The Glassblower (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 1)

by Durst-Benning, Petra

  “You’re going to have a baby?”

  Johanna couldn’t believe what she had just heard. She didn’t want to believe it.

  “But how could that happen? You’re not even married yet!”

  Ruth laughed bitterly. “Do you think that not being married can protect a woman from pregnancy?” It was just like her high-minded sister to make such a remark.

  Johanna shook her head brusquely.

  “Rubbish. But . . .” She didn’t even know herself what she had meant by that. “What does Thomas say about it?”

  Ruth sat up straight. “He’s pleased as Punch,” she said. Seeing the skepticism in Johanna’s face, she added, “No, he really is! If I hadn’t sworn him to silence, he’d be going round telling the world right now that he’s going to be a father.”

  Ruth decided to keep to herself just how Thomas had taken the news of impending fatherhood. “Jackpot, first shot!” he had said, strutting like a cockerel. Instead she said, “Sebastian and Eva have been trying to have children for years now without any luck, so you can see why he’s so pleased. There’s going to be a little Heimer at last! And Thomas has even been to see the pastor. He decided that we should get married at the end of June. Which suits me. The sooner the better. He can hardly wait to tell his father the good news.”

  “Old Heimer will have some idea what’s coming when you suddenly rush to get married so soon after the engagement. The old fellow can put two and two together.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Ruth shrugged. She didn’t care what the old man thought. “Anyway, I don’t want to stand in church with my bump showing. Nobody needs to know that we’ve already . . .”

  Johanna got up and went to the calendar that hung next to the kitchen dresser. She leafed through it quickly and then said with relief, “What luck—Strobel will be back by then. Otherwise I would have missed your wedding.”

  “You’d have me to answer to if you did,” Ruth said, then she clapped her hands. “So now we’re going shopping. I’m going to buy myself a dress, and Thomas says he doesn’t care how much it costs.”

  Johanna looked at her askance. “Well, he really does seem pleased.”

  If Johanna had ever thought that she was a fussy shopper, she soon learned better; it took several hours for her sister to select a dress in wine-red taffeta, and during that time not a single item in the shop escaped her scrutiny. Red was the usual color for a bride to wear in Germany, but she only came back to the dress after looking at almost everything else as well.

  It wasn’t difficult to persuade Ruth to go out to one of the town’s many restaurants after that. Tired but happy, they sat at a table by the window and enjoyed the warm sunshine that filtered through the lace curtains. Ordering coffee and the day’s special—a kohlrabi bake with sausage and potato—they felt like women of the world. Three other tables were occupied by women, two of whom were messengers Johanna regularly sent to the villages. They waved at her from their table. While Johanna was relieved to realize it was not unusual for women to eat out at a restaurant, Ruth simply assumed that her sister did this every day.

  When their food came, they ate hungrily. Because it was a special day, they also ordered a slice of the chocolate cake, which had tempted them from its stand. But once the cake was in front of them, neither of them touched it for a while. It was Ruth who spoke aloud what they both were thinking.

  “Isn’t it odd? Just six months ago, we didn’t know where our next meal was coming from. Simple village girls, we were. And now we’re sitting in a restaurant in Sonneberg planning my wedding.”

  “Things certainly do change—sometimes even for the better,” Johanna said, digging her fork into the cake happily. “So? What’s it like, sleeping with a man?” she asked.

  Ruth looked at her incredulously. Had Johanna really asked such a question?

  “If you’d rather not talk about it . . .”

  Did she want to talk about it? Ruth was torn. She wanted very much to tell someone what it had been like. But was Johanna the right person to talk to?

  Her hesitation made Johanna waver too. “I only ask because of the pregnancy . . . Couldn’t you have put Thomas off a little?”

  “Putting a man off isn’t so easy. When you’re in love, the moment will eventually come when it really gets difficult. But you wouldn’t understand such things,” Ruth replied rather condescendingly.

