Chapter 21
Fall, 1921
Gassmann homestead
Sometime during the second week of Ewald’s visit, the dinnertime conversation turned once more to the topic of the Germans living in America, and their ties to loved ones still in Germany.
“It was so hard during the war,” Ewald told them. There was no longer awkwardness about the discussion taking this turn. By now everyone was once again feeling that Ewald was one of them. So, it was acceptable to talk about these deeply personal experiences that transcended the restraints that the political and geographical distances had placed upon them during the war years.
“Tough not being able to send letters back and forth,” Ewald continued. “That was such a torture for all of us German families there who have family here still.”
“It was awful for us, too,” Renate told her brother. “It was hard enough to get accurate news about what was going on near us –“
“Or in Germany as a whole!” Ulrich put in.
“Yes,” Renate continued. “We just had no idea which way was up, what was happening in Varel or Oldenburg, never mind the other side of Germany. To try to imagine what was going on over there in America, in Illinois, in Durand… No, that was just impossible!”
“For us, too!” Ewald told her, nodding. “What with all the patriotic news … I almost said ‘propaganda’, but I guess I wouldn’t go that far…”
“Oh, I would,” Ulrich said. “I mean, about what we were reading here. We basically gave up trying to figure anything out. We couldn’t tell at all what was really true and what was meant to give us hope, or to turn us against… you, against America… So we just gave up. We concentrated on getting through each day here. And on praying that each person we knew – whether here or over there with you – would be safe and sound.”
Everyone around the table nodded. Even Viktor nodded this time, since he really had done something akin to praying while his father was off fighting, and when he, himself, had gone into the army, too. It had been too late to pray for his mother, but he’d hoped for his step-mother and Hannelore and Walter to all come through the war alive, too…
“We only got news now and then,” Ewald told them. “But mostly not. It was only after the armistice that the mail began getting to us again. That’s when we all really started to get a picture of what our relatives went during the war, and what it was like afterwards. We all felt so helpless then, over there, stuck without a way to help you all here, afterwards, even, with so many injured and trying to get back into some kind of normal life.”
“How could life ever be normal after that?” Hans asked. “I mean, I never got into the fighting.” He looked around the table, gauging how the other men in the room felt about this.
“Thank the Lord for that,” Ewald said, and Ulrich nodded. Viktor gave a quick bob of his head. “Me, neither,” he said, adding, for Ewald’s benefit, “I never saw the other side of basic training. War ended in the middle of that for me.”
Ewald gestured at Hans. “Even so, you were still injured, without even being in battle.”
“My injury was nothing,” Hans said. “Not compared with what others went through. I thank God to be home alive and safe, even with one slightly bum leg.”
There was a pause while everyone turned their attention to their plates. Then Ewald spoke again, gesticulating with his fork.
“You know, what you say about your leg, Hans – it reminds me. Elise’s parents’ neighbors heard something really kind of crazy just after the war ended. Turns out their nephew – the son of one of the brothers or sisters who stayed behind in Germany when the others, Elise’s parents’ neighbors, left for America – they live in Danzig. And, well, this nephew – Leo was his name – Leo was badly injured in battle and sent home. He was in some army hospital there in Danzig, for a long time. I don’t know the details, what exactly had happened to him, but he had to have some surgery, something with his legs, I think. Lots of broken bones, maybe? Or maybe partial paralysis? I don’t know, I don’t remember. Elise might. But he was in a bad way. He just didn’t seem to be getting better. I think there were open sores on his legs. Maybe they were going to amputate a leg? Or both of them. Gangrene, maybe?”
Ulrich interrupted him, laughing. “For heaven’s sake, Ewald, what do you know about what happened?”
Everyone laughed, and Ewald opened his hands and nodded. “Yeah, I know it. Sorry. But the point is this: There was this woman who came by regularly to visit the soldiers in the hospital. And she had a son. He was maybe ten or eleven. And sometimes she brought him with her. And all the men in the hospital, well, they noticed that when she brought her son with her, for some reason, and nobody knew why it was, they all felt better by the time he left.”
“Do you mean they felt better as in they weren’t sick any more, or they were in a better mood?” Ethel asked, intrigued.
“Well, now,” Ewald said, turning to her and tipping his fork in her direction, “Now, that’s the odd thing about it. Yeah, they felt happier, and, this Leopold told his family, they weren’t in such pain.”
“Really?” Renate asked. “What did he do? He wasn’t a doctor, was he?”
“Mama,” Hans said, “the kid was ten! What kind of doctor could he have been?”
“True,” Ewald went on. “But all the same, all the same, the sick soldiers felt different somehow. Better. And if this woman came one time without her son – Bruno, that was his name, yes, Bruno! Yeah, if the woman came without him on a given day, the boys in the beds, the soldiers, they’d say, ‘Ma’am, please bring your Bruno with you when you come. We feel better when he’s here!’ And so she did do that.”
“And?” Ethel asked. “Is that it? The soldiers were happier?” She paused and looked down at her lap, and then added, “I mean, I’m sorry. It isn’t that I mean that that’s not enough, because, of course, that’s enough. Who wouldn’t want the wounded to feel better, even just a little bit?”
“But that’s just it, Ethel,” Ewald said. He sat up straighter and turned to her. “That wasn’t all! Some of those young men in the beds actually got better. Totally healthy, I mean. Including Leo. He had all this pain in his legs, even after the surgery that was supposed to cure him. So much pain, and his wounds weren’t healing after the surgery. Now I remember. He seemed to have some infection where he’d had the surgery on his legs. The doctors were really worried about it, because they weren’t having any luck clearing it up. And the day before they were actually planning to cut off his leg – I remember now, that’s what his aunt said – this boy Bruno came by.”
“And so what happened? With the boy Bruno, I mean?” Renate asked.
“Well, it’s hard to say. That is, it’s clear what happened: The boy was there one day – the day before they were going to amputate – and he sat down on Leo’s bed and talked to him for a little bit. Then he shook Leo’s hand and said, ‘May you be totally healthy soon, by God’s grace’. Then he left. As Leo’s aunt told it, it was a very funny scene. I mean, think of it: a little boy shaking a soldier’s hand in a very solemn way.” He mimicked the gesture. “And by the next morning, when Leo woke up, the infection was gone, and the wound was nearly healed up. And his pain was gone.”
