“That Sarah hardly seems like a fast worker,” Johanna said suddenly. “Whenever I looked over at the two of you, you were the only one doing any work.”
“You can say that again!” Ruth sat up in bed. “Father would have had some words for her; she’s slow as a snail.”
Johanna snorted. “Well said! She even looks a bit like a snail.”
“She guzzled down the beer,” Marie said, shuddering. “Nasty bitter stuff! I’ll ask for some water tomorrow.”
“So will I,” Johanna agreed. “I was surprised that the men could sit down and work at their lamps with a steady hand after drinking all that beer at lunch. But the women were drinking just as much. It was very odd, don’t you think, Ruth?”
“Who cares?” Ruth grumbled. She simply wanted to lay back down in the dark and think about Thomas.
Johanna sighed. “You’re right! It’s no business of ours how much the Heimers drink—our business is in their workshop. But they have a funny way of running the place. If the old fellow hadn’t decided halfway through the morning that we should stop the silvering and start snipping the tinsel wire, Widow Grün and I would have gotten a lot more work done.”
“What’s the wire for, even?” Marie asked.
Johanna shrugged in the dark.
“It’s for decorating something, but we never found out what. Once we were done snipping it into pieces we had to go help with the packing, and after that it was time to leave.” She thought for a moment. “It really is very odd. Heimer spends all day running around the workshop checking up on this and that, but he causes such a commotion when he does so. He really puts the cat among the pigeons.”
When there was no answer from Ruth, Johanna rolled over.
“Well, we Steinmanns put in a good day’s work on our first day,” she mumbled, and then she fell asleep.
11
Marie painted in her dreams all night, and when she woke up the next morning, she could hardly wait to get back to work. She was all the more disappointed, then, when Wilhelm Heimer put her to work with Sarah decorating perfume bottles.
She cast an envious glance at Ruth, who was sitting next to Eva today. She probably didn’t know how lucky she was! In front of Marie were thick bundles of glittering wire, the tinsel that Johanna and the Widow Grün had cut into lengths yesterday. Reluctantly she picked up a bundle. Upon closer inspection, she had to admit that the curly, shimmering wire had its own particular charm; its warm golden tint glowed or faded, depending on how the light fell on it. The perfume flasks themselves were pretty as well. They were the same shape as the ones that Father had blown for the French consignment, but they were all made of colored glass—violet, blue, and green—from the stock that Heimer had from the glass foundry. Marie had never seen this shade of violet before. The gloomy cloud that hovered over her head lifted a little. This part of the job could never give her the same pleasure as painting with those lovely colors, but decorating work had a certain appeal.
She watched cheerfully as Sarah wound the glittering wire round and round the belly of a perfume flask until it had made a kind of cage about the bottle.
“There, you see, that’s how you do it,” Sarah said, picking up the next bottle just as placidly as if she were chopping firewood.
Marie was horrified. Wrapped around as thickly as that, the tinsel wire lost all its delicate charm! And the bottle itself could barely be seen. The glass was no longer transparent and the colors might just as well have been the dreadful dull brown of a beer bottle.
Marie could have wept.
Ruth was secretly glad when Heimer put her to work with Eva at the painting bench, for she thought it would give her the opportunity to find out more about Thomas from his sister-in-law. And she was sitting much closer to him than when she had been at the packing table on the other side of the room. So far, however, neither had been advantages; certainly Eva never stopped jabbering, but since she seemed to regard herself as the most important member of the Heimer family, most of her stories were about herself. She hadn’t mentioned Thomas even once. Ruth was beginning to lose patience.
“When I found out they had a housekeeper here, I was so surprised!” Eva said, so caught up in her story that her cheeks were glowing. “Edel is an old woman, of course, but she takes care of so much of the work that there’s nothing left for me to do! My mother always told me, ‘My child, you must take what you can get in this life! It’s little enough.’ ” Her eyes gleamed. “Well, I certainly made a good choice here,” she went on, with unmistakable pride in her voice. “Look at this dress. Sebastian gave it to me just last week.” She held up her sleeve right under Ruth’s nose. “Bouclé silk—it must have been expensive!”
Ruth pursed her lips. What a silly, self-satisfied cow! All the same, she couldn’t resist running her fingertips over the silky fabric. “It feels wonderful.”
Eva beamed. “My mother always said, ‘My child . . .’ ”
Ruth took a deep breath. She didn’t want to hear any more of Eva’s mother’s wisdom. She cast a yearning glance toward the workbenches with the lamps, where Thomas looked very focused on his work.
Just like the day before, he and his brothers had been bent over their lamps already when the Steinmann sisters arrived. Thomas had only looked up briefly and nodded.
Disappointed, Ruth looked down at herself. Thomas hadn’t even glanced at her blue blouse, which hugged her figure so nicely and was something she usually only wore on special occasions. She had expected Johanna to make some comment when she took the blouse from the wardrobe and was surprised when she’d said nothing.
Ruth decided to try again. “How did you meet Sebastian?” she whispered, silently hoping that Eva wouldn’t include half the room in her answer.
Eva laughed. “That’s quite a story. I was on my way home from the slate quarry with my father and three of my brothers when our old nag collapsed in the middle of the road. It was on its last legs, you know. Anyway it was just lying there, and we were standing around wondering how we were ever going to get all the slates back home when Sebastian came by. And . . .”
