Thomas and his brothers sat at their lamps without a break from morning till night, while the hired hands painted, silvered, labeled, and packed. In addition to the two women he normally paid to take the wares into Sonneberg, Wilhelm Heimer hired a farmer from a nearby village to take a delivery into town every day.
As Johanna sat there stringing twenty glass beads each onto lengths of string and knotting the ends, she forbade herself even to think of her Friday visits to Sonneberg during the Christmas season in years past. But threading the strings was tedious work, and as the heap of glittering trinkets grew ever higher, Johanna could no longer keep the memories at bay.
The taverns and cafés were all lit up, and the town’s narrow streets were filled with crowds. There were few foreign buyers in Sonneberg that time of year, as it was impossible for them to get their orders across the borders so soon before Christmas. But dialects from all over Germany flowed through the streets. And the air was filled with scents so intense that the memory of them started Johanna’s mouth watering. On these cold, short days, old ladies stood in front of their houses with a pot of mulled wine spiced with cinnamon, aniseed, pepper, and secret ingredients. Others sold gingerbread—much to the disapproval of the bakers of Sonneberg, who could do little to stop their competitors from breaking the guild monopoly just once a year. Still others toasted almonds or grilled the famous Thuringian sausages. And all of these treats sold quickly, since there was a hardly a visitor to town who would refuse a snack along the way. Johanna always had liked to soak up the hustle and bustle, and she always returned to Lauscha energized.
She let her hands drop onto the workbench. The gleaming silver beads swam before her eyes. Ruth and Marie had always been so pleased when she brought back a bag of almonds or an elaborate gingerbread biscuit. Father had never objected to the extra expense. He never even counted the money that Johanna handed over from the sale of the glass.
She glanced over at Wilhelm Heimer, who was upbraiding Sebastian about something. Her new employer hardly knew the meaning of the word trust, and took an inventory every evening. She would never want to steal any of his ugly products—the ones Marie designed being the only exception. “Cheap, gimcrack stuff,” she muttered under her breath.
This year there would be no gingerbread, nor any other treats. Instead they would sit staring at Father’s empty chair, and the Christmas carols would sound thin and feeble without his voice booming out the words. Johanna was beginning to understand why those who had suffered a death in the family always hated Christmas so much; the hole that their loved one left behind seemed bigger in the light of the Christmas candles.
But it wasn’t just grief over Joost’s death that made her so miserable. She was also worried sick about money. She had to plan the budget down to the last penny every month to make their wages last. So far they had not gone to bed hungry, but it had been close at the end of last month. It was true that Heimer paid them a mere pittance, but there was another problem too: everything from bread to soup cost more now that they were working outside their home. Before, Ruth had spent every Wednesday morning kneading a huge batch of dough, which she then took to the bakehouse to bake into six loaves that would last the family through the week. But now they no longer had time to bake, so they had to buy bread instead, which cost much more. Since they didn’t have time to go to the butcher to buy a bag of bones or to stand by the stove boiling them for soup, they had to rely on a can of Liebig’s Extract of Meat from the pantry.
Johanna looked down with hatred at the heap of beads in front of her. She couldn’t understand why anyone would spend good money on that sort of thing. Money, money, money—that was all she thought about these days. But neither Ruth nor Marie ever gave her a word of thanks for keeping accounts and sticking to a budget. Instead Ruth always complained that she couldn’t bear to see another meal of potatoes or bread and drippings, that she wanted a nice juicy roast or a dish of herring. As though it were her fault that they were short of money, Johanna had to explain to them again and again why it was out of the question to spend a little extra on a drawing pad or colored pencils, a hair clasp or comb. Though Johanna had to admit that her sisters had stopped making such extravagant demands recently. Maybe they finally understood that she couldn’t just snap her fingers and make these things appear. Johanna sighed again. Perhaps old Heimer would give them a couple of extra marks for Christmas. She toyed with the idea of asking Griseldis if Heimer might do this, but she dismissed the thought immediately. She didn’t want to sound too bold, especially since Griseldis was always telling her how grateful she should be to have a job at all as a woman. As a woman—sometimes Johanna wondered whether being a woman was like having some ghastly disease.