The Glassblower(41)

“It was. I still don’t know whether I like the elephant best or the lion,” Marie answered. “The way he made that elephant coil its trunk . . .”

“I just love the curls in the lion’s mane—such a pretty yellow. I never even knew that the foundry sold stock in that color,” Johanna replied.

“I think what he did was melt together a bit of yellow rod with some orange,” Marie said thoughtfully. “Apparently it’s not easy to mingle the colors like that. When old Heimer got that order for the striped drinking glasses, they all cursed up a storm.”

Johanna’s sigh hung in the air like a little white cloud. “Those glass animals would certainly sell well. Friedhelm Strobel . . .”

Ruth laughed. “Save your breath. Peter makes eyes because that’s his passion, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. He doesn’t care about earning money. Which is unfortunate,” she giggled. “If our dear neighbor were a little more business minded, you might have become Mrs. Maypole long ago!” She nudged Marie.

“The things you say! How often do I have to tell you that Peter and I are just good friends? Mrs. Maienbaum—why, it would be like marrying my own brother.” Johanna grimaced. “Anyway, who cares about marrying money? I certainly don’t. I just want Peter to do well. If he made his business in glass animals, he’d make money much more easily than he does with his wounded soldiers and those poor children who’ve had accidents.”

As soon as they opened the door to the workshop, Johanna felt her hackles rise. She wanted to turn right round and . . . well, do anything but this. Anything but stand in this ill-ventilated workshop, working on Christmas Day itself because old Heimer couldn’t organize the business well enough for even a day’s holiday, putting ugly glassware through the silver bath or packing it into boxes. Marie went in first and made a beeline for the painting bench. Johanna shook her head as she saw Marie take off her jacket while striding across the room, as though she could hardly wait to get back to work.

As Ruth walked past the glassblowers at their lamps, her chin held high, she said nothing beyond “Good morning.” Johanna was pleased to note that her sister still didn’t seem to have forgiven Thomas for putting so little thought into his gift to her. She scanned the room for Griseldis, but Widow Grün was nowhere to be seen. Peter had said that her house had been ice-cold; perhaps she’d caught a cold when her stove stopped working.

There was no sign of Wilhelm Heimer either. Johanna felt strangely at a loss. What am I doing here? she thought. By now Marie had opened all the paint pots in front of her as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Ruth was caught up in conversation with Eva and seemed to be admiring her new hair clasp. Sarah came in from the storeroom at her usual snail’s pace, her arms full of flattened cardboard boxes. And the three Heimer boys were hunched over their lamps—she had heard the flames hissing as soon as she opened the door. Everyone had a job to do but her.

Thomas Heimer turned round. “Father will be in later. He’s in Sonneberg this morning,” he said, looking past Johanna. When he saw Ruth standing with Eva, he got up and walked over to her, without giving Johanna any indication of what work there was to do.

So Johanna joined Sarah and began folding cardboard boxes. Sarah told her that Widow Grün was in bed with a high temperature, and then fell back into sullen silence. After folding boxes until there was no more room on the table, Johanna said, “That’s certainly enough for now. There must be more urgent work to be done.”

But Sarah carried on folding boxes as though she hadn’t heard.

Was the girl really as simpleminded as she acted? Exasperated, Johanna walked over to the silvering bench, where at least three dozen glass goblets were waiting to be silvered. Here was something for her to do.

She found she had a new appetite for work as she picked up the first goblet and held the opening in the base up to the stopcock on the silver fluid bottle. It was only then that she noticed there was no more silver solution in the bottle on the wall. The flask of reducing fluid was full, but that was no good on its own. She stared helplessly at the flasks of ammonia, spirit vinegar, and silver-nitrate salts. Heimer always made a great secret of the exact proportions. Griseldis was the only one who knew how much to take from each bottle before she mixed them together with water and a pinch of grape sugar as a reducing agent. Granted, Heimer’s silvered wares were especially smooth and shiny. Other masters didn’t use such pure ingredients, or they used the wrong reducing agent, and their silver didn’t wash evenly over the glass, leaving bare spots here and there. But the drawback of Heimer’s appetite for secrecy was clear: without Griseldis there to mix the fluid, the whole workflow ground to a halt.