Ulrich frowned. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What did the boy do? He must have done something. It’s impossible otherwise. And he wasn’t a doctor…”
“That’s just the thing,” Ewald said emphatically, tapping his fork on the table for emphasis. “Nothing but talking and taking Leo’s hand and wishing him well. Nothing more. And then he was nearly all healed up the next day. Within another day, it was complete. No one could explain it.”
“And you heard this from who?” Viktor asked with a frown, speaking for the first time in the conversation. He was trying to keep the skepticism out of his voice, but inside he was thinking that this is the sort of story that gets passed around and garbled the further it goes. No way that could happen.
“Leo’s aunt,” Ewald told him. “In a letter she wrote to Elise’s parents’ neighbor, her sister.
“How could that be?” Viktor asked. “That kind of thing just doesn’t happen.”
“Exactly!” Ewald said. “But it did! And that wasn’t the only time. Some of the others were cured, too. One of pneumonia, another of appendicitis – he didn’t need the surgery after all.”
There was a pause as everyone chewed – both on their food and on what Ewald had told them. Then Ethel spoke again, as if thinking out loud.
“Do you think it could be some kind of faith healing?” she asked, addressing no one in particular.
“Sis,” Hans told her, “did you hear? This kid was only ten. Where’d you ever hear of a ten-year-old faith healer?” He shook his head and returned to his dinner, but, almost unconsciously, he laid his left hand on his own leg, the one that had been injured during the war. And he wondered…
“So he’s young,” Ethel retorted. “Does that mean he can’t be close to God?”
“Close to God is one thing,” Ulrich said. “But to have some kind of healing powers? Again, how would something like that work, even?” How?
“Through faith?” Renate suggested, thoughtfully pushing her potatoes around her plate. “Faith that God could heal those boys, those soldiers?”
“Who has that kind of faith?” Ulrich asked, his tone thoughtful, rather than critical. “Especially now?” His mind was wandering to thoughts of war injuries and atrocities, and to just the war itself. “How do you keep your faith in God after all we’ve been through?” Looking at Ewald, he added, “All of us. Not just us Germans. The whole world.”
Viktor nodded. “That’s right. How do you believe in a God who would allow this to happen?” The words jumped out, and now, surprised at his own openness and honesty, Viktor looked down and cursed himself for getting into a discussion of religion.
“But God gave man free will,” Ethel said, directing her gaze at him. “And man has chosen to make war.”
“Then what does God do all day?” Hans asked, an edge coming suddenly into his voice. “Can’t He do something to stop all of this? Why not stop the war?”
“Because then He’d be violating man’s free will,” Ethel told him, her voice firm.
“Then what good is this God?” Hans threw back at her, “If He just sits and watches everyone in the world try to wipe each other out without doing something to stop it?”
“But He does do something,” Ethel retorted, sitting up straighter. She was surprised at the annoyance she felt rising inside her. “He is here with us always, letting us know He is here, that the divine is here. All around us.”
“In the forest, say,” Viktor added quietly.
“That’s right!” Ethel pointed across the table at him. “You can feel Him there. Papa, you’ve felt God’s presence there.” Ulrich nodded. “You know He exists,” Ethel went on.
“But what good does that do us, God being around us?” Hans persisted. “I don’t understand how that helps us. Especially when He sits by and lets wars and everything else bad go on.”
Ethel frowned. It took a moment for her to reply, but everyone at the table waited patiently until she did. “Hans, I guess what I’d say is that when I feel God is near me… or when I feel connected to God, to the divine … Well, then it’s easier for me to feel what it’s right to do. I’m calmer. Not upset. And I don’t get so worked up about things.”
“So,” Hans said to her, “you don’t feel like making war when you feel God. Is that it?”
“Is there something wrong with that, Hans?” Ethel asked him, a slight edge to her voice. “With feeling connected to God? Maybe if more people were really connected – then maybe there’d be less war.”
Renate felt the conversation heading in a direction she didn’t like, and jumped in.
“I’m no theologian,” she began, “but I think that having God, knowing He’s there – even if you don’t feel it yourself – I personally think it helps a person feel safer.”
“How in the world does that make you feel safer?” Hans exclaimed, exasperated. “I certainly didn’t feel safer during the war because of believing in God.”
“Maybe you don’t really believe He exists,” Ethel suggested. Although there was no edge to her voice this time – she was simply thinking aloud again, not casting aspersions on her brother’s faith – Hans heard an edge. He sat up straighter.
“What, so now I’m a bad believer? And that’s why I got hurt in the war?”
Ulrich laid his hand on his son’s arm. “That’s not what Ethel meant.”
“But that’s what she said. ‘Maybe you don’t really believe He exists’. Well, maybe you’re right, Ethel. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I don’t.” He took a breath in and exhaled loudly.
“No, Hans,” Ethel told him, “I wasn’t accusing you of that. I was just reflecting, thinking about that boy Bruno and about the idea of faith healing and about what it means to have faith. About what might be possible if we really do have faith and are very strongly connected to God.” She looked at everyone else around the table. “I don’t know whether I really have faith myself. I mean, the kind of faith that believes those soldiers could be healed by the grace of God.”
“Do you think that’s what happened with them?” Renate asked her. “That that boy Bruno asked God for them to be healed? And then it happened because he believed it would?”
Ethel turned to Ewald. “What was it he – that boy – said to Leo? About wishing him….”
“Yes, wishing for him to be completely healthy soon, by the grace of God. That’s what his aunt told us, anyway.”
“So, this boy wished, really, really wished, for Leo to get healthy,” Ethel said.
“It sounds like he asked God for that, a kind of prayer,” Renate added.
Ethel nodded. “And then it happened. Leo did get healthy.”
Hans shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “No way that could happen.”
“Why not?” Viktor and Ethel inquired at the same moment, and then both laughed.
Hans scowled at them. “You know how many men on the battlefield, or in hospitals all over Germany, and not just Germany, all over France and England… How many of them begged God for healing, at the top of their lungs?” He paused. “And how many of them got it?”
No one replied. “And now, this little slip of a boy comes into a ward, and suddenly the wounded start jumping out of bed and throwing away their crutches?”
“No need to make fun of it,” Renate told him.
“But Mama,” Hans went on. “Really! How many? Ethel, tell me, if you believe this story – and don’t take it personally, Ewald. I’m not saying you’re lying, but –“
“Hans, do you believe Leo actually got better?” Ethel asked.
