Chapter 30
Marcus and Kristina planned to announce their engagement to the family the next morning at breakfast, over coffee and sweet rolls. It was either that, or wait until the evening meal. They both knew that Kristina wouldn’t be able to keep the secret all day, so they decided to tell everyone first thing.
Kristina did tell Ingrid the news as soon as the little girl got up, but asked her not to say anything at breakfast until she and Marcus told the rest of the family. But Ingrid, who was excited that there would be a wedding, and that she would be allowed to be a flower girl, found it hard to sit still at the kitchen table. She fidgeted so much on her chair, looking up at her mother, or nudging her elbow, that Renate finally asked whether she had ants in her pants.
Instead of answering, Ingrid glanced up at her mother again, her eyes wide. “Mama?”
Everyone laughed, thinking that Ingrid was asking Kristina to answer Renate’s question. Kristina obliged.
“Not actual ants,” she said, smiling. “Ingrid’s just excited.”
“About what?” Renate asked. “Something at school?”
Ingrid shook her head and smiled, thrilled that there’d be a game. “Guess again!” she said eagerly.
“Is Stick going to have puppies?” Peter asked, playing along.
“No, Silly,” Ingrid replied indignantly. “Stick’s a boy. He can’t have puppies!”
“True enough,” Viktor said, reaching up to pat Ingrid on her shoulder. “Good girl.”
“Keep guessing!” Ingrid seemed to be fidgeting even more now.
“Did you make a new friend at school?” Ethel asked.
Ingrid shook her head again. “I told you, it’s not about school. It’s about here!”
“Is one of the goats going to have babies?” Lina asked, inspired by Peter’s question.
“No, no, no!” Ingrid told them. Then she burst out with, “But maybe Mama will!”
Kristina’s face went crimson, and she put her arm around Ingrid and whispered something in her ear. Then she looked over at Marcus with an expression that said, “Help!”
“What Ingrid means, I think,” he said, for some reason rising to his feet, “is that, last night, I asked Kristina to marry me, and she said yes!” Clearly, he wanted to make a toast to his future bride, but, lacking any drink that would be suitable to the occasion, he picked up his coffee cup and raised it. “To my dear Kristina!”
A bit awkwardly, everyone at the table followed suit, except for Ingrid, who raised her glass of milk. “But there might be babies, right Mama?” she asked Kristina in a whisper so loud that the others couldn’t help but hear.
Lina stifled a laugh and called out, coffee cup raised high, “To puppies and goat kids and human kids!”
Ingrid put down her glass and clapped her hands, bouncing up and down merrily on her chair.
The others also raised their cups, but it was clear that they were all feeling uncomfortable. It was partly the suddenness of the announcement. Ever since they’d been to see Bruno Groening, the whole homestead seemed to be in motion: There was Peter’s healing, and Lina’s tumble in the woods, and her discovery that being in the trees helped her pain fade, and now this. There were also the insights and subtle interior changes that many of them were experiencing as a result of the trip. It was so much to take in, to make sense of, and they all felt a bit off balance.
Maybe that was why Peter had asked whether Stick was expecting puppies. With so many parts of their physical and interior landscapes shifting, he thought that he might not have been surprised at all for a male dog to give birth! Later that day, when he considered this new development, he told himself he shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, I saw Marcus and Kristina kissing outside the workshop that evening a while back. But still…
Renate seemed the least surprised of them all. Why did they think I sent him out with the tea last night? she wondered as she looked at her family’s confused faces. I guess they haven’t been paying attention. She was pleased. Kristina would now be a true member of the family. She’d be a Bunke soon, with full rights to stay here forever.
Lina’s voice, as she offered her impromptu toast to puppies, kids, and kids, carried more enthusiasm for this match than she actually felt in her heart. Why is that? she wondered. Was the strong pain that had crept back into her legs overnight impairing her ability to feel joy? Or was it her disappointment that Kristina hadn’t told her how much she cared for Marcus? Or perhaps it was her concern that her best friend was now engaged to the man who had terrorized Peter when they growing up? Both of these possibilities ran through her head as she studied Kristina’s face. Although clearly still embarrassed by the way Ingrid had shared the news, she looked happy and more at ease than she had in the four years since she’d come to live with them. That’s a good thing, Lina told herself. A good sign.
But it wasn’t just these thoughts that left everyone not quite sure how to respond to what Marcus had said. It was the way he’d said it. “My dear Kristina.” No one in the family had ever heard him talk that way to anyone, or about anyone. And they certainly had never heard in his voice what sounded like genuine affection, like love. Ethel glanced over at Viktor during the coffee toast and caught his eye. “Is that our Marcus?” she seemed to be asking him. He shrugged, and his slightly raised eyebrows told her that he was as mystified as she by their son’s new demeanor. Is this a new Marcus? Viktor was asking himself. Or just a more skillfully manipulative old Marcus? He wasn’t alone in his wondering. Among the Gassmanns and Bunkes around the table, Renate was the only one who didn’t share the skepticism and wariness which crept immediately into the other family members’ thoughts and hearts. Perhaps these feelings had arisen in her mind, too, but if they had, she had ignored them, choosing instead to trust her heart and its devotion to Detlef Gassmann’s long-cherished wish to see the log cabin he built full to bursting with new life.
