The Glassblower (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 1)

by Durst-Benning, Petra

  “If you think we’re going to start again from the beginning for your sake, you’re wrong,” Johanna replied icily. She turned the notepad over so that Ruth couldn’t even see what was written there.

  “Well pardon me! I daresay I’ll find out soon enough.”

  Ruth cut a few thin slices of cheese and popped them into Wanda’s mouth bit by bit. Her movements were flustered.

  “I ran into Thomas.”

  The others looked at each other. So that was why Ruth was so jittery.

  “And? Did he make trouble again?” Peter asked, frowning.

  Ruth shook her head.

  While they all listened to Ruth describe her encounter, Peter reached for Johanna’s notepad and pulled it toward him unobtrusively. He hesitated for a moment, then turned it over as though it were the card upon which his whole game depended.

  Marie peered over his shoulder as he read, and she wanted to whoop with joy.

  Peter put down the notepad and grinned.

  “Not quite what I’d imagined, but it’s a start,” he whispered to Johanna.

  Ruth looked from one to the other, exasperated.

  “Is anybody even listening to me? What do you have there anyway?” Before Peter could stop her, she had snatched the pad from his hand.

  “Steinmann and Maienbaum, glassblowers.” She looked up, baffled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  30

  Life was never the same again in the Steinmann house, and the three sisters were once more the talk of the whole village.

  Marie and Griseldis gave notice the same day. Wilhelm Heimer stood there openmouthed and had to watch his best painter and his best silver-mixer walk out of the workshop without looking back.

  Hammers swung, and the wall between the Steinmanns’ house and Peter’s was broken down and replaced by new support timbers. Though the space was still not as big as the Heimer workshop, it was much larger than the two little rooms it replaced. Furniture was moved around, and the men from the gasworks came to extend the gas pipes by another couple of yards.

  Peter and Magnus hung a sign that read “Steinmann-Maienbaum, Glassblowers” between the two houses, and everyone who walked past stopped to wonder at it; Marie had painted the letters as pine-tree branches and created a frame of red and dark-blue Christmas baubles all around them. The effect was astonishing and eye-catching. As well as the artistry involved, the sign’s message also stirred great interest; Peter and the Steinmann sisters were joining forces when he wasn’t even married to one of them. Surely that was just another sign of how things could go wrong when women ruled the roost.

  While Johanna and Marie went down to the foundry to order new stock, Ruth went to Sonneberg with Wanda to send confirmation to Woolworth that they were accepting his order. She sent another letter that same day, with trembling fingers and pounding heart.

  It was not yet mid-January when production began in the new workshop. Although they had never worked together like this before, their daily routine soon became that of a close-knit team. In the mornings Peter and Marie sat at the lamp and blew glass. The finished baubles went on to Ruth and Griseldis at the next table, who silvered them. Thanks to Griseldis’s special recipe, the baubles had exactly the right silvery gleam, with no gray streaks or dull spots. Johanna congratulated herself more than once on her decision to take on Griseldis, and she cheerfully forgot that it was actually Peter who first made the suggestion.

  Johanna spent most of her mornings doing paperwork; she worked out a system for numbering all the items and then wrote them out on labels and cardboard boxes in the afternoons. When she was done with that, she wanted to prepare a catalog; she had to think of the future after all.

  Around midday, Magnus sat down at Marie’s lamp and practiced blowing the globes. Either Peter or Marie watched over his shoulder as he worked, giving advice or correcting his posture. Although he didn’t become a talented glassblower overnight, he managed to blow simple globes—even if they all varied somewhat in size.

  While the silvered globes were drying on a bed of nails, they all sat down around the table and ate the lunch that Griseldis made early each morning. She had insisted from the start on taking on the task.

  “If you’re going to employ an old woman like me, then I want to make myself useful. Otherwise you might just as well have taken on one of the young village girls!” she had told Johanna as she kneaded the potato dough with wet hands to make dumplings. Neither Johanna nor Ruth was sorry to be rid of the hard work of cooking, and they enjoyed the luxury of sitting down to lunch at a table that was properly set. They set great store by the fact that there were enough plates for everyone.

  After lunch the silvered globes would be dry and the women sat down, under Marie’s guidance, to decorate them. While the first winter landscapes had been painted with white enamel, they now had a broad palette in shades of red, blue, and green. And they had a full range of decorations as well, including glass beads and tinsel wire as fine as human hair. Whenever Marie looked at the sparkling, shining treasures all around her, her heart leaped. With all the glowing colors, the silver bath, and other shimmering materials, the workshop looked like a fairy’s grotto or a storehouse where comets waited before shooting across the sky. Sometimes Marie felt that she was an enchantress. With the time to finally try out new shapes and designs, her imagination knew no limits. Where she had once had a dozen different designs, she now had three dozen or more. The others grumbled that even if Johanna did ever get started on her catalog, she would never be able to finish it because of Marie’s boundless imagination.

  Other glassblowers soon started to say that Marie’s baubles were more beautiful than anyone else’s. Again and again, they stopped by and tried to get into the workshop under some pretext or another in an attempt to catch a glimpse of Marie’s designs. But Johanna was unbending here; apart from Peter’s patients, nobody else was allowed in the workshop. She didn’t want Marie to suffer the same fate that Karl Flein had met with his glass roses.

