The Glassblower (31 page)

19

“You did
what
?
” Johanna’s eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets. Flabbergasted, she stared at the sheet of paper that Ruth was holding out to her.

“I went to Sonneberg and showed Marie’s baubles to Mr. Woolworth,” Ruth repeated. Ruth laughed and Wanda gurgled happily in her arms.

Marie laughed even more loudly than Ruth and Wanda together, and she hopped up and down like a child.

“Don’t you understand? The American wants to buy six thousand baubles from us. Six thousand! I can’t quite believe it myself, not yet.” She snatched the contract from Johanna’s hand. “But here it is, in black and white!”

Johanna suddenly felt ashamed of herself. She had been upstairs in bed day in and day out, as though she were suffering from some dreadful disease. Wallowing in self-pity like a great crybaby. While outside, life had gone on like a giddily spinning top.

Ruth had been to see Woolworth?
That
Woolworth?

A contract for six thousand baubles?

“And there I was, silly goose, thinking you’d gone to meet Thomas!” She felt even more stupid just thinking about it. “So that’s why you didn’t go to work today!” she added, turning to Marie. “You wanted to wait for Ruth to come back with her news.”

Ruth and Marie exchanged knowing glances. They both looked about fit to burst with self-importance.

Johanna looked at Ruth as though seeing her sister for the first time.

“The things you get up to!” she said, swinging both legs out of bed. She felt dizzy from the movement. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know whether I would have dared.”

“But the truth is that
you’re
the businesswoman among us,” Ruth said, looking at her with unmistakable pride.

Once she was on her feet Johanna didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Ruth and Marie were leaning in the doorway and looking at her as though they were expecting her to crawl right back into bed.

Her sisters! The Steinmann girls.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to lie down again,” Johanna assured them as she reached for her clothes. “If we women are going to rule the roost again, then I can’t just laze around on a feather bed!”

Ruth and Marie sighed with relief. Loudly.

Peter came by a little while later. Marie had already told him what was afoot the evening before, and when he saw Johanna sitting downstairs in the kitchen, he knew that Ruth had succeeded.

While Johanna bustled about getting supper ready, Ruth told the whole story, starting from the moment the photographer blurted out which hotel the American was staying in. They all listened, astonished and openmouthed, as Ruth explained how she had gotten the chambermaid to help her sneak into Woolworth’s room. The bread and cheese sat on the table untouched. Who could even think of eating at a time like this? As Ruth recounted how Woolworth had picked up one bauble after another and looked at each in turn, Marie hung upon her every word.

“He was really impressed,” Ruth told her sister.

Johanna reached for the contract. She read it through several times, then looked up, frowning. The others didn’t fail to notice the question in her eyes.

“Look at that, it didn’t take her long to find fault,” Ruth remarked pointedly to Marie. Then she turned to Johanna and asked, “May we know just what displeases you here?”

“Nothing at all, nothing! It’s all just as it should be,” Johanna said, raising her hands appeasingly. “The delivery date will be tight, but there’s nothing we can do about that. And the price is fine. And it was very clever of you to make sure that we only have to deliver as far as Sonneberg.”

Ruth relaxed a little. “But?” she asked nevertheless, still apprehensive.

Johanna smiled helplessly. “I’m just wondering where we’re going to get the money for so much glass stock and all the packing and gas if he isn’t paying us an advance.”

There were a thousand and one questions to consider that evening, some of which they could answer themselves, some of which they left to Peter. Anything that couldn’t be settled straightaway was left for later.

It was already dark outside, with a strong wind rattling the windows by the time they finally had a plan.

The three sisters gratefully accepted Peter’s offer to lend them the money they would need for materials. They were mighty surprised all the same that he had so much in savings.

Peter also offered to buy the glass stock for them from the foundry. When he suggested he could help blow the baubles as well, Marie turned him down in no uncertain terms. It was a matter of honor for her that she do it on her own. She was well used to sitting up at the lamp until late at night and had no doubts that she could manage the order. It would be a lot of hard work, but she didn’t mind that. Ruth and Johanna would use Marie’s samples as models to paint the globes and the other designs in the daylight hours before packing them up in the evenings. Marie didn’t want to give up working for Wilhelm Heimer—best not to burn her bridges quite yet.

Although the sisters argued that they should keep their plans quiet for the time being, Peter said that it was probably impossible. The master glassmakers down at the foundry would wonder why he suddenly needed hundreds and hundreds of rods. And Fritz the crate-maker would ask the same question when Johanna went to order the packing materials.

