Above the River, Chapters 15-17

Chapter 15

August, 1904

Walter farm, Near Varel, Germany

            None of what Ewald was saying to them was making any sense to Ulrich.  This was how the conversation over dinner went on that one summer evening at the Walter farm:

            “Ralf’s gotten set up in a town in Illinois, doing carpentry for a business there,” Ewald was explaining.

            “Where’s Illinois, again?” Lorena asked.  She asked this same question every time Ewald mentioned his friend. Lorena had heard this detail numerous times before, but she never really took it in. Probably because the information just seemed irrelevant to her. Like Ulrich, her interests were strictly local and focused mainly on her fiancé, Stefan, whom she would be marrying the following year.

            “On the bank of one of the big lakes they have there, Lake Michigan.”  Ewald paused.  “And…” he then continued, scanning his parents’ faces, and Renate’s and Ulrich’s, too, hoping to discover beforehand their response to the news he hadn’t even shared yet. 

            “And what?” his father, Ingo, asked, setting down his utensils on his plate.  He knew something was coming.

            Renate stopped chewing. Oh, no! she thought.  Her intuition had been accurate, as usual. No!

            Ewald took in a deep breath and let it out.  “He said there’s lots of good work. His boss said he’ll take me on, too. If I go over there.”

            “To Illinois?” Ewald’s mother Veronika asked, just as Renate said, “To America?”

            “Yes.”

            Stunned silence. 

“Is Illinois a city?” Lorena suddenly asked, in what seemed like a total non sequitur.

            Ewald, who was eager to proceed with discussing his plans, felt annoyed at his sister’s question. On the surface, this seemed like just one more of the absent-minded queries she often posed. But the whole family knew that although this question seemed, like her first, to be concerned with geography, the underlying emotion was different. They knew that this was the way Lorena always responded when she was worried or upset: She focused on establishing minute details, so as to stay tethered to the ground, instead of floating off on a wave of anxiety.

            “No, it’s an American state,” Ewald explained patiently. “Think of it like Bavaria. But a lot bigger.”

            Lorena nodded and turned her attention back to her schnitzel.  Although she said nothing more, they all realized that she was feeling every bit as shocked as the rest of them were.  Except for Renate, who was feeling a deep sadness rise up in her, sadness for every member of the family, and especially for Ulrich.

*          *          *

By the end of the fall, Ewald had sailed for America, his final destination Durand, Illinois, a small town in the state’s northwest corner. Ulrich had, as he saw it, lost a brother and a friend.

Chapter 16

Summer, 1921

Gassman homestead

            Just as Ulrich had found the peace and love and familial warmth his heart desired on the Walters’ farm, the more time Viktor spent living and working amongst the Gassmanns, the more his soul blossomed and his heart opened.  Not that he would have put it that way, because he was only barely aware of this growth that was going on inside him.

            Certainly, we could attribute this largely to his growing love for Ethel, and to hers for him.  But it would be a mistake to say that Ethel catalyzed this transformation all on her own.  Not that her love was not a powerful elixir for Viktor.  It was. But equally powerful was the effect that the forest exerted on him.

            Following that first walk to Bockhorn with Hans, on the day they went to meet the Kropps – the day of Viktor’s first creative contribution to the family business – Viktor felt drawn to learn about the trees he would eventually saw and carve and nail, shaping into furniture and walls and stairs. 

            Viktor’s father, who himself had thought of wood as material to be worked, rather than as a once-living source, never instilled a respect for trees in his son.  His approach to his work was much more utilitarian: he’d acquire already-prepared wood, and then create with it. But, as Viktor began working alongside Ulrich, he understood that his own father, as beautiful as his carving work had been, and as skillful a carpenter as he had been, had also lacked something. This something was clearly present in Ulrich. 

Viktor didn’t know quite how to describe it, at least not at first.  He’d never encountered it before in any of the master carpenters he’d trained with.  But it was powerful.  He sensed it already the first day, as Ulrich showed him around the workshop, indicating the various projects he was working on.  There was the care with which Ulrich touched the wood, a near caress when he picked up a table leg he’d been turning and brushed off the sawdust.  Viktor noticed this… this relationship of Ulrich’s to the wood, but it was only when Viktor went out with Ulrich into the forest for the first time that he began to understand what was going on.

One day at dinner, a couple of days after that first trip to Bockhorn, Viktor asked Ulrich to tell him about the forest, nd about his family’s connection to it.

“Our eleven hectares of heaven!” Ulrich said, and Viktor saw a sparkle come into his eyes.  “That’s what I call it.” He smiled, and as he did, Viktor noted that the Gassmann family patriarch seemed not the least bit sheepish about expressing how much he loved the forest. A less confident – or less loved – man might have looked to check Viktor’s response, to gauge whether he’d made a fool of himself. But Ulrich didn’t.

“That’s right,” Ethel said, as she bit off a piece of bread.  “It is!”

Renate and Hans nodded, too.

“Of course, it’s beautiful,” Viktor replied.  “But why ‘heaven’?” His question was sincere, but he didn’t want to look like an idiot. Perhaps everyone in the world except him knew about this.  So, he adopted an expression that he hoped would indicate casual interest instead of the yearning he was just beginning to realize he felt for the answer.

“Ah,” Ulrich said, holding up his right hand, index finger pointing at Viktor to indicate that the question was well-taken, perhaps even expected.  “Exactly. You cut to the core of it.  It really is heaven. It’s not just a figure of speech I was using there, meaning to say that I like being in the forest.”  He paused.   “Beauty.  Yes, there’s that. But beauty alone doesn’t indicate the heavenly.  In fact, I’d wager that it’s the heavenliness that creates the beauty.”  He turned and smiled at Renate.  “As with my dear wife.”

Renate shook her head and looked down at her lap, where her hands were smoothing her napkin. But a smile flitted across her lips.

Ulrich, more expansive and light-hearted than Viktor had seen him up to this point, leaned back in his chair, tipping back onto the two back legs, and cocked his head to one side.

“Why do I draw an equals sign between heaven and the forest?  I’m not saying I know what heaven feels like.  But if heaven does end up feeling like the forest, then I’ll be quite content when I take up residence over on the other side.”

That wasn’t a real answer to Viktor’s question, and everyone at the table knew it.  Only Ethel stepped in to help.

“I agree with Papa, but I, too, have a hard time saying what it is.  But I am completely sure it is heaven, and that the real heaven will feel that way, too, when I get there.”

“If it feels like heaven to you,” Viktor commented, slowly, “then maybe it actually is.”

Ulrich was still resting back in his chair.  Ethel was chewing contemplatively.  Hans was saying nothing, focusing instead on his potato salad.  He took Viktor’s question as yet another attempt by the newcomer to worm his way into his father’s good graces by flattering the older man. (His father’s, not Viktor’s, as much as the young stranger might want to become like a son to Ulrich…).  Renate was eating slowly, while gazing at her husband with an expression Viktor hadn’t noticed on her face before.  She was smiling contentedly, clearly made happy by her dear husband’s sudden vibrancy and glowing face.  It was true: Renate was content. She so seldom saw Ulrich like this, free of his habitual undertone of melancholy, and she was delighted to bask in it, for as long as it lasted.  Seeing her husband come alive, her own heart opened a bit toward the young man whose genuine interest had drawn Ulrich out of his dark-lined shell. 

Ulrich laughed. “Precisely!” he nearly shouted. He leaned forward in his chair, so that its front legs clapped back into contact with the floor with a thwack.  “Come out into the forest with me tomorrow, Viktor, and you can tell me what you think makes it heaven.”

“Papa,” Ethel said playfully, “perhaps Viktor won’t find a speck of heaven in the forest.  What then?”

“Oh, I think I might, find it,” Viktor answered.  Especially if you are in the forest, too. “If you all are convinced it’s there, I’m game to search for it, too.”

Ulrich shook his head now, but not in a harsh way. “No need to search for it, son.  It’ll find you itself, if you let it. Put itself right in your very path.  And all around you.  It’ll find you all right.  If you’re still.” He paused again. “And if you wish it to.”

Hans, who was the first to finish his dinner – after all, he had been eating while the others had been philosophizing – thanked his mother and sister for the meal and put his dishes on the table by the sink.  “See you in the shop,” he told Ulrich, but without a glance at Viktor. Then he was gone, thinking to himself,  Son?

*          *          *

            The next day, Ulrich took Viktor out into the woods as he went to survey part of the forest. Thus began the younger man’s tutorial in the ways of heaven.

            Hans was not with them, having stayed behind to work on the Kropps’ cabinet.  And in any case, Viktor knew that Hans had more interest in what was made out of wood than in the trees the wood came from.  He wondered, though, when Hans’ focus had shifted.  After all, as a child, he and Ethel had spent days at a time in the forest, and Hans had told him about the treehouse and how much he’d loved being up in it.  Then again, Viktor realized, Hans had spoken most about what he and his father had made in the forest, how they’d constructed the treehouse, and not at all about how it had felt to him to be in the treehouse. Nothing at all about heaven.

            Viktor was correct about where Hans’ interests lay.  What gave Hans the most satisfaction was putting the wood of the forest to use in some way, perhaps even in a creative way.  Like other carpenters Viktor had encountered, although Hans knew the trees and how they could best be utilized – as material – he didn’t seem to know or care what else the trees and the forest had to offer, i.e., heaven.  This “what else”, Viktor surmised as he followed Ulrich into the woods along a dirt path wide enough for a cart and horse, was exactly what this forester knew.

