And then she did what she had to.
She turned the gas tap counterclockwise, once round, twice, until the gas began to flow invisibly. Marie couldn’t see it, could hardly even smell it.
And with that, Joost’s workbench awoke to new life.
Her right foot found the bellows and her leg settled into the rhythm of its own accord. Up, down. Up, down. Marie bent down and held the hose to her cheek, testing the flow. She seemed to feel every little hair in the gentle stream of air.
“You have to blow hard to make the flame sing!” she heard her father say. She choked back a sob. Then she lit the match and held it to the flame. A bluish-red flame shot up.
Marie sat up straight, took a deep breath, and tried to shake some of the tension from her shoulders. There was no reason to be nervous. She had the gas under control. She wouldn’t open the tap any more than she knew was safe. She needn’t be afraid.
Once she had calmed down a little, she took the air hose, which had been blowing off to one side, and brought it closer to the gas tap. Very soon the flame would turn blue, and then it would burn ever more fiercely until it was hot enough to melt glass.
But nothing happened.
Marie was taken aback. Not enough gas? Or not enough air?
She began to work the bellows faster. Still nothing. Not enough gas, then. She put the air hose into its clip so that her hands were free. Then she turned the valve on the gas tap all the way around. When she turned the air hose back onto the flame, it flickered for a moment, but Marie could see at a glance that the temperature was still far too low to heat up one of the glass rods.
She struggled to recall just how far Thomas and his brothers opened their gas pipes. Even though she was at the workshop every day, she never paid attention to such details. She was a woman and had nothing to do with the glassblowing. Women just finished the wares.
Marie stared at the gas tap as though it would tell her what to do. She had turned the valve three times by now—did she need to turn it ten times, or twenty, to get a good flame?
It was no use, Marie decided. Either she plucked up her nerve and used more gas, or she could give up right now. She swallowed. Then she turned the gas tap round and round until she heard it hiss. She knew that sound! She brought in the air.
The next moment a burst of flame shot up toward the ceiling.
35
Marie couldn’t believe how easy it was to explain away her singed eyelashes to Ruth. And her eyebrows, which were charred almost beyond recognition. Never mind the way her right index finger and middle finger were puffy and swollen. She had thrown away the singed shawl first thing. She had stammered out something about being careless as she lit the gas lamps in the house, expecting Ruth not to believe a word. But her older sister had just looked at her a little skeptically and asked no more questions. Marie heaved a sigh of relief. For a moment there she had considered telling the truth—“I burned myself because I thought I could blow glass like a man”—but didn’t they say that pregnant women should avoid shocks? And Ruth would certainly have been shocked. She would have shouted something like, “You—blow glass? Are you mad? What the devil got into you? The whole house could have burned down! You could have been burned alive!”
A few nights later, Marie was back at the workbench, smiling. Perhaps some devil really had gotten into her. But if so, she was going to grab him by the horns!
Granted, after her first attempt had gone so wrong, she had tasted fear. The flame was dangerous—every child in Lauscha knew that. But in the end, her desire had been stronger than her fear.
This time she had taken off her shawl and put her hair up in a tight braid. She also didn’t turn the gas valve all the way, but only as far as she had seen Thomas and his brothers open it when she’d watched them these last few days. Four turns, no more. She was rewarded with a blue flame that looked a lot like what the other glassblowers used. A smile flitted across her face.
Her hand trembling, she picked up one of the rods of clear glass that Joost had used to blow pharmacy jars. It felt smooth and cold. She turned it carefully in the flame, keeping it in one position, until it began to glow in the middle. That was the moment when the glass became soft. Marie put the air hose down and pulled the two ends of the rod apart until she was holding two pieces. She put one of these aside and looked critically at the other. In pulling the rod apart, she had made a long thin shape that the glassblowers called a tail, and it looked just like the ones Thomas and his brothers made. So much for this being men’s work. She knew just what she had to do next from watching the Heimer brothers over their shoulders. She was excited as she put the shortened glass rod back into the flame until the end melted closed. She did the same with the second piece. Then she put both pieces down to cool off in a pail.