The American Lady (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 2) Page 9

  But so far . . . nothing.

  Sometimes she found herself remembering the terrible nightmare that had led, as much as anything, to her trip to America: how she had been trapped inside a bauble like a glass prison. Did I bring my prison here with me? she wondered.

  Whenever another day had passed without her picking up a pencil to sketch, she was happy when Wanda suggested some outing for the next afternoon. Or announced that it was time for them to go to Pandora’s dance class. On days like those she could forget for a while her feeling of imprisonment.

  After their first successful outing, Marie, Wanda, and Pandora had decided to go out for coffee after every class.

  One of their favorite cafés was in Central Park, where Pandora knew one of the waiters. If his boss wasn’t watching, he always slipped them an extra scoop of ice cream or refilled their coffee cups for free. On top of which, the café had a fine terrace with sunshades and cast-iron furniture and a view over half the park. What could be better than sitting there on a summer’s day, enjoying a treat in the open air?

  One day, as they were sitting there under a striped umbrella, Wanda proudly announced, “Starting next week I’m afraid you’ll have to do without my company. I’ve found a job!”

  She beamed as the other two congratulated her and then explained what the new job was.

  “Supervisor in an overcoat factory?” Pandora frowned and put down her sundae spoon. “But darling—you can’t be serious!”

  “Oh but I am!” Wanda said, laughing. “I know it’s not the most exciting work, but I’m glad to have found anything really. And don’t we always say you have to make the best of what you’ve got?” She put a hand to her head and tucked her hair behind her ear with a carefree gesture.

  She had been expecting Pandora to turn up her nose at the news. “Why don’t you come and work for me?” her teacher had asked recently. “You could be my assistant.” Both of them knew, however, that it was utterly impractical, however kindly meant; Pandora barely had enough money to cover the rent, never mind to pay an assistant’s wages.

  “Make the best of it?” Pandora said now excitably. “Make the best of a job as a slave driver? Don’t you know what it’s like in those factories? Those poor women have to work hundreds of hours a week, and they’re only paid a pittance. The sewing machines are deafeningly loud, and they have to sew the heavy cloth so fast that they’re always getting their fingers in the machines. Stitched right through. The windows and doors are barred so that they can’t even look outside or take their mind off their work for a moment.” She was counting off her points on the fingers of her left hand as she spoke.

  “Not all factories can be so awful, can they?” Marie asked, disturbed by what she heard.

  “That’s what I read last November in the newspapers. There was a special report. Fifteen thousand seamstresses went on strike over poor working conditions. It was the biggest women-only strike ever. The factory owners were so riled up they hired squads of bruisers to keep the strikers in line. But the women refused to back down. They spent three weeks picketing the factory gates, standing out in the snow and ice and slush. They didn’t do that just for fun, believe you me. You must have read about it.” Pandora shook her head and turned to Wanda.

  “Well, yes,” Wanda said slowly, then leaned forward on the bench. “But they say that things have gotten better since then, in lots of ways. And if I’m a supervisor I can make sure that the improved working conditions really are observed.”

  Pandora shook her head. “Well even if that’s the case—which I very much doubt!—I refuse to have anything to do with those slave drivers. If one of those factory owners offered me a hundred dollars to dance, I’d refuse!”

  Wanda heaved a deep sigh. “All the same, I don’t see that I have any choice but to give it a try. Who knows? Perhaps I can even help the women who work there? In any case, I’ve made up my mind to do everything right this time.”

  Everything would be all right; it had to be. Why had she let Pandora’s remarks get to her like that? Not that Harold’s reaction had been much better: he had asked her whether she had switched sides and joined the proletariat now. What a stupid thing to say!

  As they were talking, the ice cream in the silver bowls in front of them had melted to a pink puddle. Wanda began to scoop it up with fresh enthusiasm.

  “In all the jobs I’ve had so far, there’s always been some string of ghastly coincidences that ended up in me getting fired. But my bad luck can’t last forever, can it?”

  She saw Marie nodding in agreement, which made her feel a little better. Pandora just frowned.

  “This time it’ll all work out, I can feel it!”

  Whereas Marie always felt that Wanda was keeping something back, she was convinced that she knew what Pandora was thinking. The dancer never bothered to conceal anything but lit up the whole world with her good cheer. Marie had never met anyone who took life so lightly. Wanda had charm and could win over strangers whenever she chose, but Pandora was an absolute master of this art. She hardly ever had any money, but she never let that spoil her fun. She could always find someone—including Marie and Wanda—who was happy to pick up her share of the tab.

  And so Marie thought it the most natural thing in the world that she should pay for their tickets to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, especially since she had to work hard to persuade Pandora to come along in the first place. The dancer had declared that she cared only for the works of the younger generation of artists, the wild and the free.

  But as soon as they entered the hall where the Dutch Old Masters hung, she couldn’t pretend to be bored any longer. Rembrandt, Bruegel, Jan Steen, Vermeer—Pandora darted like a butterfly from one painting to the next, sipping, tasting, drinking them in. She dived into the sea of color, the golden glow of the sunbeams, the dark shadows and luminous outlines. Her eyes glazed over as if she had drunk too much red wine, and she gave little cries of joy.