“I’ll grant you that.” Hans absently picked up his napkin and began twisting it in his hands.
“Then how did it happen, if it wasn’t from God?” Ulrich broke in.
“How should I know?” Hans snapped. “Maybe he was actually on the mend anyway, and the doctors just didn’t realize it. I don’t know. Why does it have to be God? And besides, can God really even heal like that?” He looked around the table at his family’s motionless faces. “Why’s everyone ganging up on me? I asked a simple question: How many wounded men in that war prayed to God to get healed, and how many did get healed? How many didn’t? And if they didn’t, then why not? Maybe they didn’t really believe, either? Maybe there’s only this one little boy in Danzig who really believes enough, that God answers?”
Now Viktor, uncomfortable at the rising tension, and also feeling protective of Ethel, who was bearing the brunt of Hans’ rant, reentered the conversation.
“I don’t know what it takes for God to answer a prayer,” he said. “For myself, I can say that I gave up asking God for anything after he let my mother die when I was little…”
“You did?” Ethel asked, incredulous.
“I gave up then, and never started up again until I came here.” Don’t mention the forest. Don’t mention feeling God there. He managed to keep his mouth shut, and prayed a small, but fervent prayer that no one at the table would ask him to explain himself.
“Exactly!” Hans cried, and Viktor silently thanked the Lord for this small miracle.
“’Exactly!’ what?” Ethel asked, her attention shifting from Viktor to her brother.
“What I mean is, why pray when our prayers aren’t answered?” Hans continued. “When we don’t even know whether God can answer them.”
“There may be all sorts of reasons a prayer isn’t answered,” Renate offered. “Because I believe God can do anything.”
“But doesn’t this God want everyone to be happy?” Hans persisted.
Renate nodded. “I believe He does. I absolutely believe that.”
“Then why allow the suffering?” Hans asked, opening his arms, palms open upward. “What kind of God allows that, assuming He has the power to turn things around?”
“It’s what Ethel was saying about free will,” Ulrich suggested. “Each man has to make his own choices about how to live and act.”
Hans gave a dry, sarcastic laugh. “Is this how you people explain it to yourselves – explain that God has abandoned you? Or that he hasn’t been able to help you? By resorting to this idea of free will? By blaming all of our misfortunes on us? We do every possible harmful thing to ourselves, but God just stands by and lets us do it?” He looked from one to the other of them, then went on. “Even just a human parent pulls a child back if he’s about to walk off a cliff. Why not God? If we’re about to walk off the cliff toward war, say.”
“Because we have to learn on our own,” Ethel said. “That’s what I think. We have to learn on our own what’s bad and what will hurt us. If God just keeps saving us, we’ll never learn for ourselves what’s right and wrong.”
Renate nodded. “I see it that way, too. We choose. And God helps us choose the right path.”
“How does God help you choose, Mama?” Hans asked. “Because I never have the feeling God is helping me choose.”
“He shows us the way,” Ethel continued. “Sends us messages. I’ve heard them in the forest. And I know you have, Papa.”
Ulrich nodded.
Hans sighed loudly, but said nothing for a moment. Maybe he didn’t know how to respond to this. Maybe he was sick of fighting about it. Maybe he just didn’t have any hope that they’d come to any agreement on the topic. Or any hope that he’d come to understand whether or not he did have any real faith in God. Finally, he turned to Ethel.
“So, do you believe Leo could actually have been healed because that boy Bruno prayed so hard and believed so hard that God could heal him?”
Ethel inhaled slowly and deeply and then let out a big sigh. “I don’t know, Hans. I just don’t know. But I can tell you this: I sure want to be able to believe. Because, think of it: Wouldn’t that be a grand thing? To be able to believe that if you have enough faith, then God will heal someone no doctor’s been able to help? I want to be able to believe that.”
Viktor gazed at her. And in that moment, he was at least able to believe that if anyone could muster enough faith to be able to achieve something like that, the only one around this table who had a shot at being able to do it was Ethel. She has as much faith, as much connection to God, as all the rest of us put together.
“What about you, Hans?” his mother asked him softly. “Do you believe it’s possible?”
Without answering, Hans folded his napkin and laid it on the table. “Thank you for the meal, Mama,”’ he said, rising from his chair. “I need to get some air.”
He didn’t look angry, and didn’t sound it, either, and yet, everyone at the table was stunned. His sudden departure might have been more comprehensible, had it been accompanied by yelling, or by sharp, abrupt motions. But there was none of that. That wasn’t his way. He just calmly left the table and the house.
Ethel followed him with her gaze. Then she looked at her mother, who, reading the question in Ethel’s eyes, said, to her as much as to everyone else, “Leave him be. He just has something he needs to think out.”
In fact, this was true for all of them. Only Hans had taken the step of removing himself from the group in order to do his thinking somewhere else. The rest of them stayed at the table and conversed only about topics they were certain would be free of controversy. The stormy discussion they’d just endured was so unlike what they usually experienced during meal time, that they were all at a loss. Behind the bland words that continued to come out of their mouths, questions floated through the background of each mind, each question unique to its thinker, but each prompted by the uncomfortable scene that had just played out. Before long, this evening meal ground to a halt. The thoughts of those sitting at the table seemed finally to have overwhelmed the thinkers’ ability to think about one topic – the topic they really wanted to be attending to – while speaking about another, uninteresting, and unsatisfying topic. Renate rose from her seat and began collecting the dishes from the table.
“I’ll head back to the farm, then,” Ewald said. He stood up and stretched. His words and tone sounded formal and awkward, as if he were some stranger they’d invited to dinner. Have I been away so long that they don’t feel I’m family anymore?
“It’s a nice evening,” Ulrich said. “I’ll walk with you.” And Ewald felt a bit relieved.
The two men remained silent until they came to the main road and turned left to head toward the Walter farm. Each was beginning to allow some room in his head for the thoughts that had been pushed to the background by Hans’ hasty departure from the table.
“Sure wish I hadn’t told that story,” Ewald said finally. What he was feeling most at this point was anxiety that, in his new role as outsider – for this really was how he’d come to see himself since his arrival, despite the warmth of everyone’s welcome – he had unwittingly, out of ignorance of everyone else’s state of mind, caused a great upheaval.
