“Yes?” Clara croaked as she served the dessert.
“That you will bring me back a crate of champagne. Moët is my favorite. It’s absolutely divine.”
From the corner of her eye, Clara noticed Natalie give her husband an almost imperceptible nod.
The next moment, the professor cleared his throat and said, “My dear Mr. and Mrs. Gropius, this has been a pleasant and fascinating conversation. I hope you will therefore not take it badly, my dear doctor, if we might turn to your medical work. In the next two or three weeks, I have to decide to which practices I will be sending our Charité patients for their follow-up care, and technical expertise naturally plays an important role in that. Speaking from a purely personally perspective, however, this evening has been a very positive surprise. After all, a certain reputation does precede you.”
Gerhard’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “How am I to understand that?” he asked stiffly.
It was Natalie who replied, looking at him directly. “Oh, people say that your views when it comes to the fairer sex are a little . . . unprogressive. My husband, however, is a strong advocate of the emancipation of women. I would never have married him otherwise!” She let out a peal of laughter but quickly became serious again. “Again we see how much truth there is in hearsay. That you would let your wife travel alone to Champagne demonstrates not only mutual respect and trust, but also your own generosity. You are willing to make sacrifices for her sake, and I like that.”
The professor nodded in agreement. “I can only work with men cut from that kind of cloth and can happily live without the old breed of diehards. Tell me, my dear doctor, how many Charité patients may I send you per month without overtaxing your capacities?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
One week later, Clara and Josephine were standing side by side on the train platform. They would go from Berlin to Leipzig and from Leipzig to Frankfurt, then on to Saarbrücken and from there to Reims via Metz.
When Josephine and Adrian embraced tenderly in parting, Clara looked away and fought back tears. Gerhard had gone off to his practice as usual, saying good-bye to her that morning in a few words and with no kiss. And she herself had forbidden Christel from coming to the station with Matthias. It was better like this. She knew that she would turn around on the spot and go home if her son started to cry. She dabbed at her eyes and nose with a handkerchief and hoped this whole trip was not one enormous mistake.
“How did you manage to talk your husband into letting you come along? You’re not normally allowed to take two steps without his permission,” said Josephine, once they had settled into a compartment in second class. Before that, she had made sure that her bicycle was stowed safely in the baggage section. Clara was surprised when she saw her arrive with it. What was the point of taking a bicycle?
“Gerhard is certainly concerned about my well-being, but if you think all I’m going to do is say ‘yes, sir’ or ‘no, sir,’ then you’re mistaken. I can stand up for myself,” Clara retorted as casually as she could, and she smoothed her hair. Even as she spoke, she thought about how much truth her words actually contained. Instead of whining and pleading as she had in the past when she wanted something from Gerhard, she had played her cards cleverly. Perhaps she should try that more often.
Josephine raised her hands defensively. “All right. I wasn’t trying to attack you. The opposite, actually. I’m happy that we’re traveling together. If I were doing this alone, I’d be feeling a little uneasy.”
Clara accepted Josephine’s words as an apology and smiled. “We’re not going off to a different continent, just to France,” she said appeasingly, but at the same time, her own heart was beating so hard at the thought of the nearly six-hundred-mile journey that she could feel it in her throat. She squeezed Josephine’s hand in her own. “You and me, together, just like when we were children. Who would have guessed it?”
The trip was long, but not hard. Whenever they pulled into a station, the train they had to change to was ready and waiting. After the second change, they had a routine: Clara took Josephine’s suitcase along with her own, and Josephine took care of her bicycle.
“Maybe I can cheer up Isabelle with a little two-wheeled tour,” she had said when Clara asked her about the bicycle. It drew a lot of attention, and other passengers wanted to know about it; conversations developed and soon they were talking animatedly about their travel plans.
One older couple was on their way to Paris, where they had first met more than thirty years earlier. They held hands continuously, which Josephine found touching, but Clara wondered whether such intimacy was suitable for public display.
