The American Lady (28 page)

Pride shone in his eyes. “This technique’s called
pennelate
,
and the glass has to be hot for this as well. We make these delicate streaks by drawing a rod of colored glass over the surface very gently.” Richard’s face darkened suddenly. “I’m happy enough with what I can do with hot glass now. But I just can’t make any headway with the cold-work techniques. It’s not just that I don’t have the right tools. Täuber tells me that etching is the next big thing and that I have to find someone who knows his way around chemistry. He said he’d help me there—in fact he’s already written to a gallery owner he knows in Venice. We’ll see what comes of tha
t . . .
”

Wanda nodded. This man Täuber seemed to be serious about Richard’s future. She picked up the gleaming golden glass once more. “When I think of Heimer’s glasses and the leaping deer he puts on everythin
g . . .
”

“Don’t underestimate your father’s handiwork! I may be the only one in the village who knows that gold-leaf technique, but I’ve already found some of our own techniques in the Venetian glasses Gotthilf Täuber has shown me. Cameo work, threadwork, cut glass—we’ve been doing all that for centuries. Murano glass is all very beautiful, but most of it is done in some kind of neo-this or neo-that technique. It’s an old hat with a new ribbon, so to speak. It took me a while to realize that, but it convinced me that you can make something very special, something unique, by mixing old and new.” Richard’s eyes gleamed. “And I’m also convinced that a fellow can make money that way.”

Wanda had to laugh at his enthusiasm. “Then at least one of us has something to believe in!” she said dryly, then kissed him passionately on the lips.

Although it was already after eight o’clock by the time Wanda finally said a fond good-bye to Richard, she could see the gas flames still flickering in the Steinmann-Maienbaum workshop as she approached. Indeed, that morning Johanna had announced there would be a great deal to do that day. Wanda was thankful that the house was so quiet as it gave her a chance to think. All the same the first thing she did was look in the kitchen to see whether she could lend a hand there. When she saw that there was a pot of soup simmering away on the stove and that the bread had already been sliced, she sat down at the kitchen table and opened the drawer. She took out the notepad that Johanna always used for her various lists, then, with a smile on her face, she picked up a pencil and began to write:

Business Plan for the Heimer Workshop

She looked at the title and nodded. That was the way to do it! The next few sentences almost seemed to write themselves.

1.
What can we do to get more commissions?

• Find out what the wholesalers in Sonneberg are after, as Marie suggested in letter. Visit to Sonneberg urgently needed!
  
• Perhaps find new clients in other nearby towns? For example Coburg, Meiningen, Suhl, Bayreuth, and Kulmbach? Discuss idea with Richard.
  
• List techniques Father knows. Sit down with him and talk about whether he can make something new from old skills the way Richard has.
  

With every item she added to the list, Wanda’s confidence grew. “
Somehow I thought that you would be a bit mor
e . . .
organized about the whole thing
”—Richard’s rebuke had somehow given her new energy. She may not have trained as a bookkeeper or gone to secretarial college or learned any of the other skills needed in the business world, but she had grown up in a business household. She had ingested business thinking with her mother’s milk, so to speak. She only needed to remember that day when Pandora had sat in the courtyard of her tenement block surrounded by all her worldly goods—hadn’t she come up with a plan on the spot? She had smoothed things over with Pandora’s surly landlord and arranged a dance performance in her mother’s house.
You can do anything you want in this world!
—her own words came back to her.

Everything was suddenly clear as day: she would not be able to fix this mess on her own. She needed people on her side. Her pencil flew across the coarse paper.

2.
Who can help me get all this done?

• What can Michel do? Write lists and letters? I have to talk to him right away.
  
• What can Eva do? How can I win her over so that she helps too?
  
• I have to try to get Grandfather on my side here.
  

The next thought struck her like a bolt of lightning. She wrote:

• Richard! Is there any way he and Father could work together?
  

