The Glassblower (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 1)

by Durst-Benning, Petra

  The moment passed but the tenderness remained.

  They walked on, hand in hand. When they saw the first houses of Steinach, Steven thought that they had reached Lauscha. Ruth laughed as she told him that they had just as far again to go. She didn’t mention that it would also get steeper; he would see that for himself.

  As he wiped the sweat from his brow, Steven wondered aloud at the black layer of grime that covered the village and its tiny houses. Ruth told him about the slate that the Steinach villagers dug out of the hillside, day and night, and the meager living that it gave them.

  “The slate dust doesn’t just get into every nook and cranny and all over people’s clothes, it gets into their lungs as well,” she explained. She went on to tell him about Eva’s family, in which one of the younger children died every year. “I’m just happy I was born in Lauscha. Marie calls it a paradise of glass. Though if you ask me, it’s not much of one.”

  “When I look around, I can see what your sister means,” Steven answered, pointing up the mountain. “I’ve never seen such marvelous landscapes, not all the way from Hamburg to here. Look at the forests! Pine trees as thick as the hair on a bear’s rump!”

  “Yes, and when the sun’s not shining it’s as dark in here as if you were wrapped in a bearskin. But come winter you notice pretty quickly that you’re not. It’s cold enough to freeze your hands and the roads are so covered with snow that you can’t even leave the village. It may look marvelous to you, but we’d all rather live somewhere a bit more ordinary.”

  Steven laughed.

  “Do you know that you’re quite extraordinary yourself?”

  Ruth frowned at him.

  “You’re not just clever and beautiful, you’re funny as well!” he said in a tone that suggested he couldn’t quite believe it himself.

  Ruth decided to change the subject and insisted that he tell her something about his family. His parents had emigrated years ago after his father and uncle had decided to open a branch of the family business in America as an import-export house. Steven and his three sisters had all been born in America. Ruth was astonished to learn that Sophie, Edna, and Jean, the youngest, all worked for Miles Enterprises. But if his family was as rich as all that . . .

  He laughed at her confusion. “Just because a family has money, that doesn’t rule out the daughters working! We’re quite used to women in America earning their own money. Sophie has never let her husband stop her from working. She doesn’t even need the money; her husband is a rich man himself.” Sophie was the only sister who was married.

  “But who looks after the housekeeping? And who takes care of the children?” she asked. Steven had already mentioned that he was the proud uncle of twins.

  “The staff,” he replied. “Sophie has no time for the housekeeping. She spends quite a few hours every week doing charity work, looking after the children of poor immigrants.”

  The things they got up to in America! Ruth shook her head in confusion.

  “And why is it that the only son in your family is working for another firm?”

  “I’ll never learn as much anywhere else as I will under Woolworth’s wing! My father expects me to join him in the family business eventually of course. But at the moment I have the good fortune to be able to watch two great business minds at work at once, and I cherish the hope that one day I may be a passable businessman myself.”

  Ruth sighed. “It all sounds so exciting! When I think of life in my little village . . .”

  “What kind of businesswoman talks like that?” he asked, his eyes sparkling. “You and your sisters are trailblazers.”

  She looked at him skeptically.

  “Look at what you just did,” he insisted. “You got yourself a deal with one of the biggest chain stores in America. You’re your own boss; you work in an industry that up till now had been exclusively the domain of men—my God, that’s what I call entrepreneurial! Believe me, you’re building yourselves a grand future here.”

  Ruth’s thoughts turned to home, where Johanna was lying in bed humiliated and robbed of her honor. Where Marie was hoping to be able to sell even a single bauble. Where her own daughter would grow up without a father or any brothers and sisters and with only her mother to turn to. She took Steven’s hand again and smiled painfully.

  “If only I could see things your way. But what you call entrepreneurial, we call bitter necessity.”

  As they walked on she plucked a flower from one of the many wild rose bushes, a blossom that had just opened. She breathed deeply, drinking in all she could of the barely perceptible scent. Then she looked up.

  “When I was a girl, I used to greet every new day that came. As soon as I opened my eyes I would wonder what lay ahead of me. Every morning I used to think that there were pleasant surprises in store. I never even wanted to consider that life had its dark side too. And Father used to encourage me in my beliefs. He only ever wanted the best for me. And for Johanna and Marie as well, of course.” She shrugged in resignation. “How I wish I could still think the same way!”

  19

  “You did what?” Johanna’s eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets. Flabbergasted, she stared at the sheet of paper that Ruth was holding out to her.

  “I went to Sonneberg and showed Marie’s baubles to Mr. Woolworth,” Ruth repeated. Ruth laughed and Wanda gurgled happily in her arms.

  Marie laughed even more loudly than Ruth and Wanda together, and she hopped up and down like a child.

  “Don’t you understand? The American wants to buy six thousand baubles from us. Six thousand! I can’t quite believe it myself, not yet.” She snatched the contract from Johanna’s hand. “But here it is, in black and white!”

  Johanna suddenly felt ashamed of herself. She had been upstairs in bed day in and day out, as though she were suffering from some dreadful disease. Wallowing in self-pity like a great crybaby. While outside, life had gone on like a giddily spinning top.

