Chapter 19
September, 1921
Gassmann homestead
It was mid-September now, and Ethel was working on the quilt for the Kropps’ daughter Hannah. She made use of several bursts of creative energy to design the top of the quilt using the fabrics she’d purchased in Bockhorn. She’d picked out the fabric with one arrangement in mind, but when she actually got down to sketching out the design on paper, she noticed that her original ideas didn’t feel right any more.
This didn’t bother Ethel at all: From the earliest days of creating her “pictures”, she had always allowed herself to be guided by her heart in arranging the fabrics. Naturally, as a two-year-old, she never sat down beforehand to plan how she would put the fabric scraps together. Nor did she ever start with a completed vision of how any one “picture” would turn out. When she began making quilts on commission for people outside the family, she went through the process of trying to pin down how it was that she did what she did.
The first time she took an order, for a friend of Renate’s mother, she sat down at the kitchen table with a pencil and a piece of brown paper left over from something her mother had bought in town, to work out a design. She knew what colors the woman who was buying the quilt wanted, but the actual design was up to Ethel. That time with the paper and pencil was perhaps the most frustrating afternoon Ethel had ever experienced. When she finally got up from the table and walked agitatedly out into the yard, leaving behind the pencil and the paper on which she’d drawn nothing at all, Renate followed her outside. She’d never seen Ethel like this.
“What’s wrong?” Renate asked her.
“Oh, Mama,” Ethel replied, in tears now, “I took on this order, but now I don’t know what to do. I just can’t figure it out.”
Renate put her arms around her daughter and rubbed her tense shoulders. “Figure what out, Sweetheart?”
“What the design should be,” Ethel told her, lifting her head off her mother’s shoulder. She began chewing a fingernail absently, as she stared off across the yard.
Renate looked off toward the end of the yard, too, and the two of them stood silently that way for a minute or two. Then Renate turned back to her daughter.
“You know, Ethel,” she said, “in all the years you’ve been doing your ‘pictures’, I never once saw you sit down with a pencil and paper to plan a single one of them.”
Ethel turned her gaze to her mother, and her lips parted slightly in surprise as she considered Renate’s words. She nodded thoughtfully. “That’s true, Mama. Very true.”
“You know something else, Ethel?”
Ethel shook her head. “What?”
“Well,” Renate went on, “I’ve always wondered how you decide what to do with the fabric pieces. The way it always happened was, you came and asked me for the scraps, I gave them to you, and then you sat with them in a pile on the floor. You piled them up, moved some here, some there. Sometimes – pretty often, in fact – you got up and went and did something else for a while. Then came back and sat back down on the floor. And all of a sudden, you put the pieces in some kind of order. Then you sat up and looked at them, tipping your head this way and that. Sometimes you stood up and went and looked at them from another angle. And that was that. It was all clear to you. Then the sewing could begin.”
“You mean, then Hans could start sewing them!” Ethel laughed, and Renate joined in, remembering little Hans sewing, and littler Ethel supervising.
“That’s right! That’s the way you’ve always done it. Always. Never any paper and pencil drawings. It’s always been like some whirlwind of a wonderful idea would strike you, and then you put everything together.”
“You’re right, Mama,” Ether agreed, her head tipped to the side, as if she was running through in her mind all the countless times when she created her “pictures”.
“So why did you start with a pencil and paper this time?” Renate asked her.
Ethel gazed back across the yard, into the forest as she thought about that.
“Well,” she answered finally, looking at her mother once more, “maybe I want to make sure I do it right.”
“What does right mean?” Renate asked her. But, before Ethel could reply, she added, “And when did you ever care so much about doing things right?” She posed the question with a smile, so that Ethel knew it was not a reproach. Both of them immediately burst into laughter.
“You have a point,” Ethel said. Then she paused. “But I want them to like it when I’m done. That’s what it is, Mama.”
“And you think that they can only like it if you set to making this quilt in an entirely different way than the way you’ve done it your whole life?” Again, Renate’s tone was light, although the question was quite serious.
Ethel sighed. “Well, that’s the way it seemed to me this morning.”
“And how does it seem to you now?”
Ethel looked again into the forest, and it seemed as if she found an answer there in the way the light danced and played on the leaves and the trunks and fell in ever-shifting streams onto the forest floor.
“Now it seems to me that I need to make the quilt the way I’ve always made the things here at home.”
“Which is how?” Renate asked, encouraging her.
