Marie swept her hand across her workbench in a rage. Hundreds of tiny pieces of glass flew off the worktop and scattered over the floor like colorful raindrops. They lay there, almost mocking her, beautiful and utterly indifferent to her plight. Marie screamed in pain. For as long as she could remember, glass had been the only material she wanted to work with. Glass revealed even the smallest mistake; glass showed every weakness in the maker’s hand—which was precisely what she found so fascinating. It was a sensitive material. More than once it had driven her into a fury and then brought her back to her senses; it had taught her patience and humility and then urged her on to new heights of ambition. Marie would never have imagined that glass would one day become her enemy.
At five o’clock sharp the key turned in the lock. Marie was sitting on the bed. She noticed with astonishment that Patrizia had brought the tray today, with a cup of mocha coffee and a slice of cake. She certainly hadn’t been expecting her, though at lunchtime she had begged her mother-in-law to call a doctor for her backache.
“I swear to you I won’t tell him anything!” she had pleaded, and she had meant every word. Where was she going to run to with her huge belly? If she hadn’t been pregnant, she would have spent all day every day looking for a chance to escape, but she had to think of her unborn child. So she had said, “It worries me that I’m in such pain! What if there’s something wrong . . .” But the discussion ended as it always did, with Patrizia leaving the room, her back ramrod straight and her lips pursed. She usually punished Marie for such outbursts by not coming to see her for a few days.
Perhaps she had found out that it was Marie’s birthday?
Without looking at Marie, Patrizia put down the tray on the little table by the bed. Her hands were trembling, and her eyes were rimmed with red as though she had been crying.
“Can you ask Carla to heat some water for the bath?” Marie asked, pointing toward the tub that Patrizia had had brought into her room on the first day. “Perhaps the warm water will do my back some good,” she added.
Patrizia nodded wordlessly. She was already halfway out the door when she turned around and stopped where she was. Then she cleared her throat, almost inaudibly.
“What is it? Have you heard from Franco at last?” The spark of hope leapt up before Marie could smother it. They had been waiting for weeks for him to call.
Patrizia shook her head. “There’s been a problem in New York . . .” Her haughty expression crumbled and she whimpered. Quickly she put a hand to her mouth.
Marie felt as though she had been punched in the gut. She leapt to her feet. “And? Tell me!”
“One of the customs agents who knew what was going on has talked.” Patrizia’s lower lip quivered. “They’ve arrested Franco.”
22
The thaw set in from one day to the next. First the snow in the streets melted, then it slipped down off the rooftops, then the trees on the mountain slopes all around began to show their branches. By the end of March the landscape was shaggy and patchy like a dog shedding his winter coat, and Wanda had to get used to seeing colors other than white. Rivulets and streams ran down the slopes wherever she looked; the meadows down in the valley became quagmires, and the water in the streets pooled into great puddles. It was no easier to walk the streets than it had been when the snow was knee-deep. Everyone got wet feet one way or another, but they never complained as they went about their business—rather they seemed to welcome the melt. After all, it meant that the landscape was finally struggling free from its cocoon of snow and that spring was near.
Though Wanda’s head was brimming over with plans and ideas, she noticed that everyone around her was growing restless. Suddenly everybody was on the move: a neighbor set off for Neuhaus to fetch two piglets from his brother-in-law. Anna and Johannes were planning a trip to Coburg—without asking Wanda if she wanted to come along. Lugiana, the Italian maid, sang Roman songs from morning till night and cast longing glances at Magnus, who didn’t notice a thing.
Wanda felt the same restless urges—among other symptoms, she wanted to kiss Richard whenever the chance arose. She was more than a little scared by the strength of her physical desire for him, and she was glad that Richard kept a cool head when it seemed she might lose control of herself.
Lauscha woke up from hibernation with regard to business matters too. A great many more wagons were slipping through the last of the snow now than in months gone by, and visitors were seen among the old familiar faces. Richard’s patron, the gallery owner Gotthilf Täuber, came to visit and bought everything Richard had made. After that Richard grew even more dedicated to his work than before; whenever Wanda came by his workshop, he was either hard at work on a piece or studying the most recent catalog that Täuber had brought.