The Glassblower (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 1)

by Durst-Benning, Petra

  The bulk of the work fell to Marie, but she never once complained about putting in twenty hours a day. Instead she sat at Joost’s bench and blew glass as though she’d been doing nothing else her whole life. She was quite carried away by the idea that her baubles soon would be hanging on Christmas trees all across America. Johanna sometimes wondered whether there wasn’t a touch of obsession in Marie’s dedication. When she mentioned this to Peter, he replied dryly, “Is there even any such thing as dedication without obsession?”

  For Johanna, too, the work was like stepping into freedom after doing nothing all summer long: she painted, finished, numbered the items, wrote the price tags, packed the baubles, tracked the inventory. Finally, it was her chance to show what she was made of. And she had to admit that there was a kernel of obsession inside her as well.

  Ruth went around with a blissful smile on her lips all the time—almost entirely thanks to the letters the postman brought.

  21

  Hamburg, 30 August 1892

  Dearest Ruth,

  I hope that my letter finds you in good spirits and in good health? I am sure that there is much work to fill your days, so I almost feel guilty for taking up your valuable time with my letter.

  Ruth, you cannot imagine how pleased Frank (Mr. Woolworth) is to be able to have your Christmas decorations in his catalog. Throughout the journey back to Hamburg he talked of little else but how he could hardly wait to see those baubles shining on his shop displays. You should know, most respected Ruth, that Woolworth stores are not like other shops; we do not have our wares stacked up out of reach on shelves behind a counter, but rather, everything is set out where the customers can help themselves. This means that everyone can pick them up, look as closely as they wish, and then choose whatever their heart desires. The customer is king, so Frank always says. My employer is quite sure, as am I, that your Christmas baubles will suit our customers’ tastes exactly.

  I am distressed to discover that even in the first paragraph I have already broken my resolution not to take up too much of your time. Ruth, you have made me into quite the chatterbox. There are a thousand things I wish to tell you. But where should I begin? Where should I stop? And yet I confess I find that a written letter is a poor substitute for being able to look into your eyes and listen while you talk in that lively and inimitable way you have. Please permit me to say that since we met, I have not stopped thinking of you. The evening we spent together, and then the walk we took through that incomparable landscape enchanted me. You, Ruth, enchanted me!

  I am a man of numbers, a sober-headed chief clerk, and yet I find myself asking Fate what it could mean that we met. I hardly dare hope that you might consider our meeting anything more than a commercial transaction. Though this, too, has its charm—it seldom happens that I find myself negotiating with such a charming partner. Mr. Woolworth, by the way, says that he found the way you did business very “American.” You may be assured that he means that as a compliment.

  As I sit in my office and look out the window, I see steamers setting out for the New World every day. In only a few weeks I, too, will set foot aboard one of these oceangoing giants to accompany your Christmas baubles—and the many other glasswares from your home village—to America. But before that time comes, I wish you to know that I am considering a visit to Sonneberg on the 29th of September. Given the quantity of goods that are to be transported to Hamburg on the 30th, it might be a good idea for me to supervise the loading and packing of these wares myself. Most respected Ruth, if you chose to come from Lauscha to Sonneberg, we could be certain that the wares are treated with the due respect. After all, glass is very fragile, is it not?

  I would be very pleased indeed to receive a few lines with your reply. I have already given you my address in Hamburg. You will also find it on the back of the envelope to this letter. With hopes of a positive reply, I remain,

  Yours sincerely,

  Steven Miles

  Lauscha, 9 September 1892

  Dear Steven,

  Thank you for being so kind as to write. Your letter was delightful! (If one may say this sort of thing of a letter.) I would be very pleased if we could meet in Sonneberg on the 29th of September. Of course I plan to accompany our Christmas decorations—after all, I must make sure that they don’t end up in a ditch by the side of the road somewhere between Lauscha and Sonneberg! Do you see now what you have done to me? No sooner do I have dealings with you than I begin to behave like a silly woman. Or at least write things that sound silly. Please ascribe this to the fact that I have as little experience in writing letters as I do in business affairs.

