Enough indulging in old memories, Josephine cautioned herself. It was time to get to the stack of mail that she had brought to the balcony with her.
“I don’t believe it,” she murmured a moment later when she discovered a letter from Lilo in the pile. She had just thought of her! Josephine smiled as she slit open the envelope with one finger. Although they rarely saw each other, she and Lilo were avid pen pals. She would know Lilo’s fluid handwriting anywhere, and it made her happy just to see it.
Meersburg, Lake Constance, August 1906
Dearest Jo,
I hope my letter finds you and yours in the best of health.
I’m well, though there are days when I feel like all the work is eating me alive. I’ve barely had the chance to even sit on my bicycle this summer, can you imagine?
Josephine frowned. Lilo was an enthusiastic and extremely successful cyclist, and she had always taken the time for her sport, regardless of whatever else was going on in her life. Curious, Josephine read on.
I never expected my hotel in Meersburg to be such a success, but we have been booked solid since the beginning of March! I already have several reservations for autumn and winter, too. And compared to Friedrichshafen, where the king and his court spend the summer, Meersburg is an insignificant little town! But at the same time, it’s beautiful. I am overjoyed that I was right in my judgment, and that in the age of the automobile a few miles here or there doesn’t concern most people. Actually, the opposite is true—I think my guests are happy to be able to run their cars along the elegant promenades as far as Constance and Friedrichshafen!
Josephine smiled. Lilo had always been ahead of her time, beginning with cycling. And she had been successful in everything she turned her attention to—including her divorce two years earlier. In contrast to Clara, who had walked away empty-handed, Lilo had received a considerable sum of money from her ex-husband, enough to take over the hotel at Lake Constance. And Lilo seemed not to have encountered any ill will as a divorcée, also in contrast to Clara. Or did she just keep that to herself?
“Josephine?”
“I’m outside!” she said, and pushed her chair backward to make room on the narrow balcony for Clara.
“Well?” she asked, although Clara’s expression told her all she needed to know.
Clara sat on the empty chair beside Josephine, swept a strand of hair away from her tired face, and began to talk about her day.
Once Clara had finished, Josephine, truly concerned, said, “That’s horrible. Oh, Clara, I’m so sorry you went through that.”
“Don’t be,” said Clara, her voice steady and firm. “It helped me come to an important decision today.” Her eyes shone proudly as she said, “From now on, I won’t let them get me down. My motto is going to be ‘Stay strong and don’t look back.’ I am going to walk through my life with my head held high, whatever comes.”
“Absolutely right,” Josephine praised. “You know what I always tell myself when things get tough? ‘Keep your chin up, especially if you’re drowning.’”
Both of them laughed at that. Clara raised her eyebrows and pointed at Josephine’s coffee cup. When Josephine nodded, Clara drank a mouthful of coffee gratefully. Josephine was tempted to ring for the housekeeper to bring them more coffee, but first she wanted to put something else behind her. She handed Clara an official-looking envelope, something that had arrived that afternoon.
“Here, for you. It’s probably from Gerhard’s lawyer.”
Clara’s face turned stony immediately. With her lips pressed tightly together, she opened the envelope. When she looked up from the letter, her expression registered both shock and bewilderment.
“It’s a court order. They’re forbidding me from seeing Sophie!”
Josephine took the letter out of Clara’s hand and began to read. “‘. . . you did not, as agreed, collect your daughter on the day of the hearing. You have thus convinced the court a second time of your unreliability.’” Josephine looked up, aghast. “Are they mad? You were there! You wanted to take her with you! You only left her behind because Gerhard set you up by allowing Sophie the kitten.”
Clara sat and said nothing, as if stunned into silence.
Josephine read on hurriedly: “‘The court hereby revokes its original instruction granting you the legal custody of Sophie Gropius. A new instruction takes its place and hereby grants Dr. Gerhard Gropius custody of both children from this day forward. Through your insubordinate behavior, you have also forfeited any visitation rights you may otherwise have enjoyed for your daughter, Sophie, or your son, Matthias. The court orders that from this day forward, you are to approach neither your children nor the Gropius household. Should you violate this order, Dr. Gerhard Gropius is hereby permitted to send for the police and have you removed by force.’” Josephine put down the letter. “Are they allowed to do that? This is just arbitrary!”
“Now it truly is all over,” Clara whispered. Tears flowed down her corpse-pale cheeks, and every bit of life seemed to have drained out of her.
Damn them, thought Josephine. Things were getting worse and worse for Clara. Still, she said, “You aren’t going to let anyone or anything get you down; that’s what you just told me. And now your good intentions are already swimming away on a sea of tears!” Gently, she shook her friend’s arm. “Berlin is not the center of the world. The German empire is big. A new start would certainly be easier somewhere else.” She felt an old but familiar fluttering spread inside her. It always came over her when new ideas and thoughts came along. A new beginning . . . somewhere else . . .
“Wonderful! So you think I should just jump on the next train to wherever, is that it?” A deep crease appeared on Clara’s forehead.
But Josephine was excited now, and she slid forward to the edge of her chair. “No, no! I have something much more concrete in mind! Remember my old friend Lilo?”
