At least half a dozen times, all through the afternoon and evening, he told his story, his voice trembling, his eyes downcast. He spoke of the bitter disappointment he had suffered that day. All of his Sonneberg business partners or rivals who sat down across the table from him were equally shocked and horrified—it must have been awful to find that his own assistant was stealing from him! The breach of trust was inexcusable!
7
Even before she warmed up the soup left over from the previous day, Griseldis Grün took the letter from its envelope one more time. The cheap paper was crumpled by much handling and did not unfold easily. Though she already knew the few lines written there by heart, her eyes took in every word as though she were reading them for the first time; Magnus was coming home. That’s what he had written. The postmark was blurred but Griseldis was fairly sure she had read the date right; the letter had been posted two weeks before. She didn’t know how long it took to get from Rostock to Lauscha, but she was expecting him home any day now. She glanced out the window.
Before she put down the letter, she ran her hand over the tabletop to see that it was clean. The wood was as rough as her skin, but there were no splashes of soup. She put the letter down almost reverently. She had thought that the postman must have made a mistake when he had stopped in front of her house. A letter, for her? That was impossible, she had never had a letter in her life.
Her boy was alive. And he was coming back. Griseldis didn’t know whether that was anything to look forward to.
Unable to settle down, she stood up, picked up her sewing basket, then put it down again.
It had been a long time since she had last seen Magnus. Shortly before Josef died, he had packed up his things and left. Though he had been only sixteen years old, Griseldis hadn’t tried to stop him, hadn’t wept or pleaded. He had not been a good son to her. Like father, like son—wasn’t that how the saying went?
In the years since Josef died, Griseldis had finally been able to live in peace.
And suddenly here was this letter. Why had Magnus even written to her? There was no hint of an explanation in those few brief lines. Why now, and not once in all the years before?
It took some effort for her to remember his face; six years was a long time. There had never been anything childlike about it; it had always been a smaller copy of his father’s face—plain, and wearing a sullen expression, as though he were constantly squabbling with his Creator about why he had been born at all. Griseldis couldn’t remember a single occasion when Magnus had taken her side. Whenever Josef beat her, he had simply looked on, unmoved. Never once had he called out, “Stop, Father!” and run the risk of being beaten himself. He would only come out of hiding once his father disappeared off to the tavern, and she was busy soothing her bruises with a cold compress or a salve. Griseldis could still remember exactly how he would look at her; the contempt in his eyes hurt as much as Josef’s blows. He doesn’t know any better, she had told herself back then, he’s still a child. But even a child would have realized that Griseldis was not to blame for Josef’s brutality. It was the drink that was to blame, the schnapps that Josef tipped down his throat every evening at the Old Jug. It was like an acid, whittling away at Josef’s wits. The only thing that she had ever had to thank God for in those days was that Josef had never turned on his son.
The memory of those wretched times made Griseldis shiver. She shut the window, though not before looking out into the warm June night one last time.
Why was Magnus coming back to Lauscha? Why not stay where he was?
He had never belonged here. Truth be told, none of the family ever had. Although the fact that Josef was not a glassblower shouldn’t have been a problem—nobody shunned Weber the baker or Huber the storekeeper for not being glassblowers; Lauscha needed people to take care of the day-to-day necessities after all—Josef’s nature had made him an outsider. He hadn’t had a single friend. And no wonder! He was so envious and suspicious of others that he managed to make enemies of everyone he spoke to, even the best-intentioned. Magnus had hardly been any better, and none of the glassblowers’ children ever wanted to play with him. But how could he have been better? Griseldis wondered with a heavy heart.
She was quite sure that Magnus had long ago followed his father’s example and become a drunkard himself.
The solitude that gave her such peace, the lonely life that she had grown so accustomed to by now, suddenly made her shudder. There was nobody she could talk to. Not a single neighbor she could visit for a chat. For a while she had thought that she might befriend the eldest of the Steinmann sisters. But once Johanna had lost her job at Heimer’s, it had come to nothing. And even if Johanna had stayed in Lauscha, she would hardly have had much time for an old woman. She had her sisters to take care of. Griseldis’s thoughts turned to Ruth. Why hadn’t she turned up to work today? She knew all too well what Ruth’s life was like, and she didn’t envy her for it. It was cold comfort that other women were as stupid as she had once been, and chose drunkards for husbands. It made no difference whether the family was rich or poor: men who beat their wives were all the same.