“That’s odd,” Ruth declared. “Don’t you talk to one another, then?”
“Of course we do. But to be honest, I prefer knowing as little as possible about him. He can be a rather odd duck.”
33
On Monday Johanna was so swamped with work that she had no time to think about Ruth’s wedding. She had just unlocked the shop and was putting the key in a drawer under the counter when the door opened and Swiss Karl walked in. He must have set out from Lauscha in the middle of the night to get there so early.
“You’ve got young swallows up under the eaves,” he said instead of hello, and pointed his chin toward the door.
Johanna smiled. This was typical of Karl Flein. The glassblower had a better eye for the beauties of nature than almost anyone else in the village.
“I know,” she answered. “If I let Strobel have his way, I’d have to clear that nest away. He’s worried that the little beasts might drop something on our customers as they come in. But they do say that a house where swallows build their nest will have health and wealth.” Johanna leaned over the counter. “Now then, Swiss Karl, what can I do for you? Are you thirsty? Shall I get you a glass of water? It’s warm for June, isn’t it?”
She’d always liked Karl Flein, a quiet, polite man, even before he had come to Father’s grave with the handblown glass rose as a final gift to a fellow craftsman. She was happy that Mr. Woolworth had ordered several items from him.
Flein waved the offer away. “I shan’t need anything, thank you.”
Johanna waited while he ceremoniously took a sheet of paper from his breast pocket and unfolded it. It was the order sheet she had given to a messenger woman for him last week. For a moment Johanna flushed hot and cold. Had she made a mistake?
“There’s something I don’t understand on your order. What’s this mean?” he asked, pointing to one line.
“We’ll soon sort this out,” she said, taking the sheet from his hand. But the next instant her confident smile faded. “Twenty dozen balls with eyelets for hanging, silvered within, diameter two inches,” she read, furrowing her brow. “What does it mean?”
“At first I thought it was the bead necklaces, since you’ve bought plenty of those from me,” Flein said. “But that can’t be it, not at that size.”
Johanna put her hand to her mouth to disguise her own confusion.
“Two inches in diameter—they’d certainly be very big beads!” she said, trying to laugh. “Mr. Strobel isn’t here at the moment. Let me fetch his notebook. Perhaps he’s written down something that might clarify things a little.” She went to the back of the shop.
She hadn’t noticed anything odd as she was filling out the order sheet. She had simply copied out every item on the Woolworth order that Strobel had written under number 386, which was the number for Karl Flein in the books. Perhaps Strobel had made a mistake about the size of the balls? Johanna bit her lip. Drat it all; it was her job to make sure of details like this. Now she couldn’t even ask him.
Strobel’s notebook didn’t tell her much though. He’d jotted down a comment in the margin for this item, as he often did, but Johanna had trouble deciphering his handwriting.
“New product/ add to catalog/ globes for hanging: as Christmas tree decorations,” she read out loud, frowning.
“Christmas tree decorations?” Flein repeated.
“Glass globes? On a Christmas tree?” Johanna asked, baffled, while outside the young swallows chirped hungrily.
The glassblower shrugged. “Why not? For all I care, your clients can hang themselves on the tree if they want to,” he said with a laugh. “When you get right down to it, these are nothing more than big glass beads then. The only difference is that instead of drawing the tail off the bead, I’ll blow a little hook into it. So that it can be hung.” He smiled confidently. “I can do that, of course, now that I know what the globes are supposed to be for . . . Well then, I’m off to get back to work.” He pulled his cap down over his brow.
“Anyway, let that wholesaler of yours know that next time he should be a bit clearer about what he wants.” Karl winked and left.
Three weeks later Ruth Steinmann became Mrs. Heimer.
The wedding banquet was such a magnificent affair that it was almost as though Ruth really was marrying Prince Charming. Nearly a hundred guests had been invited, mostly glassblowers and their families but also the Sonneberg wholesalers who did business with the Heimer workshop. For once Wilhelm Heimer hadn’t skimped on costs and had rented the Black Eagle outright. It wasn’t Lauscha’s largest tavern, but it had always been a popular gathering place for the glassblowers.