Chapter 33

Gassmann-Bunke homestead

            Lina awakens with the sun the next morning, and it takes a moment before she realizes that she is lying on her side, instead of her back. For four years, she has slept on her back, but here she is now, on her side.  She is confused at first. Then a smile spreads over her face. I must have turned onto my side in my sleep! she realizes. So, it’s true! I’m really healed! Rolling onto her back, she slowly raises herself up to a sitting position. Then, bending her knees, she scoots backwards, so that she is resting on her pillow against the headboard. And all this she does without any pain whatsoever.  Lina smiles and feels a deep well of gratitude within her.  It’s true!

            Moving aside the sheet she’d been sleeping under, Lina straightens out her legs, then pulls her nightgown up to her knees, so that she can examine her legs. After four years of such examinations, she knows the course of each scar, the outline of each discoloration, by heart. She has always had the feeling that if these spots where her skin and bones were broken could talk, they would whisper to her the secret of how and why the accident happened. Many, many times in the previous four years, she touched the white traces on her skin, the lichen-like blotches, and asked them to help her understand.  Funny, she thinks now, I haven’t looked at my legs since before the last time we went to see Bruno Groening. And that was the night when she did finally understand how the accident occurred. She runs her index finger lightly along one of the scars.  “Was it you who sent me that image?” she asks out loud, “So that I could understand?”  She spends the next few minutes bobbing her knees up and down and watching how these movements alter the way the scars and blotched patches of skin appear to her.

            Before this morning, her motionless legs always reminded her of dead tree trunks, lying helplessly on the forest floor, vulnerable to attack from all manner of insects and sharp human implements. Now, though, they seem to have sprung back to life, somehow reconnected to their roots, to their source of sustenance.  Even the scars and discolored spots have acquired a certain vibrancy, as the muscles beneath them undulate. Lina leans forward and then swings her legs over the side of the bed.  Stand up on the earth now, little saplings! she calls to them in her mind. Summon your strength up from your roots!

            The bed is just high enough that, when Lina lowered her legs, the soles of her feet come to rest against the floorboards. For the first time in four years, she feels the wood beneath her feet, really feels it. Wood to wood, she thinks, as her newly-enlivened trunk-legs meet the pine planks beneath them.  The floor is cool to the touch of her soles, and as Lina slides her feet this way and that, she notices that the pine is smooth here, roughened there.  She stretches out her right foot and touches her big toe to the edge of the hooked rug that lies half a foot from the bed. She smiles at the sensation of the wool against her skin as she moves her toe back and forth.

            It is this smile that Ethel sees on her daughter’s face when she walks into Lina’s room, just as she has done every day for the past four years.  Seeing Lina perched on the edge of the bed, Ethel’s first impulse is to rush to take hold of her daughter’s shoulder, lest she topple right over and onto the floor. But then she remembers what Groening said the evening before: that they should treat her like the healthy person she is. So, she just stands in the doorway, overcome with emotion at the sight of her daughter gently stretching out her fully-functioning leg.

            “Mama, can you believe it?” Lina asks, rising to her feet.  Slowly, not out of fear or discomfort, but out of the desire to savor each step, Lina walks over to her mother. Tears come to Ethel’s eyes, just as they did when tiny, one-year-old Lina took her first steps, in this very room. Joy and wonder, and gratitude, too, flood her heart as she and Lina embrace.

*          *          *

            When Lina comes out into the kitchen for breakfast, the others, who are bustling around either finishing the cooking or helping to setting the table and lay out the food, all stop what they are doing at the sight of her.

            “Aunt Lina,” Ingrid asks her, “why are you wearing boys’ clothes?”

            Indeed, Lina is dressed in one of the pairs of Peter’s dark gray pants that she always used to wear to work in, before the accident.  They are a bit big on her, since she has grown thinner over the years of inactivity. The white work shirt – also Peter’s – hangs loosely, too, but this suits her somehow:  As she extends her arms out straight to the sides and slowly spins to display her new-old look, the extra fabric in the sleeves and torso billows (although there is no breeze inside the house), and, for a moment, she resembles nothing so much as a dove that is just taking flight. Or, perhaps, a swallow.

            Ingrid has come over to her now, cloth napkins still clutched in one hand, and is looking her up and down in surprise. Lina reaches out and playfully tugs the little girl’s braids.

            “These are my work clothes,” she tells her gaily. Ingrid looks to Kristina for explanation, but Kristina is just as shocked as her daughter. She, too, has never seen Lina dressed this way, and it feels a bit much to grasp: first the healing, and now the clothes. Marcus and Viktor, too, are taken aback. After all, it was only after they both went off to the war that Lina began donning her brother’s pants and shirts and working alongside Ulrich in the forest. And when they returned home in 1945, it was after her accident, and she was once again wearing skirts. For Ulrich, Renate, and Ethel, seeing Lina dressed this way is not so much a surprise, as a welcome flashback to the wartime days before the accident. Here’s the Lina we knew! Ulrich finds himself thinking. For Peter, too, Lina’s garb is not unfamiliar.  After being discharged from the army due to his leg wound, he had more than a year to observe how natural his sister looked as she moved about the homestead in his clothes. And not once did he object: Seeing her head off into the forest wearing in his pants and shirts helped him feel that in some small and symbolic way, he was still able to participate in those efforts, if only by contributing the clothing his sister inhabited with such ease.

            Ingrid reaches out and touches Lina’s pants, then looks at the men in the room to inspect what they’re wearing in a way she never thought to do before. Then she rises up on tiptoes and brings her mouth next to Lina’s ear.

            “Isn’t it harder when you have to go to the toilet?” she asks in her stage whisper, a serious expression on her face.

            Lina laughs and puts her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Well, I would say it is not,” she replies. “Fewer layers of fabric to keep track of,” she whispers into Ingrid’s ears.  This is evidently all Ingrid needs to hear.

            “Mama,” she calls out to Kristina, “can I wear pants, too?”

            They all laugh, perhaps more loudly than the question really warrants, for everyone is grateful to have something else to discuss besides the revelations that came to light in Bremen the night before.

            “I don’t think these will fit you,” Lina tells Ingrid, as she takes a plate of fried eggs from her mother and sets it down on the table. “So, you’re out of luck, at least for now.”

            Over the coffee and rolls and jam and eggs, the family members pepper Lina with questions: How does she feel? Any pain? What did it feel like to wake up and realize that her legs really did work? And this from Viktor:

            “Are you really intending to go out into the forest with us today?”