  Ruth had been to see Woolworth? That Woolworth?

  A contract for six thousand baubles?

  “And there I was, silly goose, thinking you’d gone to meet Thomas!” She felt even more stupid just thinking about it. “So that’s why you didn’t go to work today!” she added, turning to Marie. “You wanted to wait for Ruth to come back with her news.”

  Ruth and Marie exchanged knowing glances. They both looked about fit to burst with self-importance.

  Johanna looked at Ruth as though seeing her sister for the first time.

  “The things you get up to!” she said, swinging both legs out of bed. She felt dizzy from the movement. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know whether I would have dared.”

  “But the truth is that you’re the businesswoman among us,” Ruth said, looking at her with unmistakable pride.

  Once she was on her feet Johanna didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Ruth and Marie were leaning in the doorway and looking at her as though they were expecting her to crawl right back into bed.

  Her sisters! The Steinmann girls.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to lie down again,” Johanna assured them as she reached for her clothes. “If we women are going to rule the roost again, then I can’t just laze around on a feather bed!”

  Ruth and Marie sighed with relief. Loudly.

  Peter came by a little while later. Marie had already told him what was afoot the evening before, and when he saw Johanna sitting downstairs in the kitchen, he knew that Ruth had succeeded.

  While Johanna bustled about getting supper ready, Ruth told the whole story, starting from the moment the photographer blurted out which hotel the American was staying in. They all listened, astonished and openmouthed, as Ruth explained how she had gotten the chambermaid to help her sneak into Woolworth’s room. The bread and cheese sat on the table untouched. Who could even think of eating at a time like this? As Ruth recoun
ted how Woolworth had picked up one bauble after another and looked at each in turn, Marie hung upon her every word.

  “He was really impressed,” Ruth told her sister.

  Johanna reached for the contract. She read it through several times, then looked up, frowning. The others didn’t fail to notice the question in her eyes.

  “Look at that, it didn’t take her long to find fault,” Ruth remarked pointedly to Marie. Then she turned to Johanna and asked, “May we know just what displeases you here?”

  “Nothing at all, nothing! It’s all just as it should be,” Johanna said, raising her hands appeasingly. “The delivery date will be tight, but there’s nothing we can do about that. And the price is fine. And it was very clever of you to make sure that we only have to deliver as far as Sonneberg.”

  Ruth relaxed a little. “But?” she asked nevertheless, still apprehensive.

  Johanna smiled helplessly. “I’m just wondering where we’re going to get the money for so much glass stock and all the packing and gas if he isn’t paying us an advance.”

  There were a thousand and one questions to consider that evening, some of which they could answer themselves, some of which they left to Peter. Anything that couldn’t be settled straightaway was left for later.

  It was already dark outside, with a strong wind rattling the windows by the time they finally had a plan.

  The three sisters gratefully accepted Peter’s offer to lend them the money they would need for materials. They were mighty surprised all the same that he had so much in savings.

  Peter also offered to buy the glass stock for them from the foundry. When he suggested he could help blow the baubles as well, Marie turned him down in no uncertain terms. It was a matter of honor for her that she do it on her own. She was well used to sitting up at the lamp until late at night and had no doubts that she could manage the order. It would be a lot of hard work, but she didn’t mind that. Ruth and Johanna would use Marie’s samples as models to paint the globes and the other designs in the daylight hours before packing them up in the evenings. Marie didn’t want to give up working for Wilhelm Heimer—best not to burn her bridges quite yet.

  Although the sisters argued that they should keep their plans quiet for the time being, Peter said that it was probably impossible. The master glassmakers down at the foundry would wonder why he suddenly needed hundreds and hundreds of rods. And Fritz the crate-maker would ask the same question when Johanna went to order the packing materials.

  Peter looked around the table at each of the women in turn. “Why keep it a secret? You should be proud of getting this order!”

  Marie looked at him in an agony of embarrassment.

  “Yes, of course. But what do you think the men will say when they find out . . .” She paused and made a wry face, but a moment later, she smiled. “Peter’s right in fact; it’s too late to get cold feet now!”

  Johanna nodded. “Lauscha will just have to get used to the fact that we have our own roost to rule. There’s always going to be someone who grumbles. And some who resent what we’re doing. But we mustn’t be discouraged,” Johanna said, looking at Ruth. “Aren’t you listening?”

  Ruth sat up straight with a start. “I . . . sorry, what were you saying?”

  Johanna smiled as she shook her head.

  “I suppose you were still thinking of Sonneberg.”

  Ruth looked thoughtfully out the window, at the wind driving the rain against the pane.

  “You have no idea how right you are.”

  20

  Now that Johanna had snapped out of her trance, she took charge of everything much as before. Neither Marie nor Ruth had any objection when she went to Fritz the crate-maker and bargained with him on the price of the packing material. She also insisted on going into Sonneberg to buy the white enamel paint, tinsel wire, and other supplies they would need to realize Marie’s designs. She even set out to organize the glassblowing itself.