  “No, you’re right, I really can’t imagine that sort of thing,” Johanna agreed. She threw up her hands in an almost comical gesture. “Mind you, I can fill out order forms and keep the books.”

  Ruth laughed at Johanna’s disarming honesty.

  “Well that’s certainly going to come in handy in affairs of the heart!”

  They ate their cake in silence. While Johanna gazed fixedly down at her plate, Ruth’s thoughts wandered back to her first night with Thomas.

  After the May dance had ended in such disarray, they had made their way up to the forest the following evening instead. Thomas hadn’t gotten anything ready but a blanket and a couple of candles. Though it was far from the magical, romantic setting Ruth had hoped for, she had let him pull her down onto the blanket. Thomas had kept his part of the bargain by announcing their engagement at the village dance, so she couldn’t back out now. His compliments that evening had been oddly halfhearted. He told her that he thought of her night and day and that she was beautiful, but he stumbled through the words as though they were a poem he had been forced to learn by rote. Straight after that, his hands were hunting around under her skirt. Greedily. Possessively.

  Ruth’s mouth was dry. She swallowed a bite of cake.

  After that it all had happened very fast. He had shoved her legs apart with his calloused hands and pressed her body down onto the blanket. The mossy forest floor beneath was lumpy; there was something digging painfully into her back—a root or a stone or a pinecone; and she felt cold, though she hadn’t dared complain. The last thing she had wanted to hear just then was some remark about how overly sensitive she was.

  And then?

  She had squeezed her eyes shut and tried to conjure up some of the romance she had so desperately wanted for the occasion. Groaning and breathing heavily into her ear, he thrust into the chill of her body—and it hurt. Ruth had been relieved when he finally let go.

  Involuntarily she pressed her legs together. The sudden movement made Johanna look up. Ruth smiled at her and took a sip of coffee.

  She had been so shocked by the nasty dampness between her legs!

  When Thomas had seen her dismay, he had simply laughed. “That’s the elixir of life! You’ll have to get used to that.” Then he had taken her in his arms and they had looked up at the night sky to search for stars together. But it was overcast that night. All the same, these were, for Ruth, the most beautiful minutes of the evening.

  She sighed and looked across at Johanna.

  “Mrs. Heimer—it’ll take me a while to get used to that.”

  “How do you think I’ll manage?” Johanna asked.

  They both had to laugh.

  “Is he really Prince Charming, like you used to dream about when you were a girl?” Johanna asked quietly.

  Ruth was quiet. It was an important question. Not for Johanna, she realized, but for her.

  She certainly couldn’t claim that he catered to her every whim. But it wasn’t stinginess that made Thomas treat her so . . . unimaginatively. That was just the way he was. If she enthused to him about something she had seen in one of the magazines that Johanna brought home, he merely looked at her with blank incomprehension. “You and your silly ideas,” he would say. But was that any surprise? Thomas had grown up in a household that sneered at sophistication.

  At last she answered, “No, he’s not Prince Charming. But what would I do with someone like that in Lauscha?” She smiled coquettishly. “I’d rather have th
e son of the richest glassblower in the village. After all I’m no princess myself; I’m just a perfectly ordinary girl.”

  “No you’re not,” Johanna replied decisively. “Thomas couldn’t find a woman anywhere in Lauscha or beyond who’s prettier than you or cleverer or works harder! Don’t you hide your light under a bushel, not even for a moment!”

  Ruth was deeply affected but popped the last piece of cake into her mouth to hide it. “Sometimes I have my doubts,” she admitted. “Marie has her painting; you’ve got your work here in town and earn a good wage. But me . . . ?”

  “You’ll soon be the mother of a curly-haired little blond angel, and we’ll all be wildly envious of you,” Johanna said, grinning. “But before that you’ll be the prettiest bride Lauscha has ever seen.”

  “The dress is wonderful, isn’t it?” When Ruth thought of the big packet under the table, her melancholy vanished. “Eva will be so jealous she’ll burst!”

