[Author’s note: The words of Bruno Groening’s in this chapter that are in boldface are his actual words. I have excerpted them from lectures and talks that were recorded during his lifetime and later transcribed and translated into English by the Bruno Groening Circle of Friends, which has very kindly given me permission to use them.]
Chapter 28
July, 1949
Gassmann-Bunke homestead and Bremen, Germany
The days following Lorena’s announcement that Bruno Groening had left Herford and gone who knows where, were among the hardest for the Gassmanns and Bunkes since the period following Lina’s accident. Now, as then, the family members did their best to project an air of hope and confidence that they would find Groening.
But beneath the outward profession of positivity lay the persistent fear that they had missed their chance. And their chance was precisely the way they all thought of it. After all, it wasn’t just Lina who had something to gain if the visit to Groening took place and Lina was healed. Each of them was invested in the success of this venture for his or her own reasons, even if these reasons were never voiced out loud. They all spoke only of how Lina’s life would change – and for the better! Lina, of course, sensed her relatives’ unspoken thoughts, but she didn’t judge them harshly for wishing for their own lives to be easier, too. In fact, she appreciated it that they did keep their own desires to themselves. It made her feel that they really did care about what happened to her: After four years of what seemed to her like no one doing anything to change the situation, at least they were all working toward a common goal.
Even so, Lina was realistic enough to understand that if there wasn’t some progress soon, enthusiasm for the project would wane. They might all slip back into a state of stagnation, like the swallow she’d seen on the riverbank, one wounded wing in the mud. But that was just the way it was at the beginning, Lina reminded herself, before the bird summoned the strength and took flight once more. As the days passed, Lina kept calling to mind that swallow, panting in the mud. That’s where I am now, she told herself over and over. Just waiting for that power to flow into me. And then I’ll fly!
* * *
The first encouraging moment came two weeks after the evening they had all gathered around Marcus’ boss’ car, so looking forward to heading to Herford the next morning, the evening when Lorena had rushed over to tell them the bad news. Now, it was Marcus who rushed into the yard after work, beaming with excitement.
“Bremen!” he cried out, bursting through the door, expecting the whole family to be gathered for his announcement. But it wasn’t quite suppertime yet, and only Renate and Ethel were in the kitchen.
“Where is everyone?” Marcus said, annoyed. “I have news!”
Renate, who had been pulling plates off the shelves to set the table, turned to face him, her arms cradling the stack of dishes. Ethel wiped her hands on a dishtowel and walked toward Marcus.
“What news?” she asked softly, studying her son’s face for clues.
But he shook his head, refusing to tell them. “Where’s Lina?” But before they could answer, he was already out the door and searching for his sister. He found her on the other side of the sheets that were drying on the clothesline. She and Kristina were just taking down some laundry that was dry.
“There you are!” Marcus called, running over to her.
Startled, Lina dropped the clothespin she was holding. When Kristina bent down to pick it up off the ground, Marcus took it from her and threw it aside.
“Forget the laundry, Kristina!” Then he got crouched down in front of Lina and took hold of her hands. “Bremen!” he nearly shouted. “He’s in Bremen!”
Lina grew pale and looked back and forth between Marcus and Kristina. “Bruno Groening?” she whispered.
Marcus nodded. “Yes, Groening! Who else would I be talking about?”
Now Lina allowed herself a smile. Seeing that, Marcus smiled, too.
“That’s my girl!” He jumped up, stepped behind Lina, took hold of the wheelchair’s handles and began pushing his sister around the yard, in and out beneath and between the hanging sheets. Kristina and Lina shrieked with laughter and begged him to stop before all the laundry lay in the dirt.
All this commotion drew everyone out into the yard: Renate and Ethel from the kitchen, Peter from the workshop, and Ulrich and Viktor, who were just coming out of the forest, carrying a two-man saw.
“What’s the excitement about?” Viktor asked, and looked to Ethel, who came over to stand next to him and slipped her arm through his. He realized from her expression that she, like he, was trying to remember a time when Marcus had ever treated Lina this way – as a loving older brother. He couldn’t. Neither could Ethel.
“Papa,” Lina called out breathlessly, although it was Marcus who’d been moving the wheelchair. “Marcus said Mr. Groening is in Bremen!”
“Ahhhh!” Viktor exclaimed. “Now that’s some news!”
“And only a couple of hours away,” Ulrich noted with an approving nod of his head.
“Marcus,” Renate asked, “how did you find that out?”
“From my boss, Mr. Weiss,” Marcus told them, leaning over to brace his hands on his thighs. He was feeling a bit winded from the exertion.
“But how did he know?” Renate continued. “Lorena’s been listening to the radio non-stop for the past week, and she hasn’t heard anything.” She was frowning, as if somehow insulted that she hadn’t been the one to learn the news and present it to the family. Ulrich put his arm around her shoulders and laughed.
“Hush, Renate, and let the young man tell us!”
It was a funny scene, with all of them standing around the yard, instead of taking seats indoors. No one wanted to wait to hear Marcus’ explanation. Even Stick, the dog, was racing around them in excitement, his tail catching on the sheets and causing them to dip and billow.
“It happened like this,” Marcus began, gazing around at his audience and pleased that everyone was now present. “Mr. Weiss came in this morning… Oh, well, of course, I told him what happened, when I took the car back to him last Friday. I had to explain why we didn’t go to Herford after all.”
“Yes, yes,” Renate said impatiently, waving her hand to hurry him along. “Mr. Weiss knew about why we were going to Herford. But how did he find out where Mr. Groening is now?”
“Mama!” Ethel told her with a laugh, “Marcus is telling us. Just let him tell us!”
Renate nodded, and Marcus continued.
