The pale skin between Emilia’s arched, black brows puckered. “No––” She stopped chewing her food and stared at the sandwich in her hand. “But I’m tired of starving myself, of getting up at four in the morning, of begging for jobs.” She threw the rest of her sandwich away and crossed her arms. “Yuri takes care of me. Did I tell you he wants to buy me a brand new BMW? It’s red––my favorite color.”
What could I say? I was exhausted, buried under a mountain of my own problems. I didn’t have the energy to debate all the dangers she faced with this man. “Please promise me you’ll be careful. No partying…no drugs.”
Chastened, she studied her fingernails. Her pale jade eyes wouldn’t meet mine. Beautiful Emilia. The fine boned features and long legs did nothing for her self-esteem. There was also a new brittleness to her that I hadn’t sensed last time I saw her. I suspected she realized it couldn’t last with Yuri but was stubbornly trying to convince herself otherwise.
“What will you do now?” My eyes fell on the half-eaten sandwich she had discarded into the paper bag by her feet. I was so busy contemplating whether I should save it for later that her voice barely filtered through. “Vera?” Reluctantly, I pulled my gaze away from the sandwich.
“I don’t know where else to look. The restaurants and the hotels won’t take me without a visa.” Emilia took one hundred francs out of her purse and handed it to me. I pushed it away and shook my head, my inconvenient pride protesting the indignation. “Emi, I can’t.”
She ignored me, shoved the money into my hands, and gripped them closed. A sympathetic smile softened her angular features. “When you become a famous doctor, you can pay me back…until then, don’t.”
Torn between shame and survival, I stared at the money and swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth. “You can count on it.”
“I just remembered something.” I looked up and found Emilia’s expression pinched in concentration. “One of the waitresses at the club said there was a position available at the Horn estate, outside the city, but they wouldn’t take her because she doesn’t speak proper English. It pays well and housing is included.” She stood up and brushed the crumbs off her skinny black jeans.
“Kitchen or housekeeping?” I asked. Not that it mattered––I was ready to dig ditches in a graveyard if it meant being paid.
“Housekeeping, I think…maybe when you get there you can show them how well you cook.”
I stood and wrapped my arms around her tiny waist, the height difference between us considerable. “I’ll do anything they need me to. Thanks, Em, you know I love you.”
“You’re my oldest friend, Vera…my only real friend. I’d do anything for you.”
The thinly veiled bruises on her soul were evident in her expression. I recognized those bruises, saw them in myself when I looked in the mirror. Liberty had taken its pound of flesh but we had survived. “Horn. Why does that sound familiar?” I thought out loud. Emilia turned around and pointed to the majestic turn-of-the-century building. As the metallic letters glimmered in the sunlight, I recognized the name. Horn Banque.
Chapter Two
I wasn’t surprised to discover that the only housing I could afford in Geneva was a small room in the red light district. The windows of Pâquis embarrassed me. I always stared ahead when I walked past the barely dressed women in the store windows. As if in mutual agreement, they began filing their nails or checking their phones when they saw me, and resumed dancing suggestively as I walked past them. I pretended they didn’t exist, even though the only thing that separated me from them was the thin glass between us… and my education.
After my lunch with Emilia, I went to inform the landlady she needn’t worry about fixing the small refrigerator. The sarcasm escaped her completely. It had been broken for months and no amount of begging had convinced the woman to replace it. The condition of the building was deplorable. Nevertheless, who was complaining? Not the tenants. Not a bunch of immigrants huddled together for some semblance of familiarity and safety, too scared to raise an eyebrow.
That apartment was a constant reminder of how low I had sunk in life. It was dark, cold, and the walls practically transparent. I knew exactly what time my neighbors left for work, who was having marital problems, when the prostitute down the hall was entertaining.
In a hurry to leave it far behind, I purchased a tattered valise in a secondhand shop and threw my belongings in without taking the time to fold anything. The valise had no wheels but I had learned to travel light. I had to be ready to pick up and move at a moment’s notice. And I certainly didn’t need another blouse; I was living the life of a Jesuit monk. Not that I was in any position to complain, but I had been on one date in six years.
