“Didn’t I tell you that Mrs. Berg was probably spying out something new? That’s why the shop is closed. A businesswoman like her always has new plans,” said Mrs. Loblein gleefully to her husband. Without waiting for him to reply, she turned back to Clara.
“But perhaps you’d still like to hear an idea I’ve had. It’s like this: above our emporium, which is right by the market square in Stuttgart, the first floor has suddenly become free. The seamstress who used to rent the rooms has moved out to the edge of the city. And then I thought . . . well . . .” She cleared her throat, then said in a rush of words, “I wanted to ask you if you wouldn’t perhaps be interested in opening a Bel Étage in Stuttgart. All my friends would come to visit you, and of course I would, too.”
“The rooms my wife is talking about are very nice indeed,” her husband went on. “And it’s not as if we don’t have enough potential lessees in Stuttgart. But my wife wanted to give you the chance to look at everything first.”
“Stuttgart?” Clara repeated.
“We’re traveling back tomorrow. We could take you with us, if you like,” Mrs. Loblein said, looking expectantly at Clara.
She would certainly have enough time to think everything through during the drive to Stuttgart, maybe even work out what to do about the Baden-Baden shop. She had to avoid jumping to conclusions. Perhaps everything wasn’t as bad as it looked. Work had always got her through her troubles in the past.
Clara took a deep breath, then gave the couple the best smile she could muster. “I have, in fact, been thinking about where to open my next shop. Maybe I should include Stuttgart in my plans?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Laszlo had inherited his passion from his mother. And from his father, the engineer, he had learned self-control. And that was good, because otherwise anyone looking at him would have seen in an instant that he was hopelessly in love. And worse, that it had been love at first sight. Clara Berg had stolen his heart, and she didn’t even know it. It hit him the very first moment that he had seen her talking with Monsieur Gayet. Was it her beauty? Her radiance, so warm and brilliant? Was it that she came from his father’s homeland and that the German language flowed like music from her lips? Or maybe it was her charming smile, and that she seemed so strong, so sure of herself, but vulnerable at the same time. Laszlo knew that Clara Berg was the woman that he had been waiting for all his life. He felt bound to her as he did to no other person on earth. But she was his employer, and she was married. And because of that she could never discover the depth of his true feelings. How he was supposed to manage that, Laszlo did not know. But manage it he must.
It was a dejected Laszlo who left Justine Kaiser’s house. He looked up at the restless sky and turned up the collar of his jacket. The weather had turned. The sunshine of recent days had given way to heavy, black clouds gathering over the lake. A gusty wind whistled through the streets, and the air smelled of seaweed and rain.
Thunderclouds. How appropriate. Laszlo’s steps were heavy as he walked toward the manufactory.
At first, Justine Kaiser had not been willing to talk to him at all. But when he finally persuaded her that he was there in Clara’s name—more, that he was Clara’s trusted colleague—Justine began to talk.
“The gloves were just the final straw,” she said miserably. “The new cleaning chemicals that Mr. Berg bought to clean the filling machine are so caustic that they practically eat the skin off your hands. And the fumes from the vinegar essence we use to rub down the stirring spoons, ladles, and other tools burns our eyes so much that they still tear up at night. I never knew vinegar to be as aggressive as that stuff. Clara Berg’s creams might make other women beautiful, but they’re going to be the end of us! And it’s been this way for weeks.”
Frowning, helpless, Laszlo couldn’t do much more than listen and try to reassure the forewoman. “I promise you that you will not have to handle a single damaging chemical again,” he had said. “Mr. Kohlwitz and I will go through our entire inventory this afternoon and check everything thoroughly. If you had spoken with Mrs. Berg about these problems, I’m sure she would have listened to you.”
Justine had looked at him with skepticism and simply answered, “Mrs. Berg never sees us anymore.”
What did that last sentence mean? Laszlo wondered as he walked by the Bel Étage in the Unterstadtstrasse. Clara’s laboratory was just one floor above the production rooms of the manufactory. Didn’t they see each other all the time?
