Above the River, Chapter 24

Chapter 24

June to July, 1949

Gassmann-Bunke homestead

            Here it was, the second half of June, 1949. Hans, who’d been gone from his ancestral family home for twenty-nine years, was more of a topic of conversation now than he had been at almost any point in the past nearly three decades.

            Did Hans anticipate, when he made the phone call and invited the Gassmann-Bunke family to his daughter’s wedding, that this would lead to yet another of those situations with which he had been so intimately familiar during the years he lived here? Did he know full well that it would be his mother and father – Renate and Ulrich – who would decide which two lucky family members would be the first to bridge the long, intercontinental gap between the two Gassmann households?

            Or did he imagine that protocols had changed in the years since his departure? Did he picture the whole, extended family discussing the options around the supper table, and coming to a joint decision? If he was, indeed, imagining the latter scenario, perhaps it was because the memory of his intense feelings of being excluded from all decision making had faded over time. Or perhaps he felt content to allow the process to play out however it would, now that he no longer felt that the course of his own life depended on what was decided, no longer felt at his parents’ mercy.

            Whatever musings Hans did entertain about how the question would be decided, it seems unlikely that he would have been surprised to learn that no revolution took place in the old log house: as always, the final word rested with, and was revealed by Renate:

            “Ulrich and I have talked about the wedding,” she announced at supper the day after Hans called.

            Everyone at the table, including even Kristina and Ingrid, who weren’t even related to Hans, paused in mid-bite, or mid-sentence. It was as if they feared that continuing to eat or move at all might cause them to miss this important news. Renate waited to continue until she was certain that all eyes were upon her, all ears fully tuned toward her. This was her habitual way of enhancing the drama of any positive moment. Everyone could see the sparkle that arose in her eyes as she paused.

            “We feel it’s best for Ethel and Lina to go,” she said, finally.

            Ethel, who had been holding her breath in anticipation of hearing the decision, let out an excited sigh, but managed to suppress the exclamation of delight that wanted to burst from her lungs. Looking quickly around to the others, she was relieved to see the others nodding.  Both of her parents were smiling. Ulrich patted her hand affectionately, as if to say, “Did you doubt we’d send you?” Even so, Ethel felt it best to protest at least a bit.

            “But, Mama,” she began, “shouldn’t you go?”

            Renate smiled. “On these creaky knees?” She shook her head. “And entrust the running of the household to you, only to come back to who knows what state of things? I think not!”

            Ethel was crying now. She understood the great generosity of her mother’s decision: She was willing to forego what might be her last opportunity to see her son again in her lifetime.

            “Papa?” Ethel managed to say, looking questioningly into her father’s eyes, her gaze asking whether he, too, was really prepared to make this same sacrifice.

            Ulrich didn’t joke the way his wife had. It wouldn’t have been appropriate to do so. He genuinely was concerned about what might happen if the left the family business to Viktor and Peter and Marcus for even a week, never mind two months.  Things already felt on the verge of collapsing here, what with the tensions between the three men. As much as his heart ached to see his son once more, as much as he wished to have the same chance to smooth things over with him, once and for all, he couldn’t risk it. Nor could he give voice to those thoughts at the table. So, he made do with nodding to Ethel and patting her hand again.

            “Besides,” he did joke, though, almost as an afterthought, “what do I need to go to Illinois for? We already know there are no decent forests there. Isn’t that right?”

            Of all of them at the table, only Renate and Ethel and Viktor understood Ulrich’s reference. And each of them was immediately transported in their minds back to 1921. They each recalled clearly how Renate’s brother, Ewald, visiting for the first time after emigrating to Illinois himself, admitted that forests were few and far between around the small town of Durand where he now lived.

            Although Ulrich intended for his remark to bring some levity to the situation, he saw tears begin to fall from Renate’s eyes after he spoke. He realized that he’d miscalculated. Twenty-eight years had passed since that suppertime conversation took place, but its reverberations were still strong enough to tear Renate’s heart open.

            Ethel saw this, but so did Lina. And just as Ethel opened her mouth to say that Renate absolutely had to go, in her place, Lina spoke up.

            “Grandma, you and Grandpa can’t be serious about sending me to the wedding.” She paused and looked back and forth between Ulrich and Renate. “I mean…” Here she silently patted the arms of her wheelchair. In doing so, she expressed what others at the table had also thought, but not voiced. Even Marcus remained uncharacteristically silent.

            No one had gone back to eating yet. They were all awaiting Renate’s reply. She, for her part, had anticipated that Lina would object. In fact, Ulrich had questioned her reasoning the night before, as they talked the question over before bed. But Renate had convinced him that this was exactly what their granddaughter needed, as difficult as she knew the trip would be: by train to the coast, and then by steamer to New York; then another long train ride to Illinois.

            On the surface of it, if you looked at it from the standpoint of logic, the idea did seem, frankly, insane. Yet, Renate had a strong feeling that this was just the right way to proceed, even if she couldn’t put her finger on all the reasons why. She couldn’t say whether this idea and her belief in it came from God, or from deep inside herself, or whether it represented the kind of collaboration between God and human that the family had been talking about recently, around the supper table. But, although she couldn’t determine this, Renate nonetheless took the great leap and chose to trust her feelings.

            “Lina, dear”, she said, facing her granddaughter, but speaking to everyone present, “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk. Aren’t you the one who sat here, just the other evening, and told us that beautiful story about that bird? What was it, a swallow?” Of course, Renate knew full well what kind of bird it was that Lina had mentioned. In this moment, she simply intuited that it was essential to shift Lina out of seeing herself as doomed to be always a prisoner in her wheelchair.

            “Yes, Grandma,” Lina replied, nodding a bit wearily. “It was a swallow.”

            “Well, then,” Renate said, also bobbing her head, “you see?” She forged ahead, ignoring the fact that no one else seemed to be following the logic that seemed to her so iron-clad. “It’s settled, then! Ethel and Lina will go to Katharina’s wedding.” Then, as everyone began to heed Renate’s urgings to eat while the food was still hot, the Gassmann matriarch added, cryptically, “Besides, Lina. Something tells me that you and your Uncle Hans will have much to talk about.”

            This remark registered only in the most superficial way in Lina’s mind. She was too overwhelmed by the prospect of the trip to take in one additional bit of information. What can they be thinking? she wondered as the meal progressed. How can I possibly make it to the coast on the train, much less manage the crossing… It’ll be too much for Mama.” She was nearly in tears by the time supper ended.

            A bit later, during her evening stroll with Lina, Kristina did not even broach the topic of the trip. She could see that Lina was overcome by fear and confusion, and not up to talking. So, feeling no resentment whatsoever this time at her friend’s reticence, Kristina pushed the wheelchair in silence, pausing occasionally to lay her hand on Lina’s shoulder and give it a comforting squeeze. I’m here for you, whenever you’re ready to talk.

*          *          *

            In the days following her grandmother’s announcement, Lina often fell under the sway of fear and dread that settled onto her shoulders like a great weight. She couldn’t imagine how going to Illinois would be possible if she was still wheelchair bound.  At the same time, though, she found herself daydreaming about attending her cousin Katharina’s wedding with her mother – in America, no less! When she came out of such reveries, she always noticed that she was smiling.  But how to reconcile these two opposing thoughts? Having concluded – despite what her grandparents had concluded – that being paralyzed and traveling to America were mutually exclusive, Lina’s rational mind told her that there was only one possible course of action: If she wanted to go to America – and she did! – then she simply had to get out of the wheelchair.

            Even before Renate’s announcement about the travel plans, Lina had already felt cautiously hopeful about investigating this Bruno Groening she’d read about. There did seem to be promise in what the man was doing. More than that, even. Right now, given that the doctors had not been able to help her at all the past five years, Groening seemed like her only hope. And now, with the trip looming (that was how she thought of it, now, as something “looming”), she began to feel more and pressure each to get healed.  How long have I got? Lina wondered. Six weeks until we leave? Two months?  

            For this reason, Lina now approached the reading of each day’s newspaper with increased intensity. She spent each morning wondering whether there would be another article about him, and then she feverishly scanned the paper each afternoon. For a few days, she found nothing.  Then came June 23^rd.

            Lina was seated in her usual spot at the edge of the forest.  The afternoon was cloudy, but warm, and despite the slight breeze, she didn’t need a shawl.  With a hope that she consciously tempered, in case today’s paper once again brought no more news of Groening, and anxiety that she consciously chased away, she turned to page three.  There, in the bottom right hand corner, was a short article, unaccompanied by a photo: “No More Canes for Herford Visitor to Bruno Groening”.  The subtitle read, “First-hand account by a Groening assistant”. The part that caught Lina’s attention read as follows:

“I noticed an old man one day who was literally hanging on his two sticks. He suffered from Bechterew’s syndrome – a progressive ossification and stiffening of the spinal column. As sorry as I felt for him, I couldn’t allow him in, because all the rooms in the house were already filled with help-seekers, about sixty people.  Even the corridor was full.  He had already waited for nine hours. It was well past midnight when I met him again in the corridor, not knowing who had let him in.  I was able to show him a spot where he sat down with extreme difficulty. I pointed him out to Bruno Groening who came in soon and addressed him.  Within a fraction of a second, the old man’s tired and drawn countenance was transformed.  He had told me shortly before that he had already suffered from that disease for ten years and had been given up as a hopeless case by the doctors. He got up from his seat – in this case the healing effect was particularly abrupt – and walked immediately without canes!  The wish to live had been so strongly awakened in him, that he immediately expressed the wish, followed by the action, not only once, but several times, to go up and down stairs without using the walls or banister for help.  After ten years of extreme restriction of movement, here was a newborn man!  He had come to Bruno Groening with a careworn and bitter face and radiantly happy and glad he left him now, filled with renewed courage for living.” [Author’s note: quoted from The Miracle Healings of Bruno Groening, p. 34]

            By the time Lina came to the end of the article, her hands – and, consequently, the newspaper – were shaking so much that she had to lay the paper on her lap, or else it would have fluttered off like a butterfly on the afternoon breeze. She noticed the same tingling in her hands that she’d felt when reading the first article three days earlier, and then she became aware of something else: a subtle sensation in both her feet.  Not a tingling, as in her hands, but a light fizziness. A barely-perceptible effervescence. Then she noticed a slight feeling of being weak in the knees. If this had happened under other circumstances, such as before she’d had her accident, she might have been frightened by it.  But not now.  It was a feeling, after all!  In her feet and in her knees!  Feeling! At the same time, a deep joy rushed into her heart, and she sensed the same underlying deep calm she’d experienced after reading the first article a few days earlier.