            He looks at her with eyes red from lack of sleep, and his usual upright posture has shifted. His shoulders aren’t exactly slumping, but there is a kind of listlessness in his muscles – the exact opposite of the way Lina’s legs feel now. Did my healing somehow come at the expense of his vibrancy? Lina wonders as she looks at him.

            “Yes, I’d like to. Nothing too heavy,” she tells them all and sees that they are relieved to hear this.  “But I’ve spent so many years not being able to help, that I see no reason to sit here doing nothing.”

            “And who, exactly, will help me hang out the laundry, then?” Kristina asks, her hands on her hips, feigning insult, although, to tell the truth, she really will miss Lina’s company during the day. Will she still want to take our walk tonight? she wonders.

            “Heavens!” Lina tells says, happy to be made a fuss of in a light-hearted rather than pitying way. “We’ll hang it out after dinner, before I go back out, all right?”

            “Nonsense!” Ethel tells them both. “We don’t want to work her to death on her very first day, do we, Kristina? I know you can manage on your own.”

            Catching sight of her friend’s crestfallen face, Lina says, “And I’ll help you take it down after supper. How about that? I can reach the clothespins now!”

            Kristina, relieved, smiles. “Agreed!”

*          *          *

            After breakfast, Ingrid is off to school, Marcus to work in Varel.  Lina heads out into the forest with her father, grandfather, and Peter.  They are all carrying various saws and other implements – except for Lina, who has reluctantly agreed to take it a little easy this first morning.  They are still seeing me as weak! she thinks in consternation.  But they are her family, and she loves them, so she carries nothing.  As they reach the beginning of the path into the woods, Lina pauses.  The others, who are walking ahead of her, turn.

            “Are you all right?” Peter asks, a look of concern coming to his face.

            “Yes, yes, I’m fine!” she tells him with a bit of irritation.  “I’m just greeting the trees. You go on. I’ll catch up with you.”

            It is the first time she has entered the forest under her own power in more than four years. There is so much happiness in her heart, that tears come to her eyes.  She looks up at the crowns of the aspens and pines, sees them waving ever so slightly in the summer breeze. Hello, friends! she says to them in her mind, and takes the increased waving as their response.  May I come in here with you today? she asks.  A moment later, a burst of energy comes into her feet from the earth beneath her.  It rises up through her legs, through her entire body, into the very tips of her fingers, and the top of her head.  That is a ‘’Yes”! she knows. She notices that her body is tingling and vibrating in just the same way as it was the evening before, in the Birkners’ parlor. Ahhh, she thinks. The Heilstrom?  She gazes again at the tops of the trees, then runs her eyes downward along their trunks, to the point where their roots meet the ground, where myriad small and middling plants are also growing, where mushrooms have poked their caps up after the rain that fell a few days before. Nature is God, Lina thinks. Groening said that. She closes her eyes and opens her palms. The tingling in her body increases, and joy floods her heart.

            “Good morning, nature,” she says aloud, taking in the rich scents of the pines and the fungi. “Good morning, God.”

            Moving along the path, Lina feels a lightness in her body, as if she could just float up off the ground. But she wants to be on the earth, to notice how it feels and sounds different beneath her feet as she walks on bare dirt, a cushion of pine needles, or a layer of several years’ worth of dried and decaying leaves. Each of these has its own give and bounce as she moves across it, and its own scent, too. This really is the heavenly, just the way Grandpa always says.

            Before long, by listening for her relatives’ voices, she finds the spot where she needs to leave the path and head into the woods in a different direction, to where the men are preparing several large oaks for cutting.  Selected for their straightness and size, they will eventually be transformed into tables and sideboards for clients by Viktor and Peter.

            “How beautiful they are!” Lina exclaims, as she joins her relatives. She walks over to one of the trees and lays a hand on its bark.  “Do you ever think,” she says, without directing her question to one or the other of them, “what the oak must think at this moment? Here it’s been growing, growing, growing for all of these years, straight and strong and handsome, only to be cut down one day without warning. Taken away from its family, isolated, alone. And without knowing the reason for it.”

            Ulrich smiles wistfully and nods, and they all recognize that his words pertain not just to the trees, but to Lina, too, and to Viktor. Perhaps even to all of them. “I have thought about that many times, Lina,” he tells her. “Especially when I was young.  Sometimes it felt like a monstrous thing, to cut a tree off at the roots, to fell it in such a violent way, with such sharp tools, to tear it away from its loved ones. As if it is being punished for some grave mistake. Except that it has no idea what it’s done wrong, or why no one gave it the chance to do things differently.”

            “Yes, Grandpa, I was thinking that now,” Lina tells him. Tears come to her eyes.

            “But then,” Ulrich says, “I came to a different view of it.  Like Mr. Groening said last evening, nature is God.  And God has created this beauty in the forest.”

            “The heavenly,” Lina adds, and Ulrich nods.

            “And so, when we cut down a tree like this beauty here, and create a table or chairs or a wardrobe out of it, then we are taking God’s beauty and moving it into someone’s house.”

            “But not everyone approaches the trees and the table-making the way you do, Ulrich,” Viktor interjects. “Plenty of woodworkers – I’ve worked with them! – see the wood just as a product to be shaped according to their idea. They don’t see their task as working with what’s divine in the wood to create something that’s in a different shape, but still divine.”

            “And some trees are just cut down for firewood,” Peter adds, thoughtfully. “Because they’re deformed, or damaged in some way, and nothing divine seems to come from them.”

            “No, that’s true,” Ulrich agrees, reaching out to touch the tree, too. “What both of you said. But the damaged tree… it still can give warmth.”

            Lina jumps in. “And if it can do that – provide warmth – then there still must be some bit of the divine in it, don’t you think? To keep people from freezing to death, to allow them to cook their food. That’s an act of kindness, too, isn’t it?”

            They all nod. And Viktor looks intently at his daughter’s face. He feels that she’s speaking to him, and about him, even if it is in a very indirect way. He wants to believe that this is the case.

            “I think it is an act of kindness,” Ulrich offers, nodding.

            “So, however we use the trees, then,” Peter adds slowly, “they’re all ways of allowing the trees to be of service in one way or another.”

            Here Lina thinks of the picnic they had out here in the woods the week before. She recalls the insight she gained then: that her accident had to happen, so that the whole family could come together in love. So, she thinks to herself, even those bone-breaking rounds of firewood were able to serve us all in a good way, and help us.

            “I reckon you’re right,” Ulrich told his grandson. “Even so, there’s something about transforming the tree’s wood into an object of beauty, a piece that preserves the divine … It takes a rare ability to be able to do that. And you,” he says, waving a hand in Viktor’s direction, “are able to do that. I see that especially in your carving.”