“That’s something I never understood until we started talking about it. Now I can see that I’ve only ever done a ‘picture’ when I felt something inside me urging me to do it. I always feel that it’s the right time. I feel light and happy and full of energy, almost a kind of vibration. And then I do it. And then it works.”
Renate nodded. “I understand that.”
“You do?” Ethel looked at her in surprise. It made Renate feel sad. Evidently she had so suppressed her own creative impulses that her very own daughter didn’t know they ever flowed through her in the very same way Ethel was now describing.
“Yes. Do you recall me telling you how I made fairy houses, back when I was your age?”
Ethel nodded.
“And what you just told me, about how you go about your ‘pictures’ – that’s exactly how I always did things. Only in a moment of inspiration.”
“Yes!” Ethel told her. “That’s exactly it. Inspiration.”
Renate expressed her next thought a little hesitantly. “Maybe even divine inspiration…”
“I think so, too,” Ethel responded quietly. They both smiled, and they hugged each other. They were suddenly aware of a connection between them that had always been there, but which had gone unacknowledged and unspoken until this moment.
“Just make this quilt the way you always do, Ethel,” Renate told her. “Forget who it’s for. Folks don’t love your quilts because you listen to some instructions from them. Just allow the inspiration to come, and then start. That’s what touches everyone in your ‘pictures’. There’s life in them. Energy. You can feel it. And I think it comes from the way you make them. Trust that, Sweetheart.”
Ethel nodded. Then the two women went back into the house. Ethel returned the paper to the shelf atop the other pieces of wrapping paper, laid the pencil alongside the stack, and then went out for a walk in the forest. Over the next few days, she waited until she got the strong feeling to come back to the fabric pieces she was working with. When she was ready, then she started. She worked as long as she felt the joy for her task flowing through her. And when it began to feel heavy, instead of light, she set the quilt aside and came back to it the next day, when she once again felt drawn to pick up the fabric. The quilt that resulted was striking. Beautiful, yes, but with a beauty infused with joy and lightness of touch.
This is why, when Viktor asked her out in the yard that day about the quilt’s design, Ethel replied that she might tell him once she’d figured it out. She was just being completely honest – although it also felt nice to tease him a bit. Her answer simply reflected the way she’d grown accustomed to working on her commissions, since that day several years earlier.
The quilt for nine-year-old Hannah ended up being a collection of appliquéd butterflies and flowers of various sizes that were fashioned from the array of fabrics Ethel had bought in Bockhorn. She stitched each flower and butterfly onto a background square of plain muslin. Then she embroidered curling antennae rising from the butterflies’ heads, and delicate leaves and stems to support the flowers. Next she arranged the squares into a diamond pattern. But what was unusual here was the mix of sizes of the squares themselves, and the fact that in some places, Ethel even overlapped a smaller square slightly onto a larger one. The flowers and butterflies themselves were pointing every which way on the squares. The result was that when you looked at the quilt, it was as if you were gazing at a garden of flowers, with a profusion of butterflies flitting about it.
Ethel was very pleased with the way the quilt turned out, and she was eager to deliver it and see Hannah’s response. So, she arranged with the Kropps to deliver it to them on the upcoming Sunday, in the early afternoon. It was a fine day, and, as it turned out, Viktor offered to walk with her to Bockhorn: Mr. Kropp wanted to confer about having a wardrobe made for Hannah’s room, and Sunday was convenient for this discussion, too. (By this time, Hans and Ulrich felt comfortable having Viktor go on his own, for the preliminary talk about the project. After that, the three of them would sit down together to decide what price to charge and how long it would take them to construct the new piece of furniture.)
Thus it happened that Ethel found herself walking along the road to Bockhorn with Viktor. They had never spent more than a few minutes alone, although they, naturally, saw each other every day at meals, and exchanged greetings, and had small snippets of conversation throughout the day. So, each of them was a bit nervous: Both wanted to talk, but neither knew quite how to get started. It struck Ethel that this was somewhat like the way she worked on quilts. She was just going to have to honor her impulse to start talking and see where the conversation went.
“Are you curious about the quilt?” she asked him, not turning to look at him at first, but he could see the slight smile on her lips as he looked at her profile.
He nodded, then realized that she probably couldn’t see that, so he said, “Yes, I am! Especially since you’ve been keeping me in suspense about it since you came home with the cloth that day.”
Now she turned to look at him. “I thought it would be nicer if it was a surprise. Instead of me trying to describe it to you.”
