The Glassblower (24 page)

4

As Strobel’s coach drew closer to Sonneberg, his mood grew darker. For the first time, he felt not the least twinge of anticipation at the thought of returning to Sonneberg and his shop. As he gazed fixedly out the window at the pine forests rolling past, he felt stifled. A heavy stench of old sweat hung in the interior of the coach, which he had been forced to take when his train was cancelled due to work on the line.

A backwater. Nothing but a backwater.

The thought of having to spend weeks on end in this dreary wilderness before he could even think of taking another trip to B. was more than he could bear.

He shut his eyes and let his mind drift to the time he had just spent there. That was life at its fullest! He had felt every sinew in his body.

It had been a special visit, meant to celebrate the end of the renovations. The Countess P. had found just the right words for it: “Let us celebrate the resurrection of a temple of delight.” Count Z. had even compared it to a palace. Well, reall
y . . .
a slight exaggeration perhaps. But the designs had indeed lived up to all their promises. His money had been well invested. They had made something truly extraordinary.

The décor alone would have justified the expense: black and red everywhere, with great swaths of velvet, even more silk, and plain tough leather for contrast. Beyond that, there was music, champagne, and, above all, a select circle of kindred spirits. All this was reserved for a chosen few.

Strobel sat up straight. Money couldn’t buy everything, even if some people believed that it could. No, those who had a key to this temple of delight had the utmost refinement and education. Doctors, lawyers, city fathers, and heirs to great commercial fortunes—the highest of society—all with one thing in common: a strict upbringing in which rigor and discipline had been prized above all else. The capacity to abase oneself, to accept punishment—or, in turn, to show harshness and punish the submissive for their faults—this had to be learned from early childhood if it were later to be celebrated as art.

Strobel’s gaze was fixed now on the bench opposite. There was a long rip in the shabby imitation leather, and the brown stuffing that burst out smelled moldy. He traced the ragged edge of the rip with his finger. The material left a sharp, white line on his skin where it scratched him, but Strobel felt nothing.

Now the memory of these delights would have to last him for a while to come. No thrilling pleasures awaited him in Sonneberg. Consultations with clients. Keeping the accounts. Bargaining down the glassblowers and doll-makers—that would be his daily bread. There would be no more fine dinners, but instead, hasty meals, taken with no one but Johanna. Hardly an appealing prospect. To put it bluntly, what did she have to offer him? Pitiably little, even though he had spent more than a year now striving to broaden her horizons and open her eyes to life’s pleasures. Granted, she listened to what he had to say and occasionally made a mocking retort as was her habit—a habit that had once given him hope that she might develop as a more astute and assertive conversationalist—but deep down she was nothing but a country girl. Instead of keeping pace with his flights of fancy, with his sometimes startling verbal pyrotechnics, she always brought the conversation back to Lauscha. And he couldn’t care less about the blasted place, miles from anywhere in the mountains. How did the English put it? “You can take the girl out of the village, but you can’t take the village out of the girl.”

As for the other matter, here, too, his efforts turned out to have been fruitless. She had not uttered a single word about the frightfully expensive edition of the Marquis de Sade’s memoirs he had chosen as a Christmas present. Ever since then, he had made no further effort in that direction. Perhaps the old adage was true: there was no point in trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, or—ha!—trying to cut a diamond from a lump of mountain stone.

On the other hand, hadn’t Count G.—or was it Baron von Z.?—claimed that in his experience it was often the simple village lads and lasses who had the greatest natural gift for submission and dominance? This certainly didn’t seem to be the case with Johanna Steinmann, for she would have given him some sign by now.

The coach stopped so suddenly that Strobel lost his balance and tumbled to the floor. “Can’t you pay a little attention! Bumpkin!
Putain
!
” he swore at the coachman.

He looked down at the dust on his knee as the coachman unloaded his luggage. Then he paid precisely what he owed for the journey, without so much as a penny more as tip. Why would that clod deserve a tip? he asked himself as he heaved his bag up the steps to the shop door. For bringing him back down to earth with a bump?

Irritated, he turned the handle of the shop door and moved to push it open.

Locked.

Strobel looked at his watch incredulously: ten past nine. On a Monday morning.

What was going on?