Despite the new family composition that was now on the horizon, breakfast finished up in the usual way,: Renate, Ethel, and Lina cleared up from the meal, Kristina saw Ingrid off to school; Ulrich and Viktor headed out into the woods, and Peter into the workshop; and Marcus was waiting at the end of the driveway for his office colleague from Bockhorn, who picked him up each day on his way to work in Varel.
As Kristina walked back into the kitchen, she saw that each of the other women was already settling into her task for the morning, as if nothing at all was different. Do they not care? Kristina thought to herself. The joy and lightness she’d felt after they saw Bruno Groening were nowhere to be found now. They had been usurped by doubt. The feeling of terror she’d experienced so often as she and Ingrid were fleeing their home – and which had lain in her heart and chest as a layer beneath every other emotion for the past four years – was beginning to make itself felt anew, creeping stealthily into her mind. Maybe they won’t really accept me after all… That’s the thought that had just risen up in Kristina’s mind, when Ethel suddenly turned from where she’d been standing at the counter, measuring out some sourdough starter for the day’s bread. She brushed a curl out of her eyes and then, opening her arms wide in that odd, but graceful way she had of spreading them as if they were wings, she walked over to Kristina and embraced her.
“I’m so happy for the two of you,” she said warmly, taking a step back to look at Kristina, and then placing her hands on the younger woman’s shoulders. “Marcus couldn’t have found a better woman for his wife,” she went on.
Renate looked back over her left shoulder at them. “That’s the absolute truth!” she said, tapping her hand on the counter for emphasis. “These last four years, I’ve been afraid some local lad would snatch you away from us. Now I don’t have to worry about that anymore.” She smiled and turned back to the cucumbers she was getting ready for pickling.
Lina, who had rolled up to the table with some mending, raised her threaded needle in a repeat of her earlier toast. “Here’s to your future wedding dress! We had better sit down today and start designing it.” She shifted her gaze to Ethel. “Don’t you think so, Mama?”
“Oh, yes,” Ethel said, bringing one hand to the side of her face, index finger pointed up, to express that there was thinking to be done. “Unless, of course,” she added, smiling widely, “you want to follow the family tradition and get married in a flour sack!” Ethel looked back at her mother, and the two of them laughed heartily. But since it was clear from Kristina and Lina’s faces that they didn’t get the joke, she explained it for them.
“Both my mother and I felt – at first! – that we had no need of a nice dress to get married in. Why make such a fuss and spend all that time on it?”
Lina knitted her brows. “But Mama, your wedding picture is right there on the wall. You wore a beautiful dress! Not a flour sack at all. I’m confused.”
Ethel went over to where the photo of her and Viktor in their wedding clothes hung on the wall, near the door that led into the addition. It had been a long time since she’d looked at it, and when she did, now, she was struck by the joy in their faces. They looked so young and radiant. She smiled, grateful that she and Viktor were once again beginning to regain the closeness and intimacy they’d had at the beginning, and had then gradually lost. She took the photo off the wall and handed it to Kristina.
“Lina’s right,” she said. “Mama,” she went on, gesturing at Renate, “convinced me that it really was right to make a fuss over a wedding dress, because it marks the beginning of your new life with your husband. Nothing will be the same after you get married,” she told them, coming around to look at the photo over Kristina’s shoulder. “It’s a new stage of life, and dressing up for it helps you – and your husband – recognize that you’re leaving some things behind. And that other things will be required of you in life now, things you can’t even imagine on the day you get married.”
“You make it sound a little scary,” Lina told her, sounding like a normal twenty-year-old young woman who has yet to find the man she’ll marry, and who isn’t quite sure she’s up to what that new stage of life might demand of her.
Ethel raised one eyebrow and tilted her head to the right. “Well,” she finally replied with a sigh, “married life can have its scary moments. Mine has had them. I won’t deny it.” She looked down at her wedding photo again.
“But knowing about them now,” Lina asked, her mending forgotten in her lap, “you’d still marry Papa, wouldn’t you?”
Ethel paused so long that Renate stopped slicing the cucumbers and turned around, a curious look on her face.
“Yes,” Ethel said slowly. “Yes, I would. I imagine every couple goes through very hard times. Do you think so, Mama?”
Renate shrugged. “I imagine so, Sweetheart. Your father and I have been very lucky. Hardly a disagreement in all these years.”
“That,” Ethel said with a smile, “is because Papa manages the forest, and you manage the family. We all know that!”
“You do?” Renate asked, looking genuinely surprised that her secret was out.
