The Glassblower (5 page)

“What would life be like if nothing ever changed? We can’t stop such changes; that’s for certain. But sometimes we can turn the screw a little and make them work for us.” Strobel nodded portentously. “Which is why, my dear Johanna Steinmann, I have an offer for you.”

7

“I would like you to come and work for me. As m
y . . .
assistant.”

Strobel’s words echoed in her ears.
Assistant
—what a fancy word. Why not say shopgirl, or hired hand? She walked through the streets of Sonneberg as though in a daze, and a thousand thoughts crowded round her, keeping pace. Strobel’s offer had given her a great deal to think about.

At the edge of town, she stopped suddenly. Should she buy a bag of coffee as she usually did? Deciding that they wouldn’t starve to death for want of a few pennies, and that they all deserved a reminder of the good times, she headed for the grocer’s that she visited every Friday. She ignored the silver trays piled high with tempting pastries and the barrels of salt herring. A little while later, she left the shop with a couple of ounces of coffee. The smell of freshly ground beans was an extra treat she could enjoy for free.

As soon as she reached the outskirts of town, the road began to climb gently uphill. Johanna strode on like a sleepwalker. Her thoughts kept going round and round, always returning to the conversation in Strobel’s shop.

He had said that he admired the stubborn way she bargained with him, and he thought that she might turn out to have a good head for business—whatever that might mean.

Her first reaction was to say, “Me? Help you here? I can’t be of any use to you!” But she had paused a moment and stroked the smooth mahogany table with the palm of her hand. Then she had asked, “What kind of work would I be doing for you?” Her voice was flat, toneless. She thought she knew the answer—indeed, she could already see herself polishing the floor. Some work!

“I would make you my right-hand woman,” Strobel had replied. “As I do business with my customers, you will draw up inventory, note down their orders, and then deliver them to the suppliers. The greater part of your work would involve keeping proper records. In a business the size of mine, written records of every transaction are absolutely crucial.” What a pompous tone he had! “I’ve been thinking for some time of hiring an assistant. Perhaps the time has come to make the thought a reality.”

She had just nodded. It could hardly have been more astonishing if Strobel had offered her a job polishing the moon.

“I would pay you of course,” he had added, misinterpreting her silence. “Though you understand that we would have to agree on some probationary period at a lower rate of pay. But once you have been on the job for a while—” He broke off there, leaving the rest of the sentence to dangle tantalizingly unspoken, like bait on a hook. Johanna snorted. He hardly needed to lure her in like this! His first few sentences had been enough to conjure up images in her mind’s eye that were quite tempting enough in themselves: Sonneberg and all the visitors in its streets, customers from all around the world, orders that ran into the hundreds of items, the samples all sitting neatly in their drawers waiting for the right client—and in the middle of all this hustle and bustle, Johanna Steinmann from Lauscha. Then straightaway she had felt a pang of guilt. How could she let herself be carried away so soon after Father’s death?

“I don’t know whether I can do all that,” she had answered, brushing aside her daydreams. She had seen herself standing there, notebook in hand, elegantly coiffed and wearing a dark-blue dress, attending to the customer
s . . .
but she couldn’t ever be anyone’s assistant. Although excitement bubbled up inside her, she had kept it from spilling over.

Friedhelm Strobel grasped her hand. “If
I
trust you to do all that, it should be enough. Or do you think I would make such an offer to any young lass who wandered in off the street?”

Johanna wasn’t quite sure whether this was meant as a compliment or an insult. But she shook his hand—that horrible hand with the chewed flesh at the fingernails—and stood up. “I will have to consider your offer,” she had said, noticing how frosty her tone was.

Oh, drat it all! She kicked at a pile of leaves. Why did that man always put her on the defensive? Was it because he wasn’t from around here? Somebody had told her once that Friedhelm Strobel was from an important family of Berlin merchants. Maybe that was why he could seem so hoity-toity, even arrogant, Johanna mused. On the other hand, he had always been scrupulously polite to her, and that despite the fact that she could be stubborn, even mulish, in her dealings with him. More than once she had wondered whether, for some unknown reason, she had ended up in Strobel’s good graces. Well, today’s job offer certainly confirmed that.