“So, evidently, Mr. Weiss told his wife the story – about Lina and how Groening was in Herford and then had to leave. Turns out she – Mrs. Weiss – has been following the whole thing in the papers, too. And apparently, Mrs. Weiss has a cousin who lives in Bremen, and this cousin said that her next door neighbor, a woman named –“
“For heaven’s sake, Marcus, we don’t care what her name is!” Renate burst in, but she quieted down when Ulrich squeezed her shoulder.
“Right, Grandma,” Marcus said. “To make a long story short, Groening was at the cousin’s neighbor’s house two nights ago, and a group of people came. The neighbor even invited the cousin, but she didn’t go. But she did tell Mrs. Weiss about it, because it seemed like such an unusual occurrence. She –“
“She? Who?” Lina asked, and no one shushed her, figuring that if anyone had a right to ask for clarification, she did.
“The cousin,” Marcus said. “A Mrs. Schneider. Mrs. Schneider said she saw a man go into the house – and this is a side-by-side house, connected, so she got a good look at him – and she said he was on the short side, with long, dark, wavy hair –“
“That’s him!” Lina cried, her eyes shining brightly.
Marcus nodded. “Yes, it was Groening. And Mrs. Schneider said that as she was looking out the window, trying to get a look at him, he stopped on the walkway and turned. And he looked right at her! As if he knew she was there watching him, even though she was kind of hiding behind the curtain so he wouldn’t see her. And he just looked at her for a few second, in a serious way, and then he continued walking and went into the house. And Mrs. Schneider said that she felt something when he looked at her.”
“What?” they all asked, hanging on Marcus’ every word. “What did she feel?”
But Marcus wanted to drag out his moment in the limelight. So he paused, looking at them each and taking Lina’s hand. Finally, he said, “Love. That’s what she said, Mrs. Weiss told her husband. And peace.”
Lina squeezed her brother’s hand, and they could all see that she had begun to cry quietly. Kristina, who was standing on the other side of the wheelchair, leaned over and hugged Lina. Then she asked Marcus:
“Did Mrs. Schneider go over to the neighbor’s then, too?”
Marcus shook his head. “Seems she was too embarrassed. But after everyone had left, she did go next door…” Here he paused again, for effect, before continuing. “And the neighbor told her that Groening is coming back again… tomorrow night!”
Now everyone in the yard began talking and gesturing, nodding and clapping their hands and hugging. Stick began racing around once more.
“Well, then,” Viktor said, smiling broadly, “we have some plans to make, don’t we?”
“We might as well all go in now,” Renate announced. “Supper’ll be ready in a few minutes. Everybody get washed up, and we can discuss it all when we sit down.”
Ethel looked at Viktor and raised her eyebrows. He could see a smile in her eyes, as if she was asking him, “When has Mama ever said we’d discuss something over supper?” Viktor hugged her and whispered in her ear, “Maybe a new day is dawning for this family.”
* * *
So it was that, the next evening, the Gassmanns and Bunkes and Kristina (Ingrid had reluctantly gone to the Walters’ farm) found themselves at the curb outside the home of the Schneiders’ neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Birkner. Kathrin Schneider hurried to the front door of her house as soon as she saw them pull up. She watched, mouth agape, as Marcus, Kristina, Renate and Ulrich climbed out of the Opel Kapitän, which Mr. Weiss had generously offered Marcus for the trip. Lina was still seated in the front passenger seat, waiting for Viktor, who had driven to Bremen in the pickup truck with Ethel and Peter, to park and unload Ethel’s wheelchair from pickup’s bed. Mrs. Schneider, a short woman in her fifties, with small eyes and tightly curled, dark hair that hugged her head just so, was amazed not only by this large number of people who had come together, but also by the juxtaposition of her brother-in-law’s Opel and the family’s dusty farm truck. They seemed a motley crew, indeed. Not raggedy, no. They were all dressed in their Sunday best, that was clear. But it was also clear that these were country folk.
Mrs. Schneider stepped outside onto her own front stoop, now, and watched them all make their way up toward the Birkners’ side of the house. Still, she pointedly didn’t look at Lina, who was now being moved into the wheelchair by two men Kathrin assumed must be her father and brother. Even so, her gaze settled on this scene. Kathrin immediately averted her eyes, not wanting to be caught staring, especially since the girl herself was casting glances around, as if she didn’t want to be seen. But then Kathrin caught sight of a young man who was limping, too. There’s nowhere to look! she thought. So, she walked right over to them and introduced herself. Then she turned and led the way up to the Birkners’ door, taking on the role of guide. She, after all, was the one who had learned about Groening’s visit in the first place!
Inside – once Viktor and Marcus lifted Lina’s wheelchair up the one step and over the threshold into the house – Mrs. Birkner greeted them warmly. A tall, lithe woman, with her wavy, straw blond hair pulled back loosely, she seemed both relaxed and energized. She leaned down to take Lina’s hand in her own and give it a firm shake as a heartfelt smile came to her face.
“Miss Bunke? I’m Silvia Birkner. I’m glad you’ve come.” She looked to the entire assembled family as she spoke the last sentence.
“Come along in here,” she continued, walking ahead of them. She indicated with her hand that they should make their way through a large, arched opening, and into a parlor of sorts. At least that’s what Renate thought she’d call this room, since it was neither kitchen nor dining room, and seemed to function solely as a place where people would sit and chat.
The room measured about fifteen feet across and twelve feet deep, and there was a small fireplace with a dark surround and mantel fashioned out of wood that matched the rest of the trim in the room. An assortment of upholstered and wooden chairs, settees and benches faced the fireplace and had been arranged in rows, along with two small couches along the two outside walls. Just to the right of the fireplace, where, it seemed to Renate, one of the armchairs must usually go, there stood a little table. It held a small lamp, already lit, and a glass of water that had been covered with a small lace doily.
