The Glassblower (34 page)

25

The farmer tried several times to start up a conversation with his pretty young passenger, but to no avail. Ruth simply stared straight ahead and smiled absentmindedly. Her mouth was dry, and she was so excited that she felt as if she kept forgetting to breathe. Her stomach was churning, and it took all her concentration to try to calm the collywobbles. All in vain—to her great embarrassment, she had to ask the driver to stop his wagon. Her panic grew when she saw that there was nowhere nearby she could decently take shelter in the woods. At last she scurried behind a little copse of pines, but no sooner had she got there than the churning in her guts suddenly stopped.

When the first houses of Sonneberg came into view, Ruth was a bundle of nerves.

She was about to see Steven again at last!

When the farmer asked where he should direct his wagon, she had trouble concentrating. She swallowed several times and finally managed to tell him to go to the Sonneberg railway station. He shook his head and gave her an odd look.

On the way to the station, Ruth was already looking up and down the road for Steven, but she didn’t see him anywhere. She would have known his head in any crowd, the way his hair sprang up.

Once they reached the station, the farmer turned his horses and brought the wagon up alongside the platform. Instead of dismounting, Ruth sat where she was on the bench.

How were they ever to find each other here?

She couldn’t imagine a worse meeting place than this madhouse. Crates and cartons were piled high, people were coming and going, and men were conducting business, handing over sheaves of money or bills of lading. Tempers were short, and here on the crowded platform patience was not to be had at any price. Their cargo wobbled dangerously as wagons shoved and jockeyed for the best position to unload, and Ruth feared that the farmer’s horses would shy at the loud shouts and crack of whips all around. Fortunately, they stood their ground without getting skittish.

Ruth, however, felt increasingly frazzled and disappointed. Her stomach was giving her trouble again. While the farmer began to untie the lines that held the cardboard boxes in place, Ruth spotted a sign that pointed to the public lavatory. After deliberating for a moment, she mumbled something about having an upset stomach, pointed vaguely toward the main entrance, and dashed off.

“I’ll be back in five minutes,” she called over her shoulder to the farmer.

This time Ruth managed to ease her bowels. When she was washing up and looked into the mirror, she was shocked at what she saw. Her face was dreadfully drawn and tense. She stuck her tongue out at her reflection.

“What a silly cow you are,” she scolded herself. “No man would ever get so worked up.” By the time she left the lavatory she had calmed down a little.

And then she saw him.

Steven!

He was standing there with a black notebook in his hand, counting the cardboard boxes as the farmer unloaded them and stacked them up. Ruth wondered how he had managed to find the right wagon amid all the confusion.

Her heart was in her throat. How should she greet him? She hoped she would be able to speak at all.

But before she could utter a word, Steven looked up. “Ruth!” he exclaimed. Beaming, he lowered the documents in his hands and came toward her.

“How are you? The driver told me that you have an upset stomach. I do hope it’s nothing serious?”

Of course he had to spot her as she came out of the lavatory. Ruth felt her cheeks grow hot. “No, nothing, just a little chill,” she murmured in embarrassment.

“You look a little pale still, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

His eyes. So full of concern for her, s
o . . .
Ruth had to fight the impulse to fling her arms around his neck.

“I’m sure I do. I wasn’t expecting all this excitement.” She waved her hand in a gesture that took in the whole station.

“That’s why I’m here,” Steven said, seizing her hand and pressing it briefly. “I’ll take care of everything. Marie’s baubles will leave Sonneberg in one piece, and they’ll arrive in New York unharmed.”

His smile and the certainty he radiated could have calmed a herd of stampeding horses. Ruth had trouble keeping her happiness in check.

“Here are the inventories. Just as you asked, we’ve listed every design individually. And the codes on the cardboard boxes are all explained here.” She pointed to the top of the first sheet.

How good he smelled. His face was just a few inches from hers as they bent over the papers together. There were blue shadows under his eyes.

“You look worn out,” Ruth heard herself whisper. She had to resist the impulse to reach out and stroke his cheek until the fatigue vanished.