Johanna grinned. She had been able to get a good price for the jars as well.

Now she could see the outskirts of Lauscha in the distance. The mountains all around cast their long shadows over the houses that clung to the steep slopes. When the sun shone, the wooden shingles on the rooftops glittered gray and silver, but when the village was in shadow like this, all the houses seemed to be wearing gloomy black hoods.

Johanna stopped to rest before tackling the final slope. Wouldn’t Ruth and Marie be surprised? She smiled from ear to ear, and though she knew it was vain, she felt she had every reason to be pleased with herself. What had he said? “Do you think I would make such an offer to any young lass who wandered in off the street?”

“Not to any lass, but certainly to me!” Johanna said to herself, and laughed out loud.

But a moment later, she had her doubts. If she took Strobel up on his offer, she would have to live in Sonneberg. She would have to leave Ruth and Marie on their own, and only come home at weekends; there was no way she would be able to walk more than twenty-five miles every day. And if she took the train all the time, it would probably eat up most of her wages.

And another thought nagged at her: What if she couldn’t live up to Strobel’s expectations? What if she did something foolish?

Ever since leaving Sonneberg, she had been of two minds about the matter. She had asked to be allowed to sleep on the decision. After all, she had to talk it over with her sisters first. And with Peter. Not that he had any say in the matter, but he did have a knack for asking the right questions, which her sisters did not. Yes, she decided, she would pay him a neighborly call after supper. She set off up the hill toward home.

Friedhelm Strobel was also thinking back on the conversation, his mind elsewhere as he went through the motions of showing his samples catalog to a buyer whose company was notoriously late with its payments. He grinned quietly to himself as he remembered how nonchalantly she had answered him—as though there were nothing in the least bit unusual about his offer. The little minx certainly knew how to play it cool. He passed his tongue over his lips until he found a scrap of dry skin, which he bit off greedily. Oh yes, Johanna Steinmann was far from being a frightened little mouse like most females her age. You could see that just by looking at her figure, which was wiry and firm, without an ounce of extra flesh on her anywhere and instead the muscles of a hard worker. Shoulders square, she looked ready to face the world, almost like a proud young brave except for the gentle swell of her breasts, which were such a pleasure to gaze upon. And the way she looked at him with those big eyes of hers above broad high cheekbones? Even the dreadful headscarf she always wore could not disguise her beauty. If he took away her scarf, replaced those dreadful country bumpkin boots with an elegant pair of shoes, and put her into a close-fitting dress, Johanna Steinmann would be far more attractive than many of the fine ladies who came to buy from him.

She was also far from stupid. Just now she had given further proof of her ability to cope with the unexpected. She was confident, intelligent, and adaptable—all qualities that were greatly sought after in his line of work.

And not just in the world of work.

He turned half his mind back to the current customer, naming prices for the vases and glass dishes he was looking at—full price for this buyer, no question of a discount. And all the while he felt his excitement growing.

The customer was disappointed at Strobel’s stubbornness and made some disparaging remark. Strobel leafed on through the catalog, chewing at his lip as he did so. He soon tasted blood on his tongue. He had to get rid of this fellow. He could hardly wait to lock up the shop for a while and be alone.

He had always been sorry to see Johanna leave his shop on Fridays, her head held high. More than once he had imagined what might happen if he met her in other circumstances. What an opportunity that would be for him—or for them both! Well, now that Joost Steinmann was dead, his chance had come.

He could hardly wait to take Johanna under his wing. She would learn fast; he was sure of that. Under his instruction, she would be able to develop her talent, and he had no doubt that she would soon play the game better than anyone.

Then he heard a voice in his mind, speaking from somewhere far back in his memory.
“Only a fool would poach in his own forest.”
It was so unexpected that for a moment Strobel couldn’t recall who had said it. Father! His father had said that, back when
. . .

All at once he remembered the old man’s proud patrician face as though it were yesterday. He hadn’t thought about him for an age, or about all that he stood for in Strobel’s life. His good mood vanished in a gust of cold wind.