“No need,” Ulrich replied, reaching over to lay his right arm across Ewald’s shoulder. He allowed it to rest there for a few paces, even though it wasn’t comfortable for either of them to walk that way. “How could you know it’d be such a touchy subject for Hans?”
Ewald turned to him. “Did you know it would?”
Ulrich shook his head and allowed his arm to return to its natural position, but not before giving Ewald’s shoulder a firm pat. “Came as a complete surprise to me.”
“Me, too. But I thought it was maybe because I just wasn’t here while he was growing up. If I knew him better, I might have known better than to bring it up.”
“I’ve lived with him his whole life,” Ulrich said, smiling, “and I never had any idea.”
“I guess most folks don’t sit around the table talking much about God and faith. We never did, growing up, and we sure don’t now, either, at home. In Illinois, I mean.” Damn it. “At home.” You’re just making it worse.
But Ulrich smiled again, clearly not taking any offense. “You mean to say,” he said, “that you Illinois Germans are just as tight-lipped as us German Germans?”
“Mmmhmm.” Now Ewald smiled, too. “There’s so much that those Midwesterners just don’t say. Sometimes it seems like they’re just the same as us Germans, as if I didn’t really leave home – home here – at all. Of course, there really are a lot of German families there, even if they left a generation or two ago. But still… The pure Americans in Illinois are mighty quiet, too. No one wants to say the wrong thing. Nothing controversial. ‘Do the right thing.’ ‘Be considerate.’ ‘Don’t upset Mr. Smith.’ That kind of thing. And what that translates to is everyone keeping their thoughts and feelings to themselves.”
“Sounds pretty German to me!” Ulrich said, his smile broadening. “And here, I thought you’d become more American, somehow.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hard to put my finger on it.”
They were walking past the forest on their left now, the Gassmanns’ forest, and farm fields on their right, and both men studied the landscape as they walked along it. Ulrich made a brief attempt to imagine how it would look to him if he’d been away for seventeen years and was seeing it anew after that long absence. Ewald, meanwhile, was delighting in the way the early evening’s sunrays played amongst the tree leaves and rendered the forest more achingly beautiful with each moment. The silence reigned until they reached the end of the Gassmanns’ land. Then Ulrich spoke again.
“Seems to me you’re freer. You seem more open to me, happier than you were way back then, more willing to speak your mind.”
“Not that you liked it back then, on the occasions I did speak my mind,” Ewald half-joked.
“True, true,” Ulrich agreed. “There was that one particular, last, time you spoke your mind that I’ve wrestled with all these years. But the others – those times I always agreed with you, as I recall, so there was no bite to them. But still, they were few and far between, don’t you think?”
He turned to look at his old friend. Although Ewald was nearly two decades older than when they’d parted, he still looked fresh and full of life. Ulrich, though, felt as if he, himself, had been hauling heavy weights around all this time. And that, despite all his physical labor and his strong and basically healthy body, this inner weight had caused his very being to sag and droop in a way that Ewald’s didn’t.
“Oh, I do. I agree with you! Before I went to America, I think I kept most everything inside, or at least the things I figured would cause a commotion if I brought them up. But the things that would cause a commotion – they didn’t go away just because I didn’t talk about them. They just kept building up in me until I couldn’t not let them out. I can see that now. That’s why my decision to go to Illinois came as such a shock to everyone. It was totally new to all of you, totally out of the blue, like a lightning bolt.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Ulrich told him. “We none of us could understand it at all. Where did that come from? That’s what we were all asking ourselves and each other. It seemed so sudden to us that we couldn’t believe you were serious.”
“What you didn’t know was that I’d been thinking about it from the time Ralf went over. And the idea just got stronger and stronger until finally I made up my mind.”
“But why didn’t you ever talk to us – or at least to me – about it before you announced it?” Ulrich asked. Ewald could hear the combination of a sigh and his friend’s persistent sadness about this topic.
“Ulrich, I can’t explain it. Well, I can a little bit now. I couldn’t have, back then.” Ewald paused and turned to look at his old friend. “The way I’d describe it now is that I was afraid that if I brought it up early on, when it was still just a thought I was considering, then I’d never have the chance to decide about it on my own.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I knew for sure that the family wouldn’t be happy. You remember how rough it was for Ralf when he made his decision? It was months of arguing and hard feelings in that period before he set foot on the boat. And I knew I’d get resistance from my folk, too. I mean, my parents would have been tough enough, but Renate?” He shook his head in a combination of awe and the respect. “I preferred to give her the healthy distance you’d give a cyclone you know has the power to crush you. She may talk about free will,” he went on, with a smile, “but that’s for her, not for anybody else. So, I announced my decision and high-tailed it out before the cyclone could get up to full power.”
Ulrich knew exactly what Ewald meant. “Yeah, she packs a punch,” he said simply, smiling.
“A big one. I think she’s mellowed out a bit these past years,” Ewald said. He raised his hand when Ulrich began to object. “Really, I do. And I think it’s because she’s happy, Ulrich. Happiness does that to a person. That’s what I feel, about myself. You call it more open, being more willing to speak my mind. Maybe that’s true, but if it is, it’s not so much because I’m in America, but because I’m happy. Despite everything I told you the other day. I love my family and they love me. It’s the love that does it. I believe that. And Renate has that, from you and Ethel and Hans.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Ulrich granted. “Maybe she is a little less fiery than when she was younger.”
“Less combative,” Ewald suggested. “Oh, I don’t know how to put it. I guess what I mean is that when I announced I was going, it was as if she felt it was a threat to the whole family order, that everything would unravel if I left, that her own personal vision of how the family should be would crumble.”
Ulrich listened, evaluating Ewald’s explanation. Then he said, “She hasn’t changed a bit in that regard.”
“Oh, no?”
“Nope. It’s just more under cover. I never analyzed it, but what you say – it makes sense. She really is like that, still. She has her idea of the way things need to be so that everyone will be happy, and she’ll do what she needs to do to get them there and keep them that way.”
Ewald stopped and pointed emphatically at Ulrich. “Exactly! That’s exactly it! And that is why I waited until everything was set for me to go before I breathed a word of it. I knew I couldn’t hold up under months of her pressure. Or at least not until I was a hundred percent sure myself it was what I wanted and that I could do it. Otherwise she would have worn me down.”