He opened his traveling bag and rummaged around for the key.

Where was Johanna?

5

“Get ready,
mesdames
, don’t be startled! There will be a bright flash!” The photographer twiddled the ends of his moustache, rubbed his hands together, and disappeared under the black cloth that hung behind the bulky box.

“Isn’t she good? Just look at how pretty she is!” Ruth was almost bursting with pride.

Johanna looked around restlessly as though planning her escape.

“I really must go now!” she said. The grandfather clock in the photographer’s salon already showed quarter past nine. Drat it all! Why had she ever allowed Ruth to persuade her to come along?

“I’m sure it’ll be over soon,” Ruth whispered soothingly.

Monsieur looked at her reproachfully.

“I cannot work like this,
mesdames
! I need quiet. And the
bébé
must also be quiet. Lie still!” He nodded toward Wanda, who was whimpering insistently.

Ruth hurried over to her daughter, put her back in the middle of the blanket—the photographer had not been able to find them a bearskin, much as he may have liked to—and was back at Johanna’s side a moment later.

“What a self-important fellow! Are all Frenchmen like that? I think I would hardly have dared come in here without you.”

You’ve certainly changed your tune,
Johanna thought. “You and your ideas—you’re going to get me in trouble! If Strobel comes back before me and the shop’s not ope
n . . .
”

“Oh, he shouldn’t be such a fusspot. What difference does half an hour make? The customers won’t be standing in line at this hour of the morning.”

While Johanna grew more restless with each passing minute, the photographer took another photograph, this time of mother and daughter together, with a great deal of hocus-pocus. When at last they were done, Ruth paid the man, and it was agreed that Johanna would pick up the photographs on Friday.

Twenty past nine.

Strobel looked for the umpteenth time from his pocket watch back to the window.

Where was she? Was she ill? He simply couldn’t imagine anything else that would keep her from work. After all, dependability was one of her greatest virtues. It had to be something serious, he told himself. If she had come down with something harmless, she would have sent him a message. He put down his pencil and the list he was holding and went to the kitchen, where he found a message in Sybille Stein’s spidery handwriting on the table: she was ill, she wrote, and couldn’t come in. He threw the notepaper onto the floor in disgust. Had everybody in the house gone mad? Things couldn’t go on like this; he would have to find himself a new housekeeper right away.

He stood at the kitchen window like a spy. Without the clatter of pots and other kitchen sounds in the background, he felt the strain mounting.

Nine twenty-five.

No sign of Johanna.

Nine thirty.

Perhaps it wasn’t Johanna
who was sick but one of her sisters. Or that brat that one of them had. Strobel gnawed angrily at a hangnail on his right thumb. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? All anyone in Lauscha needed to do was whistle and Johanna would come running. Though he had gone to great lengths to show her how insignificant all those country bumpkins were, when it came to her family, she was stubborn as a mule.

Come to think of it, Johanna was stubbornness personified.

Nine thirty-five.

Too much stubbornness wasn’t good for a person. A stubborn person failed to see the essentials.

Nine forty-one.

Perhaps it was time to teach her a lesson. Yes, perhaps that was just what she needed. He found himself growing excited by the thought and shifted forward impatiently on his chair.

Where was she, damn it all?

It was a quarter to ten when he saw Johanna coming around the corner, arm in arm with Ruth.

6

When the door handle gave way under her hand, Johanna’s heart sank. Strobel’s train must have arrived early, today of all days! Hastily Johanna took off her coat and hung it up in the hall. All was quiet. He did not seem to waiting for her with his accusations. And a good thing too, since she still hadn’t thought up a suitable excuse for her delay. She was still hoping something would come to her as she ran her hand over her hair and tucked back a strand that Wanda had mussed. She took a deep breath and was just about to go into the shop when a hand grabbed her arm roughly from behind.

“Where have you been?” As if out of nowhere, Strobel was suddenly standing beside her.

“
I . . .
” Startled, Johanna put a hand to her throat. “I had to take care of something,” she said lamely.

Strobel took a step closer. “So I see!” He nodded toward the window. His breast heaved. “Taking care of things with your sister!” He shoved her back, took a few steps, and was at the door, putting down the bolt.

