The American Lady (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 2)

by Petra Durst-Benning

  Marie tugged at Franco’s sleeve. “Why don’t we skip dessert and go for a walk?”

  “A walk? It’ll be time to go out onto the terrace soon,” Franco said. “You’ve been looking forward to the fireworks for days, haven’t you?”

  He winked at her, and Marie felt a flush of resentment. Why was he treating her like a child just because she had never seen a fireworks display? Suddenly, she wasn’t looking forward quite as much to the show.

  “We can watch the fireworks from down in the harbor, can’t we? Can’t you hear how lively the crowds are out in the street?” She pointed toward the window and the distant sound of shouting and laughter. Sometimes the wind carried a snatch of music into the palazzo as well. “They seem to be really enjoying the festival out there!”

  “They’re drunk!” The count made a face.

  “Father’s right. Many people drink more than is good for them on a night like this. You wouldn’t enjoy being shoved and elbowed in the crowd.”

  “Whether Marie would enjoy it or not is irrelevant. It is beneath the dignity of a de Lucca to go out into the streets with the mob,” the count interrupted. “Listen to them shouting and roaring!” He shook his head, disgusted.

  “What’s the problem if the men have a little drink? It’s the last night of the year! At least the folks down there have a bit of life in them!” Marie retorted. Unlike you, she wanted to add, but instead she clamped her lips together to suppress a groan. As always when she got herself worked up, there was a painful twinge in her womb, and it scared her. It was as though a hungry wolf were growling and snapping after the child. She reached over to Franco and gripped his arm tight.

  “What’s wrong? Aren’t you well, mia cara? Perhaps you should lie down a little?” He drew back her chair without waiting for an answer and helped her to her feet, shooting an apologetic look at his father. Marie knew perfectly well what the look meant—women and their moods. All the same she let Franco take her up to their room.

  She stopped in the hallway and put a hand to the side of her belly. Breathe deeply now, it will be better soon . . .

  She could hear Patrizia’s harsh voice from the dining room. Doubtless she was complaining about Marie’s behavior again.

  “What was all that about? Why do you always argue with Father?” Franco looked at Marie accusingly. “On New Year’s Eve of all evenings.”

  “On New Year’s Eve especially! The first one we’ve ever celebrated together! And we’re sitting there with your parents as though we were old and gray ourselves!” she shot back without bothering to lower her voice. Let them all hear how angry she was! “And all this ridiculous self-importance! As though the de Luccas were the lords of the earth and everybody else just scum. Things are not what they seem, though I realized that long ago! You all think I don’t see what’s going on!”

  “What do you mean?” There was a dangerous gleam in Franco’s eyes now, but Marie didn’t care.

  “Oh, I see how stiff and anxious the visitors are when they come here,” she told him bitterly. “They’re happy to get out of the palazzo as quick as they can. I can’t imagine you have many friends among ‘the mob.’ In fact I think your family is very unpopular! You should see how people behave when Peter or Johanna take a stroll through Lauscha! They can hardly go ten steps without stopping to shake someone’s hand or share a few words!”

  Instead of being angry as Marie had expected, Franco seemed almost relieved. He laughed. “If that’s the worst of your worries! My father isn’t the man of the people your brother-in-law seems to be, that’s true. We do business on a much larger scale, you know, so we can hardly stay friends with everybody. But you must have gotten used to him and his ways by now. Surely you see he doesn’t mean any harm.”

  Marie wasn’t quite so sure about that, but she held her tongue. Her temper had vanished as quickly as it had flared up.

  Franco put a hand to her chin and lifted her face fondly. “What’s really wrong, mia cara? Aren’t you looking forward to the year to come? To our child?”

  Tears came to Marie’s eyes. How could she tell him that she missed her family so much it hurt? Instead she sobbed, “Of course I’m looking forward to our child! And to 1911. But I thought that New Year’s Eve would be different somehow—more Italian, more lively, more joyful—like the festival we went to in New York, on Mulberry Street!”

  “Marie, please don’t cry.” Franco held her close.

  “I can’t help it,” she sniffled. “I feel so alone.” She missed Pandora and Sherlain and the other women from Monte Verità. She missed the conversations as they sunbathed. The childish pranks. Marie couldn’t remember the last time she had enjoyed a good laugh.

  Franco stroked her hair. “You still have me,” he said hoarsely. When she didn’t answer, he said, “I think everyone feels a little alone on the last night of the year.”

  Marie looked up, her eyes full of tears. There was something unfamiliar in his voice. Despair? Loneliness? Whatever it was, it didn’t make her feel any safer, any less vulnerable.

  “Just hold me tight,” she said.

  After Marie had recovered from her fit of weeping, she enjoyed the fireworks after all. She even admitted that the uppermost terrace of the palazzo really did offer the best view of the harbor. She gasped in wonder at every whirl and burst of light. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and Franco felt as though he were watching the show for the first time. Even his father declared that the pyrotechnicians had done a particularly good job this year. When his mother raised her glass and proposed a toast to the next de Lucca heir, Franco felt light at heart. Everything was all right.

