“These days it isn’t enough just to make beautiful glass. There are too many people doing exactly that. If you want to be a success, you have to do something else as well.”
“And what may that be, if you please?” Eva’s face was blue with cold and deeply skeptical.
Wanda shut her eyes and enjoyed the moment. When she spoke, the words melted like cotton candy on her tongue. “The real art is in selling stories!”
21
The first few days were the worst. The hole that had opened up in Marie’s life gaped so wide that she didn’t know how she would ever be able to close it again.
Franco was in America, and she was a prisoner in the house. It was all very simple, but even after several weeks had passed, her mind simply refused to accept the facts. So most of the time she thought of nothing at all. That was the only way she could bear it all. The silence. The loneliness. The confinement. The dagger in her heart.
Marie stood at the glass door, leaning her forehead against the glass. The door was still firmly bolted. A gentle breeze ruffled the blossoms on the almond trees, and the petals drifted down like pink snow, scattering across the garden and the paths. That was the only thing that told her that spring had come—that, and the height of the sun in the sky. The seasons flowed together in Patrizia’s garden like dabs of watercolor paint on damp paper.
Lauscha was still firmly in the grip of winter, she was sure—the thought was there before Marie had a chance to chase it away. Perhaps the villagers could occasionally hear the birds of spring and draw strength from their song, but otherwise every day would be spent just as all the days had been for months now: shoveling snow, scattering ashes on the icy paths, and waiting. And waiting.
A hot tear ran down Marie’s face and splashed on the floor.
Snow. Would she ever feel the crunch of frozen snow under her feet again?
She rubbed at her face so vigorously that it hurt. She mustn’t cry. She mustn’t startle the child. She had to hold on; it couldn’t last much longer now. She was expecting Franco back any day now. And then . . .
Then she wouldn’t stay here a minute longer!
She had made her decision. It was her lifeline, leading her to what came next: she would leave Franco and take her child with her.
No more discussion, no more asking why. There could be no answer to that. And no more feelings for Franco. Whatever she still felt for him was banished to the furthest corner of her mind, and she had forbidden herself to look there. Didn’t they say that time heals all wounds?
It no longer even mattered to her whether he knew that they were keeping her under lock and key like a criminal. Maybe he had no idea. She had read his farewell note a thousand times, weighing every word. I beg you to wait for me—he wouldn’t have written that if he knew she was to be a prisoner, would he? I will make sure that you have everything you need while I am away—then again, perhaps he did know. Patrizia told her nothing at all. Whenever Marie asked anything, she always received the same answer. “Franco is in America, and you are here.” Somehow Marie had come to accept it. Just as she had accepted that there was no chance of escape. There was no need for bars on this prison; all it needed was locked doors, locked windows, and prying eyes and ears everywhere.
“Soon it will be over, soon, soon . . .” she prayed over and over. If only Patrizia would tell her which ship Franco would be coming back on . . .
Her hand drifted down to her swollen belly. If it weren’t for the child in her womb, she would have gone mad long ago. The baby was the only reason Marie could stand the passing of time, even when the days crept by as slowly as a snail through dry grass, leaving nothing in their wake but a trail of dull slime.
“Soon it will be over, soon, soon . . .” Marie turned away from the glass door and sat down at the dainty little desk that hardly had room for a single sheet of paper.
She had begun to write in a little notebook. That helped too. Eventually, she would give her child this diary to read. At first she had found it painful to write. It had been hard to look back and remember the young girl who had begun to blow glass in the dead of night. But that was when her story really began, after all. So Marie began the diary back then.
It hurt to have nobody here to talk to, nobody who could help her remember times past. How she and her sisters had built up the workshop together. And then her great journey to New York. Seeing Ruth again, so elegant, so different but still a sister whom she adored. Then the grand new feelings when she met Franco! The memories were mingled with pain, with the knowledge that she was now more alone than she had ever been—but the pain told Marie that even here in prison she had not lost her ability to feel.
Once all the old stories were in the pages of the notebook, Marie slowed down a little. It was enough to write a line or two every day for her unborn child. She didn’t write about how she was, how she felt. Her child must never learn how unhappy she had been during the pregnancy. Instead she wrote about the new beginning that they would make together as soon as Franco was back, once he had let her out of this prison.
She and her child. A new beginning, like a sheet of blank paper. She didn’t know where yet. Perhaps she would settle on Monte Verità for a while. And then? It didn’t matter . . . as long as it was away from here.
Marie sighed and hid the book under her bedstead again. Then she looked at the pendant watch that hung around her neck. Four o’clock in the afternoon.
She went into the workshop. Just that morning the glowing colors of her work had granted her a few hours of blessed relief from prison. She felt better when her head was filled with colorful images. The mosaic pictures that she had made over the past few weeks were propped up all around the walls—bizarre, almost abstract compositions that not even Marie herself could explain. It was as though the pictures had created themselves. Now she ran her fingers through the bowls where she kept the pieces of colored glass and felt nothing. Just so that she had something to do, she began to arrange pieces of glass in various shades of green, putting them together to make leaves.