Why now? Why today? Strobel fumed inwardly. It was as though his father was still seeking to rule his life, even from so far away. Was it the secret envy of a man who begrudged his son even the smallest pleasure in life? Or was it perhaps a warning?

Strobel stopped turning the pages of the catalog.

God knows, this current situation was nothing like what had happened back the
n . . .

All at once he remembered the old story so vividly that he quite forgot his customer was there. He looked up with a start as the man cleared his throat, loudly and insistently. The buyer was pointing somewhat impatiently to the first page of the catalog.

“I said, I would like three dozen of these dessert dishes, for two marks and thirty pence each. Would you be so good as to note that down?”

8

In the end the decision that had given Johanna such trouble was taken out of her hands. While she had been away, Wilhelm Heimer had come to call on her sisters. Although he had wanted to speak to her, as the eldest, he had settled for Ruth. He had recently begun supplying a new wholesaler, and he had a number of extra commissions to fill and would need help. He told Ruth and Marie that the work would consist of painting patterns, applying the silver wash, and packing the wares. There were bowls, drinking glasses, vases, and glass beads to prepare.

“I didn’t want to say anything at Joost’s funeral; I hadn’t shaken hands on the commission back then,” he added, and then he asked them whether they would come work for him. They could start the very next day, he told them. “Your father would have wanted you to.”

Ruth and Marie were almost bursting with excitement when they told Johanna about Heimer’s offer. All of a sudden working as hired hands wasn’t something to be ashamed of, but a goal to strive for.

Once she heard the news, Johanna never even mentioned that Strobel had offered her a job. If there was work in the village, then it made no sense to go off somewhere else. All the same, she felt a pang of regret the next morning on the way up to Heimer’s workshop when she stopped one of the village women who was headed into town and handed her a note to pass on to Friedhelm Strobel, turning down his offer. Farewell then, Sonneberg. Farewell dark-blue dress, and farewell customers from far and wide.

Instead she found herself standing in Heimer’s workshop a little while later with a rubberized smock around her, listening closely as Widow Grün explained how to work with the silver solvent.

“Look here, you take the goblet by its stem, and then put a couple of drops of silver nitrate into it from this tube.” Griseldis Grün showed her where the bottle of solution hung, and then pointed out the hole at the base of the stem. The goblets were made with double walls, to be silvered on the inside. “Then you put in a few drops of this one as well, that’s the reducing fluid. After that you can dunk the goblet in the hot water. The silver doesn’t take so well unless there’s a bit of heat working on it from the outside, do you see?”

Johanna nodded. She had been wondering why there was a hot plate next to their workbench.

“You have to be quick about it. You’ll need to give the goblet a good hard shake, so that the solution goes all over the inside.”

The clear glass goblet turned silver as Johanna watched.

“And you have to be sure that you never get any of the solution onto the outside of the goblet, or it leaves behind the most horrible marks.” Griseldis held up the finished product and showed off the unblemished silver all the way around. “That’s how it works.”

“It looks splendid! Hardly like glass at all!” Johanna shook her head, amazed.

Griseldis smiled. “That’s why they call it poor man’s silver, you know. Now look, once the silver has taken to the glass, there’ll be a little fluid left over. You shake it out in here.” She pointed to a box, its sides covered in a thick layer of cotton wool.

Johanna frowned. “What’s the good of that? If the silver nitrate’s only good for one use, then surely we could just tip the rest out.”

“My word, no! It’s nasty-looking stuff, and you may not think so to look at it, but there’s still some silver in there. It all drips down to the bottom of the box. By the end of the year there’s enough to make it worthwhile, believe you me. This box is worth money.” She leaned closer to Johanna.

“And just try to guess who gets the profit from it?”

Johanna shrugged. “Heimer, I should imagine.”

Instead of answering, Widow Grün shook her head and grinned knowingly.

Instead of asking further, Johanna stared at the bottle of silver nitrate where it hung on the wall.

“You’re in no mood for riddles, are you, my dear?” Widow Grün put a hand on Johanna’s arm and shook her gently.

Johanna swallowed. “It’s all s
o . . .
strange. Father’s hardly been dead two weeks and now here we are in someone else’s house, working at someone else’s benche
s . . .
It’s all happened so fast, I almost feel that life is a merry-go-round.”