  The two sisters hugged good-bye in the doorway of Strobel’s shop. Ruth was already outside when she turned around one more time.

  “Where has Strobel gone anyway?” Though she wasn’t really interested, she felt a twinge of guilt after talking about herself and Thomas all afternoon.

  “I have no idea,” Johanna answered darkly. “But given the fuss he made about it you’d have thought he were setting off for a trip around the world.”

  “That’s odd,” Ruth declared. “Don’t you talk to one another, then?”

  “Of course we do. But to be honest, I prefer knowing as little as possible about him. He can be a rather odd duck.”

  33

  On Monday Johanna was so swamped with work that she had no time to think about Ruth’s wedding. She had just unlocked the shop and was putting the key in a drawer under the counter when the door opened and Swiss Karl walked in. He must have set out from Lauscha in the middle of the night to get there so early.

  “You’ve got young swallows up under the eaves,” he said instead of hello, and pointed his chin toward the door.

  Johanna smiled. This was typical of Karl Flein. The glassblower had a better eye for the beauties of nature than almost anyone else in the village.

  “I know,” she answered. “If I let Strobel have his way, I’d have to clear that nest away. He’s worried that the little beasts might drop something on our customers as they come in. But they do say that a house where swallows build their nest will have health and wealth.” Johanna leaned over the counter. “Now then, Swiss Karl, what can I do for you? Are you thirsty? Shall I get you a glass of water? It’s warm for June, isn’t it?”

  She’d always liked Karl Flein, a quiet, polite man, even before he had come to Father’s grave with the handblown glass rose as a final gift to a fellow craftsman. She was happy that Mr. Woolworth had ordered several items from him.

  Flein waved the offer away. “I shan’t need anything, thank you.”

  Johanna waited while he ceremoniously took a sheet of paper from his breast pocket and unfolded it. It was the order sheet she had given to a messenger woman for him last week. For a moment Johanna flushed hot and cold. Had she made a mistake?

  “There’s something I don’t understand on your order. What’s this mean?” he asked, pointing to one line.

  “We’ll soon sort this out,” she said, taking the sheet from his hand. But the next instant her confident smile faded. “Twenty dozen balls with eyelets for hanging, silvered within, diameter two inches,” she read, furrowing her brow. “What does it mean?”

  “At first I thought it was the bead necklaces, since you’ve bought plenty of those from me,” Flein said. “But that can’t be it, not at that size.”

  Johanna put her hand to her mouth to disguise her own confusion.

  “Two inches in diameter—they’d certainly be very big beads!” she said, trying to laugh. “Mr. Strobel isn’t here at the moment. Let me fetch his notebook. Perhaps he’s written down something that might clarify things a little.” She went to the back of the shop.

  She hadn’t noticed anything odd as she was filling out the order sheet. She had simply copied out every item on the Woolworth order that Strobel had written under number 386, which was the number for Karl Flein in the books. Perhaps Strobel had made a mistake about the size of the balls? Johanna bit her lip. Drat it all; it was her job to make sure of details like this. Now she couldn’t even ask him.

  Strobel’s notebook didn’t tell her much though. He’d jotted down a comment in the margin for this item, as he often did, but Johanna had trouble deciphering his handwriting.

  “New product/ add to catalog/ globes for hanging: as Christmas tree decorations,” she read out loud, frowning.

  “Christmas tree decorations?” Flein repeated.

  “Glass globes? On a Christmas tree?” Johanna asked, baffled, while outside the young swallows chirped hungrily.

  The glassblower shrugged. “Why not? For all I care, your clients can hang themselves on the tree if they want to,” he said with a laugh. “When you get right down to it, these are nothing more than big glass beads then. The only difference is that instead of drawing the tail off the bead, I’ll blow a little hook into it. So that it can be hung.” He smiled confidently. “I can do that, of course, now that I know what the globes are supposed to be for . . . Well then, I’m off to get back to work.” He pulled his cap down over his brow.

  “Anyway, let that wholesaler of yours know that next time he should be a bit clearer about what he wants.” Karl winked and left.

