The Flower Shop (The Seed Traders' Saga Book 2)

by Petra Durst-Benning

  The arrangement, however, was possible only because Flora would tend to the Baden-Baden Samenstrich by herself that year, which secretly made her very anxious indeed. Would the customers be as willing to buy from her as they were from Hannah? Despite the impending customer visits, however, Flora was looking forward to getting back to the town. She could hardly wait to see the nest that Friedrich had created for the two of them.

  Now that Seraphine had reminded her about the language of flowers, Flora was also dying to collect more material on the subject. Friedrich, whom she had already let in on her plans, wanted to accompany her to the library at the first opportunity, but he also advised her not to say a word about her ideas to the ever-skeptical Kuno, at least for the time being. That was fine with Flora—she was far from certain that they would go anywhere, after all.

  Could she attract the spa guests to the shop, assisted by the language of flowers? Or were Seraphine and her father—with their talk about “putting on a show” for the rich visitors—oversimplifying things?

  In Baden-Baden, Flora was thrilled to see the two rooms that she would be living in with her husband in the future. The marriage bed and a large wardrobe stood in what had once been Sybille’s room, and Friedrich had turned his old room into a kind of sitting area, with a patchwork rug on the floor and two flower pictures on the wall above an old sofa.

  “A bit of peace and quiet again, finally!” said Sabine grimly as she helped Flora get her clothes into Friedrich’s wardrobe. But Flora knew Sabine well enough to realize that she was not comfortable with the thought that Flora was now her “mistress.”

  She put one arm around Sabine’s shoulders. “The only thing that is changing between us is that I’ll be living one floor lower down. You’ll be in trouble if you start calling me Mrs. Sonnenschein! For you, I am and I will always be just Flora.”

  “Really? I can’t just—”

  “Oh, yes, you can! Let’s just not make a big production of it, all right?”

  Relieved by Flora’s words, Sabine returned to the kitchen, and Flora—just as relieved—went to the shop.

  Even after getting married, Flora and Friedrich remained the best of friends, and their life together worked well. Now that it was winter, Friedrich did not have to be constantly available at the Trinkhalle, and while he checked in several times a day to make sure everything was fine there, he had more freedom than during the spa season. If it had been up to him, he and Flora would have been in bed much of the time. With every passing night of love, their awkwardness faded, and with each act of love they grew a little more familiar and assured in their motions. Before long, Friedrich knew that although Flora enjoyed the feel of his hands stroking her breasts, she fended him off when he tried to kiss her there. And Flora quickly learned that Friedrich could use a little assistance in reaching his goal, and that afterward it was best if she lay very still.

  So this is what it felt like to be husband and wife . . .

  They enjoyed the tender hours they shared on those long, dark winter nights, but at the crack of dawn Flora swung herself out of bed, ready to tackle the day. On the streets of Baden-Baden, she encountered many of the gardeners and nurserymen that she had met the winter before with her mother. They acknowledged each other, said hello, and exchanged a few words. Before long most of them knew that she had married into the Sonnenschein family and, of course, the flower shop. That she continued, simultaneously, to be a daughter of the Kerner seed family from Gönningen did not seem to bother them at all.

  “The main thing is that I’m still able to order my seeds as I always have,” said the gardener from the Holländer Hof hotel.

  And Mr. Flumm, once he had placed his annual order, remarked, “I’ve got a dozen particularly nice orchids on offer. I actually had Maison Kuttner in mind, but if you want them, they’re yours.”

  Flora glanced wistfully at the pots containing the exotics. “I fear we can’t yet afford something quite that exclusive.”

  Still, her seed trade in Baden-Baden thrived. At the end of a busy week, she packed a pile of order forms into an envelope and sent them off to Gönningen.

  When Flora had left Baden-Baden at the start of October, the town had been filled with all the chaos and frantic hustle of the departing guests.

  Now, early in the new year, it was as if the streets had been swept clean. Few gave any thought to flowers. Enough potatoes in the cellar, wood and coal for the stove—those were the essentials, and a visit to the flower shop was far down anyone’s list of priorities.

  Flora would never have believed that a day could drag on so long. She spent hours tidying drawers and sorting bits and pieces out of sheer boredom. Or she cleaned the windows. Now that it was cold outside and cozy and warm inside, the windowpanes fogged over faster than Flora could wipe them clear. How were they supposed to lure passersby into the shop if they could not even see through the window?

  Kuno, suffering from a range of minor maladies, came to the store only rarely, much to Flora’s annoyance. She hoped that Friedrich would find the time to make good on his promise and take her to visit the library soon. With a stack of books, she could pass the long hours in the shop much better, she was sure.

  Kuno’s day usually started with him appearing in the morning to collect his newspaper and ended with him returning at five to close up. In the hours between, he took regular naps, but still often retired for the night before dinner.

  How can one man sleep so much? Flora wondered. It wasn’t normal. But no one other than her seemed particularly concerned. Apparently, his ailments in the winter months were a given.

  The meager income of the winter months made itself felt at the dinner table. Ernestine went to great lengths to come up with new, economical dishes. It was not as if the family went hungry, but they were often close to the edge.