            Viktor made a couple of attempts at starting a conversation as he and Ulrich walked, but Ulrich shook his head gently. 

            “Just walk for now,” the older man said softly.  “And notice.”

            So, for probably the first time in his life, Viktor made his way through a forest without talking to a person by his side.  As a child, he simply hadn’t played in the woods by himself, and hardly with other kids, either, to be truthful.  During his military training, his time in the woods had been about as far-removed as could be imagined from what he was experiencing now.  As for keeping silent, Viktor wasn’t used to being quiet with other people and had, in fact, never particularly liked it. He always preferred to talk, to get a sense of the other person or people he happened to be with.  So, now, at first, he had to contend with the voice in his own head, which, in the absence of words from other human interlocutors, provided both sides of the conversation. The thoughts came fast and furious: Notice what? Ask him.  No.  He said to just walk and notice.  But what?  Is this a test? God Almighty, what should I be looking at?

            Then, as if reading his mind, Ulrich said, “Don’t think.  Just walk. Forget about noticing for now.”

            Viktor relaxed a little, shook out his shoulders.  Just walk. Don’t think.  Easier said than done.  In an effort to not think, since he imagined Ulrich had a good reason for this instruction, Viktor turned his attention actively to what was around him.  To the slightly damp and still cool air.  He could feel the remnants of the morning’s mist, and it seemed to him as he looked in between the trees, that perhaps he could even see it.  Like the vaguest of thin, cottony shadows against the background of the leaves on the low branches of the young oaks.  Or maybe those were just spider webs?  Don’t think.

            As Viktor consciously looked here and there, his gaze took in the pine needles and the decayed, brown, last year’s leaves beneath his feet and in the underbrush off to the side of the path.  The pine needles sounded and felt different beneath his boots than the old leaves, and, naturally, they smelled different, too.  Both scents were rich, but the pine’s was lighter, and the smell of the leaves darker and heavier and sharper, more sour, even, he concluded.

            He felt his breathing deepen and slow, and his gait also shifted.  Up until this point, he had continually found himself having to consciously reduce his speed, so as not to bump into the older man just ahead of him.  But now, somehow, he noticed that his own pace had naturally attuned itself to Ulrich’s.   As he slowed, he began to take in the sounds of the woods. First he noticed the louder bird calls, although he had no idea what birds they were.  Then chirps of crickets and softer birds’ songs came into his ears, as if competing for his attention with the rustling of dry leaves close by and new ones further up in the trees.  At one point, Viktor was so captivated by a waving aspen leaf that, smiling, he stepped off the path and wrapped his fingers gently around it, wishing to test what it felt like.  Soft, it turned out. Softer on the top than on the bottom, where the ridges protruded.

            “Ah,” I see you’ve met one of the most welcoming trees of our forest,” Ulrich said, his voice transmitting his smile.  He had noticed that Viktor had stopped walking, and he’d turned to see what had caught his attention.

            “Welcoming?” Viktor asked.

            “I’ve always thought so,” Ulrich said, coming up alongside Viktor and grasping another leaf in what, to Viktor, resembled a handshake.  He smiled at the thought of trees and humans shaking “hands”.

            “Have you heard the phrase ‘quaking aspens’?” Ulrich asked him.  Viktor nodded.  “But they don’t look to me like they’re quaking,” Ulrich remarked. “If they were quaking, that’d be from fear, wouldn’t it?  But what’s to be afraid of here?” he asked, swiveling his head to look at the forest around them, and making a sweeping gesture with his arm. 

            “The forester’s axe?” Viktor asked, with a slight smile.  He looked down at the leaf in his hand.

            “Perhaps some foresters’ axes,” Ulrich agreed.  “But not in this forest.”

            “You don’t cut any aspens?” Viktor inquired, his eyebrows rising in surprise.

            “Oh, we do.  But not just at random. Not just to cut.”

            “How, then?”

            “That is a process of discussion between the forester and the tree,” Ulrich told him.  He ran his hand along the branch of the small aspen before him, patting it gently as his fingers progressed closer to the trunk.  Viktor waited for him to continue and followed Ulrich’s hand with his eyes. Ulrich rested his hand on the branch and spoke again:

            “They can communicate, you know.”

            “I didn’t know,” Viktor said simply.  It wasn’t that he didn’t believe what Ulrich had said, and that realization surprised him, actually.  He wasn’t sure how to respond, but Ulrich seemed to take his words as assent, as acceptance of the veracity of what the experienced forester was telling him.

            “Many people don’t,” Ulrich continued.  “I used to think they must.  I heard the trees talking to me from the time I was a boy, and figured everyone did.  Found out that wasn’t the case the first time I shared what I heard with my father.  Turned out my own father didn’t know these things. He didn’t believe it was possible for trees to communicate.  Didn’t accept it.  Tried to drum it out of me.”

            Here, Ulrich turned his gaze to meet Viktor’s.  Was he consciously telling Viktor this to gauge his response, his openness to this idea?  For once, Viktor wasn’t focused on trying to figure out what someone else was all about. He was just listening to the forester standing before him. And replying in a most natural and sincere way.

            “So, you ‘picked things up, too’,” he said simply, his voice full of a kindness that surprised him.  “And you still do.”

            Ulrich sighed deeply, and then nodded.  “My father tried to beat it out of me, but he failed.  No matter what he did, I could still communicate with the trees. I just learned not to talk to him about it.”

            “Did you tell anyone else?”

            Ulrich nodded again. “Renate.  Because she understood.  Not that she understands the trees, or even hears them, for that matter.  But she understands me, and she hears me.  And she hears and sees enough other things – like the fairies and the wood spirits – that she believed me about this.”

            Viktor thought back to the way he’d seen Renate looking at Ulrich the day before, at dinner, and he realized that Ulrich was a very lucky man, indeed. He told him as much.

            “Yes, that’s very true,” Ulrich agreed.  “Having a person with you who understands who you are, who believes what you believe to be true, even if she can’t understand it fully herself – now that is a gift from God. That is heaven.”

            “I imagine you’re right about that.”  Viktor didn’t speak from personal experience.  But he desperately hoped that this would someday be his personal experience.  Someday soon.

            “And so, the aspens…” Ulrich said, pointing to the leaf Viktor still held between his finger.  “They aren’t quaking in fear. They’re greeting us, welcoming us.  That leaf there, it was waving to you, inviting you to make its acquaintance.  And you did!  See there, son, you’re already communicating with the trees, too!”  He laughed. And as he did, Viktor once again saw a sparkling light come into the older man’s eyes, just the way it had done at dinner.  The difference was, that this time, Viktor grasped a bit about why it had appeared. He also sensed, without being able to put it into words – without even trying to do so! – a little bit about the nature of what constituted the heavenly in these woods.  And as the two men stood there, greeting the aspen, Ulrich saw something else that Viktor couldn’t possibly see: A sparkling light had come into the young man’s eyes, too.

*          *          *

            This was just the first of many mornings or afternoons in the next few weeks that Ulrich and Viktor spent together in the forest.  Having seen Viktor’s response to the trees, Ulrich correctly surmised that the newcomer could grow into a skilled forester, and that learning about the trees would only enhance his cabinetry work.  Discussion between them in the woods – about the personalities of this or that type of tree, and about why a given variety of wood was suited to being shaped into a particular piece of furniture – continued as the two men moved from forest to workshop to kitchen.  Although mealtime conversations had always been lively, with everyone present taking part, things now gradually shifted, subtly, but noticeably: Ulrich and Viktor brought an ebullience to the table, their joint enthusiasm spilling over.  Ethel and Renate and Hans all noticed the shift, but each had a unique take on what was happening.

            Hans, still suspicious of the new arrival (although Viktor had already been with them for more than two months at this point), was experiencing a combination of fear and jealousy.  It was true that he, himself, had no real interest in learning more about the forest than he already knew, more than what he had taken in as a child playing amongst the trees and using them for his own projects.  He knew which wood to use for which job, but, unlike his father – and now, Viktor – he couldn’t have explained the why of it.  He had always been eager – and content – to move ahead with whatever he was constructing. Why did he need to know more?  But despite the fact that he couldn’t have cared less about the particular properties of oak that made it suitable for cabinets and tables, it bothered him that Viktor did care about this, that Viktor’s desire to find out more clearly pleased his (his – Hans’) father.  With each meal where the conversation seemed dominated by this topic, Hans’ resentment of Viktor grew. He felt as if a wall were growing ever taller between him and his father.  What?­ he continued to ask himself.  What is this man up to?

            A different question kept popping into Renate’s mind.  Who is he? She often found herself wondering this, as she watched Viktor walk off into the forest with Ulrich of a morning, or saw their animated conversations as they emerged, hours later, full of joy, and smiling.  She couldn’t deny that a new lightness had come into Ulrich’s step since the younger man took an interest in the life of trees.  Nor did she want to deny it. She welcomed it!  It gladdened her heart to see the connection between the two of them, a connection fostered, it seemed, by their shared connection to the trees.  It was almost as if Ewald had come back, in Viktor’s form. Renate – as Ulrich had told Viktor that day in the forest – did understand this bond.  She knew from her own experience the joy and peace that come from time spent in stillness in the woods, and it pleased her that Viktor had come to know this, too.  She’d seen a shift in him since that first day, just as she’d seen it in her husband.  Viktor’s step had grown lighter, too. There was a greater ease about him, and that ease radiated from him more and more each day.  She felt it in the air around him.  She saw it reflected in the carvings he was doing on the furniture orders – of which there were more now, thanks to the Kropps’ delight with how their sideboard had come out.

