The Glassblower (26 page)

9

When Marie didn’t turn up for work, Ruth went by at lunchtime to see what the matter was. When Marie told her the news, Ruth could hardly control herself. She sobbed and howled and little Wanda did the same. Marie had trouble calming them both down.

“Why didn’t you fetch me last night?” she asked again and again. “Why didn’t Griseldis tell me first thing this morning?” Ruth refused to leave Johanna’s bedside. That afternoon she hurried up to the Heimer house with Wanda in her arms and told everyone that Johanna had come home from Sonneberg with a bad case of pneumonia, and that she and Marie would be taking turns looking after their sister. The old man made a face and muttered something about “No work means no pay,” but by then Ruth was already halfway down the stairs.

Johanna spent most of her time staring at the wall. Marie and Ruth sat by her bedside, whispering a few words to one another every now and then. Even Wanda seemed to sense that she should keep quiet.

Though Ruth tried several times to ask Johanna about what had happened, she simply shut her eyes in reply.

She didn’t utter a word all day. When Marie brought a bowl of soup up to her late in the afternoon, she shook her head. The look on her face was almost furious as she stared fixedly at the wall. She refused to eat or drink. She didn’t sneeze or cough or cry. She didn’t even use the chamber pot. She made not a sound, not even a whimper.

As the hours passed, Ruth and Marie exchanged worried glances. It was as though Johanna had left her body.

Neither Ruth nor Marie nor Peter had imagined that Johanna would begin to talk that same evening. The three of them were sitting around her bed when Johanna suddenly turned to look at them.

“He’s mad,” she said, her voice curiously childlike. She looked at each of them in turn with an astonished expression on her face.

None of them dared say a word—or even breathe too loudly—for fear that she would fall silent again.

“Strobel went mad. Just like that.” She laughed hysterically. “From one day to the next.” Her eyelids fluttered as though she had a lash trapped in her eye.

The others looked at her.

In plain language, in just a few hastily uttered sentences—as though she wanted to get it over and done with as quickly as possible—she told them what had happened. She didn’t go into detail, but nor did she conceal anything essential.

“Strobel went mad. There’s no other way I can explain it,” she repeated, plucking hectically at the bedclothes. “So? Why don’t you say anything?” she asked them, almost accusingly.

Ruth flung her arms around her neck, sobbing. “Oh, Johanna, it’s all my fault,” she whimpered. “I’m to blame that you got in late. I’ll never, ever forgive mysel
f . . .
”

“What are you talking about?” Peter said, dragging her forcibly away from the bed.

Johanna stared at her sister. “You’re not to blame. Nobody but Strobel is to blame, nobody at all. There’s no explanation for something like this. Is there?” Her gaze drifted over to Peter. “What is it? Why are you looking so angry?”

“Because I could practically burst with rage,” he said harshly.

Marie plucked at his sleeve.

“I’m not angry at you, God forbid,” he added more gently, squeezing Johanna’s hand. Nobody failed to notice that she accepted it. “But I don’t think Strobel’s mad. I think he’s dangerous. He’s a defiler of women. Perhaps more! I think he’s capable of almost anything. The callous look on his face when
I . . .
”

“You were there?” Johanna sat up straight in bed. “What? When? Why? But you couldn’t have known for sure that it was him!”

“Who else?” Peter retorted. “He didn’t even bother to deny it. He just said that it was his word against yours.”

Johanna clamped her lips shut. They were bloodless and thin.

“Peter,” Marie said in a warning tone, “Johanna’s tired, can’t you see that?”

“Then I’ll say just one more thing: the bastard got what was coming to him.”

“What have you done? Peter, have you committed a sin?” Johanna asked with a touch of hysteria in her voice.

“He tanned Strobel’s hide for him so he won’t be able to sit down for a week,” Ruth answered in his place. Tears shone in her eyes. “If I could, I’d do it to him all over again.”

“And I’d pass you the stick,” Marie said just as forcefully. At that, a sad smile flitted across Johanna’s pale face.