The old woman sighed. “I know what you mean. You wouldn’t believe how well I know! Just be happy that you have any work at all, my child. A woman on her own has a hard time in this world, let me tell you.”

Johanna looked up. “Did Heimer come and offer us work of his own accord, or did you have a hand in that?” she whispered. From the corner of her eye she could see Heimer looking over Ruth’s shoulder as she packed up the finished goods. She hoped that he would have no complaints.

“I wouldn’t dare try such a thing!” Griseldis laughed. “You can’t change that fellow’s mind, nor try to plant an idea in him. You’ll see soon enough that he runs the workshop just exactly as he sees fit.” She was whispering too now. “Let’s get to work, or we’ll have trouble.”

Johanna would have liked to thank her for her help. Maybe even ask her about her son, Magnus, who had been gone from Lauscha for so long. But one look at her neighbor’s face showed her that this was not the time or place for such talk.

She couldn’t believe how big the workshop was. It made their workshop at home look like one in a dollhouse. The Heimer family home was the only three-story house in the village; the kitchen was upstairs on the second floor and the bedrooms were above it, right under the roof. The workshop and storerooms took up the whole of the first floor, and even that didn’t seem to be enough space; every square inch was crammed full of supplies or half-finished items or products already packed into crates and waiting to be taken away. The air was foul and smelled of chemicals, unwashed bodies, and bird droppings. Johanna was disgusted to see that there were some ten bird cages in the room. The village glassblowers loved to catch songbirds in the forest in the hope that the sound of their song would cheer up the workshop, but Joost had never liked the custom and his daughters didn’t either. Quite the opposite: Johanna always felt sorry for the poor little creatures in their dirty cages. She turned away from a robin redbreast that gazed at her, sad eyed.

What would Father say if he could see her here now?

Like Joost, Wilhelm Heimer had lost his wife very early, and he had raised his three sons alone. All three had become glassblowers, but unlike most of the young men in Lauscha they made no attempt to set up their own workshops. Instead, they worked in their father’s house, just as the Steinmann sisters had for Joost. Despite their similarities, the two families had never had much to do with one another, not only because the Heimer household was at the top of the village but also because both houses had quite enough to do with the work that came in. Joost and Wilhelm had drunk together often enough at the Black Eagle, but otherwise each went his own way and didn’t interfere in the other’s business. One had three daughters and the other three sons, and naturally there had been talk around the tavern table of making a match. In the end though, everyone in Lauscha knew that the Steinmann girls kept to themselves and didn’t let the boys turn their heads.

Johanna sighed. It was a mad world, for here she was now, working with Wilhelm’s sons. She stole a glance to the left where three lamps were set up by their workbenches, each with its own gas pipe. She could guess what that must have cost, given the fees the gasworks charged. But judging by the mountain of raw glass rods that lay by each bench, the three Heimer lads had plenty of work. The three brothers had already been sitting there, stooped over their lamps, when Johanna and her sisters had arrived that morning. Thomas had been the only one to look up and greet them; the other two had just grunted a word or two. So far none of them had taken a break.

Thomas, the eldest of the three, was her age. Sebastian was the middle brother. He was the only one to have married, and his wife, Eva, came from the village of Steinach. She was sitting at a table with Marie, busily painting. When Johanna looked over at them, she had trouble telling them apart from behind—they both had the same slim figure. The men in Eva’s family made stylus pencils for writing on slates, the kind that schoolboys used, and they were dirt poor. Johanna remembered what Ruth had said about getting married, and she smiled. The Heimer household must look like paradise on earth to Sebastian’s wife. Making a slate pencil was an exhausting and dirty job, so the work she did here must seem like child’s play by comparison.

“When you’re done with this little lot, you can get to work with the tinsel,” said a voice at her ear all of a sudden.

Johanna jumped.

Heimer had appeared as if out of nowhere and was standing behind the Widow Grün. He set down a pile of cardboard boxes and inspected a few goblets that were drying on a bed of nails. He filled two boxes, which he left standing by the workbench. Then he was gone again.

Johanna frowned. “What does that even mean?”