            Lina glanced down at her hands and turned them this way and that, as if she might be able to discover some visual clue for the source of the tingling sensation. But her hands looked the same as they always did.  So did her feet, when she pulled up her skirt to examine them, too. Of course, she had her shoes on, so she couldn’t tell for sure. She’d have to check them at bedtime to see whether anything was different about them…

            Then Lina picked up the newspaper once more and reread the story.  She noted with particular excitement that fact that Groening didn’t just talk to people from the balcony of that house he was staying at in Herford. He also met with people inside, individuals, evidently. People like her, who were sick, who couldn’t walk…

            Lina felt her chest constrict, as if a tiny cry was about to try to burst out of it.  How did they get to do that? she thought. That man, he waited nine hours to get into the house. Lina bit her lower lip and let her gaze wander to the path that led into the forest, while her thoughts traveled to that house in Herford. She imagined the corridor, and the old man sitting there, and Groening speaking to him.  The moment of healing in the corridor.  The stairs he had then climbed up and down, up and down.  I’d wait nine hours.  I’d wait more than that.  But how to get there? Then she remembered what she’d told Kristina a few nights earlier, when she’d shown her the first newspaper clipping, when they’d talked about God and how He could help them.  She’d said to Kristina, “I think it starts with our own wish. Like the swallow’s wish to fly free.”  And here was the old man whose “wish to live had been so strongly awakened in him.”  At that moment, Lina felt that the wish to live had also been strongly awakened in her, along with another wish:  I will go to Herford and see Bruno Groening!

            Lina took out her sewing scissors and resolutely cut the article from the newspaper. She folded it and placed it inside her apron pocket, next to the original piece about the “miracle doctor”.  Over supper later that afternoon, she animatedly related the tale – also gleaned from that day’s page three – of the dispute between their client Mr. Kropp and a belligerent town resident who’d refused to pay an extra postal charge.  Everyone found the story amusing, but not as amusing as Lina’s bright face and cheery voice had led them to expect it would be.  And Lina didn’t bother to explain a thing when Ulrich, seeing the neatly-trimmed edges of the newspaper where she had evidently cut something out, asked what she’d found there of interest. “Oh, just this and that,” she replied casually as she rolled herself over to the sink, her lap full of dishes from the supper table.

*          *          *

            “’Just this and that?’” Kristina asked Lina with a laugh, as they were taking their evening stroll down the road that ran along the forest.  The evening had cooled off, and Kristina adjusted the shawl around Lina’s shoulders. “Is there something new?” Lina’s mood seemed so much lighter than it had been a few evenings back, that Kristina knew it was all right to ask.

            “Oh, yes!” Lina replied animatedly, and waved her hand energetically in the direction of the forest entrance a ways down the road. Kristina correctly gathered from this gesture that Lina wanted Kristina to push her to what they now both thought of as their spot. She’d the wait until they were seated there before sharing her news.

            Once Kristina positioned Lina’s wheelchair at the edge of the path opening and took her seat on the fallen log opposite her friend, Lina pulled the fresh newspaper clipping from her pocket and read it to Kristina.

            “You have to go there!” The words burst from Kristina’s mouth as soon as Lina finished reading.  But then, realizing that it wasn’t her place to tell Lina what to do, she placed her hands demurely in her lap, but she clasped them together so tightly that the knuckles grew white.  In her excitement for her friend, though, she couldn’t keep quiet for long.

            “You want to go, don’t you?” she asked gently, looking at Lina intently.

            Lina immediately nodded and met Kristina’s eyes. “More than anything, Kristina.”

            “Because you have your wish,” Kristina replied.

            “That’s right. I do!” Lina smiled.  “I just don’t know how to go about it.” She paused and looked into the forest, as if following that path with her eyes could show her how to make her way to Herford.

            Kristina studied her friend’s face and saw the hope there, and the doubt that accompanied it, the fear of moving ahead. “I don’t know, either.  But Lina, think of it this way. If God hears our wishes, our deepest wishes, and He wants them to come true – which I believe He does – then don’t you think He will help?”

            “I haven’t thought things through that far,” Lina told her with a smile.  “What do you do with a wish once you have it?” She paused. “And what if it fails? I’ve already failed at being able-bodied. I might fail at being healed, too.”

            “You can’t start thinking like that!” Now Kristina looked into the forest, too. “Maybe it’s the way you said the other night. It starts with the wish.  And then God helps.”

            “But don’t we need human help, too, Kristina?  After all, we can’t walk all the way to Herford, with you pushing me along the road.” She looked at her friend and laughed, but then fell silent. Maybe I’ve made assumptions I shouldn’t…

            But Kristina seemed to have read her mind, and she was secretly relieved to realize that Lina wanted to include her in whatever plan was beginning to take shape. “Oh, don’t worry, dear one. If it comes to that, we’ll do it! But don’t you think we could start by mentioning it to your parents?  Or your grandmother, at least? Don’t you think she would want that for you?”  Kristina was about to add that, surely, Renate wanted Lina to be able to board the ship to America on her own, two legs.  But she thought better of mentioning this.

            Lina shrugged and looked down at her hands, which had once again begun tingling as she read the article to Kristina.  The thought of sharing all of this with her mother, or even her grandmother, terrified her.  She knew that Kristina was probably right, but this new wish felt so fragile to her, as if it could be ground to dust by the slightest opposition from those around her.  She wasn’t sure she was up to having her hopes dashed.  It was hard enough the day when she fell out of her wheelchair in the yard. She didn’t want to go through that kind of humiliation again.  She raised her eyes to meet her friend’s.  “But what if they laugh at me, Kristina? Poo-poo the idea?  I don’t think I could bear that.”

            Kristina reached out and took Lina’s hand.  “Do you think you could bear the rest of your life in this chair? Could you bear that any better?”

            Lina’s eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head.

            Kristina squeezed Lina’s hand in both of hers. “Then it’s settled.  Tomorrow we’ll find a time to talk with your mother and grandmother.  I’ll be right there with you.  Assuming you want me to be…”

            Lina nodded.  “Yes, I do.”  She freed one hand so that she could wipe away the tears that were flowing freely down her cheeks now.  “But Kristina, what if they do laugh at the idea? What do we do then?”

            “Then I get myself a pair of good, sturdy walking shoes,” Kristina replied with a smile.  “You seem to have forgotten that I walked halfway across Germany to get here. Herford would be a mere stroll for me!” Then, seeing Lina smile in response, she stood up and took her position behind the wheelchair to begin their walk back to the house.

*          *          *

            Lina found her moment – and her voice – the next morning.  Ethel was just finishing submerging the laundry in the two large kettles on the stove, while Renate cut up meat from two rabbits, in preparation for making a stew for supper.  Lina sat at the big kitchen table, shaping pieces of dough into the rolls that would accompany the rabbit stew. And Kristina? She had just come back into the house after collecting eggs from the hens.  She’d just set the wicker basket down on the table, when Lina began speaking.

            “Mama? Grandma?” She waited until both Ethel and Renate turned in her direction before continuing.  “I’d like to talk with you about something.”

            Ethel waved her arms in that wing-like way of moving she had as she wiped her hands dry on the towel tucked into her apron pocket.  Renate laid down the carving knife and smoothed her skirt.  They could tell that Lina wanted their full attention. But they weren’t so sure how she felt about Kristina being there. Mother and daughter looked discretely toward Kristina and then back to Lina.

            “It’s all right,” Lina reassured them. “I asked Kristina to be here for this, too.”

            Renate and Ethel sat down at the table. “What is it?” they asked, nearly in unison.

            Lina pulled the two newspaper clippings from her apron, then passed one to Renate, and the other to Ethel.  Then she patted the seat of the chair next to her and nodded to Kristina, who sat down and rested her hands in her lap, not sure where to look while the women opposite her were reading.  She didn’t want to seem adversarial, just supportive of Lina…

            Ethel finished first – she’d received the shorter, more recent of the two articles.  But she didn’t say anything right away, preferring to wait for her mother to read all the way through the other piece.

            Of course, from the first moment they glanced at the newspaper clippings Lina handed them, both Renate and Ethel surmised what Lina wanted to talk with them about.

            “We’ve been wondering when you would mention this to us,” Ethel said, but her face betrayed no hint of how she felt about the topic at hand.

            Lina’s mouth gaped. “You have?” she asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.  “But… You mean you already know about Bruno Groening?”  It took only a few seconds for the initial surprise she’d felt upon hearing her mother’s words to shift first into relief, and then hope.

            “Lorena saw this first one, too,” Renate said, laying the clipping onto the table in front of her.  She held its edges with one hand and smoothed it out with the other, looking at the photo of Bruno Groening as she spoke.  Then she raised her gaze to meet Lina’s. “She read it and told me about it.”

            “And?” Lina asked expectantly. She was still feeling stunned by this revelation. But now, an element of anger was beginning to creep in, too.

            “Well,” Renate said, glancing over at Ethel, who nodded, “I told your mother about it…”

            “And we talked…” Ethel continued.