  It’s this blasted seasonal work! Flora thought many times while she waited in vain for customers. It was no different for them in Gönningen. For the seed dealers, too, the money they made on their annual sales trip in autumn had to last the whole year. And woe betide anyone who didn’t manage to put at least a little aside.

  On one particularly gloomy January morning, Flora suddenly heard giggling in front of the shop. Several shadows appeared on the other side of the fogged window; then the shop door was opened so energetically that the little bell almost came out of its fitting.

  The girls from Maison Kuttner in their oh-so-gorgeous aprons!

  Flora’s pulse sped up and shivers ran down her spine when she recalled what she had boasted so pompously to these same young women shortly before her departure for Gönningen. She couldn’t have suspected back then that she and Friedrich—

  “There she is, dear Mrs. Sonnenschein, surrounded by all her marvels! I have to say, I’m impressed,” said their leader, looking around the store with her eyes open wide.

  Flora could only follow the other young woman’s gaze to the buckets holding a few lonely bunches of carnations, the fir sprigs, and a few forced apple twigs that, so far, had steadfastly refused to bloom. From the ceiling hung the bundles of dried herbs and flowers, and their sparse offerings of potted plants were scattered around the room. In the dim light cast by the oil lamp, it all looked rather shabby.

  “Perhaps I’m a little slow on the uptake,” said the leader to the two girls accompanying her, “but there’s one thing I’m not completely clear on. With what amazing business ideas does our little forest marauder here plan to please her clientele this winter?”

  Flora held her tongue. So this is what she got for all her big talk! She would have thrown all three of them out of the shop if she could have.

  “It’s really very simple,” one of the other girls replied. “Flora Sonnenschein is demonstrating a particularly involved method of twiddling her thumbs.”

  Giggling maliciously, the three saleswomen from Maison Kuttner ran out of the shop, leaving the door open behind them.

  Flora inhaled deeply. That did it!

&n
bsp; It was bad enough that she had to put up with such silly chatter at all. But it was far worse to know that the Kuttner girls were right.

  In a few steps, Flora reached the door of the shop, closed it, and locked it. Then she ran through the back of the store into the house.

  She found Friedrich in the kitchen, where he was stuffing old newspaper into wet leather boots.

  “Friedrich, we have to do something. It’s high time we took a stand against those arrogant witches from Maison Kuttner.”

  “You can borrow whatever you like and take it home or read it in the reading room at the library—we’ll go there first. If you especially like a particular book, we can buy it, if it’s not too expensive,” said Friedrich, pushing open the entrance door to the Conversationshaus.

  As they made their way in the direction of the reading room, Flora cast a surreptitious glance through the glass panes of the door that led into the casino. What magnificent chandeliers! And the walls practically shone—she was certain they were covered with pure silk.

  They were here for the books, of course, but now that they were inside . . .

  “Um, Friedrich,” she whispered, “what would you think about, well—”

  “Visiting the casino?” he interrupted her, laughing. “And squandering my hard-earned money at the roulette table instead of spending it on a book for you? Oh no!”

  Obediently, Flora padded along behind her husband.

  Moments later, she was left standing in wide-eyed amazement. D. R. Marx’s library and reading room played second fiddle to the casino in almost nothing. The atmosphere was one of substance and high-mindedness, and the entire room smelled of perfume and eau de cologne and the fragrance of the large bouquet of roses that stood in a silver champagne bucket beside the cashier and that clearly bore the hallmark of Maison Kuttner.

  Flora was thrilled. This place had nothing at all in common with the dusty bookshops she knew from Reutlingen.

  “Up ahead there is one of the two sisters who run the reading room,” Friedrich said, pointing with his chin. “You can ask them for whatever you want. In the meantime, I’ll be back there looking at the books on archaeology.”

  When Flora asked if the library had books about flowers, the woman looked at her questioningly. What kind of book did Flora have in mind . . . botanical identification guides? Novels? Goethe’s flower poems? Or would the young lady prefer to read something of an edifying nature, the story of vain Narcissus, for example, whose name was synonymous with spring daffodils? Of course, they also had books with pretty flower pictures, the woman added.

  Flora was speechless.

  The librarian swept away almost silently on her soft-soled shoes, and returned a minute later with a stack of books in her arms. Flora would no doubt be able to decide for herself what she wanted.

  She let out a little hysterical laugh. If Seraphine could see this . . .

  Every year, from April 28 to May 3, the Romans celebrated “Floralia,” a lively spring festival in honor of the keeper of gardens . . .

  It was all so exciting! Flora was so deep into her book that she barely noticed the raised voices outside, in front of the Conversationshaus. Only when most of the library visitors were already at the windows did she look up.

  A male voice could be heard, loud and upset, perhaps also a little drunk, bemoaning something. A second man seemed to be trying frantically to talk to the first.

  “Russians, probably,” murmured a woman by the window. “I wonder what it’s about?”

  “It’s about money, of course,” said the woman next to her. “They both just came from the casino. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “He’s got a pistol!” another woman suddenly screamed. “Mon Dieu! He wants to kill himself!”

  Flora practically leaped to the window.