Ulrich nodded. “I can see what you mean. That’s where you and I are different, my friend. Your sister and I have never had that kind of disagreement.”
“Why’s that? Haven’t you ever wanted to do something she didn’t want you to do?” Ewald was looking at him in amazement.
“Oh, I wouldn’t quite put it that way.” Ulrich turned and gazed into the woods, recalling the times when he’d wanted to do things one way and Renate another.
“How would you put it, then?”
“Like this: In the end, the things we disagreed about… they didn’t matter enough for me to fight against that force of nature that is your sister.” He smiled, but Ewald was still looking at him in surprise.
“But if it was something you really felt strong enough about? What then?”
Ulrich shrugged. “It never was, Ewald. It just never was. I take my cue from her, as far as family matters go. Always have done, probably always will. She knows how to adjust things, keep them in order in the family. Her way of doing things keeps everything calm and good. Happy. For all of us. I’d rather have her as an ally than an opposing force.”
Here Ewald understood that all the apparent peace and joy in his sister’s household came at a price, at least for Ulrich. And what about Hans? And Ethel? What weren’t they speaking about out loud as they went along with Renate’s way of doing things?
“Well,” he said to Ulrich, “I’d say your Hans isn’t afraid of speaking his mind.”
“Are you saying I am?” Ulrich objected, and Ewald could tell from his tone that he was hurt.
“I’m sorry, Ulrich. I didn’t mean it that way. All I meant was that Hans is willing to go head to head with his mama, if need be.”
They were just coming to the lane that led onto the Walter farm, and Ulrich turned to face Ewald. “Do you think there’ll be a need?”
“Wouldn’t be surprised at all, judging by the dinner discussion tonight,” Ewald told him.
“That did come out of the blue, him getting riled up like that.”
“Exactly my point. And I’m sorry if I caused some harm there.” It was Ewald’s turn now to put his arm around Ulrich’s shoulder.
“Not at all,” Ulrich said, embracing his brother-in-law. “People need to be free to think their thoughts and speak their mind. Thoughts are free, aren’t they?” He spoke, apparently without realizing that his own life was not necessarily lived in accord with this ideal. “I understand now why you kept quiet about your plans for so long.”
“Even to you,” Ewald told him. “Especially to you, maybe. I knew you’d tell her if I told you, and then…”
“Cyclone winds?”
“Mmmhmm.”
The two men laughed then walked into the farmyard. Lorena – also a force of nature, but a refreshing summer breeze to her sister Renate’s cyclone – caught sight of them and herded them along into the kitchen for cake and coffee.
* * *
Ethel also felt the need for fresh air as an antidote to the stultifying effects of the dinnertime conversation. So, once she and her mother finished cleaning up after the meal, she walked out into the yard. She felt the desire – and need, even – for Viktor’s company, and was delighted to see him sitting on a bench outside the workshop. He was bent over a thin board with a piece of paper on it, pencil in hand.
“What are you working on?” she asked, coming over and leaning down to look at the paper. He motioned for her to take a seat next to him, which she did.
“Just a sketch for a design on that chest of drawers Hans and I are going to do. For a family in Varel.”
Ethel nodded and leaned over again, studying the graceful lines of the ivy design. “I like your carving so much, Viktor. This will be beautiful.”
He thanked her and then placed the board on the bench next to him, positioning the pencil so it would stay put. “Feel like a walk? I need to move.”
Ethel jumped up. “I was just about to ask you the same thing. I love a walk at this time of day, with the sun just starting to get low.”
Out of force of habit, they headed for the main path into the forest. Walking slowly, they both remained silent for a bit, allowing their breathing and thoughts to be calmed by the energy of the trees and the beauty of the golden light filtering through the branches and leaves. Viktor spoke first.
“Will you show me the treehouse? The one you and Hans built? If it’s still there, that is.”
Ethel smiled. “Oh, it’s still there. Probably will be as long as the tree stands, and it’s a beech, so I imagine it’ll be there for decades!”
“For your children and even grandchildren to scamper up into it,” Viktor suggested, imagining such a scene, even though he couldn’t fully picture the house, not having yet laid eyes on it.
Ethel turned and smiled at him, but said only, “Over here, then. Follow me.”
She led him off the main path, into a stand of pines, and then through a section with more oaks, and then back to pines and spruces.
“How do you remember where it is?” Viktor asked. He could see no discernible path, unless it was beneath the fallen leaves that muffled the sound of their footsteps.
“Have you forgotten I grew up in these woods? I could probably find it blindfolded.” She blushed.
“No need to test that,” he told her. “I believe you.”
“All right, then, come on. And stop doubting me.”
After a few more minutes, Ethel raised her hand and pointed to something in the near distance. “There it is. See it?”
“Nope,” Viktor replied, after following the direction of Ethel’s pointing finger. There were still some leaves on the trees, mostly the oaks’, so he figured the structure must be hidden behind them. He saw some beeches, but no treehouses.
“Oh, my goodness, and you call yourself a forester!” she teased.
“Never!” he objected. “Cabinet maker, yes, forester – not yet! So, please take pity on me!”
Ethel shook her head in mock disgust. “All right, then, keep going.”
After tramping about a hundred more yards through the leaves, underbrush and small fallen twigs, Viktor finally saw it. A tall, spreading beech tree, its silvery bark both in shadow and yet also shimmering in the early evening light. He was surprised to see that the treehouse was only about ten feet off the ground. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, especially given that it was built in a beech tree.
Viktor said nothing at first, just walked with Ethel up to the tree. He laid a hand on its cool, smooth bark and looked upward, studying the floor of the treehouse: Perched on the low-slung branches of the beech, it had a roughly hexagonal deck, which consisted of small logs – birch, it looked like to Viktor – that had been laid like a floor. The treehouse rested on and was supported by five large branches spreading out beneath it from the central trunk, which ran, unhindered, up through the house’s center. A series of rough planks had been nailed from below to the birch log “floorboards”. At the house’s outer edge, one end of each of the supporting planks rested on two of the tree’s main branches, one at each of the plank’s ends. At the center, a series of short logs slightly thicker than the floorboards supported the floor. Viktor was impressed by the design: the thicker supports were needed at the center, because the beech’s branches were not level. If the floor had been allowed simply to rest on the branches, the floor of the treehouse would have tilted down in the middle, like a funnel.
