The Queen of Beauty (The Century Trilogy Book 3)

by Petra Durst-Benning

  The Weingarten Pharmacy was set back in a quiet side street and was built so tight against the old medieval castle that Clara got the impression that the castle had taken the little building protectively under its wing like a mother hen. Does the sun ever shine through these windows? Clara wondered as she swung open the door to the little shop. She could not imagine that living so deep in the shadow of such a towering edifice was particularly pleasant.

  A bell rang melodically, and a young man stepped out from behind a curtain. He wore a brown suit beneath a white coat. His brown hair was parted in the middle, and a sparse beard covered his chin. His cheeks were flushed, as if he’d just eaten something hot or completed a stiff march.

  “Good morning. May I help you?” the man asked, smiling shyly at Clara.

  “My name is Clara Berg, and I am looking for work. My parents owned a pharmacy, and I helped my father all the time, so I’m very familiar with most of the processes.” Looking more closely, Clara realized the man was not as young as she first thought, but in his midthirties.

  “You are from Berlin, aren’t you?” said the pharmacist, a little less shyly than before.

  “Is it so obvious?” asked Clara, taken aback.

  “I’m originally from Potsdam, myself,” the man said with a smile. “And as it happens, I am looking for someone. My wife is expecting, and until now she’s been the only one I’ve had to help me in the laboratory. But in the future, she’ll have more than enough to do looking after our child.”

  The pharmacist laughed, and Clara suddenly felt dizzy—jubilantly dizzy—and joined in his laughter. If it were up to her, the pharmacist and his wife would be blessed with twins!

  But the next moment, their laughter was cut by a piercing scream that penetrated Clara to the bone. The pharmacist stood as if paralyzed, his hands frozen on the countertop. When a second scream—or more of a drawn-out moan—came, his eyes widened in panic. “Oh God,” he breathed. Then he slumped onto the chair behind the counter and stared into space.

  “For heaven’s sake, what was that?” Clara asked anxiously.

  The pharmacist looked at her as if she had spoken in a foreign language.

  Another scream, this one even more animalistic, filled the space.

  Clara’s hesitation only lasted a moment. Someone needed help, and urgently!

  She stepped around behind the counter and pushed the curtain aside. On the other side was a kind of parlor. It was quite small, and it smelled of sweat and damp, moldering washing. This was their living room? Clara had little time for such thoughts, however, for there was a red-haired woman cowering on the one armchair in the room. She was in a more advanced state of pregnancy than Clara had ever seen. Her belly, her fleshy arms, her legs, and even her head looked as if they might burst at any moment. Not even sturdy twins could account for this woman’s condition, Clara thought. The woman was either suffering from edema or carrying far more weight than was good for her, neither of which would make the impending birth any easier.

  “Are you a mid . . . midwife?” the pregnant woman whispered, obviously in a great deal of pain. Her face was a pale as a corpse, her forehead was beaded with sweat, and perspiration discolored the armpits of her blouse. A damp patch marked the floor in front of the armchair. Her water had broken.

  “The baby is coming! Where’s the midwife?” Clara said, turning back to the pharmacist, who was at least on his feet again and standing in the doorway behind her.

  “I . . . I have to send for her,” he whispered. “Sabine said it was still a long way off.”

  Clara had had enough of his helpless stammering. “Go and get the midwife. Your wife needs help, and she needs it fast!” she snapped at the man, who ran out of the shop. She turned back and reached out to the woman with both hands to help her. “Can you stand up? It might be better if we got you into the bedroom.”

  But the pharmacist’s wife only shook her head weakly. “I can’t make it.” She closed her eyes, and a guttural sound crept out of her throat.

  Clara stared at the woman helplessly. She should have been in a hospital! Giving birth here, under these circumstances, was life-threatening. Was there a hospital in Meersburg? And even if there were, the woman weighed at least two hundred pounds. How was Clara supposed to get her to the hospital if she couldn’t get her into the bedroom?

  Clara mustered every bit of resolve she could. “Where’s your kitchen?” she asked, putting her handbag aside and rolling up the sleeves of her blouse. “I’ll do what I can to get everything ready for the midwife.”

