The American Lady (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  She turned abruptly and walked off through the crowd, her head held high.

  “So why don’t you take her place if you’re so much better at it?” called a voice from the back.

  “Yeah, come on, why don’t you join us? We can always use someone with a big mouth. And we can use a bit of fun too.”

  Wanda’s mouth went dry. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. Should I . . . ? But she had no idea what the strike was even about—she didn’t know the first thing about workers’ rights.

  “Leave the poor baby alone; I can see from here that she’d give up at the first hurdle!” one of the older women called.

  And Wanda slunk off with her tail between her legs.

  Another hope dead and buried.

  9

  As they walked over the rubble, Marie had to lift the hem of her skirt several times to avoid snagging it on a particularly big stone. I wouldn’t have all this trouble if I were in trousers, she thought as she picked her way after Pandora, who had hurried on ahead. The air smelled of smoke and engine oil, and seagulls wheeled in the sky above, so she knew they must be somewhere near the harbor. There were no shops or restaurants, no tenement blocks or children’s playgrounds, just an endless sprawl of huge warehouses. They had been walking between the vast buildings for half an hour now.

  “Are you quite sure the reading is happening here? It’s the back of beyond!” Marie said at last. She would never find her way home on her own, that much was certain.

  Pandora turned and looked at her. “Have you already lost the taste for adventure, darling?” She marched on, undismayed. “Listen, anyone can stand up with a book in their hand at a reading in a café. But never mind, we’ll be there soon.”

  Marie raised her eyebrows. All of a sudden she wished Wanda had been able to come along. But her niece had to supervise the garment workers. She smiled at the thought. Wanda was probably feeling just as uncertain as Marie, but she would never admit it.

  It was even hotter in the warehouse than it had been outside in the blazing July sun. The building was roofed with sheet steel, and the trapped air was baking hot. Marie’s hair stuck to the nape of her neck as soon as they walked in.

  She looked around while Pandora bustled off to find a drink.

  The venue was nothing more than a vast lumber room; over to one side was a huge stack of old chairs and tables, suggesting that the place had been used previously for meetings. On the other side was a heap of folded cardboard boxes, tin canisters, and rusty iron bars. Marie had no idea what they were for. The floor was covered with pigeon droppings, and the birds fluttered about in the rafters every time the door opened. Marie figured there must be fifty people there already, and more were arriving every minute.

  “Wherever have I ended up?” she muttered when she saw Pandora coming back toward her. She pointed in surprise at the glasses the dancer was carrying. “Where did you conjure those from?”

  Pandora smiled. “Let’s not waste our breath talking about this dive. You’ll see soon enough that the venue is all part of Sherlain’s art. And as you can see, it’s not quite so uncivilized as all that.”

  Marie sipped her wine while Pandora told her more about the poet. If Marie still believed that Pandora was eccentric, she was soon corrected. Compared to Sherlain, Pandora was as mild as a lamb!

  Sherlain had left her husband and their seven-year-old son when she was twenty-four years old, and broken off ties with her whole extended Irish family. She raged against the Irish church, accusing it of stifling the life of its flock and of being the enemy of pleasure and a pack of hypocrites. It hadn’t taken long for Sherlain’s family to denounce her in turn; her father had forbidden anyone, mother, cousin, or uncle, to speak to Sherlain ever again. Even her son was not allowed to talk to her. They were forbidden to so much as mention her name. It was as though she had never existed.

  “That’s all a bit much, isn’t it?” Marie asked, frowning. “How does your friend manage on her own?”

  “She gets by,” Pandora answered with a shrug, then continued.

  Once she had left respectable society, it didn’t take long for Sherlain to run into money trouble. She lived in a damp basement flat without a single window. Some weeks the poet was so weak with hunger that she couldn’t even get out of bed. Friends brought her food, though she was loath to accept it.

  “But why does she do all this? She could write poems even with a husband and child,” Marie said in dismay.

  Pandora just shook her head.

  Sherlain believed that she was a kind of Celtic goddess. When she turned her back on the Irish church, she had taken up the old Celtic rites of her country. Heathen rites, Pandora explained.

  “Of course it’s just a way of breaking society’s rules,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “But Sherlain finds her salvation in words. Sometimes she’ll stay up all night long writing, and by morning, she has a single poem. Just one.”

  Marie raised her eyebrows. “I don’t want to say anything unkind about your friend . . . but do you really think I can learn anything from her that will help with the dry spell I’m going through?”

  “You’ll have to decide that for yourself,” Pandora answered cheerfully.

  There was a stir among the crowd at the front.

  “It looks as though things are about to get started. Come on, let’s go up to the front!”

  Privately Marie had already packed Sherlain away in a box and pasted on a label with the word “Madwoman.” But then a thought came to her: a lot of what Pandora said about her friend was very much like what Alois Sawatzky had told her about the German poet Else Lasker-Schüler. She lived in dire poverty too, had broken with conventional society, and lived her life according to some “cosmic laws” or whatnot. There must be something special about these madwomen after all . . .

  Suddenly a drum pounded, breaking her train of thought.

