Chapter 14
1921
Gassmann-Bunke homestead
It was the morning after that day when Viktor and Hans visited the Kropp family, that day when Viktor suggested adding carving to the sideboard the Kropps had asked the Gassmanns to build for them. That day when Viktor, in Hans’ view, overstepped his bounds. On this spring morning, Ethel came into the workshop to bring Viktor his clean, folded laundry. Ulrich and Hans were out in the forest, deciding which trees to cull in a certain area. Viktor, alone in the workshop for now, was standing at one of the workbenches, his back to the door. But he heard and felt Ethel come in.
“Good morning, Miss Gassmann,” he said, without turning around.
“Good morning to you, Mr. Bunke,” Ethel replied. She walked over to him, the laundry in her arms. “How did you know it was me?” she inquired, both surprised and pleased.
Viktor completed the pencil line he was drawing on the piece of wood before him, and then turned his full attention to her.
“By the sound of your step,” he replied.
“Really?” Ethel asked, and she smiled.
Viktor nodded. “And by the joy you bring with you.”
This flustered Ethel. She dropped her eyes. “Joy? Me? I don’t think I’m any more or less joyful than anyone else in the house,” she responded, shifting her gaze to the sketch he was working from. “I’ve brought your laundry.” She turned to take it into his room, but stopped when he spoke again.
“Well, you are. More joyful, that is.”
“And you can ‘pick that up’?” she asked, turning to face him again. Had it been Hans speaking, the words would have sounded like an insult, or a challenge, but Viktor understood that Ethel was asking with sincerity.
He nodded, placing another pencil line, asking, without looking at her, “Do you believe me?”
Ethel cocked her head slightly to one side, and a small smile appeared on her lips.
“I’d like to,” she said, after a moment’s pause.
“Why’s that?”
“Because I ‘pick things up’, too,” Ethel told him. “Not so strongly as you do, though, I think.” She didn’t mention the other reason she wanted to believe him: She was coming to like him, and she found it flattering that he paid enough attention to her to be able to identify the sound of her feet and the way the atmosphere changed when she was nearby.
“I had the feeling yesterday you wanted to ask me more about that,” Viktor said. He laid the pencil down and turned toward her, an apparent invitation to further questioning.
“You were right about that, too,” Ethel said, laughing. “I mean, sometimes I just know things, or rather, sometimes things just come to me.”
“What kind of things?”
“Well,” Ethel began, her eyes running now along the upper edge of the wall as she thought, “the right words to say to help people feel comfortable. Or designs, say. For my quilts, or for embroidery.”
Viktor nodded encouragingly, and Ethel continued.
“When I was little, I fell in love with designs and patterns. I’d arrange any spare scrap of fabric I could find, or little objects that caught my eye –“
“Like a magpie?” Viktor asked, smiling, his eyes dancing.
Ethel laughed. “I imagine so! But it wasn’t just shiny things. An acorn with an unusual cap, or a clump of moss, or a broken button, scraps from Mama’s sewing. Something would catch my eye and I’d pick it up and put it in the pocket of a little apron Mama had made me – it had blue rickrack around the edges, I remember that! And then, I’d sit down on the floor, by Mama’s chair, while she was sewing or darning, and spread everything out and arrange it.”
“Arrange it how?”
“Well, it wasn’t random, although it probably looked that way. But it wasn’t, not at all! It wasn’t that I sat there and thought, Oh, okay, now put the acorn next to that piece of yarn. No. There was no thinking involved. I just knew what arrangement was right and best.”
Viktor watched her as she spoke, and was transfixed by the tiny tendrils of curls that floated by her face, having escaped her braid. “You’re an artist, then,” he said, finally. And you should be painted by one, he thought to himself.
“Now, I don’t know about that.” Ethel looked at the doorway to Viktor’s room, as if she felt she could escape this conversation that was beginning to feel awkward to her, by actually putting the laundry where it belonged. But her feet kept her in her spot. “All I know is that I spent most of my childhood making patterns out of things. I called them my ‘pictures’,” she added with a little laugh.
“See? I told you! An artist!”
When Ethel shrugged in response, Viktor nodded toward the door of his room. “You made that quilt in there,” he said, “and the embroidery on the pillowcases is yours, too.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve never seen a quilt like it,” Viktor told her, then added, “It’s beautiful. Very unusual.”
“Now that’s true – the unusual part!” Ethel relaxed a bit and laughed again, her voice melodic and lovely as her golden halo of hair. “That hasn’t always been appreciated.”
“Who wouldn’t appreciate that kind of work?” Viktor asked, totally sincerely.
“People who prefer straight lines and a predictable shape to their designs and their world,” Ethel told him.
Her voice had more of an edge to it than she’d intended, and although it was slight, Viktor detected it. He raised his eyebrows, and she went on.
