Clara snatched her coat from the coatrack. “I’m going to run down to the Residenz and get my writing paper and ink. I want to get started straight away.” She already had her coat buttoned when the doorbell jangled and the door opened.
“Well, what do we have here? Leaving my lovely shop in the middle of the day? Earned enough already, eh?” With his thumbs hooked behind his suspenders, Alfred Schrott stood inside the store, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and gazing at Clara’s breasts. He stepped closer. Clara could smell the onions on his breath.
She shuddered. “Urgent errand,” she said, and was about to push past her landlord and escape when she felt Therese’s hand on her left arm—stay!
“How can we help you?” Therese asked, and her voice sounded unusually tinny.
Alfred Schrott grinned. “What makes you think I want anything from you? I came by to check if everything is in order. You know that if there’s anything I can do for the ladies . . .”
From anyone else, such an offer might have sounded friendly and helpful. But from Schrott, the words carried an insinuating tone. Nothing explicit, but unmistakable, and Clara shuddered again.
“Everything is perfectly all right,” she said stiffly. “We’re getting along just fine by ourselves, aren’t we, Therese?”
The hairdresser nodded vehemently. She was all but hiding behind Clara.
“Ah. Good then.” The disappointment in his voice was unmistakable. “But in case there’s anything you—”
“Alfred? Alfred!” Lydia Schrott, her voice shrill and demanding, called out from the doorway.
Some days just get worse and worse, thought Clara when Lydia Schrott stepped inside. Clara gave the landlord’s wife a pained smile. Lydia nodded curtly and, without a second glance at Clara or Therese, said, “I searched the whole house for you! You were going to help me take down the curtains on the top floor. And the garden gate needs oil. It squeaks so loud it gives me a migraine.”
Clara watched with relief as Lydia Schrott pulled her husband out of the shop.
“Those two really are peas in a pod, aren’t they?” said Therese, and they both smiled.
Then Clara’s smile turned to a worried frown. “I find that man so repulsive, but we can hardly tell him he can’t come in.” It bothered her especially that he had described the shop as his, and she told Therese so.
“What was that supposed to mean? We pay him good rent, after all, and we should say what goes on here,” Therese said firmly. “But he thinks he can get away with anything. He came here a few days ago, too, you know. If I remember right, you’d gone out to Treiber’s. I was washing towels. ‘Oh, what’s that I see? Has the basin sprung a leak?’ he said from the doorway. I knew straight off that all he was doing was looking for an excuse to squeeze up close. I told him everything was fine, but he was already standing next to me. Shameless bastard put one arm around me as if he were checking something on the sink and then brushed against my breast!” Therese wrinkled her nose in disgust.
Clara exhaled sharply, horrified. “Why didn’t you tell me straight away? That’s monstrous!”
Therese snorted. “I’m more annoyed that I was so startled. Next time I’ll rap him over his knuckles; you can quote me on that!”
“What now?” said Clara, still taken aback by Therese’s disclosure. Normally, she was the one left alone in the shop while Therese went off to enjoy herself. The idea of a run-in like that Schrott was anything but pleasant.
“Best we can do is ignore him,” said Therese. “His charming wife usually makes sure he keeps his distance from us. Other people tie a dog up in their yard. But Alfred Schrott has a dragon in his house!”
A short time later, when Clara returned with the writing paper, envelopes, and a bottle of ink, Therese was standing by the door ready to go out herself.
“Finally! I thought you weren’t coming back at all.”
“And I thought you were going to help me write the invitations?” Clara watched as Therese pulled her hat down over her forehead so that only her left eye was still visible, a jaunty, daring look. The next moment, Therese gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“I’ll help you tomorrow, promise! But Hubert was just here—you know, Count Zeppelin’s engineer, the manager? He’s in a champagne mood, he said, and he wants to take me out to dinner. I couldn’t really say no, could I?”