Widow Grün shrugged and smiled indulgently. “You’ll get used to that sort of thing. Best not to ask the point of every order he gives. Come on, let’s pack up the rest of them!”

Johanna looked at the last goblet she had silvered and felt a twinge of pride. No streaks and no bubbles. Good! She was beginning to enjoy the work.

Ruth was enjoying herself too. Wilhelm Heimer was pleased with her work. At least, that’s what she assumed his muttered words to mean when he took a jar from her hand and checked the label she had written for it. She wasn’t daft! It was hardly difficult to tell the jars apart when one type was five inches tall and the other seven inches.

And it was a clean job too! She was lucky that Heimer had put her to work at this bench. Ruth glanced over her shoulder at her older sister. She felt sorry for Johanna, standing there in a beige rubberized smock that was already splashed all over with horrible gunk. By the looks of it, she must be perspiring underneath it. The ripe smell of the silver solution filled the whole room, and Ruth didn’t even want to imagine what it must be like for Johanna and Widow Grün to breathe in those fumes directly.

Ruth was working at the packing table alongside Sarah, another hired hand. The table ran almost the whole length of the workshop. As she looked with growing dismay at the chaos of glassware in front of them, Ruth thought the packing itself was barely even half of what they had to do here. Someone or other was constantly coming over and putting more finished pieces on the table; either it was the glassblowers bringing dishes and plates that were to be packed away without painting, or it was Johanna and Widow Grün with the silvered pieces, or Marie and Eva with painted items. It wasn’t long before Ruth began to wonder whether her job really was something to envy, as she had thought at first. Sarah, however, seemed utterly untroubled by the chaos all round as she calmly painted letters and numbers onto labels and pasted them onto the wares.

Ruth hadn’t wanted to make any fuss on the first day of work, but as the mountain of glassware grew, she cautiously suggested, “Maybe we should sort things out a little first, before we write the labels.”

Sarah looked up. She looked slowly down the length of table at the mounting heaps of wares, then shrugged. Although she didn’t seem resistant to the idea, she didn’t agree either.

Ruth was beginning to get fed up with how slowly Sarah worked. “If we don’t hurry up we’ll have to pile the next lot of finished wares on the floor.” Then she began to sort the pieces without bothering with what Sarah would say. She didn’t want Heimer thinking she was daft.

Sarah went on working at the labels. “If I got myself into a tizzy every time the table filled u
p . . .
” She puffed out her cheeks, and then exhaled a long breath.

An hour later the table was almost empty, and Ruth calmed down. But an hour after that, the wares were piling up again so fast that they could hardly keep up. There was something to be said for Sarah’s air of indifference, Ruth decided, the way she kept calm even when the table was a mess. She herself practically panicked when she saw Marie approaching with a whole tray of vases. “The two of us can’t manage all this,” she muttered. And the boxes that were already full had to be cleared away somewhere. Maybe she should start by—

Just then, a tall, fat woman appeared in the doorway. “Lunch is ready!” she called in a deep voice, then turned and stomped off.

Ruth had never been happier to go to lunch.

“Be our guest, and let this food to us be blessed.” Wilhelm Heimer looked around the table. “Starting today, there are going to be three more mouths to feed, but no one will have to go hungry. Old Edel has taken care of that, eh?” This was directed at Edeltraud, the housekeeper, who just nodded, a sour look on her face. “Right then, dig in and don’t hold back!”

The three sisters looked at one another. They didn’t dare to do as Heimer said. Were they really supposed to eat from the serving dish like pigs from a trough?

The deaf old housekeeper had brought in a great platter of food and set it in the middle of the table. Everyone had a spoon set in front of them, but there were no plates. There was nothing wrong with the meal as such, the potato salad looked tasty enough and there were plenty of spicy little sausages piled on top. Ruth tried to ignore the rumbling of her stomach. The others were already digging in, and she could even hear the sausages burst as teeth bit into them. Surely they weren’t going to put a sausage back into the dish with the end bitten off? Ruth wondered. Then she saw Michel, the youngest son, licking the grease off his fingers before reaching for the next sausage. Maybe she should just eat a slice of bread for the moment.