The Glassblower (8 page)

Marie had wanted to ask Heimer to be put back on the painting bench the next day. After the squabble, however, she wouldn’t dare ask such a thing. But how on earth was she going to get through the whole day so close to the pots and brushes, if she wasn’t allowed to paint? The very thought was painful, and she held her belly as though she were having her menstrual pains.

Thomas had looked over at her at least five times that afternoon! And his eyes had unmistakably—and shamelessly—fixed on her blouse. Fervently hoping not to blush, Ruth had tucked her plaits back over her shoulder in a show of nonchalance, but she saw how his eye followed the action greedily. Now she put her hands to her hair in the dark and fixed her plaits. If she kept them bound up tight like this all night, her hair would have waves in the morning. Oh, if only she could let her hair down at work! Then he would see her chestnut-brown tresses at their best.

Did Thomas really have his eye on her? Or had she been imagining things? No, she was sure she hadn’t been. Perhaps he was lying in bed and thinking of her at that very moment? Ruth was overjoyed. The idea that she might have caught Thomas Heimer’s eye was almost too good to be true. She was delighted that the dreadful prospect of ending up an old maid was fading a little. Maybe a happy ending awaited her after all. Thomas wasn’t just handsome and a good singer; he was also the son of one of the richest men in the village. Marry one of the Heimers and you had a good life; that much was certain. After all, it looked like Eva lacked for nothing: she had such lovely clothes and a string of beads at each wrist and a necklace as well. Ruth sighed gently. Maybe Thomas would give her a present like that soon?

That fat, self-satisfied, short-tempered old fool!

Johanna’s thoughts were trained on one of the Heimer men as well, but she was thinking of Wilhelm. She asked herself for the umpteenth time why she had even opened her mouth. Her boldness had quite gone since the morning, and now she was only angry at herself. She ought to have known that not every man was as mild-mannered as Father. And looking back on it, she realized that it had been the height of folly to make her criticism at the table while everyone else was listening. She had to make an effort to unclench her jaws; she had been grinding her teeth so hard that her face hurt. She would never be able to tell Peter about this because he would fall all over himself laughing. Well, damage done need fear no mockery, as the saying went.
“That fearless tongue of yours will get you in trouble one of these days!”
Peter had said that often enough. Johanna took a deep breath. She just hadn’t been thinking. She had been so angry at Eva that she had simply burst out with her thoughts, despite the fact that it was neither the time nor place for it. But tomorrow, she’d hold her tongue all day long, she promised herself.

12

Four weeks later Wilhelm Heimer paid them their first wages—a mere fifteen marks each for a full month’s work!

Johanna was outraged. Neither she nor her sisters had dared to ask Heimer about the wage when they started work—though they had taken some guesses among themselves, of course.

“It’ll be all right, Heimer knows what the going rate is,” Ruth had said quite sharply the first time Johanna broached the topic. After all, she had been the one to talk to Heimer while Johanna had been in Sonneberg. All the same, she had tried to get Sarah to open up a little about what she was paid, but the girl was either too slow-witted or too secretive to say.

Johanna had had no more luck with the Widow Grün; apparently it wasn’t proper to discuss wages.

As the three of them sat around their supper table and stared at the little pile of coins in the middle, all the euphoria of the last few weeks was quite gone. They had been so proud to be making their way in the world after fate had dealt them such a cruel blow.

“Forty-five marks
—
that’s not even enough to buy groceries for the month. Why, I used to spend forty marks a month just on the shopping in Sonneberg,” Johanna said. “And then there’s Mrs. Huber’s store here in the village; I’ve been buying on credit from her for the past two weeks, and we have to pay our debts.”

Ruth looked as though she would burst into tears. “And now? What are we going to do next? We’ll need new clothes as well, from time to time. A new hairband. A cake of soap. An
d . . .
” She broke off.

“And I had so wanted to buy more drawing paper and a few pencils! I’ve been looking forward to that all month,” Marie said.

“You can forget all about that sort of indulgence,” Johanna said brusquely.

