The Healing Place

by Clare Nonhebel

CHAPTER 34

  Ella had a shower then sat on the bedroom floor with the bedspread wrapped around her, meditating. The noise of the party billowed around her and she let her mind go with the flow, riding on currents of sound. It was peaceful, though certainly not quiet. The two are not at all the same thing, she thought drowsily.

  She felt far out at sea, tossed by the clamour of waves. She had an image of herself as a child caught in cross-currents, tossed that way and this in turbulent waters that caused constant upheaval on the surface yet left her becalmed, never carrying her towards shore. A second image imposed itself, of Franz being carried towards her by another cross-current, flowing in the opposite direction silently and persistently against the tide, deeper and without visible waves. When he reached her, the calm fast-flowing water meeting the turbulent waves with no movement below the surface, both were turned towards shore by the incoming tide.

  Strange, she thought sleepily; I always thought I was the calmer one of the partnership. Then: A cross-current powerful enough to carry both of us in to shore must surely have all that turbulent movement in its depths, even if it doesn’t show on the surface.

  It was a long time before the party noise subsided. Ella, in bed now with the light turned out and the curtains open, with a cold breeze easing its way round the rim of window, listened to the chatter thinning out and the bursts of laughter becoming less frequent. Car doors slammed and goodbyes were called, in hushed shouts that sounded louder for the attempt to muffle them.

  When the house was quiet, small sounds survived: the short whoosh of water in pipes – someone filling the kettle, she guessed – and footsteps across the hall and low voices talking. She imagined Franz and Rachel and perhaps the O’Connells sitting in the kitchen, reviewing the evening over a pot of tea.

  It was several hours, she thought, with sleep rolling over her, claiming her for a time then releasing her up to the surface again, before Franz came upstairs. She heard him talking in a low voice, then whispering goodnight, then more talk, then laughter.

  He opened the door quietly and closed it behind him, avoiding clicking the catch. She heard him getting undressed, draping his clothes smoothly across the chair, putting his shoes neatly together in the corner, then going into the bathroom.

  She wasn’t sure when sleep intervened again, only knew that she was awake and aware of a new noise. Raising herself on one elbow, she saw light still coming from under the bathroom door, and heard sobbing. After a while it stopped and she lay down again. Then, as though caught by a new wave, he started again, choking this time, shaken out of control.

  She flung back the covers but before her feet touched the floor, she felt the unmistakable sensation of being held back. It wasn’t a hand – that would have freaked her out, for sure – but a definite physical pressure, accompanied by warmth.

  Ella stopped, her body weight balanced midway between bed and floor, and waited. The pressure remained. There was a sense of some kind of presence in the room, entirely benevolent. She felt cared for, suspended in security. In the meantime, the man she loved was breaking his heart, the other side of the door, and she wasn’t going to comfort him.

  She had a sudden conviction that this was right: that if she went to him now, he would accept her comforting for her sake more than for his. He would make an effort and suppress the tumultuous emotions now forcing themselves from the depths of him. Then he would carry them all with him, beneath his usual calm surface, the next day, the next year, perhaps for the rest of his life.

  If she let him go now beyond the point of her comforting, beyond all limited human solace, he would fall apart. Alone in the night, brought to his knees in a closed room with the world the other side of the door, sleeping, he would not be able to shake himself out of this grief, gather his strength and put himself back together. He would leave himself at the mercy of life itself, life that could be creative but also destructive and uncaring.

  If there was a God, Ella felt, he would be all right; he would come out of this stronger, more vulnerable, more real and more himself.

  If there was not, he was finished – a broken man with an irreparably broken heart and shattered dreams.

  Either way, she should not intervene.

  She lay down in the bed and waited, her heart pounding but feeling strangely relieved. It was out of her hands now. They would be together for life, or they would part. Franz would survive this, or he wouldn’t. There was nothing she could do about it.

  Listening to him, she wondered at the force of his emotions, this man she had seen as so self-assured when she met him, so totally in control of his own destiny. They had worked together, attended courses and workshops, learned techniques for steering their lives into creative, constructive paths.

  They had felt empowered, in charge of their individual destinies and part of some wider collective, all of which they might not fully understand but which made perfect sense in itself. Encouraged by their success in every course they undertook, qualified in accepting their self-realization and confident in their ability to choose their own spiritual path and apply their own inner power to their lives and to the universe to which they belonged, they marvelled at those people who lived their whole lives without ever suspecting these deeper levels of consciousness.

  There were people who felt like victims all their lives, at the mercy of circumstances and of more powerful people’s choices – but all this, they had learned, was a myth. They themselves had power to change the universe and direct their own fate as they decided and the universe, in return, would serve their needs and fulfill their dreams.

  Now, listening to Franz sobbing his heart out, at the end of his considerable resources, she felt bereft. She had relied on his belief, his ability to retain the power they had been taught they had, his certainty and the evidence of powerfulness that shone in every aspect of his life. She had been content to use her own power in smaller things, in relationships, supportive tasks, in encouraging people to fulfil their potential, and in delving to find and maintain a calmness within her, within her own life.

  None of it seemed any use to her now. She tried again to grasp the truth of it, to remember the affirmations and principles and recall the sense of serenity that had come to her at those times. It eluded her. All she could hear, all that filled her mind and tore her heart, was that sobbing cry of a man deserted by every security, abandoned by God, by human power and by every natural and supernatural resource.

  He had reached the end of himself. Ella, still cocooned in the warmth and gentle pressure that kept her in her own space, was adrift from him, untethered. While he knelt on the bathroom floor, alone in the universe and distanced from all forms of help, she floated, astonished at her own detachment and inability to feel concern for this person she loved.

  The light dawning outside the dark window was unforgiving and the birds were silent. The outlines of trees, as they became visible in the grey morning, looked stark and rigid.

  Ella hadn’t known anyone could cry for so long. She wasn’t given to crying, always having been able to summon up a wave of calm, as simply as throwing straw over a muddy puddle, which became instantly dry enough to walk on.

  It was only when she heard that the sobbing next door had stopped that she was suddenly aware that her face and hair and pillow were soaked with tears and that she, in her web of serenity, had been crying along with him for all these hours, not for his life and loss but for a history of her own.