“Always in a hurry, my little businesswoman. Does a fire break out in the shop whenever you’re not there? Do the flowers transform into ghastly ghosts while you’re lying in my arms? Are your violets being stolen by a horde of robbers as we speak?”
Flora had to laugh at the image of robbers fleeing through the streets of Baden-Baden with her potted violets.
“My customers like to discuss their special requests with me, not Sabine.” Ernestine would also be wondering where she was all this time, Flora thought as she kissed the hollow between Konstantin’s shoulder blades. And there would be hardly any time left to spend with Alexander that afternoon. But not even the thought of her son made her get out of bed, get dressed, and leave.
How perfectly their bodies nestled into one another, as if they were fashioned for nothing else. Flora cradled her cheek in the curve of Konstantin’s neck, enjoying the warm, moist cocoon of sweat and love in which their lovemaking had swathed them. Like Adam and Eve. Like the Garden of Eden . . .
The hairs on her salty skin were beginning to prickle with desire again when Konstantin abruptly sat up.
“I don’t like to throw you out of my bed, but we have to get up. They’ll be laying Püppi to rest very soon.”
For Flora, the summer of 1873 passed in a state of exhilaration, with Konstantin as both her poison and antidote. They met in his hotel, where Flora always used the back entrance, and they met out in the meadows, too. Of course, they saw each other at the parties for which Flora arranged the floral décor and to which Konstantin was invited as a guest, but for Flora such evenings were more anguished affairs than joyful. She wanted to drive away all the cackling chickens that gathered around Konstantin the moment he entered the room. Konstantin, who was well aware of her jealous eye, flirted all the more with his admirers.
He did not ignore Flora, though, and when he talked with her the women who so gladly kept him in their midst looked on with a critical eye. He would return to them after a whispered pledge of affection or two, and Flora was left to console herself in the knowledge that there were hours in which he belonged to her alone.
Her talent for coming up with excuses and rationales for leaving the house and shop developed rapidly, and also for her occasionally disheveled appearance when she returned home with her skirt grass-stained or her arms scratched.
“Blackberries,” Flora said then, or “I slipped and fell; I’m so clumsy!” But the truth was that she had lain voluntarily among the nettles and thorns.
As soon as she was home, and with a heavy heart, she washed away the perfume of love that clung to her body.
You’re a sinner! You are not worthy of being the wife of a good and loyal man like Friedrich.
A thousand times she made up her mind never to see Konstantin again. But she returned to him. Again and again. How was she supposed to leave him? How would she ever again be able to do without what only he could give her?
What her family and her customers saw of her was only an imperfect thing. It was Konstantin who . . . completed her. Never was she in higher spirits than with him. With him she laughed until tears ran down her face, and sometimes he was sillier even than she. In his arms, the carping of customers was a distant memory, and there was no talk of healing waters, oh no—they had champagne instead!
But when the rendezvous was over and Flora trotted breathlessly home again, the burden weighed heavily on her shoulders. Alexander. Ernestine. Friedrich. And there was always the work: bouquets to be made, orders to be placed, invoices to be written. She had to get home. She did not have another valuable minute to waste!
There were moments when she stood at the counter in the shop and her floral arrangements came to her with uncommon ease—when every movement flowed into the next, when erotic desire inspired every deft motion, when she scooped her creativity from the cornucopia of love. But most of the time she kept her passion for Konstantin separate.
If she had not been able to do that, she would have gone utterly insane.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Nine o’clock. He should have been at the Trinkhalle long ago. Friedrich walked faster. It was not that the guests necessarily had a glass of healing water in mind so early in the morning, but before the first of the ladies and gentlemen arrived he had to sweep the floor, empty the trash, wipe the glass panels of the doors clean of yesterday’s fingerprints.
You’re no more than a lackey, you know, he thought, as he had many times before.
His presentations on the benefits of taking the waters were poorly attended. Not many wanted to hear about his conviction that a drinking regime was best undertaken along with a course of curative baths. Friedrich was coming to doubt whether the members of the spa committee were serious in their efforts to turn Baden-Baden into a true spa town. No one seemed to have much interest at all in the ideas about healing spas and water cures that he had put forward during the year. He had been hoping, because of those ideas, to be called to join the committee and to obtain a better position. But the way things looked, he would forever be no more than a page boy to the rich at the Trinkhalle.
As he passed by the theater, Friedrich ran into the owner of the Hotel Marie-Eluise, Gustav K?rner. He paused and greeted the hotelier with a friendly nod and was about to continue on his way when K?rner held him back.
“You know a lot of people here in town, don’t you? And quite a few of the guests, too, I’ll wager.”
Friedrich frowned. “That’s true.”
“I thought . . . well, I wanted to ask you . . . would you happen to know someone who would like to buy my hotel?”
Friedrich sighed. “So you’ve really decided to sell it?”
The older man laughed bitterly. “I have no choice. In the last year, I’ve lost not only my wife, but gradually also my guests.”
Friedrich shook his head. “It’s a disgrace. You’ve got one of the best springs in Germany flowing under the place.”
“Please make sure my future buyer hears that. Unfortunately, so far, I’ve had no success in finding one. Before the war, when we still had the casino and the French came in droves, it would probably have been child’s play to sell my hotel, but now?” K?rner tilted his head to one side, and for the first time a smile appeared on his pinched face. “What about you, Mr. Sonnenschein? Wouldn’t the Marie-Eluise be something for you?” When he saw the look of disbelief on Friedrich’s face, he added, “You know our springs better than anyone in this town. It was from you that I learned just how good our own spring is. Frankly, I believe you could turn my hotel into a destination for those who come here in search of a good spa.”
Friedrich laughed. “Now you’re exaggerating.”
K?rner nodded. “I’ll probably never get rid of the old box. You know, I’d get out of Baden-Baden tomorrow if I could. I’d move to my sister’s place in Munich . . . just to finally get away from the place where everything reminds me of Marie-Eluise.”
With a smile, Friedrich marched on toward the Trinkhalle. Old K?rner had some ideas! He, Friedrich, as the proprietor of a hotel, and Flora as proprietress—ha! As if she didn’t have enough to do in the flower shop. And as a mother? She’d hold Alexander in one arm and use her free hand to set tables, and be thinking about whether candelabra were appropriate during the week or should be reserved for Sundays!
His mother could work there, too. It could be a family affair. The thought of Ernestine wearing a small white apron and setting tables in a banquet hall made Friedrich laugh out loud.
She probably wouldn’t do a bad job of it. His mother understood how to run a household in an orderly, efficient way. Flora was good at dealing with people, and he certainly understood the Baden-Baden springs.
Apart from the fact that they would never be able to scrape together the money for the purchase, it would mean he and Flora working side by side—could that go well?