“What do you mean?” Ruth snapped at her. “We worked for this money just the same as you did. So we get to decide as well how we spend it.”

“Will you listen to yourselves?” Johanna said, shaking her head angrily. “Hairbands and colored pencils—I think you both know that there are things we need far more than that! Firewood for the winter, for instance.”

As if on cue, a mouse scurried through the room.

“If the mice are already coming indoors in October, it’ll be a hard winter,” Marie said, her face expressionless.

“Really? Is that all you have to say?” Ruth shot at her. “If you could bestir yourself to put out a few traps from time to time, we wouldn’t have mice in the house at all. But oh no, our princess is much too fine for that sort of thing. After all, I’m here to do the dirty work, aren’t I?”

“Enough of that!” Johanna shouted. She wanted to burst into tears, but what good would that do?

“There’s no point in our arguing like donkeys.” She got up and went to the cupboard. “I’ll make a pot of coffee to celebrate, and then we can calm down and think how to spend our money.” The situation called for a dose of gallows humor. But when Johanna saw the miserable few coffee beans that were left, her heart sank even further. That wouldn’t brew more than colored water! All the same she picked up the coffee grinder and began to turn the handle energetically.

Ruth watched as Johanna ground the coffee. “I’m getting fed up with that horrible stuff the Heimers brew. What does old Edel put in her pot?” She shrugged uncomprehendingly. “Do they just dry out any old root they can grub up in the forest and then boil it up with water?”

Johanna and Marie laughed. Ruth could be funny when she wanted to.

Johanna sighed. “Our dear father was a different kind of man entirely. ‘There’s more to life than just work, you need a little pleasure now and again!’ he told me once. And he was right!” She put the ground beans in the pot and poured boiling water over them.

As soon as the smell filled the room, it had the effect Johanna had hoped for. Ruth’s expression softened a little, but she shook her head helplessly all the same. “I don’t understand all their penny-pinching. Judging by the amount of glass they sell, they must have more money than they need. Do you think he only pays us so badly, or do Sarah and the Widow Grün get just as little?”

“I don’t know,” Johanna replied, biting her lip. “We’re going to have to find out somehow.”

“But how would that help?” Marie asked. While the other two drank their coffee, she was drawing complicated knotwork patterns in a notebook. “We can’t just go to Heimer and demand that he pay us more.” Her tone of voice suggested that she hardly cared.

Johanna bit back a sharp reply. Marie wasn’t being the slightest bit helpful, as usual. Instead she was filling up valuable paper with her sketches. “The problem is,” Johanna said, turning to Ruth, “that the Heimers live so modestly themselves. Have you ever seen them indulge in anything? Fresh herring? A cake? A better cut of meat?”

“Oh, don’t even talk to me about meat! That horrible tripe that was swimming in the soup today was so ghastly that it wasn’t even much of a comfort that we each had our own bowl to eat from.” Ruth stuck out her tongue, revolted at the memory. “But you’re right. Old Heimer wouldn’t care if he were just chewing on a crust of dry bread every day. All the same though, there’s someone in that household who never goes shor
t . . .
”

Johanna nodded.

Eva.

Sometimes Johanna wondered which of the Heimers Eva had really married. Sebastian hardly ever seemed to look at his wife, while the old man waited on her hand and foot. Evie this and Evie that. If golden spoons had been for sale, he’d have bought her one long ago.

“Just imagine, she’s the one who gets the box of leftover silver at the end of the year,” Johanna said. “I would have thought that Heimer would split that up among his three sons, but no such thing. Griseldis says the old man spoils Eva because she looks so much like his dead wife. She must be the spitting image of her.”

Over the last few weeks Johanna and the Widow Grün had grown a little closer. Sadly there was never enough time to talk for long while they were working. And in the evenings, she either had housework to do or was too tired to go calling. The most Johanna ever managed to do was go next door to see Peter for a while, but that hardly counted as paying a call.

“Do you really think that’s the only reason?” Ruth asked. “She’s his daughter-in-law after all. Maybe he thinks she’s more likely to give him a grandson if he spoils her?”

