Authors: Petra Durst-Benning
The Glassblower
FORTHCOMING IN THE SERIES
The American Lady
The Paradise of Glass
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2003 by Petra Durst-Benning
English translation copyright © 2014 by Samuel Willcocks
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
The Glassblower
was first published in 2003 by Ullstein in Berlin as
Die Glasbläserin
. Translated from German by Samuel Willcocks. Published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2014.
Cover design by Marc Cohen
Published by AmazonCrossing
ISBN-13: 9781477820278
ISBN-10: 1477820272
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014933179
CONTENTS
PART ONE
FALL 1890
THE BEGINNING
But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisite invention; and in buying these we are doing good to humanity.
—John Ruskin
1
Ruth had already gone upstairs twice that morning to try to wake Johanna. Both times her sister had grumbled something that led her to believe—wrongly, as it turned out—that she really was going to get up.
Why do I always fall for it, every single day,
Ruth scolded herself as she climbed the stairs for the third time. The smell of bacon frying gently in the pan followed her as she went. She stopped at the dormer window, stood on tiptoe, and glanced down at the back of the house, where Marie was singing. A spider had spun its web right across the window. Without even noticing the fine patterns spun into the threads, Ruth brushed it away with her hand. Marie was nowhere in sight. Nor was Father. Ruth frowned. By the time either of them smelled anything burning in the kitchen, the bacon and potatoes would be charred to a crisp!
The last time she had come up to try to wake Johanna, she had left the door to the room she shared with her sisters standing open, so she could already see from the landing that Johanna was still not up. Without saying a word, Ruth walked up to the bed, grabbed hold of the linen bedspread, and whisked it off Johanna.
“How can you lie there all covered up in this heat?” she asked, shaking her head as her sister struggled toward wakefulness. Ruth went to the window and opened the shutters wide. Straightaway the bright September sun flooded the room with a dusty light.
Johanna swung her legs over the side of the bed like a rheumatic old woman, groaning piteously but not saying a word.
Ruth glared at her sister one last time and then hurried back downstairs to rescue breakfast. While she stirred the potato slices and bacon bits around the pan, pouring in a little more oil so they wouldn’t stick, she thanked heaven that she at least was an early bird.
Even as a child, Johanna had never liked getting up early—she and her sisters had been late to school often enough on her account. And it wasn’t just getting out of bed that caused her trouble—she was groggy all morning and no good to anyone before ten o’clock. “It’s as though I’d drunk half a bottle of schnapps the night before,” Johanna had said once, trying to explain how bleary she felt. Not that she or Ruth had ever drunk half a bottle of schnapps or had any real idea what that would feel like. Knowing that Johanna would be sleepy in the mornings, the three sisters had settled on a housework routine that meant that she didn’t have any morning chores, though Ruth sometimes wondered whether this was really the best answer. She sighed. Had their mother still been alive, she probably wouldn’t have made such a fuss about it! In many ways, Anna Steinmann had been much more stubborn than her husband. Ruth tried to picture her mother’s face for a moment, and felt a pang of sorrow at how hard it was to do so. Ten years was a long time.
The water she had put on to boil for the morning brew began to simmer, shaking Ruth out of her memories, and she promptly took the pot off the flame. She didn’t like it when the chicory roots boiled too long in the water—best just to bring them up to a boil from cold, or else the drink was too bitter. Ruth was fussy about this: most of the folks in the village made a brew of dried bits of mangel-wurzel, but she wouldn’t let the stuff into her kitchen. She’d rather drink plain water than that swill. Of course, she liked to drink real coffee most of all, but often they couldn’t afford enough beans to last the week. Johanna went to Sonneberg every Friday to sell the glass that they had made that week and she always brought back a little bag of coffee beans. Joost Steinmann didn’t much care what he put in his cup to drink, as long as it was dark and hot, but he didn’t deny his daughters this little luxury. It had become something of a ritual by now; when Johanna came back from Sonneberg, they would treat themselves to coffee and a slice of cake, and a pickled herring that she would buy in town as well.
The rest of the village gossiped about these habits of theirs and said that in Joost Steinmann’s house, the women ruled the roost. But it wasn’t as though they did whatever they pleased. Certainly within their own four walls the girls were allowed their own way much more than others of their age, but when it came to sheltering them from the wicked ways of the world, Joost could be worse than a mother hen. What if the village choir was rehearsing and they wanted to join in the singing? Out of the question—there might be boys lurking around the streets as they walked back home. And a dance on the night of the solstice? There was no point even asking if they could go. A few years back some of the village girls had gotten together and started a spinning group for the winter, but Joost wouldn’t even let his daughters join in this bit of harmless fun. “You’ll slip and fall on the ice on your way home and break a leg,” he had declared. “Better to stay home and practice your letters.” As if books were as enjoyable as a good chat. Ruth swallowed. The gatherings were set to begin again in November, and the other girls would all be sitting at the spinning wheels two evenings a week while she and her sisters sat at home. By the time the spinning circle broke up and the girls walked home through the alleys, laughing, throwing snowballs, and shrieking at the boys chasing them, Ruth, Johanna, and Marie would already be in bed.