Ethel nodded. “Now, your father and I,” she said, nodding to Lina, “we both think we know what the other should do, and we haven’t hidden those opinions from each other.”
“But that seems like the right thing to do,” Lina told her. “Why wouldn’t you talk about everything?”
“Ah, Lina, Darling,” her mother said, coming over and smoothing her daughter’s hair, “that is the question, isn’t it? When to talk about things and when not to.”
“As you may have noticed, Kristina,” Renate threw over her shoulder, since she’d turned back to her cucumbers by this point, “our family is not big on talking about things.”
“Mine isn’t – wasn’t – either,” Kristina replied, not sure how much she should say about her own views on this topic, although this response seemed sufficiently neutral. The last thing she needed was to offend her future in-laws on the morning of her engagement by giving them the impression that she would be too outspoken or too meek in her relationship with Marcus. Without even realizing it, she was still doing what she needed to do to protect her position on the homestead.
“Now, that’s true,” Ethel said, placing the photo back on its nail on the wall, “About us not liking to get into big conversations as a family.”
“Only leads to trouble,” Renate put in, shaking her head. They could hear the rhythmic thud of the knife she was using to slice the cucumbers.
“But, just think,” Lina objected. “If I hadn’t mentioned Bruno Groening, and if we hadn’t talked about it over supper that day, we never would have gone to see him. Peter never would have gotten his healing.”
“Not necessarily,” Renate announced. Her remark was rendered all the more enigmatic by the fact that they couldn’t see her face. All they saw were her elbows bobbing along in a motion that matched the sound of the knife against the cutting board.
“I think what Mama – Grandma – means,” Ethel said, as if translating from a foreign language for Kristina and Lina, “is that there are various ways one can help a situation move in the direction you want, aside from bringing it up to the whole family for discussion.”
“Amen to that,” Renate said, and they could hear the smile in her voice as they saw her head nod.
“What does that mean?” Kristina asked, quietly and hesitantly. She was still standing just inside the doorway, but she didn’t move, fearing that this would somehow cause the conversation to shift its focus. And the current conversation suddenly seemed desperately important to her and her future married life. Somehow, it had never occurred to her to think about this when she was married to Artur, Ingrid’s father. With him, she’d never felt the need to nudge anything in a given direction. Things just flowed. But maybe that’s just the way it seems to me now… Kristina thought to herself. I was so young then…
Renate finally turned around. She took her apron in her hands and slowly wiped them clean as she spoke.
“Get to know what is most important to your husband, what he knows the most about. And let him make all the decisions about that part of your life. Then get to know what is most important to you, what you know the most about. And make it clear to him that if he tries to encroach on your territory, he’ll regret it.”
Ethel and Kristina and Lina exchanged glances, and it was clear that all three of them were shocked as much by what Renate had said as by the fact that she had said it at all.
“But Mama,” Ethel said, her hands spread wing-like once again, “you never told me that when I got married.”
“You never asked me,” she replied, a gleam in her eye. “Kristina here did.”
Open-mouthed, Ethel stared at her mother. “But you might have shared that with me, as a bit of motherly advice, on my wedding day, for example.”
Renate shook her head. “You wouldn’t have listened.” When Ethel raised one finger, in preparation for objecting, she asked her, “Would you?”
“I don’t know,” Ethel answered honestly, and then she smiled. “Maybe not. But still, Mama –“
“Don’t ‘Still, Mama’ me, Dearie,” Renate told her lightly. “Kristina here asked, and it’s a good thing she did. Took me long enough to figure this out myself –“
“But Grandma,” Lina objected, “didn’t you know this all along, with Grandpa?”
Renate’s eyes twinkled. “I just really understood it last night,” she admitted. “Isn’t that something?”
“So,” Ethel clarified, “you couldn’t have told me when I got married, then, even if I had asked?”
“I don’t imagine I could have,” she said simply.
Ethel shook her head in amused dismay, and she felt both relieved that her mother hadn’t consciously withheld valuable advice from her more than two decades earlier, and also sorry that Renate hadn’t had this insight into things sooner. She could have used the guidance.
“But now I can,” Renate went on. “And given our Marcus, I think it might come in handy for you, Dear.” Here she nodded at Kristina.
Kristina was not quite sure how to interpret the remark, especially since Renate turned back around to her cucumbers before she could interpret the expression on the older woman’s face. Lina and Ethel gave her no help, either.
“Do you have any other words of wisdom for us married or soon-to-be married ladies?” Ethel asked, only half joking. “Now that we’ve opened that door?”
Renate shook her head sharply. “Nope. A one-time special.” And with her left hand, she made a gesture of pushing a door closed.
“Then that makes Kristina very, very lucky,” Lina announced, picking up her needle and thread again. “And what about you, then, Mama?” she added, looking up at Ethel.
“Well,” Ethel began, as she retrieved a crock with flour from the shelf on the wall near the stove, “I may have missed out on the key advice, but I’d say I’ve gathered a bit of knowledge in the past twenty-seven years. Mostly the hard way.”
