The Glassblower (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 1)

by Durst-Benning, Petra

  “I know somebody in New York who could create papers for you and Wanda under another name. Meaning that during the journey you would be somebody else, do you understand? Nobody would ask you about your husband—you’d be free! Free to be at my side. Free to live in New York, where we . . .”

  “And my sisters?” Ruth interrupted softly.

  The gleam in Steven’s eyes died away.

  “It will be difficult for you, I know, but you mustn’t tell them anything. The danger that one of them might give you away is too great. Especially if Marie says something in the workshop.”

  “Marie wouldn’t say anything. She can’t stand Thomas.”

  “She might not intend to, but even a word out of place could put our plan in danger. Which is why it would be best to leave them behind and then let them discover the truth.”

  There were tears burning in Ruth’s eyes as she freed herself from his embrace.

  “Leave them behind? These are my sisters we’re talking about! And Peter. My family, do you understand? Steven, I love you so much that it hurts. But what you’re asking me to do . . . I’m not sure that I can.” She put a hand to her brow. “You want me to vanish like a thief in the night. To leave my family forever—I can’t bear the thought. But I also can’t bear the prospect of having to live even one more day without you!” Her misery grew with every word she spoke. “Tell me, what should I do?”

  Steven took her in his arms again and rocked her back and forth.

  “I know that it’s a lot to ask of you. You don’t need to decide today. But it would mean a great deal to me if I knew that you were considering my suggestion while we’re apart.”

  “When will we see one another again?” she choked out, her voice thick with tears as she clung to him. “Do you really have to go?” she asked, against her better judgment.

  Steven gently prized open her fingers where they were clamped around his arm. He took her hand in his and kissed the palm.

  “I’ll be returning to Thuringia in mid-May. Until then, we can write to each other every week, every day! I promise you that as soon as I have the letter telling me your decision, I will do all that has to be done. When I come back to Europe in the spring, I could have all the papers for you and for Wanda with me. You’ll see, the winter will just fly by. Before we know it, spring will be here. And we can begin our future together.”

  “I haven’t said yes yet,” Ruth told him, frowning.

  “I know.” He kissed her mouth and drew her close. “But I will pray every day that you do.”

  27

  “Have you gone quite mad? How could you say yes to the American without asking me first?”

  Marie took the contract for the Valentine gifts and shoved it back into Ruth’s hand. Then she began leafing deliberately through one of her new books, as though Ruth’s concerns had nothing to do with her.

  “Now you’re insulting me; that’s just like you!” Ruth replied. “You’re the one who’s always going on about your skills as a glassblower. But instead of thanking me for getting you another order, you stab me in the back. This order is our big chance, don’t you understand?” She waved the sheet of paper in Marie’s face.

  “Our chance for what? For us to end up looking like fools?” Marie retorted without looking up from her book.

  Johanna stepped between her sisters.

  “Now calm down, both of you. Whatever we have to say to one another, there’s no need to shout, is there?”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Marie said mockingly. “You’re not the one being asked to blow one thousand glass hearts in the next seven weeks.”

  She slammed her book shut and thumped it down on the tabletop.

  “There’s no way to make a heart by free-blowing. Which means I’ll have to make a mold for it first. And not just one—I’ll need at least a dozen to blow a thousand hearts because my plaster forms don’t last as long as Strupp’s.” She looked accusingly from Johanna to Ruth. “Unless either of you has a special recipe?”

  The only answer was an uncomfortable silence.

  “If we had a mold from Strupp, then things would be different. But he can’t make us one at such short notice,” Marie threw in.

  Not even Johanna knew what to do. She felt utterly overwhelmed by the new development. She and Marie had been awake half the night, worrying about Ruth and fearing the worst. When their sister finally came home, she offered not a word of explanation but simply handed them this sheet of paper. This was the last thing Johanna had expected.

  She had been preparing for Ruth to return lovesick and distraught in floods of tears, so she had been racking her brains as to how best to comfort her sister. But by the look of it, Ruth didn’t need a word of comfort. She looked calm and collected and seemed not to feel the slightest pang of guilt for having stayed away all night. She didn’t say a word about Steven or what it had been like to see him again.

  “I have to admit I never thought that the mold might be a problem. When I saw the heart, I thought it looked a lot simpler than your more elaborate baubles,” Ruth said. “We could at least ask Emanuel Strupp whether he’d make us a form. The worst he can do is say no.” Ruth turned to Johanna and gave her a nudge. “Are you even listening? You’re not usually one to hold back from giving advice. This is about how we earn our living after all!”

  Johanna looked up.

  “It’s strange. We never wanted anything more than to be able to stand on our own feet. To depend on nobody. Not on Wilhelm Heimer, and not on Thomas. And not on the wholesalers in Sonneberg either,” she said, looking first at Ruth, then at Marie. “But now that it looks as though we could really do it, we’re suddenly afraid. Instead of thinking how best to fill the order, we’re squabbling. Maybe the others are right when they say that women can’t rule their own roost?”

  The other two looked stubbornly at the kitchen table and at the object that lay in the middle of it—the subject of the whole argument—the heart of glass.