  While Marie spent the afternoons working on new designs just as they had agreed, Peter made glass eyes to written specifications that arrived by post. He had as many orders as ever, and he had patients who came directly to him.

  His fears that the patients would be distressed by the chatter, song, and laughter in the workshop were soon banished. Rather they felt quite at ease in the bustling, happy atmosphere. Fate had been unkind to them once when they lost an eye, but after their consultations with Peter many didn’t want to leave, so they sat down at the workbenches with the women and watched as they painted and finished the pieces.

  Although next Christmas was still nearly a year away, it wasn’t long before a visitor asked whether perhaps he could buy some of the splendid globes. At first Johanna wanted to refuse—after all, they were working to fill an order for America—but she soon reconsidered. The first to ask was a man who had come from Nuremberg with his daughter. Johanna let him choose twelve globes, which she packed for him in a cardboard box. Then she asked double the price that Woolworth was paying. The gentleman handed over the money without a murmur of protest and thanked Johanna over and over for accommodating him. As Peter and Johanna shook his hand to say good-bye, neither of them could have guessed that they had just won a major new client.

  Nor did they immediately make the connection when a letter arrived a few weeks later from a Nuremberg department store, asking about terms and prices. Peter only realized as he was reading it through for the second time that one of the “Hoffmann Brothers & Sons” must have been the father of little Siegrun, who had lost an eye in a riding accident. He hadn’t known until that moment that the man was also part owner of one of the largest stores in Nuremberg. After a flurried exchange of letters—and a box of samples sent to Nuremberg—Steinmann and Maienbaum, glassblowers, had another order to fill.

  When in late February the postman arrived at their
door with a telegram from America, everybody was too busy to be surprised.

  A telegram from America? Why not?

  All the same everyone was eager to hear what news could be so important that it would be sent at such expense. It wasn’t the way their client usually communicated with them.

  As always, Ruth took delivery of the mail. She unfolded the sheet as she came in from the street.

  “I hope the shipment of Valentine hearts arrived all right,” Johanna murmured. Though everything in the workshop was running as smoothly as could be, she was still prone to fits of worry. The humiliation she had suffered at the hands of the Sonneberg wholesalers was like a thorn in her flesh. It always began to itch anew whenever she dared believe that success was here to stay.

  All eyes were on Ruth as she stood rooted in the doorway, staring at the sheet.

  “How long are you going to keep us in suspense?” Johanna snapped nervously. “Peter, don’t you even care that there’s news from America?”

  Peter was consulting with a war veteran about a new eye. He sighed and put the color card aside. He didn’t like being interrupted at such a critical moment.

  With one hand at her throat, as though gasping for air, Ruth croaked, “The telegram is from Steven. He says, ‘Valentine hearts arrived. Well done.’ ” She looked up.

  “Thank God!” Johanna said. “For a moment I feared the worst.”

  “Does he write anything about how the hearts are selling?” Marie asked.

  Ruth shook her head. “He’s coming to Sonneberg in May. He wants to look at your new baubles when he comes. Which must mean . . .”

  “Ruth! Why don’t you just read what he wrote?” Johanna spat. “The telegram’s addressed to all three of us after all!”

  Peter’s patient followed what was going on with lively curiosity; he had not expected the consultation to be so interesting.

  Ruth finally read it aloud.

  Valentine hearts arrived. Well done. Arriving Sonneberg 14 May. Meet Swan Hotel. Request one sample each design from new collection. To Ruth Heimer, All preparations in place. Schedule tight. Stop.

  She looked up. “That’s all. Happy now?” She made a face at Johanna.

  “All preparations in place. What does he mean by that?” Marie asked, frowning.

  “Mr. Woolworth probably just doesn’t want to miss Ruth for anything,” Peter said, then turned to Ruth and went on. “You must have made quite an impression on the man.”

  “The telegram’s not from Woolworth though, it’s from his assistant Steven Miles!” Johanna said, casting a meaningful glance at Peter.

  Marie shook her head. “It sounds very odd to me all the same,” she insisted. “What do we care if his schedule’s tight? My word, he should see ours!”

  The others laughed.

  Ruth gazed into space as though none of this had anything to do with her.

  Marie wasn’t ready to change the subject though.

  “They want to see new baubles, isn’t that wonderful? It’s a lucky thing I already have some put aside. I’ll be sure to spend more time on my new designs from now on.” She looked triumphantly around the room, but there was no reaction except from Magnus, who nodded his approval.

  They soon all went back to work and nobody paid any more attention to Ruth. She walked through the room like a sleepwalker and knelt down where Wanda was sitting on a blanket, playing listlessly with some wooden blocks. Glad of the distraction, she stretched out her little arms to Ruth.

  “My angel. My sweet little girl!”

  “Mama . . .”

  Ruth brushed Wanda’s blonde locks away from her forehead, then held her tight, cheek to cheek.

  “It’ll happen soon. Soon.”

  Nobody but Wanda heard her whisper.

  31

  The next few weeks were not easy for Ruth.