“That’s always the way it is,” Renate put in, matter-of-factly. “For all of us.”
“So, what did you learn the hard way?” Lina asked the question she knew Kristina was eager to have answered, and she herself wanted to hear her mother’s thoughts, too. She knew enough from growing up in this household that moments of such openness were rare indeed.
Ethel paused, wrapped her arms loosely around the flour crock, and stared off across the room, past Lina. “What have I learned the hard way?” she asked, as if posing the question to herself.
“About things being required of you that you didn’t expect, maybe?” Lina piped up, impatiently.
“Just let her tell it herself,” Renate chided her. “She’s spent her whole life raising you and your brothers and living through a war, and not philosophizing about how she’s lived her life.”
Ethel gazed affectionately at the older woman. Although Ethel knew that her mother loved her, Renate didn’t often directly offer words of support, so she took some time to savor this moment before speaking.
“What I would say,” she began finally, “is this. When things happen that you don’t expect, things that make you wonder who the man in front of you is… I mean, when it seems to you that some stranger has replaced the man you married… When that happens, you have to look into his eyes and struggle as hard as you can to see – in the eyes of that stranger – the man you married, the man you fell in love with. That’s the only thing that will give you a fighting chance.”
Neither Kristina nor Lina had expected such a serious and disquieting bit of advice. Kristina wasn’t about to say anything here, since she sensed it was a delicate family moment that she couldn’t possibly grasp. Lina, who had no more insight than Kristina into what events had enabled her mother to gain such insights, did speak up.
“What happens otherwise? If you don’t fight to see him?”
Ethel looked Lina in the eye and then Kristina. “Then your marriage is over,” she said, simply, in a deadly serious tone.
Kristina and Lina exchanged glances. Then Kristina, who hadn’t had enough years with Artur to encounter such a situation before he was killed on the Eastern front, asked, “But what do you do then?”
Ethel pursed her lips, then replied. “Either you stay, or you leave.”
The two younger women looked to Renate, hoping she would clarify things somehow. But the Gassmann family matriarch remained where she was, her back to them, slicing cucumbers for pickles, just as she had done in this very same kitchen for more than forty years.
* * *
During the days that followed, before the family’s next trip to Bremen to see Bruno Groening again, each of them was engaged in the process of not only understanding what had or had not changed for him or her in the time since the first meeting, but also observing what was different with others in the household. This was a week of changes, both visible and unobserved, physical and internal. The healing of Peter’s leg was clear to them all, and all of them, at this point, applied the word “healing” only to the physical body. Although they all found themselves looking at the world, each other, and themselves, in new ways during these days, none of them would have claimed that they had been “healed” of anything, despite the fact that they each underwent shifts after the meeting with Bruno Groening. Rather, the whole Gassmann-Bunke clan spent that week in something of a daze, experiencing certain thoughts and feelings, but without analyzing them.
For some of them, like Renate, long-suppressed memories came to mind. One day in the forest, Ulrich found himself thinking of his mother with kindness, even though she had died when he was just a babe, leaving him to be raised by his father and volatile step-mother. Others, like Ethel, felt unexpected lightness and joy. The closeness that she and Viktor had regained of late only deepened after they went to see Groening, and by the middle of the following week, Ethel found herself singing in the kitchen and looking forward to sinking into her husband’s arms at night.
Kristina, who at first was filled with relief and happiness, then sank suddenly and inexplicably into the terror of the past. Had she been able to ask Groening about what had happened that evening in the forest, when Lina fell from her wheelchair, he would have told her not to worry. He would have explained that this was simply part of her healing, a release of the old fears – the evil – that had settled into her body. “Regelungen” is what he would have called it, even though he’d spoken only of physical Regelungen that evening in Bremen, and not of the sometimes terrifying way the mind and heart also release long-held burdens. But Groening was not there to reassure Kristina. So, she ended up spending the next week alternating between joy at her engagement to Marcus and a low-level, but still perceptible, concern that her old fears would come back again and spoil her new-found happiness.
Marcus, whose sudden expressions of affection stunned those around him, was not at all aware that he seemed to them like an entirely different person. He just delighted in the openness of his heart and in the warmth and love that now filled it, sensations he never recalled having experienced in his whole life. He spent no time analyzing why this was happening now. But while he strode around the homestead with unprecedented lightness of bearing, his brother and sister and parents seemed to be holding their breaths, as if waiting for the “old” Marcus to reappear in an outburst of rage or recrimination.
Viktor was the only one among them who was able to place the breathtakingly painful sensations he had felt at the Birkners’ house into a larger context: He understood that the energy of the forest and the power that Groening called the Heilstrom affected both his body and mind, and in nearly identical ways: this power somehow enabled deeply-held terrors to be freed and released. For some reason, he didn’t try to explain this to himself. Rather, he found himself picturing the injured swallow Lina had mentioned to them. He kept seeing, in his mind’s eye, the moment when the swallow gained the strength to lift off the ground, free. And he knew that, although what he had gone through both times – in the forest, and in Bremen – disturbed, and even frightened, him, it was all meant to help him.
