THE AMBER CRANE
By Malve von Hassell
Chafing at the rules of the amber guild, Peter, an apprentice during the waning years of the Thirty Years’ War, finds and keeps a forbidden piece of amber, despite the risk of severe penalties should his secret be discovered.
Little does he know that this amber has hidden powers, transporting him into a future far beyond anything he could imagine. In dreamlike encounters, Peter witnesses the ravages of the final months of World War II in and around his home. He becomes embroiled in the troubles faced by Lioba, a girl he meets who seeks to escape from the oncoming Russian army.
Peter struggles with the consequences of his actions, endangering his family, his amber master’s reputation, and his own future. How much is Peter prepared to sacrifice to right his wrongs?
Trigger Warnings:
References to rape, Holocaust, World War II, violence.
Excerpt
Excerpt from Chapter 7 PATERNOSTERMAKERS
Peter shook his head as if to clear the fog from his mind, but only ended up banging it against a wall. He blinked and moved his hands, touching a familiar mattress stuffed with straw and a woolen blanket. He was in his bed, Cune snoring gently in the bed next to him.
After that, he had a hard time getting back to sleep. When he woke up in the morning, he felt groggy. Confused, he gazed at the blues and reds of his blanket, the solid brown of his shoes, the dark floor planks, and the familiar walls, scuffed and gone yellow-grey from the candlelight. He lifted his hands and scrutinized them as if he had never seen them before, the pink tones under the nails, the blue veins on the inside of his wrist standing out, the white edges of his nails. Everything was blurred. In his mind, he was still in the flat black and white world of his dream. This was the third time it had happened.
“Are you falling asleep again?” Cune stuck his head in the door. “Come on, breakfast is on the table.”
Hurriedly, Peter pulled on his clothes and brushed his hair before making his way downstairs.
In the kitchen, Mistress Ottilie Nowak was pulling a loaf of bread out of the oven and placing large mugs of ale on the table. Small and slightly built, she rarely seemed tired.
Sometimes Peter would watch the fine lines around her mouth and remember that her two older sons had died a few years ago in a battle near Leipzig, fighting in the Swedish army. Her youngest child had died soon after birth. But usually Peter did not think about that. She was just the mistress, always ready with a warm meal and a comforting smile.
“Anne,” Mistress Nowak shouted. “Would you get the butter out of the pantry?” Her daughter complied with her usual morning grumpy expression.
“Oops.” Inga giggled. Anne’s little sister was playing with her spoon and some of the porridge from her bowl had splattered onto the table. Master Nowak had built a highchair for her so she could sit with everyone else.
“Stop that.” With deft motions, Mistress Nowak tied a towel around her little daughter’s chest and tucked it into the collar.
“Good morning.” Master Nowak walked in the door, returning from buying the paper. He never missed a single issue and insisted the apprentices read some of it. “You should be proud we have our own weekly paper,” he reminded them when they grumbled. “I expect my apprentices to be informed.”
Cune obediently stuttered his way through the main stories, sometimes begging Peter to help him. “He will ask us about it, Peter.”
Impatiently, Peter scanned the pages. “It is always the same—another battle, thousands killed, this time around the Swedes beat back the Imperial forces. It makes no difference. The war will just keep going until there is no one left alive to fight.” Then he relented and helped Cune decipher some of the words.
After eating their bread, Peter, Cune, and Anne started their day in the workshop. Master Nowak was working on his accounts that morning. Peter was relieved to be able to work for a few hours without his stern eyes on everything he did.
Peter drew the master’s attention almost every day. He worked too fast. His work was chipped or cracked. It needed more polish or hadn’t been soaked sufficiently. The holes were drilled off-center, or the rosary beads were not evenly sized. Master Nowak was never satisfied. He would never think Peter was ready for the exam.
Just yesterday, Peter had failed to soak a piece of amber sufficiently, so it cracked while he worked on it. He also managed to break off a chip on another one just because he was distracted. His thoughts wandered as he remembered walking past Marthe and two other girls on the market square whispering to each other. Marthe caught his eye and winked. He felt his face grow hot. They were talking about him, he knew it.
