Johanna felt clumsy as she fended off the compliment. “Nonsense,” she said. “I’m nothing special.”
“You are to me,” Peter said emphatically.
Johanna looked up at him, on her mettle. “Don’t you ever give up?”
He shook his head. “I never will. I’m still quite convinced that we belong together.”
“Oh, Peter!” she said, nudging him gently. “And what if you have to wait for me until you’re old and gray?” It was only half in jest. While she found it flattering that he was so insistent, she didn’t want to raise any false hopes. It didn’t matter how Peter felt about her; she saw him as a brother, nothing more.
“I’ll take the risk,” Peter replied cheerfully. “Look at those two.” He nodded toward Ruth and Thomas. “A year ago nobody would have thought that they would be married.”
“Well I have to agree with you there at least; nobody knows what time may bring,” Johanna said vaguely, to end the conversation on a friendly note.
Once they had danced enough, they went to the bar and ordered two steins of beer. Then they sat down at a little table where the waitresses put their drinks. It gave them a good view of the crowd while they weren’t noticed themselves.
“I think I’ll stay here for the rest of the party,” Johanna said, her cheeks glowing. The beer was cool and refreshing. “I can’t take any more of Wilhelm Heimer’s speeches today. There’s a way he always looks at me out of the corner of his eye as he talks . . . brrr! As if he always wants to remind me what a good catch our Ruth has made.” She sighed. “Though I must admit it’s very generous of him to give them the apartment over his warehouse. I didn’t even know he owned that building.”
Peter laughed. “Well there you have it. Thomas really is a good catch.”
“There we have it indeed!” Johanna scoffed, jutting her chin toward the dance floor, where Thomas and his buddies were making fools of themselves, clucking like hens and prancing about. Johanna raised her eyebrows as the women tried to drag their men off the dance floor. She was relieved to see that Ruth was not among them.
“Do you think it’ll work out?” she asked Peter, nodding toward the newlyweds.
Peter shrugged.
Johanna knew that the happiness she felt today was just an exception: the dancing, the easy chatter, none of Strobel’s odd remarks, no worries about how Marie would get by on her own. Everything would be quite different again tomorrow.
All at once Johanna felt sick at heart. She changed her mind about sitting and led Peter back onto the dance floor, hoping that her worries would go away.
34
And then summer was over. Up on the forest heights where the wind was strong, deciduous trees shed their leaves, exposing the grim dark pines behind them. The sun was soon barely visible behind the steep mountains, and the shadows stayed in the village longer each day. When Johanna set off for home on Fridays, it was already dark as the slate-maker’s cart rattled on its way.
There were days when Ruth felt unwell as her belly grew rounder, but she turned up for work right on time all the same. And a good thing too, since the workload at Heimer’s workshop never ebbed. Thomas and his two brothers sat at their lamps and blew glass from morning till night, while Ruth, Marie, and the other women painted and finished the wares.
Although Marie often had a backache after the long hours up at Heimer’s, she frequently sat up half the night at the kitchen table with her sketchpad. She felt invigorated by the peace and quiet in the house now that Ruth had moved out. At last she could put her sketches and her colored pencils wherever she liked, could draw and experiment and cross out without anyone looking over her shoulder and squealing with delight. Her sisters’ interest in her art had always felt like rather a burden. They were bound to praise her, whatever she did. If anyone was going to pass comment on her work, then Marie would have much preferred that it be someone who really knew about art, someone with whom she could exchange ideas. Despite the fact that she had no such expert guidance, her designs became clearer and more considered over time. All the same, Marie constantly found herself drawing circles and spheres rather than the dishes or bowls she had intended and which she ended up crossing out in frustration.
The ideas had started with a passing remark many months before. Something that Johanna had said shortly after Ruth’s wedding had put those shapes into Marie’s head, and now they simply wouldn’t go away.
“You can’t imagine all the new things I get to see at Strobel’s shop,” Johanna had said. “There I am thinking I know every kind of glass made in Lauscha and then a glassblower comes along and surprises me with some new design.”
Marie had asked her sister what exactly she got to see, even though she would have liked to put her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to hear about all the wonderful things—or even the ugly things—that the glassblowers brought to Strobel. Not when Wilhelm Heimer had just turned down another of her designs.
“You have good ideas, girl, I’ll give you that,” he had said. “But as long as we still have commissions to work through, we don’t need to go trying anything new.” He clapped a friendly hand on her shoulder, but it did nothing to lessen the disappointment. So Marie had only listened with half an ear while Johanna talked about Karl Flein and his order from an American buyer. “We’ve seen people hang glass beads on their trees of course, but glass globes—can you imagine?” Johanna had laughed.
And all of a sudden Marie had pricked up her ears. She had nodded impatiently at Johanna. Tell me more!