  Four young men, all cloaked in white robes, set out dozens of candles in a circle and lit them. All at once a tension filled the air, as though a thunderstorm were brewing. A shiver ran down Marie’s spine.

  The poet came into the hall, dressed in a billowing silk robe. Her rusty red hair glowed as though on fire and hung loosely down her back with not a clasp or hairpin anywhere. The drum pounded again, and the four young men bowed deeply.

  Marie swallowed hard. She had been determined not to let this crazy poet impress her, but no sooner had Sherlain knelt down inside the circle of candles than Marie was utterly transported.

  What a woman! What an aura she had! All of a sudden Marie found herself thinking, She’s a goddess.

  Sherlain lit a cigarette. Instead of inhaling, however, she spluttered in disgust and coughed it back out. Then she began to recite from a scrap of paper, without a word of greeting or introduction, between drags at the cigarette. At first she was quiet, so quiet that many at the back of the crowd couldn’t hear her at all. Her voice grew louder, though, after the first few words.

  . . . seven summers, seven sins,

  hell above me, sweet haven below

  my memory lost in glorious mercy

  my shell empowered with lust . . .

  Another shiver ran down Marie’s back, an unsettling prickling feeling, as she listened to the poetry with her eyes closed. The sounds of American English were still strange to her but she heard the joy in the bright vowels, i and e, and the sadness in the dark u’s and o’s. Sherlain’s voice changed from one moment to the next, sometimes soft, sometimes hard. She was a musician, coaxing her voice like an instrument, making sounds it had never been intended to create.

  Although she couldn’t understand every word and only had a rough idea of what the poem meant, Marie felt she had never heard anything so . . . melodious.

  . . . dazzle, moon, dazzle

  for me and for all

  to follow thee!

/>   The poet swung a whip and cracked it to end the poem. The cigarette glowed next to her on the ground.

  Marie stood there, her head spinning as though she had been turning in circles. Most of the rest of the audience seemed to be under the same spell; they stared straight ahead, their eyes unfocused, or shook their heads and rubbed their eyes as though they had just woken up. Then they began to applaud and shout “Bravo!”

  “I was there when she wrote that poem—what a night that was!” Pandora shouted in Marie’s ear. Her cheeks glowed red. “The seven summers are when Sherlain was a mother. Hell above her is the Catholic church and its oppression. And haven is a pun of course, with heaven as well, you see? It means the goddess, sensuality, joy . . .”

  Marie waved her away, annoyed. She felt precisely the way Pandora had felt that afternoon in the museum; she didn’t want explanations. She just wanted to . . . feel. By now she couldn’t care less that the reading was taking place in a scrap heap—she realized that the contrast between the ugliness of the surroundings and the beauty of Sherlain’s words was an integral part of the whole effect.

  Marie wanted more.

  More of this strange elixir that let her forget her own inadequacies, however briefly.

  It was sheer chance that Franco was anywhere near the warehouses that afternoon. Later he would say that the gods had led him there, some higher power or destiny—but in fact it was coincidence.

  He didn’t know anything about a poetry reading. None of his agents knew anything about it either, since nobody had asked the warehouse supervisor for permission, and nobody had officially rented the hall. It belonged to the de Lucca family business, just like half a dozen other warehouses in the New York docks. Unlike the others, however, this one wasn’t used to warehouse the imported wine before the barrels were distributed to the Italian restaurants in the city, nor was it used for any other, darker purposes. It had been empty for a while now. At least, that’s what Franco had assumed.

  He was just haggling over the sale price with the owner of the warehouse next door, when they heard strange sounds coming from his own property.

  Probably hobos, drinking and brawling, Franco’s watchman declared grimly. He ran for reinforcements.

  Franco and the other warehouse owner rallied three watchmen and armed themselves with clubs. They were just about to kick down the rear door and storm the warehouse when they heard a woman’s voice from inside, hoarse but powerful.

  I give you my blood

  sweet lamb of mine

  to still your thirst

  to strengthen your spine . . .

  Franco was startled. He gestured to his men to stay where they were. Poetry? Here? He went inside on his own, into the dark, following the bittersweet words.

  No killing will follow

  I promise you so

  my love will be stronger

  my love will come through . . .

  The closer he got, the more strongly the words spoke to him. He fell under their spell. He didn’t understand every word, but he knew that it was a love poem. That it spoke of the deepest love that one person could feel for another—true love—the kind of love for which a man could die. Love that could outlast the darkness . . .

  Franco hastily wiped the sweat from his brow. He was feeling a little dizzy, but he didn’t know whether from the heat or the foul air. He never even noticed the bohemian crowd standing around in his warehouse with wineglasses in their hands; he didn’t remember his own men waiting outside for him to give them an order. He only heard this smoky, silvery voice.

  Please help me, you devilish fawn

  to get the night over

  to make love last till dawn . . .

  A moment later, applause broke out.

  “Bravo!”

  “Superb!”

  “We love you!”

  Franco joined in the applause and clapped till the palms of his hands stung.

  The poet’s words had stirred something inside him that he had thought had turned to stone long ago. Even if he had wanted to, he would not have been able to defend himself against this extraordinary feeling in his chest.

