“I’ll take the risk,” Peter replied cheerfully. “Look at those two.” He nodded toward Ruth and Thomas. “A year ago nobody would have thought that they would be married.”
“Well I have to agree with you there at least; nobody knows what time may bring,” Johanna said vaguely, to end the conversation on a friendly note.
Once they had danced enough, they went to the bar and ordered two steins of beer. Then they sat down at a little table where the waitresses put their drinks. It gave them a good view of the crowd while they weren’t noticed themselves.
“I think I’ll stay here for the rest of the party,” Johanna said, her cheeks glowing. The beer was cool and refreshing. “I can’t take any more of Wilhelm Heimer’s speeches today. There’s a way he always looks at me out of the corner of his eye as he talks . . . brrr! As if he always wants to remind me what a good catch our Ruth has made.” She sighed. “Though I must admit it’s very generous of him to give them the apartment over his warehouse. I didn’t even know he owned that building.”
Peter laughed. “Well there you have it. Thomas really is a good catch.”
“There we have it indeed!” Johanna scoffed, jutting her chin toward the dance floor, where Thomas and his buddies were making fools of themselves, clucking like hens and prancing about. Johanna raised her eyebrows as the women tried to drag their men off the dance floor. She was relieved to see that Ruth was not among them.
“Do you think it’ll work out?” she asked Peter, nodding toward the newlyweds.
Peter shrugged.
Johanna knew that the happiness she felt today was just an exception: the dancing, the easy chatter, none of Strobel’s odd remarks, no worries about how Marie would get by on her own. Everything would be quite different again tomorrow.
All at once Johanna felt sick at heart. She changed her mind about sitting and led Peter back onto the dance floor, hoping that her worries would go away.
34
And then summer was over. Up on the forest heights where the wind was strong, deciduous trees shed their leaves, exposing the grim dark pines behind them. The sun was soon barely visible behind the steep mountains, and the shadows stayed in the village longer each day. When Johanna set off for home on Fridays, it was already dark as the slate-maker’s cart rattled on its way.
There were days when Ruth felt unwell as her belly grew rounder, but she turned up for work right on time all the same. And a good thing too, since the workload at Heimer’s workshop never ebbed. Thomas and his two brothers sat at their lamps and blew glass from morning till night, while Ruth, Marie, and the other women painted and finished the wares.
Although Marie often had a backache after the long hours up at Heimer’s, she frequently sat up half the night at the kitchen table with her sketchpad. She felt invigorated by the peace and quiet in the house now that Ruth had moved out. At last she could put her sketches and her colored pencils wherever she liked, could draw and experiment and cross out without anyone looking over her shoulder and squealing with delight. Her sisters’ interest in her art had always felt like rather a burden. They were bound to praise her, whatever she did. If anyone was going to pass comment on her work, then Marie would have much preferred that it be someone who really knew about art, someone with whom she could exchange ideas. Despite the fact that she had no such expert guidance, her designs became clearer and more considered over time. All the same, Marie constantly found herself drawing circles and spheres rather than the dishes or bowls she had intended and which she ended up crossing out in frustration.
The ideas had started with a passing remark many months before. Something that Johanna had said shortly after Ruth’s wedding had put those shapes into Marie’s head, and now they simply wouldn’t go away.
“You can’t imagine all the new things I get to see at Strobel’s shop,” Johanna had said. “There I am thinking I know every kind of glass made in Lauscha and then a glassblower comes along and surprises me with some new design.”
Marie had asked her sister what exactly she got to see, even though she would have liked to put her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to hear about all the wonderful things—or even the ugly things—that the glassblowers brought to Strobel. Not when Wilhelm Heimer had just turned down another of her designs.
“You have good ideas, girl, I’ll give you that,” he had said. “But as long as we still have commissions to work through, we don’t need to go trying anything new.” He clapped a friendly hand on her shoulder, but it did nothing to lessen the disappointment. So Marie had only listened with half an ear while Johanna talked about Karl Flein and his order from an American buyer. “We’ve seen people hang glass beads on their trees of course, but glass globes—can you imagine?” Johanna had laughed.