            “And?” Lina asked once more, and a frown came to her face. She looked over at Kristina, who was doing her best to keep her face neutral. She didn’t really want to be drawn into the conversation, but she did want to show Lina that she was on her side.  She reached over and placed her hand on Lina’s.

            Renate let out a deep sigh. “Now, Lina, dear…”

            Lina knew from experience that when her grandmother began a sentence this way, it didn’t bode well. Not for Lina, at least.

            “’Now, Lina dear’ what?” Lina asked, sitting up stiffly in her chair.

            “Lina,” Renate repeated, summoning her inner strength as the Gassmann family matriarch, and reminding herself that she really did know best, “We decided not to mention it to you.”

            “And why was that?” Lina’s voice was dry and her gaze sharp as she stared at her grandmother.

            Smoothing the newspaper clipping once more, Renate began to explain. “We…” – and here she motioned to Ethel with her free hand –  “We felt it would only give you false hope. And Lord  knows you don’t need that!”

            Lina’s mouth dropped open again. She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach.  “False hope? Grandma, I’ve had no hope for the past four years.  Here is a man –“

            “Perhaps a charlatan!” Ethel put in, leaning toward her daughter. “You can’t be too careful.  Someone comes along and sways a crowd, and…”

            “Perhaps a charlatan?” Lina responded, her voice rising now along with her anger. “On the strength of that perhaps – when you have no evidence of that, by the way – you decided not to mention it to me?”

            “We felt that was best,” Renate repeated flatly.

            “I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” Lina said. Without even realizing it, she began rocking her wheelchair back and forth, and each time she rolled it forward, the front edge of the armrests tapped against the table’s edge. “Why do you get to decide what’s best for me? Was all that talk about free will just for show? Was it, Mama?”

            Ethel was swaying forward and backwards in her chair now, as if in subtle tune with her daughter’s movements. “We just want to protect you, Lina. Surely you can understand that?”

            “But what makes you so sure I need protecting from Mr. Groening?” Lina responded in a challenging tone.  Then she gestured at the clippings.  “Do you not believe that these people were really healed? Do you not believe it’s possible?”

            Here Ethel stopped swaying. She suddenly felt transported back to that awful suppertime conversation in 1921, when Uncle Ewald told them the tale of how a young boy named Bruno supposedly healed the young German soldier.  She recalled the heated conversation with Hans about faith and healing and belief in God and His ability to heal.  The look of recollection and shock on Ethel’s face stopped Lina just as she was about to launch her next salvo.

            “Mama, what is it?” She took her hands off the wheelchair wheels and leaned over, resting her elbows on the table and stared at her mother across the table. “What is it?”

            Ethel glanced at Renate, but the matriarch’s face gave no sign that she knew what had just occurred to Ethel. 

In fact, Renate knew full well what was going through Ethel’s mind. Really, she was surprised that Ethel hadn’t made the connection a week earlier, when Renate showed her the clipping Lorena brought over. Renate had been hoping that Ethel wouldn’t recall that the boy in the 1921 story was also named Bruno.  The last thing Renate wanted was to dredge all that up again. They all knew what that conversation about faith and healing and God had led to. Don’t say it, she silently willed Ethel. Leave it be. But then Ethel spoke.

“Lina,” she began, reaching across the table to take her daughter’s hand, “this Bruno Groening… This isn’t the first time I – we – have heard of him.”

“What?”

Even Kristina leaned forward now, in spite of herself. “You knew about him?”

Ethel nodded. Renate, realizing that a floodgate was about to be flung open, took a deep breath and nodded. Then, still looking at the clipping on the table before her, she absently waved a hand at Ethel. Go on, then. You’ve started it. Might as well get it all out.

“You know about how your Uncle Hans left in 1921, emigrated to Illinois in America to work with our Uncle Ewald?” Then she added, for Kristina’s benefit, “Ewald is my uncle, my mother’s brother. Hans is my brother, the one whose daughter is getting married.”

Both Kristina and Lina nodded, but said nothing. Lina was barely even breathing at this point. She was so full of surprise in anticipation of finally learning what her mother and grandmother had steadfastly refused to tell her all these years: the real reason Hans left for America.

“All right, now, how to tell this in as few words as possible?” Ethel mused. She paused briefly, to collect her thoughts, then continued.

“Well, Uncle Ewald came back from America to visit.  It’d been, what, fifteen years since he’d left?”

“Seventeen,” Renate corrected.

“Seventeen, then.” Ethel was looking past Lina to the opposite wall, aware of the fact that she was sitting in the very same chair she’d occupied during that fateful supper. “So, I don’t recall how we got onto the topic, but that doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that Uncle Ewald said that one of their neighbors had a nephew, back here in Germany –“

“In Danzig,” Renate put in.

“Yes, that’s right, Danzig.”

Now Kristina’s ears perked up. Danzig? Where she and Ingrid had sailed from? Something occurred to her, but she pushed the thought aside. She didn’t want to miss any of Ethel’s story.

“So, there was the nephew, a soldier, in a military hospital. Something with his leg, wasn’t it, Mama?”

Renate smiled and waved her hand. “I don’t recall what the problem actually was now. I recall that Ewald went back and forth about it.  Wasn’t sure himself, at first, and now I don’t remember what the true diagnosis was.”

Ethel laughed then, too. “Yes, that’s right! But in any case, it was serious, as I recall. Right, Mama?”

“Yes, that wasn’t in dispute,” Renate said, smoothing the part of the clipping that showed Bruno’s face.  “The doctors’ treatment hadn’t been working, and this nephew –“

“Leo!” Ethel exclaimed. “Yes, his name was Leo!”

“Yes, Leo,” Renate confirmed. “The doctors said that they’d have to amputate Leo’s leg the next day.

Lina couldn’t help herself. “And what happened?” She was leaning forward now, her long braid in her right hand. She’d wrapped it around her wrist and was twisting it back and forth.

“Well, as Ewald’s neighbor told it, there was this woman who came to visit the soldiers now and then.  And she usually brought her little boy with her.  His name was Bruno.”  She paused, looking from Lina’s face to Kristina’s, but neither said anything.  Too early in the story for them to react, Ethel decided. And she went on. “So this little boy, Bruno, goes over to talk to Leo, and he says to Leo, ‘I wish for you…’ Mama, do you remember what he said?”

Renate nodded. Every detail of that suppertime conversation had been etched into her memory, and she spoke out the young Bruno’s words to the women at the table, so softly that they had to strain to hear. “‘May you be totally healthy soon, by God’s grace’. That’s what he said to him.”

“And what happened?” Lina asked in a whisper.  Ethel could tell from her face, and from the look that she and Kristina exchanged, that now they’d gotten it.

“The next day, Leo’s leg was perfectly healthy. The doctors didn’t have to amputate it after all.” Ethel stopped there.  She knew that she needn’t say any more. There was plenty in what she’d already said for Lina to ponder. 

Indeed, Lina was sitting stock still in her chair, except for the absentminded twirling of her braid, as she sought to put all the pieces together in her mind. Finally, she asked, “Just how old was this Bruno then? What year was that?”

“It was just after the war ended,” Ethel told her, “the Great War. The boy was ten or eleven, Uncle Ewald thought.”

Lina reached over and took hold of the clipping in front of Renate, the one with the photo of Bruno Groening.  “Thirty-one years ago, the story with Leo.  If he was ten or eleven then, he’d be, what, early forties?” She brought the paper up to her face and studied the man in the photo.  Again, she felt the familiar tingling –in her fingers at first, and then streaming through her whole body.  “Could it be him?” she asked, showing the photo to Kristina, as if her friend could tell her the answer.  Then she turned her gaze to her mother and grandmother. “Could this be the same Bruno?”

“I thought so,” Renate answered slowly, “as soon as Lorena showed me this article.  I remember Ewald’s story so clearly, and I just knew this was the same person.”

Lina turned her eyes to her mother. “And you? Did you realize it, too?”

Ethel shook her head. “Not until just now, when we started talking. Maybe that seems strange, but it’s true.” She gently took the clipping from Lina’s hands and took a good look at Bruno Groening.  “To think he’s who we were all arguing about that day.”

“What day?” Lina asked, still not understanding what Bruno Groening had to do with her Uncle Hans’ emigration.

“The day we had the big argument about God and faith and healing and whether God can heal us if we want it enough,” Renate told her in a resigned voice.

“Or if someone else believes strongly enough that He can do that,” Ethel added.

“So, if I understand what you’re saying,” Kristina asked gently, “Mrs. Gassmann’s brother Ewald told about the boy Bruno, and the idea is that Leo and his family believed that it was Bruno who healed Leo.  Is that it?”

Renate and Ethel both nodded.

Now Kristina noticed a tingling in her hands, slight at first, but growing in intensity.  She stopped talking and gazed at her fingers in surprise, wondering what this sensation was. She had no idea that Lina, sitting next to her, was experiencing the same thing, only more strongly.

“But Grandma,” Lina persisted, “I still don’t understand how the story about Bruno and Leo is related to Uncle Hans leaving.”  Lina herself was surprised to hear this remark pop out of her mouth. After all, what she wanted most was to keep talking about Bruno, to convince her mother and grandmother that she just had to go see him. At the same time, though, she also sensed that if she didn’t get to the bottom of the Hans question now, when the topic was on the table – for the first time in her life! – then she might never get the chance again.

Renate didn’t answer at first. She let her gaze drift to where Kristina was sitting – Hans’ old seat. She let her eyes rest in that direction for a brief period. The other women at the table supposed that she was reaching far back into the recesses of her memory, to the same spot whence she had retrieved Bruno’s words to Leo, to find the answer to Lina’s question.  But the truth was, Renate had no answer.

“I can’t really say,” she told them finally.

Even Ethel looked shocked by this answer. “Mama, really?” she asked.  “How can that be?  How can you not know?”  Mama has always known everything…

“We never talked about it, Hans and I,” Renate explained.  “Or your father and I,” she said, looking at Ethel.  “Honestly, I don’t believe Hans ever told your father his reasons.  He certainly didn’t tell me.” She went back to looking in the direction of where Kristina was seated, but didn’t say any more.