Steven looked up. “The thought of seeing you again robbed me of my sleep,” he whispered back, not taking his eyes off her. Then he reached out and took the lists from her hand as though forcing himself to get back to business.

“Well then! Let’s make sure we get this show on the road! The sooner the better. When we’re done here, I’d like to invite you for a cup of hot cocoa. Are we agreed?”

Ruth nodded. She would have agreed to anything.

From that moment on, she didn’t have to worry about a thing. Steven beckoned, and three laborers came over. Steven gave one of them a sheaf of papers, and the men began to load the cardboard boxes into several enormous wooden crates. Then the crates were taken away on a handcart. Steven pressed a few coins into the hand of the man who had taken the papers and suddenly it was over. The whole thing took less than a quarter of an hour.

Ruth was almost sorry it had all happened so fast. She would have been quite happy watching Steven for a while longer.

Steven insisted on taking care of business first. They had hardly taken their seats in the café before Steven started counting out the banknotes for Ruth, as discreetly as he could. Six hundred marks. When he was done, she put the fat wad of notes in her bag with trembling fingers. Six hundred marks—the reward for six weeks of hard work, missed sleep, arguments, and tears. She had never had so much money in her life.

With the smell of hot chocolate hanging over the table, her fears that they might not have anything to say to one another vanished into thin air.

The hours flew by as never before. One cup of cocoa became two, and then three. If anybody had asked Ruth afterward what they talked about she would hardly have been able to say. And yet it was almost as if not a day had passed since their last meeting, so easily did they pick up the threads of conversation. Though the talk itself was lively, they were also communicating at another level—for instance when Steven took a handkerchief from his breast pocket before Ruth had even wrinkled her nose to sneeze. The rage in his eyes when she told him about Thomas and the scenes he made in front of their house every night. The gleam in Ruth’s eyes when Steven told her about the Christmas decorations that were about to go up in every Woolworth’s store in America. Her delight when he told her every detail of Thanksgiving and its traditions.

“My mouth’s already watering!” she said, laughing. “I can practically smell the turkey and the stuffing!”

“Have you ever thought what it would be like to leave Lauscha?”

Steven’s question took her breath away.

“Leave Lauscha?” She put a hand to her throat. She felt like she was choking.

All afternoon, she had somehow managed to forget the circumstances of their meeting, forget that the clock was ticking away as they laughed and gazed into one another’s eyes. But his question brought it all back. As though she needed another reminder, the oak-cased grandfather clock at the end of the room struck six. The café would close at seven.

“How could I ever leave Lauscha?”

“It seems to me that the real question is how you could stay. What future do you have here?” Steven asked quietly. “After all you tell me about Thomas Heimer, I worry for your safety. That man isn’t going to leave you alone. What if he’s lying in wait for you or your daughter one day when there’s nobody nearby?”

“He’s not interested in Wanda,” Ruth said, dismissing the idea.

Steven looked skeptical. “There’s no shortage of tragedies that occurred because someone thought
if I can’t have her, then nobody wil
l
. . .
”

Ruth raised her hands in despair. “Why are you frightening me like this? I’m married to him. I know that Thomas will never set me free—he’s too proud for that—but that doesn’t mean he’s going to kill me.” Tears sprang to her eyes. There was no future left for her anywhere; she had thrown it away long ago.

“Ruth, Rut
h . . .
” Steven whispered. He stroked her head gently. “Don’t cry. I’m here. I’ll take care of you.”

How could that be? Steven had his life to lead, and she had hers. She sniffled as she told him so.

“Have you forgotten that I’m an American?” he answered with a roguish grin that didn’t really suit her mood. “We Americans aren’t so quick to knuckle under when things aren’t going as we’d like. If we don’t like the way things are, we change them. And I get the feeling that you can change things too.” He lifted her chin.

Ruth wiped the last tears from her eyes.

“How many women would have spent their life alongside a husband who beat them rather than take the brave steps that you did and leave him?” Steven asked. When she didn’t answer straightaway, he added, “Do you know any other woman who would have dared go to Mr. Woolworth’s room looking for him? You began taking your fate into your own hands long ago.”