“Like I said, I made all these ‘pictures’ when I was growing up, and before long, I was making my own little quilts. Not real quilts, mind you, but quilt tops, crazy quilts, fabric going every which way. Blankets for my dolls, pillow covers, curtains for the tree house Hans and Papa built…”
“The one with the rope ladder you didn’t like?” Viktor asked.
Surprised, Ethel paused and tipped her head to the side, but instead of asking how he knew that bit of information about her, because, clearly, it had come from Hans, and she’d take that up with him later – or maybe she wouldn’t – she just nodded.
“But where’s the harm in that?” Viktor asked.
“Oh, no harm in any of that,” Ether told him. “The problem came when I started applying my creativity to other parts of our life here.”
“Such as?”
“What, can’t you guess?” Ethel asked, teasing him.
“I’m not a complete mind reader….”
“Well, then, it was a problem when I planted the bean seeds in a spiral one spring, so that when they grew up tall, I’d have a labyrinth to walk through.” When Viktor smiled, she explained. “I thought it’d be fun, but Mama was livid. ‘It’s an inefficient use of the space’, she said, things like that. So, I learned quickly that there was a place for being creative, and mostly that was only when it came to making use of things no one else in the house needed.”
“But you kept on with the quilts. And the embroidery?”
“Well, there, you see, I had pretty much free rein. The ones in your room are pretty tame. Some of my other ones aren’t.”
“I’d like to see them.”
Ethel raised one eyebrow and smiled. “Well, you can be content with the ones in there for now. And yes, I kept on with the quilts. I’m convinced Mama and Papa encouraged me to make them only to keep me out of trouble.”
“And your creativity in check?”
“Mmmhmm. But then, one day, when I was about eight, our neighbors down the road came by with their little girl – she must have been about four then – and she saw my doll quilts and kept pestering me to make her one. So I did. And that was the beginning of my little business.”
“You started making your ‘pictures’ for other people?”
Ethel nodded. “They really just flew out the door. Not when I was eight, of course, but by the time I was twelve, I was making real quilts, complete with the batting all, I mean, for folks hereabouts.”
“That must have already been during the war,” Viktor remarked, having calculated her age in his mind, and hoping he wasn’t too far off.
“That’s right. Fabric was in such short supply that all anyone had was scraps anyway, from worn-out clothes, or I could beg some scraps from the local dress-makers now and then – the ones my Grandma Claudia had worked for – and so I had plenty to work with.”
“And you were able to charge for them?”
“Yes. Now, that’s when Mama and Papa began to think there might be some place in the world for my creativity. The profit changed their view of things!” She shook her head, recalling it all, and then she sighed and raised her head in the direction of Viktor’s piece of wood.
“Kind of like you,” she said.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, Hans didn’t think much of you coming out with your creative ideas for the Kropps’ sideboard, did he? Not at first. Not until Papa set him straight: The Kropps will pay for it, so we can tolerate going off the rails a bit now and then.”
“Seems that’s the way it went,” Viktor agreed. He was grateful for what Ethel had told him about her own creative woes. Knowing what she’d grown up hearing helped his dealings here with Ulrich and Hans fall into place. Not that this was an entirely new experience for him. “I’ve seen things go that way before,” he told Ethel.
“You mean, you’re a bit of a bean labyrinth fellow yourself?” she teased, her cheeks reddening a bit.
“More than a bit.” Viktor smiled wryly. “A bean labyrinth cabinet maker in a by-the-square carpentry world. But I’ve had my successes, too, just like you.”
Ethel was about to ask him to show her his design for the carving on the Kropps’ sideboard, when Renate’s voice rang out from out in the yard.
“Ethel? That’s bread dough’s risen. It’s calling your name. Don’t make it wait, or it’ll collapse in despair.”
“Coming, Mama.” Shrugging lightly to Viktor, as if to say, “What can I do?” she slipped into his room, laid the clean clothes on his bed, and then trotted lightly out the side door, waving gaily to Viktor without turning to see whether he’d waved back, or whether he was even looking. But he had, and he was.
No sooner had Viktor picked up his pencil and turned his attention back to drawing his design on the piece of wood before him, than he heard footsteps enter the workshop once more. These steps were more solid and serious, as was the voice that accompanied them. The energy had grown suddenly heavier, too.
“Mr. Bunke?”
“Yes, Mrs. Gassmann,” Viktor replied, turning toward Renate.
Ethel’s mother walked up to him, peered around his shoulder at the design that was taking shape on the wood on the workbench.
“I ‘pick things up’, too,” she said, and then looked him in the eye. “Move straight on down the row assigned to you, Mr. Bunke,” she said evenly, in a tone that was not unfriendly, but neither was it warm. “No…” she glanced again at his design and waved her hand in its direction. “No curlicues or spirals. Or labyrinths.”
Viktor nodded. “Yes, Ma’am.”
He fixed his attention on his work, and she turned and strode out of the workshop, wiping her hands on her apron, as if she’d just finished a bit of cleaning.