Therese and the engineer had met on New Year’s Eve, and the man had shown up at the shop several times since with flowers and chocolates or to take Therese on an outing. Given his occupation, Clara couldn’t imagine how he had so much free time. “Oh, Hubert is such a treasure!” Therese sighed dreamily. “Do you think I should tell him about the permanent-wave machine? As an engineer, he’s a very forward-thinking man, and technically knowledgeable, of course. I’m sure he can tell me what he thinks of this invention. Maybe he’ll be prepared to help me out a little with the purchase . . .”
“I don’t know,” Clara said, furrowing her brow. “Don’t you think you’d be putting the gentleman in an awkward position? I mean, what if he doesn’t want to finance a machine like that for you?”
“Then he just has to say so,” said Therese, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And so you don’t think I’m selfish, I’m going to ask Hubert if he can wrangle an invitation for both of us to one of Count Zeppelin’s parties. We could do a little quiet advertising. Once we have one or two fans in the better circles, more women will follow suit. Soon everything will be running like clockwork, you’ll see!” She gestured with a gloved toward Clara’s writing implements. “And you can save yourself the effort of writing invitations.” With a happy wave, she was gone.
Clara watched her leave with dismay. “What if someone comes in and wants a haircut?” she called, but Therese wasn’t listening anymore.
Chapter Seventeen
The spring weather held, and the skies remained cloudless. More and more open carriages were out on the streets around the lake—excursionists out enjoying the attractions of the region; some of them were just there for a day or two, but there were also guests at the local health resorts, some there to spend the entire summer. There were rumors that members of the royal court in Stuttgart had already arrived. Nobody had actually seen any high-ranking nobles in Friedrichshafen or anywhere else, but that didn’t stop Meersburg’s rumor mills from grinding at top speed.
Lilo’s Hotel Residenz was fully booked, and when Clara entered the breakfast room, there were often only one or two tables free. Rather than taking a table from a paying guest, Clara decided to have breakfast either in her room or at a café along the esplanade. “You don’t have to do that, you know. I’ll always have space for you,” said Lilo when Clara hadn’t appeared for breakfast for a few days. Clara appreciated Lilo’s words, but she thought Lilo might have been relieved by her thoughtfulness.
Clara breathed deeply, filling her lungs with the clear morning air, and looked out over the water as she sat on the café terrace, waiting for her breakfast to arrive. She knew how lucky she was to have her first meal of the day in the open air close to the water. The slap of wavelets washing against the quay wall was both calming and invigorating.
A waiter had just set a cup of coffee, a roll, and a small pot of marmalade in front of Clara when, behind her, she suddenly heard laughter and a babble of voices speaking French and a language she did not recognize. She turned as surreptitiously as she could in the direction of the esplanade to see the source of the commotion. An older woman of extraordinary girth was at the center of her personal entourage. She lumbered along with the aid of a walking stick. A small white dog with dark button eyes scurried so excitedly around her feet that the big woman nearly tripped over it, but she caught herself at the last second with surprising agility. Instead of chastising the dog, all she did was laugh.
She makes Sabine Weingarten look as petite and spry as an elf, Clara thought.
The woman wore at least ten long strings of pearls around h
er neck, and with every step she took the pearls bounced on her enormous bust as if they were trying to jump free and return to the depths of the water from which they had originally been fished. Wearing a fortune like that around her neck in broad daylight! Clara was surprised. The woman’s entourage was composed of much younger women—Clara guessed they were in their midtwenties to early thirties—and all, without exception, were extremely attractive. A group of actresses, appearing at a theater near the lake? Or dancers, perhaps? They were elegantly and elaborately dressed, and even the youngest among them wore flamboyant jewelry and large hats decorated with veils, flowers, and feathers. So these were the famed summer guests of whom Lilo, Therese, and so many others spoke with such admiration.
As the dazzling group came closer, Clara pretended to be lost in thought, gazing out over the water. The women sat at the table directly behind her. The legs of the cast-iron café chairs scraped across the floor, and then Clara heard a threatening, groaning sound—as if something were about to break apart. The corpulent dame and the small, ornate chairs—Clara preferred not to think about the combination. She listened with amusement to the lively conversation and laughter behind her. One of the women tried to order coffee, and another called out for champagne. Then a third shouted, “No, hot chocolate for everyone!” The little dog yapped out its approval of each.
