The Glassblower(43)

She put her spoon down so suddenly that the soup splashed over the edge.

Peter looked at her, his eyebrows raised. “What’s bothering you now?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “To be honest, I don’t think it’s all bad. I never liked to think of you working your fingers to the bone for Heimer. A woman like you, working for a blockhead like him. That was never going to end well.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Johanna looked at him, still tense. “I think the argument was just waiting to happen. If it hadn’t broken out today, it would have by the new year.”

Her expression grew more cheerful, and she picked up her spoon and carried on eating.

Now! Now was the time to ask her again.

“Sometimes a storm clears the air . . .” he heard himself saying instead of what he wanted to ask. “Who knows? Perhaps you’ll find some way to make peace with the old fellow.” He held his breath.

Johanna looked up. “Make peace with him?” she asked uncomprehendingly. “You don’t really believe that I would go crawling back to him. I’d rather starve!” She pushed the bowl away.

He leaned across the table and took her hand. “Johanna, come to me, to my workshop!”

Her arm went rigid.

“You and me . . . we work well together, you have to admit that.” But she didn’t respond. He let go of her hand.

“Oh, Peter!” Johanna looked at him with despair and amusement in her eyes. “I know you mean well, but you don’t really need me around. You’ve got everything just as you like it.”

Peter looked around his home, seeing it through her eyes; the narrow room with windows at each end. The simple workbench and the racks of glass eyes staring out of their sockets. The table in the kitchen corner where he consulted his patients. And in the back, his bed with the old patchwork quilt his mother had made flung carelessly over it. Damn it all, why didn’t he have more to offer her? “Just as I like it? This is the messy, untended household of a bachelor. A woman’s touch would work wonders here.” And a woman’s love . . .

“Oh, so I’m supposed to help you keep your home looking nice,” she answered sarcastically. “Do you think that’s all I’m good for?” She laughed bitterly. “It seems our father was the only man who didn’t think that we girls were stupid!”

“Nonsense!” Peter felt himself losing his temper. Why did she always have to make things so hard for him?

“Maybe that came out wrong. You know quite well that I think the world of you. But that’s not what we’re talking about. What I wanted to say was—me and you . . .” He looked at her and fell quiet.

It was pointless. Johanna looked like someone who had made up her mind long ago. He didn’t know what she was thinking about, but it wasn’t him.

“Just forget I spoke,” he said, dismissing his own suggestion with a wave of his hand. “You’re quite right; I can rearrange the workshop all on my own. And when I start making a new line of glass animals in the new year, I’ll be able to do that on my own as well, at least at first.” He saw Johanna prick up her ears. For a moment the throb of disappointment faded in his chest. Yes, she’d sit up and look twice when he began to make good money with the glass animals.

“I’ll manage on my own. And I’m sure you will too.” He didn’t let it show just how much it cost him to say these words, which he didn’t even believe himself. How on earth was a single woman without a job going to manage on her own? But Peter knew when he’d lost a battle. And he also knew there was no point in trying to force Johanna into anything. Either she would come to him one day of her own accord . . . or she wouldn’t.

He tried to ignore the dull throb in his chest and went over to the pantry. He came back to the table with two glasses and a bottle of cherry schnapps.

“We can’t drink to the new year quite yet, but let’s drink to better times ahead,” he said, pouring Johanna a generous glass and handing it to her. Ignoring her startled look, he lifted his own glass just as though he were drinking with a buddy down at the pub.

For the first time that day, Johanna smiled. As they raised their glasses in a toast and looked each other in the eye, any awkwardness between them fled.





22

“You could not have chosen a better time to come to me,” Friedhelm Strobel said, smiling down at Johanna from the ladder. “The year-end inventory will help you get to know every item we have in stock, without my having to take it down from the shelves for that purpose.”

Johanna nodded. When she had gone to Sonneberg on the Monday after Christmas and knocked on the wholesaler’s door, hoping with all her heart that his offer from the fall still stood, she had never expected that she would start the very same day. But she had come to realize that it made sense to join in the inventory. They had spent three days on it already, and she had a good grasp of Strobel’s business now. Not wanting to sound too full of herself, however, she simply replied, “I hope I don’t forget where everything is kept.” Even as she spoke she knew perfectly well that she could see every drawer and shelf in her mind’s eye; she knew just where the vases were kept and where to find the candlesticks.