Taking the hint, Johanna had explained, “When Strobel got back from his trip, I asked him how on earth Mr. Woolworth had gotten the idea of ordering glass globes for Christmas trees—whether that was what they usually hung on their trees in America. Strobel said it wasn’t, but that Mr. Woolworth had told him he’d bought a small consignment of clear glass globes from a dealer in Penn . . . Pennsylvania”—she had stumbled over the name a little—“and only because the man had been so insistent about it. If nobody had bought the globes, he’d have sent them back to the dealer. But apparently they sold like hotcakes.
“Woolworth’s a businessman and saw there was a tidy profit to be made. And now Swiss Karl’s working away on them. I’m glad that Strobel picked him for the order. His family can certainly use the work.”
Marie had asked for an exact description of the globes. There really wasn’t much to them, she realized. But the idea itself was fascinating.
When Johanna had gone back to Sonneberg shortly thereafter, she had no idea that her remarks had planted the seed of a new idea in her sister. Marie had tossed and turned sleeplessly in bed that night, fighting to hold back the flood of images in her head: glittering globes, their colors standing out against a green pine. The candlelight playing across the silver sheen. She wanted to get out of bed and put the pictures safely down in her sketchbook. But then she scolded herself for the thought—Wilhelm Heimer would never want to bother with these globes, any more than he did with the rest of her designs.
But she nonetheless came back again and again over the following weeks and months to the thought that Karl Flein’s glass globes would soon be on their way to America to glitter and shine as Christmas tree ornaments. She was full of pride that glass blown in her home village was cherished all over the world.
Once again, Marie couldn’t sleep even though she was dead tired. Christmas was fast approaching, and she didn’t know whether to look forward to it or dread the day. Ruth would spend Christmas Eve with the Heimers, but she had promised to visit Marie and Johanna for a while.
On her last visit, Johanna had said, “I’ve thought up a few nice surprises.” Marie could well imagine what that meant; Johanna would probably come home with a whole trunk full of gifts. But that was hardly unexpected given how much she earned.
If only she could think of something that would really surprise her sisters.
She fetched a shawl and threw it over her shoulders, then hurried into the workshop.
Should she decorate a Christmas tree, the way they used to do when she was a little girl? She could weave some stars out of straw and then paint them white perhaps, to make them look like ice crystals. That was not exactly an original idea though.
But a tree with glass globes like the ones Karl Flein made—that would be a real surprise!
Deep in thought, she began to wipe down Father’s workbench with a damp cloth.
She had gotten into the habit of dusting the abandoned workbench and all his tools once a week, no matter how much other work she had. Her father had worked at this bench all his life, day in and day out. The ritual was important to her, just as Ruth felt it important to clear the moss away from Joost’s gravestone regularly.
Everything was still just as he had left it: the gas pipe to the left with the box of matches that had a picture of an orange flame on the label; the air hose to the right, which connected to the treadle-operated bellows under the table; and in between there were the glass rods, neatly lined up by color and length. Marie carefully picked up each one and wiped the dust away. Then she put aside the cloth and sat down.
She gazed into the darkness for a while. Dusting the bench had just been an excuse, she realized, a pretext for sitting here. She reached for the matchbox and took out a match. Her hand was trembling a little at the audacity of what she was about to do. She hesitated. Then she looked over the workbench, checking that all was in place.
And then she did what she had to.
She turned the gas tap counterclockwise, once round, twice, until the gas began to flow invisibly. Marie couldn’t see it, could hardly even smell it.
And with that, Joost’s workbench awoke to new life.
Her right foot found the bellows and her leg settled into the rhythm of its own accord. Up, down. Up, down. Marie bent down and held the hose to her cheek, testing the flow. She seemed to feel every little hair in the gentle stream of air.
“You have to blow hard to make the flame sing!” she heard her father say. She choked back a sob. Then she lit the match and held it to the flame. A bluish-red flame shot up.
Marie sat up straight, took a deep breath, and tried to shake some of the tension from her shoulders. There was no reason to be nervous. She had the gas under control. She wouldn’t open the tap any more than she knew was safe. She needn’t be afraid.
Once she had calmed down a little, she took the air hose, which had been blowing off to one side, and brought it closer to the gas tap. Very soon the flame would turn blue, and then it would burn ever more fiercely until it was hot enough to melt glass.
But nothing happened.
Marie was taken aback. Not enough gas? Or not enough air?
She began to work the bellows faster. Still nothing. Not enough gas, then. She put the air hose into its clip so that her hands were free. Then she turned the valve on the gas tap all the way around. When she turned the air hose back onto the flame, it flickered for a moment, but Marie could see at a glance that the temperature was still far too low to heat up one of the glass rods.
She struggled to recall just how far Thomas and his brothers opened their gas pipes. Even though she was at the workshop every day, she never paid attention to such details. She was a woman and had nothing to do with the glassblowing. Women just finished the wares.