            Viktor, who is standing, axe in hand, glances at his father-in-law with gratitude. There is so much history between the two of them, both easy and trying… After the previous night, Viktor is thankful that Ulrich still has a good word for him.

            “But if I am able to do that, then I learned it from you,” Viktor replies.  “Before I met your grandfather,” he tells Peter and Lina, “I was one of those ‘other woodworkers’ myself. I couldn’t sense the heavenly in the wood. Probably because I never spent time in the forest before I came here.”

            Ulrich shrugs. “You can’t be faulted for that,” he tells Viktor. “Generations of our family have worked in this forest and lived alongside it. We came to feel its power as a matter of course.”

            “But you never took it for granted, Grandpa,” Lina says.

            “That’s true.  My father, and my grandfather, Wolf, they brought me into this forest from the time I was born – just the way your father did with you.” He gestures to Peter and Lina. “I felt God here before I could speak and put a name to what I felt. But I knew that here is where I would find it. And that I didn’t feel this same divinity when I was in town. Or on other folks’ homesteads.  That’s how I came to understand how special this forest is. How powerful.”

            Lina sighs and runs her fingers over the oak’s bumpy trunk.  “I never realized what the forest gives us until I couldn’t be out here in it every day.  In those early days, I thought I’d die from not being in with the trees.”

            Peter steps over and hugs her. “And now you’re back with them. With us and them.”

            Lina nods.

            Viktor looks from one to the other of them, and feels a mixture of love for them and shame in regard to himself. On the one hand, if Bruno Groening is to believed, he has made things right – with God. But then there is his family. Although no one has said anything yet, he is certain that they are all looking at him differently now. Even Ethel didn’t raise the question last night when they went to bed. She looked to him like she was in a daze, and she went to bed without a word. How to make things right with all of them? The answer to this question still eludes him.

            “This forest saved my life,” he says, his voice catching. He clears his throat and looks down at the axe.

            “It did?” Peter asks quietly.  “How?”

            “As I told your mother many, many years ago – in fact it was at supper that day with your Uncle Hans and Uncle Ewald, Grandma’s brother, the day when we all talked about God.”

            “And it was after that that Uncle Hans left?” Peter asks.

            Viktor nods. “Anyway, that day, I told everyone that I didn’t believe in God before I came into this forest, before I worked with your grandfather here, amongst the trees.”

            “But how did it save your life, Papa?” Lina asks.

            Viktor gazes at her gray eyes that matches Ulrich’s, then over at Peter, whose sandy hair came from him, and his mother’s hazel eyes.  Can they forgive me? God, please help me!

            “You are very lucky,” he says to the two of them, “to have grown up here, with this family – here I’m leaving myself out – and in these woods, where you could be with God.  I didn’t have that when I was growing up. I didn’t know God. Saw no evidence whatsoever that He exists. But here –” Viktor raises his right arm and makes a large arc with it, indicating everything around them. “Here I came to know that God does exist. And that saved me. Gave me hope – for myself, for our family.”

            Feeling he might have said too much, he looks down.

            All of them realize that he is speaking now about much more than his early years on their homestead. They each, like Viktor himself, feel a mix of emotions.  Here is this man they have loved – Peter and Lina, for all their lives, and Ulrich, for more than two and a half decades – and who has also committed acts that turn their stomachs.  His two children want to run to him and cry in his arms, beg him to explain it all to them, so that they can forgive him as God apparently has done. At the same time, they want to run from him.  This new side of him that’s been revealed terrifies and repulses them. They don’t know how to incorporate it into their vision of their father. 

            Certainly, they have seen him angry and, especially with Marcus, they have seen him act harshly. But somehow they have been able to ignore that aspect of his personality – perhaps because neither of them ever had to experience his harshness themselves. And in fact, they saw him as their protector: He was the one who kept them safe from Marcus. Or, at least, Lina thinks, He kept mesafe from Marcus. She remembers now what Peter told her about Marcus’ bullying, about how he knew he couldn’t go to their parents, that Marcus would only grow more brutal if he did.  So, did he nottake care of us after all? Lina wonders. 

            Peter, looking now at Viktor, realizes how torn up his father is feeling. The thought that perhaps their father did not care for them as he should have done – this is not a new thought for Peter. But he, like Lina, has long ago found a way in his own mind and heart to focus more on the love and care their father has shown them in the course of their lives, than on what he did not do for them. At this moment, too, Peter wants very badly to continue to love his father, to see the good in him.  But how? Peter asks himself. Can there be an explanation for what he did? An explanation that will make it all right? Or that will at least allow them to return to seeing him without the shadow of what Groening revealed.

            Then a memory comes into his mind. He sees a field on the Eastern Front, an operation that took place just a few days before the one in which he was wounded. His group of ten soldiers is moving through a forest that stands alongside what was once a field where crops of some sort were growing. Wheat, maybe? There have been reports of an enemy partisan force here, and Peter and his fellow soldiers are searching for them. They move more deeply into the woods, and then, suddenly, the partisans are upon them. Peter’s friend, Rolf, is shot at close range. Peter sees the partisan who made the shot, but this partisan has not seen him. The rest Peter remembers in clear detail, but also as if through a haze: pulling his knife from its sheath, coming up behind the partisan, grabbing him around the neck, and plunging the knife deep into the man’s back at the level of his heart.  To this day, Peter cannot make sense of how he could bring himself to kill another human being.  Of course, he tells himself, there may have been other times when he killed enemy soldiers at longer range, when shooting into a line.  Until that moment – when it is your knife drawing blood from another man’s back – it is easy to tell yourself you haven’t caused anyone’s death.

            As this memory fades, Peter looks once more at his father. What brought Papa to give that order? Viktor’s face provides no answer, and Peter is left – as are they all – to make his own choice: to find space in his heart to continue loving this man, despite the truths they now know, or to allow the horror he feels to take the upper hand.

            Ulrich, in a moment of outspokenness that surprises them all, listens to what Viktor has said and then asks, “And was it when you left the forest that you forgot that God exists?”

            A slight frown comes to Viktor’s face. “What do you mean, exactly?”

            Ulrich takes in a deep breath, and then lets it out. “When you went to Schweiburg,” he begins, “when you were away from this forest, away from the divine – was that how all those awful ideas were able to get in?”