“Who knows whether that skinny goat can even have children,” Johanna said. She had hardly uttered the words before she glanced over at Marie, embarrassed. Her younger sister was at least as slender as Eva. But Marie either hadn’t heard or didn’t hold Johanna’s remark against her.

Ruth grinned. “Maybe it’s time for someone else to try. Someone who can marry the
oldest
son, and have his childre
n . . .
”

Johanna’s face clouded over. “You’ve hardly known the lad a month and you’re already talking about having his children! I don’t like it that you spend your whole day flirting with Thomas.”

Ruth exploded. “What business is that of yours? I’ll flirt with whomever I like. Besides, when I’m Mrs. Heimer I can make sure that old man Wilhelm pays us better. And when Thomas gets to have his sa
y . . .
”

“You’ll be old and gray before that happens,” Johanna said scornfully. “Wilhelm Heimer might get out of breath from time to time, but that’s just because of his big belly. Even you can’t believe that he’s going to let his eldest son take over the business any time soon.”

Marie looked up. “Do you love Thomas so much that you want to marry him?”

Ruth stood up, clattering her chair. “I’ve had enough. I don’t have the slightest desire to talk to you two about Thomas. I’m going out for a while. The air in the workshop was so horrid today. It’s a wonder we haven’t gone blind or gotten ill from all the chemicals we splash around.” She put on her jacket and buttoned it up.

Johanna had a headache too, but she didn’t know whether the pounding at her temples came from the stink of the silver bath or from their money worries. “You’re going out for a walk? In this cold?” she asked suspiciously.

“So what? Nobody says anything when you run off to visit Peter all the time! I can go off and be on my own for a quarter of an hour, can’t I?”

Before Johanna could think of a reply, Ruth had hurried out.

13

“I’ve never seen such a thing!” Peter said, shaking his head. “Normally a glass eye lasts about three months. But Mr. Wunsiedel wears his out so fast you can practically watch the surface cracking. It’s because his tear ducts don’t function. Even in the eye he has lef
t . . .
” Peter stopped when he heard Johanna sigh. He looked up from his work.

She looked tired sitting by the stove with her eyes closed, her back pressed up against the stove tiles to warm her, her shoulders drooping. The skin under her eyes was almost translucent. He wanted very much to take her in his arms and soothe away all her troubles.

“What’s th
e . . .
am I boring you with my talk?” he asked, only half joking.

She opened her eyes. “Of course not. It’s just so nice to be able to sit still for a little while. And the heat’s making me a bit sleepy,” she said, shuffling up closer to the stove. “But do go on, why does this gentleman from Braunschweig have such dry eyes?”

Peter shook her arm gently. “You don’t have to pretend you’re interested. I can see that your mind is elsewhere. What’s the matter, have you been arguing with Heimer again?”

Johanna snorted. “Arguing—that rather depends what you mean by it. If you’re asking whether I’ve spoken out of turn again, then no, we haven’t argued.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Listen, I’m your friend!” Peter said, pointing to his chest. “Instead of talking to me, you go back in your shell like a snail.”

Johanna laughed. “Well, thank you for calling me a snail!” she said, but she had perked up a little.

Peter waited. You could never hurry Johanna.

“Oh, I don’t know what’s wrong with me!” she said at last. “Maybe it’s because it’s Friday, and I miss going into Sonneberg.”

“Going begging to Friedhelm Strobel? God knows you’re not missing much there!” Peter answered scornfully. The glassblowers took all the risk, while the wholesalers made all the profits, wasn’t that it? And Strobel was the kind of man to trample his suppliers underfoot if that would get him the best prices. He didn’t care whether a glassblower almost broke his back filling an order; all he cared about was keeping his customers. And he had enough of those. Word was that there was hardly a city in the world where Friedhelm Strobel didn’t have at least one buyer for his Lauscha glassware or Sonneberg toys. Very few wholesalers gave as many orders to glassblowers and toymakers as Strobel did. So even though his terms were terrible, the suppliers hurried to meet them.