  Reluctantly, Marie reached out and picked it up. She turned it this way and that in her hands.

  “Who says that women can’t run a business?” she asked.

  Johanna shrugged.

  “I don’t know. But supposedly there are people who say that sort of thing.”

  “They’re wrong,” Marie said, her face stern. “Even if I have to cast a dozen forms, we’re filling the order. We Steinmann girls will show the world what we’re made of!”

  She put the heart down and reached her hands out to Johanna and Ruth.

  But instead of joining hands with her sisters as they always had in the past to show their common purpose, Ruth jumped up and ran from the room.

  Frowning, Marie watched her go.

  “What’s wrong with her? Why is she crying when everything’s all right again?”

  The weeks that followed passed in the same rhythm as those that had gone before; Marie went to work for Heimer by day, then sat down at the lamp in the evening—often without even stopping to eat supper. Johanna and Ruth did the packing, eight glass hearts to a box. Although she was blowing into a mold, the same shape over and over again, the work made great demands on Marie, and when at last she would turn off the gas tap just before midnight, she was trembling with exhaustion.

  Johanna watched with concern as Marie’s features grew sharper and Joost’s old pants flapped more loosely around her legs. From then on, she made sure always to bring Marie something to eat as she sat at the lamp, but most of the time Marie simply waved her away. “I’m fine,” she would claim, rolling her eyes when Johanna gave her a worried look.

  Ruth agreed that Johanna was fussing too much. “Marie was always thinner than either of us. I think it suits her,” she said, shrugging. “Other women spend an age putting blush on their cheeks to try to look as radiant as Marie does naturally.”

  Johanna had to admit th
at Ruth was right; she hadn’t quite noticed before, but over the past year Marie had grown to be a real beauty, which not even her curious costume of men’s pants and a black workbench smock could disguise. Quite the opposite, it gave her a certain exotic charm.

  And then they had done it again: at the end of November Ruth and Johanna rode off to Sonneberg to deliver the merchandise to the railway station. Marie couldn’t go because it was a weekday and she had to work for Heimer. Ruth was unusually quiet during the trip, her eyes downcast.

  Johanna found the right train and took charge of the loading. After that, they went to find the bank where Steven had sent their payment. The counter clerk looked unimpressed by the sizeable sum he was counting out for them, and Johanna picked up the cash as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Their own money, earned by the work of their own hands.

  Christmas was suddenly upon them without any of the three sisters quite knowing where it had come from. On December 18, Ruth got another of the letters that had been arriving at the house ever more frequently, as well as a package from New York, which she opened three days before Christmas Eve—her excuse being that perhaps there was something inside that might spoil. Then she came out of the bedroom, proud as a queen, to show off a midnight-blue suit with a blouse of lilac silk. The ensemble was completed by a pair of dark mauve ankle boots. Neither Johanna nor Marie could believe that a man had chosen all this with such an eye for style and fine judgment of her size. And there was more to admire in Steven’s package; he had sent two colorful silk shawls for Johanna and Marie, and a dress of rose-colored lace for Wanda. Ruth smiled quietly to herself as the others went into raptures over their gifts and praised Steven’s generosity.

  The only part of the Christmas holiday itself worthy of mention was Marie’s lavishly decorated Christmas tree; when they saw the many new baubles that hung on it, Johanna and Ruth suddenly knew what Marie had been up to every evening behind closed doors in the workshop after they had filled the Valentine order. Their cries of delight were music to Marie’s ears. For the first time in ages, she was pleased with herself and with what she had made: the glittering stars, the dewdrops that gleamed on the silvered pinecones, the wreaths of cream-colored Christmas roses. The new designs had come to her almost fully formed in her mind, without requiring long hours at her sketchpad first. They had taken shape in glass almost as easily. Perhaps studying her art books was already paying off? She rejoiced inwardly.

  When the postman approached their house on New Year’s Day, Ruth was halfway out the door before he could even knock.

  Marie looked out the window. “Ruth’s giving the postman a whole stack of letters,” she whispered to Johanna. “Is she worried that half of them might never arrive? She must be writing him several letters at once.”

  “You know Ruth. She’s turned letter writing into a kind of religion,” Johanna replied.

  Marie scurried from the window before Ruth could spot her there.

  “I would dearly love to know what she writes to him all the time. There’s surely not that much to report?”

  Johanna shrugged. “Apparently there is for Ruth. I could just as well ask why you bury yourself in those dusty old books all the time. They can hardly be that exciting.”

  “They are for me!”

  “You see.” Sighing, Johanna stood up. “I should imagine Ruth won’t be in the mood to chat for the next few hours. So I’ll make coffee just for the two of us.”

  She was just putting the water on to boil when Ruth came in, letting in a gust of ice-cold air.

  “There’s a letter to all three of us,” she said, frowning as she held up a thick brown envelope. There was disappointment written all over her face. “I hope nothing went amiss with our delivery. What if half the baubles broke in their boxes?”

  “Don’t tempt fate,” Johanna said. She was beside her in an instant and took the letter from her sister. She slit the envelope open with her fingernail, and two smaller envelopes slid into her hand. “This one’s for you,” she said, handing Ruth a cream envelope, which her sister put into her apron pocket as carefully as if it were an egg.