The next few weeks were a time of healing. Their routine never varied: while Marie and Ruth were at work, Johanna spent the day alone at home. Now and then Magnus came by. He seemed to have developed protective feelings for Johanna, which Ruth and Marie found touching but which Johanna found burdensome. Sometimes she went over to visit Peter, sat at his kitchen table, and watched him work. Most of the time though, she did nothing. For the first time in her life, her days were filled not with work but with calm. And it did her good. For it was not just her physical injuries that needed time to heal; so too did the wounds that were not visible to the eye.

“
You have only yourself to blame for what happened here!”
Strobel had shouted in her face, the spittle flying. But the more Johanna thought about it, the more certain she became that she could
not
have prevented it. There hadn’t been any sign in the days before Strobel left town that he would undergo such a tremendous change of character. Quite the contrary: he had even made a point of mentioning how pleased he was that she was there so that he could travel. He hadn’t looked at her strangely, or no more strangely than before. Nor was the fact that she had turned up late that morning a real explanation for his brutal attack. There could only be one reason: Strobel had gone mad, irredeemably mad, during his trip. She told herself this again and again. If she were honest—and during this time she was more honest with herself than ever before—deep down she had known right from the start that there was something wrong with him. And she had taken the job all the same. If anything
that
had been her mistake.

“If we had to go round suspecting every odd fellow of criminal tendencies, there wouldn’t be many people left we would want to have dealings with,” Marie responded when Johanna mentioned her thoughts aloud.

When she looked at it like that, Johanna had to admit that her sister was right. Wilhelm Heimer had his little ways, and people said the most extraordinary things about Griseldis’s son. Even Ruth’s husband raised Johanna’s hackles. But did that mean that all of these men were dangerous? Surely not. Despite that, from then on, there was always a spark of mistrust in Johanna’s eyes when she talked to a man, and she never quite lost it for the rest of her days.

As well as all these painful questions about why it had happened, there was also the fear of possible consequences. When her period started, she felt a great weight fall from her heart.

Of course it wasn’t long before the rumors that Strobel had started about Johanna spread to Lauscha. As tongues began wagging, nobody quite knew what to make of it. People never went so far as to say out loud that they thought Johanna was a thief. The Steinmann girls were not like other women, certainly, but that didn’t mean that they were criminals. The villagers were much more inclined to believe that the rumors from town were all about making one of their number look bad.

Thomas Heimer needled his wife to tell him more, but she remained steadfastly silent. Eventually most people chose to believe the Steinmann version, which was that Johanna had come home because of a serious illness. Nobody was much surprised when she chose to stay. Lauscha folk liked to stay close to home. Hardly any of them had ever left, and of the handful who did, most came back again, as Magnus Grün’s return confirmed.

At first neither Ruth and Marie nor Peter had believed that Johanna would be able to find her way back to normalcy. But gradually, day by day, she grew more like her old self; every time Johanna laughed at one of Ruth’s jokes, made some sarcastic remark about a neighbor, or left the house to fetch butter from the store, the others breathed a sigh of relief. Only then did they realize how tense they had been. Instead of tiptoeing around the house, they resumed their daily tasks. Johanna took on the housekeeping that had been so badly neglected. Ruth began to come by only once a day, and no longer stayed for hours on end. Peter got to work on his backlog of orders. And Marie finally dared to sit down with her sketchpad in the evenings after work.

10

“I’m off then,” Ruth said, poking her head round the kitchen door.

Thomas had been lying on the kitchen bench after a long day at work, but now he sat up.

“Where?”

Ruth switched Wanda over to her other hip. “To see Johanna, of course!” She tried to keep her voice light and easy.

“Have you forgotten that we’re supposed to join the others? Father has some business he wants to discuss with us,” he said.

“No, I haven’t forgotten,” Ruth answered. “But Wilhelm and Sebastian will be smoking their disgusting pipes, and that would just make Wanda’s cough worse. I don’t know what to do about it as it is. A cough like this in the middle of summer, it’s just not normal. Why can’t Wilhelm talk to you while you’re working?”

