Peter sat down on the bench next to her and put an arm protectively around her shoulders.
“It’s all right now. You’re back home with us.” He held the water glass up for her.
Nobody knew what to say. It was so quiet that all they heard was the sound of Johanna drinking.
“I went to visit every wholesaler. I knocked on every door, every single one. They wouldn’t even listen to what I had to say,” she began at last.
Fat tears ran down her face.
“I felt like I had the plague and leprosy all at once. But in fact it was worse than that.”
The others looked at each other.
Ruth felt the disappointment knotting painfully in the pit of her stomach.
“What are you talking about, for God’s sake?” Peter asked, shaking her gently. “Did Woolworth come earlier than planned, or what happened? Why did nobody have time for you?”
Johanna shook her head. “At first I didn’t understand what was going on,” she said tearfully. “After the first shopkeeper was so rude to me I thought, he’s just having a bad day, I’ll try the next fellow. When the next one looked me up and down and said he had no time, I didn’t think anything of that either. But then . . .” She put both hands to her face and sobbed at the top of her voice. “I’ve never felt so horrid in all my life. I mean . . . except when . . . but now . . .” Her words were lost in a fit of sobbing.
The others waited helplessly for her to calm down.
“When I asked the woman . . . in the perfumer’s, she wouldn’t tell me . . . I still had no idea what was going on,” Johanna said at last in a tearful voice.
Ruth was growing angry on top of the disappointment. “So what is going on? Would you please be so good as to actually explain to us?”
Marie kicked her under the table.
“Strobel told the whole town that I stole from him and that’s why he kicked me out.” Johanna’s face was devoid of expression. “Everybody thinks I’m a thief. That’s what’s going on!” The hysteria in her voice gathered strength. Her laugh cut through the silence as the others sat there in shock. “I’m done with Sonneberg. Once and for all. Even the dogs wouldn’t give me the time of day there!”
13
Johanna was almost more distraught than she had been after the rape. She had been able to explain the attack by telling herself that Strobel was mad, that he was not in his right mind. Although he had raped her and robbed her of her innocence, deep inside, by some miracle, she had stayed whole. But his slander had wounded her innermost self; she, Johanna Steinmann, had lost her dignity. All the values that Joost had passed on to his daughters were shattered in a stroke. It was only a question of time before the rumors reached Lauscha as well. Perhaps it had already happened? Perhaps people were already making wicked remarks behind their backs?
She retreated to her room and spent days on end there, brooding in the summer heat. While the air outside shimmered in the heat wave that had descended on the village, she didn’t want to see or speak to anyone.
Eventually an even worse suspicion dawned on her: perhaps she had been the reason Ruth left Thomas. Had he called her a thief and Ruth had come to her defense? Was that why Ruth was keeping quiet about why she had fled in the middle of the night?
Brooding and furious, she relived every humiliation of her visit to Sonneberg over and over again.
“I won’t put up with it any longer. She’s hardly shown her face down here for days. When I look in on her, she turns her face to the wall. So I stand there feeling like a fool and have to leave again,” Ruth fumed, pacing up and down the kitchen. “How long is this going to go on? This Woolworth is probably in town by now, and we still haven’t got a wholesaler for your globes.”
“How many times are you going to say that? Just put yourself in her shoes. Johanna’s not doing all this just to annoy you.” Marie was tired. She had spent the whole day working with enamel paint and still had a nasty smell in her nose. She also had a headache.
She went into the workshop and sat down at Joost’s workbench. How long had it been since she had last had an evening’s peace in here?
Ruth followed her.
“It doesn’t fix anything to have her hiding in her room while we’re down here worrying about her. But the worst of it is how she won’t even talk to us.”
“Look who’s talking. You’re silent as the grave yourself about what went wrong between you and Thomas.”
“That’s got nothing to do with anyone but me and him. But this—this is about all three of us! It’s our future, our life, our . . .” Ruth fell silent.