  Marie, by contrast, stood reverently in front of the pictures. She knew these paintings of course, but only as reproductions in her art books. She looked up, startled, as she realized that Pandora was beginning to sway back and forth before a portrait of a woman by Peter Paul Rubens. She wasn’t going to start dancing here, was she?

  “Just look at that back! It’s just like she was drenched in gold. And the blonde hair! A bit thin, perhaps, given that she’s so young, but there’s so much . . . joy in the brushwork! As if he loved every hair on her head. He painted everything just exactly as he saw it, every wrinkle, every fold. It’s incredible! It makes me want to reach out and touch it . . . that soft, creamy skin. And look at the backside on her—now that’s erotic, don’t you agree?” She laughed. “She’s got quite a pair of hips as well! But then there are some men who like exactly that sort of thing.”

  “I think the fuller figure was in fashion back then,” Marie said, smiling. So Rubens was a dirty old man? Whatever would Alois Sawatzky say if he could hear Pandora’s opinions? Marie stepped closer and looked at the bronze plate that hung under the painting. “It says here that he painted this after he had traveled to Spain and Italy, where he was influenced by—”

  “Oh, who cares about all that?” Pandora interrupted. “All that happened three hundred some years ago. All I care about is what I feel, here and now.” She spun around on her toes. “Don’t be so shocked!” she said, noticing the look on Marie’s face. “All right, I admit it, I never expected these old paintings to inspire me so. But that doesn’t mean I have to kneel down and pray here, does it?”

  Marie was still skeptical. “Since you ask, I have to say that’s exactly what I want to do: kneel down and pray.”

  Pandora patted her on the arm. “Too much respect is never a good thing. Look at me: whether it’s music, poetry, painting, I can only be as good as I am when I take my inspiration from the real masters of every art,” she said happily. “If I didn’t
have that, I’d still be dancing pointe, doing Swan Lake for the umpteenth time, and torturing young girls with old-fashioned ballet. Inspiration and an open mind are sisters in art—you need both to create anything really new.”

  They made their way arm in arm toward the museum café. When the waiter had brought them each a glass of white wine, Marie suddenly leaned forward. Before she could stop to think about what she was doing, she told Pandora everything. She had clutched these terrible thoughts to herself for too long. She had to talk about it—about how helpless she felt, useless, as empty as a drained pond.

  Pandora listened, her face expressionless, sipping now and then at her wine.

  “Ever since I got here I’ve been waiting for the touch of the muse’s wings! The city, all these people, so many new impressions—damn it all, it has to have some effect on me, sometime!” Marie threw her hands in the air. “But no! I don’t even want to think of my workshop back home. It’s gotten so bad that even any talk of home makes me see red. I panic whenever I think that once the trip is over I have to go back to my bench and lamp and pick up where I left off.” Pandora still said nothing, so Marie went on talking, and even told her about her nightmare. Finally, exhausted and downcast, she leaned back in her chair. “What is it? Have I disappointed you so much you can’t think of anything to say?”

  “Nonsense! You don’t need to say another word!” Pandora replied. “I know exactly how you feel. Or rather, I don’t actually know since I’ve been lucky enough never to experience a mental block like that. I would die if I couldn’t dance!” She was talking so loud by now that the other guests in the café turned their heads to look at her, and she beamed back at them. “But I know too many artists who have had to go through the same valley of tears: poets, painters, musicians, actors—you name it!” As always when she spoke, she gestured excitably with her hands. “I’ll tell you one thing, though: it won’t help if you try to hold your nose to the grindstone and concentrate on nothing but work. You have to go out, have fun, meet interesting people. And above all . . .”—she raised a finger—“above all, you have to talk to people who have sacrificed everything for their art. Good God, those blowhards who strut the boards in the Times Square theaters don’t count as artists no matter what your dear sister thinks! Same goes for the painters in the Fifth Avenue galleries. That’s commerce, and nothing more.” She waved a hand dismissively. “You’re lucky, you know that? This afternoon my best friend Sherlain is giving a reading. She’s one of the greatest poets this country has ever seen. I’ve used some of her poems in a dance piece already. Although I have to admit that her work is a little too . . . dark for my tastes. But the poems are heartfelt; there’s no doubt about that. The best thing we could do is go and listen.” She leapt to her feet. “Sitting about moping has never helped anyone. So what are you waiting for?”

  “Now? A poetry reading? I don’t know . . . in fact, my sister was going to . . .”

  Ruth had suggested that they look through some old photographs that afternoon. She had dug out some albums the evening before, so many that Marie could hardly believe that they were all pictures from Lauscha. Johanna always hired a photographer to come to all the important family occasions, be it the twins’ birthday or the opening of the new warehouse in Sonneberg, and of course she always sent a few pictures to America. She had even insisted, once, that the photographer take a portrait of Marie sitting at her lamp. He’d grumbled quite a bit when he saw what the gas flame did to his light-exposure levels, but in the end the picture had come out all right. To Marie’s eternal embarrassment Johanna had insisted on putting it at the end of the catalog with the caption “A woman’s hands create the finest artworks in glass.” The customers seemed to like it, though—the orders had come flooding in that year.