Lina was entirely dissatisfied with this answer. I’ve waited my whole life to find out about this, and Grandma says she doesn’t know?? “Didn’t he tell someone? Maybe Uncle Ewald?” She looked back and forth between Ethel and Renate.

“Maybe he did,” Renate said slowly, finally shifting her gaze to her granddaughter.  “But if he did, Ewald never shared that with me.  Or with Ulrich. At least as far as I know.” Now the other women noticed that a thin layer of bitterness had crept into Renate’s voice. None of them wanted to poke at that layer, lift it up to discover what lay underneath.

“Mama,” Lina tried, “What do you think? What about the story about Bruno and Leo could have upset him so much that he up and decided to leave the country? That seems…”

“Crazy?” Ethel asked.  “It does.  I think we’ve all asked ourselves that question since 1921. Me, all I can say is that I hinted – we were talking about whether God will grant a healing if the person who’s praying believes – and I hinted, or, rather, just posed the possibility, that Hans didn’t believe God could heal someone if a person has strong faith.”

“No, Ethel,” Renate said, coming back into herself. “‘Maybe you don’t really believe He exists’. That’s what you said to him.”

Ethel sighed. “Yes, that was it, Mama.  He took it very personally, as if I was attacking him.”

“He took your remark to mean that if he’d had stronger faith, his leg would have been fully healed.” Renate glanced at Kristina and then added, for her benefit (although Lina didn’t know this fact, either), “He was injured in basic training.”

“Which is not what I meant at all!” Ethel protested, her cheeks reddening as if she were living through the whole conversation again.

“What did you mean?” Lina asked. She was starting to get confused.

“You see,” Ethel said, her hands raised in the air before her, “once Ewald told Leo’s story, we were all talking about whether what had happened was possible –“

“What exactly do you mean?” Lina broke in, her brows knitted.

“Oh, that the boy Bruno had asked God to heal Leo –“

“When he said, ‘May you be totally healthy soon, by God’s grace’,” Renate interjected.

“And that that’s what happened,” Ethel went on. ” That Leo was healed overnight because Bruno prayed for his healing with such faith and belief.”

“But…” Lina began again, “then what was the disagreement you all had about that?”

Ethel closed her eyes and spoke, as if she needed every ounce of concentration in order to present the situation clearly. “Hans doubted that someone’s faith could be so strong that God would grant a healing. And then I had to respond, and that’s when I said, Maybe you don’t really believe He exists.”

“And that was all there was to it?” Lina asked, thinking she must have missed something.

“Well, basically, yes,” Renate said.

“But not entirely,” Ethel said with a sigh.  “Hans asked me whether I believed such a thing was possible, and I said –“

“’I sure want to be able to believe,’” Renate put in. “That’s what you said.”

Ethel nodded, and then fell silent.

Kristina and Lina exchanged glances again. Then Kristina, surprised at her own boldness, asked a question.

“Do you think that’s why he left? Because his faith was called into question?”

Renate spread her hands out before her.  “As I said, I can’t say. I don’t know why he left.  All I know is that everything was going just fine until that whole topic came up, and once it did, things fell apart.”  She pointed a finger at the newspaper clipping. “Which is why we have stayed away from such discussions since 1921.”

Lina opened her mouth to say that this made no sense, since they had, in fact, not stayed away from them. What is it we’ve been talking about these past couple of weeks, if not that? But then Ethel caught her eye, and Lina realized from this non-verbal signal that the window of opportunity to discuss both Hans and Bruno Groening had slammed shut, at least as far as her grandmother was concerned. So she said nothing.  But as Renate stood up and turned her back on the table to return to carving up the rabbits for the stew, Ethel leaned across the table, gave Lina’s hand a quick squeeze, and whispered to her, “We’ll talk tonight, at bed time.”

The rest of this day passed more slowly than any day Lina could remember, except perhaps for the earliest period following her accident, when the passage of the hours had been marked only by pain and immobility.  Her evening walk with Kristina couldn’t come to an end too soon for her taste, since it meant that her daily routine was nearly over.  She didn’t even ask to go sit by the forest’s edge, as Kristina had expected she might. So, they talked only briefly as they walked, with both of them speaking in an unnaturally loud voice, so as to be heard by the other.  This arrangement didn’t lend itself to a thoughtful, subtle discussion.

“What do you think your mother will say?” Kristina asked her, the volume of her voice at odds with the gentleness with which she wanted to pose the question.

Lina shrugged. “It could go either way.”

“I know what you mean.  I couldn’t tell whether she’s sympathetic or not.  Certainly, she knows why you showed them the clippings.”

“Yes, without a doubt.  Especially since they’ve already seen the first one, thanks to Aunt Lorena.”  Kristina couldn’t see Lina’s face, but she didn’t have to in order to know that her friend was frowning.

“What do you think about them knowing already?” she asked softly, as if not wanting to intrude on Lina’s thoughts.  “And not telling you?”

“What did you say?” Lina replied, turning her head. “You’ll have to speak louder, Kristina!”

“I’m sorry.  I wasn’t sure you wanted to talk about it…”

“If I didn’t want to, I just wouldn’t have answered you,” Lina told her, and Kristina could see the corner of her mouth rise into a smile.

“All right, then, I’ll keep shouting!” Kristina joked.  “I said, what did you think about them already knowing. And not telling you?”

“At first I thought, oh, that’s wonderful! Now I won’t have to explain anything, won’t have to convince them. We can move right to talking about how to get me to Herford.” She paused.  “But then, I saw how my grandmother dropped her eyes to the table.  That is not like her at all.”

“I thought not,” Kristina said.

“Yes, you know her well enough to know that she’s one to look you straight in the eye and tell you exactly what she thinks. Exactly how things are going to be.”

“That’s Mrs. Gassmann, all right!” Kristina laughed. “But couldn’t that be a good sign? That maybe she’s not sure of herself?”

Lina shook her head. Kristina could see that with her right hand, Lina was twirling the end of her braid thoughtfully.  “No. I think that meant that she’d already made up her mind, and she knew her decision would upset me.”

“But even that is a departure from her usual behavior. You said it yourself!” Kristina said, leaning forward with her hands still on the handles of the wheelchair.

“That’s true.” Lina paused. “To tell you the truth, Kristina, my mind is in such a whirl, I’m not sure what to think.” Here she took hold of the wheel rims and turned the chair around so that she was facing Kristina. “I was so upset that they knew about Mr. Groening but didn’t tell me. That they thought they could make that decision for me!” She let go of her braid and slapped the arm rests of the chair with her hands.  “What gives them the right?”

Seeing that Lina was tearing up, Kristina leaned down and hugged her friend as best she could.  “I know. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?”  She could feel Lina shaking her head in response.  “Why don’t you just wait and see what your mama has to say tonight?” she suggested.  “Then we can figure out what to do next, once you know what she’s thinking.”

Kristina pulled back a bit, and Lina began drying her eyes with her handkerchief. “Yes. I guess that’s all we can do.”  Lina patted the armrests with her hands and then laid them on the wheel rims.  “Come on,” she said to Kristina. “I’ve got to move, get some of this feeling inside me out of me, or I’ll never be able to sleep. Race you!”

            With these words, and a mischievous smile, Lina braced herself against the back of her seat and began propelling her chair forward.  Kristina was caught by surprise, but she knew this was a good sign: Perhaps Lina was guarding a bit of hope inside her that her mother and grandmother might yet agree to take her to see Bruno Groening.  Kristina watched as Lina began picking up speed and rolled down the road in the direction of the house. Then she saw that, after about fifty yards, Lina abruptly spun herself around and raced back to Kristina, who was moving along at just a walking pace.

            “Come on!” Lina laughed, her face flushed.  “You’re not even trying!”

            This was not the first time they had played this game, and each time, Kristina would shuffle along at first, waiting for Lina to double back for her.  Then the race was really on, with Kristina running full tilt and Lina’s arms a blur at her sides, as she spun the chair’s wheels as fast as she could. On the occasions when Lina reached the lane to the house first, it was never for lack of Kristina trying.  Tonight was one of those times.

*          *          *

            “Mama,” Lina asked as Ethel was brushing out her daughter’s braid.  “Why didn’t you and Grandma want to tell me you already read that article?”

            Ethel had kept quiet about this subject while helping Lina get ready for bed, in the hope that her daughter might have decided not to revisit the conversation from that morning.  It was not a talk Ethel was relishing. But once Lina brought it up, she couldn’t very well stay silent. After all, she’d been the one to say they could talk at bedtime.

            Ethel paused in her brushing, choosing her words. “We didn’t want to call your attention to this Groening if he’s some kind of fake. Just think, Lina, how awful it would be for you to go to him, only to find out he’s like some swindler, or carnival snake oil salesman.”

            “But think how awful it would be, Mama,” Lina replied softly, “if he can genuinely heal people, and I never get the chance to see him. And maybe be healed, too.” 

            Ethel nodded, and Lina could see the nod in the mirror atop the dresser at the other side of the room.  But Ethel said nothing.

            “And just think, Mama, how awful it would be for me to sit in this chair for the rest of my life. Isn’t it worth taking a chance?”

            “We just don’t want you to get hurt,” Ethel said, her voice full of emotion. 

            “I already have been hurt,” Lina reminded her, her tone chilly.

            Ethel rested her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “All the more reason to be protective of you! Grandma and I would never forgive ourselves if we took you to see him and nothing came of it. Can you see that?”

            “I don’t know,” Lina replied truthfully. “When I heard that you already knew about him and decided not to say anything to me, it felt like a real betrayal. I’m so sorry to say that, Mama.”  In fact, her heart was in her throat.  She had never dared to say anything remotely unkind to her parents or grandparents, and now she was accusing her mother of betraying her.