An actress from the Frankfurt Theater, following a long stay at Lake Constance, was on her way to take up a new job as the lead in a play by Arthur Schnitzler.
Two men introduced themselves as representatives of a glassware company in Bavaria. They traveled from one end of Europe to the other to sell their products.
A pleasant camaraderie developed among the strangers during the journey. The Bavarians offered the others bread and ham. The actress brought out some smoked fish she’d brought from Lake Constance, and Josephine ordered tea and coffee for everyone. After eating, the travelers were overcome by a satisfied weariness. Clara, too, grew tired, but instead of sleeping, she took out her diary and committed to paper all the exhilarating insights into other worlds. A trip to Paris, just for the fun of it! Three months at Lake Constance to “regain her strength” to cope with the day-to-day toil—wasn’t it amazing what some people pursued? The woman had extolled the glorious landscapes around the lake in such glowing words. Clara decided that, as soon as she got home, she would look in the atlas to find out exactly where the Swabian Sea lay.
Home . . . With every mile between her and Berlin, the meaning of that word grew blurrier. In Clara’s heart, a welcome indifference began to appear, sweeping aside her homesickness and worry like dust. Matthias was in capable hands—not for nothing had she interviewed thirty nannies before deciding on Christel. And her mother had promised to check in every day and cook for Gerhard. Clara thought he’d probably get by better without her, considering how he felt her as a burden so much of the time. He might only notice her absence because she wasn’t there to knock around. Even if he actually missed her, well, she couldn’t help that. So she relaxed and enjoyed the train journey, open to every impression that came her way.
With eager eyes, she looked out the window, where the forested hills of Taunus were rolling past. So much open country! So much air to breathe!
“How must it be, living on the land?” she murmured softly. But she received no answer, because her traveling companions had fallen asleep.
In four days, they reached Reims. It was just after midday when, in a restaurant beside the station, they enjoyed their first French meal: chicken in a white wine sauce and pommes dauphines. Josephine suggested spending a night in the town, but Clara wanted to push on and tackle the last short stretch as soon as they were done eating.
“Just imagine Isabelle’s face if we come knocking on her door this evening!”
Josephine thought about it, then nodded. “Then we’ll have to find some sort of vehicle to take us to Hautvillers. Shall I see if my miserable French will do to haggle a decent price out of the coach drivers in front of the station?”
A short time later, they were sitting in a coach on their way to Hautvillers. The sun was shining as they drove through the outskirts of Reims, and a soft breeze drifted across the landscape of vines beyond.
“Have you ever seen such beautiful countryside?” Clara asked euphorically. “The pretty houses, the gardens all so well tended—it’s like something out of a picture book!” In every front garden they passed were bushes laden with berries, and the branches of trees drooped low and heavy beneath the weight of ripening apples and pears.
Josephine, too, was fascinated by the Garden of Eden they were riding through. “The people here seem so relaxed!” She pointed to a group of women w
alking along the road with hoes and baskets, unhurried, laughing and talking cheerfully. “When I think about how frantic everyone in Berlin seems to be . . . !”
Their enthusiasm only grew when they left Reims behind and were out among the seemingly infinite vineyards, where red and green grapes hung luminescent between the deep-green leaves. It was so appealing that Clara was on the verge of asking the driver to stop so that they could pick some. I don’t believe it, she thought, when the next moment the driver, a young man of perhaps twenty, jumped down from his bench, dodged into the nearest row of vines, and skillfully snipped off two heavy, low-hanging bunches. Smiling, he handed a bunch each to Josephine and her.
“Merci!” they said simultaneously.
“I haven’t had a man able to read what’s in my mind for a very long time,” Clara said with a laugh, and popped one of the sweet grapes into her mouth.