  The pharmacist’s wife waved weakly off to the right.

  The kitchen was just as small as the parlor. How could anyone live in such a cramped place, or more to the point, how could anyone that big do so? At least they had running water. And a small fire was burning in the stove. While water heated in a large pot, Clara found a few clean sheets and hand towels. Back in the parlor, she spread one of the sheets on the floor.

  “If you can’t make it to the bedroom, then lie down here on the floor. Come on, I’ll help you. You’ll feel better in a minute.” Clara half lifted and half pulled the pregnant woman out of the armchair. When the woman slumped onto the floor, the button on her skirt popped off. That’s good, thought Clara. “Why didn’t you say something to your husband earlier? You could have had the midwife here long ago,” she said in a somewhat reproachful voice.

  The woman’s face, previously pale, now turned an unhealthy red. “How was I supposed to know it was coming? My belly’s been bucking constantly for weeks. I only knew this time was any different when my water broke.” She burst into tears.

  “Don’t cry. That will just make you strain more,” said Clara, trying to placate the woman. Casting accusations at her now wouldn’t help anything.

  Clara would never have thought that she might wish to see her ex-husband again, but if anyone would know how to proceed in a situation like this, it was Gerhard. Clara tried to recall whatever she had learned in her years at his side.

  “Everything will be all right. Don’t worry. Until the midwife gets here, I won’t leave you,” she said softly. She positioned the woman’s head on the pillow that had been on the armchair. It was damp and clammy with the woman’s sweat. “You’d better put your knees up; that will help you relax a little. Yes, like that. If you’ll allow me to, I’ll take your underwear off so that it’ll be easier for the midwife when she gets here.” Clara’s own brow was sweating now. As calm and controlled as her voice might have sounded, on the inside she was trembling and agitated. Blast it, where was the pharmacist with the midwife?

  The woman launched into another scream, which rose into a shrill screech, then dropped into a wail. Clara pushed the woman’s wet skirt and petticoat out of the way, then she unfastened the thin band that held the woman’s underwear at the side. Out of the way, out of the way! thought Clara as she struggled to pull the underwear down. She was just pulling them off over the woman’s feet when she got the shock of her life: between the woman’s legs she could see the baby’s head!

  Clara withdrew sharply at the unexpected sight, but immediately pulled herself together. She’d come this far, and she would finish what she’d begun.

  “The baby is already coming. It all looks good and normal. Don’t hold your breath! Breathe, yes, like that is good. Spread your legs a little more. Not together, apart! Good . . . You’ll be through it any minute!” Dauntlessly, she placed both hands beneath the infant’s head. More and more damp hair appeared, then the ears, then the pressed-together shoulders. Carefully, Clara grasped the baby on each side and pulled a little. The next moment, he slipped out as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

  On the brink of crying, Clara looked from the newborn baby to his mother. “You have a boy,” she said, her voice breaking. Then she laid the child in the woman’s arms, and both women burst into tears.

  The very next day, Clara was dressed in a white apron, standing in the freshly minted father’s laboratory. Th
e pharmacist had no interest in checking Clara’s papers or questioning her qualifications. She did not even have to take Lilo’s advice and hint at being a widow. It made no difference to Frieder Weingarten if she was married, widowed, or single. In his eyes, Clara was no less than a heroine. He would be forever in her debt, he told her two hours after the birth when he finally returned with the midwife—he had had to go hunting through the entire high town to find her. By then, Clara had retrieved the afterbirth, cut the umbilical cord, and washed and dressed both mother and child. When the midwife arrived, the pharmacist’s wife was lying on the chaise longue in a lily-white nightdress, with a cup of hot broth in her hands. Her baby was asleep in a crib in the next room. The midwife examined mother and child and confirmed that both were in good health. “Well done,” she had whispered to Clara before leaving.

  Well done? The pharmacist had watched the midwife leave with a mixture of dismay and annoyance. Clara had saved the lives of his wife and his son—that much was clear to him! The very least he could do was repay her with a job. Because she had not completed any official training, she would not be able to serve at the counter or advise customers, but she could certainly work in the laboratory. Besides, perhaps Clara would be prepared to help Sabine out a little now and then? For him, that would be the biggest help of all!