Stepping back so he could see how the house itself had been constructed, Viktor discovered a simple, but effective design that was also economical in terms of the amount of materials it had used: Five or six upright birch logs had been nailed to the floor logs as posts, and long twigs had been woven between these posts and tied around them to form what served as the house’s walls. The roof, such as it was, started as a round length of thick rope affixed to the beech trunk about six feet up from the floor. Long, thin willow branches had been looped or hooked or tied over this rope – all of these methods had been used in various spots – and then anchored between the woven branches of the walls.
“Doesn’t look like you nailed any of the planks or posts to the tree itself?” Viktor asked Ethel, still studying the construction.
“That’s right!” Ethel told him, patting the tree. “That was the whole thing. Papa said we could build the treehouse, but we had to plan it so it wouldn’t hurt the tree in any way.”
“So that’s why there had to be the rope ladder, instead of nailing boards onto the trunk.”
“Exactly.” Then Ethel laughed. “Although I think Hans suggested it more to keep me from climbing up there on my own than to protect this dear tree.”
Viktor smiled, too. “You all did such a beautiful job.”
“I can’t take credit. Except for clamoring for it to be done. I was only three.”
“Still,” Viktor told her, struck by how beautiful she looked in the soft light. “Can we go up? Is it still solid?” he asked, peering here and there.
“I imagine so. It’ll have to be, if it’s going to last for kids and grandkids!” She smiled at him. “I’m not sure whether the ladder will still hold us, though.”
“I don’t see any ladder,” Viktor replied. “Where is it?”
Ethel pointed up to the square opening in one wall of the treehouse, about three feet wide. It took Viktor a few seconds, but then he saw two thick, curving sections of rope wrapped around one of the floor branches. “Ah,” he said, “the end of the ladder’s attached to those?”
Ethel nodded. “When Hans and I got older and stopped using the treehouse, we just folded it up up there and left it. Papa wanted to cut it, but we protested so much he relented.”
“Why did you stop using it, if you couldn’t bear to have him cut the ladder down?”
“It wasn’t that we lost interest in it, not at all. It was our favorite place.”
“What happened, then?” Viktor asked.
“The war,” Ethel answered. “It was during the war. Papa was worried that hobos or other people travelling across the land, people who didn’t want to be found, might see the treehouse and decide it was a good place to hide.”
Viktor looked around, at the deep forest surrounding them. He thought that if he had been travelling the land without a job back then, the treehouse would have been very appealing, indeed.
“And so Papa ordered us to stay away from it. Didn’t want us to stumble on anyone, or startle someone who might hurt us.”
“Seems sensible,” Viktor replied.
“Sensible, yes,” Ethel said, patting the tree trunk once more. “But it was very sad for Hans and me. This was our safest place, where we could come and sit and read. Or I would work on my ‘pictures’ up there.” She looked up wistfully. “Every time we came out here – and for the first couple of years, I was only allowed to come here with Hans – I had such a strong feeling of anticipation and joy. The closer I got, the happier I felt. I’d fly up that ladder and find my spot, back against the beech trunk, looking out through the gaps in the sides. It was heaven.”
Viktor was studying her face. It was glowing now. Some color had come into her cheeks as she told him of those treehouse times.
“That last time we were here,” Ethel went on, “I climbed down the ladder, then Hans pulled it up and half-climbed, half-jumped down. He was lanky by then. It wasn’t such a big drop!” She laughed, remembering that afternoon. “But to me, it looked like a mile from the house down to the forest floor! I was in awe of him, that he could do that. He’s never tired of reminding me of that ever since – of how in awe of him I was!”
“So, how’re we going to get up there, to get the ladder?” Viktor mused aloud. Perhaps he could perform some feat of strength and dexterity that would impress Ethel as much as Hans’ had… He studied the tree and the arrangement of the lower branches.
“I bet I can hop up on this branch,” he said, “then stand up and lean over and grab the ladder, pull it down.” It wasn’t a super-human feat by any means, but it might do.
“Yes, if you think you can, go ahead!” Ethel said. “I’m so eager to see it again myself!”
Striving to appear both as graceful and strong as possible, Viktor hoisted himself up onto the lowest branch – about four feet above the ground – and was pleased that he managed to do so in one, smooth movement. All that chopping and moving of wood had made his arms strong. Then, steadying himself against the trunk, he straightened up. At this point, his head was just below the treehouse floor, and so it was easy for him to stretch out a hand to the left and catch hold of the side of the rope ladder nearest to him, just above the spot where it had been secured to the branch at the edge of the opening. Gripping one of the supporting planks with his right hand, he began tugging on the rope. It felt heavy, but it was moving more or less freely. Soon the first rung came into sight, the rope pushing a layer of old dead leaves and small twigs and beech nuts ahead of it and out over the edge, down to the ground.
“Step back, Ethel,” he called down. “Who knows what might be resting up here on the rope.”
Ethel, who was standing right at the bottom of the tree, where the ladder would eventually come to rest, moved back about five feet, and was shortly glad that she had: Viktor began pulling harder on the rope, and soon, years of detritus was cascading from the floor of the treehouse as the ladder snaked out and over the edge. Swinging his left foot over and resting it on one rung of the ladder, Viktor slowly shifted his weight to that side and examined the loop of rope that evidently was still holding the ladder tightly to the floorboard. He ran his left hand over each of the two rope loops, testing with his fingers for any frayed parts or other damage that might compromise the ladder. The rungs themselves appeared undamaged, too, which amazed Viktor, since the ladder had lain on the treehouse floor for a number of years now. But, finding no damage, he brought his right leg onto the ladder, too. Then he slowly lowered himself down, step by step, testing each rung by bouncing slightly as he moved gradually downward. If one of the steps did give way, at least he wasn’t so far above the ground. It was his pride more than his body that would be most hurt if he did fall at this point! But the rope rungs held, and before he knew it, he was standing next to Ethel once more.
“Heavens!” she exclaimed, a broad smile on her face. “I’m so excited! It’s been six or seven years, Viktor!” She grasped the ladder and put a foot on it.
“Maybe I should go first?” Viktor said suddenly, taking hold of the side of the ladder. “I mean, who knows what might be up there. Maybe I should take a look?” Besides, he felt that it was not quite proper for him to come up the ladder behind – and beneath Ethel – with her skirt billowing. And what if she needed a boost to get up onto the floor? If he went up first, he could take her hand and pull her up, but this way… he certainly couldn’t support or push her from beneath.