  “Why not start by blowing the globes that will take the most time to paint up?” she suggested to Marie. “Then while Ruth and I are painting those, you can get on with the rest of the order.”

  Most of the time, Ruth and Marie let Johanna give the orders; they liked having the old Johanna back again, rather than a sister who just lay in bed like an invalid. They only ever objected if they felt she was pushing them around too much. And when they did, Johanna actually managed to hold her tongue for a while and let the two of them work in peace.

  It didn’t take long for the rest of Lauscha to notice that something was going on at the Steinmann sisters’ house. The lights were on until late at night and their neighbors wondered whether the women ever slept. And wasn’t that the telltale flicker of a gas lamp through the windows, the kind that a glassblower used at his bench? The neighbors soon began stopping by and trying to get into the house under all sorts of pretexts: one woman came to borrow a cup of flour and another to ask for Ruth’s help in sewing a winter jacket; one man came to ask whether he could take a look at Joost’s old tools and perhaps buy one or two that he might need. When they saw what was really going on in Joost’s workshop, some of them could hardly believe their eyes.

  Marie, the youngest of the Steinmann girls, sitting at the lamp?

  Reactions ranged from incredulity to downright disapproval. Many spoke of dark doings, and some even said it was the devil’s work. Marie’s conviction that she could do a man’s job provided weeks of conversation, both in the village houses and down at the Black Eagle as well. When Peter came to tell them what was being said at the tavern, the sisters didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Thomas Heimer had the most to say. He told whoever would listen that he had known right from the start that there was something not quite right about the three of them. They were all stubborn, self-righteous little minxes, pampered and insolent and with their heads in the clouds. When somebody asked him why he had married one of them, and everyone else at the table burst out laughing, Thomas lunged.

  “I’ll not be made a fool of! Not by you, not by a woman, not by anyone!” he yelled, and shook the man until he almost fainted. After that nobody quite dared ask why Thomas’s father saw fit to have one of these minxes still working for him—despite her devilry.

  From then on, Thomas kept coming to their house at night. When the Black Eagle closed at ten o’clock, he stumbled through the streets, always drunk, and the whole neighborhood could hear him shouting for Ruth. Sometimes he grabbed hold of their gate and shook it, threatening all kinds of vengeance. The first few times, Ruth tried to calm him down, but no sooner had she leaned out the window than he became even more abusive. He called them witches, whores, and thieves. Deeply shaken, Ruth flushed and put her hands over her ears. On one occasion, when Thomas was being particularly nasty, the other two sat down at the kitchen table with her. Johanna reached over and prized Ruth’s fingers apart as she wrung her hands.

  “Let him shout! Nobody will think the worse of us because he’s making a laughingstock of himself.”

  From then on, the sisters tried to ignore him when he turned up drunk at their door, and Peter usually managed to send Thomas away with threats.

  As if it weren’t enough to have the glassblowers heaping scorn upon them, Marie and her sisters also found that many of the local women spurned their company; conversation came to a stop or went on in hushed tones whenever Ruth or Johanna went into the village store. Some of the village women condemned the Steinmann sisters out of envy, others out of sheer incomprehension, but most of them did so out of fear. After all, if men saw them taking charge, they might get it into their heads that women could be the breadwinners of the family.

  The only one who took Ruth aside when there were no eyes upon them was Mrs. Flein, the wife of Swiss Karl. She whispered in Ruth’s ear.

  “Back forty years ago, when my father had pneumonia, I sat down at his lamp, and I blew beads in secret.” Mrs. Flein�
��s cheeks flushed as though she were still proud of what she had done. “We didn’t have the gasworks back then, and the flame wasn’t as hot as it is today, but I made those beads all the same. If I hadn’t, we’d all have starved. You tell your Marie that there’s nothing wrong with what she’s doing.” She patted Ruth on the shoulder, then scurried away as though she didn’t want to be seen with her.

  But there were other reluctant admirers too, among them Wilhelm Heimer.

  “Don’t think for a moment that I approve of women getting up to that sort of mischief!” he boomed, so loudly that everyone in the workshop looked over at him and Marie. “But you’ve got the gift for it, and I’ve known that for a long time now!” Then he winked and dropped his voice so that only those standing nearby heard him say, “As long as your work here doesn’t suffer, I’ll turn a blind eye to whatever else you choose to do.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve impressed Wilhelm any,” Eva hissed at Marie, sounding for all the world like a jealous wife.

  Griseldis and her son were regular visitors. Although Griseldis was skeptical at first, she warmed to the project when she saw how much thought the three sisters had put into the work. Sometimes she sat down at the table and helped them paint, while Magnus packed the baubles and stacked the cardboard boxes once they were full.

  Week by week, the pile of boxes grew, climbing ever higher toward the ceiling. Soon there were boxes of baubles all over the house, and it was a nerve-racking business picking a path around them to make sure nothing toppled and fell.

  Even with all the enmity they attracted and all the hard work, it was a good time for the Steinmann sisters. Though none of them knew how to put their feelings into words, they were proud to see Joost’s old workshop come back to life and to be working together once more.