  No sooner had the fireworks finished, though, than Marie whispered to him that she was tired, so they went to their room. They were in bed a little after one o’clock.

  While Marie sighed gently in her dreams, Franco was filled with nagging doubts that kept sleep at bay.

  “You all think I don’t see what’s going on!”—his heart had almost stopped beating at those words! For a moment he had believed that she knew all about the special shipments. Thank God she didn’t! But her remark had shown him vividly, once again, how quickly the house of cards could collapse. The castle in the air he had built for himself and Marie. And if it did—what then?

  Marie must never find out what all his bookkeeping and paperwork for the crossings was really about. Those records were so dangerous that he was the only one who could even look at them.

  “Everything will be all right, mia cara. The new year belongs to us,” he had whispered into his wife’s ear shortly after midnight. How trustingly she had looked at him! It was up to him to make sure that her trust was not misplaced. And that meant no more people smuggling in the new year.

  Marie spent too much time on her own and was lonely, he knew that. But how could he attend to his wife when he always had to listen to other people’s tales of woe? Farmers’ sons and poverty-stricken tradesmen came to him with their laments, all of them hoping to find their fortune across the sea in the promised land—and they ended up in a kitchen in Little Italy, enslaved by the same poverty they had fled in the old country. Meanwhile their parents back home lived on dry bread and rice because they had spent every last lira buying passage for their sons.

  He knew too that Marie was disappointed that he still hadn’t made a start on his plans to replant and reinvigorate the vineyards.

  He would go to his father this very week. Perhaps he should ask for an appointment, so that the old man knew he meant business. Yes, that would be good. The tension in his body eased a little.

  He grew vines and he sold wines—that was who he was. And that meant that the next time he went to New York, he would sell wine. Not sour rotgut that the restaurants only bought because they got cheap labor with every shipment of wine they took off him. De Lucca wines had once enjoyed a good reputation; their bouquet had taken homesick immigrants b
ack to the Italian sunshine, if only for an hour or two. And it could happen again! If only he could make his father see things his way, their wine would be a force to reckon with once more.

  Marie turned in her sleep and lifted her knees to her belly. Their child was growing in her womb. Inside her, in the dark, a tiny human being was waiting to see the light of day. Gently, so as not to wake her, Franco ran his hand over the bedcovers.

  There was still plenty of time. By the time the child was born, he would be the man he wanted to be. Then the future could begin.

  He liked the idea. He wanted to become a father without having to worry that a wine barrel might slip its moorings somewhere in the belly of a ship and crush a stowaway beneath its weight. He didn’t want to live in fear because someone might block the airholes by loading the next piece of cargo and . . . enough of such thoughts!

  Franco pressed both hands to his temples as though to chase the thoughts from his head.

  Another ship had left Genoa two days earlier. In a week the Firenze would arrive in New York. If it were up to him, those twelve stowaways would be the last he ever smuggled out of the country.

  If only it were over already.

  13

  New Year’s supper at the Steinmann-Maienbaum family home was a low-key affair. Johanna had made a pot of potato soup and did no more to mark the occasion than add an extra sausage for each person, and there was bread with the meal, as always. But the food was merely incidental that evening. As soon as the dishes were empty, the men cleared all the tables and chairs to the side of the room. Their neighbor Klaus Obermann-Brauner balanced his accordion on his knee, and everybody stood in a circle. Wanda learned that Klaus and his wife, Hermine, celebrated New Year’s Eve with the Steinmann-Maienbaum family every year, just like the rest of tonight’s guests. Klaus began to play, and the dancing began. At first Wanda felt clumsy trying to follow the unfamiliar steps—there was much stamping of boots and kicking up of knees, nothing at all like the dances she knew from the ballrooms of New York—but she found the good cheer so infectious that she was soon whooping more loudly than any of them, leaping in the air and swinging her skirts with gusto. She could have hugged the whole world tonight! Instead she spun around, following the order of the dance, and held out both hands to the man behind her. Her laugh died on her lips.

  Richard Stämme.

  A shiver ran down her spine. She almost stumbled as she spun around once more.

  As though to prove to herself that a strange man could never really have that effect on her, this time she looked him directly in the eye. Hundreds of butterflies fluttered in her tummy. She was almost glad when the next change of partner brought her face-to-face with Uncle Peter.

  Goodness gracious, what had that been about?

  When she had heard earlier that evening that he would be among the guests as well, she had gone quite dizzy for a moment at the thought that she would see him again.

  Ever since Johannes had introduced her to the young glassblower, she had been racking her brain for some excuse to seek him out. Every time Johanna needed someone to run an errand, she had jumped at the chance, hoping to meet Richard somewhere in the village. But she didn’t find him at the general store or the post office or the box-maker’s shop. Then she had found herself making detours so that she could pass by his cottage, always returning in her thoughts to the afternoon when she and Johannes had visited Richard there. How his deep-blue eyes had sparkled when he talked about Murano and Venetian glass! His voice had changed as though he were describing a woman he loved—it was husky and incredibly tender, passionate and determined. At that moment Wanda wanted nothing more than to hear him talking about her like that. It was bewildering, astonishing . . . What a ridiculous thought!