“You’re coming,” Thomas said, so quietly that for a moment Ruth didn’t understand him.

She stood in the doorway, indecisive.

“I can come later,” she offered. She didn’t want yet another argument. “It won’t take long. I just want to take them a pot o
f . . .
”

“Damn it, are you deaf?” Thomas took two steps and struck a short, sharp blow across the back of Ruth’s head. Wanda whimpered softly.

Please, child, don’t cry!

Thomas hated it when Wanda cried.

“I don’t like the way you spend all your time with your sisters. Eva doesn’t run off to Steinach every day; she knows where she belongs. But I have to keep on reminding you that you’re a Heimer now!” He was shouting by now. “I want to know what the three of you get up to all the time!”

His face was just a handsbreadth from hers, his too-big eyes boring into hers.

“I asked you a question, woman! What do you get up to? That busybody Johanna isn’t normal!”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Ruth replied, her eyes downcast. “If you came to call on them sometime, you could see for yourself that there’s nothing out of the ordinary going on.” She put more courage into the words than she really felt.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Thomas retorted. “And you’ll stop taking your sisters food and who knows what else! From now on you’ll look after my family.” He gripped her wrist and twisted.

Ruth howled with pain.

“So,
where
are you going this evening?”

The pain shot up toward her elbow, then higher and higher an
d . . .
“To your family,” she said between clenched teeth. She hated herself.

Thomas let go of her wrist.

They had no sooner arrived at the Heimer house than the trouble started again.

Thomas sat down with the other men at the table, ignoring Ruth altogether. Eva gave him a stein of beer, then nodded curtly at Ruth.

“Come and help me with supper! The bread still needs to be sliced, and the butter fetched up from the cellar. And the dishes from lunch still need to be washed as well,” she declared as she set to work slicing a ham.

Though it was a warm evening, the kitchen window was closed. The dirty dishes were piled high in the sink and a sour smell filled the air. Ever since Edeltraud had died earlier in the year, the housekeeping in the Heimer household had gone from bad to worse.

After she’d put in a full day in the workshop and got Thomas’s supper for him at home, Ruth was expected to carry on working here as well.

“And what shall I do with Wanda? Should I just put her on the floor?” Ruth answered venomously. As she spoke, the cat leapt up onto the windowsill and made himself comfortable. Ruth nodded toward him and said, “The tomcat has a better time of it in this house than the grandchild. At least the beast has a place to call his own.”

Eva shrugged. “Nobody’s stopping you from putting Wanda in one of the beds.”

“So that she can almost fall out like she did last time,” Ruth spat. She had only just caught the baby in time when she happened to look in on her. “A baby needs a safe bed.”

She hugged her little girl protectively to her breast. Wanda had started to cough. Her little body felt warm. “This horrid smoke is the last thing that Wanda needs.”

Suddenly everyone was looking at Ruth and her daughter. Sebastian took a good long draw at his pipe, as if to say,
Well here we go
.

“A cot, my word! As though you would leave it at that!” Eva snarled. “It has to be the finest silk and goose down before your sort are happy. “ She looked around, certain of approval.

Thomas glared at Ruth. “Do you really have to ask for the moon on a string like this?”

By now Wanda was coughing so hard that tears were streaming down her face. Ruth looked down at her helplessly, at a loss as to how to help her little girl.

“A fellow can hardly hear himself think with her hacking away like that,” Sebastian grumbled. “Tell her to quiet down!”

“If you want my opinion, a bit of discipline never did a brat any harm. I think we all know what happens when you spoil the little beggars too muc
h . . .
” Wilhelm Heimer shook his head as though he simply couldn’t believe his bad luck in having Ruth for a daughter-in-law.

Ruth looked at Thomas, who was busy opening another bottle of beer. He wasn’t going to sit there and let his father insult her, was he?