Richard was always complaining about not having enough equipment in his workshop after all—if he joined forces with her father, he could use all the Heimer family tools. Wanda was practically overjoyed at the thought. This was the argument she could use to lure Thomas Heimer in. Why had she never thought of it before? Her father would no longer be the only glassblower in the house, and there would be two of them to tackle every task. The wholesalers would certainly see greater production capacity as an advantage, and they might place more orders for that reason alone. New scenes formed in her mind’s eye, so wonderful, so promising that she was almost a little scared. Richard and Thomas blowing glass, Eva and Michel packing the wares, herself with a notepad in hand making sure every order went to the right client—the Heimer workshop bustling with life just as it had back in the day, just as Marie had described. Hope—more than hope, confidence—flared up in Wanda like the flame of a gas lamp.

When her family came into the kitchen, tired and hungry, an hour later, she had written down four pages of ideas. Wanda felt happier than she had for a long time—this despite the fact that Anna was looking daggers at her again. She knew exactly what she had to do in the next few days.

19

“This has to be the dumbest idea I have ever let anyone talk me into!” Eva muttered from the depths of the scarf she had wound round and round her head against the cold. “Walking to Sonneberg! In the middle of winter! Not even the gypsies do that; they’ve got the good sense to sit up on the wagons and let the horses pull them.”

Eva jerked her chin toward the little caravan of shabby-looking wagons that was just passing them. Then she kicked at a shaggy dog that was trotting alongside the carts.

“Can’t you see how dangerous it is to be out and about on foot these days? There are even wild beasts roaming the roads.”

Wanda frowned. “Oh, really, Eva. The poor dog wasn’t doing anything to you!”

“Only because I defended myself!”

“Do stop grumbling,” Wanda said, summoning unsuspected reserves of patience. “You know quite well why I wanted to go on foot. This landscape might not be anything special for you, but do try to remember that until now I’ve lived all my life in the city! This is the first time I get to see winter this way.” She swept her hand around to point at the steep mountainside with the fir and pine trees all covered in snow. Then she stopped for a moment as if to take a closer look at the landscape. Even though they were walking along the main road where the wagons had already flattened the snow for them, the walk was tougher than she had expected. The sweat was running down her arms and trickling between her breasts too. Wanda had wanted to look as grown-up and capable as she could, so she had gone to her suitcases out in the warehouse and gotten out a black jacket with fur trim on the collar and sleeves. If she had known that the sun would be so strong when they were out from the shadows of the trees, she would certainly have chosen something lighter. “Besides, I want to know how my mother felt back then, when she set off to Sonneberg with Marie’s baubles to find Mr. Woolworth.”

Eva hopped from one leg to another. “What nonsense! If I remember right it was the height of summer. If Ruth was feeling anything, it was sunburn! And unlike her we don’t have any baskets full of wares on our backs. We’re empty-handed—we look like beggars! Just so that we get one thing clear—I’ll show you where the wholesalers are, but I’m not coming in with you. I’d rather stand outside and freeze to death than grovel to one of those cutthroats.”

Wanda sighed and walked on. She was beginning to think it hadn’t been such a good idea to insist that Eva come with her.

“You know all the wholesalers in Sonneberg; you would be a great help to me,” she had wheedled, and when Eva hadn’t agreed immediately, she mentioned the idea to Wilhelm, adding, “If two of us go in, it makes a much better impression than I would all on my own, given how young I am!”

When Wilhelm ordered Eva to go, Wanda congratulated herself on a masterstroke; for one thing she had shown Wilhelm how much she valued his opinion, and for another she had gotten Eva on her sid
e . . .

For a moment they walked along in silence, each deep in thought.

Thomas and Wilhelm Heimer had both approved of the idea that Wanda should call on the wholesalers to find out what kind of glassware was in demand—and Wanda had thought it best not to mention that the idea had originally been Marie’s.

Mari
e . . .
Wanda found her thoughts wandering. She wondered whether her aunt liked the baby things that she and Johanna had packed and sent to Genoa the day after the letter had arrived. They had made a special trip into Sonneberg to buy the presents, even though Johanna was working hard to meet a big order. They had chosen the very finest the shops had to offer: a baby gown of Plauen lace, a silver teething ring, and a rattle of snow-white horn. Wanda had thought that Marie would write back as soon as the package arrived.

Wanda forced herself to think about her business plan instead and about why she was going into Sonneberg. Item one, item two, she counted them silently in time with her steps.

