The American Lady (27 page)

17

Half carrying and half dragging two sacks of clothes, Marie stumbled through the palazzo’s long hallways. She had to get out, away from there—she couldn’t think of anything else.

From the opposite end of the hallway, she saw the count at the front door. Patrizia was at his side.

“You are not going anywhere.”

Marie stared at her father-in-law, astonished. How self-righteous he looked! No “Marie, I’m so sorry.” No “I repent of my sins.”

“What are you going to do to stop me? Shut me away, like you did those poor men in your wine crates?” She spoke boldly but her words lacked conviction. Something crumbled inside her, and her strength ebbed away.
Please let me go so that I have time to think,
she pleaded silently.

“Marie, don’t leave without me! Please, I’m begging you! If you must leave, then take me with you!” Franco had followed her and now he clung to her arm like a child clinging to his mother.

“Ti amo,”
he whispered. And then, “I love you more than my own life.”

A wave of pity broke over Marie. But she answered aloud, “That doesn’t count for much, with a life as miserable as yours.” It hurt her so much to say those words that she had to wrap her arms around her belly. She blinked against the pain and suddenly felt dizzy.

Franco flinched as though she had hit him.

“Marie, darling, be reasonable! We mustn’t be too hasty; we have to sit down and help one another to deal with this tragedy.
Una famiglia, si?
” Patrizia said, putting her hand on Marie’s arm with exaggerated concern. “In good times and in bad—isn’t that what you promised my son in Ascona, when you were married? Didn’t you tell us how happy you were on Monte Verità? That was a very good time for you and now the bad time has come, but it doesn’t have to stay this way, don’t you see? Everything can be good again, just as it used to be.”

Her voice was soothing, cajoling—almost a chant, as though she were driving out evil spirits.

Ascona, the weddin
g . . .
Marie’s head was buzzing. What did Monte Verità have to do with all this? The mountain of truth, freedom, and lov
e . . .
How dare Patrizia mention it in the same breath as the terror and suffering tha
t . . .
Marie’s eyelids fluttered but the veil that clouded her vision grew thicker. If only she weren’t so dizz
y . . .
She raised a hand to her temples to brush the dizziness away, but it was becoming harder and harder to think.

What had she done wrong? All she had wanted to do was tell Franco about her idea of inviting Sherlain and Pandora here to Genoa! To help open her gallery. And then she had heard it.
We are murderers
.

The drawstrings of the laundry bag were pulling at her hand. So heavy. Everything was so heav
y . . .

Just to lie down for a moment, the
n . . .
Suddenly a lance of pain stabbed into her skull.

Marie fainted.

“What’s this?” Patrizia said in a tone of disgust. She reached out and picked up the letter from the floor where Marie had dropped it.

Her husband looked thoughtfully in the direction of the bedroom where Franco had carried Marie after she fainted.

“Send it,” he said absentmindedly.

“Are you sure?” The countess rarely intruded upon her husband’s affairs, but they could not afford any false steps now.

“Of course I am!” he snapped. “She knew nothing of all this as she was writing it.”

He took the letter from Patrizia’s hand and inspected it.

“It’s to her American niece, as always. Meaningless gossip, that’s all.” He put the letter down onto the hall table with the rest of the outgoing mail and then turned to go back to his office. “I have to prepare everything for Franco’s departure. What luck that there is a ship leaving tomorrow!”

Patrizia followed him. “Are you really going to send Franco to New York? Into the lion’s den?” Her voice shook.

Though her face was usually calm and composed, fear had left its mark on her. There were wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, and her lips twitched. Her eyes were wide with shock. She looked like an old woman. “Isn’t that dangerous for him?”

The count shook his head. “It would be more dangerous if we do nothing. At the moment nobody can connect us to the dead men; their bodies washed up farther north along the Hudson. Franco has to make sure that it stays that way. It will cost us a great deal of money, but what can you do?” He threw up his hands in resignation.

The countess bit back a reply. Instead she asked, “And what are you going to do about Marie? Do you think she’ll just calmly accept the fact that Franco has left? You’ve seen how foolish she can be. She’s a danger to us all! What if she goes to the police? And what will she tell her family in her next letter? Do you want to let her ruin us?” Though Patrizia was whispering, her voice was shrill.

The count looked up only briefly from his pile of papers.

“There will be no next letter.”

It was still dark outside when Marie woke up the next morning. The left side of her head was throbbing. The terrors of last night came flooding back to her, shrouding her in darkness.

Without even looking over at the other side of the bed she knew she was alone—Franco was bound to be with his father again, in the office.

Feeling drained, she was just about to sit up when she noticed something on the pillow next to her.

A letter from Franco.

Her hand trembling, she picked up the sheet of paper.