“I don’t always like surprises. Not all surprises are pleasant,” he replied. Then, seeing her smile fade, he quickly added, “But I know this one will be!”
Ethel raised her eyebrows and tipped her head to one side. “Now, Mr. Bunke, how can you possibly know that?”
“Well, Miss Gassmann,” he replied, bowing to her slightly as they walked along, “because I have had the pleasure of looking at your quilting every day since I’ve been here. Drawing a logical conclusion from that, I believe your quilts must always be a pleasant surprise.”
Ethel’s cheeks colored, and she looked back down at the road as she walked.
“Well, I hope you’re right!” she told him.
“Are you going to give me a hint?” Viktor inquired.
“About what?” In Ethel’s voice, he heard the ringing quality he was so fond of, and he could hear her smile, too.
“The pattern, of course!”
“Oh. No. Not at all!” Now she laughed in a light and mischievous way.
Viktor frowned in feigned disappointment. “I don’t think that’s at all fair.”
“Whysoever not?” Ethel demanded, frowning too, now, but smiling still.
“Because I’ve already been waiting for weeks!” he announced in a jokingly petulant tone.
“And what about poor little Hannah Kropp?” Ethel exclaimed. “She’s been waiting even longer than you! It’s only fair for her to see it before you.”
Then Viktor suddenly reached out a hand and touched the corner of the paper, where Ethel had folded it around the quilt. “Not even a peek?” he asked playfully.
“No! No peeks!” she cried, laughing again. And she stepped nimbly away from him, moving the package out of reach. But as she did so, his hand brushed her elbow, and she was reminded of how he’d touched her arm in the yard that day, when they first discussed the quilt.
Viktor sighed and acquiesced. “Fair enough.”
Ethel laughed. She remembered how he’d said that to her that day, too. Not that she’d ever really forgotten it. His words and his tone had stayed with her, and she recalled them often.
The rest of the walk passed in talk of life on the Gassmann homestead – the forest, the carpentry projects currently under way, other details of little importance. They were both content with this, overjoyed to simply be in each other’s presence.
Now, Viktor had spent nearly his whole life not allowing himself to imagine what was possible, or what he might really want, if anything were possible. He never took the step of actually believing he could attain what he wanted, deep in his heart. Ethel, on the other hand, lived so much in a realm connected to her deepest heart’s desires, that it never occurred to her to think – to think – that she might be unable to achieve them. Perhaps she had more of her mother in her than was visible on the surface: Both women believed firmly that God meant for all of His children to be happy.
The difference between them was that Renate’s belief resided mostly in her head: Once she truly felt this belief in her heart, and came to trust it, many years earlier, she for some reason handed over to her mind the task of making everyone’s happiness a reality. As we’ve seen, her granddaughter, Lina, was convinced that, once we believed in and accepted God’s plan for us, He would guide us in our thoughts and actions, and our happiness would manifest. Renate, on the other hand, was convinced that we ourselves had to figure out how to make God’s will come to pass. Or rather, that she had to figure it out. Thus, Renate grew from a girl who followed inspiration’s fluid path into a woman who became a slave to pencil and diagrams, even if the sketching took place in her mind and not on actual paper.
Ethel, though, rarely seemed take direction from a rational thought process. The way she approached her first quilt commission shows that she was not a “sketch it out and then make it” kind of person. From the time she pestered her mother for her first scrap of cloth for a “picture”, and probably even before that, Ethel allowed her intuitive vision to guide her – with the exception of that very first quilt commission. She moved effortlessly from creative spark to creation, without stopping to plan first.
What was it that Ethel tapped into when she was working on her ‘pictures’? Renate often wondered about that. She knew that when she herself made the fairy houses, she felt that some unseen force and voice were guiding her. Not that she always heeded what she heard or felt: Even as a youngster, Renate never gave herself over fully to these promptings. The final decision was hers, after all! Even as a young mother, though, she could still remember days when other helpful voices – from where? The spirit world? Or from her own imagination? – suggested this or that idea to her.
