Harlequin's Millions Read online

  5

  THERE WAS A TIME, I WAS STILL YOUNG, WHEN I thought there was a life waiting for me elsewhere, I even thought it was in Prague. When Francin drove to Prague once a month, to the Brewer’s House, he always went in the Škoda 430, I’d put on my most fashionable dress, but each time Francin begged me to pretend I was just going out for a walk, I had to leave half an hour earlier than he did, so no one at the brewery would know he was taking me with him, people might resent that. And so I sometimes had to walk ten whole miles toward Prague, sulking, angry, I, who wanted to see for myself whether I could live in Prague, I, who assumed I could be just as much the center of attention in Prague as I was in our little town, I, who wore the latest high-heeled shoes, I marched down that dusty road, avoiding the big whitewashed stones that the road workers put down to mark the broken spots, in those days the stones were called “bandits,” and usually Francin caught up with me just past the forest, I’d climb into the Škoda and climb out again, embarrassed and humiliated, in Prague, then Francin would rush off to the Brewer’s House, we had agreed on a departure time, we’d meet back at the Škoda in front of Saint Stephen’s Cathedral. And then I’d stroll across Wenceslas Square, strut down Národní třída and Na příkopě, trying to see if I could ever be unfaithful to my little town, if I could ever live in Prague, if I could spend my life here. And I believed I could, I never tired of the shops and window displays, in the ten years that Francin and I drove to Prague every month I got to know all the shops and in all the shops they got to know me, I stopped into all the furriers’, all the silk merchants’, I walked through all the arcades, visited all the cafés, even the waiters greeted me, I knew all the perfumeries and ladies’ shoe shops, everywhere I went I pretended I’d buy only the most expensive goods, shop assistants ran out into the street with rolls of fabric and silk to show me what they looked like in daylight, and after a while I knew every price, every brand, every article in the stockroom, I even knew what they were expecting the following month. And because I liked to sit in the brewery reading Elegante Welt, all the shopkeepers assumed the brewery was mine. And every month I bought myself a little something, once a year I bought fabric for a suit, every six months for a new dress, and in those days I also made Francin buy himself the most expensive shoes at Kabele’s and Poldi Gutman’s, once a year he bought material for a new set of clothes, but actually I was the one who bought all that, so I would become known in Prague as a woman of the world. But I could never get Francin to come along with me to the tea room at the Hotel Šroubek, or to have lunch at the Reprezentační dům. Francin had been there only once and had felt so wretched in those surroundings that he did one wrong thing after another, so I just gave up, and in the end, whenever we went out, we always went to the pub, to the Keys, where Francin, delighted that he could eat standing at the counter, polished off a huge pork schnitzel and potato salad for four crowns fifty, a schnitzel as big as the whole plate. But in all those years that I went to Prague, I was still just someone from the little town where time stood still. Whenever I walked into the tea room at the Hotel Šroubek, when I found myself among the dozens of mirrors and hundreds of lights, the glittering of the chandeliers, when the eyes of all the waiters and the maître d’ and all those people lounging in their armchairs, wicker chairs in summer, which had been brought out onto the sidewalk, with only the waxy-leaved shrubs in green flower boxes separating the guests from the passersby, when all those eyes were fixed on me, I nearly died of panic and blushed to the roots of my hair, I ordered coffee and tried to calm myself by lighting a cigarette, but cigarettes always make me nauseous, I went pale, tried to save myself by leafing through newspapers and fashion magazines, but my hands were shaking so hard that the pages trembled between my fingers … All those years, I tried to calm myself by going into the ladies’ room, but all I wanted to do once I got there was lean over the sink and splash my face and forehead, again and again, to cool myself down, that’s how upset I was, I talked nonsense to the toilet attendant, because I always had the feeling that everyone could tell I’d come straight from the brewery and what’s more that I’d had to walk a long way, sometimes ten miles, before Francin had caught up with me and smuggled me into his Škoda, the same fate awaited me on the way back, when Francin made me get out of the car half an hour before we had reached the brewery and then drove on to the brewery by himself, while I arrived covered in dust, like a thief, and had to pretend I’d just been out for a walk, a nice, healthy walk. And the brewer’s