Ethel was taking a good look around, too. She’d been wondering what kind of house they’d be in, and she was relieved to see that the Birkners were not some fancy, rich people who might object to them being foresters and cabinet makers. The furniture was not new, but not overly worn, either, a hodgepodge of designs and ages. The room’s wallpaper was a big dingy, but not torn, and the curtains looked like Mrs. Birkner gave them regular airings and washings. On the wall hung several photographs – family portraits, Ethel assumed. There were also several paintings of landscapes, originals, probably by someone in the family. A few more, smaller, photos in simple frames occupied the fireplace mantel, along with a vase of flowers, probably from the Birkners’ flower garden, and a clock. A floor lamp stood in one back corner, and a table lamp was perched atop a bookcase on the other wall, near the arch. Ethel caught her mother’s eye, and the two women nodded subtly to each other, acknowledging that both had surveyed the room and felt that everything was going to be all right.
While her mother and grandmother took in their surroundings, Lina looked nervously at the how the furniture was laid out. She wondered where her wheelchair could possibly fit in this tightly-packed arrangement. But Mrs. Birkner already had a plan. She moved aside the last chair in the front row, closest to the large arch that met the hallway.
“Here you go,” she said to Lina. “Mr. Bunke, you can park your daughter’s chair right here, if that’s all right.”
Viktor thanked her and rolled Lina first forward and then back into the spot Mrs. Birkner had indicated.
Lina felt her cheeks burning, and she could barely breathe, although the windows in the room were open and a pleasant breeze was pushing the curtains aside and flowing into the room. Why isn’t anyone else here? she wondered. And where is Mr. Groening?
The rest of the family, and Mrs. Schneider, too, were obviously all asking themselves these very same questions. Mrs. Birkner hastened to put them all at ease.
“Don’t you worry, now,” she said as she showed each of them in turn to a seat with a gentle wave of her hand. “Others are coming,” she went on, “and Mr. Groening will be here soon, too. He called a bit ago and said he wouldn’t be long. So, you just make yourselves at home.”
“She’s nice enough,” Renate whispered to Ulrich after Mrs. Birkner left the room, “but how are we to make ourselves at home? I wish we’d just get started. It’s hard to wait, isn’t it?” she asked, turning now to Lina.
But the only response Lina could manage was to nod. Her throat felt so tense that she doubted she could get any words out, even if her life depended on it. As she tipped her head in acknowledgement to her grandmother, she felt Kristina’s hand come to rest on her right shoulder and give it a squeeze. Grateful, Lina brought her left hand (because her right was inside her pocket, grasping the newspaper article about Bruno Groening) up and laid it atop Kristina’s.
Kristina ended up sitting directly behind Lina, with Marcus to her left and Viktor and Ethel and Peter in the seats heading the rest of the way down that row. In the front row, Renate sat next to Lina, and Ulrich was on her left. Mrs. Schneider was directed to the chair next to Peter. The two seats to the left of Ulrich were, evidently, saved for other guests. On the closest one lay a folded newspaper, and a small scarf was bunched up on the next spot. As Ulrich took this in, he glanced at the man, who looked to be in his fifties, sitting in the third seat to his left. He turned when he noticed Ulrich’s surveying glance, and extended his hand.
“Helmut Birkner,” he said simply. When Ulrich made a motion, as if to indicate Mrs. Birkner, he nodded and smiled. “Yes, that’s my wife, Silvia. She’s the organizer. I’m the waiter,” he told Ulrich with a laugh.
Ulrich introduced himself, and then he, too, went back to waiting, wondering whether Mr. Birkner was waiting for something in particular. The man had no obvious disabilities or injuries, but Ulrich knew full well that not all infirmities were outwardly visible.
In the fifteen or twenty minutes that followed, other people did, indeed, arrive, mostly in twos, and mostly women, but a few individual men and women also came into the room. One man, in his mid-thirties, Peter guessed, walked in slowly and deliberately, leaning heavily on a cane and dragging his right leg behind him. Another man, who caught Viktor’s eye, held his left arm to his chest, bent at a right angle, but there was no sling holding it, and no cast, as there would be if the arm were broken. Finally, an older, gray-haired woman, in her sixties, perhaps, doubled over in pain and supported by a much younger man – her grandson? – made her way toward the seat directly behind Kristina. As the young man helped her align herself to sit down, she was bent so far forward that Kristina could feel the woman’s ragged breath on her neck, and her hand actually clutched Kristina’s shoulder as she settled back onto the chair.
“Oh, please excuse me!” the woman half-whispered, half-cried out.
Kristina sensed that this effort to observe the social niceties had cost the woman dearly: As Kristina turned around in her seat to reassure her, she glimpsed a drawn face and eyes glassed over in agony. “Don’t give it a second thought, Mother,” Kristina said kindly, patting the woman’s clenched hand with her own, before turning back around.
Some of the people who came into the parlor greeted those who already sat in the rows, or made eye contact with them, but the majority stared down at the floor and simply made their way silently to the seats that were still unoccupied. Each person in the room seemed focused on his or her own distress, or that of the person he or she had brought here. It seemed to Ethel, who slowly turned this way and that to take in the room, that it wasn’t so much that these people were self-absorbed, able to think of nothing but their own suffering. There was that, of course, but something else was at play here. In all the guests with visible burdens or pain, Ethel recognized the attitude she had seen in Lina these past four years: A keen awareness of how obviously they did not fit in to the society around them, and a strong desire to remain unnoticed.
Back in the early days following her accident, Lina never shared with Ethel the fear that haunted her for months, that some town official would suddenly come by and cart her off to be euthanized or, at the very least, locked away in an institution for citizens who were no longer of use to their great country. But Ethel had seen this fear in her daughter’s eyes, especially during her immediate recuperation period in the hospital. She’d seen the way Lina looked at her whenever she came back into the room after stepping out into the hall to speak with the doctor.