Thankfully, she could tick off another item on her list: she had talked to Michel.

She had to pluck up her nerve before going to visit her uncle in his stuffy little room—she always felt so sorry for his disability that she could hardly say a word. First she had beaten around the bush and asked him how he was feeling. She listened to a litany of aches and pains before she finally interrupted.

“Yes indeed, losing a leg is a dreadful thing to happen to anyone. And the pain you describe must be awful,” she said. “But all the same you’re going to have to pull yourself together. I need your help!” She didn’t feel anywhere near as confident as she sounded.
How can this poor man help me, really?
she thought as she kept her eyes fixed on Michel. It didn’t help that he was so startled by the whole situation that he suddenly felt the call of nature and shouted for Eva to bring the chamber pot—Wanda had to rush out of the room. How embarrassing! She was so taken aback that she went down to the kitchen, where Eva was waiting for her with a face like thunder.

Wanda was still trying to decide whether to go back into Michel’s room when they heard a dragging, thumping footstep in the hall. When Michel appeared in the kitchen doorway a little while later, leaning on two crutches, neither she nor Eva could quite believe their eyes. Eva was just about to make some remark—most probably a pointed one—when Wanda glanced at her imploringly and managed to stop her from speaking.

His arms trembling, Michel clumsily sat down across the table from Wanda. His voice trembled too as he asked her how a cripple like him could help. Just then, of course, Thomas chose to come clomping upstairs from his workshop. When he saw his brother, the first thing he did was take the schnapps bottle from the cupboard. A moment later all four of them raised a glass and drank a toast together. It burned Wanda’s throat terribly on the way down but it gave her a warm glow in her belly, and she told Michel that he could help her by making a ‘skills inventory.’ As she had expected, the others were most impressed by the high-sounding phrase. Wanda seized the moment and told Michel she needed a list of all of Thomas’s glasswork techniques. They should also dig out all the sample pieces that had been made in the workshop over the decades, whatever was gathering dust in a drawer or a cupboard somewhere—taking stock, so to speak. When Eva offered to do that part herself because she knew where everything was, Wanda’s heart leapt. A first success!

Before her father could come out with one of his pessimistic remarks and nip this new hope in the bud, Wanda told them what Richard had said about the Lauscha techniques being just as good as anything they knew how to do in Venice. If they wanted to make new items, the very best thing they could do was to use their old techniques. Even as she spoke, Eva slipped out of the kitchen and then came back with the first few pieces. A goblet of frosted glass painted in enamel, dated 1900. A deep bowl of clear glass laced with colorful threadwork, from the same year. A much older bowl with great thick knobs on the surface like the warts on a toad.

Wanda didn’t like every piece she saw, but she did her best to seem delighted by all of them. Her enthusiasm was infectious: suddenly Thomas remembered some pieces he had made years ago for a hotel over in Suhl. He ran down to the workshop and came back a few minutes later with an elaborate table decoration made up of several smaller parts—a pair of kneeling angels supporting a fruit bowl on their heads and the tips of their wings. And this time Wanda truly was impressed; she said that it was glasswork of the first order, admired the detail in the feathers and the robes, and the two brothers beamed with pride. Suddenly each of them wanted to outdo the other, and Eva and Thomas scurried from the kitchen and back again repeatedly, bringing a new treasure each time until the kitchen table was covered with glassware of every kind. Wanda was so happy she could have cried.

“If only I knew where those perfume bottles are that we made for the Frenchman that time!” Thomas muttered, and then told Wanda that her mother had liked them very much.

That evening Wanda was so late getting back home that Johanna had told her off mercilessly, threatening to complain to Ruth in New York. “We’re not running a hotel here where you can come and go as you please,” she scolded. Wanda looked into her aunt’s eyes and saw how tired she was from sitting up waiting for her, and she felt a hot flush of guilt. She resolved never to be so inconsiderate again.

All the same the evening at her father’s house had been worth Johanna’s complaints. For the first time in ages, there was a sense of purpose in the Heimer household, and even old Wilhelm had done his bit. “You’d do well to listen to your daughter now and again,” he told Thomas between two coughing fits. “The girl’s got the sharp wits all we Heimers have, and she’s got Ruth’s nose for a deal as well! She’s a godsend to us, and we’re lucky to have her back here with us!” Wanda had been out in the hallway, buttoning up her jacket, so she hadn’t caught whatever her father had said in reply.