So it had been blind luck. Eva had no new insights that might help her with Thomas. Ruth switched off the stream of chatter in her ears, like switching off a gas lamp. And . . . and . . . and . . . she thought, rather unkindly. Nobody would call Eva a skilled storyteller. She dipped her brush into the pot so roughly that a couple of drops spilled over the side.
“Be careful, you clumsy coot!” Eva hissed at her like a scalded cat. “Wilhelm doesn’t like any paint being wasted.”
Ruth snorted, but then realized how unladylike that must have sounded. If Thomas had happened to have looked up from his lamp just then . . .
She forced a smile. “I’ll learn soon enough. Not everyone can be as good as you with the brush.”
Johanna was walking past them right at that moment with a load of new glass pipes in her arms, and she raised an eyebrow questioningly. Ruth made a face at her. Nothing got past Johanna!
Eva, however, didn’t seem to have noticed the sarcasm in Ruth’s remark. Instead, reassured, she favored her new workmate with a graceful smile. “Do you know what? I’ll show you how to do it again. It’s all in how you turn the brush.”
There was potato salad for lunch again, just like the day before. Edeltraud brought a second dish full of chopped herring. The heads and tails were still in there, piled up in a grotesque heap with the fleshy middle bits, and the sour smell of the pickling brine hung over the whole table. The others once again washed down their meal with plentiful helpings of beer.
Johanna found when she took a spoonful of potato salad that it had taken on the fishy taste of the herring. Perhaps if she took some from right at the edge of the platter, lower down the side . . . Before she could do anything about it, she had a whole heap of potato on her spoon.
“Oh yes, old Edel knows what she�
��s about! Everybody likes her cooking!” Wilhelm Heimer beamed when he saw how much Johanna had on her spoon.
Not knowing what else to do, she swallowed the lot.
“Well then, what’s it like joining our workshop from your house, where you girls used to rule the roost?” he asked, chewing. “Not that there was anything wrong with how Joost used to run his workshop,” he added jovially.
“There’s a lot to get used to, of course,” Johanna answered diplomatically. Heimer looked at her expectantly, so she went on. “We used to blow far fewer shapes. Just pharmacy jars, really.” She hurriedly bit into a slice of bread.
“Oh yes, there’s hardly an outfit in the whole village that does as many different lines as ours. I would never have dreamed just a few years ago that I would have five pairs of hired hands.” Heimer was not far from giving himself a slap on the shoulder.
Johanna made an effort to smile.
“If anybody could do it, you could!” Eva told her father-in-law with a twinkle in her eye. He laughed, and little bits of potato salad leapt about on his tongue.
Disgusted, Johanna turned away. The way Eva piled on the flattery! And then some devilish impulse made her clear her throat and say, “It’s certainly impressive how many different things you do here.”
Wilhelm’s face was as round and happy as a balloon.
“But there are one or two changes you could make to work more efficiently.”
The balloon went pop. The air escaped.
There was a deathly silence over the table. Not even a spoon clinked. Johanna felt the hairs stand up at the nape of her neck. That hadn’t been a good idea, her instinct told her a moment too late.
“What do you mean?” Wilhelm Heimer asked calmly.
Perhaps Johanna should have followed Ruth’s advice at that moment—her sister was gesturing as unobtrusively as she could for Johanna to pipe down. And the look in Eva’s eyes—visible enjoyment at the prospect of someone ending up in Heimer’s bad books—should have warned her as well.
But Johanna was so caught up in her own ideas that she didn’t notice. “Of course it’s only my second day here, but I did notice that we lose a lot of time carrying the finished wares from the painting bench to the packing table. Because the silvering bench is in between, you see. And every time we need new glass stock, it has to come up from the cellar—” She fell silent as she saw Heimer’s face growing redder and redder.
“Let’s make one thing clear, Johanna Steinmann . . .” He had narrowed his eyes so that they almost disappeared behind the puffy lids. “I took the three of you on and gave you work because it was a duty I owed your father. Not everyone would be so high-minded!”
Thomas Heimer was the only one still eating. The others sat there as though rooted to their chairs. Nobody moved.
“But if any one of you thinks that the women will ever get to rule the roost in my house, you can think again!” Heimer slammed his fist down on the table and made the dishes jump. “If you don’t like the way I do things, you can leave!”
“That’s not what Johanna meant,” Eva broke in, her voice as smooth as silk. She stroked Heimer’s arm as though she were calming a savage bull. “She only said that because she’s not as quick about her work as I am, or the Widow Grün. Isn’t that right, Johanna?” she asked, tilting her chin toward her.
The sparkle in Eva’s eyes was more than Johanna could bear. She looked over at Ruth, but found no reassurance there either—rather, a glance of irritation.
“I didn’t mean to criticize anybody,” she said at last. “It just takes a while to get used to new things, that’s all.” She spoke much more demurely than she would have liked. For goodness’ sake, she just wanted to be allowed to speak her mind! If Father had blown up at her like this every time she had made some observation, she would have left home long ago.
Wilhelm Heimer seemed to accept her apology. He grumbled something unintelligible as he took a tail from the herring dish and stuck it into his mouth.
That evening too, the oven went unlit in the Steinmann house. The sisters had been at work for ten hours, and none of them felt like fetching the wood and building a fire.
The mood among them was just as chilly. Neither Ruth nor Marie was ready to forgive Johanna for having put their jobs on the line by speaking out of turn. Too tired to argue, they ate in silence, trading awkward glances every few bites.
They went to bed shortly after. But instead of chattering excitedly as they had the night before, each was silent with her own thoughts.
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. And . . .” 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?”
The Glassblower (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 1) Page 7