But before Viktor had time to decide how to approach the situation, Ethel began making her way up the ladder, alternately lifting her skirt’s front hem and holding it in her right hand, which also gripped the side of the ladder, and then stepping up to the next rung, pulling herself upward with her left hand. Watching her, Viktor knew he needn’t have worried that she’d need help. She scampered up the rope. As she reached the very top rung, she deftly leaned over slightly and half gripped, half rested her hands on the second log in from the edge and lifted herself up and onto the floor. A moment later, she was leaning over the edge, summoning Viktor.
“It’s still perfect up here! Lots of leaves, and probably some squirrel or mouse nests, but it’s perfect! Come up and see!”
He did. Unused to climbing this sort of ladder, he felt clumsy. Going down was easier than coming up! But Ethel didn’t seem to notice, and when he reached the top, it was she who tugged on his sleeve to pull him up onto the floor. Not because he needed the assistance, but because she was so eager for him to see her favorite childhood spot.
* * *
Hans, too, went out for a walk when he left the house abruptly, but he didn’t head for the forest. Rather, as his father and uncle would do a bit later, he headed in the direction of the Walter farm, although he had no intention of stopping by to visit with his relatives. Enough family for one day, he thought to himself glumly. He wanted to be alone.
Hans couldn’t pinpoint what it was, exactly, that had upset him in that evening’s conversation. He had suddenly just grown so agitated that he couldn’t sit still. It was all that about that stupid boy, Bruno. Who was he, after all? Why did people believe he’d gotten those soldiers healed? They were all so gullible! As if something could happen just because you want it enough. That’s the way it seemed to him. Why was that boy’s wanting more powerful than mine? Almost unconsciously, he stopped for a moment and stretched out his left leg, his weak leg, as the doctor referred to it. That was the way he thought of it, too. Damn it! he thought. Damned weakness!
He started walking again, glancing at the woods he was passing on his left, the Gassmann forest that was such an important part of his family’s history and identity. But he didn’t feel the least bit drawn to go into their forest, which didn’t feel like it belonged to him at all in this moment. He didn’t understand it when his father or Ethel went on and on about sensing the divine when they were amongst the trees. To him, trees were just trees, sources of future furniture. He respected them as the means of his livelihood, but some kind of spiritual relationship to the trees? Come on. So, he always felt left out, when the two of them got going on about God in the forest. Isn’t it enough for God to be in the church? Not that he ever felt God there, either.
Hans kept walking, looking almost resentfully at the trees – another place where he felt all on his own, excluded, even. Their trunks looked more solid and sturdy than his own, “weak” leg, which was beginning to object a bit to the fast pace of Hans’ walking. Those trees are standing there mocking me. “Don’t you hear us? Feel us?” they seemed to be asking him. Or maybe they aren’t even bothering to ask me. Not even bothering with me, Hans concluded now. Just standing there, stock still, looking at me blankly, as if I’m not worth the effort. They’ve given up on me, clearly. Turned their backs on me, in fact. They prefer Father, or Ethel. Or Viktor: Now he claims to have found God in the forest, too.
Hans shook his head in disgust and began walking faster, ignoring the signals from his leg to slow down. He passed the Walter farm without even noticing it, so full of thoughts was his mind. More thoughts of being left out: out of the connection with the forest. Out of the family, out of being connected to God. Do I even really want to be connected to God? He asked himself. He wasn’t sure he did want that, but being without it left him feeling he’d somehow been passed over. Why is that? Why am I not good enough to feel God, too? Not good enough to have my leg healed by God?
Not that Hans had really ever prayed to God for his leg to be healed, or for anything else – at least not with all his heart. Before he left for basic training, he prayed with his family, first in church and then at home, on the morning of his departure, that he’d return safe from the war. Which he had done, except for a broken tibia and fibula that left him with a persistent weakness in his leg. Plus a constant, if subtle, fear of taking a wrong step that would land him on the ground once again, with more broken bones and more pain.
He was also left with everyone in the family looking at him as if he were now not fully himself any more. They saw him as broken and weak. Not that they said it, but he saw it in their eyes sometimes, when he stumbled – I just tripped, and not because of any problem with my leg, damn it! – or when he absently reached down to rub his lower leg after a tiring day of work. It was as if they were looking out for him, expecting him to fall or stumble. Because they see me as weak. So do others in town. He was sure of it! “Oh, that Hans,” he was sure they thought, and even said to each other behind his back. “Hans who couldn’t even make it through basic training without getting himself hurt and discharged. Lucky thing he didn’t make it into war. He’d never have made it back out.” That’s what he imagined others were saying. And worse, even: Hans imagined that some even harbored suspicions that he’d contrived to break his leg on purpose, hoping to be sent home. But I didn’t do that! he objected in his mind. I fell when I was running over the iron barriers on the obstacle course. That soldier behind me fell on top of me, and my leg got wedged between the iron bars, and Bam! – both those bones snapped. Sure, I took a wrong step, but I didn’t mean to.
All these thoughts and memories flooded Hans’ brain as he walked – sprinted, nearly – down the road, far past the Walter farm. His face grew flushed with a combination of anger and shame. Damn that Bruno! Damn those healed soldiers! He stopped short of damning God, too, because he was beginning to fear, although he didn’t want to accept such a thought, that he himself was to blame for the fact that his leg still gave him pain. I’m not worthy of being healed, a small and quiet voice inside him whispered, so softly that he couldn’t quite make out the words. But he felt the emotion that accompanied these undecipherable words. It was a painful and sad emotion, despair, even. But the words that he could hear were quite clear: Ethel was right. I don’t believe God exists. Or at least I don’t believe enough. I really don’t. If He exists, why didn’t He save me from the pain of this broken leg, from this weakness?
It was almost fully dark by the time Hans turned around and began making his way back home. Only a faint pink still hung above the edges of the horizon. As he moved steadily closer to it, it grew more and more subtle and diffuse, like a beautiful flower fading in a vase, until its bright petals turned dark with decay. All Hans could see before him, at the horizon, where his family home lay, were his own weakness and his own lack of belief in God.
