The Glassblower(42)

“Why are you standing there like an ox staring at the barn door?”

Johanna spun round. Heimer. How could such a heavyset man appear as if from nowhere?

“I . . . there isn’t any silver bath,” she said rather feebly.

“What about over there?” Heimer pointed to where Sarah’s head could just be seen above a wall of cardboard boxes. “Didn’t you think to go and help her instead of standing there gawping at the empty silver bottle? It seems to me that there’s plenty to do!” And with that, he stomped off, shaking his head. “You girls may be used to ruling the roost at home, but you’re not paid to stand around here,” he said, wagging his finger at her.

Johanna stood there sheepishly, feeling the eyes of the others upon her as they stole glances over their shoulders. How could he reprimand her so—and for no good reason at all?

“Better to rule the roost than let you run the place like a pigsty!” she muttered to herself.

Heimer stopped in his tracks. “What did you say?”

Of course, at this point Johanna could have said something like, “Nothing, it’s all right.” She could have hurried over to Sarah at the packing table and carried on folding boxes that nobody had any use for. But she didn’t.





21

Peter turned off the gas tap. Without the singing of the flame, the room instantly fell quiet. As he sat down to join Johanna at the table, he cast a glance at the pair of glass eyes that still needed the veins painted on. A courier would come to collect them the next morning. The patient would surely be anxiously awaiting them. He would probably have to work through the night to have them ready, but he didn’t care—Johanna needed him now. Even if the stubborn woman would never admit it.

“Well don’t expect me to drag every word out of you like I’m pulling teeth. Did you say that to his face, about the pigsty?”

Johanna nodded, her expression a mixture of stubbornness and pride that only she could manage. “I don’t let anyone call me lazy. After all, it was his fault there was nothing for me to do. Gracious me—I only told him the truth, but you should have seen the way he exploded! He turned so red in the face that for a moment I thought he might drop dead on the spot.”

Peter had no trouble imagining it. “And then?”

“Then he began calling me all sorts of names. Going on about how ungrateful I was, and so on.” She shrugged. “Ungrateful fiddlesticks! I told him that he wasn’t giving me anything out of the goodness of his heart. In fact I told him that I was giving him my work and my time for next to nothing! And that I had no reason at all to be grateful to him because he was just taking advantage of the hard times we were going through to get himself a few hired hands on the cheap.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. She hadn’t minced words. He wasn’t surprised that Heimer had slung her out on her ear. “You sound like that Karl Marx. He was always going on about the workers being exploited.”

Johanna looked askance at him, not sure whether he was pulling her leg.

“I don’t know anybody called Marx. But damn it all, I’m not going to stand there and be called names. What would you have done in my place?”

Peter looked at her across the table. “I don’t know, to be honest. Maybe I would have kept my mouth shut. Maybe I wouldn’t. But I can say that I’m happy to be my own boss and won’t ever find myself in a scrape like that.”

“But you can understand why I did what I did, can’t you? A little bit?” she asked woefully.

Peter had to laugh. “What do you want me to say? I can hardly tell you it’s a good thing that you got Wilhelm Heimer to give you the boot, can I now?” Johanna didn’t need to know that deep down inside, he was actually rather proud of her. But he also wondered what it would mean for both of them that Johanna was out of a job.

She stood up. “If you’re siding against me as well, then I might just as well go home!” she said, going to the window. She stared over at her own house.

“The moment my sisters got home, they tore into me! Ruth told me that I was putting all our jobs in jeopardy. And Marie called me a quarrelsome know-it-all.” Johanna was standing straight as could be. “What a horrid thing to say—when all I did was speak the truth!”

“Come back and sit down,” Peter said as he went to the stove and fetched a pot he had put on to warm. “Let’s eat first, and then we’ll think about what to do next.”

Johanna was about to wave away his offer when the scent rising from the pot reached her nose. Her mouth started to water. She hadn’t had a bite to eat all day. When Peter put a bowl of soup in front of her, she realized how hungry she was. She dipped her spoon in before he even sat down with his own bowl. There were green beans, meat, and potatoes, all chopped up and swimming in a rich golden broth. He had everything he needed here—unlike her.