She had just nodded. It could hardly have been more astonishing if Strobel had offered her a job polishing the moon.
“I would pay you of course,” he had added, misinterpreting her silence. “Though you understand that we would have to agree on some probationary period at a lower rate of pay. But once you have been on the job for a while—” He broke off there, leaving the rest of the sentence to dangle tantalizingly unspoken, like bait on a hook. Johanna snorted. He hardly needed to lure her in like this! His first few sentences had been enough to conjure up images in her mind’s eye that were quite tempting enough in themselves: Sonneberg and all the visitors in its streets, customers from all around the world, orders that ran into the hundreds of items, the samples all sitting neatly in their drawers waiting for the right client—and in the middle of all this hustle and bustle, Johanna Steinmann from Lauscha. Then straightaway she had felt a pang of guilt. How could she let herself be carried away so soon after Father’s death?
“I don’t know whether I can do all that,” she had answered, brushing aside her daydreams. She had seen herself standing there, notebook in hand, elegantly coiffed and wearing a dark-blue dress, attending to the customers . . . but she couldn’t ever be anyone’s assistant. Although excitement bubbled up inside her, she had kept it from spilling over.
Friedhelm Strobel grasped her hand. “If I trust you to do all that, it should be enough. Or do you think I would make such an offer to any young lass who wandered in off the street?”
Johanna wasn’t quite sure whether this was meant as a compliment or an insult. But she shook his hand—that horrible hand with the chewed flesh at the fingernails—and stood up. “I will have to consider your offer,” she had said, noticing how frosty her tone was.
Oh, drat it all! She kicked at a pile of leaves. Why did that man always put her on the defensive? Was it because he wasn’t from around here? Somebody had told her once that Friedhelm Strobel was from an important family of Berlin merchants. Maybe that was why he could seem so hoity-toity, even arrogant, Johanna mused. On the other hand, he had always been scrupulously polite to her, and that despite the fact that she could be stubborn, even mulish, in her dealings with him. More than once she had wondered whether, for some unknown reason, she had ended up in Strobel’s good graces. Well, today’s job offer certainly confirmed that.
Johanna grinned. She had been able to get a good price for the jars as well.
Now she could see the outskirts of Lauscha in the distance. The mountains all around cast their long shadows over the houses that clung to the steep slopes. When the sun shone, the wooden shingles on the rooftops glittered gray and silver, but when the village was in shadow like this, all the houses seemed to be wearing gloomy black hoods.
Johanna stopped to rest before tackling the final slope. Wouldn’t Ruth and Marie be surprised? She smiled from ear to ear, and though she knew it was vain, she felt she had every reason to be pleased with herself. What had he said? “Do you think I would make such an offer to any young lass who wandered in off the street?”
“Not to any lass, but certainly to me!” Johanna said to herself, and laughed out loud.
But a moment later, she had her doubts. If she took Strobel up on his offer, she would have to live in Sonneberg. She would have to leave Ruth and Marie on their own, and only come home at weekends; there was no way she would be able to walk more than twenty-five miles every day. And if she took the train all the time, it would probably eat up most of her wages.
And another thought nagged at her: What if she couldn’t live up to Strobel’s expectations? What if she did something foolish?
Ever since leaving Sonneberg, she had been of two minds about the matter. She had asked to be allowed to sleep on the decision. After all, she had to talk it over with her sisters first. And with Peter. Not that he had any say in the matter, but he did have a knack for asking the right questions, which her sisters did not. Yes, she decided, she would pay him a neighborly call after supper. She set off up the hill toward home.
Friedhelm Strobel was also thinking back on the conversation, his mind elsewhere as he went through the motions of showing his samples catalog to a buyer whose company was notoriously late with its payments. He grinned quietly to himself as he remembered how nonchalantly she had answered him—as though there were nothing in the least bit unusual about his offer. The little minx certainly knew how to play it cool. He passed his tongue over his lips until he found a scrap of dry skin, which he bit off greedily. Oh yes, Johanna Steinmann was far from being a frightened little mouse like most females her age. You could see that just by looking at her figure, which was wiry and firm, without an ounce of extra flesh on her anywhere and instead the muscles of a hard worker. Shoulders square, she looked ready to face the world, almost like a proud young brave except for the gentle swell of her breasts, which were such a pleasure to gaze upon. And the way she looked at him with those big eyes of hers above broad high cheekbones? Even the dreadful headscarf she always wore could not disguise her beauty. If he took away her scarf, replaced those dreadful country bumpkin boots with an elegant pair of shoes, and put her into a close-fitting dress, Johanna Steinmann would be far more attractive than many of the fine ladies who came to buy from him.