  And then he saw her.

  Not ten yards from him stood the unknown woman he had seen so often in his mind’s eye these last few days. Ever since he had first spotted her in Bruni’s trattoria, he had not stopped thinking about her. How beautiful she was. How graceful. How she smiled. More than once he had regretted not talking to her when he had the chance.

  And here she was, here of all places!

  Just like the last time, the dancer with the red shawl was by her side.

  Franco went toward the woman as though sleepwalking.

  Her cheeks were flushed, as though she had just woken from a long, restful sleep. Tears gleamed in her eyes.

  How vulnerable she looked!

  The crowd was still roaring their praise, but their shouts were nothing more than a gentle humming in Franco’s ears.

  She didn’t notice him at first, since she was gesticulating wildly to where the poet stood. Then she took a step to one side—and trod on his foot.

  “Oh my goodness!” She giggled and turned around. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  Her eyelids fluttered nervously as their eyes met. She put her hand to her mouth, startled, almost frightened.

  Their faces were just a handsbreadth apart. She was even more beautiful from close up. Not as young as Franco had thought at first, but her eyes were deeper than a mountain lake.

  She still had her hand in front of her mouth, and her eyes were wide with surprise.

  Franco reached for her hand and lifted it to his mouth. He kissed her little finger, then the next, then the next. He did not let her hand go until he had kissed every finger and then the palm.

  “No need to apologize,” he said, and he meant every word.

  10

  “Why can’t you understand, darling, that it’s just not meant to happen?” Ruth said, frowning as she looked up from her notepaper. “There’s simply no work to be had in the summer months, everybody knows that. You won’t change anything by wearing out the soles of your boots looking.”

  Wanda watched as Ruth shuffled name cards around on a large sheet of paper, trying new seating arrangements for a dinner party.

  “And what will change when the fall comes? The weather’s not to blame for the fact that I go from one disappointment to the next!”

  Wanda had tried to look busy all morning, but in the end she had given up and joined her mother in the dining room. Marie was off goodness knows where, Harold was at the bank, and she didn’t feel like going shopping—what else was left for her to do?

  Ruth seemed happy with the way the names were placed on her sheet of paper. She smiled at her daughter. “Why not help me a little with planning the dinner party for Marie? I’m sure she’d be glad to know you had a hand in it.”

  Wanda made a face. “Oh, mother, we both know that nobody can plan these things as well as you do! I’m sure you’ve put down everything in those lists of yours already, from the table linens to the music.”

  She was pleased to see Ruth blush slightly. Her mother was feeling so sorry for her that she was even ready to let her play at helping out. It had gotten that bad.

  “Besides, Marie doesn’t much seem to care what we do this past week or so,” she added cattily.

  Ruth pursed her lips. “You’re right there, unfortunately. Ever since she met that Italian count we can think ourselves lucky to see her at all.”

  “Ha! She’ll end up not coming to her own party, just because Franco can’t be there—perhaps you should put that into your seating chart as well,” Wanda went on. She was enjoying this. Her mother had been most put out when Marie’s new admirer had dared to turn down an invitation from the uncrowned queen of the New York dinner-party
circuit.

  Ruth’s eyebrows shot up. “I invite a complete stranger to one of my parties—bending my rules for Marie’s sake—and what thanks do I get?”

  Wanda heaved a sigh of sympathy. “A man whose name doesn’t appear on the A-list and who nobody seems to know the first thing about.”

  “You are quite right, my dear. This Franco could have spent an evening with the best people in town. But if his business affairs are that much more important, so be it!”

  Wanda was grinning inside. Mother never even noticed when she was being teased about her snobbery. She decided to lay it on even thicker.

  “Maybe he’s not a nobleman at all, just a con man, and he’s not coming to dinner because he’s afraid he’ll be found out.”

  “Please, Wanda! Don’t make me worry more than I already am!” Ruth said. “The fact that none of our friends know any Count de Lucca doesn’t mean anything in itself—we don’t have very many Italians among our sort, after all. But I’ll tell you one thing: I’m going to meet this Franco face-to-face one day. You see if I don’t! He won’t be able to plead important business every time we invite him, will he now?”

  Just as Wanda was beginning to get bored by the whole conversation, her mother waved her to come closer. “Don’t you ever breathe a word of what I’m about to tell you to anyone else,” she said theatrically.

  Wanda shook her head as she leaned forward.

  “If this man really is who he claims to be, then I’m not sorry at all that Marie met him. I’ve never seen her so . . . relaxed or so happy in all her life! The look in her eyes when she talks about Franco, the way they shine—I don’t think my dear sister has ever felt this way before! Is it any wonder, though? An Italian count . . .”

  “He really is very handsome,” Wanda had to admit. She had seen Franco once, briefly, when he had come to pick up Marie. If she were honest with herself, he had been so handsome that she had been quite startled for a moment and only just managed to stutter “Good evening.” Granted, her aunt was not unattractive—she had fine, rather sharp features and long legs, which looked especially good in men’s pants—but she was old! Wanda would never have thought that a man like that would be interested in someone like her.