It was no wonder that all the boys in the village had gotten the idea that Joost didn’t want them paying court to his daughters. The way he looked at any boy who came calling stopped most of them from ever coming a second time.
Ruth went to the table and opened the drawer to fetch out the little mirror she kept there. When she held it out at arm’s length, she could see her whole face in it. She was a beauty, and she knew it. She and her sisters had all inherited their mother’s fine, even features, and their mother had been an exceptionally beautiful woman.
Ruth heaved a sigh and put the mirror back in the drawer again. What good did it do her to look in the mirror and see a pretty face? Would a man ever kiss her on the lips? Would anyone ever tell her that her eyes shone like amber? That her skin was as clear as a spring morning? If Joost had his way, all three of them would die old maids.
The only man who regularly came to call was their neighbor Peter Maienbaum. Ever since his parents had died a few years ago, one soon after the other, Joost had looked on him as a son, never thinking that he too might turn into a skirt chaser. But judging from the way he gazed at Johanna, Ruth was quite sure that Peter had had his eye on her for some time now. Nobody else seemed to have noticed though, least of all Johanna. Ruth sighed again—more deeply this time. If a man ever looked at
her
like that, she would certainly notice.
“Johanna’s barging about the house again like a bear with a sore head! When she finally makes it out of bed, she spends the rest of the day giving us orders,” Marie said, slipping onto the edge of the bench. She was so slim that she didn’t even need to push the table away as she sat down. Though Ruth was quite slim too, she envied her sister’s figure. Many of the village women were funny-looking creatures with dangling bosoms and great pillows of flesh on them, but the sisters could thank the Lord that they were tall and slender, with smooth healthy skin and chestnut hair that shone like silk without needing anything more than a hundred strokes of the brush each day. Marie was smaller than the other two, more delicate and fragile looking—like a costly porcelain doll.
“At least she’s made it downstairs. I was afraid I’d have to go up to wake her again,” Ruth answered dryly.
Ever since their mother had died, they used the laundry shed next door for their morning wash. Joost went out there too, rather than washing in the kitchen. This way they could all have a bit of privacy, which the girls needed as much as Joost did.
“Where’s Father, anyway?”
“I don’t know. He got home later than usual last night. He made such a din coming up the stairs that I woke up. I couldn’t fall asleep again for ages,” Marie said, making a face. “I hope he’s not sleeping off a hangover.”
Ruth shrugged. “You know as well as I do that he doesn’t drink all that much,” she said indulgently, though there was no real need to spring to Joost’s defense. He went to the local tavern, the Black Eagle, for a couple of hours every evening like all the other men in the village, but unlike some of them, he rarely drank more than was good for him.
The potatoes were nicely crisped and brown. Ruth picked up a slice with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. Hot! Then she poured herself a cup of the chicory coffee, and one for Marie as well. The hearty brew was just the thing for a sunny morning like this. They had a word for these sunny days after the end of summer but before fall had come; they called them “plum-cake days.” All summer long the songbirds had trilled in the pear tree outside the kitchen window, but they were gone now. The only sound these days was that of a blackbird chirruping or the high piping of a lark, and soon the mists would fall and silence even these. Ruth held her cup to her nose and breathed in deeply. She hated it when the year turned cold.
“Not long now and we’ll have to light the lamps in the morning,” Marie said, as though reading her sister’s thoughts. The sisters often found that they could chime in and speak aloud what the other was thinking.
After Anna Steinmann had died, they had found a way to cope—both with life and with their work. Of course they were always shorthanded—the Steinmann family ran as good a business as any of the other glassblowers in the village. Not bad for a household where the women “ruled the roost.” They were used to friendly teasing, and to ill will as well. They specialized in pharmacy jars and test tubes, and they made them well. First-class goods. The family did every step of the work—from grinding the stoppers to size to incising the words into each jar, writing out the labels, and packing every consignment for delivery—all without outside help. It was a great advantage.
Like all the other glassblowers, they worked on commission for a wholesaler in the nearby town of Sonneberg. Friedhelm Strobel had customers all around the world and always told the Steinmanns that he would happily buy more of their jars and tubes. Joost was the only glassblower in the house, however, and they couldn’t make more pieces even if they wanted to. The men at the Black Eagle were always telling Joost that a hardworking son-in-law would be a great help, but he waved them away. He loved to tell them all: “My girls don’t have to marry—not for money, that’s for sure!”
Ruth sighed, put down her cup, and went back to the stove. She lifted the heavy cast-iron pan effortlessly and put breakfast on the table. “Enough is enough! I’m going to see wher
e . . .
” She fell quiet when she saw that Johanna had appeared in the doorway. She was even paler than usual, and her eyes were wide with shock, as though she had seen the devil himself in the hallway. She held one hand in front of her mouth and seemed to be stifling a scream.
“Johanna! For heaven’s sake! What’s wrong?” Marie called out.
Ruth felt a lump in her throat. Two hands, cold as ice, gripped her heart and squeezed. She knew that something dreadful had happened. She couldn’t say a word.
“It’s Fathe
r . . .
” Johanna said, her brow furrowed with worry. “He’s just lying in bed up there. He’s not moving at all.”