Lina, who was able to detect a persistent sense of inner peace during this time, nonetheless struggled to maintain her faith that the pain that came and went in her legs really was the Regelungen Groening had described, and that the Regelungen would lead to complete healing for her. During this time, she also strived not to compare herself to Peter, not to entertain the thought that perhaps he had been healed, while she hadn’t, because he somehow believed more perfectly than she did. When the temptation to invite these thoughts in did arise, she would, through force of will, shift her attention back to repeating the phrase Groening had whispered in her ear: Trust and believe. The divine power helps and heals.
Lina also felt the loving support of her family in a way that she hadn’t before. It wasn’t that she had felt a lack of concern before. Or, at least, she hadn’t felt that for four or five years now. But when they all enthusiastically jumped on the Bruno Groening bandwagon, when they all went to see him with her, she began to sense that they had come together as a kind of team to help her. That was something new. She believed – unlike in those darker moments early on – that each member of her family, did think about her situation, that they did want to help her. But until Bruno Groening came along, there just hadn’t been any force that could unite them to fight for her and for her return to health. That’s exactly how Lina thought of Groening: as a force that somehow managed to give everyone in her family the hope that she would be able to walk again.
Thinking about Bruno Groening in this way, Lina was also, like her father, reminded of the swallow with the injured wing. She recalled what she’d told her family about how she’d first despaired that it would die, and how she’d then seen it summon strength from somewhere and rise up and fly off. She remembered telling them that she felt that power must have come from God. The day after they visited Groening, as Lina called to mind the image of that swallow, she knew that she’d been right about how the wing had been healed, and about how the swallow had been able to fly again: It took in the power of God and was healed, she told herself. And now, here’s Bruno Groening, giving us all hope and strength, by connecting us to God’s power. That’s the way Lina saw it, even though she couldn’t begin to explain how Groening was able to do that. But she saw no need to strive to explain it rationally. She was just grateful that he could do it. More and more often during the week between the first and second trips to see Groening, Lina thought of the swallow, of its injured and then healed wing, and of her own legs. Trust and believe, she repeated to herself. The divine power helps and heals.
Once the swallow made its way back into her consciousness, Lina also found herself reflecting back on the day she had caused such controversy at the supper table the month before by asking, “Does God have a plan for us?” Lina recalled Marcus’ vigorous rejection of this idea, based on his belief in our absolute free will: There was no use in God making up a plan for our lives – a “wish”, as Marcus had called it – since He was, in fact, powerless to affect our actions in any way. Given that Marcus thought this way, it wasn’t surprising, Lina thought now, that he had also scoffed at her when she suggested that perhaps any suffering we experience is really part of God’s plan for us. She and Kristina had gone on to discuss this question on their own. Was it God’s plan for her to become paralyzed? For Peter to be injured in the war? For Kristina’s husband to die in the war, and for Kristina and Ingrid to experience those horrors as they fled to safety? The two of them hadn’t come to any conclusion about whether such things really could be in God’s plans for them, much less why this would be the case if it was the case. But now this question arose once more in Lina’s mind. Maybe she would have the chance to ask Bruno Groening about it when they saw him next.
One clue to the answer Lina was seeking was actually right in front of her, although she didn’t realize it. But what she did notice, the very first day after their trip to Bremen, was that everyone in the household was suddenly going out of their way to let her know they believed she’d be healed. Throughout the day, one or the other of them would lean over and pat her on the shoulder and say, “Just a few more days until we go back,” or “You’re looking stronger already,” or, in Ingrid’s case, “Will you push me in the wheelchair after you’re healed?” Kristina was always reminding her to keep hold of the tin foil ball. Lina guessed that Kristina must have told Ethel and Renate Groening’s parting words, because one day she heard the two of them in the kitchen softly singing, ‘Trust and believe, trust and believe,” to some made-up tune. All of this shored up Lina’s own belief that she would actually walk again soon.
She was also strengthened by daily trips into the heart of the woods. This new daily routine came about in the following way: Thanks to her foray to the treehouse with Peter and also to those heavenly minutes she spent lying on the forest floor that same evening as she waited for Kristina to bring help, Lina was able to convince herself that she did, indeed, feel less pain in her legs when she was amongst the trees. No one could explain why this was, at least not in words. But Ethel surmised, and the others agreed, that this shift was connected to the divine energy they associated with the forest, with God’s energy that somehow circulated through the trees. So, already on Saturday, the day Ingrid announced that her mother and Marcus were getting married, Viktor decided that they should make sure Lina spent a good amount of time in the forest each day, so that she could absorb the heavenly there.