Clara nodded, still frowning. “From the Black Forest, the one who introduced you to bicycles in the first place? Didn’t you say that she also went through a divorce?”
“Lilo hasn’t been living in the Black Forest for quite a while. After her divorce, she moved to Lake Constance.” Josephine quickly explained what Lilo had written in her letter. “She’s got so much work and her hotel in Meersburg is so successful that she doesn’t even have time to go for a ride. What would you say if I wrote to Lilo and asked her if she can use a little help?”
“You want me to go and be a chambermaid at a hotel on Lake Constance?” Clara said. She sounded reproachful. “If you want to get me out of your hair, just say so. I’m sure I can get work as a maid and find a drafty attic room somewhere in Berlin just as easily.”
Josephine did her best to ignore Clara’s words. “Just listen to what’s going on in my head first. Yes, you could certainly help Lilo out with her hotel. At reception, with the rooms, or wherever she needs you to help. But only for half the day! She’d have to offer you free room and board for that. The rest of the time you could go on looking for work. There must be pharmacies around Lake Constance. And no one knows you there. All the prejudice you’re battling here won’t hold you back down there. Once you’re on your feet again and earning good money, you can reclaim custody of Sophie!”
Chapter Seven
Two weeks later, Clara was on a train bound for Lake Constance. In her luggage was everything she possessed: her clothes, a few makeup items, silver-framed pictures of her children and parents. A file of personal papers. A few books. A velvet box that held the few remaining pieces of her mother’s jewelry. Her father’s thick leather-bound notebook in which he had written down all his recipes for tinctures, pills, and pastilles. Whenever Clara leafed through its pages, browsing the recipes for ribwort cough medicine or peppermint pastilles, all recorded in her father’s neat handwriting, she felt very close to him. Maybe the book would be of benefit to her sometime, when she found work as a pharmacist’s assistant.
As the train creaked into motion, Clara felt unbeara
bly torn, as if different souls were at war inside her. She was hopeful and frightened at the same time. She was looking forward to Lake Constance, and at the same time her departure from Berlin was painful. And she was leaving the city that had been her home. She, who had rarely ventured out of Luisenstadt in her life. Was she really putting five hundred miles between herself and her children? Was she making a huge mistake, one that could never be put right again? Or was Josephine right when she said that her chances would be much better in Germany’s south?
“Travel today is so much more luxurious than it used to be, don’t you think?” Not for the first time, the stout older woman sitting opposite her tried to start a conversation.
Clara only nodded. Her inner turmoil was too great for her to concentrate on an impromptu conversation with a stranger. Disappointed, the woman turned instead to the man beside her.
Hour after hour, the landscape rolled past. The pretty Elbe Valley, the hilly vistas of Saxony, the Bavarian Forest. Below Nuremberg, a transformation took place beyond the train’s windows: the landscape opened up, the skies grew wider.
Clara suddenly thought of another train journey, one she had taken many years before with Josephine. They had traveled to the Champagne region to help Isabelle after the death of her first husband. Back then, they had shared their compartment on the train with an actress who had told them that she had just come from a three-month sojourn at Lake Constance to “regather her strength” for a new role. Regathering her strength by spending three months at Lake Constance? At the time, Clara had found the lifestyles some people led to be inconceivable. Gerhard would have raised hell if she’d tried to take three hours to regather her strength!
Obviously enchanted by the place, the actress had sung the praises of the fabulous landscapes around the lake so vividly that Clara could still remember them clearly. Back home again, one of the first things she had done was look in an atlas to find out exactly where that Swabian Sea actually was. And just a few days ago, she had picked up the atlas again; looking at the map, she had discovered that in the entire empire, there was nowhere more distant from Berlin than Lake Constance.
“A new start at the other end of the empire. It is certainly tempting,” she had said to Josephine, who pored over the atlas with her. “But so far away from the children? The very idea nearly kills me.”
“What can you do for your children now? You’re not even allowed to see them,” Josephine had replied somberly, and then promised to keep an eye on Sophie and Matthias, at least from a distance and as best she could.
A new beginning.
Regathering her strength beside Lake Constance.
At last a smile spread across Clara’s face.
Two days later, she arrived in Friedrichshafen. It was one of those September days that couldn’t make up its mind whether it belonged to summer or to autumn. The sun was shining, but the wind blowing in Clara’s face already had a fresh bite to it. The wind—or rather, the air—was the first thing Clara noticed when she disembarked from the train. It was so much clearer than the air in Berlin. Clara inhaled deeply. It smelled of seaweed and algae, of hay and a little of fermented grapes. The air at Isabelle’s estate had smelled the same, Clara realized with surprise. But there were no vineyards around, and she had seen nothing of Lake Constance itself yet, either. I can hardly wait to get my first glimpse of the lake, she thought as she went in search of a coachman to drive her on the last leg of her journey. She was relieved to see several carriages pulled up directly in front of the station. She had no desire to lug her bags much farther.
“To Meersburg, you say?” the coachman asked as he tied a feedbag for his horse. “I’m sorry, but that’s not my stretch.” He pointed to two young men rolling heavily loaded barrows his way. “All those goods that come by train from all over the empire? I deliver them to businesses here in Friedrichshafen.”