Eva made a great show of placing the dish of ham on the table.

“Don’t get angry, Wilhelm! Nobody can help their parentage,” Eva purred.

The others muttered in agreement.

“Am I supposed to be ashamed to be Joost’s daughter now?” Ruth snorted in astonishment. “You can hardly say I’m spoiling the child when she’s sick and I want to look after her. But I know what you’re all thinking—you all wish Wanda had never been born because she’s just a girl!” She spat out the last few words.

She felt like bursting into tears on the spot, but she didn’t want to give Eva—or any of them—the satisfaction. She stood up, her head held high.

“I’m going home. The baby has a fever and ought to be in bed. You can carry on talking
business
in peace and quiet,” she said, staring pointedly at the beer steins as she spoke.

It was long after midnight by the time Thomas got home. Even the way he opened the door told Ruth that he was drunk again. She knew she was right when he crashed into something in the hallway and began cursing loudly. She pulled the covers up over her chin and prayed that he would not wake the little one with his racket.

Wanda had fallen asleep almost as soon as she was back in her own bed, the cough vanishing instantly. Ruth had looked in on her again and again and put a damp cloth on her brow. Her forehead was still warm, but her breathing was regular again. Ruth wondered if it could be that her daughter felt sick when she was around the Heimers. Wanda probably felt how unwelcome she was.

The light went on. “Good evening, my dear!” Thomas came to the end of the bed and leaned against the bedframe. The wooden slats creaked.

Fool! Ruth shut her eyes more tightly. Why didn’t he just get undressed and go to bed? She wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink with him snoring drunkenly away, but at least she would avoid another argument. Ruth felt Thomas staring at her, puzzling over whether she was asleep or just pretending. She was sweating from every pore beneath the blankets.

He stumbled unsteadily over to the chair where he put his clothes every evening. Humming, he began to undress.

Ruth sighed with relief. It seemed there would be no more trouble tonight. But right at that moment, Wanda began to cough again.

Ruth held her breath.
Stop. Please, please stop.

Thomas spun round so fast that it seemed he had only been waiting for the least sign of life from Wanda or Ruth. “There she is, yapping away again! Haven’t you done enough to annoy me tonight?” he slurred.

Ruth sat bolt upright. There was no point pretending to be asleep now.

“I’ll take care of her. Don’t worry, she’ll quiet down again in a moment, won’t you, Wanda?” She was so eager to please that her voice sounded shrill and panicky. She would take the little one and go into the kitchen.

Thomas was blocking her way.

“You, taking care.” The fight was in him now; she could see it in his eyes. “You’re too bloody stupid for that. Can’t even take care of a kid. But you can make me look like a fool in front of my father, oh yes! You can nag at me and answer back—in fact that’s the
only
thing you know how to do!”

“Thomas!” She hated it when her voice took on this craven, wheedling tone, but sometimes it calmed him down.

Keeping her eyes downcast, Ruth tried to get past Thomas, but he grabbed her arm and shoved her back with such force that she landed on the floor.

“Not answering back
now
, Ruth Steinmann, are you?” Thomas looked down at her and sniggered. “You wanted to show me up! Like a fool. The way you always do. What do you think the others had to say after you flounced out like that? They told me I was letting you lead me around by the nose. But they’re wrong about that, the lot of them!” He towered over her, his legs straddling her, a bulge in his pants showing how he had worked himself up.

For a moment Ruth was scared. It wouldn’t be the first time he had come home in this condition an
d . . .

But Thomas seemed satisfied with the situation as it was. “So? Where are your snappy answers now? All your fine ideas?”

Perhaps he would have been content just to hurl insults at her if Wanda had not begun coughing again at that very moment. Which reminded him that as well as a willful wife, he had a useless daughter.

“Like mother, like daughter, isn’t that what they say? Lead me around by the nose—you’ll do that too someday, won’t you, you little brat!” Slowly, threateningly, he turned toward the cot.

When Ruth realized what he was about to do, her scream tore through the night air.