assistant was almost always there waiting for me, we never liked each other much, peering from behind the curtains of his house, he’d always come running out and say, grinning broadly … Great city, Prague, eh? But all the same, I was unfaithful to the little town where I thought my time had stood still. The waiter from the tea room at the Hotel Šroubek introduced me to the owner of a real estate agency, who claimed I was a very capable young lady who had all it took to run my own little shop, a perfumery in the busy Revoluční třída, he drove me to see the perfumery and I was under no obligation of course, but the moment I saw the shop, it was called the Oreum, I could think of nothing else, my whole life consisted of nothing but the Oreum, I took out all my money, all our savings, Francin’s and mine, and invested it in my new venture, and that’s how I became the proprietress of a perfumery, a glowing little perfumery on the Revoluční třída, I’d sit up late every night memorizing the names of perfumes and powders, eyebrow pencils, French and German and English names, in the shopwindow on a clockwork turntable with mirrors was the triumph of French cosmetics, Elixir Lavalier, pills for a perfect bosom, jars and flasks and powder boxes shone in the permanently lit perfume case behind the counter, cut-glass bottles with roses, water lilies, sprigs of lilac and jasmine unfurling in aromatic oils, perennially fragrant fantasies, the gentlest hair lotions with a scent of violet that bore the secret of how to stay young and eternally beautiful. In those two months I had the time of my life, I felt myself becoming one with everything around me that could make a woman happy, fulfill her mission on earth, and I never gave a thought to Francin, or the brewery, or the little town where my time stood still, I rented rooms from a milkman and his wife, I slept on the second floor, next to the window, trams rode past every ten minutes, all night long, the bed shook, but to me it felt like my bed was a lovely little boat that would carry me away to all the factories in Europe, where the most expensive perfumes were made, and cosmetic preparations and remedies and miraculous soaps that would remove all impurities, not just freckles, from a woman’s skin, and creams from California to make the skin as smooth as velvet, and modern American nail polish, because varnished nails added to every woman’s charm. And as my bed shook up and down, I smiled, and sailed in my little boat back to the Oreum, to my perfumery on the Revoluční třída, where Peruvian herbal soaps waited on cut-glass shelves and mirrored plateaus, soaps that removed wrinkles and postponed them until a later date, and transparent glycerin soaps with the scent of Highland heather, birch water from Hamburg, a lotion that worked wonders and defied old age, Pearls of Venus for pearly-white hands, cleansing milk that made a woman irresistible, Kaloderma jelly with no fats or oils, rose-colored powders and soaps with glycerin and honey for a peaches-and-cream complexion, Dralle’s lily-of-the-valley perfume Illusion, a highly concentrated flower essence, undiluted with alcohol, that all the ladies were mad about … And as the trams rumbled down the tracks every ten minutes along the broken cobblestones of Na poříčí, I dreamt that I’d have to hire a shop assistant, someone I could train, because such beautiful things as I had in my perfumery would attract all women who wanted to keep their good looks, with lily soap, for a youthful appearance and velvety skin, poudre ravissante, indispensable for actresses and indeed for all ladies with an unsightly birthmark or scar, for every woman, in fact, who longed to have a beautiful face. I was filled to the brim with the happiness that had come my way, I’d found a job that suited me, discreetly offering strips that were applied to the forehead and ch
in to get rid of wrinkles, mouthwashes and brushes for tooth and tongue, hair lotions for brunettes and others specially for blondes, because my Oreum was no ordinary shop, it was a temple, with a folding, twenty-piece altar, in whose open compartments, illuminated from above, was an assortment of powders and cosmetics that would mask all flaws, preserve a woman’s assets and enhance her charms, so they’d never fade … And I went on dreaming night after night and into the daytime and I couldn’t get enough of all those things, which I had bought at such a favorable price, which would bring me fortune and fame, because surely everyone would see what wonderful products I was selling and how expertly I advised all the ladies, the shop would always be full, especially when people heard I sold bath salts, for fragrant baths in the scent of every flower and tree, spring greetings from Vesna for the boudoir, borax shampoo for toilet and tub, the latest perfumes in sturdy bottles, in nickel tubes, lily soaps by Hvĕzda Jihu, Graciella, a beauty lotion for the neck and hands, Konoor, to preserve