            “It’s all right, Sweetheart,” Ethel said quietly.  “It’s so hard to know what’s right to do.  Unless you’re Grandma, of course,” she added with a smile. “Grandma always seems to know exactly what to do.”

            Lina smiled at that, too.  “But you, Mama. Do you agree with her about this? Especially since this Bruno was able to help that boy Leo?”

            “Assuming it’s even the same Bruno,” Ethel replied, cautiously. 

            “But don’t you think it is?” Lina asked, turning her head as far as she could so that she could see her mother’s face.

            “I do, actually,” Ethel told her.  “I didn’t remember about Bruno and Leo – I mean, about the boy’s name being Bruno – until we were talking about it this morning.” She paused, not sure whether she should add what she was thinking. But then she did continue.  “And you should know, Lina, that it wasn’t just Leo that the boy Bruno helped.  There were lots of injured soldiers in that hospital. He helped a lot of them.”

            “You see?” Lina cried.  “It must be the same Bruno!  Oh, Mama, I want so much to go see him!”

Ethel had known in her heart that it would come to this tonight, and she had been wrestling with herself all day.  It was as if she was squarely back in 1921 again, at the supper table.  Now, as she stood behind Ethel, she could clearly see Hans right across the table from her – in her mind’s eye – and she clearly heard him ask his question: “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?” She also clearly remembered her reply, all of it: “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.”

“Mama?” Lina asked, jostling her hand.  “Mama? Did you hear me?”

Ethel nodded. Of course she had heard her.  But she had to finish wrestling with herself before she could answer.  It’s not enough to want to believe any more. I have to either believe or not believe. And in that moment, Ethel made the decision to believe. For Lina’s sake. And possibly for her own, too.

“I want you to see him, too, Dear.”

*          *          *

            Renate dreaded the next day’s suppertime more than any other, even the one back in 1921. She couldn’t have dreaded that one, after all, since she’d had no idea what would ensue. But today… She knew the same questions would come up on this day as had done back then, and she blamed herself. If only I hadn’t allowed things to go so far the past couple of weeks.  If only I hadn’t let Lina go on about God’s will and God’s plan. That’s what Renate was thinking to herself this morning as she sliced the potatoes and put them into a pan to bake with some bacon and onion. 

            But in her heart, Renate knew that she couldn’t have stopped all of this from happening. She recognized that this condemnation was a thought from her old self.  Not that she knew what her new self was.  But she had managed to hold onto the deep, newfound sense that she really was working with God now, instead of trying to handle and figure out everything on her own. Somehow, now, she was able to remind herself of this, which meant that she could summon a bit of courage in regard to supper. 

            She couldn’t imagine – with her mind – how it could be a good thing for Lina to go see this Bruno Groening, for the reasons Ethel had laid out to Lina. What if he’s a swindler?  Then there was also her general aversion to situations that had a lot of emotion connected to them, and uncertainty. She so much preferred everything to be quiet, and in order, and stable. But at the same time, there it was, inside her: a quiet voice. This voice – was it the voice of God? – urged her to overcome her fear that another 1921-like situation would develop, and to embrace the plan that Ethel had broached with her the night before:  They would find a way to get Lina to Herford to see Bruno Groening.

            But before they could formulate a way to make this happen, the idea had to be presented to the whole family. Not for discussion. Renate had not changed that much! No.  As with all other decisions involving the family (the domestic side of their life, remember, since Ulrich handled the business end of things), Renate would simply announce what she had decided. And everyone would fall into line.  That was her fervent hope.  By “everyone”, Renate really meant Viktor and Marcus and Peter.  She had already spoken to Ulrich, who, though surprised, knew better than to throw up roadblocks where Renate had a clear direction laid out in her mind.  Ethel had spoken to Viktor, too, Renate knew. But how had he reacted? Ethel didn’t elaborate on their conversation when Renate asked her about it after breakfast. All she said was, “He won’t stop us.” That was not as enthusiastic a response as Renate was hoping for, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. As suppertime grew closer and closer, Renate unexpectedly found herself whispering, “Dear God, please give me the right words.”

            Renate waited to share the plan until everyone at the table had eaten their first helping of sausage and potatoes.  Let everyone at least have something in their stomachs first.  She began by saying that Lorena had given her a newspaper clipping about this man named Bruno Groening.  She even produced the clipping – the original article Lorena had given her, since Lina wouldn’t let her own copy leave her side – and laid it out on the table for anyone who wanted to peruse it themselves. 

            “Ethel and I discussed it,” Renate told them all.  “We thought this Groening might be able to help Lina. We talked with her about it yesterday, and she felt that way, too.  So, we decided to take her to Herford and try to see him.”

            Kristina glanced at Lina, concerned at first that her friend might object to how Renate was presenting the story of the way Bruno Groening had come into their lives.  But she could tell by the slight smile on Lina’s face that she appreciated her grandmother’s artistry.  Indeed, for perhaps the first time in her life, Lina truly understood how gifted Renate was. She could discern a larger picture and then paint it for her family so that her words would highlight what she wanted them to notice, while laying a gentle shadow over what she wished for them not to see.  All of this she did with the aim of presenting a situation in the way which would be most aesthetically pleasing – and convincing – for her family.

            Thus, here, when explaining the situation to the family, she summarized the success Bruno Groening had had in his healing work, pointedly retelling the story of the man who came to see Mr. Groening with canes and left without them.  If you didn’t know she’d initially been against taking Lina to Herford, you never would have guessed it, to hear her now.  As we have seen already, once Renate came round to an idea, she held on to it as tenaciously as a dog who comes across a bone in a neighbor’s yard and then proceeds to defend it as if she was the original owner.

            Those who already knew about the plan – Viktor, Ethel, Ulrich, Lina, and Kristina – listened quietly to what Renate had to say, each with his or her own thoughts regarding it.  Peter felt both shocked by his grandmother’s words, and intrigued.  This didn’t sound at all like the kind of plan she would come up with: Renate, who, like a sheep dog, preferred her flock to be either in the meadow or the paddock, all together, and not wandering off somewhere unfamiliar. But when he cast a glance across the table at Lina and saw her face beginning to glow, he knew that something almost magical must have taken place to shift their grandmother into a frame of mind – or heart – in which she was willing to take a risk of this type. To be clear: He had no doubt that there was a risk.  But that look of hope and joy on Lina’s face was enough for him.  If there was something to be hoped for, let her hope.

            It was – not surprisingly, somehow – Marcus who responded first to Renate’s announcement that Lina would go to see Bruno Groening.  To his credit, he let Renate say her piece before going on the attack.  Most likely, he felt the pressure of the stern gaze his father was directing at him from across the table.  He understood that look.  It was not unlike the feeling that the vice grip of Viktor’s arm around his shoulder in the barn a couple of weeks earlier had produced.  And Viktor’s words echoed in his mind: “It’s not worth it, Marcus.”  “But,” Marcus thought stubbornly, as the anger rose in his chest, “It is worth it. I have to speak up.  I have to.” And he did.

            “Why is it,” he started in, as soon as Renate stopped speaking, “that when Lina wants something, everyone bows and scrapes to make it happen, but when Marcus wants something, we do ‘what’s best for the family’, and not for Marcus?  Can someone explain that to me?” He furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes and looked in turn from one family member to the next.

            “That’s not what’s going on here, Marcus,” Ethel replied calmly. “It’s just that –“

            “Oh, that is what’s going on, Mama!” Marcus retorted, not even bothering to turn and look around Lina to try to find her gaze. Instead, he directed his eyes to Kristina, hoping to find support.  But Kristina’s eyes were on her plate, as she strategically pursued a potato in the hope of staying out of this family discussion.

            Renate straightened herself up in her chair, smoothed her apron skirt, and then tapped her right forefinger on the table near Marcus’ elbow.  “It’s been decided, Marcus,” she said in a voice that was both stern and kind. “And I don’t see that this is anything but good for all of us.”

            Marcus looked stunned. “You don’t? You think dragging my crippled sister to a charlatan will be nothing but ‘good for all of us’? Are you all blind?”  He looked at Viktor.  “And you agreed to this?” he nearly shouted.

            Viktor looked hard at Marcus, trying to discern whether the young man across from him was actually feeling some concern for Lina’s welfare, or whether this was a calculated ploy.  The latter seemed unlikely to him, but perhaps he underestimated Marcus’ ability to think on his feet when presented with a threatening situation.

            “So, you’re worried only about that?” he asked calmly.  “About Lina being disappointed? Or misled?”

            “And about this family pouring money we don’t have to take her to see this swindler who will undoubtedly bleed us dry with pleas for more and bigger payments.”

            “He doesn’t accept any money for his work,” Ethel told them. “Says what he has is a gift from God, and that he’ll lose it if people pay him.”

            Marcus snorted. “My God, you people are even more gullible than I thought.  It’s bad enough to believe he can heal people – we haven’t even talked about that!  But to believe he doesn’t want to get anything out of it for himself? Come on.  You –”and here he gestured to everyone at the table “- may like to think the best of everyone around you, but the whole world is not like Bockhorn. What makes you think you can trust this… what’s his name?”

            “Bruno Groening,” Lina said quietly.  She wanted to tell him and all the rest of them about what she’d experienced when reading the articles, about the tingling, the joy, the sense of connection with God.  But she couldn’t bring herself to utter one word about it.  She knew Marcus would scoff, and she didn’t think she could bear to be attacked that way right now.  The hope she was feeling was still a very young and tender shoot, so vulnerable to being cut down.  So, instead of speaking, she laid her hand against the newspaper clipping in her apron pocket and focused on gathering strength from it.  Then she looked across the table at her father, hoping he would say something to salvage the situation.

            “If Lina can be healed by going to see this Groening,” Viktor began, glancing at Lina before settling his gaze on Marcus, “then it will be good for everyone in the family.”