These afternoon hours were the worst. When her strength from the morning had left her but she had not yet grown tired with the approach of night. As the weeks had gone by, something like a routine had developed, a semblance of normality that lent shape to her days. She got up around nine o’clock when Carla came in with breakfast—it was always Carla, never one of the other maids. Two slices of white bread, butter, honey and some fruit. Then Marie washed. Carla took the pitcher and basin away along with the breakfast tray around ten o’clock. Marie had been very pleased to discover on her arrival that there were five toilets with running water scattered throughout the palazzo, but now Patrizia wouldn’t even let her leave her room to use the toilet. “It’s not good for you to walk so far,” she said primly. “You have to save your strength for the bambino.” What hypocrisy!
Marie spent the rest of the morning in her workshop until the door opened again around one o’clock. Sometimes Patrizia brought lunch and stayed for a few minutes. Marie was so lonely that she began to look forward to these moments despite the hatred she felt—after all, Patrizia was her only connection to the outside world. Most of the time it was Carla who brought lunch, though, and she simply stared at Marie as though she were scared of her. Marie had no idea what Patrizia had told the girl—probably that their guest had some infectious disease. Or that she was mad. More likely that, since Carla never responded when Marie begged desperately for help. She just flinched and turned away.
After she ate, she took a nap. How she would have loved to lie down on the wicker chaise longue in the orangery! To smell the scents, to hear the palm leaves rustling around her as they waved in the breeze from the open panes in the roof . . . But Patrizia ignored all her pleas and refused to open the door to the orangery—she was probably afraid that Marie would smash one of the windows and run as fast as her legs would carry her! She would certainly
have tried. The panes weren’t as thick in the conservatory as they were in her room or in the workshop, and there were no bars. She would have run like the wind. Away from this prison.
In the first few days she had thought of nothing but escape. Once she had shoved Carla aside, lunch tray and all, and run to the front door of the palazzo as fast as she could—only to discover that this too was locked tight. She had collapsed in floods of tears. How humiliating it had been when Patrizia and the count had led her back to her room like a criminal! Patrizia had cried as they went, acting as though Marie had devised some dreadful insult for her.
She could have simply stopped living, refused to eat even a bite—but for the child in her womb.
Fetch help from outside? No such hope. Whenever the gardeners came past the window, Marie hammered like a madwoman on the glass and tried to show them that she was being held against her will, but not a single one of them reacted. What had Patrizia told them?
Marie swept her hand across her workbench in a rage. Hundreds of tiny pieces of glass flew off the worktop and scattered over the floor like colorful raindrops. They lay there, almost mocking her, beautiful and utterly indifferent to her plight. Marie screamed in pain. For as long as she could remember, glass had been the only material she wanted to work with. Glass revealed even the smallest mistake; glass showed every weakness in the maker’s hand—which was precisely what she found so fascinating. It was a sensitive material. More than once it had driven her into a fury and then brought her back to her senses; it had taught her patience and humility and then urged her on to new heights of ambition. Marie would never have imagined that glass would one day become her enemy.
At five o’clock sharp the key turned in the lock. Marie was sitting on the bed. She noticed with astonishment that Patrizia had brought the tray today, with a cup of mocha coffee and a slice of cake. She certainly hadn’t been expecting her, though at lunchtime she had begged her mother-in-law to call a doctor for her backache.
“I swear to you I won’t tell him anything!” she had pleaded, and she had meant every word. Where was she going to run to with her huge belly? If she hadn’t been pregnant, she would have spent all day every day looking for a chance to escape, but she had to think of her unborn child. So she had said, “It worries me that I’m in such pain! What if there’s something wrong . . .” But the discussion ended as it always did, with Patrizia leaving the room, her back ramrod straight and her lips pursed. She usually punished Marie for such outbursts by not coming to see her for a few days.
Perhaps she had found out that it was Marie’s birthday?
Without looking at Marie, Patrizia put down the tray on the little table by the bed. Her hands were trembling, and her eyes were rimmed with red as though she had been crying.
“Can you ask Carla to heat some water for the bath?” Marie asked, pointing toward the tub that Patrizia had had brought into her room on the first day. “Perhaps the warm water will do my back some good,” she added.
Patrizia nodded wordlessly. She was already halfway out the door when she turned around and stopped where she was. Then she cleared her throat, almost inaudibly.
“What is it? Have you heard from Franco at last?” The spark of hope leapt up before Marie could smother it. They had been waiting for weeks for him to call.
Patrizia shook her head. “There’s been a problem in New York . . .” Her haughty expression crumbled and she whimpered. Quickly she put a hand to her mouth.
Marie felt as though she had been punched in the gut. She leapt to her feet. “And? Tell me!”
“One of the customs agents who knew what was going on has talked.” Patrizia’s lower lip quivered. “They’ve arrested Franco.”
