“It wasn’t that bad, though, looking back,” said the tailor’s wife. “Personally, I thought Flora was very nice.”
“Nice, ha! Those Württembergers all think they’re a cut above the rest of us.”
What a terrible pair, thought Sabine in disgust. Sitting with Ernestine in the garden week after week, drinking coffee and eating cake until they were fit to burst, and now that madam could use a little help, just once, they had nothing better to do than come into the store and act like . . . like . . . Sabine could not even find the words she wanted.
“Did you come here to buy flowers, or not?” she barked at Else. “And what about you? Usually, it’s your husband who comes to get your carnations,” she said to Luise.
Both women gasped. They had never known a maid to snap at them like that.
Just then, the doorbell tinkled again.
“Gretel. You, too,” said Ernestine, her face deathly pale.
Sabine moved protectively in front of her mistress.
In her zeal, Else Walbusch’s cheeks had turned bright red. She looked around at the women. “The way that girl threw herself at your Friedrich certainly looked questionable to me. Not even two years have passed and she’s gone and cuckolded him.”
“So what I heard at the market just now is true,” said Gretel. “I hoped so much that it was just someone talking nonsense. You poor thing!” She stroked Ernestine’s hand. “Anyway, can I have a dozen of these pretty purple flowers? Asters, aren’t they, Ernestine?”
Ernestine let out a sob. She had given up hope of at least one of her friends standing by her.
“Of course, madam!” Sabine dipped in a hurried curtsy, then wrapped the flowers in newspaper.
“What are you staring at like dumbstruck geese?” the pharmacist’s wife growled at Else and Luise. “What happened to poor Friedrich could happen to anyone. Oh, it’s a terrible tragedy, certainly. A sin! But who can claim to be immune to the power of love?”
Her argument was lost in the general uproar that ensued.
In the days that followed, the doorbell tinkled constantly, but few of those who came in were there to buy flowers. Luise Schierstiefel had heard from someone that Flora had fled with her lover and that they were headed for Bulgaria. This was contradicted by another neighbor, whose sister was a chambermaid in one of the smaller hotels, who reported that Flora was living with the Bulgarian in “depraved circumstances” in a single room. The shoemaker’s wife, by contrast, claimed to have seen Flora wearing a dancing outfit and escorted by two men at once—and drunk!
It was only with a great effort that Sabine managed to choke back the tears of her anger, and she stayed even closer to Ernestine in support.
For a week, they did their best together to withstand the barrage of rumormongering and sensationalism.
Regardless of how other people vilified and censured her daughter-in-law, Ernestine never took part in their spiteful talk. Just once, when she was finally alone with Sabine as they were closing up after a particularly bad day, did she open up. “When I think what Flora did to my one-and-only boy, I feel so angry and let down I could burst into tears. I could slap her face, too. Left and right, left and right! But who would it help?” She slumped dejectedly onto the chair behind the counter.
Sabine, who was in the process of locking the front door, merely shrugged. A slap on the face never did anyone much damage, and Flora has certainly earned it, she thought. But she kept the thought to herself—as open as her madam might be in that moment, she certainly did not want to hear Sabine’s opinion.
“I keep asking myself how someone could be so stupid, so ungrateful,” Ernestine muttered. “She really had everything. A lovely home, a good husband, a healthy child. And then she throws it all away for a . . . a nobody who just happens along!”
Sabine jumped when Ernestine suddenly banged her fist on the counter.
“How is anyone supposed to understand that? My poor Friedrich.”
Sabine sighed. She asked herself constantly how Flora could ever have fallen for Sokerov. You could see from a mile away that he was a wolf. Hadn’t she tried to warn Flora about him many times?
Oh, Flora, what were you thinking?
Ernestine took a deep breath. “And still it isn’t right for people to talk about Flora the way they are. There’s a great deal she has to answer for, I know that as well as anyone. But what business is it of anyone else? Why is everyone suddenly acting like judge and jury?”
Sabine handed Ernestine the key to the store and said, “The women who are screaming the loudest are the same ones who giggled most at Sokerov’s jokes and compliments. There were customers here who would not leave when he was in the shop. I saw for myself how expertly he flirted. He probably had Flora so deeply under his spell that she couldn’t break free anymore.”
Ernestine’s face brightened a little. “So deeply under his spell, you say? I never thought of it like that before . . .” She threw her arms around Sabine tightly for a moment, then turned away again almost immediately, as if the gesture were embarrassing. “Heavens above, why did a mishap like this have to happen in my family? Everything had been going so well.”
In the second week, the neighborhood slowly began to calm down again. This, in turn, meant that many customers simply did not come to the store. Among the spa guests, too, word had quickly gotten around that Flora was no longer at the shop, and they went instead to the market or to Maison Kuttner for their flowers.
Sabine managed to keep the shop open for several hours a day, while Ernestine mostly hid herself away in the front room, where no one could talk to her about Friedrich, Flora, or “depraved circumstances.”
In the third week, the store stayed closed. Sabine saw no reason to sit in an empty shop when all the housework was waiting to be done. The wilted flowers went onto the compost heap in the garden, the stale water in the flower buckets went down the drain, and the buckets themselves were stacked and stowed behind the counter.
No one thought to hang a “Closed” sign on the door. But anyone passing could tell at a glance that there were no flowers there anymore.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Konstantin’s hand slid along the inside of her thigh, pausing at the hem of her underwear. Flora sighed with pleasure and raised her body slightly. His hand moved on, gliding over her mons veneris, then caressing her most intimate bud, moist with her own nectar.
Flora responded to Konstantin’s touch with growing intensity. Her body lifted, writhed, pressed against his hand. She wanted to have him inside her, all of him.
She felt his hardness, but the next moment he pulled away again playfully, though her desire was like a whirlpool—she wanted to swirl herself around him, to hold him tight. She groaned loudly.
How could a woman want a man so much?
Flora leaped from the bed, reaching for a washcloth with one hand and her stockings with the other.
It’s almost time! She felt like laughing out loud in her anticipation.
“Flora, darling, what is it? Where are you going? Why don’t you stay with me?”
You know what I’ve got planned for today, Flora thought, but as she opened her mouth to reply, she heard a soft snore. Konstantin had fallen asleep again.
Flora rarely left the hotel so early in the morning, but when she did, she was enveloped in the smell of freshly baked bread from the bakery next door. Every time, she felt a pang in her belly.
But it was not hunger. It was Friedrich and herself at the breakfast table. Ernestine joining them, her hair disheveled, spilling her coffee when she sat down. Sabine bringing fresh marmalade to the table. Alexander, his mouth smeared with raspberries.
Don’t think! Over. Done . . .