“This must be it,” said Josephine, looking from the building to the address that Micheline Guenin had written in her letter. At the sight of the large house and surrounding gardens and vineyards, her eyes grew bigger and bigger. “It’s like paradise! And the house . . . it’s so much grander than I ever thought it would be. I can’t imagine a lovelier way to live. Can you?”
Clara, still completely overwhelmed by the drive to Hautvillers, nodded in awe. Suddenly, she felt far less sure of herself than she had in the days they had spent traveling. How could anyone possibly be unhappy in such extravagantly beautiful surroundings? Isabelle had probably cut off all ties with Berlin forever. She might see their arrival as an undesired intrusion. “Should we really just barge in? Or wouldn’t it be better to try and find Madame Guenin, so she can tell us how Isabelle is first?”
But even as she whispered to Josephine, the huge door of the house opened, and from inside appeared an older woman with a round face and the liveliest eyes Clara had ever seen.
“You must be Madame Gropius! And you’ve brought a friend along, too. Mon Dieu, you’ve taken such a load off my heart!” Before Clara knew it, the woman was embracing her warmly. “I’m Micheline, the one who wrote you the letter. Now everything will be good again.”
Soon, they were sitting in the kitchen in Isabelle’s house. It smelled of soup and the herbs that had been hung to dry above the window. Clara, who liked to use herbs when she cooked, sniffed: rosemary, thyme, and maybe oregano, too? The mix of odors was invigorating, practically intoxicating.
While Micheline Guenin set out water and wine on the table, Clara tried to imagine Isabelle cooking at the stove. The businessman’s daughter doing housework—she really couldn’t picture it. And where was Isabelle?
“She’s upstairs, in her room. I was with her just now. I try to look in two or three times a day, depending on how much time I can spare. Ghislaine—she lives across the street—also comes by every day to check on her,” said Micheline, before Clara had formulated her question in French. “But Ghislaine owns the tavern on the village square, and her hands are always full.”
“Then I find it even nicer that the two of you have taken such good care of our friend,” said Clara warmly. “How is she now?”
The neighbor shrugged. “Well, she gets out of bed occasionally, for an hour or two.”
Josephine and Clara exchanged a look. That sounded good! But what Micheline said next destroyed their seed of hope before it could take root.
“But that doesn’t mean she’s part of this life again! Oh, no, she’s lost every bit of her joie de vivre. She’s not interested in anything. Grapevines aren’t like potatoes or apples, which grow all by themselves! Vines are like small children—they need all your attention; they want to be cuddled and spoiled. Day after day, month after month, they present us with new demands. Claude Bertrand, the overseer of the estate, has been looking after the vineyards through the summer, as much as he could, at least. But a lot has fallen into a sorry state. And now we’ve got the harvest coming up, and there’s so much that Claude really needs to discuss with Madame Feininger!” The old woman shook her head with concern. “And this year, it’s all or nothing.”
“Why?” Clara asked, her voice slightly hoarse. It all sounded so dramatic.
“Well, you have to keep in mind that the turn of the century is next year. More people will be drinking more champagne than usual and choosing their bottles with even more care. For the few who can afford it, for a day like that, the very best will be just good enough! So we must all be prepared with the best champagne we can make.”
All this talk was exciting the elderly champagne maker, it seemed, for her cheeks were glowing red.
“But let’s forget the turn of the century for now. For Isabelle, this harvest is crucial; the money she’ll make from selling the grapes will have to last her for an entire year. But instead of working with Claude and preparing everything, Isabelle sits around listlessly and stares off into space. Sometimes I fear she has lost her mind. Really, I just don’t know anymore.” Micheline hung her head in resignation.
Clara felt her heart sinking. “It really looks so bad?”
“It’s worse. Lately, word has got around the region that Isabelle can’t get back on her feet. The vultures are waiting for her to finally give in. In Champagne, land is the rarest commodity of all. Only the wine grown here can call itself champagne! The prospect that the poor widow Feininger might sell her estate is on a lot of minds right now.” A deep crease formed in the center of Micheline’s forehead as she said those last words.