Ethel never revealed to Lina – and she had no intention of ever telling her this – that the doctor had, in fact, raised the possibility of sending Lina to the very kind of institution (“home”, he called it unctuously) that terrified Lina so much that she often lost entire nights of sleep over it. But Ethel told him in no uncertain terms that they would care for Lina at home, and that if he ever mentioned this option to anyone in their family again, she would report him to the head of the hospital for promoting eugenics.
In fact, Ethel was not fully informed about the details of this policy that the Nazis had enacted, but she knew enough – they’d all heard reports and propaganda during the war – to know that Lina might well have been taken from them if she’d been paralyzed earlier in the war. She also knew that, these days, the government had an official policy of cracking down when anything resembling these views popped up now. At least, Ethel thought at the time, that’s what she thought she’d read. Whether this was or was not the case, Ethel’s threat was effective. Lina’s doctor never mentioned the “homes” again.
But here, in the Birkners’ parlor, Ethel could see that new government policies didn’t necessarily mean that crippled or otherwise disabled German citizens felt comfortable being out in public, where their infirmities were on display for all to observe. In Bockhorn and Varel, you almost never saw anyone out on the street who was not in good health, at least physically. Even Lina preferred to stick to the homestead and the area of road between their house and the Walters’. Never mind that it was a production to take her anywhere – just getting her here had taken so much time and effort. That was the least of it. Ethel knew that. Steeling herself for passersby to gawk at her, pity her, disdain her… That was what took a bigger toll on Lina.
Ethel knew this, and she sensed that Lina was feeling this discomfort right now, amidst strangers. And Lina wasn’t the only one who felt that way, Ethel concluded as she glanced around the room. The shame of being different, of not being seen as whole and healthy, the fear of denunciation by others… Ethel glimpsed all of that and more in the eyes and posture of the people who filled this room. She knew she couldn’t entirely grasp what they were feeling. But she did understand that it had taken unimaginable strength and courage for them all to come here tonight and to face being ridiculed, shunned, or perhaps even verbally assaulted. And yet, they had come. Certainly, Ethel concluded, each one of these people, like Lina, had been given up on by the doctors, told there was no hope for them, told, “You just have to learn to live with it,” just as the doctor had said to Lina. Yet, something had given them the power to hope. And so, here they were, grasping at this very last straw: Bruno Groening.
Viktor was already feeling overheated in his buttoned-up shirt, and judging by the fidgeting of those around him and the way some women were fanning themselves with their hats, he was not alone. Ethel, moved by the scene around her, and by the fact that her husband had come home from the war in one piece, took his hand and gave it a squeeze. They exchanged tense smiles as they waited. Marcus and Kristina were enjoying the sensation of being seated so close to each other that their shoulders touched if they both leaned the tiniest bit toward each other. Peter, meanwhile, felt that Kathrin Schneider was staring at his wounded leg, at the same time as she was making a point of not wondering about how the young man next to her had acquired his limp, or how the others around her had come to be so physically wrecked.
It wasn’t just the temperature in the room that was causing the guests to shift in their seats. Nearly everyone noticed that the atmosphere had grown tense, in the sense that it felt filled with anticipation, as if a guitar string was being slowly tightened more and more. And just when it seemed to them that this string would break and they would all explode, Mrs. Birkner reappeared in the room, her step lighter than before, her face joyful. Behind her came a tall, slim man with dark blond hair slicked back from his forehead. The two of them came to stand at the front of the room, facing the guests, which now numbered about twenty-five.
Mrs. Birkner indicated the man at her left. “Those of you who were here the other night know Mr. Schmidt,” she began. “Egon Arthur Schmidt. He is one of Mr. Groening’s helpers, and he’s brought Mr. Groening here tonight.”
At this, everyone in the room began leaning this way and that, trying to get a view of the hallway outside the arch. But there was no Groening there to be seen. And at the same time, they all noticed, the uncomfortable tension in the room hadn’t lessened with Mrs. Birkner’s reappearance. In fact, it seemed to have intensified. Lina felt she might very well faint, or cry out. It wasn’t anything painful, just the difficulty of waiting. For heaven’s sake, where is he?? She heard someone behind her, a woman, moaning. Another further back and off to the side, was crying quietly, while someone shushed her, but not unkindly.
Now Mrs. Birkner sat down next to her husband, having picked up her scarf from the seat. Mr. Schmidt smiled and continued to stand before them, his hands at his sides. “Yes, dear ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “Good evening.” He paused and glanced out across the room. “You have all come here seeking healing. I know you’re anxious to see Mr. Groening, and I assure you that you will, in just a few moments. But first, he has asked me to give you these instructions, instructions that will help you take in everything you can receive here tonight. So, I ask you first of all, to sit so that you are not touching anyone else, whether next to you, or in front of or behind you.”
At this, the sound of chair legs scraping on the wood floor and rug could be heard, as people shifted this way and that. Marcus and Kristina reluctantly moved their chairs just far enough to comply with Mr. Schmidt’s instructions.
“Thank you. Next, Mr. Groening asks that you sit without crossing your arms or legs. Just let your hands rest in your lap without clasping them. This will allow the current to flow freely through your body without short-circuiting.”
“Current?” Marcus whispered to Kristina. “What current?” And he was not the only one in the room who glanced at the floor around the chairs, to see whether there were electrical cords running throughout the room. But there were none.
It is at this moment, as the guests are occupied with arranging their arms and legs in the correct position, that those of them on the hallway end of the rows notice a small man move quietly into the room. Lina feels rather than see him at first. She senses a strong heat along the right side of her body, as if she were out in bright sunlight on a sweltering day. She feels drawn to turn her head to that side, to determine the source of this great warmth. And there he is: Bruno Groening. He walks silently to the front of the room, passing a mere six inches from her as he des so.