In hindsight, I never fully appreciated how charmed my life had been up until that fateful day six years ago. I was raised by a single parent who smothered me in love and support, indulged me in everything. My father taught me that I could do or be anything I wished. I had grand ambitions and carefully laid out plans for my future––until my entire life was destroyed by circumstances outside my control.
There was no time to mourn. I learned to adapt quickly; my survival depended on it.
With only the clothes on my back and the little money I could get from pawning the few valuables I had, I fled, became a ghost, hiding in shadows and rejecting friendships and attachments of any kind. Because I was an accomplice to a crime, an expendable supporting character in a paperback thriller. I wasn’t even the clever villain everyone hates to love. And the only thing I was certain of anymore was that nothing would stop them from coming after me.
I flew down the stairwell, weaving around the children playing hide-and-go-seek along the dark musty corridor. Their circumstances didn’t diminish their joy in the game. They ran around me squealing and giggling, blissfully unaware of the dreariness of the place.
Halfway down, a loud shout and the thump of heavy boots drifted up from the ground floor, drowning out the melody of the children’s laughter. I glanced over the railing and watched as a single file of police officers jogged up the metal stairs with purpose, weapons drawn. Panic stricken, I shrank back, pressed my spine against the wall. I had no intention of sticking around to find out whether it was a drug and prostitution raid, or a search for immigrants with expired visas. Doubling back through the door of my floor, I raced to the back of the building with my valise with no wheels banging against the side of my leg hard enough to leave a bruise.
People poured out of their apartments, the hallways crowded as they attempted to flee, the slow and weak being trampled in the process. A smothering wall of bodies blocked my escape, the reek of body odor and fear making it hard to breathe. With strength fueled by adrenaline, I bullied my way through to the emergency stairwell and ran out the service entrance.
The street was mostly empty. Only one young officer, smoking a cigarette, loitered on the corner. I wiped the nervous sweat off my brow before I walked past him, and rubbed the tiny cross around my neck in gratitude when he barely spared me a glance. As I walked to the bus stop, one of the children called my name, but I never turned around. I kept walking, away from the children, past the girls in the windows…putting as much distance between them and me as possible.
* * *
The small town was just outside the city limits. I took three buses and spent ten francs I didn’t have to spare to get there. It sat comfortably up the side of a hill, overlooking the shores of Lake Geneva; the charm of it fit for postcards and computer screen savers. Leaning my forehead against the cold bus window, I watched life fly by on fast-forward, as smears of intermittent color against the constant blue sky.
The landscape was dotted with neatly painted homes in different shades of yellow, white, and beige. The precise, geometric pattern of a vineyard stretched along the banks of the lake. Sidewalks that framed the winding, narrow roads were swept, flowerbeds neatly groomed, and grass looked trimmed with measuring tools. After all these months, I was still dazzled
by the natural beauty of Switzerland, the cleanliness, the order. I was homeless and financially hanging on by a thread. I should have been scared witless yet inexplicably the tightness in my chest eased. And for the first time in months, I felt like I could breathe again.
When I stepped down from the bus, the sun made me squint and hide my eyes beneath the roof of my fingers. Across the street, an elderly man swept the front steps of his bakery shop. I asked him for directions to the estate and he kindly obliged while his wife stared at me suspiciously from behind the store window. I made slow progress down the single lane road. In an orchestrated rhythm, I switched my valise with no wheels from one sweaty hand to the other, dividing the painful task evenly.
My medical books made it ridiculously heavy. Actually it must have weighed as much as I did. Between my unusually fast metabolism and not enough food to eat, I was scared to weigh myself. I rarely looked in mirrors. That night, after running from the pub, I contemplated selling them but decided to cut back on food instead. The books were the only things of any value I had left.