  Three weeks later Ruth Steinmann became Mrs. Heimer.

  The wedding banquet was such a magnificent affair that it was almost as though Ruth really was marrying Prince Charming. Nearly a hundred guests had been invited, mostly glassblowers and their families but also the Sonneberg wholesalers who did business with the Heimer workshop. For once Wilhelm Heimer hadn’t skimped on costs and had rented the Black Eagle outright. It wasn’t Lauscha’s largest tavern, but it had always been a popular gathering place for the glassblowers.

  There were eight waitresses at the reception to serve coffee and fancy cakes. The sweet treats were hardly finished before they brought out potato dumplings with a goulash of venison and wild boar, and both red and white cabbage. The beer flowed freely, and though red wine was also offered, only the Sonneberg businessmen drank it. Glassblowers were beer drinkers and always had been, and the bridegroom was among the staunchest upholders of this tradition—and, at least to start with, his bride watched indulgently. His friends followed his example faithfully, and the celebration grew louder and merrier as the hours went by.

  But the food and drink, good though it was, was not the high point of the occasion. That was the table itself and the decorations; Marie had spent days wreathing box branches into lengths of tracery and adorning them with rosettes of gold paper that she had cut into delicate patterns. She wound one length around the chairs of the bride and groom, joining them together so that they looked like one royal throne. Another length was placed around the tables that bore the wedding gifts.

  And there were plenty of gifts: the glassblowers gave them all kinds of glassware of course—from drinking glasses, dishes, and plates to perfume bottles, vases, and little lidded pots. Swiss Karl had given the couple a whole bouquet of glass roses blown from the orange and red rods in his stock, complete with green leaves and thorns along the stem. The whole piece was so lifelike that Edeltraud came hurrying up with a vase full of water for the roses. When the guests standing around noticed her mistake, they laughed until their sides ached.

  Thomas’s brothers gave the couple two goose-feather quilts and pillows, which they handed over with much ado and several off-color remarks. The gifts from the Sonneberg wholesalers included a two-way mirror, a five-armed porcelain candelabrum, and a set of silver flatware for fish. Johanna got the impression that all of Heimer’s business partners were trying to outdo on
e another with their gifts. She found herself thinking ungraciously that the newlyweds might have liked some more practical presents for day-to-day use, perhaps some cooking pots.

  Ruth received all the gifts with a dignity befitting a queen. Having always dreamed of having some luxury in her life, she was visibly overjoyed by all the expensive, unusual presents. And she was equally effusive in thanking the guests who brought only a few towels or a single glass dish, like Widow Grün. All day long Ruth had a kind word for everybody, tirelessly shaking hands and receiving their congratulations.

  “If only Father could see her now,” Johanna said quietly.

  Marie nodded. “Somehow I feel that he’s here anyway,” she confessed. “I have to stop myself from looking up to heaven all the time.”

  “You too?” Johanna and Marie traded awkward smiles. Then Johanna sighed. “But I don’t like the thought that you’ll be living on your own from now on.”

  “Well, look who’s talking! Who’s been living with a strange man for more than six months now?” Marie countered, then added, “You don’t have to worry about me. I don’t mind being on my own.”

  “I’m just next door after all,” Peter said. “All Marie has to do is knock on the wall if there’s anything she needs. Besides . . .” he said, pulling Johanna gently to her feet. “I think you’ve had enough worries for today. Come on, let’s go join the fun.”

  The newlyweds had just finished the first dance and were beckoning for everyone else to join them on the dance floor. Ruth’s pregnancy didn’t show at all. In fact the dress that she had chosen in Sonneberg rather emphasized her tall, slender figure. She had decided against an elaborate coiffure and instead wore her hair in one thick plait all the way down her back.

  “Ruth looks beautiful,” Johanna whispered to Peter as they joined the other dancing couples.

  “And you look just as lovely,” he whispered back. His breath tickled the hairs at the back of her neck.