            It is such a blunt question, and they are all taken aback that Ulrich has spoken without mincing any words whatsoever. And yet, they also notice, there is no anger in his eyes. He, too, seems to be wanting to find a way to hold onto the good that has existed between himself and Viktor, while explaining away the horrific.  Ulrich studies his son-in-law, who has, over these decades, felt like more of a son to him than his blood son, Hans. He has almost always seen Viktor as the human equivalent of the great oaks they are preparing to cut today: strong, straight, even in grain, with a bark impenetrable to parasites or nature’s calamities, its shade sheltering the small plants on the forest floor, so that they might flourish.

            But, what if they were to cut one of these oaks and, upon studying its core, find there a dark rot spreading throughout its center, from crown to roots?  Could part of the wood be salvaged? Could something beautiful still be created from the divine wood? Or does the rot at the center negate the divinity of the entire trunk and force it to be relegated for use as mere firewood – to burn down to ashes, leaving no trace of the grand beauty and power the forester mistakenly felt the tree possessed?  Even if, in the process, it provides crucial warmth to a human family inside, say, a long home? This is what Ulrich is wondering as he asks his question of Viktor.

            “Yes, Ulrich,” Viktor says finally, while looking also at Peter and Lina. “Yes, I believe that is what happened.  Here I was protected, safe, for the first time in my life.  And when I left this heavenly haven – then I lost the protection. I didn’t know how to carry it with me when I went out there.” He searches their eyes for clues to what they are thinking and feeling, and his sharp intuition picks up the absolute truth: They just do not know, yet, what they think. But Ulrich does speak again.

            “And you never regained that protection, not even after you and Ethel came back from Schweiburg. I don’t think you did, anyway. Your carving has not been the same since then.”

            This makes Viktor so sad he could cry, because he knows it is true. It is only in the past few weeks that he has once again fully felt the connection to the divinity of the forest, to God.  Did I get it all back too late? He nods, accepting Ulrich’s assessment.

            “And then I went to the war,” he says quietly.  “Without that protection. Without God.”

            “In that state,” Ulrich says softly, “anything can happen. And it does.”

*          *          *

            Two hours pass, and the four of them stop their work to have a snack of bread and cheese.

            “Lina,” Peter says, “let’s go to the treehouse and eat this there.”

            Lina is on her feet in a moment, for she has been having the same thoughts. Off the two of them go, heading deeper into the woods, hand in hand.

            “Reminds you of when they were tots, doesn’t it?”  Ulrich asks.

            Viktor nods, his heart aching with both love and regret as he watches them.

            Ulrich and Viktor are sitting, side by side, on the earth, atop the dry and decaying leaves, and amongst the small plants that have pushed their way up through them to expose their green shoots to the filtered sun and air. For the first few bites of Ethel’s sourdough bread and cheese, neither man speaks. Ulrich, on Viktor’s right, is sitting cross-legged, his long, branch-like arms resting awkwardly atop his knees, one hand holding a hunk of cheese, the other, bread. Viktor’s legs are straight out, the cloth that holds the food spread out atop his thighs, a flask of water leaning against his hip. He doesn’t have much of a stomach for the food. Then he hears Ulrich clear his throat.

            “Son,” he begins, “we none of us were prepared for what Mr. Groening said last night.”

            Viktor, who continues to look ahead of him, nods.  “I know I wasn’t.”

            “And you already knew all of what he said.” Ulrich lifts his left hand and takes a bite of the sourdough, chews it.  “Imagine,” he says, and Viktor can hear that he still has a small piece of the bread in his mouth, “what a shock it was for all of us to hear that, when we had no idea.”

            Viktor is looking at the piece of cheese he is holding, remembering his first days with the Gassmanns, and how he’d complimented Ethel’s cheesemaking. He chokes down a piece of cheese now, then turns to Ulrich and forces himself to look into the older man’s gray eyes. Ulrich’s sandy-colored hair, which has grown gray to match his eyes, was once so much the color of Viktor’s, although curlier, that the two of them really did resemble father and son. Viktor recalls how happy he was, the first time Ulrich called him “Son”. That was all he had wanted then – along with marrying Ethel: to be like a son to this man who taught him so much about the forest, forestry, God, and living. He never looked up to his own father – dead for thirty-two years now – the way he does to Ulrich. But now, he fears he has destroyed this relationship, too. Why did I tell Groening I wanted to make things right? Why didn’t I just stay silent? He tries to call back the memory of the lightness and relief he experienced the night before in the Birkners’ living room, the joy of those moments when he sensed God looking at him through Groening’s eyes and knew for certain that God had forgiven him. He can no longer feel what he sensed then. Even if I could still feel it, he asks himself, what good would it do me? Receiving God’s forgiveness is one thing. But gaining his family’s, which is what he is most wishing for now, is, he sees clearly, an entirely different matter.

            “But you had some idea, didn’t you?” he asks Ulrich.

            The older man shrugs. “Well, not in the particulars,” he replies. “But I felt it in your voice, saw it in the way you moved after you came back from Schweiburg.”

            “And in the way my carving changed.”

            Ulrich nods, chewing a bite of cheese.

            “You didn’t need to know the details to know something was wrong?” Viktor asks.

            Ulrich nods again. “You came here unsettled in ’21, Viktor. You got settled, through the grace of God –“

            “And through this family,” Viktor tells him, the emotion audible in his voice.

            Ulrich waves the hand that holds the bread. “It’s all the same, Viktor – the heavenly. Whether it flows through the trees, or these young plants here, or Renate and Ethel and me, or you. I’m not sure you ever realized that. Back then, anyway. Keep yourself in the flow of that heavenly, and you’ve got a fighting chance of coming out alive. Of coming out a human being.”

            Now Viktor folds the edges of the cloth over the remaining food and offers it to Ulrich, who shakes his head. So he lays it gently on the ground beside him.

            “You’re right, Ulrich,” he says. “About all of it. I can see it now. You’re right – I didn’t realize it then.”

            “And I didn’t care to learn any details,” Ulrich tells him. “I chose not ignore the signs. I regret that now. Perhaps I could have helped you somehow if I’d had the courage to talk to you about it.”

            Viktor doesn’t respond to this confession. But then, sensing that Ulrich wants to help him now, he goes on. “Last night, at the Birkners’, after it all came out, I looked into Groening’s eyes.  I felt God then, Ulrich.”

            “In Groening?”

            “I wouldn’t put it that way, exactly.  I’d say more that it was … as if, in his eyes, a door opened up, so that I could see God.”

            “And what did you see?” Ulrich asks, taking the last bite of cheese into his mouth.

            “I can’t say I saw anything,” Viktor tells him. “But I felt God there, and such joy and gratitude. And I knew that what Groening had told me was true – about God forgiving me.”