Peter’s file and other tools tumbled to the floor with a clatter. He winced, not realizing he had been leaning against the narrow workbench until it had tipped to the side. He bent down and retrieved the amber he had been working on, the mouthpiece of a pipe, which had rolled under his chair. Dismayed, he saw there was a new chip along its edge.
Master Nowak came over. “You were not paying attention again,” he said mildly, taking the piece from Peter’s hand and looking at it carefully. “You are in luck. The chip is not too large; you can sand it down and polish it.”
Peter bent over his work, his cheeks hot. Master Nowak never raised his voice in the workshop. Sometimes Peter wished he did. It would be easier to bear than having to listen to his quiet voice, tinged with disappointment. Anne and Cune did not glance his way, seemingly absorbed by their work.
Today, Anne quietly headed to her work area, as usual neatly organized, clean, and swept free of all debris, where she picked up a small basket of beads that needed to be polished. Her braid was pinned back, so it did not interfere with her work.
Cune set to work drilling holes into beads, and Peter began the tricky process of filing away the outer layers of small rough pieces of amber.
Anne was the best of the three apprentices even though she had started a year later. Peter and Cune knew that perfectly well. She picked up new skills with ease. Peter thought her father should be proud of her, but instead, he criticized her every move. Anne never appeared to mind. Cheerfully flinging back her braids, she absorbed everything he said to her and carried on. Eagerly, she badgered her father for answers for everything.
Did people in the east really dig up amber from mines in the ground? How could amber be used to make eyeglasses? How old was it? Hundreds of years? Thousands of years? What was the biggest piece of amber he had ever seen?
Master Nowak was reluctant when it came to trying new methods, but because of Anne’s questions, he had begun to teach them how to fit different colored slivers together like a mosaic or inlay and how to carve more complicated shapes without cracking the amber.
Cune worked steadily and calmly. He always finished the work Master Nowak gave him, and he was patient. Master Nowak praised his diligence and rarely found fault with his work. He would be the first to be allowed to take the exam.
Cune hummed while he drilled holes into beads. Several polished beads lay on the low table in front of his workbench. It had taken hours to get to this point. First, the raw nuggets had to get soaked so they would not crack during the work. The outer layer had to be filed away, turning the pieces into perfect rounds. Then came the tedious task of smoothing them with a pumice stone, rubbing them down with shavings. Finally, they had to be polished with slaked lime or whiting or tripoli, a porous rock. The final step was to drill a hole into each bead for the string.
“Do you not get tired of making these beads?” Peter stretched his back, stiff from leaning over the workbench. His thoughts confused, they traveled somewhere along torn-up fields to a girl in long trousers, with her thick hair hidden under a cap.
Cune shook his head and continued drilling.
Peter kept thinking about what he had seen in his dream. It had felt real and immediate, even though everything had appeared flat—like pictures pressed between pages of a book—and devoid of colors. Now, glancing at the pile of amber beads, butter yellow and dark golden, the tools in front of him, the brown floorboards, and Cune’s carrot-colored hair and light blue eyes, Peter was overcome by a sense of disorientation. His own world had become strange to him.
“It is not as if we use these beads ourselves,” he said peevishly. The biggest market for the rosary beads was in the south. “For all you know, Imperial soldiers will be praying with these rosary beads.”
Peter had always hated the name for amber workers—Paternostermakers. Catholics referred to single beads on a rosary as a Paternoster. The beads were used for counting the prayers. Some of the rosaries made in Master Nowak’s workshop were more elaborate, including marker beads made of silver in addition to the regular counting bead. Sometimes, these marker beads were fashioned into shapes based on the Passion story: the hammer, the three nails, and the crown of thorns. Terminal beads, larger than regular ones, might be fashioned into a small flask for holy water or a pomander holding scent.