            Renate was happy for Viktor, pleased that he was blossoming, both as a forester and a cabinet maker. But she could also see quite clearly that Hans felt threatened by Viktor’s steady transformation.  Hans’ habit of playing protector within the family was coming into play here, and along with it, his fear that his position in this family he loved was gradually being usurped by an outsider.  She felt, more than saw, him cringe each time Ulrich added “son” to a sentence directed to Viktor.  She even mentioned this to Ulrich one night as the two of them were undressing for bed.

            “How would you have me behave?” Ulrich asked her, a bit bewildered by his wife’s concern.  “Viktor understands the trees.  It’s natural for us to talk about that.”

            “I know it is,” Renate replied, nodding, as she buttoned up the front of her nightgown.  “And I am so happy that you two share this love of the forest.”

            “But?” Ulrich asked.

            “But do you not see how left out Hans feels when you and Viktor are lost in conversation about the beeches and the oaks?”

            Ulrich raised his eyebrows.  “I’m afraid I really haven’t noticed that,” he admitted.  Then he pursed his lips.  “I just feel so invigorated when we’re on that topic, that I guess I lose track of what else is going on around.”

            Without Renate needing to point it out, Ulrich realized where she was headed. “My dear,” he told her, coming over and wrapping his arms around her.  “Thank you.  I do not want to be my father. A father whose son feels abandoned.  You know how much I love Hans.”

            “I do,” Renate told him, leaning her head against his chest.  “But he may not.  Remember how Erich felt all those years.”

            It took Ulrich a minute to grasp what Renate was getting at.  Then he nodded.  “Yes. He felt that Aunt Claudia had somehow stolen our mother away and slipped into our house to take her place. Like a thief.”

            “Yes, that’s it.”

            Ulrich pulled back and looked down at Renate. “Do you think Hans feels that way about Viktor?”

            “I know the situation isn’t exactly the same, but it feels similar to me.”

            “I understand,” Ulrich told her, pulling her close to his chest again.  “That is the very last thing I would want.  For Hans to feel Viktor is taking his place in my heart.”

            Renate was unable to get to sleep right away after they set aside this topic for the night: Her thoughts kept circling back to Aunt Claudia.  To Erich.  And to the terrible sadness and terror Claudia had brought into the Gassmann household.  Renate remembered how, for the first fifteen years of her marriage to Ulrich, her husband had gone over and over the question of his mother’s disappearance from the household, and of her death in some location that had never been revealed to him.  How did she die? he would ask, both aloud, in his conversations with Renate, and in his own mind, silently.

Ulrich, too, lay awake for part of the night, long after he saw that Renate had finally drifted off to sleep.  Hearing Renate speak about interlopers, about abandonment, about jealousy, he thought back to the day, two years earlier, in 1919, when Aunt-Mother Claudia was on her deathbed. That was the day he finally received the answer to his decades -old question about what had happened to his mother.

Ulrich had gone to sit with Claudia at Renate’s urging, despite his old feelings of hurt. “You’ll regret it if you don’t,” she told him, although Ulrich was not at all sure she was right.   But at that point, after nineteen years of marriage, Ulrich trusted his wife’s judgment.  He went.  

Claudia, already within several days of passing, but her voice still strong, suddenly said to him, “Ulrich.  Your mother died of pneumonia.  When you were eight months old.” She paused, studying Ulrich’s face, which registered first shock, and then confusion.

“Pneumonia?” he asked. “But why not tell us that, me and Erich?  She got sick and died.  Why not tell us that?”  Ulrich was surprised to hear that he had overcome his decades-long habit of avoiding this subject and uttered these words. But Claudia herself had raised it…  Even so, Ulrich was not sure what would come from her mouth. The decades of angry outbursts had left him wary.

Claudia coughed long and noisily and painfully into her handkerchief, then squeezed the damp cloth in her fist.  “Because she wasn’t at home when she died.”  She wasn’t making eye contact with Ulrich. She delivered her words in a flat tone, as if it was all she could do to even utter them.

“I don’t understand. What difference does that make? Was she in the hospital?”

“No, Dear.” 

She’s calling me “Dear”? What’s this all about? Ulrich wondered.

“Not in the hospital,” Claudia continued in the same, flat tone.  “She was living with a man named Karl.  She caught the pneumonia and died there.”

“I still don’t understand,” Ulrich said.  “Who was this Karl? Why was she living with him?”

His aunt-not-mother took as deep a breath as she was able to do, and laid her damp hand, still holding the handkerchief, on top of Ulrich’s.  Even now, though, she would not meet his eyes.  Ulrich was so shocked by her hand on his that he sat as if frozen, listening to her answer.

“She left your father when you were just a few months old. Just ran away. Crazy, kind of.  No one could ever understand why. That happens sometimes, when a woman has a new baby. Sometimes they kind of go crazy for no reason.”

Ulrich waited for Claudia to condemn her sister, or this Karl, to launch into a tirade. But she didn’t.

“But who was Karl?” Ulrich asked again, even though he could see that Claudia was fatigued.  He understood that this was his only chance to learn the full How? of his mother’s death.

Claudia waved the hand with the handkerchief vaguely in the air and looked toward the window.  “Someone who courted her before she married your father.  She felt desperate, and he took her in.”

“But why didn’t she go back to you and your parents? And why did she leave Father in the first place? Was that the craziness? Or was there another reason she left?”

Claudia looked back down at the quilt on the bed, frowned. Then she chose one of the questions to answer quietly. “Our parents wouldn’t take her back.  We all tried to convince her to go back to Detlef.  Mother and Father were harsh, hoping she’d relent.  But she didn’t.” Another fit of coughing.  “I wish to God we had relented.  Perhaps it would all have turned out differently, Ulrich. For everyone.  Please forgive me.”

Ulrich was as shocked by Claudia’s tone of voice, which had softened and become plaintive, as he was by the sad look in her eyes when she raised them to him, finally.

“But why do you need forgiveness?”  Aside from forgiveness for all the screaming and criticism...

“Because I sided with our parents.” A pause.  A cough seemed ready to erupt, but then didn’t.  “For my own reasons.”  She dropped her eyes to the quilt.

Ulrich felt his chest and throat constrict.  “What reasons?”

“I was in love with Detlef, too, Ulrich.  But he chose your mother. My sister, Iris.”  She stopped, staring at the handkerchief, which she was now worrying with both hands.

“So, when she left my father, you saw your chance.” It wasn’t a question, and Ulrich was surprised by the icy cold tone in which the words came from his mouth.  He felt deep sadness rising in him, which was quickly replaced with anger, and he understood for the first time in his life why he had intuitively hated Claudia. 

After a lengthy pause, she raised her eyes to his.  “Yes.  That’s right.” Ulrich heard a hint of the old defiance in her voice.  But then bitterness, too, crept in, as she told him, “But you know, Ulrich, I never should have stayed.  Your father never loved me.  It was Iris he loved, and he loved her deeply.  As much as I thought I could replace her, I couldn’t.  I’d realized that by the time Inna was born, but I didn’t have the strength to leave.”  Her eyes narrowed, and she stared out the window.  “I was so angry at him.” Now the coughing fit did come, and Ulrich sat in silence until she was able to speak once again.  “Angry at him for not loving me.  Angry at Iris for leaving him and giving me hope.  Angry at myself for staying when he didn’t want me. For having Inna and Monika with him despite that fact.”  She finally looked back at Ulrich.  “He just tolerated me, you know.  I was a good cook and housekeeper.”

Not really, Ulrich objected, in his thoughts.  There was never any love in that food.  It tasted as bitter and flat as your words.  And the house may have been clean, but it was never the sanctuary a home should be. But you can tell yourself your own version of the story, I guess.

  Then Claudia softly repeated her request: “Please, forgive me.”  She even placed her hand atop his once more, hoping that this would sway him.

  Ulrich didn’t say anything for a few moments. Her seemingly-sincere confession of anger helped him see the way she had been all his life in a new light. Even so, he wasn’t yet ready to accept her words as genuine.  He saw in the way Claudia had placed her hand on his, the same kind of drama-infused manipulation he continually experienced growing up:  emotional displays calculated to either wrest pity from a family member, or terrify them into submission.  Not that Ulrich ever saw through her tactics at all before Renate gently clued him in about them. But now he was feeling the same churning in his gut that he had always felt, and he knew that he did not want to be drawn in to her game.  And yet, he thought, How can you not offer forgiveness to the woman who raised you when she asks it of you on her deathbed? Even if she raised you in that terrible way, she still raised you. Claudia.  Barely an aunt.  Certainly not a mother.  Not even a step-mother.  He couldn’t bring himself to refer to her using any of those words.  In this moment, it was as if he suddenly didn’t even know her at all, as if she were a complete stranger.  And in that moment, looking at this stranger, he was able to assent to forgiving her, the way you’d forgive a stranger who accidently tossed a still-burning match onto your thatched roof, with the result that your house burned to the ground with your entire family inside. 