Lina felt a twinge in her heart as she had the thought that her father was supporting the plan not out of love for her, but because of a rational assessment of odds and benefits.  But then he gave her another quick look, and, just for a second, she glimpsed love in his eyes.

Upon hearing Viktor’s remark, Ethel, too, at first found his tone business-like and cold. But a second later, she realized that he had carefully calculated how best to achieve Marcus’ acquiescence, and she had to admit that he was insightful. Marcus was likely to sign on to any project if he stood to gain by it.

“With Lina back on her feet, and in the forest,” Viktor went on, “things will change around here.”

Ethel was impressed by Viktor’s dexterity in handling Marcus, but the question remained in her mind (and in everyone else’s, too): Did he really believe Groening might be able to heal Lina, or was he just hedging his bets and supporting the plan most likely to keep things calm in the family? Not that she would condemn him if it was only the latter.  Not necessarily. He’d shown over the years that he was quite capable of acting in ways others would find objectionable, if those actions meant his family would be safe.  Ethel really wanted to know what was motivating him now, but he wasn’t showing his hand, and she hadn’t asked him last night how he really felt.  At that moment, she’d been content that he agreed to do whatever it took to get Lina to Groening.  Now, though, she was back in 1921 again. During that conversation, Viktor hadn’t said whether he believed that little Bruno had healed Leo or not. The most he said was that he’d come to believe in God again once he was on the Gassmann homestead.  Looking at Viktor now, at his cornflower blue eyes that now had much more of an edge to them than they had back in 1921, Ethel wished she could read her husband’s mind.

Viktor, for his part, was thinking of 1921, too, about how he’d thought, during that suppertime conversation, that if anyone was capable of mustering enough faith to believe in Bruno’s healing abilities, it would be Ethel.  The night before, when she told him what Lina wanted to do, he looked at her and saw that the bright light of that faith – which had shone so intensely in her hazel eyes when they first met – had faded some over the past twenty-eight years.  That was partly his fault.  He knew that. But he hoped, deep in his heart, that Ethel still had the ability he’d sensed in her then, that she’d be able to call up her reserves of faith now, at this time when maybe they – including him – needed help more than ever before.  So, he agreed to help, to find a way.  Then they’d all find out how much faith there was in each of them.

First things first, though: Marcus had to be pacified.

“Things will change?” Marcus asked, tilting his head to the side suspiciously. “Just what do you mean?”

Viktor leaned back in his chair and draped one arm over the chairback. “If Lina gets back to being able to work in the forest again, we won’t need you to work here in the business anymore.” That said, he picked up his fork and began to eat the sausage that had been patiently awaiting his attention.

Marcus’ mouth dropped open.  He looked at everyone at the table in turn before replying.  “Are you serious?” he asked quietly, as if afraid to scare the possibility away by asking too loudly, or too enthusiastically.

Viktor just nodded, without even looking up from his plate.  Everyone else was silent, too. Ethel felt a rush of affection for her husband, and pride, even, at how he was handling the situation.  Renate was pushing potatoes onto her fork with her finger, too excited to look at anyone else, for fear of jinxing what seemed on the verge of transpiring. Ulrich was sitting back in his chair, a slight smile on his face, his eyes shining.  The whole situation seemed magical.  Everything hung in the balance here. It floated before all of them in the air, like a circus trapeze artist who’s let go of the swing he’d been holding onto and, after executing a somersault, is hurtling toward the partner who awaits him on the opposite side of the arena, arms outstretched. Will he grasp onto those strong arms, or fall to the hard, unforgiving earth? Lina held her breath and pressed her hand hard against the newspaper clipping in her pocket. Peter was dumbstruck, barely even understanding what was going on, it was all moving so fast.  Kristina and Ingrid, who, despite their four years here, still knew little of the ins and outs of the family dynamic, were as if spellbound, sensing that this moment was of monumental significance for all of them.

Marcus paused, floating in mid-air in the circus tent of the Gassmann-Bunke kitchen, taking in everyone around him once more.  Then he slowly extended his right hand out across the table.  Viktor looked up from his sausage and potatoes. As everyone watched, he calmly wiped his hands on his napkin, then leaned forward, took Marcus’ hand, and shook it. As Viktor wordlessly returned his attention to his meal, Marcus spoke.

“I’m in, then.”

It seemed as if all of them exhaled at once. This sigh of relief filled the room, despite the fact that not a single person in the room knew what now awaited them.

Lina flashed a smile at Viktor and noticed that her hands were trembling. She felt her mother’s arm wrap around her shoulders, and realized that tears were streaming down her face.  Looking across the table to where Kristina sat next to Viktor, she smiled again and mouthed the words, “To Herford. We’re going to Herford.”

*          *          *

            That night, as they got undressed for bed, Ethel walked up behind Viktor and, wrapping her arms around his waist, leaned her head against his back.

            “Thank you,” she said quietly.  “Did you see how happy Lina was?”

            She felt him nod.  He glanced down, and his gaze alighted on the wooden ring on her right hand. He traced the flower on its top – a bit rubbed down by now, after all these years – with his finger.  He recalled how he had worked so carefully and lovingly to carve it, nervous about how Ethel would receive it, and whether she’d accept his proposal. Twenty-eight years ago.  Only twenty-eight years.  It felt like much more than that to him – so much had transpired since the evening he slipped the ring on her finger. So much he wished he could take back. So much he didn’t understand. How did everything come to what it came to? He could see now that he’d made terrible mistakes, committed terrible lapses in judgment, terrible deeds, even. Four years now, since the end of the war, and yet he still carried those burdens – and the lapses that led him to where he ended up during the war. How to make it all right again?

Viktor had been asking himself this question quite often during the past four years. And clearly, he hadn’t yet come up with a compelling answer. Otherwise, he felt, everything in the household, in the family, and in the business would be back in order again. Whatever that means. That’s how untethered he felt now – and had felt for the past four years.  Certainly, he still exuded his old confidence, and was still able to exert a large measure of control here on the homestead. But when Viktor had the time and inclination to reflect on where things were headed for the Gassmanns and Bunkes, he felt very much at a loss regarding what course was best.

Once he came back from the war, Viktor hoped that returning to the physical work in the forest and in workshop would set him back on the right path in short order.  Not that he was quite sure what “the right path” was. That’s how bad things were with Viktor.  All he knew when he separated from the unit he served with during the war, and set foot back on the Gassmann-Bunke homestead, was that he couldn’t muster any sort of tender feeling for anyone: not for Ethel, not for Peter or Marcus, and not even for Lina, with her devastated body.  When he first saw her, he just took in her condition without any emotion whatsoever.  He’d seen worse during his time away.

But don’t think that Viktor was unaware that he felt nothing for any of his loved ones.  He noticed his numbness, and he concluded that it had taken possession of him unnoticed, at some point during the war.  He couldn’t say precisely when. Thinking about it now, which he did do occasionally, he assumed it came on little by little: Most likely, he concluded, the little voice inside him – the one that nudged him to open his heart to those around him who were suffering terribly – just gradually found it more and more difficult to make itself heard amidst the sights and sounds of the suffering he witnessed or inflicted.  For this reason or that, he began shushing that little voice, more and more forcefully, until, finally, he didn’t have to endure hearing it any more.  Or maybe it had even stopped calling out to him.  This last explanation was more frightening to him than the other, somehow, because he knew all along that the small voice was God speaking to him.  What did it really mean, then, that he stopped hearing the voice? Did God give up on me?

That’s what Viktor began asking himself when, after a year, then after two, and three and four years, the voice did not return.  He told himself he’d given it every opportunity to come back.  He was working and living on the homestead again, with his wife and his children and his in-laws.  He recognized now, that he never should have spent that time away in Schweiburg, back in the early thirties.  But you know what they say about hindsight…he told himself. He knew there were still things that needed to be made up for, set right again. At least he’d reached the stage where he wanted to set things right. For all his sincere belief that a man needs to take action and be firm and uncompromising in order to succeed, in order to bring his family life into order, Viktor also felt that this was not entirely the way to go about things now, after the war.  Was it that he saw the limitations of relying on force? That’s unclear.  But what Viktor did see was that the family was not happy, and he understood that the reason for this went far deeper than Lina being crippled. 

He realized this right away, in the summer of 1945, but this understanding wasn’t based in some intuitive, affectionate connection with his family members. Because, to his surprise, Viktor did not experience the burst of love and affection for them that he’d assumed he’d feel when he finally got back home. In fact, he realized that he felt far more distant from his so-called “loved ones” now that they were reunited, than he had at any time during the war.

It wasn’t that he felt particularly connected to his family as he served in a location not so terribly far from home – not so far, in terms, at least, of kilometers. Quite the opposite, actually. The nature of Viktor’s assignment during those years created an unbridgeable emotional and spiritual gulf between him and his family. No loving letters came to him from home: He made it clear to Ethel that it was best not to write, and, instead, to pass verbal messages to him through the underlings who made those deliveries of food and goods the family could sell on the black market.

It wasn’t just concerns about security that led Viktor to make this request of his family. It was also his awareness that he would not be able to bear to read expressions of others’ love for him while he was doing what he was doing. As he saw things – not that he consciously considered this point – such letters would have drawn him into the realm of kindness and affection, and there was no room for that in his wartime heart.  How could love exist alongside killing?

Thus, it wasn’t that Viktor felt a stronger bond of love with his family during the war than he felt now. Back then, he just locked his relatives away in a part of his mind and heart that rested far from his conscious awareness. Only once he got back home did he realize that opening that part of himself back up was not as simple as retracing his steps along the physical road he travelled to get back to the homestead.