Viktor’s spirits weren’t dampened in the least by Renate’s chiding. He was feeling so buoyed up by the brief conversation with Ethel, that it would have taken more than a stern word from her mother to deflate his mood. So he returned to his sketch, whistling some made-up tune softly as he touched pencil to paper. This was when he felt a presence, as if someone had snuck up behind him and was looking over his shoulder.
At first, Viktor thought that maybe Ethel had slipped back into the workshop. But then he realized that this wasn’t her energy he was feeling. And not Renate’s, either. There was something in it that reminded him of Ethel’s whimsy, but it had a more playful, even mischievous feel to it. Viktor looked around him, even though he knew full well that no one was there with him in the workshop. And yet, he had sensed someone.
Now what? Viktor thought. This place is full of surprises. Whatever presence he was noticing didn’t seem threatening to him. Quite the contrary, in fact. It almost felt to him like someone had laid a hand on his left shoulder. Viktor could have sworn he heard the softest of whispers: “Welcome.” But he concluded that it must have been the trick of a breeze passing through a small crack in the wall or roof. These old low houses, Viktor told himself. The “breeze” whispering to him over his shoulder frowned at that – if a breeze can be said to frown – and that was that. Viktor heard nothing more, and went back to his sketching.
* * *
Renate didn’t say more than she did to Viktor because she knew there was no need. She hadn’t been at all skeptical when Hans reported that Viktor could “pick things up”. As a result, she had no doubt that he clearly understood everything she left unsaid. She wasn’t a woman of many words, anyway, so that combined with Viktor’s intuition to good effect.
Renate’s own intuitive powers differed from Ethel’s, and from Viktor’s, or even from Ulrich’s, for that matter, but they were every bit as keen. Hers were, at this point in her life, grounded solidly in her role as matriarch of the Gassmann family, but they were already in evidence even before she married Ulrich and gave birth to Hans and Ethel. For as long as she could remember, she’d always had the ability – entirely uncultivated, and often unwanted – to feel what others were feeling, whether it was her sister Lorena’s stomach ache or their father’s despair at having their farm horses conscripted during the war, feelings which he kept so well hidden from others. In the midst of the busy-ness of daily life, Renate would somehow perceive the feelings and thoughts of the people around her, information that was crowded out of other people’s awareness by the multitude of visual and physical and mental stimuli that constantly swirled around them.
This ability both confused and annoyed her at times, since as a child, she found it difficult to distinguish whose feelings were whose. But Renate gradually made her peace with her own version of “picking things up”. By the time she married Ulrich, she had realized that sensing how he and Detlef and Claudia were feeling about everything that went on in the family was a real blessing: If she knew what they were upset about, she could also figure out how to calm things down.
Now, Renate was never the type to remake herself into whoever those around her wanted her to be. She was her own person, her own strong and even stubborn person. She had ideas about how things should be done and, even though, when it suited her, she rejected her father’s assertion that every action we take is the result of a conscious decision, she nonetheless applied his theory in her own life fairly consistently. This meant that she always had a clear goal in mind. Maybe it was to make a meat pie for supper, or to get the beans planted (in straight rows, thank you very much!), or for all the family members to adhere to strict orderliness of speech and action in the household. So, she found that her empathic knowledge of those around her made it very clear to her where their resistance to her plans lay. This enabled her to gently (usually) guide them with just the right word here or there, a phrase that she just knew would be effective.
Some people would say that Renate was manipulative. Some people had said it. Her mother-in-law, Claudia, for example. But Renate didn’t see it that way. Here’s how she saw it: She was just trying to keep everyone focused and safe and calmed down. She had the strong feeling that her family was likely to fly off into chaos without her to keep a tight hold on the reins. And she wasn’t entirely wrong…
* * *
The Walter family farm, where Renate grew up, and where she and Ulrich lived for the first five years of their marriage, was located just a couple of miles from the Gassmann homestead. Renate’s sister Lorena and her husband Stefan still lived there, working the farm now with their two sons. But back when Renate and Ulrich married, in 1900, Lorena was still on the young side, only fifteen. Their brother Ewald, two years younger than Renate, was eighteen.
As much as Ulrich had come to dislike his aunt-mother Claudia and his half-sisters, Inna and Monika, it was Inna he had to thank for getting to know Renate. Inna became close friends with Lorena at school, and Ulrich was sometimes tasked with walking Inna to the Walters’ place to play, while Renate was the one who would walk her back. At first, both Ulrich and Renate found this chaperoning a chore, but as time went on, they found themselves enjoying both the walk and the company they found at the end of the trek. Renate would offer Ulrich coffee and a piece of the cake she had “just happened” to bake that day, or Ulrich would invite Renate to the workshop, where he would show her the latest piece of furniture he and his father were working on. Other times, he’d take her on a stroll through the woods, where he would explain which wood was good for which type of project.