That first day Viktor carried her into a lovely, sunny clearing in the woods and lowered her gently onto a thick fallen log so that she could sit. But Kristina, who had also come along, noticed right away that Lina wouldn’t be comfortable sitting like that for long, since there was nothing to lean back against. So, she ran back to the house and enlisted Peter, who soon reappeared in the clearing, carrying a wicker chair from the porch. He and Viktor lifted Lina off the tree trunk and eased her down into the chair. She smiled as she leaned back and rested her arms on the rounded chair arms. Kristina sat down on the forest floor, using the fallen log as a back rest.
“Go off back to work, you menfolk,” she said to Peter and Viktor. “We’ll be fine here for a couple of hours, won’t we Lina?”
Lina nodded, indicating the knitting bag she’d brought with her. And Kristina pointed to her basket.
“I’ll collect some berries, and Lina will knit.”
Later on, toward supper time, a whole parade of Gassmanns and Bunkes made their way into the woods to see how their Lina was faring. She laughed as she saw both of her parents and grandparents, along with Kristina and Peter, walking gaily amongst the birches and alders.
“Are you off on a picnic?” she asked them.
“We just came to collect you,” Ethel told her, leaning over to kiss her daughter on the cheek and give her braid a playful tug.
“Now there’s an idea, though,” Renate exclaimed. “A picnic!”
Ethel, who was standing with her arm hooked around Viktor’s elbow, surveyed the treetops above her. Closing her eyes, she took in a deep breath and slowly let it out.
“It’s been so long since I’ve been out here at all,” she said. “I’ve forgotten how divine it feels.” She turned to Viktor and smiled. The light in her eyes made his heart fill with tender feelings of love for her. Afraid he might start crying, he summoned up a husky voice.
“Then why not have a picnic out here tomorrow?” he suggested.
Ulrich seconded the idea. “We’ll get that other spruce down by the end of today,” he said to Viktor. “A picnic will be a nice reward for us all.”
“Can we have it at the treehouse?” Peter asked, sounding almost like a little boy in his joyful anticipation.
“No, Peter, that’s too far for you to carry me again,” Lina said, not wanting to put anyone out.
“Oh, I’m not planning to carry you,” he said, turning to her with a crafty smile.
Now Lina felt very awkward. “Well, we can’t ask Papa or Grandpa,” she began.
“Nope,” Peter agreed. “But we won’t have to!”
“Why’s that?” Renate asked. Then she saw Ulrich smile.
“Peter’s come up with something to spare his grandpa and papa’s backs,” he told them.
“What is it?” Kristina asked.
“Well, I took one of the other chairs like this one, and I lashed two poles to the sides of it, like this.” He indicated with his hands where the poles were, running front to back, and extending out about three feet in front and back.
“It’s a palanquin,” Ulrich told her, smiling.
“Fit for a queen!” Ethel chimed in, leaning down to kiss the top of Lina’s head.
“But…,” Lina replied, looking from one to the other of them, “someone will still have to carry me.”
Peter nodded. “Yes, but there will be two of us in front and two in back, so it won’t be difficult at all.”
“We’ll be your litter-bearers,” Ulrich said with a smile.
He had been so happy when he’d walked into the workshop a bit earlier and seen Peter’s contraption. Although he hadn’t talked about it these past four years, it had been a terrible blow to him, too, when Lina was paralyzed. In his view, she was the person in the family whose ties to the forest equaled his own, and the one he could count on to continue his collaboration with the trees with the same heart he possessed. There was Viktor, of course, but his connection to the trees, while strong, had also waxed and waned over the years. It now seemed to be waxing steadily once more, but even so, it was in Lina that Ulrich had always seen the future of his life’s work. Thus, he had been devastated by her accident, which seemed to deprive him of both his vibrant granddaughter and his rightful forestry heir. Already a taciturn man, Ulrich had grown even more so over the past four years, speaking little with the family, except about the running of the business.
Renate noticed during these years, that Ulrich barely listened to all her commentaries and calculations regarding the family. But she was at a loss when it came to knowing how to bring him out of the melancholy that had seeped back into him. It was only when she handed him the newspaper clipping about Bruno Groening that a hint of the old spark came back into his eyes. Seeing this convinced Renate that taking Lina to see Groening would be the right thing to do, and not just for Lina, but for Ulrich, too. What she didn’t realize then, was that it was the right thing to do for every single one of them.
Thus it was that all the members of the extended Gassmann-Bunke family, which Kristina and Ingrid were now just a few months’ shy of joining officially, made their way to the treehouse late in the morning on Sunday. The women wore their everyday dresses and aprons, the men an assortment of more of less clean work clothes. Wicker baskets abounded, some brimming with loaves of bread, while others covered in worn, but still cheerful, kitchen towels concealed chunks of cheese and ramekins of butter. Yes, Renate assured Marcus, slapping his hand playfully as he bent to lift one towel to peer beneath it, there was sausage! There were also bottles of homemade cider and even their home-brewed beer. And, of course, cake: a simple sheet cake topped with raspberry jam and dusted with powdered sugar.