Marie stared at the gas tap as though it would tell her what to do. She had turned the valve three times by now—did she need to turn it ten times, or twenty, to get a good flame?
It was no use, Marie decided. Either she plucked up her nerve and used more gas, or she could give up right now. She swallowed. Then she turned the gas tap round and round until she heard it hiss. She knew that sound! She brought in the air.
The next moment a burst of flame shot up toward the ceiling.
35
Marie couldn’t believe how easy it was to explain away her singed eyelashes to Ruth. And her eyebrows, which were charred almost beyond recognition. Never mind the way her right index finger and middle finger were puffy and swollen. She had thrown away the singed shawl first thing. She had stammered out something about being careless as she lit the gas lamps in the house, expecting Ruth not to believe a word. But her older sister had just looked at her a little skeptically and asked no more questions. Marie heaved a sigh of relief. For a moment there she had considered telling the truth—“I burned myself because I thought I could blow glass like a man”—but didn’t they say that pregnant women should avoid shocks? And Ruth would certainly have been shocked. She would have shouted something like, “You—blow glass? Are you mad? What the devil got into you? The whole house could have burned down! You could have been burned alive!”
A few nights later, Marie was back at the workbench, smiling. Perhaps some devil really had gotten into her. But if so, she was going to grab him by the horns!
Granted, after her first attempt had gone so wrong, she had tasted fear. The flame was dangerous—every child in Lauscha knew that. But in the end, her desire had been stronger than her fear.
This time she had taken off her shawl and put her hair up in a tight braid. She also didn’t turn the gas valve all the way, but only as far as she had seen Thomas and his brothers open it when she’d watched them these last few days. Four turns, no more. She was rewarded with a blue flame that looked a lot like what the other glassblowers used. A smile flitted across her face.
Her hand trembling, she picked up one of the rods of clear glass that Joost had used to blow pharmacy jars. It felt smooth and cold. She turned it carefully in the flame, keeping it in one position, until it began to glow in the middle. That was the moment when the glass became soft. Marie put the air hose down and pulled the two ends of the rod apart until she was holding two pieces. She put one of these aside and looked critically at the other. In pulling the rod apart, she had made a long thin shape that the glassblowers called a tail, and it looked just like the ones Thomas and his brothers made. So much for this being men’s work. She knew just what she had to do next from watching the Heimer brothers over their shoulders. She was excited as she put the shortened glass rod back into the flame until the end melted closed. She did the same with the second piece. Then she put both pieces down to cool off in a pail.
Only then did Marie allow herself to draw a deep breath.
So far, so good.
She did the same thing to another dozen rods. Now everything was ready.
“You can do it, Marie Steinmann,” she told herself in a whisper. She took one of the shortened rods from the pail and held it to the flame until the middle was heated through. Once it was glowing red, she took the rod from the flame and put the open end to her mouth. It felt cool, even though immensely high temperatures were at work on the glass just a hand span away from her lips. She blew into it.
Dear God, please let this work, she prayed as a bubble appeared in the glass before her eyes. A large, transparent bubble.
Marie kept blowing.
A little more.
The pounding at her temples intensified.
And a little more.
That was it. She had t
o stop, or the bubble would burst.
There was now a perfectly round ball where the tail had been. Marie gazed at it, hardly believing what she saw. She had managed it. She was so surprised that she forgot to work the bellows for a moment.
The flame promptly went out.
The next few weeks were the most exciting in Marie’s life—largely because nobody else knew what happened every night at Joost’s old bench.
Every evening she learned more about how to work with the lamp, how to calibrate the gas pipe and the air hose, and how to blow the glass. After creating ten almost perfectly round globes, she began to experiment with shapes. One time she stretched the bubble as she blew so that the result was egg shaped; another time she blew a shape like a pear. She was always careful not to let the glass walls become too thick or too thin or poorly proportioned. However, when she tried blowing a shape like a pinecone, she found the end result far too long and thin. Though she had to laugh at her creation, which looked not the least bit like a pinecone but rather like a long thin sausage, she was unhappy at the thought that she had wasted half a rod.
Marie turned the thing around and around. If she used a little imagination, it looked rather like one of the icicles hanging from the eaves outside, but it wasn’t a pretty sight. She put it aside.
From then on, she only blew globes and eggs. She hid all of them in the wardrobe in Joost’s old bedroom, where neither Ruth nor Johanna would happen across them.
A seasoned glassblower like Thomas Heimer could blow up to ten dozen of such a simple shape in a single day, but Marie never managed more than a dozen in one night. Her flame went out more than once, and she had to work hard to coax it back to life. Once she cut herself and had to look all over the house for a bit of clean cloth to wrap around the ball of her thumb. Another time she thought she heard Ruth coming and hastily put everything away, but it was only the wind at the door.
The Glassblower (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 1) Page 20