“Coffee? I must say I’m surprised. You invite me to your little break-room party while the shop is empty.” He crossed to the other side of the room, where three treatment stations were separated from one another by heavy curtains, which he quickly pulled back. None of the three gilded armchairs was occupied.
“Shouldn’t there be women sitting here with cream covering their faces? Shouldn’t the Baden-Baden ballerinas be having their ravaged feet tended to? Isn’t that the fundamental concept of this shop? Or have you turned it into Clara’s Coffee Shop in the meantime? Because that’s what it smells like!” He stepped over to the nearest shelf, grabbed a spray bottle, and frenetically sprayed its contents into the air. A lavender fragrance immediately filled the room. Then he went behind the counter and looked into the back room, where the two younger beauty experts were hurriedly clearing coffee cups and cake plates into the sink. At the sight of Stefan, they froze like paper cutouts. After a moment, Luise curtsied.
Stefan looked at them with contempt. “When the cat’s away, the mice will play. Isn’t that the saying? If Clara Berg knew how you’re abusing the trust she put in you . . .”
“But, Mr. Berg, I feel obliged to point out that it was your wife herself who told us to take a coffee break from ten thirty to eleven. Look at the clock. It is still five to eleven,” said Senta. Unlike her two younger colleagues, who looked close to tears, she was not so easily intimidated. “We work through the midday hours to offer treatments to the women whose husband go to lunch then. If we’re not supposed to fall down from exhaustion, we have to eat sometime.”
Stefan eyed Senta’s well-rounded figure and said, “You’re not going to waste away so fast, my dear. And I am certain that when my wife talked about breaks, she did not intend for the shop to look so deserted from the outside that anyone passing would think it was closed.” He turned the handle on the register, and the cash drawer sprang open. Inside lay a few bills and coins. He didn’t bother counting it, but simply stuffed it all into his pants pocket. He’d gambled away the previous day’s income yesterday evening.
“Pity I can’t report very good earnings here. But given your slipshod approach to your work, should it surprise me that it’s nearly empty?” he said, closing the register again forcefully. Then he looked at the three women.
“Your breaks are canceled from now on. You can drink water or eat a slice of bread between treatments, just like my wife does. Or do you think Clara Berg has time for coffee and gossip?”
“But—” Senta began to object.
“No buts,” Stefan cut her off. “And something else: your base salary is also canceled. From now on, you will be paid according to your individual receipts. The more treatments you provide, the more money you will have in your envelope at the end of the month.” He touched the brim of his hat. “I’ll be back again next week, and I expect to see a full shop.”
The three women looked at each other in dismay. “No salary? He can’t mean that, can he?” said Luise.
Her colleague, Emma—whom many customers reported to have golden hands—merely shrugged.
“But I need my salary, especially in winter when there aren’t any tourists in town. We won’t do nearly as many treatments then!” Luise said in horror. “We want to buy a piano.”
“You take care of your piano, and I’ll take care of the cash register,” said Senta. “Do either of you know how much money Mr. Berg took with him? How can I keep good accounts if I don’t know what was in the register? And how am I even supposed to record the money he took?” She looked helplessly at her two younger colleagues.
“He’ll say we took the money,” said Emma dispiritedly.
“Clara Berg knows that she can trust us. I need the work, I really do! If she came back herself just once, we could tell her everything,” said Luise, almost crying.
“What would you tell her? That her husband helps himself to the register whenever he wants? I’m sure she would love to hear that,” Senta shot back sarcastically. Normally, she took no part in chit-chat about their employer. She shook her head. “Clara Berg is a wonderful woman, and I’ve learned a great deal from her. But these days she has better things to do than look after her shops. Well, I have better things to do than to listen to a lout like that scold me! If Mr. Berg thinks we’re dependent on him, he’s got another thing coming.”
“You’re not going to quit, are you?” Emma asked Senta in a panicky voice. She and Luise only did the treatments, no more. Senta coordinated all the appointments and organized everything else around the shop.
