The Glassblower(30)

Marie looked around. It was only when she finally had some peace and quiet that she realized just how much the constant chatter in the workshop upset her. Talk, talk, talk—all day long. Even listening wore her out. She sighed.

Why couldn’t everyone just do their work in silence?

It had looked as though Johanna might stay home after Ruth had gone out for a breath of fresh air—Good gracious! Did her older sister think that she always had to be around to hold Marie’s hand?—but then she had headed out the door to see Peter.

Reverently, she fetched a fresh sheet of paper from the drawer and picked up a pencil. It was too sharp for her purposes, so she picked up another and tested its point with finger and thumb. This one was good, it would give her the soft lines she needed. Marie began by drawing a circle about the width of the bottom of the dish. For a while, all she did was look at the circle. This was how much space she had to work with. No more, no less. The challenge was to place the basket so that the vegetables could spill out over the brim to one side—but which side? There also had to be enough room on the other side for the cucumbers to stand upright, as it were. Even as she was still thinking about the structure of the still life, her pencil began gliding over the paper in gentle strokes.

Marie was suffused with the same warm glow that she felt every time she sat down in front of the paint pots in Heimer’s workshop. Heimer must have some notion of how much it meant to her to be allowed to paint, because for the last few days he had only assigned her to the painting bench, even though the others had different jobs every day.

She held the paper up at arm’s length. Good. Just to be quite sure, she stood up and took two steps away from the table. She smiled. Even from a distance, the basket and its contents were quite clear. She pulled the chair back in to the table and sat down. The next step was to choose the right colors. For some of the vegetables, she already knew exactly which color she wanted. The violet for the cabbage could be mixed together from dark blue and carmine red, and she could use the same red to make the orange by mixing just a drop into the lemon yellow they used. She could hardly wait to see how the paints would mix and mingle. But the basket would be the problem. Brown wasn’t a color suited to painting onto clear or silvered glass. It just ended up looking dirty—as though the dish had been put back in the cupboard unwashed.

Marie gnawed at her lip. A blue basket would look wrong, as would a red one. Perhaps she could use the white enamel? She closed her eyes and tried to imagine how it would look. No, if she used white then the woven pattern of the basket wouldn’t show; it would simply look like porcelain.

Marie sat up with a start as the clock on the wall began to strike. Nine o’clock already! It wouldn’t be long before Ruth and Johanna came back. She put her sketch back into the drawer, along with the pencil. She didn’t need them any more tonight. But the basket . . . Marie imagined again how it would look, enjoying the vision. And then and there she had the answer: gold! She would use the same gold that they had been using that afternoon to paint the pistils onto the wildflowers. If she laid it on thinly, it would let the light through in such a way that the shadows in the pattern were there from the start. It would look bright and appealing, and it would go well with all the other colors she had in mind.

“Just one thing: How on earth will I talk old Heimer round?” Marie asked herself aloud, then laughed at the sound of her voice.

She would paint that basket—no doubt about it. Even if she had to buy a dish to do so.

By the time she was ready for bed it was half past nine. Neither Ruth nor Johanna was home yet. Marie was a bit surprised that Ruth would want to go out walking for so long in the cold. She had probably gone to pay a call on Peter as well after her stroll. Marie snuggled down under the covers and got comfortable. She was still in a daze, thinking of the shapes and colors of her design. Marie couldn’t imagine that either of her sisters had had anywhere near as much fun as she had that evening.



“You’re so beautiful! So soft. And so . . . rounded,” Thomas whispered into Ruth’s hair as he stroked her breast.

She moaned softly in reply as warm ripples of pleasure spread through her body.

Thomas then began circling her nipples gently with his fingers. Strangely, the ripples intensified.

“You feel so lovely. Everything about you is beautiful.” He stroked her more urgently.

Ruth felt that he could set her afire just as easily as he turned up the flame on the gas lamp. She had never even dreamed that it was like this, that a man’s desire could feel so wonderful. She had no name for the astonishing feelings coursing through her body, but she knew that they had changed her life forever. Did other women feel like this? She lifted her face toward him.