Clara nodded, but she was disappointed. She looked around for another coachman.
The man, noticing her gaze, said, “No point in asking any of my colleagues, young lady. They’re like me; they only work here in town. One or two will go as far as the castle over yonder, but no farther.”
Clara frowned. “Then how do I get to Meersburg?”
The man looked at her. He seemed a little confused. “Well, by boat, of course.”
A little while later, Clara found herself sitting aboard a small passenger boat bound for Meersburg. The coachman had been nice enough to take her and her bags down to the dock and had refused any payment for the service. The boat made regular trips back and forth between Friedrichshafen and Meersburg and had space for twelve passengers. Other than Clara, though, there were only five people—two men and three women—and two goats on board.
Clara nodded a greeting to the other passengers, then moved forward to the bow and gazed out over the lake. She had never imagined just how enormous it was. Like an ocean . . . Clara could not estimate the distance to the opposite shore, but it was certainly far away. Was that Switzerland? And how brilliantly blue the water glittered in the September sunshine. Every single cloud was reflected on the surface of the water.
Holding tight to the railing, Clara kept her face to the wind. As they moved out of the harbor, water splashed against the wooden hull, and a shower of spray splashed her suddenly in the face. She shrieked with the chill shock of it, but a moment later had to laugh. That’s what she got for being so enthusiastic!
The boatman, standing just behind her at the wheel, grinned. “You’d best have a seat on one of the benches. You’ll stay dry there.” The other passengers were already waving to her to join them and shifting to make room.
She smiled her thanks and sat down. “It’s so lovely here,” she murmured. “You can see so far.”
The woman sitting beside her nodded. “I was born by this lake, and I go to Meersburg every week to see my parents. I work at or on the water every day.” She spread her hands in a gesture that included the lake and the shoreline they were chugging along. “This beauty still manages to captivate me every single day.” She spoke with the same accent and same warm timbre as the coach driver and the boatman; her words lined up gently, like little waves. It sounded so much softer than the hard Berlin dialect.
“It is a wonderful gift not to lose your eye for the beauty of your own life. So many times, another person’s fields seem greener than one’s own. And one envies the others for what they have,” said Clara, and was astonished to hear herself speaking like that. She had spent all the hours on the train solitary and all but silent, her answers to questions monosyllabic, and now here she was chatting with a complete stranger as if they had known each other for decades. She straightened her back and turned her face fully to the warm September sun. Was it the breeze or the expanse of the waters that had made her so talkative?
“The beauty of your own life . . . ,” the woman repeated, and the streaming air carried her words away.
Clara looked at the woman. She guessed that they were around the same age, but the woman’s forehead and cheeks were raw and creased, and as she swept a few loose hairs from her face, Clara saw that her skin on her hands was deeply cracked, in places a little bloody. That must hurt terribly, she thought.
Seagulls crying their sharp cries flew alongside the boat, and one of them landed on the bench directly beside Clara and the woman. At the woman’s feet was a bucket in which lay a dozen good-sized fish, and the bird, quick and greedy, eyed them before the woman shooed it away with a wave of her hand.
“Too lazy to go and catch fish itself,” she said to Clara and laughed. “But it’s not getting any of my catch! My parents look forward to a nice fried trout in the evening.”
Clara smiled. “So you’re a fisherwoman?” That would explain the cracked hands, of course, she thought. Anyone who spent so much time splashing about in the water . . .
The woman nodded proudly. “Elisabeth Kaiser from the Kaiser Trout Fishery.” She pointed toward Clara’s luggage. “Are you here on holida
y?”
“I hope not,” Clara declared. “I’m looking for work. And I’d like to live here, too. But somehow, I still can’t believe that I’m actually really here.” She held out her hand to Elisabeth Kaiser. “I’m Clara Berg.”
“You might have done better to come in spring. The tourist season is almost over, so it will get pretty quiet around here,” said the woman, returning Clara’s handshake firmly. Her voice carried a trace of concern.
With a confidence that surprised her most of all, Clara said, “That will be nice. My instinct tells me that a lot can happen here at Lake Constance.” She smiled.
The fisherwoman, who found Clara’s enthusiasm infectious, nodded in affirmation.
Clara’s eyes swept wide over the lake. Now that the sun was at its zenith, the lake waters shone almost silver.
She was really there. No one apart from Josephine and Isabelle knew where she was. No one at Lake Constance knew her. No one had heard about the humiliating divorce hearing. She was Clara Berg, just one more new arrival looking for work at the lake. No more and no less.
An hour and a half later, they reached Meersburg. With the experience of many years, the boatman slowed his craft and approached a quay. The shore beyond was dominated by a large dark-red building.
“That’s the Gredhaus. In the past, it was used to store grain, wine, and other goods before they were shipped off to be sold in Switzerland,” Elisabeth Kaiser explained to Clara. “It was built in the Middle Ages, like most of the buildings here in the town. These days, the customs gentlemen have made themselves at home there.” Her last words carried a trace of grouchiness.
The Queen of Beauty (The Century Trilogy Book 3) Page 5