She’d done the right thing, she decided now, not to spoil the family atmosphere by bringing up the idea of working together with Richard. As she and Eva turned a corner on the road, Wanda saw houses around the next bend. They had gotten as far as Steinach, thank goodness!

“Maybe we could take the railway the rest of the way after all.” Even the thought of somewhere warm to sit put a spring in Wanda’s step, although her knees were trembling.

Eva laughed briefly. “Go all that extra way to the station now, and then have to wait for the next train to come along? No, I don’t fancy that at all.” She put her head down and plodded on past Wanda. “Let’s keep going, quick as we can. I don’t want to run into any of my brothers and sisters and have to tell them why we’re on foot. They’ll decide right away that we don’t even have the money for a train ticket these days.” She drew her scarf farther up around her ears.

Wanda had no choice but to follow Eva. She didn’t say a word, but she took the opportunity to peer around at the village where Eva had been born. Several dozen houses were all jostled up together in a narrow valley. The roofs were tiled with slate, and slate was visible everywhere else as well, in every shade of light and dark, glittering silver gray on the house walls in the sunlight.

“How beautiful,” Wanda said, pointing to a house with a particularly lovely mosaic pattern of tiles on the front. Then she saw a head pop up in one of the windows and she looked away quickly. Only a few yards on, though, she exclaimed again: there on a house wall was a spray of flowers framed by a pattern of diamond shapes. The natural colors of the slate had been used so cleverly that the whole design looked almost three-dimensional.

“It all looks s
o . . .
cozy and cheerful!” It seemed that the villagers of Lauscha were not the only people with a gift for the decorative arts. Wanda resolved to visit Steinach with Richard once the snows had melted.

They had hardly passed the last few houses in the village when Eva straightened up.
“Cozy and cheerful!”
she spat, imitating Wanda. She tore the scarf from her head. “The only reason you think so is because you’ve never been cold or hungry in your life! Believe you me, if you’d had the childhood I ha
d . . .
” She clamped her mouth shut and looked grimmer than ever.

Wanda felt dreadfully naive. She linked arms with Eva, who stiffened and left Wanda in no doubt that the gesture was unwelcome, though she pretended she hadn’t noticed. Eva’s scarf was about to slip off her shoulders and Wanda put it back in place with her free hand.

“Why don’t you tell me how it was back then?” she asked gently.

“So that you can have a good laugh at me?” Eva glanced at her mistrustfully.

“I won’t, I swear it!”

But Eva simply pursed her lips even tighter and they walked on in silence.

A few minutes later, when Wanda had already given up on the conversation, Eva began to talk. She told Wanda about being one of eight children and about her father, who worked in the slate mine like most men in the village. She talked about the thousands of slate pencils that they made and packed into boxes in their little house, week in and week out. “Day after day and late into every night. We were hardly home from school before it was time to sit down at the table and work. Oh, how my back ached, even after just a couple of hours of sitting there! But Father never listened to our complaints; he just cursed if any of us dared to start crying from the pain. Even today I get the shivers whenever I hear a grinding wheel whir!” She shook herself. “There was slate dust everywhere—in our hair, on our skin, in the rags we wore instead of clothes. Everything was so horribly dirty! And it was no good at all for our health!” In a flat tone, Eva told Wanda about her brothers and sisters who had died because the dust had settled into their lungs, tearing them to shreds. “ ‘
For every one born, there’s one who dies
’
—
that’s what my mother used to say. But our house was always full of children, and I was the one who had to look after them, wiping their little butts.” Eva laughed harshly. “Then when I got married, I never had even one child of my own.”

Not knowing what to say, Wanda kept silent. Marie had already told her how much Eva had suffered from not having children of her own.

“All the same—I wouldn’t want to swap places with any of my sisters. I was lucky Sebastian came my way!” Eva grinned wryly. “Love is blind; you say that in America too, don’t you?”

Wanda nodded so emphatically that both of them burst out laughing.