All movement and noise in the room ceases as the guests realize that Bruno Groening is finally before them. No one wants to miss a single word from this man. Groening now stands next to the small table, with his back to the front wall of the room. Mr. Schmidt has taken a seat in the front row, next to Mrs. Birkner. The first thing Groening does is to take his keys and lean over slightly to lay them on the table next to the water glass. Then he straightens back up and, still silent, slowly directs his gaze to each person in the room, his eyes moving down one row and then back up the next, pausing for a moment as he encounters the face of each sufferer or the person who has brought him or her here tonight. Mesmerized, no one speaks, but their faces show a whole range of emotions: here, someone smiles tentatively at Groening; here, another person looks down; tears well up in many eyes, while others stare back at the small man with skepticism; other faces show just pain; and often, there is desperation and a silent plea for help.
When Groening’s gaze reaches Lina, she feels as though his shining blue eyes are looking into the depths of her soul, seeing everything about her. And although he is not smiling, and his expression looks serious – stern, even – what Lina feels coming from him is not criticism or condemnation, but love. That is how she described it later, anyway, even though it was not like any love she had ever felt from another human, not even her mother and grandmother. This was both an emotion and a connection of some sort. Maybe this was what Mr. Schmidt meant when he spoke of a “current”.
What Lina senses now reminds her of the tingling and lightness she felt when she read the newspaper articles about Groening, only so much stronger. And back then, there hadn’t been this feeling of love, of a clear connection. Connection to what? Lina asks herself, watching Groening survey the men and women before him. Is it to him that this love and this current are connecting me? She attempts to think about this, but then the tingling in her body grows more intense, until finally she notices that her whole body is vibrating, and she’s simply no longer able to engage in thought. If she were able to think at this moment, she would notice that her feet and legs were tingling and vibrating just as much as the rest of her. But she is too caught up in experiencing the love that is flowing into her, and the peace that now reigns inside her, to pay attention to anything else. All she can do is to allow what is flowing to flow, and to take in Groening’s appearance as he stands just a few feet in front of her.
Lina’s attention is drawn first to his eyes, to his gaze, and then to his expression. Considering his entire face now, she can’t decide whether or not she finds him handsome. This question seems somehow irrelevant, given all that she feels radiating from him. But, she decides, if she were to judge him objectively, by his physical features alone, she would have to say that in appearance, he was unassuming. Small in stature and build, he is also dressed in a way that would attract no one’s attention: a dark blue polo shirt with a zippered opening, beneath a neat but worn dark gray suit jacket. His slacks are also dark gray, and the toes of his plain black shoes are scuffed. He holds his arms crossed in front of his chest, and his hands look like they have seen quite a bit of manual labor.
As he turns his head to take in the other side of the room, Lina has to admit that his hair is quite unusual. Although she’d seen the newspaper photo of him, she hadn’t gotten a look at his hair. Dark, and slicked back from his face to reveal a receding hair-line, it is thick and falls in waves, all the way to the base of his neck. And his neck! Lina thinks as he turns to face the room straight on once more. What is that? Groening’s polo shirt is unzipped to just below where his collar bones meet his chest, and his throat is bulging out in two big puffy sections, one on each side of his neck. How did I not notice that before? Lina wonders. Was it like that when he came in? As she stares at his neck, it seems to her that it swelled out even more. A goiter, perhaps? But again, her thoughts are quieted by the tingling and growing feeling of peace she is sensing in her body. And then Groening speaks.
“My dear seekers of healing,” he begins, in a voice that is quiet, but strong. “Your pleas to the Lord God were not in vain. Dear friends, I want to briefly introduce myself to you here. I say it to you very clearly. I don’t know much – I only know that which man today no longer knows, is no longer able to know. He has fallen prey to the human way, and he regards everything from the human, rather than the divine, viewpoint. Therefore, dear friends, it looks sad for every individual person. He can no longer find the path. He no longer knows what is true. He – the human being –has, practically speaking, fallen prey to every great sin without knowing it, without even perceiving it, without a guilty conscience, i.e..
“What he does feel, is that a dissonance has not only arisen around him, but it has seeped into him, and everyone – you as well – will ask himself the question, ‘How is all that possible?’ How did it come to the point where evil – what you call ‘illness’, but I tell you that it is the evil – seized your body? So that you really no longer feel comfortable in it, so that you yourself have perceived that your body no longer obeys you, that you can no longer give it orders, that it has, so to speak, gone on strike?”
Tears rush to Lina’s eyes now, as she feels deep within her, that what Bruno Groening is saying about their bodies – her body! – is true. Part of her wants to think about this, but only this thought comes to her: The evil? How did it do this to me? She reaches up to wipe her eyes, then focuses on simply listening.
“Evil is around us,” Groening continues,“and man can easily – very easily! – take it into himself if he forgets himself only once. It’s like the radio.” Here he stops and gestures to the radio set on top of a side table at the back of the room. “We can also receive everything. We only need to tune into the divine transmission,the healing stream: the Heilstrom. However, if someone comes and misleads you, leads you to what is satanic, to what is evil, then you are tuning in to the evil transmission. ‘I am curious,’ you say. ‘I just want to try to hear the evil transmission.’ You see, you can also receive the evil transmission in your body, and up until now, that has been the casewith you. This is what you have done. I believe you understand me now. It depends totally on your attitude, on how you tune in here. Yes, friends, you have such a wonderful body. If today I were to tell you about everything you are capable of when you take possession of the divine power, meaning, that first you are worthy of taking it in… oh, then you could do so much good!”
Here Groening smiles, and it seems to Lina that his eyes are shining more now.
“I make you aware,” he says, now beginning to walk slowly back and forth across the room, his arms still crossed in front of his chest, “that healing only benefits those who carry in themselves faith in our Lord God, or who are prepared to take faith in.” Here he pauses, as if giving the assembled guests the chance to consider where they stand on this question. There is some shifting in the seats. ”Or who are prepared to take faith in,” he repeats.