  Clara was happy with anything. For her, what mattered most was that she would be working in a pharmacy. If that meant making an occasional chamomile tea for the mistress of the house, she’d be happy to do it.

  Chapter Ten

  Clara could not believe her luck. She had a job! No, she had two jobs. In the morning, she worked at the Weingarten Pharmacy, and in the afternoon she worked at Lilo’s hotel. And she was paid for both, the first money of her own, ever.

  The pharmacist specialized in making various kinds of herbal drops and lozenges: cough drops, peppermint sweets, pastilles flavored with fennel and skirret. Mr. Weingarten melted sugar in a large copper pot and added herbs, then he poured the mixture into a press that could be fitted with various molds to produce differently shaped sweets. When the sweets were cool, Clara filled small bags with them and labeled the bags. She was amazed to see how many sweets the pharmacy sold in a day. Among tourists, Weingarten pastilles were considered an insider secret, and they were often bought as souvenirs to take back home. Clara was disappointed to find that Mr. Weingarten made practically no creams or medicines at all, ordering them instead from two suppliers in Munich and Mannheim. How dearly she would have loved to dip a spatula into a pure-white hand cream again or to stir a thick ointment that smelled of chamomile or some other healing herb.

  Some days, business at the pharmacy was so slow that Frieder Weingarten asked Clara to spend time with his wife. Then Clara would do some ironing or cook a light meal, and sometimes she just chatted with Sabine. Once the woman told Clara that she and her husband had tried many years for their child, but even as she rocked her baby back and forth, Sabine did not seem happy. Instead, she was introverted and gloomy, which came as no real surprise to Clara: the young mother had no visitors, and she never left the house by herself. It was as if she were afraid of the world outside. Mr. Weingarten even took care of the grocery shopping, and did so without complaint. This all seemed strange to Clara, and she could not imagine that the air in the little house, with its persistent odor of mold, could be good for the infant. Mother and child were both in urgent need of getting out of those four walls, she felt, after observing them for a good two weeks.

  “When I went down to the basement to find something for your husband, I found a baby carriage,” she said, flipping the pancakes Sabine had asked her to make. “If you like, I’ll bring it up for you. You could go for a walk along the esplanade. The fresh air by the lake would do you and your baby good.” The esplanade was Clara’s new passion. Ever since she had discovered the pretty street with its restaurants and cafés, she strolled there every day, enjoying the view over the water, feeding the ducks, and people watching.

  Sabine looked at her in utter horror. “But I don’t know my way around here at all!”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know your way around here?” Clara frowned in bewilderment. Mr. Weingarten had told her that he had spotted the advertisement announcing the sale of the Meersburg pharmacy in the German Pharmacist magazine three years earlier. The Weingartens no longer had any relatives in Potsdam, so without much hesitation and backed financially by a small inheritance, they had embarked on this adventure. “You’ve been here almost three years. You must know Meersburg inside out by now.”

  Instead of answering, Sabine tore off a piece of pancake with her fork, smeared it with marmalade, and stuffed it into her mouth.

  “If you went for a walk, you could stop somewhere for a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.” Clara hoped that the mention of coffee and cake might shake the woman out of her complacency.

  “Go into a café? I couldn’t do that.” Sabine Weingarten shook her head vehemently. “Oh, no. I still don’t understand half of what the people around here say. Don’t you think the southern dialect is terrible?”

  Clara, who loved the soft sounds of the local vernacular, said nothing. She flipped another pancake onto Sabine’s plate. “Then wait until your husband closes up in the evening and you can take a walk together. The early autumn evenings are still lovely.”

  Sabine Weingarten laughed loudly. “My husband is happy to get away from the Meersburgers after he closes. The carriage was his idea, and not one of his best, if I may say so.”

  Clara gave up. To all appearances, neither of the Weingartens were interested in getting involved with their new home.