Strobel didn’t want anybody watching while he scolded her. Johanna rubbed her arm.

“I can hardly believe it. I come back, suspecting nothing, and I find that yo
u . . .
”

“I really am very sorry. If I had known that I would be held up so long, I would never hav
e . . .
I’ll work late tonight, I’l
l . . .
”

Deciding that the best thing to do was to steer clear of Strobel and his temper until he had calmed down a little, she took a few steps toward the kitchen.

But he leapt after her.

“I leave my business in your hands in the belief that it will be well looked after. And what do you do? Abuse my trust at the first opportunity!” As he spoke, a fleck of spittle in the corner of his mouth puffed out with every breath like a spiderweb in the wind.

Johanna turned away, disgusted. She was ready to admit that she had made a mistake, but she didn’t have to stand here and allow his insults.

“As I said, I am very sorry!” she repeated. With more courage than she really felt, she put her hands on her hips. “I can’t believe you’re making such a fuss about half an hour! This is ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous, is it? I’ll show you who is ridiculous here!” And with that, Strobel grabbed her arm, pushed her into the kitchen, spun her around so that she was facing him, and shoved her up against the table until her spine bent backward.

It all happened so fast that Johanna had no chance to put up a fight.

What is going on?
This wasn’t how an angry employer behaved. This was the behavior of a man who had something quite different in mind, she thought in a panic.

“This is how you wanted it!” he whispered hoarsely. His bony fingers were digging through the fabric into her flesh. “This is all your fault, no one else’s.”

Johanna wanted to scream but not a sound crossed her lips. She tried to look him in the eyes, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

This can’t be happening. Not Strobel. Not me.

Her brain was so busy trying to grasp the situation that at first she didn’t even realize what was happening. And so it took her a moment to associate the sound of cloth tearing loudly with what Strobel’s hands were doing; pressing her up against the table with his hips and legs, he had reached inside the collar of her dress and yanked at it until the velvet tore. His eyes gleamed at the sight of naked skin.

“A lesso
n . . .
”

Johanna came to her senses at last. She began to scream, tried to tear her hands free where he had them clamped in a grip of iron with his left hand—all in vain. He grabbed her breasts and squeezed them together so hard that the pain clouded her vision for a moment, and she saw black.

“This is how you wanted it. Come on, tell me this is what you want. Tell me you need it!”

She tried in vain to push his arms away and to kick him. But she could do nothing against his fanatical strength, and he simply laughed at her helplessness.

Where was Sybille Stein? Why was nobody helping her?

She was like an animal caught in a trap; the more she struggled, the harder Strobel dug his claws into her. He was muttering something to himself, but she couldn’t understand what. Laughing. Raucously. Then he kneed her in the belly.

For a moment she didn’t recognize the sound of her own scream in her ears, echoing off the kitchen shelves. She couldn’t double over because he was holding her.

Her breasts, her belly—the pain was so fierce that the world blazed yellow before her eyes.

Just before she could faint, the pain ebbed away. As the tears streamed down her cheeks, she realized how finely tuned was the pain he administered. And upon realizing this, she grew truly terrified.

Do something, put up a fight.

I can’t.

He had already torn away her skirt and petticoats. Before she knew what was happening one of his thighs was between her legs, and he was fumbling at his pants. He pushed up against her. Hot. Moist. Disgusting.

No, not that! Not that, anything but that
.

“I’ll teach you to lead your master up the garden path.” He shook her head between his hands. Flecks of spittle landed on her cheek, her neck, and her mouth. She clamped her lips together.

No kisses, please. Please no kisses!

Given what Strobel was doing to her at that very moment, the thought struck Johanna as so crazy that she had to laugh. Panic-stricken laughter. Her eyes were wide open, wide with fear.

At some point it was over. Johanna’s body was slick with Strobel’s sweat. He shoved her to the floor, and she lay there, curled up, her eyes closed. Her mind was empty, her body a shell riddled with holes, dead. Her clothes were torn rags that no longer clothed her nakedness. And she still did not dare believe that it was really over. When he kicked her, it wasn’t entirely unexpected.

“Get up and do as you’re told!”

As the voice came nearer, Johanna tried to shrink even smaller.