Peter looked around the table at each of the women in turn. “Why keep it a secret? You should be proud of getting this order!”

Marie looked at him in an agony of embarrassment.

“Yes, of course. But what do you think the men will say when they find ou
t . . .
” She paused and made a wry face, but a moment later, she smiled. “Peter’s right in fact; it’s too late to get cold feet now!”

Johanna nodded. “Lauscha will just have to get used to the fact that we have our own roost to rule. There’s always going to be someone who grumbles. And some who resent what we’re doing. But we mustn’t be discouraged,” Johanna said, looking at Ruth. “Aren’t you listening?”

Ruth sat up straight with a start. “
I . . .
sorry, what were you saying?”

Johanna smiled as she shook her head.

“I suppose you were still thinking of Sonneberg.”

Ruth looked thoughtfully out the window, at the wind driving the rain against the pane.

“You have no idea how right you are.”

20

Now that Johanna had snapped out of her trance, she took charge of everything much as before. Neither Marie nor Ruth had any objection when she went to Fritz the crate-maker and bargained with him on the price of the packing material. She also insisted on going into Sonneberg to buy the white enamel paint, tinsel wire, and other supplies they would need to realize Marie’s designs. She even set out to organize the glassblowing itself.

“Why not start by blowing the globes that will take the most time to paint up?” she suggested to Marie. “Then while Ruth and I are painting those, you can get on with the rest of the order.”

Most of the time, Ruth and Marie let Johanna give the orders; they liked having the old Johanna back again, rather than a sister who just lay in bed like an invalid. They only ever objected if they felt she was pushing them around too much. And when they did, Johanna actually managed to hold her tongue for a while and let the two of them work in peace.

It didn’t take long for the rest of Lauscha to notice that something was going on at the Steinmann sisters’ house. The lights were on until late at night and their neighbors wondered whether the women ever slept. And wasn’t that the telltale flicker of a gas lamp through the windows, the kind that a glassblower used at his bench? The neighbors soon began stopping by and trying to get into the house under all sorts of pretexts: one woman came to borrow a cup of flour and another to ask for Ruth’s help in sewing a winter jacket; one man came to ask whether he could take a look at Joost’s old tools and perhaps buy one or two that he might need. When they saw what was really going on in Joost’s workshop, some of them could hardly believe their eyes.

Marie, the youngest of the Steinmann girls, sitting at the lamp?

Reactions ranged from incredulity to downright disapproval. Many spoke of dark doings, and some even said it was the devil’s work. Marie’s conviction that she could do a man’s job provided weeks of conversation, both in the village houses and down at the Black Eagle as well. When Peter came to tell them what was being said at the tavern, the sisters didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Thomas Heimer had the most to say. He told whoever would listen that he had known right from the start that there was something not quite right about the three of them. They were all stubborn, self-righteous little minxes, pampered and insolent and with their heads in the clouds. When somebody asked him why he had married one of them, and everyone else at the table burst out laughing, Thomas lunged.

“I’ll not be made a fool of! Not by you, not by a woman, not by anyone!” he yelled, and shook the man until he almost fainted. After that nobody quite dared ask why Thomas’s father saw fit to have one of these minxes still working for him—despite her devilry.

From then on, Thomas kept coming to their house at night. When the Black Eagle closed at ten o’clock, he stumbled through the streets, always drunk, and the whole neighborhood could hear him shouting for Ruth. Sometimes he grabbed hold of their gate and shook it, threatening all kinds of vengeance. The first few times, Ruth tried to calm him down, but no sooner had she leaned out the window than he became even more abusive. He called them witches, whores, and thieves. Deeply shaken, Ruth flushed and put her hands over her ears. On one occasion, when Thomas was being particularly nasty, the other two sat down at the kitchen table with her. Johanna reached over and prized Ruth’s fingers apart as she wrung her hands.

“Let him shout! Nobody will think the worse of us because he’s making a laughingstock of himself.”

From then on, the sisters tried to ignore him when he turned up drunk at their door, and Peter usually managed to send Thomas away with threats.

As if it weren’t enough to have the glassblowers heaping scorn upon them, Marie and her sisters also found that many of the local women spurned their company; conversation came to a stop or went on in hushed tones whenever Ruth or Johanna went into the village store. Some of the village women condemned the Steinmann sisters out of envy, others out of sheer incomprehension, but most of them did so out of fear. After all, if men saw them taking charge, they might get it into their heads that women could be the breadwinners of the family.

The only one who took Ruth aside when there were no eyes upon them was Mrs. Flein, the wife of Swiss Karl. She whispered in Ruth’s ear.