  “Can you see why I am so ill-disposed toward games of chance? Some of the spa guests are so addicted to roulette and cards that they stay here through winter just to be near the casino. And then this kind of thing happens,” said Friedrich as he and Flora made their way back toward Stephanienstrasse with a pile of books. “The poor devil probably gambled away everything he had in the world.”

  Flora said nothing. She had been deeply affected by what had played out in front of the window, the way the man had taken out his pistol and waved it around in the air. Had he really planned to kill himself?

  After a period of time that felt to Flora like an eternity, the fellow had allowed his friend to lead him away unhurt, but he had kept a firm grip on the pistol.

  “You don’t think he’ll try it again, do you?”

  Friedrich shrugged. “He would not be the first.”

  If someone had told Flora six months before that she would one day become a passionate reader, she would have laughed out loud. In her family, evenings were spent playing cards or singing together, working on a handicraft, or going to one of the village inns. Seraphine was the only one who read very much, and most of the time it was boring poems that didn’t interest anyone else.

  Now, however, Flora spent long hours in the shop working her way enthusiastically through a stack of books from the library. Whenever she found a passage that she really liked, she quickly added it verbatim in her notebook. Poems, wise and witty commentary, unusual flower meanings—with every passing day, she filled more pages of her notebook.

  The evenings, too, were reserved for reading. Flora had thought that she and Friedrich would be able to sit on the sofa in their room for that purpose. She would have loved to snuggle in his arms while she read. But Friedrich said that having candles burning in two rooms was a waste of money.

  Instead, almost every evening saw all four Sonnenscheins sitting together amiably, each with his or her favorite reading material. Friedrich read books about archaeology and excavations, while Kuno and Ernestine turned to Die Gartenlaube.

  In the current issue, the serialized novel that Kuno enjoyed so much concerned a prisoner whose court case was dragging on. Kuno found the story thrilling and took great pleasure in telling Friedrich and Flora the latest developments in lurid detail, but he left out important pieces of information in his retelling: even after several weeks, Flora still had no idea why the man had been locked away in the first place.

  Flora had never imagined that she would bore other people with excerpts from her reading material.

  “Friedrich, did you know that even in ancient Greece the people decorated rooms with flowers? They believed they could sense the presence of the gods in the scent of the flowers.”

  “Ah, hmm,” Friedrich murmured without looking up from his own book.

  Flora continued: “Even the Egyptians had an exceptional relationship to flowers. Florists were highly respected among them. Can you imagine? It says so right here.” She tapped on the open page in front of her.

  “Now you’ve got those old Egyptians in your head, too . . .” Ernestine shook her head almost disapprovingly, then pointed to a calendar on the wall. “February second. Today is Candlemas. Finally! Now, we will really be able to see the days getting longer. Soon we’ll be able to have dinner in daylight again.”

  “Candlemas day, put beans in the clay; put candles and candlesticks away. That’s the old rhyme, isn’t it?” Kuno said, smiling at his wife.

  Flora looked from one to the other. “You don’t seem much interested in my discoveries!”

  “Oh, child,” Ernestine replied, “when you go on all the time like that, I can’t concentrate on my own reading. To be quite candid, I find the endless flower stories a little tedious after a while.”

  Flora looked at her mother-in-law in annoyance. How could anyone have so little sense of poetry?

  Friedrich just grinned.

  Kuno took off his reading glasses. Barely stifling a yawn, he said good night.

  “You’re going up already? I wanted to tell you what I read yesterday,” said Flora.

  “And that would be . . . ?” Kuno asked, suppressing a sigh. He glanced toward the
stairs as if he could hardly wait to get into bed.

  Flora took a deep breath—now or never! “It’s about the language of flowers. Did you know that in the past, especially in Paris, florists gave their customers small booklets with their bouquets, explaining something of the symbolism of the flowers? They did it to avoid misunderstandings. Wouldn’t that be something we could do, too?”

  Kuno grimaced. “Are you starting with that again? Honestly, I don’t understand what you see in that old stuff. You’re so progressive otherwise.”

  “Romantic sentiments are not ‘old stuff,’” Flora said vehemently.

  Kuno waved off her objection. “Call it what you like, but don’t start bringing all of that”—he flailed one hand in the direction of Flora’s books—“into the shop. We want to sell flowers, and that’s all. Our customers have no interest in Goethe and Balzac and all the rest! And you already know what I think of the language of flowers.”

  “Yes, but . . .” Flora looked plaintively toward Friedrich, but he only shrugged and said, “Not everyone is as thirsty for knowledge as you are.”

  “If we start making the symbolism and the little stories known, we’ll set ourselves apart from the others. Maybe, with the language of flowers, we’ll be able to bring in some new customers in the coming season. Maison Kuttner—”

  “Enough!” Kuno interrupted her, his expression suddenly stern. “I’ll say it one last time: I don’t want to hear another word about it. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about. All the invoices, the housekeeping money, taxes, heating, etcetera, etcetera—those are things to worry about. And you come to me with all that fanciful stuff.” He glared at Flora.

  “But—” Flora wanted to say that if business were better, all those worries would fall by the wayside, but Kuno cut her off again.

  “No buts. And now, good night.”