“Please bring all the drinks you have,” said a deep female voice in a decisive tone. Clara assumed it was the big woman who spoke.
The question of what the women wanted to eat then took a great deal of discussion.
Clara grinned to herself, thinking how she, Josephine, and Isabelle were so tame compared to these women! She bit off a mouthful of her roll as the little dog trotted off across the esplanade to the quay wall.
“Bijou, ici!” called several women simultaneously, but then they ignored the dog entirely.
The little creature put its head between the bars of the railing that was meant to prevent pedestrians from accidentally falling into the lake below. A loud burst of barking followed, but whether it was just a few ducks that had got the dog so excited or something else, Clara could not see. The dog isn’t going to jump, I hope, she was thinking, when exactly that happened.
“Excusez-moi, votre chien . . .” Clara turned around in her chair and waved her hand excitedly toward the water behind her. “Your dog . . . it’s fallen off the quay!”
“Bijou! Mon Dieu!” One of the woman’s hands flew to her throat in fright, then she laboriously rose to her feet and shambled with her walking stick over to the quay wall. Her fashionably attired entourage and Clara followed close behind. The little dog was paddling helplessly in the small waves, whimpering piteously.
The women were shouting in various foreign languages, but that didn’t stop Clara from understanding that none of the woman’s entourage could help in any way. There was no dock worker, no policeman, no official in sight along the esplanade—and what if there were? Who would get wet for the sake of a little dog? But one could not simply look on calmly while the little creature died!
Should she? She could swim, after all. But the lake was still freezing cold at this point in the spring. She would almost certainly catch a cold. If she got drenched now, she’d have to hurry back to the hotel to change to have any hope of making her first appointment at Bel Étage at nine.
“Why isn’t anyone helping?” the corpulent woman shrieked. Her entourage wailed and sobbed.
While Clara’s thoughts were in a turmoil, one of the Lake Constance ferries passed by, and the dog was caught in the vortex of its wake and pulled farther away from the shore. Its little white head was barely visible anymore.
She couldn’t hesitate any longer. Clara pulled off her jacket and shoes, climbed over the railing, took a deep breath, and jumped into the water. The cold hit her like a wall of ice, and for a moment she could not breathe at all and was afraid her heart would stop. Then her arms and legs instinctively began to move. Her petticoat and dress clung to her skin, and the weight of all the material pulled her down. Only with a huge effort was she able to make any headway in the ice-cold lake. She frantically scanned the water stirred up in the wake of the ferry. Where was the dog? Was she too late?
“The dog! Where is it?” she called, turning back to the quay for help.
“Over there, to the right!” the big woman shouted and pointed, then she waved her hands frantically and helplessly in the air, and the other women did the same.
Clara’s teeth were chattering uncontrollably as she swam in the direction the woman had pointed. There! The dog!
The next moment, she reached the tiny ball of fur. Bijou’s eyes were wide with fear when he caught sight of Clara.
“It all right, little dog. Everything will be all right,” Clara murmured in the tone she used whenever one of her children came home with a scraped knee. Gently, she put the dog over her right shoulder, and began to swim back toward the shore.
“I will never forget what you’ve done!” the woman said, speaking German now. Her face was streaked with tears as she pressed Clara and Bijou to her titanic chest. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart, my dear, thank you! You saved my little darling’s life.”
Her companions looked at Clara with a mixture of admiration and horror. “Don’t mention it, really,” Clara murmured, pushing her wet hair out of her face. Shivering, chilled to her core, she freed herself from the big woman’s embrace. She needed to get into some dry clothes urgently, or she would catch her death!
“I have to go . . .”
“But I haven’t even thanked you properly! What’s your name? Where do you live? Stay, please!” the woman called after her, but Clara was already rushing away to her warm, dry room.