Here Groening gazes at Marcus, who shifts in discomfort. Does he know I have no faith? But Groening’s expression doesn’t strike him as condemning. As well, Marcus senses what he can describe only as love, flowing toward him from Groening. If he does know, then how does he still have that love for me? Or maybe it’s not for me. Marcus glances at Lina. Maybe it’s for her. She believes. He looks at his parents and grandparents, at Kristina, at Peter, too, at their rapt gazes. They all believe.”
“Man should now,” Groening continues, “once and for all, come to self-reflection. He should know that he is a divine creature, a divine being, and that it is God Himself who has granted him this body of his for an earthly life!”
Is this true? Marcus wonders. Would I really not be here, if not for God? Don’t I exist without God?
“But we are earthbound after all,” Groening asserts, “earthbound through this body of ours. And thus, it is our first duty, the first task of every single individual, to pay attention to this unique body of his and to grant his body what God has intended for it.”
‘What God has intended for it’? Marcus muses. So, we’re back to this question of God and His plans for us. He frowns.
Suddenly, Groening looks in his direction, and now his face is stern, although Marcus still feels the love flowing, and recognizes that this love is, indeed, directed towards him, too.
“Don’t think,” Groening says, focusing his eyes first on Marcus, and then shifting his glance to encompass everyone in the room. “Don’t think. Feel! Your thinking is blocking the flow of the Heilstrom.”
The Heilstrom? Marcus thinks, in spite of himself, despite his willingness to follow Groening’s instructions. Is this Heilstrom the love I’m feeling? But then he consciously turns his attention to Groening and his words, instead of the words in his own head that seek to distract him.
“Pay attention to this unique body of yours,” Groening repeats, by way of a reminder. “Grant your body what God has intended for it.”
Yes! Lina thinks to herself, and she is not the only one. But what has God intended for my body? And how to give it that?
“But this will only be possible,” Groening tells them, answering her unspoken questions, “if you pay attention to yourself,or, to put it more clearly, to your body, and if you tell yourself – where you, that is, your body, has been seized by evil – ‘That is not in order.’ You would use the words, ‘It is sick’” or ‘The sickness is here and there’ You even maintain that it is your sickness”!
As he speaks, he looks at various people in the audience, as if he knows that this woman has suffered for three months, and that man for seven years.
“My dear seekers of healing,” Groening says, “Do not think of your illness now. Put it behind you and concentrate just on what you are feeling in your body! What must happen for each individual, what they deserve, and what they wish for themselves: It is already happening. Your heart, your body, your soul must be pure. Then God can enter, where Satan has been until now. Then I can help you all! In the end, you are all God’s children. But the greatest physician is and remains our Lord God!’”
Here he pauses, as all the people before him turn their attention to their own bodies, some with eyes closed, others staring blankly at a spot on the wall. Groening has stopped pacing and is now standing in front of the fireplace again, studying the people in the chairs and taking note of each of them. Finally, he begins speaking once more.
“So, my dear friends, pay attention to your body now. Do not take in any thought from the outside, but pursue the feeling, how it –this Heilstrom, the divine current from God – is working in your body. Do not think of home now. Do not think of your business. Do not think of your job, or of your neighbor. No. Think only of yourself. And now, as you pay attention to your body, you will receive so many realizations, that you will have to say to yourself, ‘Yes, what he has just told us is correct. I do notice it. That is new to me!’ In ultimate peace and calm, only observe the body, what is going on in it!”
Here Groening again starts to walk back and forth before the people who are listening to him in rapt attention. Now and then, he stretches out a hand to indicate one of them with his hand.
“What do you feel?” he asks, and at one point, it is Lina whom he addresses.
Embarrassed at being singled out, she shrugs at first, and then, when Groening continues to look at her, waiting, she realizes she must give some answer. She does what he has told them to do: She observes what she is feeling inside, and is surprised at what she finds there. “Peaceful,” she tells him. “I feel peace. And happiness.”
Groening nods. Then he turned to the man with the bent arm. “And you, Sir? What are you feeling?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid,” the man replies, in an apologetic tone.
Groening waved his hand. “That is of no consequence. The current is already flowing through you.” He turns back to Lina then. “What do you feel now?”
She directs her awareness inward. “Tingling, Mr. Groening.”
“Where do you feel it? Pay attention to your body and tell me.”
Lina closes her eyes and concentrates. Then, she slowly opens her eyes, her lips parted in amazement. “I feel it through my whole body.”
“Even in your legs?” Groening asks sharply.
“Yes,” Lina tells him, sitting up straighter in her chair now. Renate turns to her granddaughter, but before she can say anything, Groening raises a finger to his own lips to silence her.
“You have the connection to Him now,” he says, indicating not just Lina, but everyone in the room now. “But I warn you, you won’t be filled with the good until you have really disassociated yourself from evil, until there is no more evil left in you, and you say, ’I no longer want anything to do with evil!’ Only then will you be worthy to receive the divine transmission, to get all the good back in your body that belongs to you, that God has determined for you, that God has determined for your body.”
Silently, he once again fixes his intent gaze on each of them in turn. Only after he has met the eyes of every person in the room does he speak again.
“I ask each of you now: Give me your illness. Throw away all the dirt, and then promise yourself, ‘Now I’m going to stop, I’m not going to take in anymore evil.’ This is what I urge you to do, to first give away all the evil. Give it to me, and I offer you health. I bring you the healing for which you have been longing for so long!”
Now everyone in attendance is staring fixedly at Groening. Does he mean it? they wonder. Can he really do it? Marcus, back to reflecting now, thinks, So, he, Groening, he’s the one who brings us the healing… Others, in a near frenzy, ask themselves, But how? How do I give him the illness, what he calls the evil??