In this way, each gradually gained an understanding of the other’s family and way of life. Before too terribly long, the older siblings began to make their way down the road just to spend time with each other, whether Lorena or Inna came along or not. By then, it was clear to them both that their futures lay with each other. Ulrich proposed one evening, as they sat listening to the birds and smelling the damp smell of pine needles in one of the structures he and Erich had built in the woods as children. Renate immediately accepted.
The usual thing would have been for Renate to come live in the Gassmann household: Ulrich was managing the forest with his father and learning cabinetry making from working alongside him. With the forest right there, and the workshop, too, it would have been natural for the new couple to move into the log house, especially since there was plenty of room: Erich stayed in the extra room in the workshop which had once been the family’s whole house, before Detlef built the log house. But the deep dislike Ulrich felt toward his step-mother and half-sisters weighed heavily on him. He had grown up feeling like a stranger in his own home, cut off from those around him, even if he couldn’t articulate why that was. Nor was he close to Erich.
Erich didn’t share his father’s and younger brother’s love of wood and the forest. Although Detlef wished for him to follow his path as a forester and carpenter, Erich instead pursued work as a cobbler’s apprentice, and managed to find a position in nearby Varel. Aunt-mother Claudia pressured him to pursue an apprenticeship with her own father, but Erich refused. He wanted to be as far away as possible from Claudia, and working with her father was too close for his comfort. Even though that man was actually his grandfather, he was tainted in Erich’s view, by his ties to Claudia’s sister Iris, the abandoning mother. She didn’t want me, Erich reasoned, so why should I want her? Or her father? Erich’s decision felt to Detlef like a betrayal. Not that the father would ever have put it away, but that is how he felt in his soul. As a result, he distanced himself even more from Erich, once he landed the apprenticeship. Is that even possible? Erich asked himself. Can he really have taken himself further away from me than before??
From that point on, Detlef pinned his hopes for furthering the forestry and carpentry businesses on his younger son. Strangely enough, though, Ulrich never took this as a sign of his father’s confidence in him. Nor did he conclude that this indicated that Detlef felt any particular affection for him. Rather, Ulrich felt second best. That was what his mind told him. Had he allowed himself to look into his heart, he would have seen that his father was sincerely thrilled by Ulrich’s genuine love of the forest and of the carpentry work. That realization would have helped Ulrich strengthen the very flimsy emotional bridge between himself and his father. Instead, though, the melancholy deep inside him (which Renate would later hint was the way the devil tugged at him) surfaced whenever Detlef praised his son’s work or his intuition. Ulrich just couldn’t find it in his heart to accept Detlef’s words as sincere. In this way, Ulrich became the one who kept his distance.
What’s more, when Erich chose the cobbler’s apprenticeship over the family forestry work, and moved to Varel for three years, Ulrich experienced a resurfacing of his old, not-quite-active, but still-potent despair at having been abandoned by a mother who – as he saw it – didn’t love him. This time, though, it was his older brother who was abandoning him. Never mind that after three years of apprenticing, Erich returned to the Gassmann homestead and lived there while working in Varel. Ulrich was unable to trust the solidity of this relationship with his brother: Why did he come back? Will he just leave again when it suits him? Or will he, perhaps, just die? It would be better, Ulrich decided – in his head – to keep his distance here, too. To be sure, Erich had his own standoffish side. He and his brother had, after all, both experienced abandonment by their mother. Erich, though, was wary not of being left, but rather, of interlopers, impostors. Better to keep a distance, lest your dearest ones be replaced, unexpectedly and without explanation.
Thus, the two brothers maintained a surface cordiality, but there was no fraternal bond, not even the type that could have developed out of a recognition of their shared loss. Rather than supporting each other, each saw the other as a potential source of further loss and hurt.
Renate intuited this state of affairs. But she didn’t have to rely solely on this means of information gathering, for Ulrich – surprising even himself – confided in her about how he felt about his brother and father. It was the first time in his life that he’d felt comfortable talking with someone about his inner feelings, although he found it difficult to articulate them. But that didn’t seem to matter. Renate still understood him somehow. She was calm. She accepted and loved him. It was such a relief to him to be able to share these things with her. As the two of them talked about the state of affairs in the Gassmann household, she never once told him it was unreasonable for him to feel uncomfortable there. There’s more than enough reason, she often thought. There was one scene in particular that Renate herself witnessed, back before Ulrich even proposed to her, that made this quite clear to her.
It must have been early 1898. She and Ulrich were both eighteen, and Erich was already living back on the Gassmann homestead, while working in Varel. Inna was been visiting Lorena at Renate’s house, and, late in the afternoon, Renate walked her back home, hoping to see Ulrich. (The two of them were already courting, but not yet engaged.) When she and Inna reached the Gassmanns’, they immediately heard Claudia shouting inside, berating someone. They both walked into the kitchen, so that Renate could give Claudia some of the chocolate and vanilla pinwheel cookies she’d helped Inna and Lorena bake that afternoon. As soon as Renate stepped through the door, following Inna, she felt the tension in the room. Claudia turned from Monika – who was standing, stoop-shouldered before her mother – and saw them, and Renate felt a wave of anger coming toward them both.