  Marie smiled. She’d been looking forward to rummaging about in the memory box. But if Pandora was kind enough to invite her . . .

  She took her jacket. The photograph albums weren’t going to run away, after all.

  “Let’s go and hear how it’s done!”

  It was a little after one o’clock by the time Wanda finally found the front door of the overcoat factory. She was supposed to have been there at one o’clock sharp—at least that’s what her future boss, Mr. Helmstedt, had told her. But she had turned a corner one block too early, and then had to retrace her steps. When she had finally found the right area, she couldn’t quite remember where the factory was and had wandered around for a while trying to spot an address on the buildings. She was hot and thirsty by the time she recognized the huge building on the corner of the block that housed the factory. Clamping her handbag under her arm, she ran toward it.

  I do hope Mr. Helmstedt won’t mind my being a little late, she thought as she ran. As she approached the building, she wondered why there were so many other women standing around the factory gates. Surely they couldn’t all have one o’clock appointments?

  “On strike?” Wanda looked from one face to the next, startled. “But this is supposed to be my first day at work!”

  The women standing near her laughed.

  “You can forget about that!” one of them said, standing in front of the gate with her arms crossed. She was obviously the leader, and she had such a strong accent that Wanda had trouble understanding her.

  “We are the League of German Socialist Women Workers, and we’re organizing this strike. And we won’t accept defeat like last time!” she shouted. She was screaming in Wanda’s face as though the defeat were all her fault.

  Wanda took an involuntary step back, then several hands shoved her forward again.

  It couldn’t be true!

  It took her a little while to understand what the locked gate and the mob of shouting women meant: her future boss would be waiting for her in vain, as there was no way she could get inside the building.

  She was so agitated that she clutched at the brown linen cloth of her simple dress. She had spent ages choosing exactly what to wear. She hadn’t wanted to look too fancy, but she also wanted to make sure she didn’t look too much like the workers—if she was to be a supervisor, they had to have some respect for her.

  But now? It seemed that it had been wasted effort. Another dress that Mother could give away to the poor and needy! Off to the rag bag!

  The idea suddenly seemed so funny that she had to laugh. Her laugher sounded shrill, hysterical.

  The strike leader stared at her, furious. “Women like you are to blame when we workers don’t get the rights we’re fighting for. You don’t take anything seriously!” She raised a finger and jabbed Wanda hard in the chest before she had a chance to dodge.

  But Wanda wasn’t even listening. There were tears running down her face, and she couldn’t stop laughing. When Harold heard about this . . . he’d think she’d made the whole thing up.

  Some of the women standing around began to laugh as well. It was the laughter of despair, not merriment, but it was infectious all the same. All of them had families at home, children to feed, and they had no idea how they would put food on the table in the coming weeks. Who could blame them if they were beginning to wonder what they had done?

  “Go on, laugh!” their leader yelled. “Can anyone tell me what’s so funny? We’re on strike, remember! But if you’re ready to betray the cause, go on then, enjoy life! Go see a film, why don’t you? Go spend your money on cheap trinkets. Go find a man to whisper sweet nothings in your ear!”

  The other women grew uncertain at these remarks, almost frightened. What was wrong with going out and having a little fun at the end of a fourteen-hour shift?

  Wanda saw the look on their faces out of the corner of her eye. For a moment she felt a mixture of respect for their bravery and sympathy for their cause. But she was so upset about her own situation that the feelings died away as quickly as they had come.

  Meanwhile the strike leader was still speechifying. “If you’re serious
about the struggle, learn solidarity!”

  Small drops of spittle flew through the air and landed on Wanda’s face and dress.

  “Listen to me: attend the Socialist Women Workers’ meetings. Don’t waste your time with lollipops and dance floors when you could be reading Tolstoy!”

  A few of the women clapped.

  The leader turned to look at Wanda. She was clearly spoiling for a fight.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked quietly. “This is no place for the likes of you.”

  Wanda wiped away the last of her tears. The fit of laughter was gone now, as were her dreams of earning her own money and taking responsibility for her own life.

  “I admit it: I don’t know all the details of what you’re striking for, and perhaps you’re right that I don’t belong here,” she said. She felt a dull pang of pain as she thought, So where do I belong? “But I know one thing for sure: You won’t win an inch of ground if you go about it like this, all dour and joyless. You can’t forbid these women to laugh—you may as well forbid them to breathe!”

  She looked at the woman disdainfully.

  The others standing around them began to mutter quietly.

  Wanda was happy to see that the strike leader didn’t know what to say next.

  She began again. “The way you’re bossing them about, you’re no better than the ones you’re fighting against! That’s what I think, anyway. Make it more positive, even fun, and you’ll have a lot more people join in, don’t you think?”