The Glassblower (12 page)

20

None of the sisters were sorry when Christmas Eve was over.

It had begun to snow thick, feathery flakes that melted as soon as they hit the ground. Instead of mantling the landscape in a coat of virgin white, the wet snow turned the streets into a morass. After a hard night’s frost, the ground had become dangerously slippery underfoot. For Johanna and her sisters, the miserable weather was further proof that this Christmas was not like ones past.

Tottering and holding onto each other, the three sisters braved the bitter cold and walked up the steep street to Wilhelm Heimer’s house midmorning on Christmas Day. Sheets of ice had formed on the foundry square, which was empty and abandoned at that time of year. “Careful!” Johanna said, grabbing Ruth by the elbow right as she began to slip.

Marie cast a yearning glance over at the furnaces, which stood neglected in the glass foundry. “If only they would build up the fire again!” she sighed. “I think it’s dreadful when it’s abandoned like this.”

Johanna was longing for spring as well, when the square would be stacked high with wood for the master glassmakers’ fires. The stokers would be calling loudly for more wood to keep the furnaces burning at the high temperatures needed to melt glass, and Peter Maienbaum and his fellow masters would be working night and day in shifts to keep the foundry going. The masters themselves would be working at the melt, each in his own mixing room, fussing over the best possible recipe for each batch, while outside the journeymen would be stretching the viscous lumps of glass into long, thin rods with their tongs. The rods would then be snipped into lengths to make the glass stock that Peter and all the other glassblowers used for their work—and she could watch it all happen, exactly the way it had been done since the glass foundry was opened in 1597 almost three hundred years ago. Johanna was suddenly immensely comforted by the thought that they were all part of this enduring rhythm.

Peter. He had stopped by the previous evening after helping Widow Grün fix a hole in her stovepipe.

“That was a good idea Peter had with the glass animals, wasn’t it?” Johanna said, her words muffled by her scarf.

Children who needed a glass eye fitted often found the procedure very trying. To make the ordeal a little easier for them, Peter had started to blow toy animals out of glass for his younger patients. With a little bird or a dog or a monkey in their hands, they didn’t mind sitting still so much, and Peter could get on with his work. He had brought along three of these animals for Johanna, Ruth, and Marie. Now they stood on the windowsill, where the light showed off the colored glass wonderfully.

“It was. I still don’t know whether I like the elephant best or the lion,” Marie answered. “The way he made that elephant coil its trunk
. . .
”

“I just love the curls in the lion’s mane—such a pretty yellow. I never even knew that the foundry sold stock in that color,” Johanna replied.

“I think what he did was melt together a bit of yellow rod with some orange,” Marie said thoughtfully. “Apparently it’s not easy to mingle the colors like that. When old Heimer got that order for the striped drinking glasses, they all cursed up a storm.”

Johanna’s sigh hung in the air like a little white cloud. “Those glass animals would certainly sell well. Friedhelm Strobe
l . . .
”

Ruth laughed. “Save your breath. Peter makes eyes because that’s his passion, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. He doesn’t care about earning money. Which is unfortunate,” she giggled. “If our dear neighbor were a little more business minded, you might have become Mrs. Maypole long ago!” She nudged Marie.

“The things you say! How often do I have to tell you that Peter and I are just good friends? Mrs. Maienbaum—why, it would be like marrying my own brother.” Johanna grimaced. “Anyway, who cares about marrying money? I certainly don’t. I just want Peter to do well. If he made his business in glass animals, he’d make money much more easily than he does with his wounded soldiers and those poor children who’ve had accidents.”

As soon as they opened the door to the workshop, Johanna felt her hackles rise. She wanted to turn right round an
d . . .
well, do anything but this. Anything but stand in this ill-ventilated workshop, working on Christmas Day itself because old Heimer couldn’t organize the business well enough for even a day’s holiday, putting ugly glassware through the silver bath or packing it into boxes. Marie went in first and made a beeline for the painting bench. Johanna shook her head as she saw Marie take off her jacket while striding across the room, as though she could hardly wait to get back to work.

As Ruth walked past the glassblowers at their lamps, her chin held high, she said nothing beyond “Good morning.” Johanna was pleased to note that her sister still didn’t seem to have forgiven Thomas for putting so little thought into his gift to her. She scanned the room for Griseldis, but Widow Grün was nowhere to be seen. Peter had said that her house had been ice-cold; perhaps she’d caught a cold when her stove stopped working.

There was no sign of Wilhelm Heimer either. Johanna felt strangely at a loss.
What am I doing here?
she thought. By now Marie had opened all the paint pots in front of her as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Ruth was caught up in conversation with Eva and seemed to be admiring her new hair clasp. Sarah came in from the storeroom at her usual snail’s pace, her arms full of flattened cardboard boxes. And the three Heimer boys were hunched over their lamps—she had heard the flames hissing as soon as she opened the door. Everyone had a job to do but her.

