The American Lady(118)

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 so . . . 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 had . . .” 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.





20

By the time they got to Sonneberg, Wanda was so exhausted that she insisted they stop at one of the taverns first thing. She ordered a grilled sausage and Eva persuaded her to have a beer with it, then they discussed their plans: Eva would begin by taking her to the wholesalers who had dealt with the Heimers in the past. Then, if Wanda wanted to meet with some more, Eva would take her to others. Even though they had gotten a little closer during the walk, Eva could still not be persuaded to go in with Wanda on her visits. So Wanda put on fresh lipstick, squared her shoulders, and set off to be of some help to her family.



It took a while before she found anyone who seemed likely to help.

“Of course I am aware that I am almost the only one left who thinks so—in an age where the slogan of ‘Art for All’ seems to be on everyone’s lips. And they make money with it too . . .” Karl-Heinz Brauninger folded his hands and stretched his arms out as though he felt a twinge of rheumatism. “All the same I am not ready to jump on the bandwagon of mass production just so that anyone can fill his living room with all sorts of ornaments that will simply gather dust! Others are quite welcome to sell figurines of ladies dancing—I will have no such gewgaws in my catalog!” His expression indicated his distaste.