Thinking back to Ethel’s childhood now, Renate remembered that Ethel, too, had always had some connection to spirit presences. There were times when Renate noticed the infant Ethel staring at a corner of the kitchen, or, if they were in the yard, into the depths of the woods, transfixed by something entirely invisible to her mother. What are you looking at? Renate wondered, in the long months before her daughter could express herself in words. Sometimes she asked the question out loud, and Ethel occasionally pointed to where she was directing her gaze. Then she looked to Renate, as if it was obvious what was there to be regarded. But once Ethel began to talk, Renate would ask her in these moments, “What are you looking at, Ethel?” And the little girl would reply, “That,” or, “Her,” or, eventually, “That man”. One day, three-year-old Ethel, sitting on the floor next to her mother’s rocking chair, even said, “Mama, she can play, too?” When Renate, puzzled, asked, “Who?” Ethel pointed to the corner and replied, “Her.” Questioning Ethel, Renate learned that this girl was blond and had a pretty blue dress on. “Of course,” Renate said, and this seemed to satisfy Ethel, who spent the rest of the afternoon laying out scraps of fabric in two piles: one for herself and one, presumably, for the girl in the blue dress.
This was only the first of many such instances. There were “angels” in the kitchen and bedroom, “fairies” in the forest, “a grampa” out in the workshop. Renate never contradicted Ethel. Rather, she thought back to her own childhood interactions with fairies in the forest. Of course, she had more sensed these spirits than seen them clearly. She didn’t necessarily want to encourage Ethel in these kinds of imaginative flights: What if she told Renate’s parents and they chastised her the way they had Renate? So, she never asked Ethel to describe these spirits or the way they appeared to her. But neither did she deign to tell Ethel that it was impossible for her to be seeing what she said she was. Because Renate herself knew it was possible. On some level, it even pleased her that Ethel, too, was in contact with the spirit world. Thus, Ethel grew up seeing these spirits from the other world, from beyond the door that, for most humans, remained closed and opaque. Although she had not the slightest doubt that these spirits truly existed, she also came to feel a bit isolated in her knowledge, precisely because her mother never expressed interest in this dimension that was so vivid and powerful to Ethel. And Ethel felt a very strong connection to these visitors who seemed to appear only to her.
If Renate had asked her to describe what she saw, she would have explained that she saw them as full of light, but with clearly-defined features. They looked like flesh-and-blood humans (except the fairies, which looked like, well, fairies!), just slightly cloud-like. Ethel felt their energy clearly, too. They were, almost without exception, light in mood, happy, jolly, playful. Only on a handful of occasions did she felt any unease in with one of them. When this happened, she would simply wave her hand and say, firmly, “Have that one go away!” And it would vanish. Thus, this realm of spirit beings was a friendly and comforting space where Ethel could pass the time and move back to the fully human sphere refreshed and happy and full of light herself. Renate noticed that Ethel always emerged from the woods in such a state, and so, she decided that there was no need to inquire further, to mention it to Ulrich, or to worry.
Since Ethel moved so freely into and out of communication with these spirit beings, it didn’t surprise her the first time Hans expressed his belief that if he wasn’t around to keep Ethel tethered to the ground, she would surely just float up into the sky. That’s how ethereal she was. Everyone in the family saw Ethel this way, but only Renate understood that this quality likely resulted from Ethel’s connection to the other world.
But what about Hans? Did he really not know that his sister was in communication with these beings? After all, they spent all those hours together in the forest, where the fairies and forest spirits abounded. But Ethel never mentioned them to Hans in a direst fashion. She’d say something like, “Let’s make this corner of the treehouse nice for the fairies to rest in,” or, “The forest sprites must string their hammocks from these twigs”. He always took her remarks as pure fancy, probably because he, for all that he loved the forest, was a very pencil and diagram kind of boy. It never occurred to him to ask Ethel whether she believed in the fairies she chattered about, because it never occurred to him that they could actually exist. He was occupied with how many logs they’d need to form the floor of their treehouse. And Ethel, sensing this difference between herself and her brother, just felt – she didn’t decide it consciously, but rather just felt – that there was no need to share this with him.
As Ethel got older, she retained her ability to see and communicate with spirit beings. At the same time, her intuition grew and sharpened, so that she could effortlessly “pick up” what those around her were feeling. Most times, she just knew what they felt, but on occasion, she also felt what they, themselves, felt in their bodies. This was strange for her at first. Take the time her head began aching a minute before Hans announced to their mother that his head was hurting. But very soon, Ethel got to the point where she was able to realize that she was feeling, say, Hans’ headache, instead of having one herself. On these occasions, she simply shook her head and waved her hand, and the sensation vanished, just as unwanted spirits fled when she asked for them to be gone. So, she had the benefit of being able to understand those around her deeply, but without becoming mired in their physical pain, or overwhelmed by any upsetting emotions or energy.
