Johanna nodded. She had been wondering why there was a hot plate next to their workbench.
“You have to be quick about it. You’ll need to give the goblet a good hard shake, so that the solution goes all over the inside.”
The clear glass goblet turned silver as Johanna watched.
“And you have to be sure that you never get any of the solution onto the outside of the goblet, or it leaves behind the most horrible marks.” Griseldis held up the finished product and showed off the unblemished silver all the way around. “That’s how it works.”
“It looks splendid! Hardly like glass at all!” Johanna shook her head, amazed.
Griseldis smiled. “That’s why they call it poor man’s silver, you know. Now look, once the silver has taken to the glass, there’ll be a little fluid left over. You shake it out in here.” She pointed to a box, its sides covered in a thick layer of cotton wool.
Johanna frowned. “What’s the good of that? If the silver nitrate’s only good for one use, then surely we could just tip the rest out.”
“My word, no! It’s nasty-looking stuff, and you may not think so to look at it, but there’s still some silver in there. It all drips down to the bottom of the box. By the end of the year there’s enough to make it worthwhile, believe you me. This box is worth money.” She leaned closer to Johanna.
“And just try to guess who gets the profit from it?”
Johanna shrugged. “Heimer, I should imagine.”
Instead of answering, Widow Grün shook her head and grinned knowingly.
Instead of asking further, Johanna stared at the bottle of silver nitrate where it hung on the wall.
“You’re in no mood for riddles, are you, my dear?” Widow Grün put a hand on Johanna’s arm and shook her gently.
Johanna swallowed. “It’s all so . . . strange. Father’s hardly been dead two weeks and now here we are in someone else’s house, working at someone else’s benches . . . It’s all happened so fast, I almost feel that life is a merry-go-round.”
The old woman sighed. “I know what you mean. You wouldn’t believe how well I know! Just be happy that you have any work at all, my child. A woman on her own has a hard time in this world, let me tell you.”
Johanna looked up. “Did Heimer come and offer us work of his own accord, or did you have a hand in that?” she whispered. From the corner of her eye she could see Heimer looking over Ruth’s shoulder as she packed up the finished goods. She hoped that he would have no complaints.
“I wouldn’t dare try such a thing!” Griseldis laughed. “You can’t change that fellow’s mind, nor try to plant an idea in him. You’ll see soon enough that he runs the workshop just exactly as he sees fit.” She was whispering too now. “Let’s get to work, or we’ll have trouble.”
Johanna would have liked to thank her for her help. Maybe even ask her about her son, Magnus, who had been gone from Lauscha for so long. But one look at her neighbor’s face showed her that this was not the time or place for such talk.
She couldn’t believe how big the workshop was. It made their workshop at home look like one in a dollhouse. The Heimer family home was the only three-story house in the village; the kitchen was upstairs on the second floor and the bedrooms were above it, right under the roof. The workshop and storerooms took up the whole of the first floor, and even that didn’t seem to be enough space; every square inch was crammed full of supplies or half-finished items or products already packed into crates and waiting to be taken away. The air was foul and smelled of chemicals, unwashed bodies, and bird droppings. Johanna was disgusted to see that there were some ten bird cages in the room. The village glassblowers loved to catch songbirds in the forest in the hope that the sound of their song would cheer up the workshop, but Joost had never liked the custom and his daughters didn’t either. Quite the opposite: Johanna always felt sorry for the poor little creatures in their dirty cages. She turned away from a robin redbreast that gazed at her, sad eyed.
What would Father say if he could see her here now?
Like Joost, Wilhelm Heimer had lost his wife very early, and he had raised his three sons alone. All three had become glassblowers, but unlike most of the young men in Lauscha they made no attempt to set up their own workshops. Instead, they worked in their father’s house, just as the Steinmann sisters had for Joost. Despite their similarities, the two families had never had much to do with one another, not only because the Heimer household was at the top of the village but also because both houses had quite enough to do with the work that came in. Joost and Wilhelm had drunk together often enough at the Black Eagle, but otherwise each went his own way and didn’t interfere in the other’s business. One had three daughters and the other three sons, and naturally there had been talk around the tavern table of making a match. In the end though, everyone in Lauscha knew that the Steinmann girls kept to themselves and didn’t let the boys turn their heads.