The buyers came to Sonneberg for the beautiful porcelain dolls in particular; they had real hair and glass eyes that moved, and they were dressed in finely sewn silk clothes. But they also bought toys of tin or wood, and colorful glass marbles and beads, and all the other wares that a glassblower could make. Thuringian handiwork was known and admired all over, and sold for good money in the department stores of Munich, Nuremberg, and Hamburg, and even farther afield in Saint Petersburg, Copenhagen, and Brussels.
Once a customer had made his choice from the catalog, he would work out a price, the size of the order, and the delivery date. Then the wholesaler would go to his pieceworkers with the order book under his arm. The Christmas orders were all coming in now, and a wholesaler’s door had hardly swung closed before the next visitor came bustling into his shop.
Johanna could tell at a glance which people were buyers and which were pieceworkers. The buyers were far more elegantly dressed, in clothes of the best quality. What’s more, they almost invariably had a secretary at their side, carrying a leather briefcase or a carpetbag, which likely held samples of their own, so that they could ask a wholesaler, “Could you make me a vase like this one?” or “What would you charge for a hundred wooden candlesticks?”
While the businessmen were fresh faced and well rested after a night in their lodgings and a leisurely breakfast, the pieceworkers had often worked through the night to have their orders ready on time. If they had had time to eat at all before they set out, then it was nothing more than a few potatoes or a slice of bread. They walked briskly through the streets, and Johanna suspected that they hurried not for the love of business but because they had a house full of children back home and a pile of work that grew bigger every minute they were away.
When Johanna opened the door to Friedhelm Strobel’s showroom, she was almost choked by the thought that this would be the last time she came here. She was suddenly glad that she had to wait until the glassblower who had arrived before her had finished his business with Strobel. She sat down on the wine-red velvet sofa at the other end of the shop, her heart thumping.
It was strange that she had been here so often but had never really looked at the place before now. The shop was lined floor to ceiling with cabinets in which Strobel kept his samples and finished wares. None of the drawers were labeled, but Strobel knew even with his eyes closed what was where. At the very top of the cabinets was a shelf with baskets instead of drawers. One of the baskets was full of the balls of soap that he bought from an old woman who lived in a nearby village and who made the soap by hand with the help of her two daughters. Johanna had once been at Strobel’s when a consignment of soap was delivered, so she knew it was the source of the glorious herbal smell that always filled the shop.
As she wrinkled her nose to stifle a sneeze, she heard Strobel’s voice. “The bowl’s much too deep,” he was saying. “My client wants to use each bowl to present seven or eight pralines, but you could put a pound of chocolates in there. I made this quite clear when you were here last!”
Johanna knew all too well the expression of scornful incredulity that went with that tone of voice—as though he could hardly believe the stupidity of the world. She had been in the shop often enough when one of the other suppliers was the target of such a dressing down. Every time this happened, she had felt sorry for whoever was on the receiving end.
As Strobel spoke, he pulled over a wooden ladder and climbed three steps to open one of the drawers. “I’d like to know why I bothered to show you the sample piece at all if you’re not going to stick to the model. Look here, you managed to get the radius right but this bowl is much shallower!” He held up the pale blue glass bowl.
The man took the bowl and looked at it closely. Strobel snorted impatiently. He glanced over at Johanna and tried to catch her eye, but she turned away. Surely he didn’t imagine that she would take sides with him against this poor fellow! The man spoke: “You didn’t make such a fuss about it last time. What happens now?” He looked worried.
Strobel shrugged. “Is it my problem that you can’t listen? I have to supply what my clients order.”
“But you must have some clients who want bowls this deep! What am I supposed to do with fifty of them?” A look of despair crossed his face. Johanna didn’t want to think what would happen if he returned home with his pack still full of the glass bowls he had been planning to sell.
Strobel clapped his hand onto the man’s shoulder. “I’ll keep one here as a sample. Maybe I’ll find a use for it,” he said, steering him toward the door. “I’m sure we’ll do business again one of these days.” That was probably meant to reassure the poor soul, but the man was hardly out the door before Strobel put the bowl away in a drawer under his counter without a second glance.