“Yes, of course, I forgive you.”  That’s what he said, his tone wooden.  Claudia looked at him as if she believed him.  Perhaps she was willing herself to believe him, or perhaps she genuinely believed that Ulrich’s words were sufficient, even if he had uttered them insincerely.  Perhaps she thought she had discharged her duty by revealing these damning facts before exiting the earth. 

How could I tell her I forgave her?  This was another How? question Ulrich had occasionally asked himself in the two years since this deathbed conversation.  And yet, although part of him genuinely did forgive her – for, in effect, wishing for his mother to be out of the picture, and for not telling him the truth until now – there was still a part of him that had not forgiven her in the least.  Or his father, for that matter.  How had his father dealt with being abandoned by his wife, left with two little boys?  The thought had crossed Ulrich’s mind over the years that Detlef had been happy to have Claudia come, to replace the wife who had somehow just gone crazy, that he had been as unattached to Iris as he seemed to the whole rest of the family.  Maybe it had all been the same to him which wife he had, as long as he had one?  Really, the thought had often occurred to Ulrich in the past two years, that he and Erich had, in fact, been abandoned by both their parents. After all, their father was so focused on his own plans and thoughts most of the time that he seemed to hardly pay attention to the actual personalities and needs of the people around him. Detlef had an uncanny ability to focus on forestry work and carpentry, and to draw Ulrich and Ewald and others who worked with him into that work, but there was little personal connection between them.  They could have been anyone off the street, practically, as long as he could teach them what needed to be done.

Over the next couple of years, as he reflected on what Claudia had told him, Ulrich grew convinced that he had to give up blaming Erich for the way things had played out: he came to believe that Erich had known no more than he, Ulrich, had.  And once Ulrich found out the whole story, he couldn’t even tell his brother about it: Erich had died the year before, in 1918, strangely enough, also of pneumonia he had developed as a result of the flu.

But Ulrich did fault Erich for leaving the homestead to work in town.  That had felt like abandonment to him, too.  That whole series of events – Erich leaving the forestry work, Ulrich assuming the role of heir apparent to the family business, all the while knowing he wasn’t his father’s first choice for that – had left a bad taste in Ulrich’s mouth, and his spirit.  This was another layer of melancholy atop the one that had already settled in early in childhood.  Layers of abandonment and sorrow, with some bitterness mixed in. 

Then Ewald left.  A brother-in-law-brother-in-spirit.  That felt hardest of all to Ulrich.  Or maybe it just seemed that way because the two of them were so close.  That was in 1904, but it seemed like yesterday. And the hurt and sorrow connected with Ewald’s abandonment of him had not dulled in the past seventeen years, remaining so strong that when Erich passed away in 1918, Ulrich barely grieved. He felt he’d lost that brother years earlier. The loss of Ewald felt somehow much fresher.

Two brothers lost, and a sorrow that did not lift with the birth of his own son, Hans.  At first, when Hans was young, Ulrich would occasionally think, Ahh! A son!  He’ll work side by side in the forest with me. We’ll build furniture together. They would have the kind of relationship he never had with Detlef.  He would show Hans how much he loved him.  The family business would be full of joy.  Gassmann and son. 

But as Hans grew older, the wished-for strong bond, based on a shared love of the forest and the work, failed to take root in the space between son and father.  Hans appreciated the forest, certainly, but he felt none of the divinity there that Ulrich always talked to him about.  Our eleven hectares of heaven.  It was as if Hans saw the woods as our eleven hectares of future furniture.  As dense as Ulrich generally was when it came to reading people, he couldn’t not sense that Hans had no understanding of what the forest meant to his father, and that Hans didn’t care to learn about that, to experience it for himself.  When he considered this rationally, Ulrich knew that Hans’ lack of interest in this did not mean that Hans was not interested in him, Ulrich, as a person, as his father. But: Another abandonment.  That’s how Ulrich saw and felt it in his heart.

What a joy it was for Ulrich, then, when Viktor Bunke showed up.  Viktor Bunke, who did take an interest in the trees. He wanted to learn about them as trees, not as a source material. And he sensed the divinity in the forest.  To be honest, Ulrich felt that in Viktor, he had gained a second son, one who was more like him in his nature.  More a son than his son, the way Ewald had been more a brother to him than Erich.  How could that not make him happy?

At the same time, he knew that Renate was right about the perils of the situation. I have to make things right with Hans, he concluded. And then keep them right. So, he lay there awake for hours after he and Renate spoke, trying to work out in his mind – his mind – what he could do differently, so that Hans would not feel left out, relegated to second place in his own family and home.  How to make it all right??  In setting this goal for himself, what Ulrich did not know, was that he was, in fact, powerless to make Hans feel any way at all. He didn’t know that how Hans felt was not in his – Ulrich’s – control, but depended, instead, solely on Hans himself.  Lacking this key insight, Ulrich unconsciously opened the door for anxiety and melancholy to slip back into him, unnoticed, and to crouch – silently for the meantime – behind the joy hefound in his interactions with Viktor.  Now his conscious will – to help Hans feel loved and needed – began to operate at odds with his heart, whose only desire was to express the joy and love that had begun to warm it once Viktor had arrived.

Chapter 17

June 25, 1949

Gassmann-Bunke homestead

            The question that settled so strongly into Ulrich’s heart that night in 1921 as he and Renate discussed Hans and Viktor never entirely loosened its grip on his heart.  How to make it all right? Here it was, 1949, and in the intervening decades, Ulrich had, instead of learning how to answer this question, been faced with more and more situations that needed to be made right. Layer upon layer, they piled up.  He didn’t care to recount them to himself, but he was nonetheless fully aware of each of them, and he never stopped seeking ways to explain How? these situations had cropped up in the first place. Nor did he stop searching for ways out of them.  So, on that June evening, when Lina raised the topic of the plans God has for each of us, Ulrich felt inside him that there might be a road here to a solution.

            Clearly, Ulrich was not the only one in the family who held a deep interest in this topic, for it came up once again the next day. Except for that one time back in 1921, which we haven’t yet made our way to in the telling of our story, no one in this family had ever – not even once! – initiated a discussion of religion around the table, much less a discussion of faith, which is what this question seemed to come down to, at least partly.  Even so, the extended Gassmann-Bunke family had now ventured into uncharted territory, dragging along with them Kristina and young Ingrid, who must have wondered what had stirred up this hornet’s nest.

            It was Renate who started things off the second night. The queen of concocting plans for her family and figuring out the best way to implement them, Renate wanted to know how Lina thought it was that God worked out His plans.  Maybe, Renate thought, she could learn something from gaining insight into His methods. Hurriedly setting the bowls of food on the table and motioning to the family members to help themselves, Renate sat down, smoothed her skirts and, without even serving herself, began speaking. She was anxious to get back to this topic before anyone else started in on more frivolous questions of furniture orders or forest surveys.

            “Now, Lina, dear,” she began, “about God’s plans and our free will.”

            Ulrich glanced at his wife and smiled.  Her eagerness didn’t surprise him: The night before, she would have talked with him the whole night about this, if he hadn’t finally protested that he needed to get at least a little sleep before morning.

            “Yes, Grandma?” Lina replied.

            Content that the floor was now hers, Renate picked up a bowl of boiled carrots and spooned some onto her plate as she spoke.

            “So, there’s God’s plan. And there’s our free will.  And somehow they work together.” She waved the serving spoon to this and that side as she spoke, as if indicating God’s plan on the one side, and humans’ free will on the other.

            “That’s what I think,” Lina said, nodding, as she placed potatoes and sausage on her plate.

            “That’s not an explanation,” Marcus said testily. “It’s barely a theory.”  He paused to take a sausage, then added, reproachfully, “Since when do we talk about religion in this family?”

            Ethel shushed him. “Since now.”

            Sulking, he applied himself to his meal, but not before looking across at Kristina and rolling his eyes. This action was not lost on Viktor, who was disgusted by the way his confident, swaggering son was devolving into a sarcastic schoolboy before his very eyes.

            “But what I want to know,” Renate persisted, cutting a potato in two, “is, why does God have a plan for us at all?”

            “Exactly,” Marcus said, his mouth full of potatoes. He’d adopted a flippant tone, but in actual fact, he was as interested in this topic as the others.  He’d spent a large portion of the night reflecting on it.  But he didn’t want to let the others see this.  So, he chose to speak in a way he hoped would seem dismissive, rather than curious.  He pointed his fork in his grandmother’s direction.  “What good is God’s plan, if we can all just do what we want anyway? We’ve got free will.  Why can’t we just be deciding and handling everything on our own?”

            Renate looked at him in annoyance, although she did agree with the idea that we  could handle things on our own. Or, rather, she would have agreed with it until the day before, when the topic came up.  It was as if, while Renate listened to Lina’s musings on the possibility of God and humans working together, a tension long buried in her began to surface.  It was as if some tiny voice in her soul had been trying, throughout her whole life, to suggest she consider this. But she had been ignoring that little voice the whole time, choosing instead to solve every situation she faced on her own. Yes, to solve and manipulate it according to the conclusions that her rational mind, spurred on by whatever strong emotion was ruling her at the moment, offered her about what steps needed to be taken. 