As he paused to admire the elegant window display, everything painted in shades of lavender, the door opened, and the young woman Clara had gently but firmly sent away the day before stepped out.
“You’re Clara’s new parfumier, aren’t you?” the woman asked and held out her hand. “I’m Therese Himmelsreich. I’m the hairdresser. I share the shop here with Clara.” She was wearing a heavy perfume, and Laszlo could smell peonies, oak, and vanilla. The scent matched well with Therese’s red hair.
“And you’re a good friend of Mrs. Berg’s,” said Laszlo with a smile. “Clara told me about you on the train on the way here.” Clara . . . It felt so good just to say her name. Good and a little dangerous.
“A friend . . .” Therese sighed sadly. “Whenever I need Clara the most, she’s either in her laboratory and can’t be disturbed, or she’s off traveling, like right now.” She held a piece of paper out to Laszlo. “This telegram just came. I’m lucky you’ve come by. I can spare myself the walk out to the manufactory to let you know.”
Laszlo hurriedly read the spare message. A business matter required Clara to travel to Stuttgart, and until she returned a few days hence, he should work as best he could with Klaus Kohlwitz. The chemist could show him everything. She had instructions for her staff in the shops, too, but said nothing about the strike.
“See? Clara has no time for our friendship anymore.” The hairdresser covertly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
Laszlo frowned. Was she crying? “Perhaps I can help you?” he said cautiously.
Therese burst out sobbing and ran back into the shop.
More confused than ever, Laszlo headed to the manufactory. Clara had no time for friendship? But she had spoken so warmly, so lovingly, about her friends.
He found Klaus at one of the production tables. The chemist was staring at a beaker that he had apparently been heating over the flame of a Bunsen burner. There was a thick notebook and several pencils on the table, as well as an accumulation of open bottles and jars. In the containers, Laszlo recognized pastes, oils, and various powders—were those the ingredients that went into Clara’s products?
“Strange, very strange . . .” Klaus murmured to himself. Laszlo noticed the chemist’s raven-black mustache was at an angle across one cheek as if, lost in thought, he had tugged at it too many times.
“May I ask what is so strange?”
Klaus Kohlwitz jumped in fright. He clearly had not heard Laszlo come in. But his expression changed to relief as soon as he saw the parfumier. “Oh, it’s you,” he said.
Laszlo handed him Clara’s telegram. “I’ve just been to see Justine Kaiser. She and her workmates are ready to start work again, but on one condition,” he said, when Klaus had finished reading the telegram, and he told him about his meeting with the forewoman. “I had to promise her that she and her colleagues would not be exposed to any more hazards. That . . . was what you wanted?” he added, suddenly feeling very presumptuous.
Klaus frowned and said, “I hope you haven’t promised too much. I started analyzing the various ingredients early this morning. But I can’t say I’ve learned very much. It’s more the opposite: if this keeps up, pretty soon I won’t know what to think!” He gestured toward a large dented metal container with a label that read “Liebnacht-Soda. Manufactured with the modern Solvay process.”
“This soda ash, for example, comes from a very reputable maker with whom we have so far had only good experiences.”
“But?” Laszlo glanced at the i
nnocuous-looking white powder.
“Instead of the anhydrous Na2CO3, what they call calcined soda, that should be in this box, there’s something completely different. Normally, to a hundred parts of salt, you would have eighty parts of sulfuric acid. But this soda has less than seventy parts sulfuric acid, and very impure at that. Can someone please explain that to me!” The chemist threw both hands in the air helplessly. “And that’s not the only box where the label and the contents don’t match.” He pointed to another container. “Rouge fraise—it’s a coloring agent that gives Mrs. Berg’s soaps a pale-pink shade. It comes from a company called Guckelsberger, which is well known for quality and for using cochineal as the dyestuff. Cochineal is an organic red dye of the highest quality, and until today it has proven its worth. The problem with this container, however . . .” The chemist fell silent for a moment and shook his head. “. . . is that I can’t find any cochineal in it, and find picric acid instead! Picric acid gives a slightly yellow coloring, which I am quite sure Mrs. Berg does not want in her soaps. But the much more serious problem is picric acid triggers very strong skin irritation. And—even worse—if you don’t work with it properly, it can be explosive.” Klaus looked around the room. “This entire place could be blasted to smithereens in a moment.”