A small, yellow car sped by, barely avoiding me. Too tired to step aside, I watched the tiny car speed away while the driver waved an angry fist at me and cursed in French. Unbidden, an image of my father drifted in. I could see him shaking his head and raising an eyebrow at me. His ‘princeshe’. I missed him. My father had been a man of influence in Albania. An intellectual, a visionary, a master of policy and diplomacy. That’s how his friends eulogized him on that frigid day. I used to think he was the center of the universe, the source of all truths. Not anymore. Not for a long time.
I’m the one that found him swinging in his office. An image that wouldn’t tarnish or fade. I could still see him in fine detail from time to time, when I was overly tired. His tall, lean form limp and swinging like a sack of clothes. The tinge of blue on the pale skin of his bare feet. The terrible sadness that would descend upon me shortly afterwards robbed me of breath and sapped all the strength from my limbs.
My sweaty hand was beginning to blister. The pain was a welcome distraction. I pushed thoughts of my father down and away, locked them up with all the other heartbreaking truths I did my best to ignore, and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
* * *
What started as mild fatigue steadily grew into bone crushing exhaustion. I was dragging my feet by the time I reached the driveway. Dandelions tumbled around me. Fat clusters of white, hairy seeds surfed the wind that kicked up. One landed on my nose. And as I placed my bag down to scratch the itch, the estate finally came into view. I didn’t recognize the sound of my own voice as a surprised bark of laughter erupted out of me. Somehow I had been transported to a land of make-believe…or a Disney movie. For a bizarre moment, I expected to see Julie Andrews come around the corner singing and dancing while Nazis stood on the front doorstep. I had anticipated something grand but this…this was unreal.
The manor was in the French style, with lawn as tidy as a carpet extending out as far as the eye could see. It had a steep-pitched slate roof, chimneys shaped in pointed peaks, and slender windows capped with stone demi-lunes. A fuzzy vest of ivy clung to the golden limestone façade. And in the background, framing the breathtaking scene, sat Lake Geneva in all her splendor. In short, it looked like the home of a fair-haired prince. Except this was no fairytale. Well…not mine, at least.
I barely heard the rumble of a car approaching until it almost ran me over. Apparently nobody in the countryside drives at a reasonable speed. The sports car raced past me without pausing. It looked absurdly expensive. All black and sensually sleek, the dark windows obscured the driver’s identity. Gravel fired off under its tires like firecrackers on Bastille Day and kicked up a fog of silt.
As I coughed at the dust billowing up around me, I noticed a white haze had settled on my clothes. Add that to the list of injustices I needed to discuss with God on Sunday. I tried to brush it off but only succeeded in smearing it deeper into the wool of my navy cardigan.
By the time I stood at the service entrance, I was limp and dusty, and my toe was poking out through a large hole on the top of my canvas sneakers. Basically I looked like a character in a Charles Dickens novel. Hunger and weariness made me impatient. I knocked several times, the blows growing more forceful, until a tall, elderly gentleman opened the door. My eyes snapped up to meet his. He looked north of seventy years, with olive skin and a neatly combed, thick shock of white hair. He stood stiffly, and wore both an expression and a black suit that made him look like an undertaker. I angled one foot over the other in a ridiculous attempt to conceal the hole.
“Yes?” His English had a subtle French lean to it.
“I was told you have a housekeeping position open at the house, sir,” I answered with a shaky smile.
Looking through his horn-rimmed glasses, he inspected me closer. Thinly disguised suspicion lurked in his dark eyes. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine, sir. I’ll be thirty in September.”
A heavy pause.
“You have a very cultured British accent,” he stated––although it sounded more like an accusation. Then he arched an eyebrow and dipped his chin, gazed at me from above his glasses, as if a better angle would uncover my ruse.
“I also speak French and Italian, sir,” I said quickly, pressing my case before the door slammed in my face.
“Come in, we’ll talk,” he conceded with a sigh.
Spinning. Everything was spinning. I stepped inside and gripped the doorframe for support as a wave of nausea and light-headedness washed over me. “I’m Olivier Bentifourt. I have been the butler for the Horn family for thirty-five years.” I don’t remember what happened next, but I must have fainted because I suddenly found myself horizontal, with the weight of the world sitting on my eyelids and strange voices surrounding me.