Lina is among this latter group. And as she tries in her mind to understand how she is supposed to do what he has asked, all of her family members (except for Marcus) are either looking right at her, or – in the case of Renate and Ulrich, who are seated in her same row – holding her image in their minds. And each one of them, except for Marcus, who is musing on his own thoughts, is urging her, with all of his or her heart, Do it, Lina! Give away the evil! Give it away now!
Groening waits for what seems to everyone an agonizingly long time, standing silently before them. Then he speaks, his voice ringing.
“In the name of God, I declare you all healthy!”
Those in attendance are quiet, as if each is now searching his or her body for a change, some shift. Groening stretches his hand out in the direction of the woman sitting behind Kristina. “Madame, what do you feel?”
She doesn’t reply at first, evidently still in the process of completing the inventory of her body. Then she raises her eyes to meet Groening’s and says, in a soft, nearly inaudible voice, “I feel nothing, Mr. Groening.”
“What do you mean, precisely?” Groening presses her. “Nothing at all?”
She shakes her head. “No. I mean that I feel no pain.”
At this, Kristina turns in her chair and sees that the face of this woman, who had come in wracked by pain, is now as if full of light. She is smiling from ear to ear.
“Did you have pain when you came in?” Groening asks her.
“Why, Mr. Groening, I have been full of nothing but pain for two years now. The doctor, he told me he couldn’t help me. Told me it was stomach cancer…”
But Groening interrupts her. “Madame, we don’t speak of the evil here. And no need to speak of that burden, because now you are free of it. Tomorrow, go to your doctor and ask him to do his tests. He will confirm your healing.”
At this pronouncement, a buzz spreads through the room, as people turn in astonishment to their neighbors. Marcus turns and gazes at the woman. So, Groening healed her! he thinks, without noticing the joy that has crept into him.
Groening says no more to the healed woman. Instead, he crosses the room and casually picks up his keys from the small table where he’d placed them at the beginning of the evening. Standing by the table now, he motions to the man who had come in with the cane, dragging his right leg. He is sitting at the end of the first row, ahead of Peter.
“Sir,” he says, “may I ask you something?”
The man nods, and Groening, who looks like he is about to pose his question, and even opens his mouth to speak, instead suddenly drops his keys onto the floor, as if they have slipped through his fingers. Seeing this, the man who was waiting to be questioned springs from his chair, takes two quick steps, and leans down to pick up Groening’s keys. As he straightens up, he looks in surprise at the keys and then at Groening, and, finally, at his cane, which is lying on the floor by his seat.
“Thank you,” Groening says simply. “Now,” he continues, laying a hand on the man’s shoulder, “Would please do me the favor of walking over to the archway there, and then back to me again?”
This the man does, tentatively at first, and slowly. But once he reaches the arch and turns around, he strides confidently back to where Groening is standing. He, like the woman behind Kristina, is beaming. Tears are streaming down his face.
“Now,” Groening asks him, his hand on the man’s shoulder again, “which leg is it that was crippled during the war?”
The man, who towers over Groening, now that he is no longer hunched over a cane, ponders this, and then replies, his brows knitted, “I…I don’t remember!” Laughter breaks out in the crowd. Someone calls out, “It was your right leg! I saw you pulling it along when you came in.” And the man himself chuckles, realizing the absurdity of his response. “Really, I don’t recall!” he cries.
“And indeed,” Groening tells him, “Mr. Handler, why should you remember? That leg which you broke when an ammunition box fell on it – it’s now right as rain!”
The man looks at Groening and wonders how this man could know how his leg had been broken, or his name, for that matter. But before he can pose this question, Groening makes another request.
“Kind Sir, will you please hand me your cane?”
Handler walks easily to his seat, bends down and picks up his stick, and strides back over to Groening. Groening takes the cane in his right hand and studies it for a moment. Then he stretches his left arm out straight before him, raises the cane with his right hand and brings it down onto his left arm with a sharp whack. The cane breaks in two. The shocked audience members respond, some shouting, others clapping, still others simply nodding and smiling. Groening leans down to pick up the pieces of the cane that now lie on the floor, and then holds them loosely in his hands.
“You won’t be needing this anymore, will you?” When Handler shakes his head, Groening adds, “Please accept this broken cane as a reminder of your healing.”
In the first moment after Groening breaks Handler’s cane over his arm, Lina suddenly feels a strong and sharp pain in her legs. It starts in her ankles and then runs quickly up through her calves and thighs, and then into her hips. The pain catches her so off guard that she cries out, but no one seems to hear her, since so many of the people in the room are responding to what Groening has done. Only Renate turns to look at her granddaughter, who has now gone very pale and is staring straight ahead of her, at the fireplace. Renate lays her hand on Lina’s, but she seems not even to notice.
What’s going on? Lina asks herself, although her whole lower body hurts so much that she can’t formulate any explanation for what is going on. The pain is intense, and searing, as if she is being simultaneously torn apart and compressed beneath an anvil. She can’t understand this with her brain, but as time passes – really, only a few minutes go by, but Lina has a sense of being outside of time, in a space of eternity – she gradually comes to recognize what she’s feeling. Not a memory, but a recognition. This is what I felt that day. When the wood fell on me.
In the nearly four years since her accident, Lina had never remembered what her body experienced following the accident. In the early weeks, she sometimes wondered why it was that she had no memory of the pain that she must have felt when the crushing load of wood tumbled on top of her. Then how can I recognize it now? That thought does penetrate her mind now, but again, what she is feeling at this moment is a knowing, not a remembering. She is sure of it, even if she can’t explain it.