Now, however, something in Renate had shifted: At some moment during the previous day’s conversation, a tiny entry point somehow opened up in her consciousness. The voice of Renate’s soul instantly seized this opportunity and slipped through this opening, this chink in the armor that had until now so fiercely repelled the soul’s every attempt to enter her rational mind.  And what did this voice say to Renate, once it was inside?  She couldn’t have expressed that now. But when Lina suggested the possibility of a collaboration between God and humans, Renate experienced deep inside her what she would later characterize as a feeling, first of curiosity, accompanied by a sense of recognition.

But how can it be a feeling of recognition, if I haven’t ever before had this conversation?  That’s what she would ask herself later, as she tried to work out for herself what had happened that day.  She would say that as this feeling of recognition – of remembering, even – grew inside her, she came to feel that Lina was absolutely right, even if she couldn’t rationally explain it.  She just knew somehow, and as this sense of knowing – knowing without words to express it – grew stronger, a certain lightness spread throughout her body.

At the same time, all the tension that had built up over decades of trying to do everything all on her own began to drain out of her.  As she listened to her granddaughter, Renate began to feel lighter and lighter in her physical body, so much so that she even felt a bit weak in the knees. At this very moment, joy began to fill her heart.  And relief.  Finally, she thought, although, rather, she just knew it, and again, she knew it without words: Finally, I no longer have to figure everything out on my own.

It seemed clear to her then, that the little voice inside her – the one she’d ignored her whole life – was actually the voice of God. He had been trying to speak to her all her life, trying to guide her.That was why, the night before, when Ethel began weeping, overcome with joy and hope at Lina’s belief that God could help her, Renate, too, fell to crying, just not as loudly as Ethel. She was full of gratitude for the message her soul had finally been able to deliver to her: God will help Lina. And He will help you, too. 

It was this last part of the message that surprised Renate the most, for what had made life so hard for her was not just the belief she’d always had – deep in her marrow – that she had to figure everything out herself.  That was difficult enough, but what underlay this belief was even harder for her to live with: her firm conviction that she was not worthy of being helped by God.  Renate had never allowed this thought to rise up into her conscious mind. It was not yet there at this moment, either, but it was making its way in that direction, encouraged – emboldened, perhaps? – by the upward movement of Renate’s recognition of a collaboration of the human with the divine.  And close behind this second thought, a third began stirring. This third one would reveal the link between a memory and her belief in her own unworthiness.  But for now, this third thought was just barely opening its eyes and beginning to get its bearings in the depths of Renate’s soul.  It would be some time before it followed the second thought’s lead and set Renate’s conscious awareness as its ultimate destination. 

Right now, though, hearing her grandson’s question about what good God’s plan is, if we can all do what we want anyway, Renate concluded that she could make use of his objection.

“Marcus,” she said, “I didn’t exactly mean my question that way. I understand now that if He does have plans for us, we often go against them. Or don’t want to know them in the first place.  So, knowing us well enough to know that we might fight Him tooth and nail, why does God still have plans for us?  That’s my question.  Not, What use is it for God to have plans for us?” 

            “Grandma,” Lina replied before Marcus could try to derail the conversation once more, “I think… I think maybe it has to do with… maybe God has a plan for what He wants us to do with our free will.”

            “That’s not a plan,” Marcus snapped, without raising his eyes from his plate. “That’s a wish.  Wishes won’t get you squat.  Even if you’re God. I don’t think God can run our lives. And besides, if we do have free will, then why does God even get to have a plan for us? I repeat, shouldn’t we be the ones to decide about our own lives?”

            The crux of the matter for Marcus was his sense of powerlessness to control the circumstances of his own life. If I accept Father’s logic, and Lina’s, he reasoned, What happens in life always comes down to what someone else wants – whether that’s your father or your God.  Marcus felt such a strong resistance, deep inside him, to this idea of God having some plan for his life without being able to have any input! If I got to sit down with God, talk over the options, and then pick one, of my own free will… that would be one thing. But that wasn’t the way Lina felt things worked. That’s what he really wanted to ask Lina, but once he poured out the beginning of his thought process, Marcus wished he could pull it back in: God forbid anyone should realize, despite his derisive tone, that these were his truest, most desperate questions.  Luckily, though, everyone around him at the table seemed to take in only his tone, and not his actual words.

            “For heaven’s sake, Marcus,” Peter said in a voice full of impatience, “Can’t you give it a rest for once?  Do you have to be telling everyone what to think every minute of the day?  You’re not in the Censorship Office any more, you know.”

            Marcus smirked and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, while his eyes remained focused on his food. “Fine,” he said. “Have it your way.  Lay it all out for us, dear Sis.  Not another word from me,” he told them. But inside, he was eagerly awaiting the continuation of the conversation, while simultaneously feeling annoyed at Lina. Why the hell is she suddenly some expert on God?

            Lina, unperturbed, did continue.  “All right, then.  Marcus doesn’t seem to think God has any power over us. That all He can do is wish for us to do something with our free will and then sit by, powerless, and watch us.  Even if that’s true, and I, personally, don’t believe that’s all He can do – wish, that is – even if that were true, though, what would He wish for us to do?”

            “You tell us,” Marcus said, consciously adopting a self-satisfied tone. Everyone at the table except for Lina responded with frowns.

            “No,” Lina replied, “you tell me, Marcus, if you know everything.”

            “Lina, Sweetie,” her brother told her with a shrug, after wiping his mouth with his napkin, “your guess is as good as mine.  But I think even that question – what would God wish for us – is irrelevant. It’s only as relevant as asking what Mother or Father would wish for us.”  Renate drew in her breath sharply, but no one made a move to stop Marcus, so he kept on speaking.  “I mean, if God really does allow us free will, then why does he also get to have a plan for us? Why does he get to cause a bird to hurt its wing? Or Peter to get wounded? Or you to get paralyzed, Lina? That’s the real question, folks. Why do you all believe that God’s allowed to try to direct our lives? And, what’s more, that he can actually do it? Can you tell me that?” By the end of his speech, Marcus’ voice had once again acquired a taunting tone, and this pleased him: Although he really did care about the question he’d posed, he didn’t want to come off as a man who didn’t know his own mind.      Viktor, who had grown tired of the bickering between Marcus and Lina, finally spoke up.

“Marcus, give it a rest, Son.  You don’t want to talk about it? Then sit quietly and eat. Or you can take your supper out to the porch and eat there, if you want.”

            Ethel stole a look at her husband and smiled, even suppressed a laugh. His words had suddenly taken her back to when the kids were young. They would get to arguing, generally with Marcus provoking Peter and Lina for his own amusement.  Marcus knew that Peter, in particular, could be counted on to take the bait. When that happened, Viktor would always let Marcus know that he had a choice: to finish his meal in the kitchen, without antagonizing his siblings, or to eat it on the porch.

            “It’s your choice,” Viktor told Marcus and, noticing Ethel’s gaze, he allowed his lips to form a smile, too. 

            “No different now than it was when you were twelve, is it?” Ulrich put in, also smiling and leaning in Marcus’ direction. “There’s your free will for you, my boy!”

            By now everyone had fallen into gentle laughter, except for Kristina and Ingrid, who didn’t get the joke.  Marcus – at once annoyed that he was being treated as a child, by his father, no less, and also grateful that he hadn’t revealed the full depth of his spiritual questioning – sat for the rest of the meal in genuine sulky silence.

*          *          *

“I was so surprised to hear you talking about God at the table today,” Kristina told Lina later on, as they took their usual early evening stroll. 

She had gathered from Marcus’ eye-rolling and his words where he stood on the question of God’s plans for us.   But it was clear that she’d missed an important part of the conversation the day before, the part that explained why they’d begun talking about God and free will and divine plans in the first place.  That was why she asked Lina about it right away during their walk, without giving her friend the chance to deflect that conversation by talking about something else.  Lina’s mention of God at supper had genuinely surprised Kristina. Over the previous four years, they’d discussed pretty much everything about their lives, sharing their feelings and hopes with each other.  But they’d never gotten into theology. 

Lina could hear from Kristina’s voice that her friend was hurt, that what she’d not said at the end of her sentence was, “And that you never said a thing to me about this before.”  Lina sighed and stretched her hand up and back over her shoulder, reaching for Kristina’s hand.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mention any of this to you before,” she began when she felt Kristina’s hand in hers.

“So am I,” came the reply, chilly, despite the fact that Kristina had stopped pushing the wheelchair and taken Lina’s proffered hand.  After all, Kristina didn’t yet know where the conversation would lead, and whether Lina would actually reveal anything to her or not. The night before, as she laid awake in bed, struggling to fall asleep, despite repeating her mantra for what seemed like hours, she began steeling herself for a full rejection by Lina.  Why should Lina open up to me?  We’ve become friends of sorts, but we’re not family.  Better to keep the drawbridge to my heart up and locked in place. That’s what Kristina thought the previous night, as she replayed the details of her friendship with Lina, in between mantra repetitions.  Better to not risk being hurt further.  She was allowing this string of thoughts to run through her mind again now. She was almost completely convinced of Lina’s pending rejection of her, when Lina spoke.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this,” Lina said, “about all of it.  It’s just that my thoughts weren’t at all clear until now… until yesterday afternoon. They just crystallized then, all of a sudden, and they burst out of me!”

Although Lina couldn’t see Kristina’s face, she guessed from the slight bob of the other woman’s hand in hers that Kristina was nodding slowly. Still, her friend said nothing.