“Back forty years ago, when my father had pneumonia, I sat down at his lamp, and I blew beads in secret.” Mrs. Flein’s cheeks flushed as though she were still proud of what she had done. “We didn’t have the gasworks back then, and the flame wasn’t as hot as it is today, but I made those beads all the same. If I hadn’t, we’d all have starved. You tell your Marie that there’s nothing wrong with what she’s doing.” She patted Ruth on the shoulder, then scurried away as though she didn’t want to be seen with her.

But there were other reluctant admirers too, among them Wilhelm Heimer.

“Don’t think for a moment that I approve of women getting up to that sort of mischief!” he boomed, so loudly that everyone in the workshop looked over at him and Marie. “But you’ve got the gift for it, and I’ve known that for a long time now!” Then he winked and dropped his voice so that only those standing nearby heard him say, “As long as your work here doesn’t suffer, I’ll turn a blind eye to whatever else you choose to do.”

“Don’t you think you’ve impressed Wilhelm any,” Eva hissed at Marie, sounding for all the world like a jealous wife.

Griseldis and her son were regular visitors. Although Griseldis was skeptical at first, she warmed to the project when she saw how much thought the three sisters had put into the work. Sometimes she sat down at the table and helped them paint, while Magnus packed the baubles and stacked the cardboard boxes once they were full.

Week by week, the pile of boxes grew, climbing ever higher toward the ceiling. Soon there were boxes of baubles all over the house, and it was a nerve-racking business picking a path around them to make sure nothing toppled and fell.

Even with all the enmity they attracted and all the hard work, it was a good time for the Steinmann sisters. Though none of them knew how to put their feelings into words, they were proud to see Joost’s old workshop come back to life and to be working together once more.

The bulk of the work fell to Marie, but she never once complained about putting in twenty hours a day. Instead she sat at Joost’s bench and blew glass as though she’d been doing nothing else her whole life. She was quite carried away by the idea that her baubles soon would be hanging on Christmas trees all across America. Johanna sometimes wondered whether there wasn’t a touch of obsession in Marie’s dedication. When she mentioned this to Peter, he replied dryly, “Is there even any such thing as dedication without obsession?”

For Johanna, too, the work was like stepping into freedom after doing nothing all summer long: she painted, finished, numbered the items, wrote the price tags, packed the baubles, tracked the inventory. Finally, it was her chance to show what she was made of. And she had to admit that there was a kernel of obsession inside her as well.

Ruth went around with a blissful smile on her lips all the time—almost entirely thanks to the letters the postman brought.

21

Hamburg, 30 August 1892

Dearest Ruth,

I hope that my letter finds you in good spirits and in good health? I am sure that there is much work to fill your days, so I almost feel guilty for taking up your valuable time with my letter.

Ruth, you cannot imagine how pleased Frank (Mr. Woolworth) is to be able to have your Christmas decorations in his catalog. Throughout the journey back to Hamburg he talked of little else but how he could hardly wait to see those baubles shining on his shop displays. You should know, most respected Ruth, that Woolworth stores are not like other shops; we do not have our wares stacked up out of reach on shelves behind a counter, but rather, everything is set out where the customers can help themselves. This means that everyone can pick them up, look as closely as they wish, and then choose whatever their heart desires. The customer is king, so Frank always says. My employer is quite sure, as am I, that your Christmas baubles will suit our customers’ tastes exactly.

I am distressed to discover that even in the first paragraph I have already broken my resolution not to take up too much of your time. Ruth, you have made me into quite the chatterbox. There are a thousand things I wish to tell you. But where should I begin? Where should I stop? And yet I confess I find that a written letter is a poor substitute for being able to look into your eyes and listen while you talk in that lively and inimitable way you have. Please permit me to say that since we met, I have not stopped thinking of you. The evening we spent together, and then the walk we took through that incomparable landscape enchanted me. You, Ruth, enchanted me!

I am a man of numbers, a sober-headed chief clerk, and yet I find myself asking Fate what it could mean that we met. I hardly dare hope that you might consider our meeting anything more than a commercial transaction. Though this, too, has its charm—it seldom happens that I find myself negotiating with such a charming partner. Mr. Woolworth, by the way, says that he found the way you did business very “American.” You may be assured that he means that as a compliment.

