The Glassblower(97)

Griseldis swallowed. She had never considered the possibility that Magnus would stop looking like his father. Now she even thought she could see a little of herself in his face.

Her son.

For a moment she had believed that he had been the one who . . . She heaved a deep sigh.

When Peter knocked on the door a little later, wanting to speak to Magnus, her heart lurched.

Her son, the hero—for Griseldis, the idea was as fragile as glass.



“You’re Peter the eye-maker, aren’t you? Have you found the swine?” Magnus asked immediately.

“Has Johanna still not said who did it?” Griseldis asked.

Peter shook his head. These two didn’t need to know whom he suspected. He was surprised that Magnus recognized him straightaway; he wouldn’t have known the lad without some help.

Magnus could tell him little. He had found Johanna cowering by the roadside at the edge of Sonneberg; he couldn’t say what time of day exactly but he guessed sometime around five o’clock. She had been nearly in a faint. And she was clearly scared, so he had spoken to her gently. He hadn’t realized at first what had happened to her, but thought perhaps that she had been attacked on the road. When he had asked if he should take her to a doctor, she said no, that she wanted to go home to Lauscha. So he had helped her walk as best he could, letting her lean on him, even carrying her part of the way. He hadn’t had the money for train tickets, but in her condition he could hardly have sat with her in a carriage anyway. At that point Magnus broke off and looked down at the floor.

“You were away for quite a while. Why have you come back?” Peter asked.

“Why have I come back?” Magnus repeated thoughtfully. “I don’t quite know myself.” He smiled disarmingly. “Perhaps it’s time for me to think about what I’m doing with my life.”

As Peter walked to the door, Griseldis and Magnus agreed not to say a word. “And that still holds true even after I come back from Sonneberg,” Peter warned. He swallowed hard. “If all Lauscha started gossiping about her, it would only make her suffer more!”

“But people will wonder why she turned her back on the Sonneberg job from one day to the next,” Griseldis replied, concerned. “What will you tell them then?”

Peter had no answer.



He took his leave and headed to Sonneberg to do what he had to do. Although it took all his self-control, he waited until noon before he went to Strobel’s shop. Only when he was sure that all the customers had left did he go in himself.

When he came out a little while later, there was not an inch of the wholesaler’s body that Peter had not beaten black and blue.





9

When Marie didn’t turn up for work, Ruth went by at lunchtime to see what the matter was. When Marie told her the news, Ruth could hardly control herself. She sobbed and howled and little Wanda did the same. Marie had trouble calming them both down.

“Why didn’t you fetch me last night?” she asked again and again. “Why didn’t Griseldis tell me first thing this morning?” Ruth refused to leave Johanna’s bedside. That afternoon she hurried up to the Heimer house with Wanda in her arms and told everyone that Johanna had come home from Sonneberg with a bad case of pneumonia, and that she and Marie would be taking turns looking after their sister. The old man made a face and muttered something about “No work means no pay,” but by then Ruth was already halfway down the stairs.



Johanna spent most of her time staring at the wall. Marie and Ruth sat by her bedside, whispering a few words to one another every now and then. Even Wanda seemed to sense that she should keep quiet.

Though Ruth tried several times to ask Johanna about what had happened, she simply shut her eyes in reply.

She didn’t utter a word all day. When Marie brought a bowl of soup up to her late in the afternoon, she shook her head. The look on her face was almost furious as she stared fixedly at the wall. She refused to eat or drink. She didn’t sneeze or cough or cry. She didn’t even use the chamber pot. She made not a sound, not even a whimper.

As the hours passed, Ruth and Marie exchanged worried glances. It was as though Johanna had left her body.



Neither Ruth nor Marie nor Peter had imagined that Johanna would begin to talk that same evening. The three of them were sitting around her bed when Johanna suddenly turned to look at them.

“He’s mad,” she said, her voice curiously childlike. She looked at each of them in turn with an astonished expression on her face.

None of them dared say a word—or even breathe too loudly—for fear that she would fall silent again.

“Strobel went mad. Just like that.” She laughed hysterically. “From one day to the next.” Her eyelids fluttered as though she had a lash trapped in her eye.