Luckily for Clara, she could sneak into the hotel through a rear entrance so that no one would see her in such a state.
Three-quarters of an hour later, with dry hair and fresh clothes, she made it to Bel Étage with five minutes to spare. Smiling and courteous as ever, and trying to act as if nothing had happened, she served her nine o’clock customer, who happily reported that, thanks to Clara’s cream, the spots on her décolletage had disappeared. Clara was pleased with the progress, but recommended a supplementary cleansing lotion to maintain the benefits. Still chilled through, her bones ached. Now don’t start whining. You’ve only got yourself to blame if you’re feeling miserable.
But Therese noticed that something about Clara wasn’t quite right. “Have you caught a cold? Don’t infect me if you have!” she said when the customer left.
Clara was about to tell her about what had happened at the lake when the door opened and an enormous bouquet of flowers appeared. The young man barely visible behind the bouquet was having trouble keeping the arrangement from falling.
Clara and Therese looked at each other, eyebrows raised.
“My Hubert, how sweet . . .” Therese sighed, and went to take the flowers from the messenger. But right away she turned and looked at Clara in confusion. “It’s not for me at all. It’s your name on the envelope.”
“That’s not possible,” Clara said. “Who would be sending me flowers?”
The messenger cleared his throat and shifted his weight impatiently from one foot to the other. “D’you ladies happen to have a bucket or somethin’? This is gettin’ a mite heavy . . .”
“Countess Zuzanna Zawadzki has invited you to her spring ball?” In disbelief, Therese looked from the card that came with the flowers and back again. “How, may I ask, did you pull this off?” Therese asked with more than a trace of envy in her voice.
Clara’s shrug quickly transformed into a bout of shivering. As briefly as possible, she related the incident that morning. “But I didn’t even tell the woman my name,” she said.
“You didn’t have to. Countess Zawadzki has the connections and money to find out. Finding out your name would have been child’s play for her. Congratulations, you rescued just the right lapdog from the lake!” Therese said stiffly. “At
the spring ball, you’ll meet ladies and gentlemen of the nobility who spend the season at the lake. And lots of other high-ranking types, to boot. After that, you won’t ever have to worry about your business again. Once people find out that the Russian czarina likes you, they’ll be knocking down your door.”
“That would be nice,” said Clara rather doubtfully. “But how is it that you know the countess?” She looked at the enormous bouquet. Roses, lilies, tulips—the cost of those flowers would have fed a family well for a week.
“Countess Zuzanna Zawadzki and the man whose money paid for me to open this shop move in the same circles. Our paths have crossed several times, which is not to say that the countess would ever lower herself to talk to me, so I really can’t tell you too much about her. But she is rather a flamboyant personality, and impossible to overlook.”
A flamboyant personality—those were exactly the words to describe the countess. When Clara realized that Therese was miffed, she said, “Oh, come on, cheer up a little. If you’re right and the countess really does become one of my customers, that would be good for your business, too. The question is just”—she frowned—“will I go to the ball at all? I don’t even have anything decent to wear.”
“You bet you’re going to that ball!” said Lilo sternly that evening. “Turning down this invitation would be a fatal mistake.”
“But—” Clara began.
“But nothing,” Lilo cut her off immediately. “Besides, I’m also one of the lucky ones to get an invitation, so I’ll be there for support. Now all we need is something pretty for you to wear, and everything will be fine.” Lilo beamed. “I would say we have roughly the same figure. I’m sure we can find something in my wardrobe for you.”
A little while later, Clara and Lilo were drinking wine in the dining room at the Residenz.
“Would you tell me a little about our hostess for the ball? I still don’t know anything about her.”
“Countess Zawadzki . . . It’s a tragic story,” said Lilo. A thin fog had gathered over the lake, and in the dim light cast by the street lamps, couples could be seen strolling hand in hand along the shoreline. The sight triggered a sense of longing in Clara.
The Queen of Beauty (The Century Trilogy Book 3) Page 14