22
The thaw set in from one day to the next. First the snow in the streets melted, then it slipped down off the rooftops, then the trees on the mountain slopes all around began to show their branches. By the end of March the landscape was shaggy and patchy like a dog shedding his winter coat, and Wanda had to get used to seeing colors other than white. Rivulets and streams ran down the slopes wherever she looked; the meadows down in the valley became quagmires, and the water in the streets pooled into great puddles. It was no easier to walk the streets than it had been when the snow was knee-deep. Everyone got wet feet one way or another, but they never complained as they went about their business—rather they seemed to welcome the melt. After all, it meant that the landscape was finally struggling free from its cocoon of snow and that spring was near.
Though Wanda’s head was brimming over with plans and ideas, she noticed that everyone around her was growing restless. Suddenly everybody was on the move: a neighbor set off for Neuhaus to fetch two piglets from his brother-in-law. Anna and Johannes were planning a trip to Coburg—without asking Wanda if she wanted to come along. Lugiana, the Italian maid, sang Roman songs from morning till night and cast longing glances at Magnus, who didn’t notice a thing.
Wanda felt the same restless urges—among other symptoms, she wanted to kiss Richard whenever the chance arose. She was more than a little scared by the strength of her physical desire for him, and she was glad that Richard kept a cool head when it seemed she might lose control of herself.
Lauscha woke up from hibernation with regard to business matters too. A great many more wagons were slipping through the last of the snow now than in months gone by, and visitors were seen among the old familiar faces. Richard’s patron, the gallery owner Gotthilf Täuber, came to visit and bought everything Richard had made. After that Richard grew even more dedicated to his work than before; whenever Wanda came by his workshop, he was either hard at work on a piece or studying the most recent catalog that Täuber had brought.
There was a new sense of purpose in the Steinmann-Maienbaum house as well: Johanna sent off gold-edged letters to all their customers, inviting them to a show of the new collection in the spring. Wanda was impressed all over again by her aunt’s flair for business.
But nothing could compare to how Wanda felt about the new mood in her father’s house. Karl-Heinz Brauninger had begun to contract with the Heimer workshop. He had already bought a whole series of artistic pieces, and he had told them he was interested in more.
By curious chance, the seeds for these new and promising developments had been sown back at carnival time when Wanda and Richard hadn’t missed a single dance or party or costume parade. Wanda had never seen anything like the weird and wonderful costumes and colorful grotesque masks people wore for Mardi Gras in the Thuringian Forest. She loved every minute of it and got swept up in the locals’ good cheer. And then it was all over on Ash Wednesday. How fine it would be if there were only some way to bottle some of this festive spirit for the rest of the year, she had thought, her head buzzing. Bottle . . . Wasn’t Lauscha a glassblowing village? She got the idea for a series of glass pieces called Carnival on the spot. As Wanda had expected, her father was deeply skeptical about her suggestion, arguing that the kind of detail she was describing took far too much time to create. Eventually, however, he gave in, and the result was a series of bowls and drinking glasses in various sizes. There was also a centerpiece and a set of glass napkin rings, which were Wanda’s idea. The whole series was blown from transparent glass and then decorated with thousands upon thousands of bright colorful flecks like confetti. In the end even Thomas had to admit that it had been worth the effort: every piece sparkled with good cheer, awakening visions of elegant banquet tables, tinkling glasses, and merry diners drinking to one another’s health. Karl-Heinz Brauninger was also delighted with the result and offered a higher price than Wanda had been planning to ask. They’d gotten off to a good start—now she had to keep the ball rolling!
“Please, Aunt Johanna, let’s not call New York until next week! If you like we can go to the post office in Sonneberg first thing on Monday, but not today,” Wanda pleaded urgently, glancing nervously at Johanna across the kitchen table
.
Everybody else was already toiling away in the workshop, and Wanda would usually be on her way up the hill to the Heimer house by this time, but she had asked Johanna to talk with her for a moment.
Johanna shook her head. “I really don’t see what you hope to gain by that. There are only four weeks until you’re supposed to leave. You know that you’re very welcome here, despite . . . despite everything. But if you really do intend to stay in Lauscha for longer than planned, you have to at least ask your parents’ permission! Or don’t you think they have any say in the matter?” Johanna frowned angrily. “Quite apart from which, you’re making things very difficult for me too.” She sighed. “Every time your mother writes or calls, she asks me to take better care of you, instead of letting you run off to your father every day.”
“But I’ve written to her to explain why I—”
Johanna waved the interruption away. “And then there’s the question of your affections . . . I really ought not to let you see Richard every day. Even if you do swear your most solemn oath that the two of you are behaving appropriately.”
“Oh, Aunt Johanna!” Wanda felt a pang of guilt. “I know that I’m not making things easy for you. But Richard is such an honorable soul that you really needn’t worry about my . . . about my innocence. And as for my father . . .” She threw up her hands helplessly. “Please try to see things my way. For the first time in my life I feel that I’m doing something really useful! I know that Mother only wants what’s best for me, but can I help it that I’m just not the sort of girl who enjoys a life of cocktail receptions and tennis games? I do so much like to see how things can really get better when you put your mind to it! I’m sure that you understand that. You and Mother and Marie—you never let anything change your mind. You each followed your own path!”
Even as she uttered the words, Wanda realized that it had been a mistake to mention Marie.
The American Lady (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 2) Page 33