  I, too, find myself thinking of our meeting every day but I do not have the words to express my feelings as beautifully as you do.

  Perhaps I should tell you that the work is proceeding apace. Marie can hardly wait to sit down at her lamp every day. I believe that for her, it is more a pleasure than a chore. Johanna and I greatly enjoy the work of painting and finishing the pieces. It is quite another thing when we are producing the wares for ourselves, rather than working for someone else. It is a very fine feeling to be able to be proud of what one has done. Especially since my husband does whatever he can to humiliate and hurt me. He comes to our house almost every night, drunk, demanding that I come out. Once he lay in wait for me on the way to the village store and grabbed me roughly by the sleeve. I’ll get what is due to me, he said. Thank God that some of the villagers happened to pass by just then. I was honestly frightened. What if he does something to Wanda one day, simply to cause me pain? When I look into his eyes, all I see is rage. Impotent rage. He recently asked me, in all seriousness, why I left him. Can you imagine? Until he understands what he did wrong, he will not leave me in peace. Enough! Over and done with!

  Do not worry, dear Steven, I am not about to burst into tears again and tell you my sad story. Even today I feel quite ill at ease when I recall how I behaved that evening. I am still most grateful to you for your kind understanding. The only way I can explain my candor is to say that from the very outset I had the feeling that I could trust you wholly and purely. When you consider that in truth I have little experience with men—and that what little I have had could hardly be called joyful—this is in fact quite astonishing. But deep inside I know that you are different. And that is why I am already looking forward to seeing you again, By the way: when you look out of your window, please give the ocean liners my greetings. It must be a fine feeling to be so close to the “big, wide world”!

  With warm wishes from the Paradise of Glass,

  Ruth

  Hamburg, 15 September 1892

  Dear Ruth,

  Your letter made me the happiest man in Hamburg!

  I must protest strongly against one thing that you said; you are a most gifted correspondent. The lines that you write are as lively and engaging as your conversation in person. When I read them, I feel almost as though I were sitting with you in the workshop while you and your sisters create your baubles with skillful hands. How I would love to be there with you in your Paradise of Glass—and what a beautiful name that is! Instead I threaten to drown under a mountain of paperwork. The greater the proportion of foreign goods offered for sale in Mr. Woolworth’s shops, the greater, alas, the workload. Yet I do not wish to complain. It is always exciting, with every day that dawns, to watch how he is building a great business empire through his cunning maneuvers. Indeed, I feel honored to be allowed to work for such a great man as Frank Winfield Woolworth. And yet there are times, such as now, when I yearn to be able to pack my case and travel wherever I will. But, alas, life is not that simple. Yet when I hear, dear Ruth, how your husband mistreats and molests you, then I burn to depart with the next coach and tell this villain just what I think of him. What kind of life is that, if every day you must live in fear? You do not deserve this. Nobody deserves this.

  By the time you read these lines it will be just a
few days until we see one another again. Thus I know I cannot expect to receive another letter from you in the meantime. I can hardly wait to sit across the table from you once more, to look into your velvet brown eyes and then never look away. Dare I imagine that you, too, think of me from time to time? You, the Princess of the Paradise of Glass?

  I remain, in joyful anticipation,

  Yours sincerely,

  Steven Miles

  Lauscha, 21 September 1892

  Dear Steven,

  I am counting the days until we see one another again the way a child counts the days to Christmas!

  Your Ruth

  22

  It was Sunday evening in the fifth week of the six they had to complete the baubles. Marie had sensed for the first time that the glances thrown their way at church that morning had been a little less hostile. Perhaps Lauscha was gradually getting used to the idea that a woman could blow glass. As she raised her voice with all the others in a hymn, she felt that she could finally sing with an open heart once more. When they left church, Thomas was waiting as usual and tried to take Ruth aside. All she did was look him up and down and then leave him standing there. With Peter next to her and all the parishioners around, Thomas did not dare drag Ruth away by the arm or make a scene. The painful moment passed.