“I’m not ready to decide yet,” said Senta, lowering her voice. “But I can promise you this: if I go, I’m taking you with me!”
“Guess who I ran into yesterday evening?” said Gianfranco de Lucca the next morning, sitting at breakfast with Alfonso. With an unwavering frown, he told his friend about the strange encounter in the gaming room of the hotel. “I’m one hundred percent sure I was looking at the hair trader from Elva. I don’t care how vehemently he claimed to be someone else!” he said. He waved over the waiter and asked for more coffee.
“I remember that evening well,” said Alfonso. “And the two brothers. I had reason to think of them last summer, too, although through a sad connection.” Alfonso sneezed, whipped out a handkerchief, and blew his nose loudly.
Gianfranco looked at his friend impatiently. He hoped he wouldn’t be sneezing and sniffing in the coach the whole way home.
“Our nanny, Silvia comes from Lombardy, from a town called Morbegno, to be exact. Her family is very poor, and the girl sends money home every month, although she doesn’t earn very much with us.”
Gianfranco sniffed. He could certainly believe that. Alfonso was not the most generous man in the world. “And? What did your nanny have to do with the hair trader?” He reached into the bread basket again, wishing that the Germans would learn to make bread that wasn’t so dark and heavy!
“A lot. Last summer, we had to give her some time off in the middle of the children’s vacation so that she could go to her sister’s funeral. The young woman—I think her name was Eva—had killed herself after her fiancé walked out on her. It seems he told her that he could not stand her ugliness any longer, and demanded that she give back the engagement ring. Just before it happened, Eva had allowed two hair traders from Elva to cut off her hair. They duped the young woman with their sweet words. The money they offered her for her hair was tempting, of course. Well, before she knew it, her beautiful black braid was gone and her scalp all but shaved.”
“You mean to say that the hair traders were to blame for the young woman’s death?” Gianfranco swallowed hard. He could not understand how any woman could voluntarily give up her hair. If his Rosa cut off all her blond hair . . . unimaginable! “No doubt she wasn’t the only young woman whose life was destroyed by the Totosano brothers and their profession,” he said, and the word “profession” sounded like a curse.
Alfonso nodded grimly. “Now that I think about, I remember something else. Last summer, at about the same time Silvia left for her sister’s funeral, posters suddenly appeared on the walls of every guesthouse in northern Italy saying that the Totosano and Sorri families urgently wanted information about a certain Roberto Totosano. And that they were offering a large reward for his whereabouts. Didn’t you see them?”
Gianfranco screwed up his nose. “I didn’t get out of stinking Naples once last summer. Did the posters say why they were looking for him?”
“No. Though rumor had it that he stole a lot of money from his family and headed for the hills. At first, they searched for him themselves, but when they didn’t have any success, they went public.”
“Headed for the hills . . . I think he may have headed for Baden-Baden instead,” Gianfranco said, and laughed.
“If you’ve unearthed Roberto Totosano, that would really be something. I haven’t heard anything about the man being found, which means you’d be in line for the reward. It was a considerable sum, though I do
n’t remember the exact amount anymore, I’m afraid. How about this: you accept the money, then you donate it to the poor women who fell victim to the nasty hair traders? A generous gesture . . .”
Generous enough when it’s not your money, Gianfranco thought as he chewed his bread. “Do you still remember where the posters were hanging?” he asked with his mouth full.
Alfonso nodded. “The guesthouses. We’ll pass a lot of them on the way home.”
“Good. Because before we leave Baden-Baden, I’m going to do a little more research into Stefan Berg. And if he really turns out to be Roberto Totosano?” Gianfranco shook his head. “If the guy hadn’t lied to my face like that, I might have forgotten meeting him again. But now it would be my great pleasure to be able to tell his family that I’ve found their prodigal son.” He laughed, and Alfonso joined him.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“This is beautiful!” Isabelle leaned back in her chair and sighed deeply. A small sparrow pecking at breadcrumbs beside her chair stopped what it was doing and looked up at her. When it saw she presented no threat, it turned back to the crumbs.