And once she knows what it is that she’s feeling, Lina is suddenly overcome by fear. Now she turns to her grandmother, and Renate sees the terror in her eyes. Lina grasps Renate’s hand in a vice-like grip, but can’t get any words out. “Lina, Dear,” Renate whispers, leaning over, “What is it? What’s happening?” But Lina just shakes her head.
Then, in an instant, Groening is standing before them. “What do you feel, Miss Bunke?” he asks Lina.
“Mr. Groening,” she cries, “I feel terrible, terrible pain.”
“Where do you feel it?”
“All up and down my legs.” She begins to cry now, for it hurts so much.
“Do you recognize these pains?” he asks.
Lina nods. Her family members are exchanging glances. What can he mean by asking her this?
“Where do you know them from?” Groening asks her.
“From the accident,” she says, sobbing. Now she is leaning forward, rubbing her thighs with her hands. Renate reaches over to put an arm around her shoulders, and Kristina leans forward to embrace her, but Groening waves them off.
“Do not touch her. It will interfere with the current.” After making sure that they will heed his words, Groening looks intently at Lina.
“Please check your body. Are these the same pains as before? The same as when the wood fell on you from the wagon? And in the period before your casts were removed and the pain went away?”
All the Gassmanns and Bunkes look at Groening in amazement. How does he know this about her? Kristina turns to Marcus with a question in her eyes, but he shakes his head. “I didn’t tell anyone what happened to her,” he whispers to her. “Only that she was paralyzed.” How does he know these things?
Lina sits, directing her powers of observation to her legs. It’s so odd to feel anything at all there, after all these years, all this time when I seemed not to have any living legs at all. But are these pains the same as before? Lina looks up at Groening like a schoolchild who’s been asked a math question far more complex than she’s able to comprehend. But he just waits for her to come up with answer. She closes her eyes, concentrates.
“They are in the same spots,” she finally says, slowly. “But…”
“But what?” Groening prompts her, his voice gentle now. Now the room is so silent you can hear the gentle ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.
She looks up at him, and Renate can see that the fear is gone from her eyes. “They are not accompanied by the same thoughts as before.”
“What thoughts did you have, then, with the old pain?” Groening persists.
Lina inhales deeply, as if deciding whether or not to share what she has never revealed to anyone. Finally, she begins.
“’A home.’ ‘Get rid of me.’”
Groening interrupts her. “Speak up, Miss Bunke, please.”
‘Useless,’” she goes on, after clearing her throat. “‘Euthanasia.’” As Lina speaks, she hears her mother inhale sharply.
Groening nods. “And now?”
“There aren’t any of those thoughts now. And I feel peaceful. Even though it hurts so much.”
Groening nods again, and he smiles at her, in such a kind way that she feels even more peaceful inside, even a bit happy.
Then a question bursts from Renate’s mouth. “But Mr. Groening, why does it hurt so much? That can’t be right! Can’t you help her?”
“It is right,” Groening says, answering Renate’s plea, but still focusing his gaze on Lina. “And it has to be that you feel pain. Those are the Regelungen – the regulation pains.The body is being brought into order. After being paralyzed for four years, you can’t expect the change to occur without any pain. Pains occurring after the healing imply Regelungen.They will stop. Observe your body. Observe it attentively. In three or four days, you will notice more changes. I ask you to come back with your family in a week’s time and report these changes to me.”
“Mr. Groening,” Ethel queries from the row behind Lina, “does that mean, then, that Lina is healed?” She and all other members of the family barely dare to breathe at this point.
“The pain will come and go until the healing has been completed,” he replies, speaking to the group as a whole now.
Ethel turns to Viktor and frowns, and then asks, “But this pain… Why does she have to feel it? It went away. Why did it come back?”
Groening is now standing once more in front of the fireplace.
“Healing is a Regelung. Every illness that finds its Regelung will be accompanied by Regelung pain.” He points now to the woman sitting behind Kristina. “This is true for you, also. An organic disease needs Regelungen. The illness disappears, but on the other hand, the Regelung does cause pain.”
“But I feel no pain,” the woman sitting behind Kristina reminds him.
“There is still evil within you that must leave. And when you experience that, do not fear that the healing has not been successful for you.The Regelungen – these are the evil leaving the body.”
Certainly, there are many confused looks on the faces of the people in attendance. Mr. Handler is sitting with his eyes closed, as if trying to determine whether he is feeling any of these regulation pains. He notices nothing that he thinks might qualify, and looking at Lina, who is smiling despite the fact that her body is now wracked by pain, he counts himself lucky.
Everyone seems in a daze. Lina barely notices when Mrs. Birkner stands up and thanks Mr. Groening for coming. Their hostess tells them that they are invited to come back the following week, and that they may bring others with them, too. Groening speaks some words of encouragement to the guests – although neither Lina nor her family members are taking them in at all. Then Groening starts walking toward the door, and Lina feels a new burst of fear. She reaches her hand out, but she needn’t have worried.
He stops in front of her and places one hand on her shoulder. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls something small out of it. It’s a small, round, shiny ball, she realizes when she sees it. It looks like it’s made out of tinfoil. Groening places it into her hand, which begins vibrating once her fingers close around the ball. The sensation is similar to what she is already feeling throughout her body, only stronger. Is that ‘current’ in it??
“Keep this with you at all times until you come back next week.”
“Mr. Groening,” Renate breaks in, “will she be able to walk?”
Groening does look at her this time, but his words seem meant for all of them.
“Do not demand that order manifest immediately,” he says.“The more extensive the disorder, the more work is required in the body, and so it will be, for as long as it takes, until complete order manifests.” Then he leans over and says, to Lina alone, “Trust and believe. The divine power helps and heals.”
At this point, Egon Arthur Schmidt comes up behind Groening and touches his elbow lightly. Groening nods, and the two men stride out of the Birkners’ parlor, leaving the people in the chairs wondering what they have just been a part of.
Sue Downing 