  Johanna opened the other letter and unfolded a few sheets of thin notepaper, which all had the green Woolworth diamond as their letterhead. She read through the first lines in haste.

  “That can’t be true,” she exclaimed, looking from one sister to the other. “A new order already? How can it be? There must be some mistake.” She began to leaf wildly through the rest of the pages.

  As she did so, Ruth pointed to the bottom of the first sheet. “That’s Steven’s handwriting. Johanna, I’m warning you, if you don’t read us what he wrote straightaway then I won’t be answerable for my actions!”

  Johanna was busy deciphering the postmark.

  “He wrote the letter on December thirteenth,” she answered, frowning.

  A moment later, Ruth snatched the letter from her hand and read out the lines that Steven had written.

  Dear Ruth, Johanna, and Marie, You will surely be surprised to hear from me so soon. I am afraid I must tell you that we made a mistake in our calculations regarding your Christmas baubles.

  “Does that mean that nobody wants to buy them?” Marie broke in, her eyes wide with distress. “Or are they too expensive for the Americans?”

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “You’re driving me mad, both of you!” she said, and resumed reading.

  Here’s what I have to tell you:

  They sold out. Every single one of them. Down to the very last winter scene!

  28

  Ruth hastily threw another blanket over Wanda’s pram before she pushed it outside, then shut the door behind her without saying good-bye to anyone. She felt for Steven’s letter one last time. Certain that it was in her coat pocket, she pulled her mittens on and headed off, warmly bundled in her woolen jacket, overcoat, and shawl. If she had her way, she wouldn’t be back for a while. She wanted nothing more than to read Steven’s letter in peace.

  The damp snow splashed up onto Ruth’s skirt with every step, and she struggled to get the wheels of Wanda’s pram to turn as she walked uphill. Even so, she basked in the warmth of the sun on her shoulders and neck where it shone down between the houses. The thaw was coming.

  When Ruth neared the Heimer house, she quickened her pace. The last thing she wanted was to run into Thomas. It was enough to start the new year with one argument.

  Only when she had left Lauscha behind did she stop to rest. She picked up a twig and gave it to Wanda to play with. While her daughter gurgled merrily away, Ruth walked onward into the forest. The snow was so thick on the branches that the pines were bent over like little old women. It gleamed almost silver in the sunlight, so bright that Ruth had to squint. She was in no mood to admire the beauty of the winter woods anyway.

  “Thirty thousand Christmas baubles by mid-August—I won’t do it!”

  She could still hear Marie’s words ringing in her ears.

  She and Johanna had stopped their dance of joy as though thunderstruck.

  “I won’t go into mass production, do you hear me?” she had yelled at them. “I might just as well be working for Heimer. At least my workday there only lasts ten hours, and after that I’m free to think of new designs.”

  “But you could do all that and more if you gave up working for Heimer,” Johanna had replied, pointing to Steven’s letter. “It says here in black and white that you would have an absolutely free hand in designing the baubles! The only condition is that they mustn’t be significantly more expensive than the last batch.”

  “You see, they’re already imposing conditions,” Marie had shot back. “And besides, when am I supposed to think up these new designs if I’m sitting at the lamp day and night? Magnus agrees with me,” she had added, as though Griseldis’s son had anything to do with it.

  Ruth swallowed hard. She still didn’t und
erstand why Marie had dug in her heels. Instead of being pleased to have a guaranteed buyer for her new designs, instead of being overjoyed at being able to finally stop working for Heimer, all Marie had done was complain. Ruth was getting fed up with all this talk of art and artists. Marie didn’t even realize how selfish she was being. She and Johanna couldn’t blow glass after all, so when Marie got on her high horse about her “artistic development,” she was jeopardizing her sisters’ future. But Marie didn’t seem to care. So much for “the Steinmann girls will show the world what they’re made of”!

  Ruth stopped abruptly. Perhaps it had been a mistake to leave right in the middle of the argument. But she simply couldn’t bear all the squabbling, not with Steven’s letter in her pocket. She wanted to hold on to that warm feeling of happiness and protect it. She felt through her overcoat for the letter. It was still there. Good.

  The steeper the path became, the more Ruth’s lungs ached. She was walking fast, which helped to clear her head. By the time she reached the bench on the hill with the view of the valley, she had calmed down somewhat. And that was as it should be. She wanted to read Steven’s letter without that silly argument clouding her mood.

  Wanda had fallen asleep. Ruth pulled the blanket all the way up to her nose and pushed the pram into a patch of sunlight. Then she sat down on the bench. The wood felt warm and dry. It was the first time she had been up here since she had left Thomas. Though she had been half expecting to be plagued by bad memories, she experienced nothing of the sort. Even the fact that she had lost her innocence here meant nothing to her now. It was almost as though it had happened in another life. She chased away the last thought of these things and made room in her mind for Steven.

  Steven. Her great and distant love.

  Ever since he had left, she had asked herself every morning whether she still loved him. And every time, the answer had been a resounding Yes.