“It’s gorgeous. Like everything in Grasse,” said Clara.
It was their last day in the town, and like every morning they were sitting on the terrace of their small pension for breakfast. The waitress had put out a basket of fresh croissants and white bread on every table, and there was raspberry jelly, lavender honey, coffee, and steamed milk. The roses climbing up the building’s stone walls were not yet flowering, but there were already butterflies fluttering around them. Clara imagined how lovely it must be when the roses were in bloom.
“It’s so good to sit at a real table, with cutlery and a tablecloth and everything,” said Isabelle as she took her second croissant. “At home, I’m so busy the whole day preparing all kinds of meals, and I rarely know how many people I’m actually cooking for. The children bring friends home, and we often have Claude and Micheline at the table, too. And Ghislaine comes on Mondays because her restaurant is closed. And just the other day, she brought Alphonse along!”
The two friends laughed, enjoying the intimacy between them. They found a fiendish pleasure in the knowledge that Isabelle’s sister-in-law, Ghislaine, was now officially living with her lover, because the man was previously married to Isabelle’s archenemy, Henriette Trubert. And the way that Henriette hounded Isabelle was despicable. In Clara’s and Isabelle’s eyes, it served the old witch right that her husband left her for beautiful, merry Ghislaine.
“Don’t start acting as if it’s all too much for you!” Clara teased. “You wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?” She remembered back to when Isabelle couldn’t even peel potatoes decently. But now the champagne queen fed a large household and the grape pickers who came by the dozen to her farm every autumn.
Isabelle’s eyes were radiant. “You’re right. I miss everyone at home so much that my heart aches. Not that I haven’t enjoyed these days here with you,” she hurried to add. “For me, Grasse has been a big adventure, and a fragrant one. And I’m going to feel the hole that all my purchases burned in my purse for a long time to come.” She grimaced. “But I can hardly wait to throw my arms around Daniel and the little ones again.”
Clara gave her a melancholy smile. Her friend could truly count herself lucky.
Isabelle leaned across and laid one hand on Clara’s arm. “And you? What about you?” she asked quietly.
“What about me?” said Clara breezily. “I’m looking forward to being with Stefan again, naturally. And to the work. Our life is just a little”—she waved casually—“different.”
“Different. Aha.”
“Stefan and I . . . we don’t see very much of one another, not like you’d expect of a married couple. In the morning, for example, if I have breakfast at all, it’s in a café by the lake, while he sleeps until nine. Why should I make coffee and butter bread if I’m the only one there to enjoy it? So you can see that the luxury we have here is something I get to enjoy every day,” said Clara with a smile. “During the day, Stefan takes care of the bookkeeping, or he checks to see that everything is all right in the manufactory. He deals with incoming orders and makes sure the shops always have enough stock. I spend most of my time in the laboratory, trying out new recipes and refining my old ones. A great luxury, but also a lonely job . . .” A yearning tone had crept into her voice. As much as she loved her work in the laboratory, she missed the contact with her customers terribly.
“But that leaves the evenings for the two of you,” said Isabelle consolingly.
“Don’t speak too soon!” Clara said with an affected laugh. “When I finally emerge from the laboratory, I’m so tired that all I want to do is put my feet up. Stefan is a night owl, and a popular guest at parties. The contact that he maintains with our customers at those events is very important for the business.”
“He should maintain a little contact with his wife,” Isabelle growled. “If you ask me, you work much too much!”
“You’re a good one to talk,” Clara teased her friend. “But don’t worry, I’m well,” she added, before Isabelle could vent any more about Stefan. Neither Josephine nor Isabelle had actually said anything, but Clara could sense that both women harbored some resentment toward Stefan. Clara had not managed to puzzle out exactly what they had against him.
“When I get back, I’m going to start looking for a suitable lawyer. I’ve become a respectable, married businesswoman, and the chances can’t be too bad that I can at least see my children occasionally. Stefan says he’ll support me in whatever I do, and I’m very grateful to him for that.”
