The American Lady (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 2) Page 8

  She smiled dreamily.

  “That night I sat down to blow glass for the first time. I blew my first Christmas baubles, and then I painted them with frost flowers. I wanted to capture the essence of winter.”

  “Aunt Marie is very well-known for her glass,” Wanda added proudly. “Her ornaments are sold all over the world. You probably hang them on your own trees.”

  At that, the girls all looked at Marie, their eyes shining.

  “How romantic!”

  “And what happened next?”

  “What did your sisters say? They must have been surprised!”

  Marie answered their questions, smiling, while Pandora stood next to her and frowned in thought.

  “And what was my mother doing back then?” Wanda asked, her eyes shining even more brightly than the other girls’.

  Marie’s cheerful mood suddenly vanished. Your mother was heavily pregnant with you—by a man whose name we don’t even speak out loud these days where she can hear it.

  “Ruth was . . .” she began, struggling for an answer, when Pandora suddenly clapped her hands.

  “Enough of Christmas and baubles and all these stories!” She shooed the girls away until they were scattered around the room again. “We’re here to dance, after all! Which is why I want to dance a piece for you now. Make another circle, please, come along now, get moving!”

  As they walked home afterward, Marie felt better than she had for a long time. The dance lesson had broken up a huge block of ice somewhere inside her. She had been frozen inside, motionless, but now all that was over and done with. She wanted to hug the whole world! Instead she linked arms with Wanda.

  “Your Pandora is a real artist!”

  From then on Marie went out with Wanda more often. They went for walks in the park or drank coffee or visited the library, where they would borrow great big picture books about America, using Wanda’s card. Once Wanda took her to a specialized art supply store, but Marie was deeply downcast by the time they left. There were hundreds of shades of paint and thousands of pencils, but not even the sight of all those made her want to pick up her own brush or sketchpad. Quite the opposite in fact—she was relieved she didn’t have to paint here. Wanda had clearly meant for the trip to the shop to be a special treat, so Marie didn’t breathe a word of her misgivings, but she felt shaken to the core nonetheless.

  Ruth watched their outings jealously. She would have preferred to have Marie all to herself. But once it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen, she tried to turn the new situation to her advantage.

  “Please try to talk Wanda out of looking for a job—she’s making herself look ridiculous. Do it for my sake,” she begged Marie. “We had to work, back in the old days, but she doesn’t have to. At least, she doesn’t have to work for money. She could work for a good cause—now that would be quite another matter. But the way Wanda carries on, anyone might think we were struggling to make ends meet! People must have started talking behind our backs by now. Please suggest that she do some charity work. Steven’s niece Dorothy, for instance . . .”

  “If I get the chance, I’ll see what I can do,” Marie replied vaguely. She was hanged if she was going to join in on Ruth’s side, with all her ideas about what was proper and what wasn’t. When all was said and done, she wasn’t even part of this world, was she? On top of which it was hardly as though she and Wanda had suddenly become best of friends—Wanda hadn’t even introduced her to her fiancé yet. They went on the odd jaunt together but they were a long way from baring their souls to one another.

  Marie went along with Wanda to the next dance class as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She had enjoyed the dance, the games, Ivo’s piano playing—why not have another go?

  At first she thought she would never be able to tackle this week’s exercise. Pandora read them a poem about a panther in a cage, and then told them to dance what they felt. But then Ivo started playing the music and Marie felt as though she were inside the great black cat, felt all its imprisoned helplessness. Her heart began to beat faster; her arms and legs moved quite without conscious command. When the music ended, she was happy to be back in her own skin.

  Later, after they had changed and dressed, Wanda took Marie to talk to the dance teacher. Pandora was busy counting the money she had taken from the class for that week’s lesson when Wanda cleared her throat.

  “It’s like this . . . Marie, my aunt, she’s come to visit us . . . from Germany.”

  Marie raised her eyebrows in surprise. What was the girl up to now?

  “Yes, so?” Pandora put the bundle of paper money into a little box in front of her on the table, then began counting coins.

  “Well, you said once that your people are from Germany and that you speak pretty good German yourself,” Wanda went on. “So I thought the three of us could go out and do something together. Maybe go get a coffee, or some ice cream . . . Then you could talk about Germany as well . . .”

  Marie felt herself blush. “Wanda!” she said, embarrassed. “I hardly think that’s a good idea . . .”

  “Why ever not? Of course we can,” Pandora broke in, smiling. She took a little key and poked it into the lock on her moneybox, then fished out some money. “I haven’t had anything to eat all day, and I’m ravenous! Why don’t you join me? But I warn you—I have no idea where we may end up or what I feel like eating!”

  She took a crimson shawl and threw it over her shoulders with a dramatic gesture, then marched off without even turning around to glance at Marie and Wanda.

  They had no choice but to follow her.

  “Does she have to do that? Now I feel like a dog being taken out for a walk,” Marie hissed to her niece. Wanda just grinned.