Mia cara
, by the time you read these words, I will already be on my way to New York. In the name of all those who died, I
have
to try to set this tragedy right, even though I wonder if this is even possible. I know that it is the worst possible moment for such a journey, but there is nothing else I can do. Please do not do anything rash while I am away—if not for my sake then for that of our child. I beg you to wait for me. I will make sure that you have everything you need while I am away.
Please stay!
Give me this one chance. If you leave me after I come back, I will not stop you. In everlasting love,

Your husband Franco.

Marie put down the note. An attempt to save what could not be saved. How could he leave her on her own, at this time of all times?

In good times and in ba
d . . .
but how much did she still owe Franco after all this?

Pale winter sunlight streamed into the room. Marie looked outside, her gaze vacant. The palms, the laurel bushes, the neatly trimmed box trees—everything looked just as it had before. The thought that she had not even said good-bye to Franco only added to her misery.

Air! She had to get out of bed and go out for some fresh air. Perhaps that would calm the tumult in her head a little.

She walked barefoot through the workshop and tried to open the double door that led into the garden, but it was stuck. She twisted the handle and shook it hard, but the door wouldn’t budge. That was odd, as the gardener had oiled the hinges and the lock at her request only last week—it used to squeak with every little puff of air.

Well then, not out into the garden. What then? Should she pack up a few things and sneak out of the house?

Perhaps Franco was still there? It was only seven o’clock after all. If she saw him again, perhaps that would help her to understand. She could tell him
why
she had to go—she owed him that much, at least. Marie rushed to put on her robe. Suddenly she was in a hurry. But when she went to open the door to the hallway, that didn’t open either.

Marie frowned. Was she being especially clumsy today? She rattled in vain at the doorknob, but to no avail. This couldn’t be happening!

She leaned against the door and pushed with her whole weight. Nothing happened. What could it possibly mean?

“Franco!” she shouted. “Franco, open the door!”

Panic rose inside Marie, stretching its tentacles like an unfurling octopus.

“Damn it all, what is this? Can’t anybody hear me?”

Nothing happened.

Marie was a prisoner.

18

“Great God in Heaven, Wanda! I’m a glassblower, not a factory worker! You and your ideas!” Thomas Heimer’s fist crashed down on the kitchen table. He shook his head, enraged. “When you said you wanted to help in the workshop, I thought you were talking about the dusting, or doing the spring cleaning when the time comes. You never mentioned that you wanted to turn the whole place upside down!”

Wanda was speechless for a moment. She pressed her lips together angrily.

“I certainly never said anything about
dusting
! Do you think Mother would ever have agreed if she knew that I were just here as your cleaning woman?” she said once she recovered a little.

Only two days before, a letter had arrived from New York, five pages long, in which Ruth had expressed in no uncertain terms her disapproval of Wanda’s sudden wish to help her father. Wanda had been racking her brain over the best way to phrase a reply that would calm her mother down—although so far she had come up with nothing.

“Oh yes, the young lady’s much too good to do the dirty work! Just like her dear mama, back then!” Eva spat from where she stood by the stove.

“Don’t you think I’d have switched over to technical glass long ago if I had seen any point in it?” Heimer answered with forced patience. He lifted his beer glass and signaled to Eva that he wanted more.

“Reaction flasks and test tubes—what’s any of that got to do with the glassblower’s art?” Eva asked, slamming a new bottle of beer down on the table in front of Thomas. Then she went back to the stove and gave one of her nameless soups a stir. “Quite apart from which there are already plenty of glassblowers who earn their living that way.”

“All I ever hear about is your art! But the fact is that however artistic your work may be, it doesn’t put food on the table. Isn’t that right? So what’s the logical next step? Look for something that does earn you a crust of bread! That’s all I’m trying to do, and I’d be grateful if the two of you could at least try to make an effort instead of knocking down every idea I come up with. And please, Eva, if you’re not going to put a lid on that pot, then at least open the window! The steam’s making me quite queasy,” Wanda snapped. This whole undertaking was just getting to be too much for her!

She had quickly noticed that nobody in the Heimer household treated anyone else with kid gloves. Nobody took much trouble to be polite or consider anyone’s feelings or speak a kind word. Everybody said exactly what was going through their minds—Wanda included—and said it plain. All the same she still felt a pang of frustration every time Thomas knocked down yet another of her suggestions—one or two of which were quite good ideas! Of course she was no expert on how to run a business, but she was nonetheless astonished at just how much she had learned about Lauscha and the glass industry in the last few weeks. Once she had even sat down at the lamp and tried her hand at blowing a glass, under Thomas’s guidance. She hadn’t done very well, however, and she remembered how much she had hated craft lessons back in New York.

