The American Lady(117)

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.