  She felt so distraught that on some days, her secret threatened to choke her. She longed to be able to tell Johanna and Marie everything, to prepare them for what was to come. She wanted to talk to them about the long journey she was about to undertake, and she wanted their advice on what to bring along and what to leave behind. Instead she had to think it through on her own, figuring out whether Wanda would need her winter coat for the trip on the ocean steamer or whether a jacket would be enough—after all, she could hardly pack everything from the baby wardrobe in her bag.

  How she would have loved to share her coming happiness with her sisters. And to weep with them too. But she could do none of that. Ruth knew that emigrating on forged papers, as she planned to do, was some sort of crime. The lonelier she felt, the more deeply she regretted having promised Steven to keep silent, but she would rather have bitten off her tongue than break her promise. When it all became too much for her, she left the room before she could spill the beans.

  With every day that she secretly crossed off the calendar, everything felt more final. Suddenly even the most ordinary activity was charged with meaning, and she found herself thinking, This is the last sack of flour I’ll ever bring home from the store in the wheelbarrow or That was the last time I’ll ever buy new shoes for Wanda from Mrs. Huber. When Easter came, she put a bouquet of daffodils in the window, and wondered whether they even had daffodils in New York. The very idea of New York was often too much for her. Ruth instinctively shied away from thinking about the distant city of which she knew so little and what life would be like there. If she had done that, her fear of the future would have overwhelmed her.

  When the swallows began to build their nest under the window in the washhouse, Ruth knew that she would already be gone by the time their chicks began to chirrup.

  The worst part was when somebody tried to include her in any plans. When Johanna asked her whether she’d like to take the train out to Coburg when summer finally came, Ruth had trouble holding back the tears. At last she managed to summon up a scrap of enthusiasm and muttered, “What a good idea!” At lunch one day she said how much she liked Griseldis’s sour pickles, and the good old soul promised to make a few more jars for the Steinmann sisters that July when gherkins were in season. Ruth felt like a heel. She was going to leave all these dear people, leave them in secret and forever!

  The only time the melancholy could not touch her was when she was sitting with the others in the workshop. Instead of thinking This is the last set of ice crystals I will ever paint with my sisters, she took comfort in the thought that these Christmas decorations would be going with her on the long voyage across the ocean. She would probably not be there to watch Marie work on her new idea of a series of baubles in the shape of bells, but she would hold the finished items in her hands when she got to New York. Perhaps she would be able to hang them on her own tree next Christmas! And so every time she picked up a globe, opened the bottle of silver solution, or took a brush into her hand, it soothed the pain of her imminent departure. Whatever else might happen, the glass would always be there to connect her to her sisters—and to Lauscha.

  And so day followed day, and week followed week.

  “Well then, I’m going over to see Magnus.” Marie was already halfway out the door, with a light jacket over her shoulders and her sketchpad under her arm, when Johanna called her back.

  “Do you have to spend every evening with him? I really don’t know what you see in him,” Johanna said irritably. “Magnus is a nice lad of course, but . . .”

  “But what? He’s a nice lad, and that’s enough for me,” Marie shot back. “Perhaps that’s just what I like about him—the fact that he’s not always asking something from me, that he’s not always prodding at me the way you do. He takes me as I am, and I do the same with him.”

  Ruth pretended not to see Johanna look to her for support, and carried on brushing Wanda’s shock of blonde hair with a soft brush. She didn’t know what Marie saw in Magnus either—she thought he was rather a dull dog—but she
certainly wasn’t going to stick her nose in like Johanna.

  “I don’t know why you’re always picking on Magnus. He was the one who picked you up off the street and brought you back home. But you seem to have forgotten about that,” Marie said to Johanna. “And you have no cause to complain about his work. He’s blowing almost as many globes as Peter or I. He turns up on time and he’s reliable to boot,” she added defiantly.

  “You’re right,” Johanna conceded. “All I meant is that . . . he’s so quiet. And he hardly ever laughs.”

  “I’m sure that he saw some terrible things when he was out in the world,” Marie said, and there was suddenly a note of pity in her voice. “But I don’t spend my time poking and prodding at him like Griseldis does, trying to discover his secrets. I can let him be sad if he must. In fact he’s something of an inspiration to me.” And with that, she left, slamming the door behind her.

  Johanna shook her head as she watched her go.

  “Will you just listen to that? His sorrow’s an inspiration to her.”

  “Let her be,” Ruth replied with a grin. Johanna was puffing herself up like a broody hen again.

  Ruth put Wanda gently down on the bench—she had fallen asleep while her mother was brushing her hair—and frowned.

  “Do you think that the two of them . . . are more than just friends? Marie and a man—to be honest I never even considered that,” Ruth said.

  Johanna sighed. “Well, she is still our little sister. But I suppose we need to get used to the idea that she’s grown up by now.”

  Well hark who’s talking! Ruth thought. Who was it after all who always wanted to make Marie’s decisions for her?

  But she kept this thought to herself and instead said, “That’s not what I meant. Rather . . . well you have to admit that when she goes around wearing pants like that with her hair combed straight back she doesn’t really look very feminine. And she’s never shown any sign of being interested in men.”