The Glassblower(55)

“Just wait until we get a few more railways. Then the foreigners will be visiting all year round,” he grumbled.

“I’m happy about every new line they add. How else are we going to get Lauscha glassware out into the big wide world?” Johanna replied. Then she told him about her meeting with the French clients.

“You’ve never see a married couple like the Molières. He must be at least eighty years old. It took him an age to get from the shop door over to the table. And guess how old Madame Molière is? All of twenty-five! Blonde as an angel and absolutely beautiful!” She looked expectantly at Peter.

“I daresay she didn’t marry him for his blue eyes,” he said dryly.

Johanna laughed. “I thought at first that it had to have been for the money, as well. But you should have seen the two of them! They spent the whole time billing and cooing. Strobel and I didn’t know where to look. And then when they left, Strobel said, ‘Chacun à son goût!’ which more or less means ‘There’s something for everyone.’ ”

“You and Strobel seem to get along well.” The note of jealousy in Peter’s voice was impossible to miss.

“That’s putting it rather too strongly,” Johanna said, struggling to give an honest reply. “I still find him a very odd man. Not that I want to change him to make him more to my tastes,” she added hastily when she saw Peter’s face cloud over.

“How exactly can you find Strobel odd when you spend all day, every day with him?” he asked suspiciously.

She gave him a friendly nudge. “I’ll never know anyone as well as I know you. Now, let’s get going before these shoes kill me. I can hardly wait to get the things off my feet.”

She listened halfheartedly as Peter told her about an eight-year-old boy who had come that week to have a glass eye fitted.

“When I asked the parents why they hadn’t gone to a glassblower in the Black Forest—that would have been much closer for them in Freiburg, after all—they told me that they came all the way to Lauscha because of my good reputation!” Peter sounded as though he could hardly believe it.

Johanna looked askance at him. “Why are you always so ridiculously modest?” she asked mercilessly. By now every step she took was torture. “If you want to be successful . . . then you must look successful,” she heard in her head like an echo.

“What do you mean modest? Of course I feel proud when word gets around that I’m good at my job. But that doesn’t mean that I have to boast about it like some people do. Or do you like braggarts these days? There are certainly enough of those in town.”

Johanna had to hold back from making a sharp reply. Instead, keeping her voice soft and calm, she asked, “So? What is the latest news on your glass animals?”

Instead of taking up her offer of a truce, Peter snapped back, “You don’t really care. What do a couple dozen glass critters mean compared to your commercial conquests?”

Johanna looked away. After a full week of hard work, the last thing she needed was to argue with Peter about his provincial views.





28

“Where’s Peter?” Ruth asked Johanna as soon as the door shut behind her.

“He didn’t want to come in,” Johanna said offhandedly.

“You haven’t argued with him, have you? You only see him on weekends, after all, and he . . .” Ruth’s eyes followed Johanna as she bent down to unlace her boots. “New boots!” Peter was forgotten. “What lovely leather. And the heels!”

“Thank you for such a warm welcome home,” Johanna answered dryly. “These things very nearly killed me,” she said as she reached into her bag for the presents that she had brought. She didn’t want her sisters to think she had forgotten about them.

While Marie opened her box of colored chalks with delight, Ruth looked skeptically at the little package that Johanna had brought for her. “Henna,” she read aloud from the label. “What’s this supposed to be?”

Johanna smiled as she explained.

“It’s a powder that gives brown hair a wonderful red tint. The lady in the perfumer’s told me that it comes from India. Apparently the women there use it. You put it into a bucket of water and then wash your hair with it.”

Once the gifts had been admired, Ruth began to get supper ready. Johanna put her feet up and watched her sister work.

“Oh, it’s good to be home again,” she said, sighing pleasurably. Then she began to tell what had happened that week.

“Strobel said that although it was very sad of course that Sybille Stein’s husband is at home with a broken leg, he simply can’t allow her to leave the house every half hour to go and look in on him. Lunch has to be on the table when we shut the shop at twelve o’clock sharp.” Quite without her noticing it, Johanna’s voice had taken on a chiding tone.