “Look! I managed to get some plans for a log home!”
At that point, Wolf and Iris realized that things were serious: This idea had gotten farther along than ninety-five percent of Detlef’s previous inspirations. Iris knew it was in her best interest to give this one some attention. She started by glancing surreptitiously at the book about Abraham Lincoln when Detlef was out in the forest. Then she also began perusing the log house plans and, to her surprise, she was intrigued. There were no livestock stalls in these log homes. Only living space. Can that really be? Iris took to actively studying the plans, even when Detlef was around. She began to ask questions: “Where would we cook?” “Would there be a separate sleeping area?” And, innocently, “But where will the animals go?” The answers pleased her. No animals. A big cooking hearth. A curtained-off sleeping area. And wood floors! Now it was Iris who kept Detlef up at night talking! And during the day, Iris’s daydreams about the possibility lent a lightness to her step and brought a smile to her lips. Our own, separate house! Even if it’s small… That seemed a big step up to her. So, Iris put the full weight of her persuasive powers behind convincing Wolf of the soundness of the “scheme”.
As for Wolf… It was 1880 now, and he would live only two more years, before succumbing to peritonitis. We’ll never know whether Wolf sensed that he had not long to live, and decided it was time for Detlef to be fully in charge of the family work, or whether Detlef’s plan seemed to him rash and ill-considered. Whichever it was, Wolf didn’t put up much of a fight. Just so as to not come across as a complete push-over, he voiced the opinion that there were far better uses for that much wood than to stack it up, one log atop another, especially when bricks were readily available, and they had plenty of building orders. Faced with this objection, Detlef responded with his own remarks, the ones the Gassmanns shared with Viktor at dinner, about the great strength of the log home he intended to build. The matter was settled.
Detlef was triumphant. Iris was thrilled. For some reason, she imagined that this eccentric log house would somehow be a cure-all for everything that annoyed and angered her about her life on the Gassmann homestead. Iris once again allowed herself to be swept along on the waves of Detlef’s near-manic enthusiasm, huddling over his sketches and kissing him tenderly as he described all the details of their future home to her.
By the time the house was finished, a few months before Ulrich was born in 1880, Iris already sensed, to her horror, that nothing would change about her life simply by virtue of her shifting her lodging a hundred feet further south. The livestock still stank, the house was still dirty, despite the wooden floor, and Detlef was talking about new plans now. Once Wolf died, she became the sole target of Detlef’s wild (as they seemed to her) musings. She couldn’t bring herself to even pay attention as he spoke, because all she could envision when she did, was that their life would continue in this state of chaos until she finally managed to die. Within eighteen months, Iris had fallen into a deep despair. She was unable to muster the slightest enthusiasm or tenderness for her husband, or for the two little boys she was charged with caring for. By 1882, she had had enough.
Her first step upon realizing that she could tolerate no more, was to flee to her parents’ house in Bockhorn. She might have been better received, had she come with Erich and Ulrich in tow, but she abandoned the boys, leaving the homestead on her own one morning after breakfast. The situation being what it was, Iris’ parents made it clear that she was not welcome to stay with them. They told her sternly that it was her maternal and wifely duty to return to Detlef, to return home. She was not prepared to do this, but couldn’t make anyone understand why not. How could she explain to them what she didn’t even grasp consciously herself: that she simply did not feel, in her bones or in her heart, that she belonged on that homestead? There was some kind of chasm between her and life there that just couldn’t be bridged.
She should, her parents kept telling her, get down on her knees and thank God for a husband who provided her with such a good home and income. Her sister Claudia, from whom she somewhat naively expected support, inexplicably took their parents’ side. Thus, rejected (as she saw it) by her entire extended family, Iris left her parents’ home. In a state of dejection, confusion, fatigue, and helplessness, she somehow decided that the best course of action was to make her way to the house of a young man who had courted her before her marriage to Detlef. She begged him to take her in. To everyone’s astonishment – even to Iris’ – he did.
For the next seven months, Iris and her entire extended family were caught up in the very type of chaos that Iris had so hoped to escape by fleeing the Gassmann homestead. As soon as Iris left her parents’ house, her mother and Claudia swung into action: They hurried to Detlef’s side and took up caring for Erich and Ulrich. Detlef’s state could most accurately have been described as confusion. “Why would she up and leave like that?”he asked his mother- and sister-in-law. “I had no idea anything was wrong…”This, as Iris tried unsuccessfully to explain to her family, was precisely the problem: Detlef never had any idea about anything other than what he wanted to have ideas about. But Detlef’s in-laws couldn’t see this side of him. All they saw upon arriving was an upright, family-loving man who was devastated by his wife’s sudden departure and rejection of their children. “That’s only natural,” Iris’ mother and sister said to each other, shaking their heads sadly and clucking their tongues in sympathy.