“Where in the world have you been?” Claudia hissed, coming up and grabbing Inna by the elbow. Inna shrank back and bumped into Renate, who was right behind her and clearly glimpsed Claudia’s distorted face over Inna’s shoulder. Renate stepped forward and held out the plate of cookies.
“The girls and I made cookies this afternoon,” she said calmly, deftly squeezing herself in between Inna and Claudia, so that the latter was forced to either step back and release Inna’s elbow, or else remain cheek to cheek with Renate.
As if stunned by both the offering of cookies and Renate’s interference in her family affairs, Claudia woodenly took the plate into her hands. Monika was still standing, as if frozen. Inna slipped behind Claudia and went to her younger sister, silently asking with her eyes what was the matter. Monika just stared at the floor and shook her head curtly. Both girls cast furtive looks at Claudia, hoping she would not look around and catch their eye.
“All right,” Claudia said finally, as she turned and absent-mindedly set the plate down on the large wooden table in the middle of the kitchen. She glanced at her two daughters, and they saw that the fury had gone out of their mother’s eyes. “Will you stay to dinner?” she asked Renate, as if the scene her future daughter-in-law had witnessed was both normal and nothing to be disturbed about or by.
Although the wave of anger that had risen in Claudia against her and Inna with the force of a tornado had faded away, Renate was still feeling its effects in her body: her quickened pulse and breathing, the fear in her chest that she was doing her best not to give in to. She had to consciously consider what answer to give Claudia. Certainly, she wanted to stay and eat with them, so that she could have time with Ulrich – most certainly a walk in the forest after the meal. But at the same time, she hated feeling the way she was feeling right now. She knew from past experience that it might take an hour or more for the disturbance inside her to fade. What to do? Then she heard Ulrich’s voice in the yard, as he spoke with Ewald, joking about something, and the answer was clear.
“Thank you, Mrs. Gassmann,” she said politely. “I’d love to stay. What can I do to help?”
* * *
Cut to 1900. Ulrich and Renate’s wedding was approaching. It was Renate who first suggested to Ulrich that they live on the Walter farm once they were married. Well, you could say she suggested it, but another way to present what happened is that she picked the right moment to mention it. She brought it up when she sensed that Ulrich was in a momentary state of sadness and frustration regarding his family situation, and thus open to hearing what she had to say. Or, perhaps, vulnerable? Again, you could say that Renate manipulated Ulrich, but she would tell you that she just felt what it was that he really wanted. Then she presented an option that he himself had not considered consciously. But once she mentioned it, then he, too, immediately felt it was right.
At first, Ulrich was concerned that Renate might feel uncomfortable living as a married woman in her mother’s household, but his fiancée just laughed.
“Ulrich,” she told him bluntly, “At least at our farm there is peace. I don’t see how I could live under the same roof with Claudia. It’s nothing but disorganization and shouting and nerves there.”
Ulrich closed his eyes, raised his eyebrows, and nodded. “It’s true,” he replied with a sigh. “You’ve seen it many a time. Someone says something, sets someone else off, and everyone’s too polite to yell – everyone but Claudia, anyhow. But the tension is like a thick fog.” He paused and then added, shaking his head, “How wrong it is.”
“What is?” Renate asked.
“Well, you know, we always call our place ‘the Gassmann homestead’, right?”
“Yes. It’s a common enough phrase.”
“True. But now that you and I are getting married, now that I’ve spent so much time at your place… Well, I had the thought yesterday. About how our so-called ‘homestead’ isn’t a real home, with any of the love and caring and warmth you have at the farm. It certainly isn’t ‘steady’, either. Nothing calm about it. A real ‘homestead’ should be a place where you can feel strong and secure and surrounded by love. Don’t you think?”
“I do,” Renate said, taking her fiancé’s hand in hers and leaning her head against his shoulder.
That’s how it was decided. And no one put up a fuss. Not right away, anyway. Detlef was sufficiently immersed in his own world to not really care who was in the house when he came in for a meal or to go to sleep at night. At least, that’s the impression he gave. Or, perhaps, he had unconsciously hardened his heart against rejection so thoroughly that it just seemed that he didn’t notice. For her part, Claudia was actually relieved: She sensed how calm and yet strong Renate was, and she knew that could spell trouble, if the two of them were to live together. Let the Walters have Ulrich. Then the house would be hers and the girls’. And Detlef’s, of course.
The fact that Ulrich felt uncomfortable on the Gassmann “homestead” wasn’t all that led him to embrace Renate’s plan. He’d fallen in love with his fiancée’s family as much as with Renate herself. Love and caring reigned there, as he had told Renate that one evening, and the farm became a sweet refuge for Ulrich nearly as soon as he began to visit. Despite Mr. Walter’s strictness, it was clear that he loved his whole family very deeply and would do anything for them. They all seemed extensions of each other, connected through their hearts, even if this wasn’t something any of them really ever talked about. But it was in the air. That was the kind of atmosphere Ulrich wanted to live in.