Now, if both Ethel and Viktor – and even Renate, it seems, who asserted as much to Viktor in his early days on the Gassmann homestead – “picked up” things from others, they nonetheless all made different use of this knowledge. We know that Renate utilized everything she noticed in her “herding” efforts: She’d get a thought about what would make someone happy, and then go through intense mental planning and diagramming, so that she could put her thought into action. This process kept her trapped in her head, where entire futures of her own construction would play out for her.
Viktor, as we’ve seen, tended to use his insights to positively influence his interactions with potential clients, and with employers, too. In his calculation about how best to guide things, he resembled Renate. The distinction between them was, that his focus had always been on herding situations in directions that would be to his own advantage. His approach differed somewhat when it came to the cabinet making. In this case, naturally, far more pencil and paper sketching was involved. The germs of his creative designs seemed to arise from deep within him, spontaneously, in a way very similar to what happened when Ethel conceives a design in a flurry of inspiration. But Viktor always immediately committed his creative visions to paper, thereby shifting them concretely into the realm of precise measurements and woodworking. He always had a pencil in his shirt pocket, and a notebook in his back pants pocket. It was as if he would be in contact with some sort of other-worldly inspiration, but also felt the need to bring it firmly down to earth as soon as possible.
Ethel, on the other hand, very rarely made any conscious use of the information she gained from others intuitively. She had no interest in utilizing what she gleaned to influence those around her. Rather, what she “picked up” was simply part of the landscape of her world, like the flowers, and trees, and butterflies. All of it was something to notice, something which might make its way into a quilt project or an embroidery pattern. But, as we’ve seen, this always happened quite naturally, without conscious planning or decision-making. So, while Viktor translated his intuitive design ideas first into lines on paper and then into the physical form of wood, Ethel also translated intuitive visions – into fabric – but without committing the design to paper and thereby solidifying it. To do that would have felt to her too constraining, too much like a contractual agreement she wasn’t prepared to enter into. She – although she’d never expressed this to herself in words – knew that she had to be free to create as she was moved to do in each moment.
It was this way of creating that kept Ethel from being tied down to either her body or the physical material she worked with. This approach resulted from that strong and fluid connection to the spiritual world – and its energy and spirits – that she’d possessed from her earliest childhood. It was not her physical body that formed the core of her existence, and certainly not her thinking mind. Rather, her essence was this spiritual energy that flowed through her body, energy that also prevented her from becoming weighed down by the physical. This was what produced the impression that she was so light and untethered to the ground that she might very well float away.
At the Kropps’ house, Hannah ran out into the yard as soon as she glimpsed Ethel approaching.
“May I take it into the house?” she asked, excited, reaching her hands out for the paper-wrapped quilt Ethel was carrying beneath her arm.
“Of course!” Ethel replied and held the package out for Hannah to take. She smiled at the little girl’s ebullience, and noticed how light her own heart had grown in the course of the walk. Recognizing Viktor as the source of the joy she was feeling, she turned to look at him, and their eyes met. He held her gaze for a few seconds, during which time a smile came to his face, too. Then he glanced toward the door, which Mrs. Kropp was already holding open for them. After nodding to Ethel to indicate this to her, Viktor also placed his hand lightly on her back, to signal that she should go ahead of him.
Hannah ran and placed the bundle on the dining room table, but she patiently waited until everyone else filed in before hurriedly untying the string which held the folded paper in place. Having removed the string, she turned the paper back to reveal the part of the quilt that was visible without unfolding the whole thing. She clapped her hands in delight, bobbing up and down on her tiptoes. Then, silently, she touched the quilt, running her fingertips over the appliqued butterflies and flowers and bending down to get a closer look at the stitching of the quilting that secured the front to the back, with the batting in between the two layers. Finally, she impetuously ran over to Ethel and threw her arms around her.
“It’s so lovely, Miss Gassmann,” she cried. “I just love it!”
“But you haven’t even seen all of it!” Ethel joked, giving the girl a hug. “Shall we take it into your room and see how it looks on your bed?”
Without answering, Hannah snatched the quilt off the table and walked quickly into her room, unfolding the quilt as she went, but being careful not to allow any part of it to drag on the floor. Half a minute passed, and Hannah’s bed was transformed into a veritable garden, rendered in fabric and stitching. Hannah immediately flopped down on top of the quilt, leaning this way and that to study its various elements. Her mother, too, sat down to admire and study Ethel’s work.