“Would you like to hear about it all now?” Lina asked quietly.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Kristina told her, still cautious. Is she offering simply out of some feeling of guilt? Because she noticed I was hurt? She didn’t want that.

“No, but I want to,” Lina told her. “I really do.”

“All right, then.”  Kristina released Lina’s hand. “Then let me push you over to that bench by the forest.  We can talk there.”

“No, everyone can see us there,” Lina told her. “I don’t want anyone to watch us.  This is too personal.  Let’s just go a little further on.  There’s another path into the woods there.  Do you see it? Over on the left?”

Kristina pushed the wheelchair across the stubbly grass to an opening where a path led into another part of the Gassmanns’ forest.

“Really,” Lina said as Kristina came to a halt, “I wish we could go to the treehouse.  That would be a perfect place to talk, but…” she gestured at her legs. “But I can’t do that, not with these legs.  Not yet.”

Not yet? Kristina wondered.  Lina was facing into the woods. Kristina took a seat on a fallen log in front of her.  But then Lina asked Kristina to help her out of her wheelchair and maneuver her so that she, too, could sit on the log, next to her friend.

Once they’d settled next to each other, Kristina waited for Lina to begin the conversation. When Lina failed to speak, Kristina asked the question that had occurred to her during the suppertime conversation.

“So, you think God has a plan for each of us?”

Lina nodded, but didn’t yet say more.

“But that we have our own free will, too?”

“Mmmhmm.”

Kristina was beginning to get the impression that Lina didn’t want to talk about any of this after all. Irritation began rising up in her chest.

But then Lina turned to look at her and put her two hands before her and intertwined the fingers.

“And they fit together somehow,” she said, “in a way we – or at least I – can’t begin to understand.”

“You said at supper that you think God has a wish about how He wants us to use our free will.  But like your grandmother asked, why does God bother having plans for us at all, if we can just do what we want?”

Lina laughed. This struck Kristina as strange, until Lina continued.

“That’s right. Not that Marcus let us get anywhere with that discussion, did he?” She turned to Kristina, and they both smiled.  Kristina could see clearly by the look in Lina’s eyes that they were friends again.  Or still.  She relaxed.

“Really, Lina,” Kristina said, “what do you think? When bad things happen to us, is that God’s plan for us?  Or is it just that we’ve done something bad with our free will? Or that we haven’t allowed Him to guide us?  That we’re not good enough followers? And then He can’t help us get out of the mess?”  She looked intently into Lina’s eyes, hoping for an answer that would assuage her own feelings of despair and sadness about the events that had brought her to this homestead.

“That’s what we were talking about yesterday,” Lina told her. “More or less.  About whether, say, it was God’s plan for me to have my accident. Or for Peter to be wounded in the war…”

“Or for my husband to be killed at the front and for me and Ingrid to have to flee for our lives and…” Kristina left unsaid other thoughts that came to her.

Lina nodded.

“What did you decide about that?” Kristina asked softly, looking now at the dirt path that was overgrown with grass and still littered with some of the previous year’s fallen leaves.

“Not much, I’m afraid,” Lina told her. She recounted the conversation in as much detail as she could recall. She felt both that she owed this to her friend, and also that doing so would make it possible for them to continue discussing this topic which was so, so crucial for both of them.

“I guess the main thing for me,” Lina went on, “is that I believe God loves us and that He wants us to be happy.  And that He has a plan for each of us that can lead to us being happy.” 

“If we can only guess what the plan is and act according to it, to God’s wishes?  Is that what you think?” Kristina asked.

Lina nodded.

Kristina reached over and took Lina’s hand in hers. “And being happy – that means not just a feeling of happiness in our hearts… but also being healthy, yes? Is that what you think?”  She hadn’t wanted to openly mention Lina’s paralysis, but Lina intuited what she was really trying to ask.

“It is. Yes,” she replied.  Kristina squeezed her hand – whether in a show of confidence or pity, Lina didn’t know. Nor did Kristina, herself. Lina sat up straight, took in a deep breath and let it out again, nodding as she stared into the forest.  “And I believe we can learn what God wishes for us, wishes for us to do.  And then do it.”

“And then be happy,” Kristina said. 

Lina nodded.

“And whole,” Kristina added softy, moving the toe of her shoe back and forth in the dirt beneath her foot, as if wiping the spot clean.

“Yes.  I believe that’s possible.”

Kristina sat silent for a moment, her mind suddenly full of a wish of her own.  “I want to believe that, Lina.  I want to be whole again, too.”  When Lina looked over at her, a bit puzzled, she added, “Whole, instead of full of the holes made by everything I’ve lost and left, holes that fear and sorrow and despair have rushed in to fill.  Do you think God wants me to be whole?  Us to be?”  She turned her gaze hopefully to Lina and grasped her hand more tightly.

“Yes, yes!  Of course, He does,” Lina said, seeing the tears now flowing freely down Kristina’s cheeks.

“But how? How can we make His wish come true?  Our wish? And His wish for us?” She paused for a moment. “I – my whole family – we’ve gone through so much sorrow. Hearing all this, I feel like I must have done something terribly wrong.”

“Wrong?” Lina asked, a frown coming to her brow. “Why wrong?”

“Because otherwise, if I were a better follower of God, I’d have understood what He wanted me to do. And I would have tried to do it, Lina,” she cried. “I would have tried my best.”

“But you did try your best,” Lina reassured Kristina, wrapping an arm around her friend’s shoulder.

“Even if I did, it wasn’t good enough!” Kristina protested, shaking her head. “Ingrid and I went through so much… And my parents and brother, left behind…”

Lina now felt her own chest begin to heave. The two friends, leaning their heads together, sobbed in earnest.

“Kristina, I think that making God’s wish for us come true – it starts with our own wish,” Lina said finally, cautiously, as if she feared that this simple statement might leave Kristina feeling more discouraged, instead of inspired. “Like the swallow’s wish to fly free.”

Kristina nodded thoughtfully. Then she wiped her eyes and nose on the handkerchief she’d pulled from her pocket. She held the cloth out to Lina, who didn’t hesitate at all to take it.

“Do you have that wish?” Lina asked, her tone again cautious.

“Oh, yes, I do.”  Kristina squeezed Lina’s hand.  “But how, Lina? How can I know what to do? How to do things right?”

“I’m not quite sure yet.  But He’ll guide us. Somehow.”

Kristina nodded, squeezing her eyes shut tightly, so that she wouldn’t start sobbing once more. “Somehow.”

“In fact,” Lina said after a pause, “I think He already is.” Lina took the folded newspaper article from out of her apron pocket – she’d resolved to carry it with her always – and handed it to her friend.  “Here. Read this.”

*          *          *

As Kristina was settling Ingrid into bed a couple of hours later, the little girl sat back up in bed, pulling up the quilt – one of Ethel’s creations, but not the same one Viktor had slept beneath nearly thirty years earlier, when this had been his room – and wrapping her arms around her tucked-up knees.

“Mama, why was everyone arguing tonight?” Ingrid asked. She, too, had heard the shouting the day before, and her mother could tell she was uneasy that there had been more of the same this evening.  “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it either, Sweetheart,” Kristina said, sitting down on the bed and taking her daughter’s hand.

“What if they keep on fighting?  Will we have to leave?”

Kristina leaned over and took Ingrid in her arms. “No, Honey, no.  It’s not like that.”  But Kristina recalled how ill at ease she herself had been just the evening before, when Lina rebuffed her questions, when Marcus didn’t come out to say good night, when she concluded that there might not be a place for the two of them with this family, after all.  “This isn’t about us, Ingrid.”

Ingrid nodded, but it was clear she was not convinced.  “But the other places we stayed, Mama, along the way here – they let us stay, but they didn’t like it. Don’t you remember the way they argued about it, especially that one time…”

Of course, Kristina remembered.  The night they made it to a farmhouse after dragging themselves through frozen mud and ice all day long without eating and were taken in by the family.  But then she and Ingrid, who’d already bedded down for the night in the store room, following a grudgingly-offered meal of porridge and stale bread, heard the farmer and his wife arguing loudly.  Kristina couldn’t make out the words.  Within a few minutes, the wife came in and told them they’d have to pack up and get out – as if they had more than their rucksacks and a small suitcase that didn’t take any packing at all…

“This isn’t about us, Ingrid,” Kristina repeated softly, pulling back and looking Ingrid in the eye.  “They are very happy we’re here. Truly.”

“Then what is it?”

Kristina didn’t much want to get into the topic, but she could see that Ingrid needed the reassurance of a bit of truth at this moment. She could also see the lingering fear in her daughter’s eyes, and was reminded of the holes inside herself that she’d spoken of to Lina.

“Sweetheart, this is a very grownup thing they were talking about,” she began. “I think it was hard for you to understand what they were saying. Is that right?”

Ingrid nodded.

“Well, maybe we can think of it this way.  There’s me, your mama, and there’s you, Ingrid.  I have all sorts of wishes for you, for your life ahead. And you have your own wishes for your life.” Then, seeing that this was too abstract, she shifted her approach. “Like this: I want you to go to school every day, but sometimes you don’t want to go to school.”

Ingrid nodded.  “That’s right.”

“So, I have my wish for you, and you have your own things that you want to do, like playing or running around in the woods.”