  Give it time, Viktor told himself at the beginning – by which he was instructing himself to give time to both his family and himself.  But the situation – the family’s emotional situation – did not improve over time. Certainly, they settled into a routine of caring for Lina. He and Ulrich got the forestry side of the business back on its feet, and Peter did the same for the woodworking.  Marcus, for all his bluster and arrogance, really did provide the essential financial contribution to carry them over from month to month.  Even so, Viktor noticed that as time went on, other families – take Lorena and Stefan and their children – appeared to achieve a stable and even enviable way of life, in the sense that they seemed to have come closer together after the hardships they endured as a family.  But for the Gassmann-Bunkes, the thin, oppressive layer of sadness that Kristina noticed upon arriving in the summer of 1945, just never seemed to fully lift.

Viktor did a very good job of giving the appearance that he had a clear idea of what the family needed to make its way forward. And since his own ideas generally coincided with Renate’s on the home front, and Ulrich’s, as regarded the business, there was no discord when it came to making decisions.  (Not until it came to Marcus, in 1949, that is.)  But Viktor had to strive hard to maintain this veneer of power and competence, because beneath it lay a persistent emptiness, both emotional and spiritual.

Over these past four years, Viktor reflected more than once on how his life had changed after he first arrived on the homestead in the spring of 1921.  He’d felt numb in those days, too, but to only a very slight degree, compared to what he was experiencing now. Back then, what turned his life around was spending time in the forest. That was where, under Ulrich’s tutelage, he discovered God, where he sensed the divine power of God flowing in all the trees and plants and forest creatures he encountered.  And then there was Ethel. She was so full of that divine energy that it seemed to have replaced every drop of anything earthly within her.  Coming to work and live with the Gassmanns, Viktor found both God and the love of God, in the form of his love of Ethel.

After returning from the war, Viktor wanted to regain all of this, and he knew instinctively that the forest was the place to start looking for it.  That was one of the reasons he threw himself into the forestry work with all his might (not with all his heart, mind you, since his heart was not yet up to such a task). He knew God was in there somewhere, or had been before the war, anyway, and he meant to find Him.

That is something that’s easy to say, and easy to want, but not so easily accomplished.  It was during the moments and hours that he spent in the forest, back in the 1920s, alone or with Ulrich, surrounded not by human voices, but by the sounds of the trees and the wind and the birds and the animals, that Viktor came to know God.  He gradually became aware of the ways God spoke to him, through the forest, and through his own body and mind.  He learned how to take in that divine energy that Ethel radiated with her whole being. And although he never attained that level of fullness that he sensed in her, Viktor knew what it felt like when it coursed through his body. He knew the lightness of spirit that came along with it, the joy, the peace. He became well acquainted, too, with the quiet voice that eventually began riding into his heart atop that wave of divine power.  He could sense what it wanted to tell him, translate its message into words when he shared it with others, and be content with just knowing the message when he was keeping it for himself.  It was this voice which he gradually ceased hearing during the war.  Or, rather, if he was going to be honest with himself, Viktor had to admit that he began hearing it less and less way back in the early thirties.

This was what Viktor was seeking in the forest, beginning in the summer of 1945: to feel the divine power streaming through him again, to feel the joy and peace it brought along. And the voice.  The voice that used to guide him, but had stopped. Which he had stopped. But, despite spending hours and hours in the forest, days and days, over the past four years, Viktor still did not feel reconnected to God, to the divine that he had once accessed with such ease.  True, on some days, after a good morning or afternoon of work amongst the trees, a subtle lightness might appear, unexpectedly. He would notice it and seek hungrily to hold onto it, only to feel it drain away once he came out of the forest and glimpsed his crippled Lina and limping Peter.

During these nearly four years, he did not confide anything about his state of mind and spirit to Ethel, or to anyone else, for that matter. He preferred to muddle along on his own, despite the fact that he did not truly want to be alone in solving this problem. He felt the need to preserve his image as the strong, male protector of the family. Ulrich’s near 70 now, for God’s sake!  Someone has to take care for everyone… And so, he trudged along, doing the forestry and woodworking, and toiling on his own in the spiritual sense, too.  At least, he believed himself to be toiling alone.  Why was that? It was because, although he had gone down on his knees in the forest many times and asked God for help, he felt he had not received the wished-for assistance: His heart still felt empty. He still heard no inner voice giving him the guidance he at least knew enough to know he needed. 

Then, finally, one day in late June of 1949, after nearly four years of asking for help, Viktor felt something.

He happened to be out deep in the forest at the time, coincidentally – or perhaps not – near the old treehouse where love had first sprouted between him and Ethel, and where he had given her the carved wooden engagement ring.  The sight of the treehouse caught him by surprise, and he immediately walked over to the old beech tree and laid his hand against its thick bark.  Without even thinking, he laid his axe against the tree trunk. Then he hauled himself up onto the lowest branch (although not as nimbly as he’d done in 1921), and stretched out a hand toward the opening in the side of the treehouse. Is the ladder still there? Could it be?

Improbably, Viktor detected the knot of rope that still tied the ladder to the treehouse floor. He reached his hand as far over the edge and toward the interior of the structure as he could, and pulled on the bit of rope he felt there.  He pulled and pulled, and the ladder, along with the accumulated detritus of years of fallen leaves and beechnuts, tumbled over the side and downward, until the ladder hung, just as it had done so many years earlier.  The difference was, Viktor noted soberly, that he was alone now.  No Ethel below him to impress by clambering up into the treehouse.

Still, clamber he did, but without carefully testing the ladder the way he’d done when Ethel first took him there. And as a result, he slipped and fell a short distance when his left foot tore through a rung that had been weakened and nearly torn through by the ravages of time and weather, or perhaps by the persistent teeth of a mouse looking to soften its nest with the fibers.  But he recovered and was soon resting on his belly on the floor of the treehouse, amongst the leaves and small branches that blanketed it.  He lay that way in silence for a bit, comforted by the firm support of the branches that formed the floor beneath him.  Then, finally, he sat up and scooted backwards until his spine and shoulders came to rest against the trunk of that old, old beech.

He closed his eyes and allowed his palms to rest atop the layer of leaves, decaying ones on the bottom and last fall’s drier ones on the top. Memories of the time he’d spent here with Ethel flooded his mind.  It was like watching a newsreel: the first time she brought him here; the early evening talks they had here as the sun got lower and lower and the light more and more golden; the day in the woods when he understood that he really did love her – that day when he saw how he’d lived his life until then and vowed, No more ploys!; Ethel’s surprise when he gave her the little leather pouch with the wooden ring, and the joy on her face when she realized what it meant, and when she said yes.

As Viktor relived these experiences in his memory, he began to feel a sensation in his heart.  It started as a quiet, dull ache and then grew stronger and stronger, until it felt like someone had taken hold of his sternum and, after digging deep into the bone with both hands, was wrenching it apart.  The pain was more intense than any he had ever felt, the way he imagined a lightning bolt might feel.  He cried out, but that lasted but a moment, because the pain grew more intense and prevented him from making another sound.  He found himself plunging his hands down into the bed of leaves beneath him, as if seeking something to grab onto. But there was nothing he could grasp.  I must be dying. That thought briefly flitted into his brain. Then it, too, was eclipsed by the pain. 

Perhaps strangely, Viktor felt no fear at this thought, only a distant, analytical awareness. Then other words came. I can’t die like this.  Without making everything right. Then, still other words came to him, words that he actually spoke out loud.

“Please, God. I just want to do what’s right. Help me make it right, Lord. Please.”

It was as if a dam opened within his heart when he pronounced this plea.  He felt sadness welling up inside him, decades’ worth of sadness that had lain there deep within him, pushed down, unacknowledged. Now it all flowed out of him, in a minutes-long flood of tears and vomit and wrenching sobs and screams. When it finally came to a halt, Viktor gazed around him in a daze. He felt surprised to still be in the treehouse, although who knows where he imagined he should be at that moment.

Still disoriented, he managed to get himself down the ladder, and find his way back to the homestead.  When Ulrich asked Viktor where his axe was – because his son-in-law never, ever, left his tools in the forest – Viktor made no reply. He just went to the faucet on the side of the workshop and doused his head with water.  The Gassmann-Bunkes being the Gassmann-Bunkes, there was no discussion of this incident. Ulrich didn’t ask Viktor about it further, and he never mentioned it to Renate, either.  He just concluded that Viktor had been working something out, deep in the forest. He concluded that it must be between Viktor and God.  And he was right.

It was two days after this occurrence that Ethel broached the topic with Viktor of taking Lina to see Bruno Groening. She would have been a bit worried to bring it up, if not for what she experienced two days earlier, on the afternoon we’ve just described. What she experienced was that Viktor came in from his afternoon work in a state none of them had ever seen him in before.  He was pale and looked distracted at best, confused at worst.  He smelled a bit like vomit to Ethel, and when she reached her hand out to touch his shoulder, he barely reacted.  He just walked slowly up the stairs to their bedroom. When he came back down, he was wearing different clothes. That was something he never did, unless he was very dirty from working.  He didn’t explain anything to any of them, and no one asked, although Ethel noticed that she and Renate and Ulrich were keeping a close eye on him, in case it should seem that he’d suddenly been taken ill.  But although he was mostly quiet at their light evening meal, he ate normally and even discussed a bit of business with Ulrich later on. 

That night, when she and Viktor got into bed, Ethel sensed that something was different with her husband.  All these four long years, she had felt like she was sleeping next to a board.  Or no, rather, a stone, since even boards carry the divine energy of the forest in them.  He had never been a big talker, but after the war, he was even more silent with her.  When they were first married, they had to remind each other lightheartedly to stop talking and go to sleep. That’s how much they used to enjoy sharing everything from their day with each other.  Ethel recalled how it often happened that they agreed to finally go to sleep, and then one of them launched into one last thing.  At that point, the other one silently reached over and laid a hand on the offending spouse’s lips. They both laughed, and then they really did close their eyes to sleep, most often lying in each other’s arms.