“She’s so thin, the poor, poor girl,” said a woman with a jovial French accent. “Charlotte, quick, get the pastries I made last night. She must have low blood sugar,” there was a rustling sound, “and put some tea on the stove. She looks like that actress, you know the one, the American.”
“Audrey Hepburn?” offered the butler.
“Non, Olivier. That actress,” a snap of fingers, “I think her name is Natalie Porter.”
“Portman,” corrected a woman in a crisp British voice.
“Natalie Portman, oui. Thank you, Charlotte.”
“She can’t work here, Marianne. It doesn’t look like she could lift a pillow.” The butler’s voice broke through the fog. I could feel the cool stone floor beneath me and a sore spot developing on the back of my head. I forced my eyes open and saw a halo of sparkling lights and fuzzy shapes, blinked repeatedly and still couldn’t focus.
“I’m stronger than I look. I can prove it. I can lift at least twenty kilos.” My voice sounded weak––even to my own ears.
“Where’s Bentifourt? Where the fuck is everybody?!” The deep, raspy male voice reverberated through the kitchen and echoed painfully in my head. Assertive footsteps drew closer, the ancient limestone walls amplifying every sound. I sat up with whip-crack speed and instantly felt dizzy again.
“Olivier, you should go, before he finds us in here,” said the French woman. A minute later I heard the elderly butler’s shuffle grow fainter. “Here, eat these.”
My vision sharpened to discover a short plump woman bending over me. She had a wide face, a crown of short blonde hair, a gap between her two front teeth, and deep blue eyes as round as gum balls. She must have been in her sixties but didn’t have many wrinkles on her skin, except for the fine laugh lines fanning out from the sides of her eyes. Resting in her chubby palm were three beautiful little pastries. After shoving them indelicately in my mouth, I shut my eyes. Manna from Heaven. An explosion of flavors assaulted my taste buds. Rich crème, fresh ripe raspberry, and flaky dough. A balance of sweet and tart married in perfect harmony. It was the most wonderful thing I had tasted in…well, in forever.
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sp; Her eyebrows lifted a fraction as she watched me shovel the third one in. “Better?” she asked with a warm smile.
“Much better, thank you.” Mortification began to creep in, and the realization that I may have ruined the one good chance I had at a decent job. I scrambled to my feet. “Madame, I am so sorry, but I have been walking for hours and didn’t notice…” My voice trailed off as she waved her pudgy little hand in front of my face.
“Shhhh, c’est bien. It’s okay. I understand. You are here for the housekeeping position? I see you already came with your things.”
Two sets of eyes fell on my pathetic valise.
“Yes,” I answered meekly.
“Do you have a work permit?” The moment of truth…I couldn’t answer, just held my breath and prayed for divine intervention. She considered me for a moment. “Do you know how to clean?”
“I clean very well, madame,” I answered quickly.
“We will try for a week. If you cannot do the cleaning properly I will have to let you go. Agreed?” Her gentle eyes searched my face.
“I won’t disappoint you. Thank you, so much. Thank you,” I repeated, overwhelmed with relief.
“My name is Marianne Arnaud. I run the housekeeping staff.”
I extended an ever so grateful hand. “Vera Sava, madame. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
* * *
I followed Mrs. Arnaud up the stairs to the servants’ quarters. She opened the door to a small, tidy room that had a twin bed dressed in crisp white sheets and a navy blue blanket, a pretty antique armoire, a picture window, and a small writing desk with a table lamp. It was perfect in every way. A spot in my chest began to warm, evicting the permanent chill that had taken up residence there since that night at the pub.
“The toilette is down the hall and your towels are in the armoire, along with fresh linens. I will send up your uniforms,” she informed me, as she walked over to the window. Pushing aside the linen drapes, she opened it up. “Très jolie, non? This room has a pretty view.”
A Million Different Ways (A Horn Novel Book 1) Page 2