The Glassblower(12)

Ruth had already loaded the cardboard boxes into the wooden frame that would fit inside the basket. Four jars to each box. The two of them carried the pack out to the front step, and Johanna looked up the steep village street. She was glad to see that there was no mist today. With a practiced motion, she shouldered her pack and buckled the belt tightly. Then Ruth lifted up the wooden frame and strapped it into place at all four corners. She put her hand on Johanna’s arm. “When you’re in Sonneberg, keep your ears open. You may hear of someone who wants us to work for them. Perhaps Strobel knows a glassblower who would take us on.”

Johanna nodded. The wooden frame was already digging into her back. She set out.

“And try to get a better price from the old skinflint this time. We need every penny!” Ruth called after her.

As if she didn’t know that! Johanna grimaced. It was all very well for Ruth to give orders like that, but she never wanted to go and sell the wares herself. “Strobel gives me the shivers,” she had said the year before, the only time she went along with Johanna. “I wouldn’t want to see him too often.” Johanna didn’t much like the look of the man either, but what could be done about it? She sighed, and strode on purposefully.

It was just after half past six.



When she passed the railway station, the temptation to go in and buy a ticket to Sonneberg was as strong as ever. Ever since the rails had been laid four years ago, more and more women took the train when they ran errands from the village and delivered the wares to town. But Joost had no fondness for the train; he had always called it a “stinking black contraption.” Johanna could hear his voice as clearly as if he were still alive: “It’ll break down halfway, just like it did when they cut the ribbon for the maiden voyage, and then you’ll have to hike the rest of the way all the same!” She wondered, however, whether he had really been so distrustful of the new technology, or whether his attitude had more to do with the fact that they just couldn’t afford the fare. Just as they had never been able to afford to send one of the village women into town on their behalf.

At this time of year the sun was so low over the horizon that it almost shone through from below the treetops. The rain that had poured down during their father’s funeral was long gone, and it was unusually warm for September. Johanna soon felt the heat gathering in her armpits; the thick woolen jacket made her perspire. Her back was damp, and it itched. She had tied the headscarf too tight, and she tried to ease it with her finger so that the air could get to her scalp.

Usually she would have hitched a ride with a wagon for most of the thirteen or so miles into town, but today, whenever the drivers slowed up and offered to let her ride, she waved them on. If she accepted their offer, she would have to give them a couple of pennies for the favor, and she had to be careful with what little money she had.

The rain over the last few days had made such a quagmire of the path that Johanna found herself cutting through the trees to avoid sinking up to her ankles in mud. Great clods of earth got caught in her soles all the same, and every step was an effort. She toyed with the idea of washing her boots in the Steinach brook, but it was swollen with rainwater and no longer the tame little stream she knew; it had broken its banks and foamed and thrashed wildly, throwing up fountains of spray in places that Johanna had to dodge. She carried on with the mud still clinging to her boots.

When she reached Sonneberg, she looked up at the church clock and saw to her dismay that it was already past eleven o’clock. More than four and a half hours—it had never taken her that long before. Usually she was one of Friedhelm Strobel’s first callers, which was an advantage since she never had to wait long to speak to him. She looked down at her filthy boots and her heart sank further. Strobel would hardly be pleased to have her tramping mud all over his gleaming parquet floor.

Like every Friday when she came to town, she was struck by how busy it was. Johanna knew she was late and picked up her pace unconsciously as she walked. She often had to step aside to let others past, which wasn’t easy with the great basket on her back.

Sonneberg was full of people this time of year, and as Johanna crossed town, she heard countless German dialects and foreign languages buzzing around her. Almost every inn and lodging house had hung up a shingle to show that there were no more free rooms. Buyers had flooded into town from far and wide to see what the craftsmen in the nearby villages had made over the summer months. Most of all, they were here to reserve stock for the Christmas season.

Rather than going from house to house and haggling over the items with the pieceworkers, the businessmen relied on local wholesalers, who had set up their networks of suppliers years before and turned the putting-out system into a fine art form in Sonneberg. There were at least twenty wholesalers in town—maybe more since their shops were sometimes hardly recognizable as such from outside—and all of them could contract any kind of piecework a customer cared to name. Not that they had storerooms full of glassware sitting on the shelves waiting for a buyer—instead, most orders were placed from the wholesaler’s catalogs. These great tomes were full of pen-and-ink drawings or even photographs, with every item described in minute detail, including its dimensions and material. Each wholesaler guarded his samples book fiercely. There were no prices in the catalogs, for those were always negotiated separately for each order.