The Glassblower(153)

“Now we just have each other,” she whispered, and her eyelids fluttered like a butterfly’s wings. “Or are you fed up with me by now?”

Peter couldn’t even shake his head. His heart was full to bursting with love. How long he had waited to hear her say something like this! Why did joy and sorrow always come hand in hand?

Johanna was looking at him. Expectantly, uncertainly.

“You won’t get rid of me so easily; you know that,” he said at last, and managed to smile.

As he spoke, he saw something blaze up in her eyes that he had looked for in vain all these years—a woman’s love.

She curled up in his embrace.





33

Steven had told her that with only five hundred cabin-class passengers and eighteen hundred in steerage, the Valkyrie was one of the smaller ocean liners. But when their carriage had stopped in front of the ship during a sightseeing tour of the Hamburg docks the day before, it had looked anything but small to Ruth. No, it was a giant—a giant of gleaming gray metal.

This impression was only reinforced as she followed Steven up the gangway with Wanda on her arm. The people down on the quayside looked so tiny. She couldn’t even see the stern of the ship from where they were standing now, and its gleaming silver flanks seemed to stretch away forever. Ruth had read an article about the ocean liners in one of the magazines that Johanna used to bring home from Sonneberg; in the article, the ships were referred to as “floating cities.” The writer had described the elegant restaurants and ballrooms on board, and noted that a person could lose his way among the endless mirror-lined halls and staircases. When she had read it, Ruth had thought that whoever wrote the article must be vastly exaggerating.

They shuffled forward at a snail’s pace, stopping to wait with almost every step, because the passengers ahead were held up. Steven had told her that it would be evening by the time the last passenger had been assigned a cabin. However, since the line for first class was significantly shorter than those for second and third class, he expected that they would have their cabins that morning.

Though Wanda was rather heavy in her arms, Ruth didn’t mind the wait. On the contrary—she looked all around with boundless curiosity. Ruth drank up every detail like a sponge: the hectic activity on the quayside, the families saying farewell, the elegantly dressed gentlemen and even more elegantly dressed ladies all around them. Hats seemed to be the latest fashion, and there was hardly a woman in line who didn’t have some fantastic creation perched on her head. Ruth put her hand to her head self-consciously and adjusted her own hat, a startling item made of velvet with a thick plume of purple feathers on the side. She pulled it a little farther down over her brow. When Steven had insisted on buying matching hats for all of her outfits, his generosity had been almost too much for her. But now she was glad she looked like the other ladies who were boarding the ship.

Steven turned to her.

“Are you quite sure you don’t want me to take Wanda?”

Ruth shook her head. “We’re all right, thank you. You have to hold the papers anyway.” She pointed to the sheaf of documents that he had fanned out in his right hand.

“It’ll all be fine, you’ll see,” he whispered, then turned to face forward again.

The more Steven assured her of this, the more nervous Ruth became.

She had had no time to worry about the papers on the journey to Hamburg or during the last two days here. There had been so much to see, to buy, to try on or try out. And everywhere, Steven was at her side, smiling with delight, ready to encourage her to any excess. Coffee and cakes in an English tea shop? Why not? A rocking horse for Wanda, with real horsehide? Of course they had room for that in their luggage. When Ruth complained that her feet ached after going around to so many shops, Steven snapped his fingers and called for a hansom cab. When Ruth climbed in, relieved that she didn’t have to walk all the way back to the hotel on the Alster waterfront, she was quite startled to find that the cab took them not to the hotel but to a stylish beauty salon where Steven booked a pedicure with a dainty, almost doll-like woman. While the woman’s soft hands pampered Ruth’s feet and rubbed in soothing, scented oils, Steven and Wanda went for a walk in a nearby park. When she went to join them later, her heart almost burst with happiness at the sight of the two of them busily feeding the pigeons.

She loved this man so much that it hurt.

A smile flitted across Ruth’s face, smoothing away the worry. Those days in Hamburg had been like a glimpse into a kaleidoscope, which revealed new marvels and adventures at every turn. Her fears had simply vanished in the flood of new impressions. And if she did feel a pang of worry or a twinge of regret, Steven made it vanish in the night.