Thomas Heimer turned round. “Father will be in later. He’s in Sonneberg this morning,” he said, looking past Johanna. When he saw Ruth standing with Eva, he got up and walked over to her, without giving Johanna any indication of what work there was to do.

So Johanna joined Sarah and began folding cardboard boxes. Sarah told her that Widow Grün was in bed with a high temperature, and then fell back into sullen silence. After folding boxes until there was no more room on the table, Johanna said, “That’s certainly enough for now. There must be more urgent work to be done.”

But Sarah carried on folding boxes as though she hadn’t heard.

Was the girl really as simpleminded as she acted? Exasperated, Johanna walked over to the silvering bench, where at least three dozen glass goblets were waiting to be silvered. Here was something for her to do.

She found she had a new appetite for work as she picked up the first goblet and held the opening in the base up to the stopcock on the silver fluid bottle. It was only then that she noticed there was no more silver solution in the bottle on the wall. The flask of reducing fluid was full, but that was no good on its own. She stared helplessly at the flasks of ammonia, spirit vinegar, and silver-nitrate salts. Heimer always made a great secret of the exact proportions. Griseldis was the only one who knew how much to take from each bottle before she mixed them together with water and a pinch of grape sugar as a reducing agent. Granted, Heimer’s silvered wares were especially smooth and shiny. Other masters didn’t use such pure ingredients, or they used the wrong reducing agent, and their silver didn’t wash evenly over the glass, leaving bare spots here and there. But the drawback of Heimer’s appetite for secrecy was clear: without Griseldis there to mix the fluid, the whole workflow ground to a halt.

“Why are you standing there like an ox staring at the barn door?”

Johanna spun round. Heimer. How could such a heavyset man appear as if from nowhere?

“
I . . .
there isn’t any silver bath,” she said rather feebly.

“What about over there?” Heimer pointed to where Sarah’s head could just be seen above a wall of cardboard boxes. “Didn’t you think to go and help her instead of standing there gawping at the empty silver bottle? It seems to me that there’s plenty to do!” And with that, he stomped off, shaking his head. “You girls may be used to ruling the roost at home, but you’re not paid to stand around here,” he said, wagging his finger at her.

Johanna stood there sheepishly, feeling the eyes of the others upon her as they stole glances over their shoulders. How could he reprimand her so—and for no good reason at all?

“Better to rule the roost than let you run the place like a pigsty!” she muttered to herself.

Heimer stopped in his tracks. “What did you say?”

Of course, at this point Johanna could have said something like, “Nothing, it’s all right.” She could have hurried over to Sarah at the packing table and carried on folding boxes that nobody had any use for. But she didn’t.

21

Peter turned off the gas tap. Without the singing of the flame, the room instantly fell quiet. As he sat down to join Johanna at the table, he cast a glance at the pair of glass eyes that still needed the veins painted on. A courier would come to collect them the next morning. The patient would surely be anxiously awaiting them. He would probably have to work through the night to have them ready, but he didn’t care—Johanna needed him now. Even if the stubborn woman would never admit it.

“Well don’t expect me to drag every word out of you like I’m pulling teeth. Did you say that to his face, about the pigsty?”

Johanna nodded, her expression a mixture of stubbornness and pride that only she could manage. “I don’t let anyone call me lazy. After all, it was his fault there was nothing for me to do. Gracious me—I only told him the truth, but you should have seen the way he exploded! He turned so red in the face that for a moment I thought he might drop dead on the spot.”

Peter had no trouble imagining it. “And then?”

“Then he began calling me all sorts of names. Going on about how ungrateful I was, and so on.” She shrugged. “Ungrateful fiddlesticks! I told him that he wasn’t giving me anything out of the goodness of his heart. In fact I told him that I was giving him my work and my time for next to nothing! And that I had no reason at all to be grateful to him because he was just taking advantage of the hard times we were going through to get himself a few hired hands on the cheap.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. She hadn’t minced words. He wasn’t surprised that Heimer had slung her out on her ear. “You sound like that Karl Marx. He was always going on about the workers being exploited.”

Johanna looked askance at him, not sure whether he was pulling her leg.

“I don’t know anybody called Marx. But damn it all, I’m not going to stand there and be called names. What would you have done in my place?”

Peter looked at her across the table. “I don’t know, to be honest. Maybe I would have kept my mouth shut. Maybe I wouldn’t. But I can say that I’m happy to be my own boss and won’t ever find myself in a scrape like that.”

“But you can understand why I did what I did, can’t you? A little bit?” she asked woefully.