However, although Ulrich and Renate lived with her family following the wedding, Ulrich and Renate’s brother Ewald spent six days a week at the Gassmanns’, working with Detlef. As a result, what Renate saw as Claudia’s compulsion to create tension and drama within the family setting still affected both young men deeply. They often came back home in the evening with their shoulders bent beneath more than physical fatigue. They were happiest when working out in the forest all day, because that meant they would eat the dinner of bread, cheese, and sausage Renate packed out there, amongst the trees, leaning against a supportive birch or oak. But on days when they worked in the workshop, they would join the whole family for the mid-day meal, the way Viktor joined Renate and her family now. Ewald had quite a bit of tolerance for Claudia’s steady stream of criticism and attacks, but those dinners were enough to make Ulrich lose his appetite.
Here are some examples of how they sometimes went.
“I still don’t understand why you and Renate are living with the Walters.” That’s the way Claudia would start in on Ulrich, not even waiting until all the food was on the table. She’d hurl invective from the moment he entered the house. “You’re such a horrible son, abandoning your father. He misses you.” He doesn’t, Ulrich would respond in his thoughts. Sometimes, if he was in a reflective mood, he’d wonder why he was always the target of Claudia’s “horrible son” tirades. I mean, it’s Erich who refused to become a forester, who goes off to Varel every day to work. “You should be here helping with your sisters.” That was another frequent complaint. They’re not my sisters. Or, rarely, when she felt a gentler approach might be more effective: “It’s a lot of extra time and effort to go back to the Walters’, when you’re already tired at the end of the day. Why don’t you and Renate move here?” I have plenty of energy to get home. It’s being here that drains me.
When Renate and Ulrich did come to call, say, to take Sunday supper with the Gassmanns, Claudia would unleash her complaints in what seemed like a combination of a scream and a hiss, always directed at Renate: “You dragged Ulrich away from Detlef, made him abandon his father, reject him. You hateful, heartless human being!” Or this: “Hasn’t he suffered enough rejection in his life, without you adding to it?”
But, unlike Ulrich, Renate didn’t keep her thoughts inside her head, or at least not all of them.
“Claudia,” Renate would say, never raising her voice, “We will not sit here and listen to you shriek at us. Either you stop, or we leave.”
Sometimes this would shut Claudia down, and the meal would proceed, if not in peace, then at least without further attacks. Other times, Claudia would remained standing, a pot lid or a serving spoon in her hand, punctuating her hate-filled words with a jagged movement of the object. Those times, Renate would silently stand up and walk out of the house, followed by Ulrich, who was grateful to Renate for taking the kind of stand he himself felt unable to muster. How? Ulrich wondered. How had his dear Renate gained the strength to stand up to Claudia and not be drawn into her unpleasant whirlwind? “Her evil whirlwind”. That’s how Renate once described it to him.
“You know,” she said, “I think there is something deeply evil in her that causes her to lash out like that.”
“Do you think she is a demon?” Ulrich asked her. This was a totally serious question. He considered this possibility many times while growing up, especially after Erich told him she wasn’t their mother. He began thinking of her as a demon who had invaded or stolen their mother’s body, taken over her life, and claimed everything around her.
But Renate shook her head. “I think there is a demon in her that drives her to say those vile things. But she is a child of God, just like all of us. There must be some good in her. But we can’t often see it, because the demon has too tight a grip on her.”
Ulrich had never thought of it that way until Renate laid it out for him, but once she did, he had to agree with her. It was a moment of revelation for him, and the insight moved him so much he felt tears come to his eyes. He marveled at his wife’s generosity of spirit. He told her so.
“Generosity? I don’t know,” she responded, and pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I’m willing to grant that there is a seed of good beneath those outpourings of horrible words. But what I’m not willing to do is to sit by and allow her to pour it all on us. Because then I am taking in that evil, too. And that only hurts us, too. We have to protect ourselves.”
“By leaving?”
“By giving her the chance to turn her thoughts and words around. But then, yes, by leaving, if she doesn’t turn around.”
“That’s why I say you’re generous,” Ulrich said, drawing Renate close and embracing her. “You’re willing to give her the chance to be different. All I can manage to do, when you’re not there, is to try to let the words rush over me and pay no attention.”
Renate stroked his head and looked him in the eye, tenderly. “But then it all soaks into you. And you come home looking defeated, wrung out.”
Ulrich nodded. “That’s the way it’s always been in the family. Growing up, we just took it.”
“And it took its toll on you,” Renate said softly. “But now, we don’t have to take it. It’s up to you what you do when you’re there, but when I’m there, I won’t endure it. I just won’t.”