As I sit in my office and look out the window, I see steamers setting out for the New World every day. In only a few weeks I, too, will set foot aboard one of these oceangoing giants to accompany your Christmas baubles—and the many other glasswares from your home village—to America. But before that time comes, I wish you to know that I am considering a visit to Sonneberg on the 29
th
of September. Given the quantity of goods that are to be transported to Hamburg on the 30
th
, it might be a good idea for me to supervise the loading and packing of these wares myself. Most respected Ruth, if you chose to come from Lauscha to Sonneberg, we could be certain that the wares are treated with the due respect. After all, glass is very fragile, is it not?

I would be very pleased indeed to receive a few lines with your reply. I have already given you my address in Hamburg. You will also find it on the back of the envelope to this letter. With hopes of a positive reply, I remain,

Yours sincerely,

Steven Miles

Lauscha, 9 September 1892

Dear Steven,

Thank you for being so kind as to write. Your letter was delightful! (If one may say this sort of thing of a letter.) I would be very pleased if we could meet in Sonneberg on the 29th of September. Of course I plan to accompany our Christmas decorations—after all, I must make sure that they don’t end up in a ditch by the side of the road somewhere between Lauscha and Sonneberg! Do you see now what
you
have done to
me
? No sooner do I have dealings with you than I begin to behave like a silly woman. Or at least write things that sound silly. Please ascribe this to the fact that I have as little experience in writing letters as I do in business affairs.

I, too, find myself thinking of our meeting every day but I do not have the words to express my feelings as beautifully as you do.

Perhaps I should tell you that the work is proceeding apace. Marie can hardly wait to sit down at her lamp every day. I believe that for her, it is more a pleasure than a chore. Johanna and I greatly enjoy the work of painting and finishing the pieces. It is quite another thing when we are producing the wares for ourselves, rather than working for someone else. It is a very fine feeling to be able to be proud of what one has done. Especially since my husband does whatever he can to humiliate and hurt me. He comes to our house almost every night, drunk, demanding that I come out. Once he lay in wait for me on the way to the village store and grabbed me roughly by the sleeve.
I’ll get what is due to me,
he said. Thank God that some of the villagers happened to pass by just then. I was honestly frightened. What if he does something to Wanda one day, simply to cause me pain? When I look into his eyes, all I see is rage. Impotent rage. He recently asked me, in all seriousness, why I left him. Can you imagine? Until he understands what he did wrong, he will not leave me in peace. Enough! Over and done with!

Do not worry, dear Steven, I am not about to burst into tears again and tell you my sad story. Even today I feel quite ill at ease when I recall how I behaved that evening. I am still most grateful to you for your kind understanding. The only way I can explain my candor is to say that from the very outset I had the feeling that I could trust you wholly and purely. When you consider that in truth I have little experience with men—and that what little I have had could hardly be called joyful—this is in fact quite astonishing. But deep inside I know that you are different. And that is why I am already looking forward to seeing you again, By the way: when you look out of your window, please give the ocean liners my greetings. It must be a fine feeling to be so close to the “big, wide world”!

With warm wishes from the Paradise of Glass,

Ruth

Hamburg, 15 September 1892

Dear Ruth,

Your letter made me the happiest man in Hamburg!

I must protest strongly against one thing that you said; you are a most gifted correspondent. The lines that you write are as lively and engaging as your conversation in person. When I read them, I feel almost as though I were sitting with you in the workshop while you and your sisters create your baubles with skillful hands. How I would love to be there with you in your Paradise of Glass—and what a beautiful name that is! Instead I threaten to drown under a mountain of paperwork. The greater the proportion of foreign goods offered for sale in Mr. Woolworth’s shops, the greater, alas, the workload. Yet I do not wish to complain. It is always exciting, with every day that dawns, to watch how he is building a great business empire through his cunning maneuvers. Indeed, I feel honored to be allowed to work for such a great man as Frank Winfield Woolworth. And yet there are times, such as now, when I yearn to be able to pack my case and travel wherever I will. But, alas, life is not that simple. Yet when I hear, dear Ruth, how your husband mistreats and molests you, then I burn to depart with the next coach and tell this villain just what I think of him. What kind of life is that, if every day you must live in fear? You do not deserve this. Nobody deserves this.

By the time you read these lines it will be just a few days until we see one another again. Thus I know I cannot expect to receive another letter from you in the meantime. I can hardly wait to sit across the table from you once more, to look into your velvet brown eyes and then never look away. Dare I imagine that you, too, think of me from time to time? You, the Princess of the Paradise of Glass?

I remain, in joyful anticipation,

Yours sincerely,

Steven Miles

Lauscha, 21 September 1892

Dear Steven,

I am counting the days until we see one another again the way a child counts the days to Christmas!

Your Ruth