“What a beautiful, beautiful quilt,” Mrs. Kropp said finally, looking up at Ethel. She continued to rest her hand on one of the butterflies as she spoke, even stroking it lightly, as if she were touching actual butterfly wings and delighting in their fuzzy softness. “I don’t know how you came up with this! It’s like it’s from another world, somehow. I can’t put it into words. But it is simply amazing. Thank you.”
Even Mr. Kropp, who entered the room at this point, intending to corral Viktor so they could discuss the wardrobe, was struck by the quilt. “I say!” he told Ethel. “Missus is right. I know nothing about sewing and quilts, but even I enjoy something beautiful, and this is that!”
Ethel felt particularly pleased with Mr. Kropp’s praise, given that he was clearly a man who most appreciated order, while her quilt was not at all traditionally arranged. And then there was Viktor. Does he like it? she wondered. She turned to face Mr. Kropp and found Viktor staring at the quilt, his eyes moving from this to that part of it. His lips were slightly parted, as if he was surprised at something that he was now trying to figure out. When he shifted his gaze to her, she saw in his eyes a tenderness that surprised her. He smiled, then looked to Mr. Kropp, as if embarrassed that she saw what he was feeling.
Indeed, Viktor was a bit embarrassed, since Ethel’s glance had caught him off guard. But, even more than Ethel’s glance, her quilt had caught him off guard. He had, of course, expected that it would be lovely, given the examples he’d seen of Ethel’s handiwork in his own room and elsewhere in the Gassmann house. But there really was, as Mrs. Kropp had put it, some quality of the other world to it. It possessed an ethereal beauty, as if it somehow glowed with the sunshine of a garden late in the day, when the light was growing golden and long. How? he wondered. How in the world did she do that?
In that moment, as he studied the quilt – longing to touch it, too, like Hannah and Mrs. Kropp, to run his fingers over the stitching that Ethel’s hands had made – something rose up in his chest, swelling and moving then into his throat. He knew, understood – sensed – how she had done it: It was her connection to the divine, the heavenly, to whatever it was he had learned to feel in the forest. This realization surprised him, but he felt in his heart that his thought was correct. There was a bit of the other world in the quilt because there was a lot of that other, divine, heavenly world in Ethel herself, and she had somehow allowed it to flow through her into the quilt as she was creating it. When you looked at the quilt, you could feel the divine radiating from the fabric. It occurred to Viktor now that this was why he so loved going to sleep and waking up beneath the quilt she had made for his bed: She had put the heavenly into it, too, and he could feel it. But, he recognized now, the heavenliness they were all sensing in this new quilt wasn’t the simple divine heavenliness (as if the divine could ever be simple!) Rather, it was the heavenly combined with Ethel’s contribution. It was as if she had somehow collaborated with God to manifest God’s love in the physical, material form of the quilt. He had worked through her, and together they had made the quilt.
Viktor was standing there, coming to a hazy understanding of this, so when he saw that Ethel was looking at him, he was caught unawares. He wondered whether she could tell how he felt about the quilt – and about her. In the moments when he was standing there, studying the quilt and coming to his realization, feeling all the joy and love she had put into the quilt, he understood that he had fallen in love with her, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
This wasn’t a completely new feeling for him. It had been coming into his awareness more and more strongly in recent weeks. It wasn’t the feeling or the awareness of it that surprised him. What caught him unawares was the thought – no, the conviction, really – that came up, quite firmly, as he looked at the quilt. This is possible. Not Why would you think this could happen for you? But Yes. You can be each other’s future. This is what he wondered whether she had seen in his eyes.
But Viktor was saved from further reflections on this topic, and from Ethel’s gaze, by Mr. Kropp, who suggested that the two men discuss details of the wardrobe he wanted to have built. They returned to the dining room – whence Mrs. Kropp somehow magically appeared, although a minute earlier she’d been in Hannah’s bedroom – to offer everyone coffee and cake. Setting down a cup and saucer for Ethel, she also handed the young woman an envelope that contained payment for the quilt. “Although I don’t know how we can ever give you enough for such a work of art. A real work of art!” she exclaimed, nearly as overcome with joy at the quilt as Hannah.
Ethel answered Hannah’s questions about how she’d designed the quilt, and made small talk with Mrs. Kropp. But she was also listening to the men’s conversation with one ear.
“I had the idea,” Viktor was telling Mr. Kropp, “when I saw the quilt Miss Gassmann made for your daughter, that some carving on the wardrobe might be nice.” He gestured at the sideboard that stood on the back wall, behind where the Kropps were sitting. “Maybe some flowers and butterflies.”