“You should be glad to be free of that cutthroat,” Peter said when there was no response from Johanna. “I can still remember the days when your father had trouble buying the glass stock he needed to fill Strobel’s orders!”

“Well, that’s just how it works; the glassblowers have to take on liabilities, but the wholesalers procure the orders. And Strobel is a mastermind at that part of the business,” Johanna answered crisply.

Peter went to the stove, opened the door, and put another log on the fire. “Whatever you say. All the same, I don’t think that you’re so out of sorts today because you miss Strobel.”

She folded her hands in her lap. “To be honest, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Father’s been dead for five weeks now, and it seems like forever. We don’t even have time to think of him. It’s dark when we leave the house every morning and dark by the time we come back home in the evening. And when we get home, the clothes aren’t laundered and there’s no hot meal, and the whole house is dusty and cold!” She looked at Peter reproachfully, as though it were his fault that she was so miserable.

“Somehow it’s not our own little home anymore. It always used to be so warm, with the smell of potatoes cookin
g . . .
But now, we get up, we go to work, we come home, we sleep. That’s all we do. And all for a handful of marks that’s barely enough to keep body and soul together.” Her anger dissipated, though, and she leaned up against the warm oven once more.

She didn’t need to tell him that Heimer was an old miser. Peter had seen it with his own eyes; whenever Heimer paid for drinks at the Black Eagle, he never gave the barmaid so much as a single penny for a tip. And often he sat there all evening with just the one tankard of beer, as though he couldn’t afford a second one. But what could he tell Johanna? Bad as it seemed, the truth was that the Steinmann girls should be glad to have any work at all, no matter how poor the wage. He felt something clench inside him. “If it’s really too little, then tell old Heimer to take a running jump. Come and help me. The money I bring in is enough for two.”

He’d said it at last. Now he held his breath.

When Johanna didn’t answer, he added, “And I’ve got my work at the foundry as well.”

The great ovens down at the foundry square were stoked up to full heat twice a year, and Peter put in his hours there. From September through New Year’s Eve and then March until summer, he filled his own commissions in the evenings after working down at the foundry all day. He even had a certificate granting him the title of Master Glassmaker, though it meant little since he didn’t have his own booth down at the foundry or any journeymen working for him, which had once been the privilege of masters in the guild. Many years ago his family had been among the wealthiest in the village, but through the generations they had had too many sons, and Peter and his brother had inherited nothing but a small share in the foundry. Peter’s brother was dead, but even so, he knew that Johanna knew how little he had.

Johanna shook her head. “Don’t hold it against me, but I couldn’t do the work you do. I can’t even watch when you put the veins into the glass. What you do is wonderful, but it gives me the shivers!” She smiled. “I think that you really have to love your job to do it well. I would probably just get in the way.”

Perhaps she was right, Peter thought to himself. The people who needed his help were usually desperate and railing against their fate. Many of them were in pain and in a state of denial about having only one eye. It wasn’t always easy to get them to trust him. Nor was making the glass eyes an easy job. It was more than glassblowing; for him, it was an art. But as much as he loved his job, he knew it would never make him rich.

“I think we’re just not used to working outside our own home. While Father was still with us, we could do quite a lot of our housework in between other jobs, but we can’t now. The paid work isn’t the real trouble.” Johanna waved a hand dismissively. “It’s hard work of course, but we can manage it. And it’s extraordinary to see the variety of wares the Heimer lads blow at their lamps! I find quite a lot of what they make just horrible,” she laughed, “but they seem to have customers for it all.”

Peter still had no idea why she was so unhappy. “What’s the real trouble then? Is it old Heimer?”