            “I felt it, too,” Ulrich tells him simply.

            “Felt what?” Viktor turns so that he is sitting cross-legged, facing his father-in-law.

            “That God has forgiven you,” Ulrich replies.  “And that God was looking out at each of us – through that door in Groening’s eyes, if you want to put it that way.”

            “And what did you see there?” Viktor asks, feeling now, for the first time since the evening before, the strong flow of the heavenly – the Heilstrom – in his body.

            “Nothing like what you did,” Ulrich tells him, a bit of a smile coming to his lips. “But I had a knowing, too, through a kind of inner hearing. Sort of the way I hear the trees telling me what they tell me.”

            Viktor nods. “What did you hear?”

            “That God gave Groening the message that you were forgiven as a challenge to the rest of us.”

            “What do you mean? What kind of challenge?”

            “What I heard was, ‘And you? Can you also forgive him?’”

            Looking into his father-in-law’s eyes, Viktor wonders what is behind them, in his mind, and in his heart. “And what did you answer?” he asks, his throat tight.

            Ulrich shakes his head. “I didn’t have an answer then,” he replies, reaching out and laying a hand on Viktor’s shoulder. “Still don’t.” Seeing Viktor close his eyes, he goes on. “I’m not a saint, Son. No one in this family is.  We all love you, but something like this… it’s not easy to forgive.  Or even to make sense of.  You went to the Birkners’ one person and came back somebody different. So did we. That’s how it seems to me. To all of us, I’d wager.”

            Viktor nods.

            “Like our Lina, there,” Ulrich went on, gesturing in the direction of the treehouse. “Sure, she looks different today, in Peter’s clothes again. But it’s not just the clothes. The second she got out of that chair, she was a different person than the second before. That’ll take us some getting used to, too. We all need some time.”

            “But can you all forgive me?” Viktor asks, although, even as he is posing it, he realizes how ridiculous his question is.

            “That depends on you – and on us,” Ulrich tells him. “If we can see you as the you we’ve always loved, then, yes, I think we can.”

            Viktor knows that Ulrich and Renate and Ethel all had the chance to see him when he was this man Ulrich is referring to.  But what about Lina? And Marcus and Peter, for that matter? Did they even know me before I changed?

            “But how do I make you see me that way?” Viktor asks, looking deeply into Ulrich’s eyes, seeking an answer there, seeking the older man’s guidance.

            “You can’t make us,” Ulrich says. “What we all need here is the heavenly, to not be away from it for a moment, if we can manage that. You’ve got that thingy Groening gave you, right?”

            Viktor nods and digs the tin foil ball out of his pocket. He passes it over to Ulrich, who wraps his fingers around it, closes his eyes, and sits silently with it for nearly a minute. Finally, he holds it out for Viktor to take back.

            “I don’t know how he got the power of God into it,” he says then, “but it’s there.  Keep it with you, like Groening said. I think it’s your lifeline to the heavenly, to the Heilstrom, if you want to call it that. So that you can be that man we remember. The one I know you want to be again.”

            “But what about the rest of you?” Viktor asks.

            “We’ve got our own connection to the heavenly, here on the homestead. We need to come to terms with ourselves, too”

            “But Ulrich,” Viktor persists, “will that connection be enough?

            “I can’t say. Marcus was right, you know. We do all have our free will. But unlike Marcus, I believe God can help us while we’re deciding how to use our free will.”

            “How? How does He help?”

            Ulrich is folding up his own square of fabric now. “I can’t say that for sure, either, Son.” He slides the cloth bundle into his shirt pocket. “But I suspect it’s through the heavenly Heilstrom. Viktor, if you and I were able to feel God last night when we were awash in it, and I know we feel it out here, too, and Lina got healed from being in it… Then I think anything can turn around to the good if we’re in it.”

            Viktor ponders this for a bit, then shares his thoughts. “It’s just as you said about the protection earlier.  The heavenly protects us. And when I left the homestead, I left the protection, and then I fell in with people I shouldn’t have.”

            Ulrich nods.

            “But the heavenly – or the Heilstrom, to use Groening’s word – it doesn’t just protect us. Is that what you’re saying? That it helps us? Heals us?”

            “That seems right to me,” Ulrich says. “I never thought of it in those terms, but that must be right.  I say that because I experienced it myself last night.”

            “Experienced what?”

            “Healing.” Now Ulrich looks straight ahead, out into the forest.

            “But you weren’t hurt, were you?” Viktor asks, scanning the other mans’ body for signs of an ailment.

            “Not physically, no,” Ulrich tells him.  “But inside, yes. In my heart.” He lets out a long sigh before continuing. “My mother left us when I was a tiny baby,” he says.  “I never knew her. But I missed her. Cried for months, my father told me once, when I was grown. And later on, I came to hate her for leaving us.”

            “Why did she leave?” Viktor asks, but Ulrich waves him off.

            “Not important,” he says. “What is important, is that the first time we went to Groening, we were sitting there, and all of a sudden, my mother’s face came into my mind.  I never saw her, mind you – or not so as I remember the way she looked – but I recognized her.  And I felt very warmly toward her.  For the first time in my life.” Ulrich reaches down and gently moves some dead leaves away from some new green plant leaves that are trying to make their way to the light. “Then last night,” Ulrich tells Viktor, “while Groening was talking to Kristina, I saw Mama’s face again. And in that moment, something shifted inside me, in my heart, like a clasp opening up and two cupboard doors spreading apart and letting love out.” He shows this motion with his hands. “I saw my mother – her whole body now – and she stretched out her arms to me. She embraced me, and I embraced her. I told her I forgave her for leaving us.  And I knew in my heart that it was true.”

            “Is such a thing possible?” Viktor asks. “To see someone that way, someone who’s dead?” He was thinking of Wolf again. He felt sure now that Ulrich must have seen him sometimes, too.

            “I don’t know,” Ulrich tells him. Then he smiles. “But whether it’s possible or not, I did! I saw her.  Maybe it’s not so different from your intuition, the way you pick things up, Viktor.”

            “You could be right,” Viktor says, “and it’s just a different kind of knowing.”

            “One that comes about when we’re in the heavenly. That’s what I think.”

            Viktor nods, and before him appears Wolf’s spirit. He’s also sitting amongst the leaves, nodding.  

            Ulrich points a finger in Viktor’s direction. “That’s why I said what I did about things turning around when we’re in the Heilstrom. Because of last night. That’s how I know it can happen. Because I experienced it myself.”

            “If we want to forgive, God will help us. Is that what you think goes on?” Viktor asks.