  Once they got home, they no longer had a spare minute. As so often recently, the mood was tense: the long hours of work side by side had begun to eat away at their patience and good cheer. Hardly a day passed without some quarrel. Wanda had just begun teething, and her constant crying only heightened the tension. The situation had grown especially bad that Sunday. While Wanda shrieked and wept, Ruth gave her sage tea and smiled blissfully. She seemed to have not a care in the world.

  Marie glanced up from the lamp several times, looking askance at the other two. She could feel a tension in her cheekbones. Quiet! All she wanted was a little quiet.

  When Wanda could not be soothed either by tea or kind words, Ruth said, “She probably doesn’t like the smell of the Epsom salts.” She looked reproachfully at Marie as she spoke, as though her sister had invented the technique expressly to upset Wanda. Some of the Christmas baubles were dipped into a mixture of British gum and Epsom salts and then put out in a cool place to dry. The effect was marvelous; the salts formed crystals as the solution dried and looked like a fine layer of ice covering the glass. Mr. Woolworth had been especially taken by these globes.

  “Then pick it up and put it somewhere else! Nobody’s forcing you to sit down with Wanda right by the dipping pail,” Marie grumbled in reply.

  When Ruth took the baby upstairs for her lunchtime nap, Marie and Johanna breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I couldn’t have put up with that for much longer. How is anyone supposed to concentrate on work with all that crying?” Marie said, reaching for a rod of glass and warming it in the flame.

  “That’s what it’s like with a baby in the house. Don’t believe you cried any less. And Father still managed to get his work done.”

  “Father! I’m not Father!” As the glass began to glow orange-red, Marie took the rod from the flame, carefully set the cool end to her lips, and blew life into the glass. Although by now she had blown thousands of globes, it was always a special moment for her when the rod began to swell and take on a new shape. For a moment she forgot all about Wanda’s crying and concentrated on her breath and on turning the globe around on its stem. Once it was exactly the same size as all the others, she took the rod from her lips. She used the tongs to expertly bring the globe’s tail back in on itself to form a little loop for hanging on the tree. Then she gave the whole thing one last critical look and put it aside. She smiled.

  “Watch the merry man dance, my dear, see him grin from ear to ear . . .” Ruth’s voice reached them, bright and clear from upstairs.

  Marie rolled her eyes.

  “No sooner does the little one stop crying than Ruth starts making a racket. She’s so cheerful it’s quite disgusting. There must be something amazing in those letters she carries about and reads at every possible moment. How else can you explain the fact that she goes around smiling all the time?”

  “You’re being oversensitive,” Johanna said, shaking her head in disapproval. “Just be glad she’s feeling happy. After all she’s been through.”

  “I’m fed up with it,” Marie burst out. “I can’t take any more of being told to spare someone this or consider her feelings about that. Everybody in this house gets special treatment but me. Neither of you care that I’m doing most of the work for this order. I’ve had no more than four hours’ sleep a night for weeks on end. But nobody considers my feelings! After all, I haven’t had anything horrible happen to me.” Marie knew that she was being unfair but there was nothing she could do to stop the words tumbling out.

  Ruth had come quietly into the room.

  “What are you bleating away about down here? You sound like an old goat.” She walked over to Marie and made to put her hand on her arm, but her sister brushed it away sharply.

  “The best thing you could do is come and sit by me,” Johanna said, beckoning Ruth over. “And keep quiet. Our little artist is disturbed by all this chatter.”

  Marie shot them a venomous glance. It was just like Johanna to take Ruth’s side!

  “I would be very grateful if I could work in peace for just a little while. It’s quite enough that Eva spends all day every day chattering in my ear.”

  “I hope you’re not seriously comparing me to that silly cow,” Ruth snapped back.

  “Old goat, silly cow—I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but we are in fact in a workshop here, not a farmyard!” Marie was trembling with rage. It wasn’t like her to get so angry. She had always been the quiet one among the three sisters, the one who always gave way first whenever there was a disagreement. Perhaps it was lack of sleep that made her pick the fight this time.