Eva slammed a lid onto the pot and then slammed the door behind her. A moment later, she stuck her head back into the kitchen.

“Nobody invited you here, don’t you forget that! You come here and you imagine we’ve just been sitting waiting for you and your daft ideas! If Wilhelm could hear you, he’d be a lot less pleased to have you in the house!”

Then the door slammed again.

Silence filled the room.

Thomas Heimer was the first to speak. “Technical glassware, glass buttons, spun glass—we can’t just switch production over from one day to the next; there are specialists in all those areas. And that wild idea of yours of putting a display case on the front of the hous
e . . .
None of this is as easy as you imagine, Wanda.” He spoke gently, as though ashamed of his earlier outburst.

“I never said that it would be easy, did I?” Wanda said. “But even you have to see that something must be done.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Good times give way to bad times and then the other way around. You have to be able to sit it out without turning the whole workshop upside down in the meantime. That’s just a law of nature; it’s always been that way.” Heimer sighed. “But what does a city girl like you know about these things?”

“You and your laws of nature! I’d be interested to know why these laws don’t affect all the glassblowers equally but only the ones who refuse to move with the times. Fashions don’t come back around again all that soon once they’re passed, because people have simply had enough of looking at them. I’m a city girl; I know what I’m talking about when it comes to trends! Isn’t most Lauscha glassware sold in towns? People want something new! Modern products that make life that little bit easier. Pretty new things to decorate their homes. And all those factories that are stealing work from under your nose, they’re not going to disappear either!” Wanda leaned back in her chair, worn out. How many times did she have to explain it all to him? She was beginning to feel like one of her mother’s phonograph records, skipping over a crack and repeating the same thing over and over again.

Neither of them said a word. Stubborn silence reigned.

They simply couldn’t find any common ground. Her father refused to even consider any of her ideas. But she trudged up the hill to the Heimer house every day anyway.

The way he sat there, sulking like an overgrown schoolboy! When he did that, he had the same stubborn lines around his mouth as her grandfather when he refused to eat what Eva tried to feed him. If she came out now with her idea about the colored marbles, he would undoubtedly say that wouldn’t work either.

Wanda stood up. “I’m going. I promised Richard I would say hello.”

Heimer looked down into his empty beer glass.

After she left, Wanda stuck her head back into the kitchen, just like Eva had done before. “Sometimes I think you only agreed to have me come up here because you know it annoys Eva.”

“You did
what
?” Richard put down the piece of glass he was working on and looked at Wanda in dismay.

“I suggested that he put a display case on the front of the house and have some of his pieces on show there. And a sign inviting people to come into the workshop to watch him work. Anybody who has never seen how glass is blown is bound to find it interesting. Something like that will bring the customers in, I’m sure of it. But he refuses to even consider the idea.
‘I’m not an animal in a zoo!’
was all he said. Shouted, even.” Wanda smoothed down the hair at the back of her head. Her hackles rose just at the memory!

Richard laughed. Then he beckoned her over. “Come here so I can kiss you!” he called out, still laughing.

“I’d like to know what you find so funny,” Wanda answered, staying where she was. Her glance fell on the frost flowers that covered the inside of the windowpanes. How could Richard work in this cold all day long? “The shops in town would be quite lost without showcases and window displays. There has to be something to tempt people inside!”

“Well yes, but not here in the village. Wanda—we’re at the back of beyond here! Don’t you know what the city folk used to call us? Hillbillies with bellows!”

Wanda blinked back tears. “Now you’re against me as well!”

Richard’s flame flickered and died. His stool scraped across the floorboards and he walked over to Wanda. He took her hands and kissed each palm.

Wanda felt a shiver run down her spine and went weak at the knees.

“Who’s going to come looking at shopwindows? You can count on two hands the number of visitors who find their way to Lauscha. We make a living from our contacts in the outside world.” There was a faint note of impatience in Richard’s voice.

“I know all that,” Wanda grumbled. She was stung by the thought that she had made herself sound ridiculous. “And contacts are exactly what my father doesn’t have. Not anymore. He’s had one lousy commission these last few weeks. Fifty bowls, with stem and foot—what riches! He’s stone broke and the workshop is finished, but do you think he understands that?”

She heaved a sigh.

“He’s so fatalistic! How can I persuade him that he has to make things happen himself? You can do anything you want in this world! Though first of course you have to know
what
it is that you wan
t . . .
” Her anger died down a bit and she turned thoughtful. “I feel like a fisherman casting my rod into a murky pond without really knowing what kind of catch I’m after. Whatever I suggest to my father—he’s against it. The whole thing’s turning into a staring match. At least that’s something we’re both good at!”

She broke off abruptly.