            Ulrich nods. Then he gets to his feet and stretches his arms up overhead and then straight out to the sides.

            “I do,” he tells his son-in-law.

            “But did you want to forgive your mother?”

            This gives Ulrich pause.  “You know, I never consciously asked God to help me forgive her.  But in my heart, I wanted to. I can see that now. Maybe that’s all it takes – to want it in the deepest part of your heart.”

            Viktor brightens at this. “And doesn’t the deepest part of everyone’s heart want to forgive?”

            Ulrich can tell where Viktor’s going with this thought.    

            “I can’t say, Son.  All I know is, as far as this family and forgiveness is concerned, it’s between each of us and God now.”

*          *          *

            “To think that less than a week ago, I never could have gotten up here!” Lina exclaims. She and Peter are sitting in the treehouse, their bread and cheese bundles open on their laps, looking out through the woven walls.

            “I wouldn’t have been able to do that two weeks ago, either,” Peter replies, speaking around the chunk of bread in his mouth. 

            Lina nods. “It didn’t hurt at all, climbing up here,” she tells her brother.  “After four years in that awful chair, how is it possible that my muscles work so well? That I don’t feel weak?”

            “I don’t know. Doesn’t make sense to me, either.  I feel lighter in my steps than I ever have, even before the war.”

            Lina reaches over and takes his hand. Her face is beaming. “It really is a miracle, isn’t it? For both of us!”

             “Oh, yes, a genuine miracle.” Peter says, with a nod.  “Isn’t there something odd about it – that the two of us were healed within a week of each other?”

            “Odd, why?” Lina is now breaking off little bits of her mother’s farmhouse cheddar and savoring the flavor. “You know,” she says, before Peter can answer, “I think Mama’s cheese tastes better to me now than it has for the past four years. Now, that’s strange!”

            Peter laughs.  “Yes. The whole forest looks brighter to me today, Lina. The greens look more vibrant. That’s strange, too!”

            “It is! But what about our healings?” Lina prompts him.

            “Right. Remember last week, when we were here – or, rather, down there – talking, and you said you felt responsible for me being wounded in the war? And you told me that vision you had at the Birkners’ place?”

            “Yes.” Lina is testing the bread now, to see whether it, too, tastes better than usual. It does.

            “Well, I’ve been wondering why in the world you would have done that. Caused the accident, I mean.”

            “And have you figured anything out?”

            Peter shrugs. “Not figured out, exactly.  But the whole past week, after my leg got healed, I was feeling that it wasn’t fair for my leg to be healed while you were still in the wheelchair.”

            “Peter,” Lina begins, but he holds up his hand.

            “Listen.  What I mean is, that it became so clear to me that you and I are more like twins than just brother and sister.”

            “Yes, I feel that, too. That’s nothing new, though, Peter. We’ve talked about it before.”

            “I know, I know. But because we are so close – and who knows why that is, but it’s true – maybe because of that, we can’t bear to be unlike each other.”

            Lina frowns and puts down the piece of bread.  “I don’t quite get it.”

            He sits up straighter and looks at her with shining eyes. He reaches out and touches her shirt.

            “I go off to war, and you start wearing my clothes and working in the forest with Grandpa.”

            “Well, I couldn’t very well wear my dirndl, could I?” Lina asks him with a laugh.

            “Hear me out, Sis,” Peter tells her. “You put on my clothes and learn my job.  I come back from the war and can’t do the forestry work anymore, so you keep it up for me. But, as you told me yourself, you’re feeling guilty that I got wounded and can’t use my leg properly.  And then…” He pauses and looks her straight in the eye. “Then, you’re feeling it’s your fault, and so, you cause an accident that makes it so that you can’t work in the forest or use your legs, either.”

            Lina’s jaw drops. “Wait, Peter! What are you saying?”

            “And next,” he goes on, “within a week of my leg being healed, you are miraculously healed, too.”

            “Peter, I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she tells him, shaking her head.

            “I’m not sure I do, either. But what if you and I are so connected – in our souls, if that makes any sense, or if it’s even possible – that we are constantly striving to reflect each other? We’ve known all our lives that we were so alike in our personalities.  Couldn’t that happen in our souls, too?”

            Lina frowns, but simply in confusion, not annoyance.  “Peter, for the life of me, I have no idea!”

            “But doesn’t it make an odd kind of sense?”

            Lina applies herself to the bread and cheese again, as she mulls this over.  Then, finally, she says, “As if we’re playing a constant game of copycat.”

            “Trying to keep up with each other, to be always in the same spot.”

            “In our bodies and in our souls,” Lina adds, and Peter nods.

            As they both ponder this, they finish their snacks and fold up their cloths. Lina looks at her own clothes and her brother’s.

            “Whyever this is all happening,” she tells him with a smile, “it’s convenient that I can wear your clothes. As for the rest of it, I don’t know what to think.”

            “Me, neither,” Peter admits. “But can we just tell our own souls and each other’s, that they can stop this game now?” A smile comes to his face.

            “Agreed!” Lina says. “Hear that, souls?” she calls out, lifting her head to look up high above her.  “Everything’s in order now. Can we leave it at that?”

            Peter laughs and reaches over to hug his sister. 

            “Lina, I’m so glad you’re well now.  You have no idea.”

            “I think I do. It has to be the same joy I feel that you’re well, too.”

            “And we had both better get back to Papa and Grandpa before they fine us a day’s wages!”

            Indeed, as they are lowering themselves down the ladder, they catch sight of Viktor, who is making his way through the woods toward him. Today he does not look as carefree as the last time, when the three of them shared the heartfelt chat beneath this old beech. Looking at him now, Peter understands why their father was reluctant to tell them about how the family came to live in Schweiburg for several years. “A story for another day. A sad story.” That’s what he said, Peter recalls.

            Viktor reaches the bottom of the old beech and, as he gazes up at his son and daughter, he is overcome with joy at the miracle of their healings.

            “Just look at the two of you!” he calls out tenderly. “Did you both really climb up there?”

            “We did!” Lina tells him, with a broad smile, and he sees the brightness in her eyes. He also notices another, more somber, emotion fleet across her face. He sees it in Peter’s expression, too, along with a joy in his eyes that matches that in his sister’s. Please, dear God, Viktor begs inwardly. Please help them forgive me!