“When you look at it like that, I suppose I did,” she said, smiling a little. “Crying won’t help matters, my father always used to say, you have to do something too.”

She didn’t quite know what they were talking about. What did he want her to say? Where was he going with this?

“Oh, Steven,” she sighed. “Perhaps there might be some point in our talking like this if things were different. But as it is, even the kindest twist of fate wouldn’t be enough to give me what I wish for most—which is to turn back the clock to before I was married.”

“That’s not what you really want,” he said. “For one thing you wouldn’t have your wonderful daughter”—he nodded at the photo of Wanda that Ruth had shown him—“and for another thing we would never have met.”

“Well, that’s true too,” Ruth laughed. “You have a gift for finding the silver lining in any cloud.”

He joined in her laughter.

“Wait, I have something for you.” He bent down under the table for his briefcase then put a glass object in front of Ruth. It was shaped like a heart.

“A heart of glass?” She lifted it carefully and nestled it in the middle of her palm. It felt cool and soft. She held it up to the light.

“How beautiful.” Her own heart suddenly felt even heavier. “Glass can break so easil
y . . .
”

“I knew that you would see the hidden implication straightaway. Mr. Woolworth found this heart in a department store in England recently. He actually wanted to find a glassblower who could make us something like it last time we came. But unfortunately—or perhaps I should say thank heavens—we forgot the sample in our Hamburg office. What do you think? Could this be an order for you?”

So it was a sample, not a present. Ruth put the heart back down on the table. She shrugged.

“Marie can certainly manage it. What size order were you thinking?” If she had to die of a broken heart, she didn’t want to starve to death as she did so, she thought with a touch of dark humor.

“One thousand items.”

Ruth whistled softly. “That’s quite a number! When would they have to be ready?” She held her breath. Would he come to Sonneberg to collect this order as well?

“By the end of November. The shipment will be traveling on one of the slower freighters, so the crossing will last four whole weeks. The hearts would arrive in New York at the beginning of January.”

“That’s hardly seven weeks away,” Ruth said, biting her lip. Did that mean that Steven would be in Hamburg all that time?

“I’m afraid I can’t extend the deadline. The hearts have to be in every Woolworth branch in America before the fourteenth of February. That’s when Americans celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day, the patron saint of lovers. Everybody who’s in love buys a little present for their beloved, like this heart here, for instance. We put out special tables full of merchandise in all the stores for the occasion.”

“What a lovely custom! Women who get a heart like this as a present could wear it on a velvet ribbon round their neck. Or hang it in the window on a thread, so that they think of their sweetheart whenever they look out the window.” How Ruth would have loved to be one of those women. But before she could let herself feel saddened by that thought, she began to do the arithmetic.

“If we buy the glass stock straightaway and then make one hundred fifty pieces a wee
k . . .
” Why was she even bothering to calculate it, since she had no choice but to take on the order? She looked up and held out her hand to Steven. “It’s a deal! Mr. Woolworth will have his hearts by the end of November.”

Steven took her hand. But instead of shaking on the deal, he kissed it.

“Ruth.”

He spoke her name as an endearment, dark and soft. Her fingers tingled. His lips were so warm on her flesh, his moustache tickle
d . . .

“If you will allow it, I will give you not just a heart of glass but a heart that beats wildly at the thought of you.”

“Steven, please don’t say these things,” Ruth whispered, gently withdrawing her hand. She was in agony. “I thought of you every day, I dreamed of you every night,” she confessed miserably. “You have no idea how much I wanted to hear you say such a thing, even though I know it’s wrong. To know that you feel as I do, to know that it was more than just business for you when we me
t . . .
” She stopped uncertainly. Was she making a fool of herself with this confession?

“But that’s not all.” She looked down at the floor. She could not look him in the eye and say what had to be said. “I wanted to hear those words so much, but they hurt me like red-hot needles. Because they promise me something that can never be.” She stood up before Steven could help her to her feet. It hurt so much! “I have to go now. If I don’t hurry, I’ll miss the last train home.”