Laszlo furrowed his brow. The “Meersburg Affair,” as he had begun thinking of the situation, was getting stranger and stranger.
“Containers with labels that wrongly declare the contents . . . Excuse me for asking so directly, but are you certain?”
The chemist laughed bitterly. “I’ve double-checked everything.”
“Then we’re talking about fraud. The companies have not been delivering what the packaging promises, but have sent lower quality and even dangerous substances instead. How is that possible?” Laszlo looked inquiringly at his new colleague.
“A better question is whether these producers know what is being perpetrated in their good names. Perhaps a counterfeiter copying their labels? For some time now, Mr. Berg hasn’t been ordering the ingredients for our beauty products directly from the manufacturers, but through wholesalers. It was a puzzle to me from the start, how they could offer him better prices than buying directly from the producers. But a few things are now clear to me.” He screwed up his mouth. “It’s easy these days to copy packaging. And if you know how to do it, the contents can be easily swapped. Selling cheap product for a lot of money—and making customers believe they’re getting the same quality as before. It’s criminal, and a case for the Department of Health! I should be reporting what’s going on here immediately. But . . .”
“What would that mean for Clara Berg? She’d probably get into all kinds of trouble,” Laszlo said.
The men exchanged a look, and each saw the same thing: loyalty and devotion to Clara.
“I don’t know how to tell Mrs. Berg about this,” Klaus said in hushed tones. “It will break her heart, for a number of reasons.”
Both fell silent for a long, helpless moment.
Then Klaus took the open jars and containers and began throwing them into a large steel trash can. “It’s no wonder the women who work here developed rashes. This terrible stuff belongs in the trash, not in our production. And certainly not on any woman’s face.”
Working together, it only took them a few minutes to throw it all away.
“What now? Until we restock with good quality raw materials, production can’t start again, can it? And that means no treatments in the shops,” said Laszlo as they wiped down the tables.
“And that means no money coming in, that our own salaries are in danger, that everything that Clara Berg has put so much into setting up is at risk.” The chemist snorted and his expression was grim. “I’m as sure as I can be that Mrs. Berg knows nothing about all this. Her husband is responsible for everything that comes in. He scared off our old, reliable partners, and I don’t know what he’s arranged with the new ones, these so-called wholesalers.” The disdain in his voice was obvious.
“You think Mr. Berg knows that his suppliers don’t deliver what they’re supposed to? Then he’s abetting their fraud.”
“At the very least, he doesn’t seem to care much that his wife ends up with low-quality materials. As long as he can save a few marks or line his own pockets.”
“He’s jeopardizing his wife’s entire livelihood!” Although he hadn’t even met Stefan Berg, Laszlo already felt anger toward him that was strong and growing stronger. How could he cheat his wife like that? How could he knowingly risk the health of the workers and the women who used Clara’s creams and lotions? What kind of person would do that? He wanted to ask Klaus all these questions. But they had known each other less than two days, and it took time to build that kind of trust.
“Problem found, problem solved, as my old professor always said. This junk won’t hurt anyone anymore.” Klaus nodded with satisfaction toward the trash can. “What matters now is to get a new supply of good raw materials. If only Mrs. Berg were here.” The chemist began toying with his mustache again. “Talking to her husband makes no sense. All I can do is take it on myself to go to Weingarten Pharmacy this afternoon and order the most important materials there. From good suppliers for a fair price! With a little luck, most of it will still be delivered this week, and we can start production again.”
“If you like, I’ll come along,” said Laszlo.