            Once Lina and Peter have fully descended and are back on the ground once more, Viktor stands facing them. Then he walks up and wraps his arms around the two of them together. There is an awkwardness in this embrace that they all feel, as Viktor tightens his grip and pulls them to him, but then each of them finds a way to let go of this and lean toward each other. Viktor says nothing in words, but Lina and Peter sense all that his heart is expressing. After a moment, brother and sister both reach one arm around their father’s back. As he fights the tears that rush to his eyes as he feels their hearts’ complex messages, Peter’s hand meets Lina’s, and they lace their fingers together, and rest their intertwined hands against Viktor’s back.

*          *          *

            While at work in Varel that day, Marcus manages to keep at bay all the thoughts about his father that keep trying to invade his mind.  He is busy enough with his work that, in fact, he doesn’t have much time for reflection.  But by the time his coworker drops him off at the Gassmann-Bunke homestead, he notices that the thoughts are swirling in his brain.  He turns his focus to the brief exchange he had with Groening the evening before.

            “Mr. Groening, about the Heilstrom…”

            “Yes, Mr. Bunke?” Groening gazes at Marcus, giving him his full attention.

            “You said that it comes from God.”

            “That’s right,” Groening replies. He is looking intently into Marcus’ eyes.

            “But, my whole life,” Marcus tells him, slowly, cautiously, “I’ve felt a strong power deep inside me, here.” He lays a hand on his abdomen. “I’ve always felt it. But I don’t think it’s from God.” He watches Groening’s face for signs of disapproval, but sees none. “I think it’s my power. And when I’m trying to decide something, I go to that spot with my mind. And then I know what to do.”

            “Even though you don’t always do what the voice there tells you, do you?”

            Marcus holds Groening’s gaze and shakes his head. “That’s true. But what I’m wondering is this: Is it right to trust that power, to let it guide my decisions? Even though I don’t think of it as coming from God? I mean… maybe I’m wrong, but it feels like it’s my power.” He pauses. “And God did give us free will, didn’t He?” He looks intently at Groening now, happy to have given voice to all of these questions.

            Groening tips his head thoughtfully to one side, then nods, a small smile coming to his face. He places a hand on Marcus’ shoulder. “We do all have this power you speak of, Mr. Bunke, inside us. And you do have the free will to choose what to do.”

            Marcus, overjoyed, feels like he’s grown taller.

            “If we use this power carefully, and with love, then all is possible,” Groening continues. But then he wags a finger at Marcus, and his smile grows less broad.

            “Although it can be your guiding compass, you must take great care to seek its guidance properly,” Groening says. “Find calm within you, and only then listen to the voice that speaks with the power. This is very important. The other side – the evil – will try to masquerade as the good, Mr. Bunke, and trick you into hurting others. When angry thoughts come to you, listen carefully. Ask yourself, ‘Who am I hearing? The good power? Or the evil?’ That is your task now. Be on guard!”

            Then Groening reaches out and places a small, tin foil ball into Marcus’ hand.

            “Keep this with you. It will help you hear the voice of the good power inside you. It will help you recognize the evil and avoid its trap. Don’t engage with the evil!”

            Marcus nods solemnly.

            “And remember, Mr. Bunke. Let us not despise anybody. Let us absorb brotherly love, and be good to one another.”

            “Yes, Mr. Groening. Yes,” Marcus replies, nodding again.

            Running through this conversation in his mind now, as he nears the house, Marcus resolves to heed Groening’s advice – and his warnings. He knows that the evening meal with his family will be a great test for him.

*          *          *

            As the family sits down to supper, Ulrich jokingly laments the fact that Lina has been too busy out in the forest to read the newspaper and give them her usual report. 

            “On the other hand,” he says, “she has become reacquainted with some of her favorite trees.”

            “And the treehouse,” Peter adds.

            “She climbed the ladder herself,” Viktor tells them, smiling at Lina.  “So did Peter,” he says. He turns to look at his younger son. In his eyes is an expression of both pride and gratitude, as well as an indication of some greater closeness between the two of them. 

            Marcus sees this in Viktor’s gaze and cannot understand it – especially now, given what Groening revealed about their father the evening before. As he notices what passes between Viktor and Peter, Marcus also detects a bitter taste in his mouth, and an upwelling of anger in his chest.  Don’t they see right through him? This thought comes to him, and he wonders whether it is from his own inner power, or from the evil that Groening warned him against. He also has a fleeting thought: Let it go! He recognizes this as the voice of his inner power, and resolves to do what Groening told him: to heed it. So, he composes himself, wraps his hand around the tinfoil ball in his pocket, and decides to broach the subject that is on his mind.

            “So,” he begins. “About my job.” 

            Viktor shifts his gaze from Peter to Marcus, and Marcus immediately senses that his father is now on his guard. Strangely, though, Marcus does not detect any of the aggression he has felt coming from his father his whole life.  It is an entirely different complex of emotions emanating from the man now, although Marcus can’t yet decipher it. But what he does understand, without rationally examining it, is that things have shifted, and that he suddenly has the upper hand in the relationship. This comes as a shock to him, and the voice inside him says, “Go easy”.

            “Now that Lina is healed,” Marcus continues calmly, gesturing with his right hand at his sister, who is sitting next to him, “I will be staying at my job in Varel. I’ll tell Mr. Weiss tomorrow.”

            Ethel opens her mouth and looks from Marcus to Viktor, who makes no response. But this is not the Viktor of old, who consciously bided his time by feigning indifference and leaving his interlocutor to anxiously await his response. This time, he is simply not engaging with Marcus.

            “Did you hear me?” Marcus asks, raising his voice slightly. The tiny voice inside urges him to stay calm, but Marcus is once again feeling angry. It’s as if all the anger that he’s pushed down over the years is now pressing back up, demanding to be expressed.

            “I heard,” Viktor says, but without meeting Marcus’ gaze.

            “And?” Marcus asks, grasping his napkin with his free hand.

            “That was our agreement,” Viktor tells his son flatly, finally looking across the table at him. 

            No one else at the table is even eating. They have all laid down their utensils. Renate and Ulrich catch each other’s gaze.

            “You don’t have anything else to say?” Marcus asks him, his tone suddenly simultaneously incredulous and biting.

            Viktor shakes his head.

            Marcus notices the contrast between his inner power’s voice and a voice that seems to be connected to the anger. “The bastard!”it is saying to him.

            Now the anger gains the upper hand within him, shouting down Marcus’ own inner voice that is urging calm, but unheard.

            Marcus rises from his chair so swiftly that it falls back onto the floor, making Ingrid jump. He throws his napkin onto the table, then leans forward and places both hands on the table – the tin foil ball abandoned in his pocket – until his face is a foot from his father’s.

            “I bet you don’t have anything to say about last night, either, do you?” he asks Viktor, his voice full of sarcasm.