If only Hans had been able to jump forward to 1949 and sit with his as-yet-unborn niece Lina that day in June! She might have shared with him her idea that was just beginning to blossom, the one about how maybe there really was a purpose to our pain and suffering. About how God has a plan for each of us, and about how maybe He intends each of us to work with him to discover that plan and our purpose in life. And to carry it out, by striving together with Him. But Hans was still in 1921, certain that a God he didn’t even really believe in had cursed and abandoned him in his pain and weakness. Did God have a plan for Hans? Of course He did, Lina would say later. But Hans was not thinking along these lines and could not yet have the benefit of discussing this with his niece. There would be time for that. But not yet. In the meantime, here’s a question that was floating beneath Hans’ consciousness now: Can God help us even if we don’t believe in Him? Does He?
Hans was now coming up on the Walter Farm. He saw the windows lit by lamp light, and made the sudden decision to stop in and ask Ewald the question that had been taking shape in his mind as he walked.
* * *
As Hans was walking briskly further and further from the Gassmann homestead, Viktor and Ethel were settling themselves in the treehouse, their backs against the beech tree’s trunk.
“Wasn’t I right?” Ethel asked, smoothing her skirt absently. “Isn’t it just the most perfect place?” She gave Viktor a quick glance, then focused her gaze on the wall of the treehouse and the twigs that served as its roof. She examined each part of the structure, trying to determine what had changed since she had last sat in this spot. On the one hand, she wanted to sit still, peacefully. On the other, she felt too much happiness to do that. It was as if every cell in her body were dancing.
“It’s like being with an old friend!” she continued, without giving Viktor time to answer. In fact, he opened his mouth to reply, but then Ethel piped up again, turning her gaze back to the floor and walls and roof. So, he just sat there silently, smiling a bit in amusement as he took in her excitement.
“Has it changed much?” he managed to ask finally.
Ethel turned to him, her face bright and a little flushed. Then she took in a big breath, tipped her head back to rest against the tree’s trunk, and, eyes closed, let the breath back out in a contented sigh. “Well, yes – I mean, there are all the leaves…”
“And definitely a mouse nest, over there,” Viktor put in, pointing to the far corner (although “far” was relative: The whole treehouse measured not more than ten feet across).
Ethel nodded and laughed. “Oh, yes, that’s different. It was always very clean, back when Hans and I were up here all the time. I had a little broom I brought out here to sweep the floor with!”
Viktor smiled, too, and waited for Ethel to continue.
“And there are some gaps in the thatch, of course. That’s to be expected.”
“But aside from that? Is it different?”
Ethel closed her eyes again for a few seconds. Then she shook her head. “No. It has the same feeling.” She paused. “No, that’s not quite true. I guess what I mean, is that I feel the same kind of peace here as I used to. It makes me so happy to be here!”
“But what, then? What’s changed?”
Ethel laid her palm atop one of the logs that formed the floor and then turned to Viktor. “The tree has missed us,” she said, holding her hand still, as if to sense something in the wood. Then she turned to face the tree trunk and, kneeling, laid one cheek against its smooth bark. She wrapped her arms as far around the trunk as they would go. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the beech. “Sorry I’ve been gone so long.”
Viktor turned, too, sideways, so that his shoulder leaned against the tree and he was looking at Ethel. She was facing away from him, so that he saw only the back of her head and the mass of light curls that were beginning to gleam in the early evening light. He welcomed this chance to study her. His eyes took in her shoulders and back, the way her apron the ties hugged her waist, and her gathered skirt flowed out beneath the apron. He was gazing at her arms, their graceful curve visible beneath the white sleeves of her dress, when she turned her head back toward him and sat down, cross-legged and facing him.
“Maybe you think I’m silly?” she asked him. “Hugging the tree?” Her look told him that although she was hoping he did not find her silly, she was also prepared to stand her ground, and defend her love of this particular tree.
“Not at all,” he told her, quite honestly. True, he hadn’t really given any thought to this question of whether or not she was silly for hugging a tree.
“Really?” she asked.
“Now, well, no, I don’t think you silly. To tell the whole truth, I was distracted.”
“By what?” she asked, her brows knitting in curiosity.
“By how beautiful you are,” he told her.
Ethel looked down and straightened the folds in her apron between her fingers. “Well, then, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned hugging the tree at all, if you didn’t notice!” She looked up at him, and he saw that she was smiling.
“I noticed, but I didn’t take note. Of that in particular. Just of you.”
Now she was smiling even more. “All right. We can leave it at that.”
“Or maybe not?” Viktor asked her, turning so that he was once again leaning back against the tree trunk and looking out through the gaps in the wall.
Ethel wasn’t sure quite what he was getting at, but she felt her cheeks flush fully. Her heart had picked up its pace, too, but she was at a loss. She had no idea what to say. Maybe we shouldn’t be up here together? She sat up a little more stiffly now.
Sensing Ethel’s confusion, Viktor sought to reassure her. He adopted a cross-legged pose across from her, and although he wanted to take her hand, he crossed his hands in his lap instead. Then, meeting her gaze, he said, “Don’t be worried. I’m sorry. All I meant is that I want to tell you that you’re so beautiful. And that I feel honored that you’ve shown me this favorite spot of yours. That you’re sitting here with me.”
Unable to keep looking him in the eye, Ethel shrugged. “You asked me to see it,” she said quietly.
“True.” He paused, fighting the urge to take her hand in his. “Would you have brought anyone here? Just anyone, I mean?”
She shook her head and looked back up. “Oh, no. Not at all. Only you!” Then she cast her gaze back down at her lap again, her fingers worrying her apron.
Now Viktor did take hold of her hand, very gently. He cradled it in both of his, striving to take in all of its qualities as it lay there. “That makes me very happy,” he told her, quietly, just loudly enough for her to hear. Releasing first her palm and then her fingers, he allowed her hand to come to rest once more on her apron. Then he stretched out his legs and leaned back against the tree again, his hands clasped in his lap. Now it was his turn to take in a deep breath and let it out.
Ethel shifted her position, too. The two sat that way, their shoulders nearly touching, and the old, old beech supporting them both. She eventually spoke.
“It makes me happy, too, Viktor. I wouldn’t bring anyone else here. I only want to share it with you.”
In this way, the treehouse gained a new significance for Ethel: The revisited joy of a personal and sacred space now expanded to embrace the new joy of a young woman sharing this space with a man she was coming to love, and whose love for her was solid enough to embrace even the image of his beloved hugging of a tree.
Sue Downing 