The next moment, Alexander began to wail.
“He ‘followed the croupiers’—did you ever hear anything so affected in your life? Who the devil was that?” Hannah asked as soon as they were alone.
Flora stroked Alexander’s head as he nursed and did not immediately reply. When he had drunk his fill, Flora put her son back in his crib, where he slept peacefully.
“Child, I’m talking to you! Who was that . . . self-important fellow?” Hannah was not far from physically shaking her daughter. The ruddy tinge on Flora’s neck and cheeks was certainly not because of the hot oven! Add to that the blissful smile playing around her mouth, and the way she had laughed at every halfway funny remark the man had made in his broken German! Hannah did not like the look of any of it.
“Konstantin Sokerov is a Bulgarian painter. He was the one who saved me when that tramp attacked me—I know I wrote to you about that. He’s also Princess Nadeshda Stropolski’s companion. Everyone just calls her Püppi, though she’s as old as the hills. You heard what he said: without him, she could no longer travel at all. It’s really quite touching, the way he takes care of her. She was my first customer last year. I wrote to you about that, too, didn’t I?” Flora’s words came as breathlessly as if she’d just run up the steps to the market square.
Hannah waved off her daughter’s explanations. Yes, yes, of course.
Flora looked at her triumphantly. “Hundreds of my lilies of the valley went into decorating the exhibition of his pictures. Later, he confided to me that he found the entire exhibition terribly embarrassing. He is not so far along with his painting that he feels ready to exhibit. He’s just very modest.”
“A customer, I see. Or rather, the companion of a customer—and yet you seem to be on quite familiar terms with him.”
“I maintain a friendly relationship with all of my customers. Do you think I would have gotten as far as I have if I did not? Really, Mother, I don’t know what you want to hear!” Her hands planted combatively on her hips, Flora stood and glared at her mother.
“All right, all right,” said Hannah defensively. “What did the woman from the pharmacy want just now?”
“No idea!” Flora replied. “But maybe I’d better clear the snow before someone else falls on their rear.”
Mother and daughter both laughed, but the laughter sounded strangely forced.
With the flower picture tucked under his arm, Konstantin stepped out of the shop.
How happy Flora had been to see him again, and she had been positively breathless when she told him all the news about Baden-Baden. She was a sweet thing, despite her dirty apron, despite her hair curling and tangled from the snow, despite her hands, with grime in the cracks in her skin. She was so full of enthusiasm for everything she did and said. Wasn’t that what had caught his eye the year before, when he had taken her to the wine bar after she’d been attacked by that horrible tramp? He thought her appealing then, but now, without her pregnant belly, she was even more so.
The most beautiful flowers bloom in secret—Konstantin could not have said why that particular saying occurred to him just then.
Maybe it had not been such a bad idea after all to return to Baden-Baden.
Chapter Forty-Four
“A sleigh ride! How wonderful!” Püppi leaned against Konstantin beneath the heavy blanket. Her arms embraced his neck; her lips moved closer for a kiss . . .
Konstantin quickly leaned forward to the basket with the champagne and glasses.
“I’m glad I was able to surprise you.” He opened a bottle with a loud pop, the cork flying over the side of the sleigh into the snow. One of the horses let out a nervous whinny and the other pranced a little. The driver spoke to them in a calming voice. It was rare for the horses to be fetched from the stables on a snowed-in February morning and harnessed to the sleigh, and the animals were skittish.
As the sleigh began to move, Konstantin poured the champagne. The bubbly liquid glittered in the sunlight and looked clear and pure. A sudden, unbounded joy gripped Konstantin and he let out a whoop.
“Let’s drink!” He held out a glass of champagne for Püppi.
Püppi shook her head regretfully. “My stomach. The last thing it needs is more bubbles. You know I had such terrible wind yesterday.”
Without another word, Konstantin tipped the contents of her glass over the side of the sleigh, then drained his own glass in a single draft.
“A sleigh ride.” Püppi sighed. “Did I ever tell you about the time Josephina and I . . .”
Konstantin listened with feigned interest to Püppi’s long story from her childhood in the palace at Tsarskoje Selo. God, it all happened more than fifty years ago, but Püppi was talking as if it had been yesterday.
The sleigh turned onto Lichtenthaler Allee. Seeing the long, straight way ahead of them, the horses automatically trotted a little faster.
“Then there was the fire! I remember how the flames swallowed up the house with Josephina still inside, because . . .” The more entangled Püppi became in her story, the more shrill her voice became.
Suddenly, Konstantin could not bear it another minute.
Stop! Shut up! Look around, life is still beautiful! he wanted to scream at her. But instead he leaned forward to the driver and said, “To the Hotel Marie-Eluise.”
Then he turned to Püppi and said, “I fear our little outing has been too much for you, my dear. We’ll go to the Marie-Eluise, where you can take your special bath in peace and quiet.” He patted her bony bird’s-claw hand.
“But why? I don’t want that. The water is always so hot and it makes me dizzy. And there’s never anyone else there. I always lie in one of the tubs all alone.” Püppi’s eyes grew watery. “Couldn’t you at least keep me company for a little while?”
Konstantin ignored her plaintive tone. “The solitude will do you good,” he said, and he sighed with relief when the small hotel came in sight.
“Where to now?” asked the sleigh driver when Konstantin stepped out of the Marie-Eluise.
Back to the Europ?ischer Hof? Konstantin dismissed the idea. He had been looking forward so much to a little excursion in the cold, crystalline air, to finally getting out of town, seeing and smelling something different. Maybe stopping in somewhere and having a bowl of hot soup instead of the usual five-course meal with the usual handful of faces at the Europ?ischer Hof.
When he had rented the sleigh for the entire day, Konstantin had hoped that a change of scenery would also do Püppi good. He had not, however, reckoned with how agitated and confused she seemed to be lately by anything that deviated from her normal routine. Sometimes just the face of a new chambermaid was enough to remind her of some long-past acquaintance, and off she went into her endless reminiscing, from which she only returned with great difficulty to the here and now. That a sleigh ride would trigger recollections of the Russian winters of her childhood . . . he should have expected something like that.
Poor Püppi. How long could things go on like this?
Konstantin, pondering, squinted toward the sun that was just starting to creep into the sky beyond a few naked trees. Soon, its light would transform the town into a glittering, snow-white winter fairy tale.
One of the horses scraped a hoof impatiently in the snow. “What’s it to be?” the coachman asked again.
“I have an idea,” Konstantin murmured. And with the first rays of sunlight, a smile stole over his face.
“To Princess Stropolski in the Europ?ischer Hof? Now?”
The messenger boy who had handed Flora the note and now stood waiting in hope of a tip shrugged uncertainly.
Flora frowned, then looked up from the note to the boy and then around her at the shop.