            Now Ulrich stands up and reaches an arm out to his grandson.

            “Marcus, Son,” he begins, but Marcus cuts him off.

            He straightens up and points his left hand at his father.

            “This man,” Marcus says, struggling not to shout, “whom I do not even want to claim as my father… This man ordered two hundred prisoners put to death.” He pauses and takes in all of his family members in a glance around the table.  “Two hundred!” he repeats.  “Are you all content to sit here in the same room with him, as if nothing has happened? Content to talk about the forest and the treehouse and about how Lina’s wearing pants again?”  His mouth is open in disbelief.

            “Marcus!” Ethel cries, rising to her feet, too.

            Marcus turns to face her. “What, Mama?” he asks, his expression a mixture of sadness and anger and disgust. “Are you going to defend him? The way you did after Schweiburg?” He shakes his head and grimaces. “I told you back then that he was a monster –“

            “That’s enough!” Ulrich says, raising his voice with a tone more ominous than any of them has ever heard from him. But even this does not cut short Marcus’ outburst. There is no way he can hear the voice of his own inner power now, urging him not to speak words he might come to regret.

            “No, Grandpa, forgive me,” Marcus says, making a small, tight bow in Ulrich’s direction, “but it is not enough!” His voice rises to a shout.  “A man sits here who has done unspeakable things, and you all say nothing! How can that be?”

            Once again, he looks around the table.

            Peter spreads his hands open before him. “But what do you want us to do?”

            Marcus looks at him, wide-eyed. His breathing has calmed a bit now, and he is no longer shouting, but his tone is still one of contempt and amazement. “How about at least talking about what Groening said last night?”

            “I don’t see what good that would do,” Renate offers, after clearing her throat.

            Marcus shakes his head.  “What? Are you all planning to sit here at this table, day after day, and pretend nothing has happened? Ignore what he did? Can you really do that? I can’t.” He turns around, walks behind his overturned chair, picks it up, and sets it carefully back in its place. Then he waves a hand at no one and everyone at the same time.

            “Groening says God has forgiven him, and what? We have to forgive him, too? Do we?”  He waits, but, once more, no one answers him. “Is that God’s will?” he cries. “For us to forgive Viktor Bunke, the way He has?”

            Again, Marcus hears a faint voice inside him. Enough. Ignoring the admonition, he closes his fist and brings it against his own chest.

            “Well, not me, my dear family. I am about to prove to you what I said at this table back in – whenever that was…  God can wish all He wants, but He cannot make a plan for me and force me to follow it. No. I have my own free will, my own power, that comes from inside me, and I am choosing to use that free will of mine to not forgive that man.” He points at his father. Then he leans over, facing Viktor, and brings the palm of his hand slowly down onto the table.  “I will never forgive you,” he says quietly, but in a chilling voice. “Not for what you did to this family. Not for what you did to all those others.”

            At this point, Viktor silently rises from the table. Without saying anything, without meeting anyone’s gaze, he walks slowly to the door and steps out into the yard, carefully shutting the door behind him.

            “Yes, leave!” Marcus calls after him. Then, facing his mother and grandparents, he adds, “So? Will you let him come back this time, too?”

            Again, still, silence reigns.

*          *          *

            Viktor does not leave, at least not in the way Marcus is expecting him to do.  Once outside the family home, he picks up a wicker chair from the sitting area near the door and carries it to the far side of the yard, beyond the goat pen.  He spends the rest of the evening sitting there, observing everyone else’s activities.  Kristina and Lina come out and take the laundry down from the line. Then he watches as the two of them begin to walk down the drive for an evening walk. He sees Ingrid come running up behind them, pushing the empty wheelchair. She hops up and down and tugs at Lina’s sleeve, while Kristina looks a bit put out. Then, Viktor can see that Lina is laughing. In the next moment, Ingrid has taken a seat in the wheelchair, and Lina is beginning to run, pushing the chair ahead of her, while Kristina walks heavily along, making no effort to catch up, until they turn around and wave to her.

            Ulrich and Peter leave the house and go into the workshop. A light goes on. A few minutes later, Ulrich comes out again, but Peter remains inside. Most likely working on those plans again, Viktor concludes, as Ulrich goes back into the house without even a glance in his direction.  Do they even know I’m here?

            Kristina, Lina, and Ingrid return, looking more buoyant, with Ingrid pushing Kristina in the chair this time.  Ingrid and Kristina kiss Lina on the cheek and go into the workshop. The light in their room goes on. It’s Ingrid’s bedtime. Lina pauses as she turns toward the house, and gazes over at her father. Ah, so they do know I’m here. She looks as if she is considering coming over to him. But then she hesitates, choosing to wave to him instead, before reentering their home.

            After that, there is a lull in the yard. Viktor notes the voices of the goats as they communicate whatever they need to communicate to each other before settling down onto the hay in their shelter. He hears the evening bugs buzzing and calling to each other, too. Errant fireflies float in the open space of the yard, hoping to catch a mate’s eye.  The sun is down now, and the dusk is growing deeper when the light in Kristina’s room goes out and she and Marcus come together to sit on the bench just outside the workshop door. Of course, Viktor is too far from them to hear anything, but he can see from their gestures that his son is still agitated, and Kristina concerned.  Then he watches as they tenderly kiss goodnight. Kristina follows Marcus with her eyes as he crosses the yard, opens the kitchen screen door, and steps inside. A lamp is burning in there, too.  Kristina heads back into the workshop.  Peter must still be working…

            The yard is illuminated only by the moon and the stars now, and by the faint light from inside the workshop. Viktor looks toward the forest, studying the way the dark shapes of the trees rise against the sky like a mountain range. An unconquerable range, it seems to him now.  How to get over it? He is pondering this, and recalling Ulrich’s words from earlier in the day, when he hears the sound of the screen door slapping shut.  Someone is moving toward him through the near-total darkness.  It is Ethel, he realizes, with both joy and dread in his heart. She walks to the edge of the goat pen, and he sees that she is dumping a bowl of scraps in for them, for their breakfast.  Then she walks over to her husband. Standing in front of him, she pauses, then speaks to him. In her tone, he senses his own mix of emotions.

            “Are you going to come in?”

            He wishes he could see her eyes, but then, in the next moment, is glad he cannot. And that she cannot see his. “Should I?”

            Ethel extends her free hand to him.  “Come on, then,” she says quietly, her voice tinged with exhaustion, sadness, disappointment, and yet, a bit of tenderness, too. “Nothing’ll be helped by you sitting out here alone all night.”

            He takes her hand and holds it tightly as they walk across the yard and into the house.