The Glassblower(23)

She watched cheerfully as Sarah wound the glittering wire round and round the belly of a perfume flask until it had made a kind of cage about the bottle.

“There, you see, that’s how you do it,” Sarah said, picking up the next bottle just as placidly as if she were chopping firewood.

Marie was horrified. Wrapped around as thickly as that, the tinsel wire lost all its delicate charm! And the bottle itself could barely be seen. The glass was no longer transparent and the colors might just as well have been the dreadful dull brown of a beer bottle.

Marie could have wept.



Ruth was secretly glad when Heimer put her to work with Eva at the painting bench, for she thought it would give her the opportunity to find out more about Thomas from his sister-in-law. And she was sitting much closer to him than when she had been at the packing table on the other side of the room. So far, however, neither had been advantages; certainly Eva never stopped jabbering, but since she seemed to regard herself as the most important member of the Heimer family, most of her stories were about herself. She hadn’t mentioned Thomas even once. Ruth was beginning to lose patience.

“When I found out they had a housekeeper here, I was so surprised!” Eva said, so caught up in her story that her cheeks were glowing. “Edel is an old woman, of course, but she takes care of so much of the work that there’s nothing left for me to do! My mother always told me, ‘My child, you must take what you can get in this life! It’s little enough.’ ” Her eyes gleamed. “Well, I certainly made a good choice here,” she went on, with unmistakable pride in her voice. “Look at this dress. Sebastian gave it to me just last week.” She held up her sleeve right under Ruth’s nose. “Bouclé silk—it must have been expensive!”

Ruth pursed her lips. What a silly, self-satisfied cow! All the same, she couldn’t resist running her fingertips over the silky fabric. “It feels wonderful.”

Eva beamed. “My mother always said, ‘My child . . .’ ”

Ruth took a deep breath. She didn’t want to hear any more of Eva’s mother’s wisdom. She cast a yearning glance toward the workbenches with the lamps, where Thomas looked very focused on his work.

Just like the day before, he and his brothers had been bent over their lamps already when the Steinmann sisters arrived. Thomas had only looked up briefly and nodded.

Disappointed, Ruth looked down at herself. Thomas hadn’t even glanced at her blue blouse, which hugged her figure so nicely and was something she usually only wore on special occasions. She had expected Johanna to make some comment when she took the blouse from the wardrobe and was surprised when she’d said nothing.

Ruth decided to try again. “How did you meet Sebastian?” she whispered, silently hoping that Eva wouldn’t include half the room in her answer.

Eva laughed. “That’s quite a story. I was on my way home from the slate quarry with my father and three of my brothers when our old nag collapsed in the middle of the road. It was on its last legs, you know. Anyway it was just lying there, and we were standing around wondering how we were ever going to get all the slates back home when Sebastian came by. And . . .”

So it had been blind luck. Eva had no new insights that might help her with Thomas. Ruth switched off the stream of chatter in her ears, like switching off a gas lamp. And . . . and . . . and . . . she thought, rather unkindly. Nobody would call Eva a skilled storyteller. She dipped her brush into the pot so roughly that a couple of drops spilled over the side.

“Be careful, you clumsy coot!” Eva hissed at her like a scalded cat. “Wilhelm doesn’t like any paint being wasted.”

Ruth snorted, but then realized how unladylike that must have sounded. If Thomas had happened to have looked up from his lamp just then . . .

She forced a smile. “I’ll learn soon enough. Not everyone can be as good as you with the brush.”

Johanna was walking past them right at that moment with a load of new glass pipes in her arms, and she raised an eyebrow questioningly. Ruth made a face at her. Nothing got past Johanna!

Eva, however, didn’t seem to have noticed the sarcasm in Ruth’s remark. Instead, reassured, she favored her new workmate with a graceful smile. “Do you know what? I’ll show you how to do it again. It’s all in how you turn the brush.”



There was potato salad for lunch again, just like the day before. Edeltraud brought a second dish full of chopped herring. The heads and tails were still in there, piled up in a grotesque heap with the fleshy middle bits, and the sour smell of the pickling brine hung over the whole table. The others once again washed down their meal with plentiful helpings of beer.