The two of them proceeded to take care of all the young children’s needs, and to pick up the slack that Iris left in the wake of her cruel, unwarranted act. During the weeks they spent on the Gassmann homestead, “putting out Iris’ fire”, as they called what they were doing, they carefully observed Detlef, watching for signs of despair or anger. But they glimpsed neither of these reactions. Instead, Detlef turned with a frenzy to his work, as if trying to blot out the very memory of his family, despite the fact that his two sons were very much present and in need of care and love. Iris’ mother later said that it seemed to her that something shut down in Detlef, that it was too painful for him to look at Erich and Ulrich and see Iris in their features. We can’t say exactly what was going on in Detlef’s mind during this period. He himself couldn’t have said. But what we can say, is that this man, who had all along been one to focus intently on his own plans and ideas, now grew gradually even more and more distant from his young sons.
Despite this disturbing state of affairs, Iris’ mother returned to Bockhorn after a few weeks, leaving Claudia on the Gassmann homestead: She saw that Claudia had everything under control and, more important, that her younger daughter wanted to be there with Detlef and the boys. Claudia was convinced – on what basis, she never did say – that Detlef’s state of detachment from his boys would certainly be temporary. She could certainly stay on until he came out of it. And so, Claudia stayed on at the house, sleeping on a cot near the fireplace, tending the children, and doing her dress-making work there in the log cabin’s one room.
* * *
Now, Ulrich’s knowledge of what transpired between his parents in the early months of his life did not come from his own memories, naturally. Rather, they existed in a cobbled-together form consisting of snippets of information passed along by his grandparents, Erich ,and Claudia. Claudia. Aunt Claudia, who, within a year and a half of Iris’ abandonment of the family, became Mama. His step-mother. He grew up calling her Mama, since she was the only Mama he had known – at least consciously. He didn’t know what we know now, that babies can tell these things, tell when the woman who’s caring for them is not their biological mother. So, when, on the day of his actual mother’s abandonment, his aunt Claudia turned up and immediately took over, right with the afternoon feeding (although where did they get the milk???), little Ulrich cried and cried. Claudia and her mother attributed the cries to hunger. But Detlef somehow sensed – and he was right! – that Ulrich saw Claudia for the imposter she was, not the Mama he was expecting that afternoon. The boy never felt at ease again. This Detlef knew in his soul, but he never shared this knowledge with another living soul. He just filed it away in his heart and closed that heart off to his family. The sorrow of what had happened – to Ulrich, to Erich, to himself – was too much for him to bear.
Even on this evening in 1921, so many years after the substitution of mothers had taken place, Ulrich felt a dis-ease deep within him as he sat silently in bed with Renate and mulled over the facts of his early life. Or what he had been told were the facts. Erich was the one who clued him in about who Claudia really was – and wasn’t. One day when Ulrich, at about age four, called Claudia Mama, eight-year-old Erich suddenly burst out with the information that she was, in fact, Aunt Claudia, their real Mama’ssister. And that their two little sisters, one and three years of age, were not entirely their sisters. Ulrich, of course, couldn’t begin to fathom how someone could be only partly your sister. But to this day, he recognized feeling somewhat of an aversion to people when he was told they were someone’s half-brother or half-sister.
Back then – when Erich told him this – that was when Detlef and Claudia came clean and admitted that, yes, Claudia was not his actual mom, but his actual mom’s sister, and that she had come to live with them after his mother died. That’s all they said, that she died when Ulrich was just a baby. Erich, despite his pride at being the source of the most shocking fact Ulrich had ever heard in his life, either before or after that day, couldn’t shed any light on how or where or when their mother died. Erich remembered that one day she was there, and that then she wasn’t there, and that Aunt Claudia and Grandma had shown up. That Aunt Claudia had just stayed, and somehow he had started calling her Mama, just the way Ulrich did from the time he began to talk.
Since the details of Iris’ death were never discussed in their immediate or extended family, examinations of possible explanations for his mother’s death became a constant feature of Ulrich’s mental activity as a boy. He explored them in his mind, sometimes trying them out on Erich. Run over by a horse, or a cart? Food poisoning from eating tainted meat? Knocked down by a falling tree? Bitten by a rabid dog? Each time, Erich just shrugged his shoulders. Ulrich often felt angry at this response, convinced that Erich knew, but wasn’t telling him. But Erich really did not know.
What Ulrich mulled over in his mind in bed this night, for the hundredth or thousandth time, was why he never asked his father or step-mother what had happened to his real mother. Now, as a grown man, this struck him as odd. Why did he not just ask? But he recalled the feeling he grew up with, the internal knowledge that this topic was off limits. So, he spent nineteen years of his life – from age four to age thirty-three – trying to work it out in his mind, the How? of it. In fact, his early fixation on the How? of his mother’s death was most likely the source of his later fixation on the How? of his granddaughter Lina’s accident. This question was so deeply-rooted in his soul and his psyche, that it never, ever, occurred to him to ask himself why it was that he focused so intently on figuring out the Hows? in his life.
Now, in 1921, forty-one-year-old Ulrich sat, propped up in bed, leaning against goose-down-filled pillows, whose cases his loving wife of twenty-one years had lovingly embroidered. Downstairs slept their Ethel and Hans, who were as precious to him as his darling Renate. As he sat, feeling all the love that flowed through the four of them to each other, his eyes filled with tears of gratitude for the unbelievable blessing of this family. How?, he silently asked himself. How? did all this happiness come to me? And How? can I protect it? For he somehow intuited that it would need protecting.
Sue Downing 