The chemist looked at him in surprise. “Your offer does you credit, but are you aware that we’d be putting both our jobs on the line? What if Mrs. Berg throws us both out for exceeding our authority? Of if her husband does? I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
Laszlo returned the chemist’s look steadily and said, “Clara Berg will make the right decision.”
“I will tell you this now—for the time you’ve been on strike, you will not get a pfennig of your wages. I’d like nothing more than to throw out all of you. And that’s exactly what I’ll do if even one of you starts to complain!”
Stefan looked out over the assembled workforce. “Now get to work! For the next two weeks, I expect three hours overtime every day to make up for the backlog.” The women, who had stood there in their white aprons and listened half-afraid, half-angry, began to dissipate, but they heard a different man’s voice, and they stopped still.
“Stay just another moment, please.” Laszlo lifted his right hand in the air.
“What—” Stefan, irritated, started to say, but Laszlo did not react.
“For those who don’t know me, my name is Laszlo Kovac. I am the new parfumier, and together with Mr. Kohlwitz, I will ensure that the beauty products you make here in the Bel Étage Manufactory don’t just make women look good, but that the products also smell good.” He smiled engagingly at the gathered women. Tentatively, they smiled back.
“First of all, I want to thank all of you for returning to work. As for your wages, I can’t say anything about that, though I am sure that as soon as Mrs. Berg returns, she will find a good solution. I also think that Mrs. Berg will have something to say about overtime.” He glanced sideways at Stefan, but before he could say anything, Laszlo continued. “There is one more thing I would like to add before we all get back to work, and I speak for Mr. Kohlwitz as well.” He looked from one woman to the next, his expression earnest but not unfriendly. “You can come to us at any time—any time—if something in the production process is not in order. It makes no difference: defective gloves or bad raw materials. Your observations are critically important to us, because only when we all pull in one direction can we manufacture products of the highest quality. You are the experts, and you are the first to notice if something is not as it ought to be.”
The women looked at each other in surprise. They relaxed their tense shoulders and faces, and they lifted their chins. No one had ever spoken to them in this way.
“You . . . you think you can come here and—” Stefan began, puffing himself up, but his voice was lost in the applause and excited voices of the women.
Until that moment, Clara had observed everything in silence from just outside the doorway. Like a stranger, an outsider, she had witnessed the meeting, overheard the men. If she were working at one of the tables here, whom would she trust? The good-looking Italian in his elegant, tailor-made suit, flailing his hand in the air like a furious general? Or the pale stranger in work pants, his gold-brown eyes shining like polished amber? Her thoughts were interrupted by the women’s appreciative applause, and she smiled to see her employees return to their work tables.
The next moment, Stefan rushed toward her. “You’re back, finally,” he said. “Things can’t work like this, Clara. Your new perfume-meister—”
She raised her hand authoritatively. “Not here, not now. Please get out the ledgers for the past year. I’ll be in my office in a few minutes and would like to go through all the books. Then we can talk.” She walked away from him and went to Klaus and Laszlo and, unlike with her husband, greeted them warmly and shook both men’s hands.
“You’ve done well, gentlemen. It looks as if the worst of the crisis is over.” Laszlo’s hand felt warm and comfortable in hers. “I have good news, too. I will very soon be opening a fourth shop, this time in Stuttgart. I’ve already signed the lease, and am looking forward to getting started there as soon as possible.” She exhaled deeply with relief; things seemed to be moving forward again.
The two men exchanged a glance. Klaus cleared his throat, then said, “I fear your good mood will be short-lived. I have to tell you some rather bad news.”
Clara listened expressionlessly to what Klaus had to say. It was not as if she were frozen, or as if she were hearing the chemist’s words through a veil of fog. It was the opposite—Clara had never heard or understood something as clearly as she did Klaus’s words. She was discomfited, embarrassed. In her heart of hearts, Clara knew that what he was telling her amounted to one thing: her husband was a liar and a cheat. His wheeling and dealing had endangered the health of their employees and their customers, and he had risked permanent damage to her reputation.
The Queen of Beauty (The Century Trilogy Book 3) Page 35