“But what does that have to do with God?  That’s what everyone was talking about, isn’t it?”

“Yes, about God.  And about how God has His own idea of how He wants our lives to go, and we don’t always agree with that because we have our own ideas.”

“And who’s right?” Ingrid asked, frowning.

Kristina laughed.  “That’s what they were discussing, Sweetheart!  Whether God is allowed to want us to live the way He wants us to live, and to try to make us do that. And whether He even can do that.”

“The way you want me to live the way you want me to live?”

“Kind of.  Think of it like this: God loves us so much that He only wants the very best for us. But sometimes we do things He knows aren’t good for us.”

“Like Katie who poked a hole in the chicken feed bag when she got mad at her mama?”

“Yes, like that,” Kristina said with a smile.

“So Katie was wrong to spill the feed? And Katie’s mama was right to punish her by taking away her dollies for a week?”

“I can’t say, Ingrid, but sometimes we parents do think we need to punish our children.”

Ingrid thought for a moment, looked at the quilt and asked, “And so God punishes us when we do something He doesn’t like?”

“No, no, Ingrid, God doesn’t punish us.”

“But then why do the bad things happen to us, Mama? God can do everything, can’t He?”

Kristina paused, and then said, “Yes, Ingrid. I believe that He can.”

“Then why would He do something bad to us?  Is it because we’re bad?”

“That’s what folks were talking about tonight, Sweetheart.  They wonder that, too.  When something bad happens to us, is it our own fault – because we can do what we want, which means we can make mistakes – or did God somehow plan things that way so we could learn something from it?”

“But why does God plan something bad so we get hurt? Why doesn’t He keep us from getting hurt instead?”

Kristina sighed and spread her hands out before her. “See, it’s not so simple, is it?” she asked kindly.  “We don’t know what God can do and what God can’t do, or whether He can keep us from getting hurt. Some people think He can do whatever He wants.”

“But why would He want us to get hurt, Mama?” Ingrid asked, and her eyes suddenly filled with tears.  “Why would he want Daddy to get killed? Want us to have to leave Grandma and Grandpa behind and… all the rest of it?”  She paused. “Or Auntie Lina!  Why?”

Kristina took Ingrid in her arms and, as she rocked her, thought back to her conversation with Lina, about the sparrow.  “He never wants us to suffer, Ingrid.  I know that for sure.  Auntie Lina, she believes there’s a reason we go through the bad things we go through.  That it’s God’s way of trying to help us be happy.”

“I don’t like that kind of God,” Ingrid declared, pouting now, instead of crying.  “How can letting us get hurt help us?”

“I’m not sure, Honey.  But I believe in God, and I believe that He only wants to help us. That’s as much as I know.  So, let’s just ask God to help us.  Can we do that now? A little prayer?”

Ingrid shook her head.  “I don’t want to pray, if He’s only going to let us get hurt again.”

Kristine looked into Ingrid’s eyes once more, and squeezed her hands. “I’m not going to force you to pray if you don’t want to.  But tell me, what would you wish for, if you would wish for something?”

Ingrid rested her chin on her knees and looked out across the room to the wash stand and the towels hanging on pegs on the wall, then to the windows with the bright curtains.

“I wish for us to always be happy. To never have to run again.  To be safe, Mama. Safe and happy.  And for a new daddy to take care of us.”

Kristina smiled.  “All right, then. I like those wishes, too.  Now go to sleep, all right?  I’m going to go outside for a while.”

Ingrid stretched herself back out under the covers. Kristina tucked her in, fully this time, and then walked back out into the yard.

A wish.  First comes the wish, she thought.

*          *          *

            The evening was cool for late June.  The breeze that blew across grass, bushes, and gardens still moist from a strong late afternoon rain brought a chill to Kristina as she sat on the bench outside the workshop.  She couldn’t say she was cold, at least not the way she would have been had she been out here a month earlier; even so, she instinctively wrapped her arms loosely around her chest and stomach to keep the cool air out and her bodily warmth in. She could have gone back inside to get a shawl, but she didn’t move.  A holdover, she realized, from the period four years ago now, when she and Ingrid had moved across Eastern Prussia and then Poland before making their way by ship to this part of Germany.  They were never warm enough during those months, even when they wore nearly all their clothing each day as they walked, and each night as they slept. 

Kristina grew so used to the idea, back then, that she had no choice but to endure the cold, that even now, she had to consciously remind herself that she did have warmer clothes, and that she could go put them on.  Nonetheless, the habit of endurance persisted, a habit formed out of a feeling of powerlessness in regard to the elements.  Even now, some lingering feeling of helplessness and cold lingered in Kristina as she sat on the bench, rubbing her arms.

            She was so lost in recollection of that period in her life, that she didn’t notice Marcus until he sat down beside her.

            “You’re cold,” he said.  When Kristina shrugged, he took off his own sweater and laid it across her shoulders. She didn’t protest, but she did smile up at him.  She knew the sweater was a peace offering of sorts, and she felt the previous night’s anxiety begin to fade away. He came out!  He didn’t reject me after all!  He wouldn’t give me his sweater if he meant to drive me away, would he?

            “I had too much to do to come out last night,” Marcus began.  He’d been working on it all day: what to say to her about why he hadn’t come out. He was damned if he’d tell her he was sorry, even though he was.  Or that he’d been too angry at his whole family to be able to talk with her the way he wanted to. Even though this was the truth, too.  “My father and I needed to work out a plan,” he told her.  He figured she’d heard the shouting the evening before, but he hoped his words and his tone of voice now would give her the impression that he was an equal participant in deciding what was to be done, and how. Even though this was not the truth.  The truth was, that Viktor had, indeed, wanted to talk with him after supper. It hadn’t been to consult with him about the way they might make the changes, though, but to tell him how it was going to go.

            “A plan for you coming back here to work?” Kristina asked, trying to get a read on what Marcus was thinking, so that she could best support him.

            He nodded, but instead of looking at her, he stared off across the yard, past the clotheslines and the goat pen and the old outhouse.

            “So… What did you decide?” Kristina inquired finally. When Marcus turned to look at her, she could tell he’d been as far away in his thoughts as she’d been when he sat down a minute earlier.

            “I’ll be back here full-time in a month. Meanwhile, I’ll be helping with the forestry on the weekends and in the evenings a bit, too.”  He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice.  He really wanted Kristina to believe he’d had a part in the decision, but it was all he could do to keep his frustration inside.  Why does Father have the right to tell me what to do? It’s not right. So much for free will.  This last sentence he actually said out loud.

            Kristina wasn’t surprised to hear this, since she knew Marcus was unhappy with having to give up his Civil Service position, but she hadn’t expected him to reveal his true feelings so easily.  “What do you mean?” she asked, so as to not let him know she understood his frustration. She was giving him the chance to shift the conversation, if he wanted to do so.

            Marcus looked at her, grateful, and waved his hand dismissively in the direction of the house, as if the whole family were still sitting at the supper table.  “Oh, nothing.  Just that nonsense about God’s plans and our free will.”

            Kristina had already had two conversations this evening on this topic – in addition to what she’d heard over supper. She didn’t really want to get into it again.  But, she was feeling buoyed up about the future by her discussion with Lina, hopeful, even, especially since her fears of rejection had faded into the background. So she asked Marcus, “What part of it do you think is nonsense?”

            He threw up his hands. “All of it: that God has a plan for us, that he can somehow influence us to enact, or that he can enact some of it himself – mostly the bad parts, mind you!” he said, turning to look at her again and shook his head. 

            Kristina recalled how he’d rolled his eyes at her during supper, clearly assuming that she was on his side in this matter. Now she regretted having opened the door to this topic. She wanted to shift the conversation, but Marcus was on a roll now.

            “Like I said tonight, why is God even allowed to have a plan for us, wishes for us, if we have free will? And why would we make it our goal to find out what God’s wishes are and act according to them? Why do we assume God knows what’s best for us? Aren’t we the best judges of what’s right for us to do?” 

            Kristina sat, listening in stunned silence, as Marcus sought to destroy the idea that had, just an hour earlier, given both her and Lina so much hope.  “How,” Marcus continued, “can there be a God who wants bad things to happen to us?  Kristina, I don’t get that.”

            Kristina summoned a smile now. “That’s exactly what Ingrid asked me when I was putting her to bed just now,” she replied.

            Marcus extended his index finger and snapped his hand in the air.  “Smart girl,” he said, smiling too. “Really,” he continued, assuming that Kristina’s thoughts were in line with his own, “A God who does something bad to us so we can learn something, so that we can be happy?  That doesn’t make any sense.  That God’s not for me. Why not just do something so we’ll be happy, cut straight to that part?”

            “Ingrid would agree with you,” Kristina told him, but without saying what she herself thought.

            “Like I said,” he told her, “Ingrid’s a smart girl.” He paused and adjusted his sweater around Kristina’s shoulders. “Warm enough now?” he asked, feeling calmer than he had at any point since the evening before, now that he was sitting next to Kristina. She supports me!  She’ll be an ally for me. He was certain of it.