“So my whole room will be like a garden!” Hannah piped up, nodding. “Papa, I’d like that.”
“Not to copy the quilt design exactly,” Viktor added quickly, with a glance at Ethel. “That would be impossible.” Please don’t let her think I want to copy her ‘pictures’! “But Something with the same theme. Do you see?”
Ethel nodded, even though he wasn’t asking her, at least not directly. “I see,” she told them. “A garden in fabric, and a garden in wood.”
“Inspired by the garden in fabric,” Viktor added, trying to sound as measured as possible, and not allowing himself to look over at Ethel, although he did smile.
Mrs. Kropp and Hannah voiced their approval for this plan, and Mr. Kropp agreed. He’d already seen what Viktor could do with carving, and he felt that having another piece in the household would show his good taste, even if their guests didn’t ever see the future wardrobe, hidden away as it would be in his daughter’s bedroom. But still… And so, the deal was made.
* * *
“How nice that the Kropps liked your idea for the carving on the wardrobe,” Ethel said to Viktor on the walk home. She spoke without looking at him. Instead, she directed her eyes to the dirt road before her and watched the toe of each of her shoes in turn poke out from beneath her skirt as she took each step forward. “I’m sure it will be beautiful.”
“I hope so,” Viktor began, and then paused. He was gathering the nerve to speak about what was on his mind, and in his heart. They walked in silence for a bit, and then he continued. “Your quilt inspired that idea. You inspired me.”
Ethel smiled and gave him a quick glance, but said nothing.
Viktor went on. “I couldn’t believe how beautiful your quilt was,” he said. Then, fearing she might misunderstand him, he quickly added, “No, what I mean is… I could believe it. I expected it would be. You made the quilt on my bed, after all.” He paused again, stealing a look at her, but she was looking at the road ahead of her. Was that a little smile?
“But what I mean is… it’s even more beautiful than I could have imagined.” Now, when he looked over at her again, he saw a smile come to her lips, and a bit of color to her cheeks, too. She turned to face him.
“Really?” she asked softly, knitting her brows, as if she actually did doubt what he said.
“Really.” He nodded emphatically, his eyes studying her face. “It’s as if…” and here he looked at the sky, searching for a way to put what he was feeling into words. “As if you somehow took heaven into you and turned it into a quilt.” Now he was the one with some color in his cheeks. Heaven’s sake, how could I have said that??
“Oh, my,” Ethel responded. “No one has ever said anything like that about my quilts. Or about anything I’ve made.”
“Maybe they don’t know what something heavenly feels like. Or looks like. I can’t explain it.”
But Ethel wasn’t going to let him off that easy. Besides, she really did want to hear what he meant. And it wasn’t just that she wanted to hear his words of praise, although that was certainly pleasant, too.
“Would you please try?” she asked him gently. He could tell she was genuinely wanting to know what he meant.
“All right.” But he looked off into the distance again, thinking, for so long, that Ethel finally gave him a nudge with her elbow.
“Maybe sometime this century?” she teased, smiling again.
Viktor laughed. “All right,” he repeated. “I can only say that what I felt when I looked at your quilt back there… that I felt almost the same way inside as I feel when I’m out in the forest with your father, and we’re both very still, amongst the trees. The’ heavenly’, the way your father put it. I feel that in the forest, as if the divine is right there, radiating out from the trees.” He paused and looked at her, to see whether she might be giving him a skeptical look. She wasn’t, so he went on. “I felt something very much the same coming from your quilt.” Now he didn’t even dare to turn to look at her.
For Ethel’s part, she was dumbstruck by what he said. Shocked, first of all, that he felt that coming from something she had made. Could that be true? It never seemed that way to her.
“I don’t know…” she said, speaking slowly, thoughtfully. “I just make what I make. I get a feeling about making it, and I follow the feeling, and…”
“You see?” he asked, animated, turning fully to face her now. “That’s what I mean. There’s some sort of feeling there, that you put into it, or that somehow moves from you to it.”
Ethel looked back at the ground. “Maybe that’s possible. But it’s nothing I mean to do.”
“But where do you think that ‘something’ – the ‘something’ that went into the quilt – what do you think it is? Where does it come from?” He stopped, fearing once again that he’d put his foot in his mouth and insulted her. “I mean… I’m not trying to say that you don’t have the heavenly in you yourself. You do!”
Here Ethel burst out laughing, that tinkling, ringing laugh that Viktor loved so much.