Clara frowned too. “But this beautiful house, the vineyards—everything looks so abundant. Isabelle isn’t seriously thinking about giving it all up, is she?”
Micheline shrugged. “If something doesn’t happen soon, there won’t be any other choice.”
Josephine gestured to the end of the long table, where a large stack of letters lay in a basket. “Is that all business mail?”
Micheline looked at her. “Not all of it. That’s all the mail from the last few months. Condolences, private letters, bills, everything!” She shook her head. “Isabelle and I, we’re friends now, but I would never dare to open her correspondence.”
“So you’re saying that since Leon died, the entire business side has been ignored?”
Micheline nodded.
Clara could hardly believe her eyes when she saw how Josephine pulled the basket over to her.
“Your businesswoman’s heart might be breaking to see such neglect,” Clara said sharply, speaking German to Josephine, “but we’re here for Isabelle. She’s our main concern, not this winery or anything else.” When she saw Josephine’s piteous look, Clara realized that her friend was afraid to see Isabelle; tending to the business side was only a way to postpone the inevitable.
Micheline, who had followed the exchange silently, cleared her throat. “Before you go up to see your friend, I should probably warn you.”
Clara and Josephine looked at Isabelle’s neighbor. More bad news . . . ?
She heard voices. Clara’s voice. And Josephine’s. That was strange. She often heard voices, but mostly it was Leon’s. He spoke to her every day. She didn’t understand what he said or what he wanted from her, and it made no difference anyway. He had abandoned her. She was alone. Alone on an island in a black ocean of loneliness. The voices were the waves lapping against the shore; they came and went. Sometimes she heard sounds from before she was married: the clattering of pots when her mother’s new cook was in the kitchen or Josephine tossing pebbles at her window to call her down for their next bicycle ride. Life had been so uncomplicated back then.
She briefly laid one hand on her belly, which was growing larger all the time. That was the dwelling place of the pain, a pain that always reminded her of her loss. A soft knocking at the door, then. She sighed, annoyed. Why didn’t Micheline simply leave?
“Isabelle?”
She felt her body stiffen. That voice . . . Her heart began to pound, and sweat broke out on the palms of her hands. She wiped them on a pillow. It wasn’t possible. She
was alone. Alone on an island . . .
“Isabelle.” That voice again, a little louder. “It’s me, Clara!”
A harsh buzzing noise filled Isabelle’s head.
“Josephine is here, too. Can we come in?” The sound of robust shoes on the plank floor. Footsteps entering her room.
Slowly, Isabelle turned around. She squinted.
“You? How is . . . why . . . you’ve come.” Words formed in her mind, and she wanted to speak all of them but could not. She wanted to let out all the suppressed screams but could not. The lump in her throat swelled and swelled.
With a cautious smile, Clara came toward her; like an angel, she opened her arms wide. “Isabelle, I’m so terribly sorry.”
Those arms thrown around her, so caring, protective. The warmth, the unaccustomed closeness, so strange. Tears filled her eyes, poured hot down her cheeks, gathered at the corners of her mouth.
She had not cried for months. Instead, she had let the pain grow until it had swallowed every single feeling in her. But now, in Clara’s arms, the tears so long held back came rushing out. Isabelle sobbed and sobbed. And Clara rocked her in her arms like a child.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Isabelle let herself be led downstairs without resisting. Micheline was standing in the entryway, buttoning her cardigan. With a satisfied smile, she nodded to Isabelle. “Everything will be better now, ma chère,” she said, then she opened the door and left.
Had Micheline asked her friends to come? Feeling numb, she followed Josephine and Clara into the living room, where Josephine immediately flung open the double door to the terrace.
“What a glorious view! Can’t we sit outside?” She waved out to the terrace. “This summer in Berlin has been terribly wet, and there’s hardly been any chance to sit outdoors.”
The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2) Page 22