            Kristina was relieved that Marcus let the topic go. Let him think I agree with him, Kristina thought.  At least for now.  She was still in the process of figuring out what she did believe about all of this. She had felt a new hope come into her heart while talking with Lina, a tender hope that she didn’t feel ready to share with Marcus, out of fear that he’d trample all over it. No, she needed that hope right now, needed it desperately. So she kept her opinions – and her wishes – to herself. Now she would concentrate on blocking out the doubts Marcus had tried – unintentionally – to sow in her heart. If he’d realized this was what he was doing, he would have kept his thoughts to himself.  The last thing he wanted to do was create any lack of harmony between himself and Kristina, the person on the homestead he saw as his strongest supporter.

            But since he didn’t realize that he’d misgauged Kristina’s views, Marcus was feeling happy how, happy enough to chat about something else. He asked about Ingrid and how school was going, and about what Kristina had done during the day.  He knew even without her telling him that her day was occupied with cleaning, sewing and making preparations for the canning season, plus helping Lina. Even so, he enjoyed hearing her tell about everything: She always added little details she’d noticed that intrigued him, or shared amusing moments and jokes that made him chuckle.  He imagined that her “reports” on her day consisted of whatever came to mind to her to tell him.  He didn’t know that throughout the day, Kristina was consciously taking note of this or that, committing this or that conversation or remark to memory, not for her own amusement, but so that she’d have something engaging to tell Marcus in the evening.  It was as if she was living not for herself, but for what she could share with this man she was growing steadily closer to.  And who appreciated hearing all of it, each and every day.

            He, in turn, stored up bits and pieces of his day at the office, carefully selecting the encounters and observations that would show him in the very best light – as smart, quick-witted, strong, and powerful.  He depended on these details to paint the kind of picture of himself for Kristina that he wanted her to see.  But now, as he related the latest installment, and enjoyed the sound of her laughter as she smiled at the funny parts, and the shine in her eyes as he described this or that triumph over his coworkers, he began wondering about various points, and not for the first time: How could he make her love him, or keep her loving him, if she already did, without his important position?  Would she still want him if he was just a forester?  Of course, he reminded himself when this questionrushed into his head again now, that Kristina’s husband had been a forester.  This wasn’t necessarily a comforting thought…

            With a strong effort, Marcus pushed these upsetting thoughts out by focusing his eyes on Kristina and laughing – very sincerely – as she described the way one of the nanny goats had greedily gobbled up a piece of cheese rind Kristina had offered her.  “I told her, here, back to the source! Make more milk for more cheese, please!”

            As the yard began to grow dark, Kristina removed Marcus’ sweater from around her shoulders and said, “Time for me to turn in.  Thank you for keeping me warm.” She placed the sweater back around his shoulders and laid one hand on his, leaving the other on his shoulder, where it smoothed the sweater.

            Marcus took her hand in both of his and rubbed it, as if to warm it up. “I can’t stand to see you looking cold.” He smiled and brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.  Then, surprising himself, he added, softly, “I’m sorry I didn’t come out last night.”

            Kristina looked down, blushing.  She understood that these words hadn’t come easily to Marcus, but she was so happy to hear them.  Caressing his shoulder with her free hand, she replied, equally softly, “I missed you.”  Marcus brought his free hand around her waist and pulled her gently toward him until their lips met.  The kiss was brief. It was not their first, but even so, it felt to them both that they were entering a new phase of their courtship.  For Kristina, this meant a feeling of greater confidence in Marcus’ devotion to her. Marcus, for his part, was already thinking ahead to the months to come, and worrying about whether he would be able to keep this woman’s love – if it was already his, that is.

Kristina squeezed Marcus’ hand one last time, stood up, and walked toward the doorway.  Pausing to turn in his direction, she saw that he was standing now, too, watching her. She smiled and waved, then walked inside. Marcus stood there for a minute more. Slipping his arms into his sweater, he felt her warmth clinging to it, and he was glad she’d been sitting out there too lightly dressed.

*          *          *

            As Kristina was settling herself into bed next to Ingrid, still feeling Marcus’ kiss, she heard movement on the other side of her door in the workshop and saw a thread of light flow through the space beneath her door.  At first she wondered whether Marcus had come back, but then decided that no, he wouldn’t have done that.  There were certain unspoken rules to their courtship. One of them was that he never came to her room when Ingrid was there, and really, almost never, even when Ingrid wasn’t.  Kristina listened intently for clues to who was in the workshop.  After a minute or so, she heard the scrape of a stool, and realized that Peter was back for another late evening of cabinetry work.

Peter did, indeed, pick up his project where he’d left off the previous evening.  He picked up his thinking at the same spot he’d left it, too, revisiting one of Lina’s ideas that he had been able to hold onto:  her suggestion that the painful things we go through are part of God’s plan for us.  Jesus, he had thought when she said that, and he thought it again now.  Are you out of your mind? That was just too much for him to bear. While the family was talking of this, he began feeling first agitated, and then angry. It surprised him that Marcus, too, was clearly angered by Lina’s suggestion. A rare moment of agreement between the two of them!  But Peter assumed that he and his brother were probably angry for different reasons.  He concluded that Marcus didn’t want anyone else – not other people, and not even God – telling him how to live his life, because he believed himself quite capable of figuring everything out on his own.  Which was why he felt so angry that their father had told him to come back to working at home. That was Peter’s explanation of his brother’s dissatisfaction.

Peter himself was growing angry for another reason.  Here was his own sister – his own paralyzed sister – suggesting that God allows us – no, forces us – to go through hell on earth and then wants to work with us so we can be happy.  No! Peter had felt during supper. This No! most likely arose out of Peter’s firm belief – adopted and nurtured over the nearly 26 previous years of his life, that complete responsibility and blame for every single painful thing that ever happened to him lay squarely with him and no one else. 

As Lina spoke and the others asked her questions, Peter was thinking. If all that happened to me was God’s plan… Does that mean it wasn’t all my fault? He didn’t know where to go with this possibility. He felt, without words, that certain conclusions followed from this idea, but he had absolutely no desire to explore them.  Rather, he suddenly noticed himself beginning to feel angry.  But why?  Shouldn’t he feel comforted that his suffering might not be his fault after all? All he knew was that when Lina suggested that there was a way to get free of suffering by asking God to help us, it was all he could do to keep from overturning the table and rushing out into the fresh air.  When supper was over, he was the first one out the door. 

Walking briskly into the forest, he followed the path, ignoring the nagging pain in his right leg, until he came to a grove of aspens.  Their leaves were dancing in the light evening breeze. Peter’s mood did not match their lightheartedness. All the same, he sat down heavily amongst the trees and leaned back against one of them.

Peter wanted to scream, but he knew that would bring the whole family running. So, instead, he took out the matchbox and small pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He lit a cigarette. Then, holding the spent match in one hand, he held the lit cigarette to his lips with the other and took a long drag on it.  Once he’d exhaled and began feeling some measure of calm beginning to flow through his body, he carefully wiped the end of the match with a fallen leaf, still damp from the day’s rain, to make sure it was fully extinguished, and then slipped it back into the matchbox.  He toyed with the matchbox as he smoked, tossing it absentmindedly up and down in his hand.

After the second cigarette, he was no longer feeling possessed by anger.  Having wrapped the cigarette butts in another fallen leaf, he slipped them into his pocket along with the match box: He’d put them in the sand bucket outside the workshop.  Then he sat for a few more minutes, casting his eyes aimlessly about the forest that surrounded him. His gaze fell upon a fallen aspen branch that was lying within arm’s reach of where he was sitting. 

A few inches thick, its bark was still intact, and a few dead leaves still clung to one of three smaller branches radiating off from the central section.  Peter reached over and, taking the branch in his hand, placed it upright on the ground next to him.  It reached nearly to his head when he stood up next to it.  Wrapping his hand around the branch, Peter tapped it lightly on the forest floor once or twice, and then strode out the forest, using the branch in his left hand as a walking stick.

In the workshop, Peter laid the branch down flat along the rear of the workbench. Then he spread out his sketches, so that they lay between him and the branch.  Now, sitting at the workbench, doodling aimlessly on the scrap of paper before him, Peter gazed at the aspen branch. He brought his focus to the mottled bark whose task in life was to protect the delicate, living wood tissues beneath it.  This branch had recently fallen, and its bark was still tightly pressed to the pulp.  Peter took the branch in his two hands, resting it atop his open palms, and continued to gaze at it.  It seemed to him that he felt something in his hands.  A slight tingling, perhaps. 

He sometimes felt this when he was holding or touching wood he was planning to work with, but he’d rarely felt it in recent months, maybe even for a year.  Even when he did experience this sensation, it was fleeting, barely perceptible.  Now, though, the longer he held the branch, the more strongly he felt the tingling. It grew into a gentle pulsing that seemed to him to be flowing from the branch itself into his hands. Is that even possible?  he wondered, before turning his attention back to the branch, to its beautiful gray bark mottled with bumps and spots of darker gray. 

But then Peter ceased to notice the thoughts. He felt a calm come over him, as the tingling spread up into his whole hands, then up his arms.  Tears began to flow, although he stifled them, not wanting to give voice to what he was feeling, not while Kristina and Ingrid were sleeping in the the next room.   Peter closed his hands gently around the branch and raised it slightly off the bench. At the same time, he leaned his head down until it rested on the cool aspen bark.  He closed his eyes and opened his heart to the sensation of the bark against his forehead. His tears continued to fall, and without even consciously realizing he was doing so, Peter began to speak to the branch, in a soft, anguished voice. Help me.  Please. Help me.