This is not at all how they went to sleep now.  To be honest, that way of welcoming the night faded in the early thirties, and it never fully returned. Ethel so missed that closeness they had in the early years.  There was a rekindling of sorts after Viktor came back home from his time alone in Schweiburg, but it faded again in the run-up to the war.  And since the war ended… Well, there was no rekindling in 1945, and none since then, for that matter. It was something Ethel missed terribly.  She prayed about it.  Please give me my Viktor back, she often asked God.

In actuality, Ethel began offering this wish to God during the war, and back then, the plea was mostly about having him come home alive.  He did come home alive, but once he was back, Ethel no longer felt the love that had always radiated from him toward her. Even during the difficult years, she could always sense it coming from him.   And, back then, he never stopped being affectionate toward her, even when things were hardest between them, when the challenges they were facing made them angry with each other. But now, since he came back from the war, he seemed dead inside to her.  They rarely even kissed any more.  They occasionally made love, but you couldn’t call it that any more. Viktor’s embraces were devoid of the vibrancy and loving energy that used to combine with Ethel’s to bring them so close together that it seemed impossible that they could ever be torn apart. But that’s exactly what happened. And so, Ethel prayed for things to turn back around.

Then, on the night of the day that Viktor went through what he went through in the treehouse, he came up behind Ethel as they were getting ready for bed. Ethel was already in her nightgown. Lightly, hesitantly, even, Viktor leaned over and slipped his arms beneath his wife’s and wrapped them loosely around her waist. He bent his head down and rested his cheek on her shoulder.  This was something he used to do, years ago, just to feel the way her body felt against his, and to silently take in her energy. 

Surprised, Ethel glanced in the mirror and saw that he had his eyes closed. After resting like that for a half a minute or so, Viktor tightened his arms gently around his wife and, almost shyly, kissed the bare part of her skin that peeked out between her shoulder and her neck.  And she felt it then, something she hoped she wasn’t imagining: a thin little stream of love coming from him.  Not as strong as back in the early days, but it was definitely there.  She reached down and took his hands in hers.  His hands began to shake, and a moment later, she felt his face contort. He was crying, softly, and silently.  And she could hear him saying to her in a low, hoarse voice, “Forgive me, Ethel.  I just want to make it all right again.”

There wasn’t any sharing of thoughts that night, or any jolly shushing of one by the other.  No lovemaking, and not even any kissing.  But they got into bed and lay in each other’s arms, and something that reminded them of their love in the old days flowed gently through them as they fell asleep, feeling each other’s breathing in their own chests.

It was this experience that emboldened Ethel to raise Lina’s wish with Viktor two nights later.  Certainly, things between them had not suddenly – miraculously – shifted back to how they’d been twenty years earlier. But even so, they both understood that something had cracked open in Viktor that was allowing them to feel connected in what was both a new and also familiar way. 

It was thanks to the reappearance of this connection that Ethel ended up slipping her arms around Viktor’s waist that evening, an action that mimicked the way he’d come up behind her the other night.  She felt him take her hand and run his finger over the carved ring. Then he turned around and embraced her, gently, and with a tenderness that surprised her. Even though a bit of love had been peeking out from inside him for the past two days, Ethel didn’t wanted to hope for more.  Be patient, she told herself.  Don’t try to rush him. But now here he was, with his arms around her and his head buried in the curls of her hair at her neck. And now he was kissing her there, too, the way he always used to do. On this night, when they got into bed and leaned into each other’s arms, there was lovemaking, and it was worthy of the name.

After Ethel fell asleep, lying with her head on Viktor’s chest, he stayed awake a while longer. Partly, this was because he simply wanted to savor the joy he was experiencing now, the peace of having his Ethel asleep in the crook of his arm. Partly, it was because he was full of wonder at what had taken place within him over the past forty-eight hours.  He couldn’t explain it, at least not in words.  He knew that it was, as Ulrich had put it, between him and God. He also knew, deep inside him, that God had not ever given up on him, not once during all the years of trouble, not during the war years, either.  He understood that he, himself, had allowed the connection to God – and, in turn, to his family – to be squashed down within him, and God’s voice to be silenced.  He listened to Ethel’s steady breathing, synchronized with his own, and was overcome with a feeling of gratitude.  If what he experienced out in the forest two days earlier wasn’t grace, then he didn’t know what else would qualify.

This realization, in turn, was the other reason Viktor had not yet closed his eyes to sleep. It led his thoughts back to the fateful 1921 suppertime conversation.  The memory of that day had sprung vividly into Viktor’s mind when Ethel told him about the newspaper articles about Bruno Groening, about Lina’s wish to go see him, and about how Renate was in favor of the plan.

Viktor assumed that not only he and Ethel, but his in-laws, too, were revisiting that day now, too, especially given the topics that Lina had recently raised at their 1949 table.  In fact, it surprised him that Ethel didn’t immediately put the Bruno of Ewald’s story together with the newspaper article Lorena passed on to Renate.  Gazing down at her now, he almost touched her shoulder to ask her about it.  Then he smiled wistfully and put a hand to his own lips to seal them. It didn’t really matter that Ethel didn’t think of young Bruno as soon as she read the newspaper article. Even without that, neither of them had to remind the other of the questions that formed the crux of that long-ago argument: What do we believe is possible, and how strongly do we believe it? But Viktor knew that pondering those questions really would keep him up all night if he pursued them. So he chose instead, to pursue the sweet embrace of sleep while embracing his sweet Ethel.

*          *          *

            Lina, on the other hand, was coming to believe she might never sleep again.  She barely slept the night before, after her mother  promised to talk things over with Lina’s father and grandparents.  And after Viktor and Marcus shook hands across the table this afternoon, she felt like she might fly right out of her chair from excitement!  Her evening walk with Kristina didn’t calm her down a bit, either.  Quite the opposite. Kristina was almost in shock that everyone had actually agreed.

            “How did it happen,” Kristina asked Lina thoughtfully, as they made their way out to the main road, “that Marcus didn’t put up a fuss? I mean, given the way he was talking those other days about God’s will and all that… I’ll just say I was flabbergasted.”

            Lina nodded. “I was, too.  But at the same time, I wasn’t.  You don’t know Papa, or at least not very well.  What he did today… that was pure Papa. Papa at his best, in regard to Marcus.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “It goes back a long time,” Lina told her, looking off into the distance, as she went back in time to dig up a memory that would explain the dynamic between her father and Marcus.

            Kristina waited in silence for Lina to continue. She had the sense that whatever Lina told her would give her deeper insight into the man she had come to love.

            “All right,” Lina said finally, as if spying a lost button in the grass.  “Here you go. This was when we were all little.  I was probably seven or eight, so Marcus was twelve or thirteen.  There was some conflict over Papa being away from home so much.  Papa happened to be home at that point, and I remember the whole thing clearly, because – well, you know it yourself – no one ever makes a fuss openly in this family.”

            “Except for Marcus, it seems,” Kristina put in.

            “Yes, that’s true!” Lina laughed. “I don’t know why I always say no one ever makes a fuss, when he’s done it all his life!” She shook her head and then went on. “So, Papa had been away from home a lot. I don’t know what it was all about –“

            “Because no one talks about things like that!” Kristina said, laughing.

            Lina nodded her head and smiled. “Absolutely right! So, this was one of those times when it was only Marcus who spoke up.  He was saying all sorts of things about how Papa was ruining the family, not taking responsibility for taking care of us all…”

            “Really?”

            “Do you mean, did Marcus really say that, or was Papa not taking responsibility?”

            “Both,” Kristina replied in a quiet voice.

            “Well, yes, he really said it, and he really meant it. I don’t know to what extent it was true. I was too little. All I can say is that Papa was gone for what seemed a long time, and there was a lot of tension at home, probably about that.”

            “So what did your father do?”

            “Well, so there was this hunting rifle of Papa’s that Marcus really coveted.  But Papa wouldn’t let him use it. You see, it was Papa’s favorite rifle, and Marcus was often not very careful with tools and things, so Papa didn’t want to risk Marcus ruining it.”

            “I can see that,” Kristina said.

            “But that day – I recall it. It was after the evening meal, and we were all out in the yard, for some reason. Maybe it was too hot in the house? I don’t know.  But we were all out there.  And Marcus – Papa sent him outside during dinner because he wouldn’t stop yelling about Papa being away.  So, Marcus was out there, sulking, and then all the rest of us came out and sat down.  Without saying a word, without even looking at Marcus, Papa went into the workshop. And he came out holding the rifle, which he proceeded to hand to Marcus. ‘You can use this while I’m gone,’ he said to him. ‘But if you damage it in any way, you’ll regret you ever held it in your hands.’”

            Lina couldn’t see Kristina’s eyes grow wide, but she could sense the chill that passed through her friend’s body.  After mulling this all over a bit, Kristina asked, “And what happened? With the rifle?”

            “Oh,” Lina replied with a laugh, “I think that rifle was in better condition when Papa came back a year later than it was when he left.”

            “But how can you laugh about it?” Kristina asked her in a whisper.  “It’s horrifying, in a way, isn’t it?”

            “It is, yes,” Lina said, serious again now.  “But you have to understand, Kristina, Marcus was so awful to Peter and me growing up.  He was mean to anyone he could get away with being mean to, and Papa is the only one who could ever really get him in line. And it was, as far as I recall, mostly Papa using violence or threatening to use it that did the trick.” She let out a long sigh.  “At least there wasn’t that today.”

            “No,” Kristina agreed. “Today was all carrot and no stick, as far as I can tell.”

            Lina nodded. “And that’s a good sign, I think.”  

            “Especially since it means that you’ll be going to Herford!” Kristina told her, pushing aside the discomfort she felt at Lina’s story. 

            For the rest of the walk, the two of them chattered excitedly, wondering how soon the trip could be arranged.  But neither voiced the question that concerned them both most: Could Bruno Groening really heal Lina?