“Why did I ever open myself up to this?” she choked out finally, weeping.
And why doesn’t Richard take me in his arms in that way he has and stroke m
e . . .

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but somehow I thought that you would be a bit mor
e . . .
organized about the whole thing.” Richard looked at her with a faint gleam of amusement.

“I beg your pardon?” Wanda’s sobbing subsided and gave way to a surge of fierce anger. “What ever made you think that I have all the answers?
You’re
the one who got me into this fix in the first place!” Even though he had been so rude to her, she still desperately wanted to grab hold of him and kiss him, which only made her angrier.

He grinned. “What you said just now about being a fisherman wasn’t bad, but I see it slightly differently: you’re an American and you’ve been trained in business, so there’s no doubt you’ll be able to land a big fish. It’s just that maybe you’ve been using the wrong rod. Or been casting in the wrong place. But you can change all that.”

Wanda felt the fluttering in her stomach intensify.
Trained in business, my foot—
how could she have known that he would believe every word she told him!

What would Steven say to all this? The answer was obvious. He would say that Richard was right. “Without organization and strategic planning, business is just a waste of time and effort!” How often had she and Mother heard him deliver little speeches like that at the dinner table? Mostly when yet another of his competitors had gone bankrupt. Perhaps she should draw up a plan? With a list of items to work through one after another? There was something comforting about the thought.

Richard nudged up next to her on the narrow bench. “Stop worrying now. Tomorrow is another day. Everything will be all right, believe me.” He kissed her on the crown of her head several times, which scattered her thoughts again.

For a few wonderful minutes Wanda surrendered to Richard’s caresses, but then she broke free. She couldn’t just switch off that way.

She nodded toward his bench and lamp and asked, “How do
you
make a living, in fact?”

The words puffed out and hung in the cold air as little white clouds.

Richard frowned at the sudden change of mood.

“I blow Venetian-style glass, you know that.”

“That’s all very well, but who buys the glasswork from you?” She knew that it wasn’t appropriate to talk about business so directly—it wasn’t considered ladylike, but ladylike behavior wasn’t getting her anywhere.

“I’ve been lucky. A little while ago I got to know a gallery owner over in Weimar. Gotthilf Täuber. Rather an odd fellow. He thinks he’s the only one in the world who knows anything about art, and he’s not shy about saying so in the most highfalutin terms. You’ll never hear him say ‘I like this one, but I don’t like that one.’ No, he goes on about all those isms. You know, Realism, Impressionis
m . . .
”

Wanda grinned. “Naturalism, Symbolism—oh my, you don’t have to tell me about those! The New York art world juggles those terms like balls. Marie was always caught up in those conversations; she could spend hours going on about all the different schools of art. But continue: How do the two of you work together?” It could hardly be a very lucrative connection, Wanda thought, or Richard wouldn’t be scrambling for every little commission that Johanna gave him. If it made him any real money, surely he’d be able to afford enough firewood to heat the place at least for an hour or two a da
y . . .

“Well, he buys one or two things off me every now and again—and he pays well too. Either he comes to Lauscha or I go to Weimar if I have something special to show him. The last time I visited he even gave me a present, the catalog of an exhibition in Venice. Have a look at that!” Richard snatched the catalog off a shelf and held it up in the air like a trophy.

Biennale
, Wanda read on the binding. It was old and shabby by now but still impressive.

“Täuber says he’d like to help me make my way as an artist. If I manage to find my own way of using Venetian techniques, he says there’s a good chance he can give me a solo exhibition. In his gallery, do you understand? All my own work!” His voice glowed with passion as he spoke. He jumped up and picked up a glass from his bench. “He said that people are crazy for the Italian style. Look, this is one I’ve just finished. The Italians call this technique
aurato
. We take gold leaf and apply it to the hot bubble of glass. The gold doesn’t expand along with the glass as we keep blowing, so it rips and tears as it goes. That’s the effect we’re after. Not bad, is it?”

“It’s splendid!” Wanda took the glass reverently by its stem and turned it in the light. The flecks of gold glittered strangely as though thousands of tiny sunbeams were shooting up from the stem into the sides of the glass.

Richard took the glass away and handed her a tall goblet. “What do you think of that?”

It was of transparent glass, blown very thin. Streaks of colored glass covered the entire surface, creating the effect of a delicate net. Every shade of blue was there, fading into purple, and light green alternating with darker shades, all of it shot through with pink.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, not even at the New York exhibition I told you about,” Wanda said, shaking her head. She had known right from the start that Richard knew his craft. The glasses that he had shown her the first time she came to visit were something special in their own right. But the pieces standing on the table in front of her now were of an entirely different caliber. She looked lovingly at Richard. He was an artist! She told him as much.