Isabelle looked as if she were about to say something else, but she fell silent for a while before saying, “So, are you satisfied with the outcome of this trip?”
This time, Clara’s laugh was less artificial. “Oh, definitely. Grasse itself is more impressive than I ever would have thought, and I’ve bought better ingredients than I’ve ever had to work with before. But even more important: I’ve found the right parfumier. Unlike all the arrogant gentlemen we’ve met here, Laszlo Kovac is not above using his art for creams and tinctures. And who knows, maybe we’ll create our own perfume one day. I can hardly wait to start work with him!” Clara sighed.
“You’re really sure about him?” Isabelle asked. It was a question she had asked before. Since Clara and the man had shaken hands on his employment, Isabelle had been expressing her concern: “Why do you take everything the man says as the gospel truth?” “What if he’s a conman and was no more than the errand boy in Escarbot’s factory?” “How can you be sure he really knows his craft?”
“Do you really want to take him with you to Germany and give him a job? Do you really think he’s the right one?” asked Isabelle again.
“I do,” said Clara plainly, and she smiled.
“At the same time, the scent of lemon flowers is completely different from the essential oil you get from the skin of a lemon.”
“Absolutely. But for most people, lemon is just lemon.”
Clara and Laszlo laughed.
What’s so funny? Isabelle wondered. Since boarding the train in Avignon, Clara and the parfumier had been talking about fragrances. Which scent created which mood. If one should perfume a face cream with lavender or if it would just make the user tired. When one should use plant extracts and when one would do better with an essential oil.
“. . . a cream as light as whipped cream, with just a hint of verbena . . .”
“. . . or a combination with some vanilla and . . .”
Isabelle yawned conspicuously. She had been looking forward so much to being able to spend the time in the train talking with her friend, but instead Clara and Laszlo were carrying on endless technical discussions. She hoped it wouldn’t last all the way to Lyon. Clara and she would go their separate ways there, and Isabelle had no idea when or where she would see Clara again, which made it all the more important that they make the most of every minute.
&n
bsp; Clara, her cheeks flushed, leaned across to Laszlo on the seat opposite. “Do you know what I’ve been dreaming about for a long time?”
Isabelle instinctively pricked up her ears. She had seldom seen her friend as animated as she was then.
“A complete product line with soap, facial toner, face cream, and bathing lotion. And all of them with the identical perfume so that the women can cover themselves from head to foot in their favorite fragrance.”
“Then you should add a shampoo,” said Laszlo.
“Right!” Clara clapped her hands, as excited as a small child.
“But a fragrance that runs through an entire line can’t be too idiosyncratic. It ought to . . .”
Isabelle, bored, opened the newspaper she had bought at the station in Avignon. In two weeks, the Brussels World’s Fair would open. The previous year, the Champagne Makers Association had asked Daniel and her if they would be interested in participating, but she had turned down the offer with regret. In April, there was so much work to be done in the vineyards that Daniel couldn’t be dragged away from his beloved vines. It would have meant traveling to Brussels alone and leaving the children with the nanny. She had done just that to spend this time with Clara, but a world’s fair was not worth the sacrifice.
“And do you know what else I dream about?” Clara’s voice had taken on such a delicate tone that Isabelle looked up from her reading in surprise. What now?
“A simple line for women with little money to spare. I want to give them the chance to look after themselves, too.”
“And from what I know of you, even your simple line should be a very good quality. A real challenge. But one that it would be worth pursuing,” said Laszlo. “When I think of the longing in the eyes of the chambermaids whenever they looked at my mother’s perfume bottles and jars of cream . . . and how grateful they would be when my mother gave them a nearly empty jar.”
“Oh, I know from experience exactly how they felt,” said Clara softly. “There was a time in my life when I didn’t dare spend even fifty pfennigs on myself.”
The Queen of Beauty (The Century Trilogy Book 3) Page 33