  Ruth seemed dumbstruck. And then Marie threw in one more jab.

  “Or maybe it’s these ‘mysterious’ letters you’re getting that suggest this sort of comparison? Maybe some silly ass wrote them?” She smirked as she put her hands up to her head and waggled them about like donkey’s ears.

  Ruth was round the table so fast that it wobbled as she ran past.

  “You . . .”

  The sound of glass chiming should have warned them both. But Marie was worked up, and Ruth was in a blind rage. She grabbed her sister’s arm.

  “You take that back. Right now!” she spat at Marie.

  “I will not,” Marie shouted, snatching her arm away. Habit made her careful not to knock into the gas pipe, but she never thought of the pail of gum-and-salts solution that Ruth had picked up and put behind her earlier.

  “Careful!” shouted Johanna.

  The pail tipped over.

  Speechless with horror, the three women watched the liquid spill out over a pile of boxes.

  Johanna was the first to collect her wits. She ran into the kitchen and came back with two dishcloths. She tried in vain to stem the tide of liquid, but it had already soaked through the thin cardboard of the boxes, leaving a layer of ice crystals behind as it dribbled over three hundred Christmas baubles packed and waiting for transport.

  “I’m cold.” Ruth rubbed her hands together and then wrapped them in the folds of her skirt. Her eyes were red with weeping, and there was reproach written all across her face.

  Johanna’s eyes were also red. She slowly got to her feet.

  “So am I. I’ll shut that window now. There’s no point in trying to air out the room. Nobody’s ever died from a bad smell, but we may very well freeze to death!”

  After the accident, they had flung open all the windows, but instead of the stinking cloud of fumes leaving the house, the cold autumn mist had crept in. Johanna rubbed her brow and groaned.

  “I feel as though my s
kull might burst from the stink! And my bones hurt as well.”

  “What next?” Ruth’s question was hardly more than a whisper.

  “I don’t know,” Johanna confessed. “That’s two hundred and fifty globes completely unusable, at least another hundred splashed, a whole pail of salts solution tipped over—and that costs money as well—and the floorboards are soaked. Then there’s the smell . . .” She shook her head. “If it weren’t all so terrible, I might even find it funny.” She swallowed hard. She wanted to run upstairs the way Marie had done and hide away in a corner. But how would that have helped?

  “More than three hundred globes, ruined! And so close to the end of the commission. I don’t know whether to cry or grind my teeth. How on earth are we going to make up for the lost work? We were already falling behind,” Johanna said.

  There was desperation in Ruth’s eyes as well. “If we can’t fill the order . . . then we’re sunk. We’ll never get another.”

  “It hasn’t come to that yet,” Johanna said with more conviction than she felt. “In the worst case, we’ll only be short by five hundred. Ruth!” she said, grabbing hold of her sister’s arm. “Please don’t cry!” But her own eyes were prickling as well.

  “Steven Miles will think I’m nothing but an unreliable flibbertigibbet. And Mr. Woolworth will regret ever having signed a contract with us. I can still hear what Steven said: ‘If there is one thing that Mr. Woolworth really can’t abide, it’s breach of contract.’” Ruth covered her face with her hands and let out a loud sob.

  “Please calm down. All is not lost.”

  Ruth shot a hate-filled glance at the stairs.

  “And it’s all her fault! She’s to blame for the whole miserable business. If she hadn’t knocked over that pail . . .”

  “Not so fast there. As I remember, you had something to do with it as well,” Johanna said. “You made a dreadful scene when all she did was tease you a bit. You’re not usually so sensitive. And the way you make such a song and dance about keeping your letters secret. If this Steven is only writing about the contract as you claim, then why can’t we read them too? The way you’re carrying on, anyone would think there was something else going on between you and Mr. Miles.” It was not the first time the thought had crossed Johanna’s mind, but until that moment, she had always thought it far too unlikely to bring up. But as soon as she saw Ruth glance sullenly away, it didn’t seem so unlikely after all.