After lunch the silvered globes would be dry and the women sat down, under Marie’s guidance, to decorate them. While the first winter landscapes had been painted with white enamel, they now had a broad palette in shades of red, blue, and green. And they had a full range of decorations as well, including glass beads and tinsel wire as fine as human hair. Whenever Marie looked at the sparkling, shining treasures all around her, her heart leaped. With all the glowing colors, the silver bath, and other shimmering materials, the workshop looked like a fairy’s grotto or a storehouse where comets waited before shooting across the sky. Sometimes Marie felt that she was an enchantress. With the time to finally try out new shapes and designs, her imagination knew no limits. Where she had once had a dozen different designs, she now had three dozen or more. The others grumbled that even if Johanna did ever get started on her catalog, she would never be able to finish it because of Marie’s boundless imagination.
Other glassblowers soon started to say that Marie’s baubles were more beautiful than anyone else’s. Again and again, they stopped by and tried to get into the workshop under some pretext or another in an attempt to catch a glimpse of Marie’s designs. But Johanna was unbending here; apart from Peter’s patients, nobody else was allowed in the workshop. She didn’t want Marie to suffer the same fate that Karl Flein had met with his glass roses.
While Marie spent the afternoons working on new designs just as they had agreed, Peter made glass eyes to written specifications that arrived by post. He had as many orders as ever, and he had patients who came directly to him.
His fears that the patients would be distressed by the chatter, song, and laughter in the workshop were soon banished. Rather they felt quite at ease in the bustling, happy atmosphere. Fate had been unkind to them once when they lost an eye, but after their consultations with Peter many didn’t want to leave, so they sat down at the workbenches with the women and watched as they painted and finished the pieces.
Although next Christmas was still nearly a year away, it wasn’t long before a visitor asked whether perhaps he could buy some of the splendid globes. At first Johanna wanted to refuse—after all, they were working to fill an order for America—but she soon reconsidered. The first to ask was a man who had come from Nuremberg with his daughter. Johanna let him choose twelve globes, which she packed for him in a cardboard box. Then she asked double the price that Woolworth was paying. The gentleman handed over the money without a murmur of protest and thanked Johanna over and over for accommodating him. As Peter and Johanna shook his hand to say good-bye, neither of them could have guessed that they had just won a major new client.
Nor did they immediately make the connection when a letter arrived a few weeks later from a Nuremberg department store, asking about terms and prices. Peter only realized as he was reading it through for the second time that one of the “Hoffmann Brothers & Sons” must have been the father of little Siegrun, who had lost an eye in a riding accident. He hadn’t known until that moment that the man was also part owner of one of the largest stores in Nuremberg. After a flurried exchange of letters—and a box of samples sent to Nuremberg—Steinmann and Maienbaum, glassblowers, had another order to fill.
When in late February the postman arrived at their door with a telegram from America, everybody was too busy to be surprised.
A telegram from America? Why not?
All the same everyone was eager to hear what news could be so important that it would be sent at such expense. It wasn’t the way their client usually communicated with them.
As always, Ruth took delivery of the mail. She unfolded the sheet as she came in from the street.
“I hope the shipment of Valentine hearts arrived all right,” Johanna murmured. Though everything in the workshop was running as smoothly as could be, she was still prone to fits of worry. The humiliation she had suffered at the hands of the Sonneberg wholesalers was like a thorn in her flesh. It always began to itch anew whenever she dared believe that success was here to stay.
All eyes were on Ruth as she stood rooted in the doorway, staring at the sheet.
“How long are you going to keep us in suspense?” Johanna snapped nervously. “Peter, don’t you even care that there’s news from America?”
Peter was consulting with a war veteran about a new eye. He sighed and put the color card aside. He didn’t like being interrupted at such a critical moment.
With one hand at her throat, as though gasping for air, Ruth croaked, “The telegram is from Steven. He says, ‘Valentine hearts arrived. Well done.’ ” She looked up.