“I’m not sure about that… But it’s all right. I think I know what you mean. I can say that when I work, whether it’s on a quilt, or some embroidery, or even the cheese or bread… I feel that I am being helped somehow. I call to mind what it is I want to do, and then I begin to feel some tingling in my body, or just my hands, some kind of energy pulsing through me. Not that it’s strong. It’s not. It’s very, very quiet. And it helps me do what I’m doing.” She turned to face him. “Make any sense?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Yes, that’s what I was wondering.” They walked along a few more steps in silence, and then Viktor asked, “What you feel… Do you think it’s… God?”
Now it was Ethel’s turn to walk in silence, reflecting, until Viktor nudged her ever so gently with his elbow.
“Yes, I know,” she said, laughing, “Maybe sometime this century?” And he laughed, a full, joyous laugh.
“I have never thought about it like that,” Ethel told him finally. “I’ve just noticed the process, noticed that it happens. But now that you mention it, the feeling I get when I’m doing the sewing especially, is akin to the way it feels for me, too, in the woods. Maybe that’s why I always enjoyed taking my sewing into the woods, into the little lean-tos Hans and I built, or up into the tree house, later on. I always loved sitting there to create and sew my ‘pictures’. But I felt that way from the time I was tiny, so I never tried to explain it to myself.”
“Sure,” Viktor said. “You were little. You were just there and just felt it. No need to analyze it.”
Ethel agreed. “I think that’s right. I just always knew it was a very special place – divine, holy even – and I wanted to be there as much as I could. I love the peace there. And the love. There’s so much love in the forest, from the trees and everything that lives there.” She turned to face him now. “Don’t you think so?”
“I do. Before I came here, before I started going into the woods with your father, I never would have said that. Never. But now I can say that, because I’ve felt it, too. I never really believed in God when I was growing up. But I think… I think it’s God I feel in the forest. And I want to be there, too.”
“I think it’s God there, too,” Ethel said, nodding. “So, maybe I have been able to take something of what is God’s from the forest and use it to inspire me, to help me make what I make.”
“I think you’re right,” Viktor told her. “And that’s one reason the quilt is so pretty, and the cheese is so tasty.”
“One reason?” Ethel asked.
“Yes. I don’t believe it’s the only reason. There’s something special about you, in you… I think you were born full of the heavenly. That makes it easy for you to carry more of it around with you and put it into everything you do.”
Ethel didn’t even know how to begin to reply to this. She was happy and surprised and confused, all at once. Viktor was now back to looking at the forest that ran alongside the road. Ethel finally found some words.
“I think,” she began. “I hope… that when you build that wardrobe for Hannah, that you’ll be able to get some heavenly help, too. From God. To take what’s divine, from God, into you in the forest, and to use it when you carve what you’re going to carve out of the wood that God created.”
“That is a wonderful wish,” he told her. “I wish for that, too.”
“I’m sure the two of you will be able to do that together. Because there’s some of the divine in you, too, I believe.”
Upon hearing this, Viktor turned sharply to look at her, to study her expression, to see whether it matched the kindness of her words. Is she just saying it to be nice? And he saw a tenderness there, perhaps the same type of tenderness she’d seen in his eyes at the Kropps’ house.
“I thank you for that, Miss Gassmann,” he told her. “Between God’s divine help and the inspiration of your creation, maybe I’ll be able to come up with something good.”
Ethel smiled, then looked back at the road ahead. “You can call me Ethel,” she said. “Seems silly to be so formal.”
“All right, Ethel,” he said, and he enjoyed saying her name. Then he added, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something.”
“Oh?” she replied. “What’s that?” Keep looking ahead.
“Well,” he began, and then stopped. Then he stopped walking. When Ethel realized he’d come to a halt, she did, too, and turned to look at him. He took the few steps necessary to catch up with her.
“Ethel,” he said, “I was wondering. Could I court you?” He took in a long, deep breath and let it out, waiting for her to answer. All the while, he studied her face, in the hopes of guessing her answer from her features before she voiced it in words.
She was studying him, too, taking in all she could about him: his sandy hair that reminded her of her father’s, his strength of spirit, his sun-browned face with its lines, despite his young age, and that fleeting, tender look she had seen earlier in the afternoon.
“Yes, please do,” she said. Then a smile lit up her face, and she turned and began running lightly down the road toward the homestead. Strands of her blonde hair streamed back behind her, along with the one word she called out to him as she ran, and which reached him and fell right into his heart. “Viktor.”
Sue Downing 