  And now she was dancing through Johanna’s front parlor with him.

  At about ten o’clock Klaus Obermann-Brauner packed up his accordion and called for a beer. The others were glad for the break in the dancing, and the table and chairs were pushed back into the middle of the room. Everyone sat down at the table, sweaty but full of good cheer, as Johanna brought in bread and butter and a tub of salt herring.

  Once the fish had all been eaten, Johannes called out, “Now for the second-best bit!” He took a slice of bread and began to dip it greedily in the puddle of sour liquor that the herring had come in. When Peter asked Wanda whether she wanted to do the same, she declined, saying she was already full.

  Once again she had to struggle to conceal her dismay at how modest her aunt’s housekeeping was. It didn’t make it any easier knowing that here in the village, the family was considered well-to-do. There was probably more than one family right here in the neighborhood that had nothing at all to eat tonight and that was sitting in an unheated room.

  All the members of the Steinmann-Maienbaum family had even treated themselves to an extra little luxury that day: a hot bath. The men had taken turns since the crack of dawn keeping the old stove in the washhouse fed with firewood. Since Wanda was the guest, she had bathed first. Even though she otherwise firmly insisted that they mustn’t make any exceptions for her, this time she was glad of the offer—she didn’t much like the idea of climbing into the bathwater after Anna and Johannes had already had their turn. While the others were still at work, she guiltily climbed into the hot water, steaming and scented with lavender.

  If her mother could see her now . . . after her first proper bath since she had arrived, wearing no makeup, dressed for the evening in her everyday clothes . . . Wanda grinned at the thought.

  Johannes threw her a cheerful glance across the table. Ever since Wanda had been such a hit with all his friends on their little tour of Lauscha, he had become her greatest supporter—not that anyone outside the family would have realized it, given the way he was always teasing her.

  “I have to wonder why we wait for New Year’s Eve to turn the parlor into a dance floor,” Richard said, chewing happily at a slice of bread. “A little bit of music and dancing and life seems very different all of a sudden, doesn’t it?”

  The others agreed that working life didn’t leave enough time for fun and frolics. Anna was the only one who disagreed, saying, “Who would do the work if every day was a dancing day?”

  Richard frowned briefly but didn’t argue. Instead he passed the bread basket over to Wanda and asked, “Well? How do you like our Thuringian New Year’s Eve?”

  For a moment their fingers touched and his eyes held hers. She looked down.

  My hand’s shaking, she thought as she put the basket down in the middle of the table.

  “I like it very well indeed. Marie told me so much about the festivities here before I came, but being here is different . . . I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much,” she answered truthfully. The dancing, Richard’s friendly smile, the warmth in the parlor as the snow fell outside, her family, Richard’s dark eyes, so intense, so . . . Without even realizing it, she had looked back at him so now she forced herself to turn away again.

  “Christmas was just as lovely, with all the snow and the Christmas tree.” She pointed to the corner of the room where the tree still stood, decorated with the first baubles Marie had ever made, following family tradition. “My first Christmas in Germany. And it was even more wonderful than the Germans in the New York clubs had told me to expect!”

  Richard was still looking straight at her. She could feel his knee pressing up against her leg.

  “But New Year’s Eve is something else again, isn’t it?” Wanda asked, struggling to keep her voice light and friendly.

  His gaze became a little less intense and was softer now, somehow turned inward.

  “Yes, the last day of the year is . . . an ending of sorts. The minutes slip down through the hourglass . . . Suddenly everything that once was seems less important now, because we’ll make a new start soon. Because anything can happen in the new year.”


  Wanda nodded. Richard had said exactly what she was feeling. She was even more bewildered now. His knee was pressing harder against her now, and she wondered whether she should move a little farther down the bench—for the good of her soul. She felt dizzier by the moment.

  Richard gave her a knowing grin, then turned his eyes away. “We may not be such fine folks as they are in America, but we know how to have a good time, don’t we, Peter?”

  The spell was broken. Wanda took a deep breath.

  Peter laughed and dipped his ladle into the pot of punch that was simmering gently away on the stove, then began pouring more into everybody’s glasses. Somehow the pot never seemed to run empty. The others had all stopped to listen while Wanda and Richard talked, but as they picked up their own conversations again, Wanda saw that the expression on Anna’s face had turned even grimmer than usual.

  Wanda drank half her glass in one gulp.

  A little while later they began to play cards, and the mood became even merrier.

  Whenever Hermine had a good hand of cards, her husband, Klaus, began to grumble, and she did the same when he was in luck. The more the old couple bickered, the funnier everyone else found it. At some point Johannes and Richard began imitating the two of them and gales of laughter followed. Aunt Johanna giggled like a girl, and even Magnus was not his usual sorrowful self that evening. Anna seemed to be the only one who didn’t find it funny. When she laughed at all, the sound was strangulated.

  Wanda looked around the room, her cheeks aglow as she held her right hand over her cards. This wasn’t such a bad hand . . .

  “Whose turn is it?” Why did her voice always have to go so squeaky when she was excited?