  What came next was a tour of a part of New York that Marie had never seen before, a journey of discovery through food. First Pandora took them to the Lower East Side. More than forty thousand Jews lived here, and Pandora’s family as well, though she had no intention of visiting them. Instead she went into a tiny little restaurant with no more than three tables and ordered gefilte fish, coarse rye bread, and something she called a “schmear,” which she spread on the bread and which tasted of mustard.

  Marie was hungry as well, and helped herself—there had been nothing for lunch at Ruth’s but salad, again. The food here was unfamiliar, but tasted good. She wasn’t bothered by the fact that they were the only women in the place, nor by the way all the men around them were wearing braided earlocks and little caps on their heads. Pandora explained between mouthfuls that the Lower East Side was the most densely populated place on the planet. “At least that’s what those clever men with their statistics manuals say.” She shrugged. “All I know is that it’s fearfully crowded behind those high housefronts. You’ll often find more than twenty people living in one room—can you imagine? I’m just glad I don’t have to live here myself anymore.”

  “It’s not much different back home in Lauscha. There are plenty of families who eat, sleep, and work in one small room,” Marie said. “The ones like us who make Christmas ornaments are always walking around with glitter powder on our skin and clothes. It’s very finely ground glass, and it gets absolutely everywhere.”

  Pandora nodded knowingly. “I know all about that, it’s the same with the garment workers here. They end up with cotton threads in their soup and needles in their bed. They say that there are more than a million Jews in New York City, and most of them come from Europe like my family,” she said.

  When the waiter came and asked if they wanted more, Marie was ready for another plate of fish. But Pandora said no. “That was just the appetizer,” she said mysteriously, and paid up. Then she leapt to her feet and was out on the street in an instant.

  Marie and Wanda looked at one another and laughed. Then they hurried out after Pandora.

  “Just a woman out having fun . . .” All at once Marie
could hear Georgie’s words from back on the ship. Having fun was easy, she discovered.

  They ate sticky rice from tiny bowls in Chinatown, spicy goulash in a Hungarian restaurant, and spaghetti with clams in Little Italy. One of them said that they might be up half the night with indigestion and worse—and the idea seemed so funny that all at once they were crying with laughter.

  Pandora was recognized everywhere they went. Like a peacock displaying her tail, she was always the center of attention. The owner came to shake her hand in every restaurant, and she invariably got an extra glass of wine or a basket of rolls on the house. Everybody was happy to have her visit, and Marie wasn’t surprised; Pandora had a way of spreading good cheer wherever she went. Marie also liked the fact that she could say whatever she wanted to Pandora, since they could speak in German.

  “I had no idea there were so many cozy little places in New York,” she said between two forkfuls of spaghetti. “This restaurant is hardly bigger than the village tavern back home. And everybody knows everybody else.”

  As they laughed over their glasses of red wine, they didn’t see the men at the bar turn and look at them.

  “Who are those three?” Franco de Lucca asked, gazing across the room at Marie, spellbound. Her hair had come loose from its knot during dance class, and now it fell down over her shoulders like a cape. With her high cheekbones, gray eyes gleaming with their own inner light, and trim figure, she looked more aristocratic than any of the Italian countesses his mother had ever arranged for him to meet or tried to marry him off to.

  Somehow she reminded him of Serena. Her carefree, almost childlike laughter, utterly unaffected and bubbling over with happiness. Happiness . . . the very idea was almost strange. Franco felt a pang in his chest. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed that way.

  The restaurant owner replied, “The one with the red shawl is Pandora, the dancer. She’s mad. The other two gals must be dancers as well, or painters or something like that. Shall I ask them to come over?” He was already halfway out from behind the counter, eager to get into Franco’s good books.

  Franco shook his head, almost imperceptibly.

  “Not now, I don’t have time. I have to be getting to my next meeting. She doesn’t look American,” he said thoughtfully, still staring at Marie.

  The other man went back behind the bar, disappointed, and returned to washing glasses.

  “If you ever change your mind, all you have to do is go to one of those artist cafés in Greenwich Village. You’ll find Pandora and her gang there anytime.”

  Franco waved his hand dismissively, as if to say what do I care for those three! All the same he took careful note of what the other man said.

  Every district Pandora led them through was like a little world unto itself. The faces on the street changed, the clothing, even the languages they heard. Uptown, where Ruth and Steven lived, the avenues were shaded by tall trees and fringed with flowerbeds, but here the streets were crowded with peddlers and their pushcarts. There were fewer motor cars but the subway could be heard underfoot, making an infernal racket. And there were people everywhere.

  At first the crowds made Marie nervous or even afraid, but she soon realized that everyone around them considered it perfectly normal. She was fascinated. New York was a cocktail, a city like no other, and she was already a little drunk.

  It was after seven in the evening when the three women sank onto a bench down by the harbor, exhausted. Marie knew Ruth must be worried about her and Wanda as well.

  Marie’s feet ached so much that it was hard to resist the urge to take her shoes off. Her eyes were red, her throat was dry, and her muscles were sore. But none of that mattered compared to the fun she’d had.

  “Do you know that I’ve seen more of the city today than I have in all the weeks I’ve been here?”