“I’m glad you won’t,” he told her. And, bit by bit, he, too, began to stand up to Claudia. For the first little while, he just avoided her, always taking his own dinner, and eating it out in the yard, instead of indoors with the family. That was all he could manage. But then, after a few weeks, he noticed he was feeling stronger. So he began to eat his dinner with everyone else occasionally, in the kitchen, while also adopting Renate’s approach: When Claudia started in on him, he gave her an ultimatum.
“Claudia, you can keep on like this, but if you do, I’ll go eat outside. It’s up to you.” Some days she quieted down – and although she sulked, Ulrich simply didn’t look at her. Some days she didn’t back down. On those days, Ulrich silently filled his plate, took it out to the workshop, and ate there, returning the empty dish to the doorstep before resuming his work.
What was perhaps strangest of all during all of these interactions during the first five years of Renate and Ulrich’s marriage, was that none of the other Gassmann family members ever got involved in the tense conversations. It was if they were not even present.
Detlef, always lost in his own thoughts, sometimes simply silently placed the food on his plate and ate, and then left the table without speaking with anyone. Mostly, though, he talked to people, expounding on this or that idea that had come to him that morning, or sharing an arcane bit of information about this or that kind of tree. Those present were a target for the details he wanted to share, but he never sought a response from them; they had all learned, years earlier, that if they did comment, Detlef stared at them blankly for a moment before continuing, as if, until he heard their voices, he didn’t even realize that anyone else was in the room with him. It always seemed to Ulrich that his father’s complete failure to take notice of him – or of Erich, for that matter – during these family meals, completely took the wind out of the sails of Claudia’s claims that he, Ulrich, was a neglectful son whose father missed his presence.
No matter what Claudia happened to be ranting on and on about on any given day, Erich and Inna and Monika never responded, either. Nor did they make any effort to shift the course of the conversations. Perhaps they felt the approach they employed with Detlef was one-size-fits-all: Just let Detlef and Claudia talk. Even so, they did deal with Claudia slightly differently than their father: They waited for her gale to lose strength, and when her verbal hurricane winds died down, then they calmly and animatedly began discussing whatever was of interest to them.
Is this Father’s approach, too? Ulrich wondered one day, after he and Renate had that talk about Claudia. Is this how he protects himself from her onslaughts? But he thought not. His father was distant like that even early on, when Claudia was calmer.
“Is this how we all just made it through?” Ulrich mused one night in those early years, as he and Renate were talking at bedtime. “By just pretending Claudia wasn’t screaming at one of us? As if, if we didn’t say anything about it to her or to each other, then somehow it wasn’t happening?”
“I don’t know,” his wife replied as she turned down the quilt on their bed. “I imagine, as little tykes, you couldn’t stand up to her. Not at all. Your father wasn’t standing up to her, either. He wasn’t protecting you.”
“No. He was just pulled back. He left us to her, whether it was because he didn’t care, or because he didn’t see anything wrong with it, or because he just didn’t notice. Whyever it was, we were at her mercy.”
“I’m sorry you grew up that way,” Renate told him as they settled in against the pillows. “It wasn’t right.”
“How did that demon get into her?” Ulrich mused aloud.
“God only knows,” Renate replied. “But you can all be safe now. Now you’re big and strong, and you can protect yourself.”
“Thank God for you, my darling,” Ulrich told her. “Now I see how wrong it always was in that household. I was so weak. I didn’t see what was going on, so I didn’t stand up to it.”
“No, you were strong, in your own way. Maybe you never spoke up, but you never let the demon get into you, Ulrich. You are such a kind and loving person, despite all of that.”
“And now you’ve given me the strength to behave in a new way in that house.”
Renate shook her head as she rested her head on his chest. “No, Ulrich. It’s God who’s given you all of that. I’ve just prayed to Him to help you.”
* * *
And so it went. The young married couple settled into a very contented life on the Walter farm. Ulrich grew stronger and more adept at avoiding being caught in Claudia’s webs and intrigues. His boldness somehow encouraged Erich to stand up up to her, too. The girls, although they lacked their brothers’ willingness to speak up for themselves verbally, found another, very effective, method of escape: marriage. By 1904, both Inna and Monika were living in Bockhorn, each with a young family of her own. Claudia, taking advantage of her rights as a new grandmother, often visited her daughters. She knew enough, however, not to even consider descending on Ulrich and Renate when first Hans, and then Ethel, were born. While she continued to keep the Gassmann household running, it wasn’t long before Claudia realized that there was really no one at home anymore whom she could reliably draw into her drama: Detlef was as if deaf, and Erich and Ulrich just did not bite when she tossed out a lure. Nor did Ewald, though he ate dinner with them nearly every day. Claudia found all of this supremely frustrating. As a result, she began to lash out more and more at Detlef. But her railings against him seemed to the children not to affect him. It looked to them like he emerged from each tempestuous mealtime conflict unscathed. But maybe it just seemed that way. Could that have been what killed him, the next year? Not that an angry wife can bring on peritonitis in her husband. At least medical science would say that was impossible…
* * *
One of the brightest parts for Ulrich of living with Renate’s family was that he her and Renate’s brother, Ewald, became closer friends. Of course, the two of them got to know each other long even before Renate and Ulrich married, since they were working together with Detlef at the Gassmann place. Ulrich and Ewald were following roughly the same life’s path, both apprenticing as carpenters with Detlef. Ewald had been learning alongside Ulrich’s father for six years now, Ulrich for two years longer, which was natural, since Ulrich was older than Ewald by two years. But Ewald had already developed a high level of skill, very much on a par with Ulrich, and in some ways even surpassing him, since Ulrich was also working to learn the forestry work. Ewald, on the other hand, was concentrating exclusively on the carpentry and cabinetry, and it was paying off: The Gassmann family business was thriving, with lots of orders for furniture and cabinetry, as well as the occasional small job in a client’s house. The three men developed an easy rhythm of planning and working on projects together. It surprised Detlef that there was no jealousy or unhealthy competition between the two “boys”, as he still referred to them, but when he commented on this to Ulrich one day, the latter just shrugged. “We like each other,” he said. And that was it.