She nodded. “I get so worked up when he creeps up behind us and peers over our shoulders. Does he really think we would spend all day lazing about if he weren’t always checking up on us?” Her eyes gleamed. “And the mess in that place! I tell you, it makes a beehive look neat and tidy. Last week we ran out of paints, this week it was glass stock. He could have sent one of his boys down to the foundry to pick up more, but oh no, the old man put all three of them to work at the packing table. Can you imagine?” She laughed, exasperated. “In the end we had nothing to paint, nothing to silver, and nothing to pack. But”—she raised an eyebrow mockingly—“Ruth was delighted! She got to spend the whole day working side by side with Thomas.” Johanna frowned. “I can’t understand why none of the lads opens his mouth when Wilhelm loses track. Anyone can see that there’s no planning or organization in that house.”

“The two young ones are too stupid, and Thomas Heimer can’t win an argument with his father. What are you hoping for?” Peter asked calmly. “You’ll just have to speak your mind again and take what comes.” He gave her a friendly nudge and grinned.

“You’re the only one who thinks that. I’d rather bite my tongue!”

“And? Is there anything new with Ruth and Thomas?”

“Have you ever seen a man with such handsome green eyes?” Johanna said, mimicking Ruth’s dreamy tones. “He spends most of his time staring at her as though he’s forgotten how to count to three.” She made a face. “All that’s missing is for him to let his tongue hang out and to start drooling! If you ask me though, Thomas isn’t the kind of man who’s looking to get married. Otherwise he’d be engaged by now, wouldn’t he? But Ruth thinks that she’s going to be Mrs. Heimer any day now. To be honest I’m not sure I would even want the two of them to get married. They don’t seem suited to one another.” She raised her eyebrows again and added, “At the moment she says she’s gone out for a walk—just how stupid does Ruth think I am? She’s meeting him, of course. I only hope that she knows what she’s doing.”

Peter kept quiet. He couldn’t stand Thomas, not only because—unlike himself—the young Heimers had something to offer a bride, but also because he knew both sides of Wilhelm Heimer’s eldest. Most of the time Thomas was a dull dog but bearable, at least. But it was another story if you came upon him when he’d had one too many at the fair or the village dance! When he was drunk, he bragged and snarled and picked fights. Since Johanna and her sisters had hardly joined in the social life of the village while Joost was alive, they knew nothing about this side of him.

“Whether you like it or not, the two of them will get together if they want to, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Ruth will know the right thing to do, don’t worry. The more you go clucking over her like a mother hen, the harder she’ll fight back,” he said.

Johanna turned to look at him. “You can talk! You only have yourself to look after. If I don’t keep an eye on everything, things will soon go off the rails in our household.”

If anyone else had said such a thing, he would have dismissed it as pompous nonsense. But Peter knew that this was exactly what Johanna believed. “It’s not good for you to spend all your time worrying yourself sick about other people. Let them think for themselves.”

“I can’t rely on my sisters much when it comes to household matters.” Her face clouded over. “And I’m just as bad! We had so much work that I forgot to get firewood for the winter while it was still cheap. Now I don’t know where we’ll get the money for that. You can’t truly expect Ruth or Marie to be any help there.”

“What about me? Don’t you expect me to be of any help?”

“Expect you to? Yo
u . . .
you’re not responsible for me and my troubles.”

Oh but I would like to be,
Peter thought once more. “I can help you all the same, can’t I? In any case, if it’s firewood we’re talking about, that’s easily solved. I haven’t even used my rights in the forest this year. My share of wood is still standing there on the slopes, but we can soon change that.”

“Do you really think so?” Johanna asked skeptically. “Are the guild masters at the foundry going to let you just give your wood away?”

“They don’t care what I do with it. The statutes were drawn up hundreds of years ago, and a master glassmaker is allowed to take a certain amount of wood from the forests each year and that’s that. Those rules still apply today. The master makers have always taken a bit of the wood to use at home. “

A spark of hope flared up in Johanna’s eyes.

“You girls will have to come help me get it of course,” Peter said sternly. Johanna wasn’t generally one to take help, but Peter knew that if he gave her a chance to work for it, she would swallow her pride. Darned if he didn’t know the woman better than she knew herself.

Lo and behold, Johanna smiled at him. “When shall we go up to the forest?”

Peter laughed. “Tomorrow, if you like.”