  “Well, you just have to go out with the right people,” Wanda said, pleased with herself. “I think Pandora knows more about New York than all the guidebooks put together.”

  “You’re right,” Marie agreed fervently. “But tell me—how do you know it so well?”

  “New York is like a village—and if you’ve spent your whole life here . . .” Pandora said offhandedly. She seemed pleased with the compliment nevertheless. “I have to say that I enjoyed our little outing as well. It was almost like seeing everything for the first time again. I say we do this again next week after class.”

  Wanda’s face glowed when she heard that.

  For a while they just sat and watched the bustle of the harbor. Two fishing boats and a ferry went past, then a string of barges. Farther out on the water, a gleaming silver ocean liner was making its stately way into port.

  “How can one city have so many different faces?” Marie asked in amazement. “I’ve read in my guidebook that they call New York a melting pot, and it’s true, isn’t it? What is it—why are you laughing?” she asked Pandora.

  “I just think it’s funny that the guidebooks have taken up that term. A friend of mine was the first to use it—Israel Zangwill,” she declared proudly. “He wrote a play two years ago about a Russian musician whose dearest wish is to write a symphony showing every facet of New York. Israel has the young Russian standing up on top of a high-rise and looking down at the city.”

  Pandora stood up, climbed onto the bench, and struck a dramatic pose.

  “There she lies, the great Melting Pot—listen! Can’t you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth—the harbor where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight.”

  She climbed down from the bench, ignoring the startled looks from passersby.

  “Israel has the young Russian hero say that,” she said, making a face. “It was just his bad luck that the New York Times gave the play a bad review, though. They thought it was a romantic potboiler. And it was my bad luck too: I was working for him as a stagehand at the time—I was very short of cash, as it happened.” She sighed. “When I think about it . . . I’ve actually had quite a lot of different jobs. But all that was before I managed to get the money together for my dance studio,” she added.

  “I was wondering how you managed to learn whole speeches from a play by heart!” Marie said. “All the same—you’re beginning to scare me, just a little.”

  The three of them got up from the bench, laughing, and Pandora linked arms with Wanda and Marie.

  “If it’s any consolation: I have my weak spots too. One of them is that I don’t know how to handle money, meaning that I can’t even pay the rent this month, and I’m always having to scrimp and save. Which is why I suggest that we stop somewhere for a glass of white wine on our way home, and you can pay!”

  8

  It was early July. Marie could hardly believe that she had arrived in New York only a few weeks ago. She had settled so easily into her New York routine that it was as though she had never lived anywhere else.

  Most days she and Ruth breakfasted late and then went shopping. They didn’t always buy something significant like a dress or a hat. Ruth was quite capable of spending hours choosing one of ten different hatbands. Or trying on dozens of silk flower corsages, and then settling for a simple rose of pale-gray tulle. Marie simply couldn’t understand how anyone could spend so much time on things they didn’t really need, but then she remembered that even when they were girls Ruth could spend hours on end in front of the big shard of mirror that hung in the laundry shed at the back of the house. Even back when she had had little more than a couple of lace collars, some bead necklaces she had strung herself, and a few hairbands, she had spent ages making herself look nice. It had made Marie and Johanna furious!

  Once a week Ruth had a morning appointment at the hairdresser, and she insisted that Marie come along and have her hair styled too. At first Marie dug her heels in and protested. She would never have considered going to the hairdr
esser back in Lauscha, even if the village had had a hairdresser—which it didn’t—so she would have had to walk to Sonneberg. But in the end she gave in and even had to admit that all the salves and lotions they used at the salon really worked, and smelled wonderful to boot. Her hair had never shone so brightly in her life. It was usually a rather faded brown, but now it had a warm glow, like coffee with a drop of cream. And then there was the powder they put on at the end, so that she carried the scent around with her all day like a breath of spring.

  Ruth usually spent her afternoons planning the menu and table decorations for her dinner parties. Most of the time the dinner guests were important clients for Miles Enterprises who were passing through town. Steven was firmly convinced that there was no better way to network than to sit down to an elegant dinner. Ruth was a born hostess and eagerly embraced the idea. Whether it was a small gathering or a banquet for twenty guests, she tackled every task with the same enthusiasm.

  So in the afternoons Marie had time to do as she pleased. Ruth undoubtedly would have been shocked to learn that her sister sometimes did nothing more than wander the streets and breathe in the city scents. Or that she could spend hours sitting on a bench in Central Park, watching the world go by, enjoying the sunshine and the shimmering haze on the black asphalt paths, listening to the birdsong echo down from the tops of the shady chestnut trees.

  For the first time in her life, Marie did not have to spend her days following the strict timetable of a glassblower’s workshop: mornings at the bench and lamp, afternoons designing new baubles or drawing pictures for the samples catalog. Now that she didn’t have to concentrate on working the glass in front of her, she found her thoughts wandering all over the place like paper boats drifting on a pond. It was a strange feeling, and she didn’t quite know whether she even liked it. But she let it happen, just as she let all the other experiences wash over her, and welcomed the new impressions. She still hoped in vain that all these new sights and sounds would reawaken her imagination and bring it back to life.