The two of them both shrugged whenever Renate and her family commented on the friendship. Ulrich and Ewald, the family noticed, got so absorbed in their conversations about trees and their current cabinetry projects – and this at home in the evening, after they’d already jabbered on about all of this at work the whole day before that – that Renate teased them. “Mothers talk about gaining a daughter when their sons get married. But in my case, it’s like I gained a brother when I married you, Ulrich. I mean, Ewald, you seem more like Ulrich’s brother than mine.”
Renate and Ewald’s mother, Veronika, noting that the two young men were so in agreement, also teased them: “Why don’t you two boys just alternate days talking at supper? Ewald one day, Ulrich the next. And so on. You always say the same thing, anyway.”
This was the general consensus: that Ewald and Ulrich were of exactly the same mind about life, about what they both valued most: family, forestry, and friends. In the four years since Ulrich and Renate had married and been living with the Walters – it was 1904 now – no one had ever seen them disagree about anything serious. That’s how strong their friendship was.
As for the foundation of that friendship: It wasn’t just that the two of them liked each other. It was a deep, brotherly connection. Not that Ulrich could have articulated that. What he knew was that when he spent time around Ewald, he felt an ease and heartfelt affection that he had never felt with his actual brother, Erich. Maybe that was why he wouldn’t have thought to identify his fondness for Ewald as fraternal. The way he and Ewald got along – that was what Ulrich thought it was like to have a good friend. Ewald agreed. He, too, had never had a brother, but in a different way than Ulrich: He had no brother in the biological sense. Only two sisters – now, at least – whom he dearly loved. With Ulrich, he could joke in a way he couldn’t with Renate and Lorena, and he appreciated that. Even so, if you were to measure the strength of the bond between the two men, it would be accurate to say that Ulrich felt more strongly attached to Ewald than Ewald did to him.
You see, Ulrich’s world extended in a very small radius out from his home with the Walters, to the Gassmann homestead, and out as far, maybe, as Bockhorn and Varel in either direction. But not really any farther than that. With Renate and her family, Ulrich had found what made him happy, and he genuinely was content. He had a loving wife, two children whom he cherished – Hans, who’d just turned three, and Ethelinde, who was but a couple months old. And then there was good work to do that he found inspiring and enjoyable, if sometimes challenging.
Ewald, on the other hand, had a little bit of Detlef in him, although he was related to the Gassmann patriarch only by marriage. What served as a common thread between the two men was their fascination with America. Ewald was constantly asking Detlef questions about the log cabin, about how he’d even found out about it, how he’d decided to build one for himself. Detlef was more than happy to indulge the young man’s questions: It gave him a chance to hold forth, his most favorite activity in the world
Ulrich – and nearly everyone else in both families – put Ewald’s interest down to simple curiosity, or even an attempt to draw Detlef out of his shell. (Ewald hadn’t spent enough time yet with the man to realize this couldn’t actually be done. What Ewald took as an engaged discussion was, for Detlef, just the opening of a tap that allowed him to let loose a flood of words.) Even when Ewald’s childhood friend Ralf emigrated to America in 1903 and began sending Ewald detailed letters about what life and work were like in the part of the country called the Midwest, neither family saw any warning signs. They genuinely took an interest in what Ralf wrote to Ewald. It was America, after all, and they enjoyed hearing about what the countryside was like (flatter than at home in Germany), whether the people were different (they were, more talkative), whether he could get decent German food there (he could, thanks to the woman he lodged with, whose parents had emigrated twenty years earlier) and what it was like working there as a carpenter (not much different, really, except that there seemed to be lots of work to be had.) No one in either family even considered Ewald’s correspondence any more than a pleasant addition to mealtime conversations. Except Renate, that is. Renate, who always sensed everything. She felt what was coming this time, too. And she hoped that, just this once, her intuition was off.
Sue Downing 