“And don’t you dare breathe a word about this to a soul. Remember: you have only yourself to blame for what happened here.”

Johanna was still in her room at the back of the house when Strobel came to his senses.

“What have I done?” he whispered hoarsely, looking at the blood on the palms of his hands, on the open fly of his pants. “Whatever have I done?” His heart was hammering wildly. How could he, the connoisseur, lose control like this? How could he run wild like a raging bull, when he was such a sensitive soul?

A punishment.

Johanna.

His shirt, soaked in blood.

His shop, closed all day.

Were there customers waiting at the door?

Johanna! Should he go to her?

Apologize?

His head was buzzing with pointless thoughts.

“Only a fool would poach in his own forest,”
he heard a voice say in disgust from a long way off. That well-known voice, humiliating him. Strobel put his hands over his ears.

“I didn’t mean to.”

Had he said that aloud? He bit at the knuckle of his index finger till the skin split and the blood began to flow.

Money! He would offer Johanna money. A great deal of money! Enough to make her keep quiet an
d . . .

“Is it not enough that your sins dishonor your Maker?”

And now Strobel saw his father’s face, the fine patrician features twisted in disgust at his offspring. Next to him was the hunched figure of his cousin Clara. The old hatred boiled up in him again. Clara, that Polish whore! A poor relation who had sought refuge with his family and had been taken in. In thanks she had brought disaster down on his head. And how she had enjoyed his downfall! With her brooding, despondent manner, she could hardly have made her point more clearly if she had hung a placard around her neck with the words “Fallen Woman.” And all this after she had spent months provoking him, making eyes at him all over the house.

“How could you bring your brutish habits into this house and dishonor your ancestors so?”

Until that moment he had never seen his father tremble with rage.

Strobel overturned the table and flung it to the floor. Then a chair. Another. Damn it, she had wanted it to happen! Just like Johanna.

“I condemn you for all eternity.”

Strobel’s stomach twisted into a hard knot.

No, no more damnation.

He had been young then, and easily browbeaten by his father. That was the only reason he could think of for why he had allowed himself to be chased away like a dog. Today nobody would be able to chase him away; that was certain!

He heard a door slam shut out in the hall. When he looked out the window he could not help but admire how Johanna held her head high as she walked away. She had two large bags and a suitcase with her.

She’s going!

Leaving me, and my shop!

He had to do something, he had to. It wasn’t so bad after all, a mere misdemeanor. Nothing more than that. A lapse. Insignificant.

He ran to the door, hurled it open, an
d . . .

She was gone.

“I will see to it with everything in my power that not a door in Berlin will be open to you!”

A smile crept back over Strobel’s face. A sardonic smile.

His father had been wrong! Not all doors had remained closed to him. Quite the opposite.

Disgusted, he looked at the chaos he had made in the kitchen. Then he laughed dismissively.

A loss of self-control, no more than that. A momentary lapse, though if he wasted his time standing around here listening to the voices of the past it might still have the potential to ruin his reputation a second time.

He could not allow that to happen.

He bent down shakily and picked up the chairs. He shoved the table back into the middle of the room. Fetched a cloth and wiped down the sticky tabletop.

He had to think.

Find a solution.

He would not be condemned again.

Strobel’s shop stayed closed the rest of the day.

It was five o’clock in the afternoon when he finally left the house. Carefully dressed, with not a trace of Johanna’s blood left on him, his back bowed as though under a heavy burden, he walked through the streets with a worried look on his face. He looked even more worried as he went into the Golden Ox, his hostelry of choice whenever he wanted to eat out. Instead of taking a table by the window as he usually did, he chose the table where Sonneberg’s businessmen gathered, and he ordered a schnapps. Everything about his behavior was utterly uncharacteristic: coming to the tavern in broad daylight, choosing a different table, ordering schnapps when he usually drank wine. It didn’t take long for the first of his colleagues to sit down and ask whether anything was the matter.

At least half a dozen times, all through the afternoon and evening, he told his story, his voice trembling, his eyes downcast. He spoke of the bitter disappointment he had suffered that day. All of his Sonneberg business partners or rivals who sat down across the table from him were equally shocked and horrified—it must have been awful to find that his own assistant was stealing from him! The breach of trust was inexcusable!