If this group picture was all you saw on this morning, you’d say that this troupe looked like any other family heading into the woods for a mid-summer picnic. But if you shifted your gaze to the front of the group, you’d see Lina sitting erect in a wicker chair, while the four male members of her family walked along – two on her right, and two on her left – with the poles that Peter had lashed to sides of the chair resting on their shoulders. Their slow walking and the fact that Lina sat at their shoulder level, so that her head rose higher than theirs, lent a certain regal air to the whole procession. In fact, Lina’s bearers were making their way along the path at a measured pace because none of them wanted to be the one to trip on a branch and send Lina tumbling to the ground. So, they directed their eyes downward as they walked. This also enhanced the impression that they were carrying a queen who commanded their utmost respect and devotion. For her part, Lina sat as still as she could, resisting the urge to look back over her shoulder and wave at the adoring masses – namely, Renate, Ethel, Kristina, and Ingrid – who were bringing up the rear. Ingrid, who wanted to help carry Lina, but whose head barely came up to the shoulders of the men, made one brief foray to the front of the procession, walking between Marcus and Ulrich, her right arm raised and her little hand touching the pole, to symbolize her contribution to the effort.
Even once they reached the old beech tree and Viktor, Ulrich, Peter, and Marcus gently lowered themselves – and thus, Lina – to the ground, Lina still felt quite queenly, since everyone around her took seats either on the ground or on the nearby large fallen tree trunk.
“We’re not allowed to have our heads higher than yours,” Ingrid announced solemnly, as she walked around, bent over and carefully measuring her own height with her hand and comparing it to Lina’s. They all laughed at this, and Lina found that she did, indeed, appreciate the higher vantage point that she’d enjoyed on her “ride” here and even now. How liberating! she thought, realizing the toll that spending four years at the level of everyone else’s waists had taken on her. It was exhilarating! She swore that the cheese and sausage had never tasted as good as they did today.
Viktor noticed this, too: Renate’s cooking had grown even tastier since the visit to Groening. He hadn’t realized, back in 1921, when he complimented his future mother-in-law’s cooking, that the quality of her cooking would, like his step-mother’s, suffer under the sorrow she endured when Hans left for America. In the past few days, though, Renate’s stews and side dishes had regained the sublime quality that Viktor had noticed when he first came to the Gassmann homestead. Now, it was finally beginning to peek out of her heart once more, and into the dishes she placed before her family.
Even Marcus, who, to Lina’s surprise, had not balked at being one of the chair-bearers, looked relaxed and happy as he leaned back on one elbow, his crossed legs stretching out before him, alongside his fiancée. Peter, who was sitting opposite them, between Renate and Ulrich, was looking at Kristina with an intensity that surprised Lina. How did I not see this before? she thought, as she grasped how her brother felt about the woman who would soon be his sister-in-law. How much I’ve missed these past four years, she thought. But this realization did not sadden her. Rather, she delighted in what she was now able to observe about her family members.
Viktor and Ethel had taken seats on the fallen log kitty-corner to Lina, and Lina was struck by the way they seemed to have eyes only for each other. Occasionally, Viktor would reach out to take his wife’s hand, and his cornflower blue eyes looked brighter than Lina remembered them ever being. She also saw what appeared to be almost a halo around her mother’s head. Lina concluded that this was just the light through the trees playing on the strands of blonde hair that had escaped from Ethel’s braids and framed her head.
“Can I go up?” Ingrid asked, addressing all of them. She was standing at the foot of the treehouse’s rope ladder, one small foot already poised on the lowest rung.
Marcus jumped up and brushed off his pants. “Come on, then. Let me help you,” he offered. She’s going to be my step-daughter before long, he was thinking. But even he, so unused to being connected to his heart, noticed that the thought to help Ingrid climb the ladder had come not from his head, but from his heart, where he detected a little bit of happiness and warmth toward Kristina’s nine-year-old daughter.
“I don’t need help,” Ingrid announced brightly. “Just permission.”
They all laughed, and Marcus, who had, by now, reached the ladder, demonstratively spread his arms wide, ceding her point, and directing a wink and a smile toward Kristina.
“I think we all see who’s really going to be able to keep Marcus in line,” Renate joked, and the crowd laughed once more.
Marcus stood alongside the ladder (and surreptitiously placed his foot on the lowest rung to steady it, once Ingrid began making her way up). The little girl confidently climbed upward, hand over hand, until her head and shoulders cleared the top.
