She flung herself into Richard’s arms and held him tight. “Please don’t go!”
Her fear of losing Richard was suddenly stronger than anything in the world. Perhaps she should ignore what her parents wanted and stay in Lauscha?
For a moment the only sound was the monotonous drip-drip-drip of snow melting into the brimming rainwater barrel behind the house.
“Why don’t you just come with me to Italy?” Richard suddenly murmured into Wanda’s hair. “The art fair might be useful for the Heimer workshop as well. They say a lot of business gets done there. That’s the other reason I want to go—though I’d never say as much to Täuber. But I’d like to have more than just one customer, do you see what I mean?”
Wanda nodded, still leaning her head on his chest. She knew just what he meant. She worried that so far she had only managed to interest Karl-Heinz Brauninger in her father’s wares. Finding more buyers was right at the top of her list. But how should she go about it? That had always been the question.
“The two of us in Venice . . .” Wanda heaved a heartfelt sigh. But before she could fall too much in love with the images this conjured up, she pushed herself away from him. “But there’s no way in the world that Aunt Johanna would allow that! Not any more than my parents would!” She didn’t say whether she meant Ruth and Steven, or Ruth and Thomas Heimer.
Richard gnawed at his lip. “And I can understand them too. We’re not married yet, or things would look different of course . . .”
The image of gondolas in the pale glittering sunlight was fading away when another thought struck Wanda. “How far is Venice from Genoa, though?”
Richard shrugged. “I have no idea. Why?”
“Do you have an atlas where we could look it up?” Wanda asked, though she knew that he didn’t.
“An atlas—me? Where would I get something like that? But your aunt has one, Anna brought it over one time. We wanted to see how far it is to the Bavarian Forest and the Black Forest, there are a lot of glassblowers down there as well. We would have liked to visit . . .” He waved the idea away. “You get ideas like that on the long winter evenings. But tell me, why do you ask?”
Wanda fought back the twinge of envy she had felt at Richard’s words.
“Well, if I remember right, then Marie will give birth sometime in May. And I’m wondering . . . what if I used the time I have left to go visit her? Nobody can object to that, can they? I’m family after all.”
In fact, Johanna objected a great deal, as did Ruth and Steven. Even Thomas Heimer scowled more than he usually did when Wanda told him her plan. They all said the same thing: that it was not proper for an unmarried girl of her age to travel with a man, even if they would part company as soon as they’d crossed the Italian border. Wanda thought it best not even to mention that she planned to follow Richard to Venice once she’d been to see Marie. Even she felt rather alarmed at the thought of catching the train from Genoa to Venice all on her own. Nor did they mention anything about getting married. Wanda had persuaded Richard that this was not the time to say anything. Wanda was quite sure that her parents would be even more worried about their daughter’s virtue if they knew that she and Richard were planning a wedding. So instead she repeated that she was almost frantic with worry for Marie. It was some comfort to think that that wasn’t even a lie.
The calls flew back and forth between the post office in Sonneberg and Ruth’s apartment in New York. Since she couldn’t make any headway with her mother, Wanda even called Steven at his office. As soon as she heard his voice, she burst into tears. Then she told him at length how sorry she was to have hurt him with her childish behavior before she left New York. Steven did his best to calm her down. At last he managed to bring her around to why she had really called, and she asked whether he could put in a good word for her. There was nothing she wanted so much, she said, as to see Marie again. Steven answered that he understood that Wanda was worried about her aunt, of course, but he wasn’t really sure that he would be acting in her best interests if he let her take this trip.
Whereupon Wanda burst into floods of tears again.
A few days later the postman came to the Steinmann-Maienbaum workshop with a telegram for Wanda. When he didn’t find her there, he cursed under his breath and then climbed the hill all the way to the Heimer workshop.
Wanda’s hands trembled as she took the telegram from him. She held her breath as she opened it. She scanned the lines quickly and only then did she let herself breathe out.
Her cry of joy rang through the whole house.