PART ONE
FALL 1890
THE BEGINNING
But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisite invention; and in buying these we are doing good to humanity.
—John Ruskin
1
Ruth had already gone upstairs twice that morning to try to wake Johanna. Both times her sister had grumbled something that led her to believe—wrongly, as it turned out—that she really was going to get up. Why do I always fall for it, every single day, Ruth scolded herself as she climbed the stairs for the third time. The smell of bacon frying gently in the pan followed her as she went. She stopped at the dormer window, stood on tiptoe, and glanced down at the back of the house, where Marie was singing. A spider had spun its web right across the window. Without even noticing the fine patterns spun into the threads, Ruth brushed it away with her hand. Marie was nowhere in sight. Nor was Father. Ruth frowned. By the time either of them smelled anything burning in the kitchen, the bacon and potatoes would be charred to a crisp!
The last time she had come up to try to wake Johanna, she had left the door to the room she shared with her sisters standing open, so she could already see from the landing that Johanna was still not up. Without saying a word, Ruth walked up to the bed, grabbed hold of the linen bedspread, and whisked it off Johanna.
“How can you lie there all covered up in this heat?” she asked, shaking her head as her sister struggled toward wakefulness. Ruth went to the window and opened the shutters wide. Straightaway the bright September sun flooded the room with a dusty light.
Johanna swung her legs over the side of the bed like a rheumatic old woman, groaning piteously but not saying a word.
Ruth glared at her sister one last time and then hurried back downstairs to rescue breakfast. While she stirred the potato slices and bacon bits around the pan, pouring in a little more oil so they wouldn’t stick, she thanked heaven that she at least was an early bird.
Even as a child, Johanna had never liked getting up early—she and her sisters had been late to school often enough on her account. And it wasn’t just getting out of bed that caused her trouble—she was groggy all morning and no good to anyone before ten o’clock. “It’s as though I’d drunk half a bottle of schnapps the night before,” Johanna had said once, trying to explain how bleary she felt. Not that she or Ruth had ever drunk half a bottle of schnapps or had any real idea what that would feel like. Knowing that Johanna would be sleepy in the mornings, the three sisters had settled on a housework routine that meant that she didn’t have any morning chores, though Ruth sometimes wondered whether this was really the best answer. She sighed. Had their mother still been alive, she probably wouldn’t have made such a fuss about it! In many ways, Anna Steinmann had been much more stubborn than her husband. Ruth tried to picture her mother’s face for a moment, and felt a pang of sorrow at how hard it was to do so. Ten years was a long time.
The water she had put on to boil for the morning brew began to simmer, shaking Ruth out of her memories, and she promptly took the pot off the flame. She didn’t like it when the chicory roots boiled too long in the water—best just to bring them up to a boil from cold, or else the drink was too bitter. Ruth was fussy about this: most of the folks in the village made a brew of dried bits of mangel-wurzel, but she wouldn’t let the stuff into her kitchen. She’d rather drink plain water than that swill. Of course, she liked to drink real coffee most of all, but often they couldn’t afford enough beans to last the week. Johanna went to Sonneberg every Friday to sell the glass that they had made that week and she always brought back a little bag of coffee beans. Joost Steinmann didn’t much care what he put in his cup to drink, as long as it was dark and hot, but he didn’t deny his daughters this little luxury. It had become something of a ritual by now; when Johanna came back from Sonneberg, they would treat themselves to coffee and a slice of cake, and a pickled herring that she would buy in town as well.
The rest of the village gossiped about these habits of theirs and said that in Joost Steinmann’s house, the women ruled the roost. But it wasn’t as though they did whatever they pleased. Certainly within their own four walls the girls were allowed their own way much more than others of their age, but when it came to sheltering them from the wicked ways of the world, Joost could be worse than a mother hen. What if the village choir was rehearsing and they wanted to join in the singing? Out of the question—there might be boys lurking around the streets as they walked back home. And a dance on the night of the solstice? There was no point even asking if they could go. A few years back some of the village girls had gotten together and started a spinning group for the winter, but Joost wouldn’t even let his daughters join in this bit of harmless fun. “You’ll slip and fall on the ice on your way home and break a leg,” he had declared. “Better to stay home and practice your letters.” As if books were as enjoyable as a good chat. Ruth swallowed. The gatherings were set to begin again in November, and the other girls would all be sitting at the spinning wheels two evenings a week while she and her sisters sat at home. By the time the spinning circle broke up and the girls walked home through the alleys, laughing, throwing snowballs, and shrieking at the boys chasing them, Ruth, Johanna, and Marie would already be in bed.