Peter put down his drill and flexed his hands before picking up the next bead. Cune worked steadily, humming softly. Irked by Cune’s contentment, Peter started the laborious process of polishing the amber while reciting the Paternoster as if it were a marching song. Admittedly, the prayer made for a nice solid rhythm for working.
Pater noster, qui es in cœlis;
sanctificatur nomen tuum:
Adveniat regnum tuum;
fiat voluntas tua,
sicut in cœlo, et in terra.
It always sounded better in Latin than in German. “Our Father, who art in heaven ...”
Cune looked up with a puzzled expression on his round face. “You should not be so disrespectful about the Lord’s Prayer.”
Peter shrugged. Cune was right to chide him, but he did not want to admit this. “I want to do more. I want to create beautiful pieces, not just a bunch of marbles.”
“I do not mind this work. At least I know what I have done at the end of the day.” Cune picked up a pumice stone and began sanding.
Anne was quiet, working steadily.
Peter glanced at her, so calm and neat. All he could see of her face was the curve of her cheekbone. Suddenly he remembered Effie. What if someone attacked Anne? But she was never alone. Mistress Nowak made sure of that. Effie should never have walked around by herself. Maybe she had done something to provoke someone into attacking her. Then he was ashamed all over again. How could he blame Effie? He shook his head. All this thinking would not do any good.
Trying to focus on his work, Peter breathed in the spicy scents of heated amber and amber dust. Usually, he loved the workshop with its stools and workbenches in front of long narrow tables, with wooden bars above on which they hung strings of finished beads. In front of each workstation was a box of tools, neatly organized. Every evening, Master Nowak ran an experienced eye over the workstations, reprimanding his apprentices when they failed to put their cleaned tools back into their proper places.
Now, Peter was restless and irritated by everything. “I just get so annoyed sometimes,” he grumbled. “Remember the other day when Master Nowak told us about his idea to use linseed oil for making amber more transparent?”
“Yes, so?” Cune raised his eyebrows.
“It was brilliant. You would simply soak the amber in heated linseed oil for a little while. That’s all. But can we use this? No. Of course not. The guild hasn’t approved it, and they have to approve every little bit of innovation. This is so infuriating.”
“I am sure the guild will introduce some of these innovations soon.”
“Why should we have to wait for them? Besides, we are stuck with these old tools.” Peter waved his drill around in his frustration. “In Paris, they use all sorts of new tools to produce the finest work. And then the guild members are shocked when we can’t compete in the markets. That is what they get for obsessing about tradition and protective tariffs.”
“Oh, Peter, stop whining,” Cune snapped. “Just do your work. Master Nowak will be upset if we do not finish what he gave us for the day.”
THE AMBER CRANE is available from:
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Malve von Hassell
Malve von Hassell is a freelance writer, researcher, and translator. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the New School for Social Research. Working as an independent scholar, she published The Struggle for Eden: Community Gardens in New York City (Bergin & Garvey 2002) and Homesteading in New York City 1978-1993: The Divided Heart of Loisaida (Bergin & Garvey 1996). She has also edited her grandfather Ulrich von Hassell's memoirs written in prison in 1944, Der Kreis schließt sich - Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft 1944 (Propylaen Verlag 1994). She has taught at Queens College, Baruch College, Pace University, and Suffolk County Community College, while continuing her work as a translator and writer. She has self-published two children’s picture books, Letters from the Tooth Fairy (2012/2020) and Turtle Crossing (2021), and her translation and annotation of a German children’s classic by Tamara Ramsay, Rennefarre: Dott’s Wonderful Travels and Adventures (Two Harbors Press, 2012). The Falconer’s Apprentice (namelos, 2015) was her first historical fiction novel for young adults. She has published Alina: A Song for the Telling (BHC Press, 2020), set in Jerusalem in the time of the crusades, and The Amber Crane (Odyssey Books, 2021), set in Germany in 1645 and 1945. She has completed a biographical work about a woman coming of age in Nazi Germany and is working on a historical fiction trilogy featuring Adela of Normandy.
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