Watching Ingrid, Viktor was overcome by the memory of watching Ethel climb up the ladder on that first day she brought him here. She’d seemed so self-assured, so strong and graceful, then – so free. He looked at her now, took in her smile as she watched Ingrid, and smiled back at her when she turned and caught him gazing at her. Their eyes met, and Viktor recalled the evening he proposed to her, how he told her that he wanted her to be guided by God to give him the answer that was right for her, even if that meant refusing him. He told her that he would never want to lead her off a cliff. Looking at his wife now, Viktor recalled how confused she was by his words about the cliff. She said she couldn’t imagine him ever leading her off a cliff. And yet, he ended up doing just that. All the same, she had remained strong and graceful and confident to this day, even as she found herself pushed to the very edge of the cliffs that neither of them could have imagined as they sat up there in the treehouse. He felt so much love for her now, as he stared into her eyes and saw in them her love for him. The now-familiar pain had returned to his chest, alongside the joy and peace that the love brought. I just want to make it all right.
Ingrid paused at the top of the ladder, trying to figure out how to maneuver herself up onto the treehouse floor.
“Grab the second floorboard from the edge,” Ulrich called out.
At this, Ingrid shot back, “I know, I know!”, and a moment later, they all saw her again. Now she was leaning over the treehouse railing and announcing what she had found up there.
“Leaves. Some pine cones. But why pine cones?” she asked with a frown. “This isn’t a pine tree, is it?”
“It’s a beech tree!” they all answered, nearly in unison.
“She needs some tutoring,” Ulrich said, smiling.
“Don’t worry about it, Kristina,” Viktor told her. “Your future grandpa-in-law will teach her everything about the forest.”
“Just like he did me,” Lina affirmed with a nod.
When Kristina heard these words, her heart melted. She gazed at each member of the Gassmann-Bunke family, these people who would soon be her family, too, hers and Ingrid’s. We are blessed, she thought. And for the first time since she’d been living here, she truly believed her own words. There was no trace now of the earlier terror that had descended on her when Lina fell out of her chair in the woods. Now she really did feel like she belonged.
She glanced at Lina and was surprised to see a cloud-like figure standing behind her. Kristina immediately recognized this as the old man whose spirit she’d glimpsed in her room years earlier. She couldn’t forget those gray-blue eyes and long gray beard. So, Wolf, she thought, You’re here, too. This seemed so fitting to Kristina that she nearly pointed him out to Marcus. But then she restrained herself, afraid her fiancé would think her crazy. She could have mentioned it to Viktor, though: He was, at the same moment, also looking at the space behind Lina’s chair. It had been nearly twenty-five years since he’d heard the old man’s ringing laugh, but he heard it now, and he smiled to himself.
Lina, however, did not sense her great-grandfather’s presence. She’d never seen him. But she did notice something that touched her deeply. She glanced over at Ulrich and saw how he was beaming as he looked up at Ingrid. It reminded her of the way his face looked when she was Ingrid’s age, when he’d bring her out here into the forest and introduce her to each tree. “Miss Lina,” she remembered him saying, “meet Mr. Pine.” Now, it might seem that this memory combined with watching her grandfather and Ingrid now, might leave Lina feeling a bit sad, for any number of reasons. But this wasn’t the case at all. Rather, Lina suddenly felt an upwelling of tenderness for Ingrid. Maybe it was that she saw herself in the little girl, the way Viktor saw Ethel in her. Or perhaps it was that, as Lina concluded from watching Renate’s face, her grandmother was glimpsing the bright future that this new addition would bring to their family.
Lina couldn’t put her finger on why she felt the way she did, but she didn’t feel any particular need to figure it out. At that moment, she was content with the happiness that was filling her heart and lending a distinct lightness to her whole body. In the course of these hours spent in the company of her beloved family and the trees she adored, the pain in her legs had vanished entirely. And this was enough for her right now: for all of them to be here together, smiling, with love and affection flowing between them.
Lina was certain that their family had never experienced a time together like this, at least never since she’d been alive. Is this what happiness is? she wondered. Is this God’s plan for us all? To be together and to share this kind of joy and love? Lina caught sight of her grandmother’s face – her smile so broad, her eyes so brightly lit now – and as she did so, a swallow, iridescent black and purple in the sunlight, swooped down between the trees and landed on one of the beech’s low branches. Lina’s mouth opened in surprise. A swallow here? I never see them in the woods. The bird was looking right at her, and – Am I imagining it? – it extended one wing down to touch the branch it was resting on. Then, in one, swift, powerful movement, it lifted off the branch and, giving a sharp chirp, rose sharply into an opening between the beech tree and the surrounding pines, and vanished in the sky.
Lina was too shocked to speak, or to call anyone’s attention to the bird. Besides, it was gone in an instant. But in the brief time of its visit, Lina felt herself filled up with power, a force that tingled throughout her body and brought her a lightness that gave her the sensation that she was floating above the seat of her chair. She felt weak in the knees and, simultaneously, full of gratitude, for she knew that this was a gift from God. And at this very moment, a flash of insight came to her: It was in God’s plan for me to have my accident. She glanced around once more, shifting her gaze from one to the other of those sitting here with her; and then up at Ingrid, too, who was continuing to entertain them by piling dried leaves on top of her head as a crown, and striking the most regal pose she could. I had to have my accident, Lina thought, for this: to bring us all together, in happiness.
Sue Downing 