Peter had to laugh. “What do you want me to say? I can hardly tell you it’s a good thing that you got Wilhelm Heimer to give you the boot, can I now?” Johanna didn’t need to know that deep down inside, he was actually rather proud of her. But he also wondered what it would mean for both of them that Johanna was out of a job.

She stood up. “If you’re siding against me as well, then I might just as well go home!” she said, going to the window. She stared over at her own house.

“The moment my sisters got home, they tore into me! Ruth told me that I was putting all our jobs in jeopardy. And Marie called me a quarrelsome know-it-all.” Johanna was standing straight as could be. “What a horrid thing to say—when all I did was speak the truth!”

“Come back and sit down,” Peter said as he went to the stove and fetched a pot he had put on to warm. “Let’s eat first, and then we’ll think about what to do next.”

Johanna was about to wave away his offer when the scent rising from the pot reached her nose. Her mouth started to water. She hadn’t had a bite to eat all day. When Peter put a bowl of soup in front of her, she realized how hungry she was. She dipped her spoon in before he even sat down with his own bowl. There were green beans, meat, and potatoes, all chopped up and swimming in a rich golden broth. He had everything he needed here—unlike her.

She put her spoon down so suddenly that the soup splashed over the edge.

Peter looked at her, his eyebrows raised. “What’s bothering you now?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “To be honest, I don’t think it’s all bad. I never liked to think of you working your fingers to the bone for Heimer. A woman like you, working for a blockhead like him. That was never going to end well.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Johanna looked at him, still tense. “I think the argument was just waiting to happen. If it hadn’t broken out today, it would have by the new year.”

Her expression grew more cheerful, and she picked up her spoon and carried on eating.

Now! Now was the time to ask her again.

“Sometimes a storm clears the ai
r . . .
” he heard himself saying instead of what he wanted to ask. “Who knows? Perhaps you’ll find some way to make peace with the old fellow.” He held his breath.

Johanna looked up. “Make peace with him?” she asked uncomprehendingly. “You don’t really believe that I would go crawling back to him. I’d rather starve!” She pushed the bowl away.

He leaned across the table and took her hand. “Johanna, come to me, to my workshop!”

Her arm went rigid.

“You and m
e . . .
we work well together, you have to admit that.” But she didn’t respond. He let go of her hand.

“Oh, Peter!” Johanna looked at him with despair and amusement in her eyes. “I know you mean well, but you don’t really need me around. You’ve got everything just as you like it.”

Peter looked around his home, seeing it through her eyes; the narrow room with windows at each end. The simple workbench and the racks of glass eyes staring out of their sockets. The table in the kitchen corner where he consulted his patients. And in the back, his bed with the old patchwork quilt his mother had made flung carelessly over it.
Damn it all, why didn’t he have more to offer her?
“Just as I like it? This is the messy, untended household of a bachelor. A woman’s touch would work wonders here.”
And a woman’s lov
e
. . .

“Oh, so I’m supposed to help you keep your home looking nice,” she answered sarcastically. “Do you think that’s all I’m good for?” She laughed bitterly. “It seems our father was the only man who didn’t think that we girls were stupid!”

“Nonsense!” Peter felt himself losing his temper. Why did she always have to make things so hard for him?

“Maybe that came out wrong. You know quite well that I think the world of you. But that’s not what we’re talking about. What I wanted to say was—me and yo
u . . .
” He looked at her and fell quiet.

It was pointless. Johanna looked like someone who had made up her mind long ago. He didn’t know what she was thinking about, but it wasn’t him.

“Just forget I spoke,” he said, dismissing his own suggestion with a wave of his hand. “You’re quite right; I can rearrange the workshop all on my own. And when I start making a new line of glass animals in the new year, I’ll be able to do that on my own as well, at least at first.” He saw Johanna prick up her ears. For a moment the throb of disappointment faded in his chest. Yes, she’d sit up and look twice when he began to make good money with the glass animals.

“I’ll manage on my own. And I’m sure you will too.” He didn’t let it show just how much it cost him to say these words, which he didn’t even believe himself. How on earth was a single woman without a job going to manage on her own? But Peter knew when he’d lost a battle. And he also knew there was no point in trying to force Johanna into anything. Either she would come to him one day of her own accor
d . . .
or she wouldn’t.

He tried to ignore the dull throb in his chest and went over to the pantry. He came back to the table with two glasses and a bottle of cherry schnapps.

“We can’t drink to the new year quite yet, but let’s drink to better times ahead,” he said, pouring Johanna a generous glass and handing it to her. Ignoring her startled look, he lifted his own glass just as though he were drinking with a buddy down at the pub.

For the first time that day, Johanna smiled. As they raised their glasses in a toast and looked each other in the eye, any awkwardness between them fled.