Johanna sighed. It was a mad world, for here she was now, working with Wilhelm’s sons. She stole a glance to the left where three lamps were set up by their workbenches, each with its own gas pipe. She could guess what that must have cost, given the fees the gasworks charged. But judging by the mountain of raw glass rods that lay by each bench, the three Heimer lads had plenty of work. The three brothers had already been sitting there, stooped over their lamps, when Johanna and her sisters had arrived that morning. Thomas had been the only one to look up and greet them; the other two had just grunted a word or two. So far none of them had taken a break.
Thomas, the eldest of the three, was her age. Sebastian was the middle brother. He was the only one to have married, and his wife, Eva, came from the village of Steinach. She was sitting at a table with Marie, busily painting. When Johanna looked over at them, she had trouble telling them apart from behind—they both had the same slim figure. The men in Eva’s family made stylus pencils for writing on slates, the kind that schoolboys used, and they were dirt poor. Johanna remembered what Ruth had said about getting married, and she smiled. The Heimer household must look like paradise on earth to Sebastian’s wife. Making a slate pencil was an exhausting and dirty job, so the work she did here must seem like child’s play by comparison.
“When you’re done with this little lot, you can get to work with the tinsel,” said a voice at her ear all of a sudden.
Johanna jumped.
Heimer had appeared as if out of nowhere and was standing behind the Widow Grün. He set down a pile of cardboard boxes and inspected a few goblets that were drying on a bed of nails. He filled two boxes, which he left standing by the workbench. Then he was gone again.
Johanna frowned. “What does that even mean?”
Widow Grün shrugged and smiled indulgently. “You’ll get used to that sort of thing. Best not to ask the point of every order he gives. Come on, let’s pack up the rest of them!”
Johanna looked at the last goblet she had silvered and felt a twinge of pride. No streaks and no bubbles. Good! She was beginning to enjoy the work.
Ruth was enjoying herself too. Wilhelm Heimer was pleased with her work. At least, that’s what she assumed his muttered words to mean when he took a jar from her hand and checked the label she had written for it. She wasn’t daft! It was hardly difficult to tell the jars apart when one type was five inches tall and the other seven inches.
And it was a clean job too! She was lucky that Heimer had put her to work at this bench. Ruth glanced over her shoulder at her older sister. She felt sorry for Johanna, standing there in a beige rubberized smock that was already splashed all over with horrible gunk. By the looks of it, she must be perspiring underneath it. The ripe smell of the silver solution filled the whole room, and Ruth didn’t even want to imagine what it must be like for Johanna and Widow Grün to breathe in those fumes directly.
Ruth was working at the packing table alongside Sarah, another hired hand. The table ran almost the whole length of the workshop. As she looked with growing dismay at the chaos of glassware in front of them, Ruth thought the packing itself was barely even half of what they had to do here. Someone or other was constantly coming over and putting more finished pieces on the table; either it was the glassblowers bringing dishes and plates that were to be packed away without painting, or it was Johanna and Widow Grün with the silvered pieces, or Marie and Eva with painted items. It wasn’t long before Ruth began to wonder whether her job really was something to envy, as she had thought at first. Sarah, however, seemed utterly untroubled by the chaos all round as she calmly painted letters and numbers onto labels and pasted them onto the wares.
Ruth hadn’t wanted to make any fuss on the first day of work, but as the mountain of glassware grew, she cautiously suggested, “Maybe we should sort things out a little first, before we write the labels.”
Sarah looked up. She looked slowly down the length of table at the mounting heaps of wares, then shrugged. Although she didn’t seem resistant to the idea, she didn’t agree either.
Ruth was beginning to get fed up with how slowly Sarah worked. “If we don’t hurry up we’ll have to pile the next lot of finished wares on the floor.” Then she began to sort the pieces without bothering with what Sarah would say. She didn’t want Heimer thinking she was daft.
Sarah went on working at the labels. “If I got myself into a tizzy every time the table filled up . . .” She puffed out her cheeks, and then exhaled a long breath.
An hour later the table was almost empty, and Ruth calmed down. But an hour after that, the wares were piling up again so fast that they could hardly keep up. There was something to be said for Sarah’s air of indifference, Ruth decided, the way she kept calm even when the table was a mess. She herself practically panicked when she saw Marie approaching with a whole tray of vases. “The two of us can’t manage all this,” she muttered. And the boxes that were already full had to be cleared away somewhere. Maybe she should start by—