  It was another gorgeous Sunday morning. Things were still quiet in the hotel, but Clara, an early riser, had been awake for two hours. Instead of getting up, she lazed in bed and read The Sisters by Jakob Wassermann. The book had been published that year and told the stories of three women—Johanna von Castile, Sara Malcolm, and Clarissa Mirabel—who, Clara thought, were at least as different from one another as she, Isabelle, and Josephine. The sun splayed golden bands across her bedspread and illuminated the open pages of the book. Clara sighed contentedly.

  Gerhard had never liked to see her with her nose buried in a book. “If I’d wanted an intellectual for a wife, I’d have looked for one,” he said—at best. On bad days, if he caught her with a book, his reaction had been far more violent, so Clara had limited her reading to when she was alone in the house. She read books that she had pilfered from her father’s bookshelves, wanting to find out more about salves and tinctures, chemical formulas, and medicinal compounds. Just as secretly, she had used Gerhard’s name to borrow specialized books from the library and thus had learned about human digestion, circulation, infections of wounds and their treatment. Once, she had discovered a book about dermatology; that had excited her a good deal! Beauty care in ancient Egypt, in India, Japan, France—Clara had wanted to keep the book, like so many others, forever. Instead, she had laboriously copied the most interesting passages into a notebook that Gerhard had bought her to manage the housekeeping. Some Sundays, when he was home and she could not pick up any other book, she had—undisturbed by Gerhard—leafed through her “housekeeping” book until she had committed many of the passages to memory.

  Being able to read without fear—that was a special pleasure in her new life. Admittedly, the hotel library with its large collection of light, entertaining novels and women’s magazines was not exactly to her taste, but the small library in the high town had a good selection of literature, and that was where she had found the new Jakob Wassermann.

  Clara did not know from where her thirst for knowledge, her hunger to learn new things, came. Was it because her desire to study had been slighted by Gerhard and her parents? There were days when she still dreamed about going to university, but she was realistic enough to know that that would forever remain a dream. She was thirty-two years old and hardly a woman of means. Her children were her priority, and f
or them and for herself, she needed financial security and a place of her own.

  Around eight, Clara was sitting in the hotel dining room with a handful of other early risers. The lake gleamed a pale morning blue, and there were not yet any boats in sight. A few seagulls turned in lazy circles in the sky, searching for fish for breakfast. Clara still could not say which time of day by the lake was loveliest. The early morning hours, when the world was still as if made for her alone? Or the evenings, when the lake and its people settled down again? Clara turned away from the floor-to-ceiling windows, determined to write the letter to Josephine that she had been putting off for so long.

  As the dining room slowly filled, her pen fairly flew over the stationery decorated with delicate roses that she had treated herself to. Her arrival at the lake, Lilo’s hotel, the unexpected way she had landed her position in the pharmacy . . . There was so much to tell!

  . . . the work in the pharmacy is certainly not particularly demanding, but I am enjoying it immensely. Though the Weingartens, I have to say, are a little strange. They have lived here for three years but have practically no contact with any of the local people. Poor Mrs. Weingarten is so lonely and unhappy that she is constantly gorging herself. But I doubt she really finds any consolation in that . . .

  It was unlikely that Josephine would ever meet Sabine Weingarten, so Clara did not feel guilty for writing so candidly about her employer.

  In any case, I have decided not to be like that at all. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, in the hotel or on my walks around the town, I try to talk with the people. The Meersburg locals are so friendly and engaging that I feel at home here, although I cannot claim to have made any real friends yet. I miss you so much, dear Josephine!

  I am therefore all the happier to be with Lilo. She doesn’t have time for long chats over coffee, of course, but I am learning so much from her. Like you, Lilo is a wonderful businesswoman, and it doesn’t bother her at all if I look over her shoulder a little. I’m starting to think that she only assigns me the best and most interesting tasks. Yesterday, for example, I helped her write invitations for the end-of-season party. And the day before, she had me tie up small bouquets and lay them in the guests’ rooms. Once, I spent an entire day in charge of reception. You can imagine how nervous I was, but Lilo said she knew I would manage everything fine.