the youthful color of one’s hair and keep it from turning gray … And when I discovered the compartments of hairbrushes with splendid handles and sets of combs in every size and class, and fifty étuis of rings and brooches on velvet cushions, the rings were copies of all the famous rings, like Jablonec glass, but I couldn’t believe my eyes when I’d polished those rings with Sidol, from then on I wore them myself, every day a different ring on every finger, they were so beautiful, and when I then found the beauty cases with a mirror under the lid and the insides lined with cut-glass perfume bottles and soaps and combs, I felt confident that my Oreum offered everything a woman could ever dream of … Yet in those two months, even though Francin came to see me almost every day, he never once came into the Oreum, he just stood on the opposite street corner and watched me, as I sold something now and again in the light of the permanently burning lamps, he watched me as I turned, as I stretched out my arm to reach a bottle of perfume that a customer had requested, he stood there watching and waiting until evening, when I closed the shop and rolled down the shutter, only then did he detach himself from the wall and come up to meet me, guiltily, during those two months I glowed with happiness, but Francin was sad, he walked me back to my room and listened as I enthusiastically described my successes, future successes, to be sure, but I knew I could achieve them. And that made Francin sad, but he continued to wait for me by the wall and didn’t care if people bumped into him, he never set foot in my perfumery, every night he walked me part of the way and every night he asked, wouldn’t I rather go home? To the brewery? To the little town where my time stood still … But every night I declined his offer, laughing, and described to him how in five years’ time we’d buy a little brewery of our own. But what I forgot was that just like all those famous trade routes where they transported goods from the cities along the Adriatic Coast to Nizhni Novgorod, even sea routes had a fixed, perfectly natural course, which no one deviated from, it was just like that in the cities themselves, in certain streets there are places people hurry through, run through, never stopping or slowing down until something gets in their way, and those are potential customers. But just as everyone always runs through Spálená Street and doesn’t stop until they get to Lazarská or even farther up on Národní třída, my Oreum in the Revoluční třída was in a house ten yards from the pedestrian stream, so the lights of the Oreum burned in vain, anyone who happened to pass by was driven into a kind of trap, and hurried on, so as not to bump into people coming from the other direction … No one ever came into my Oreum except perhaps someone who had stepped out of the stream into a quiet place to tie his shoe, or a woman seeking the shade of the street corner so she could fasten her garter, so I’d have about five or six customers a day, mostly women, the clockwork turntable, which bore the triumph of French cosmetics Elixir Lavalier on its glittering, mirrored plateaus, kept on turning, for two months I rested my fingertips against the counter and tried to conjure up my loveliest smile, two whole months, but no one came, while I stood here for two months bathed and combed and dressed to the nines, adorned with a smile, like a girl waiting for her beloved, who never came and never would. And so I began to get suspicious, I went around to all the other perfumeries and discovered that I was selling articles that were out of date, that had gone out of fashion ten, twenty years ago … And then my creditors began coming around with bills of exchange and threatening me, and after that came the bills for articles I had bought, but never sold, Francin still kept coming to visit and when he saw me there, and he knew a lot about doing business, because pubs are subject to the same unwritten rules, there are some places in a town where people hurry and others where they feel safe, and that was where he opened the brewery pubs, the first time Francin saw me standing there, crushed, just after creditors and suppliers had threatened to lodge a complaint against me, Francin couldn’t help smiling, he looked up at the rainy Prague sky above Revoluční třída … And then that bed of mine, where every night for two months I had drifted along on thoughts of my good fortune, all those splendid brands of perfume and powders and creams and pencils, in those days I still nodded off blissfully to sleep, but now I lay awake and waited for every passing tram, I broke out in a sweat, mopped my forehead and neck, and more and more trams went clanging past and made my bed shake up and down on the second floor on Na poříčí, the clanging bells sounded like the gong that announces the start of a public auction … And it was on those nights, when I couldn’t fall asleep and the next morning, exhausted, walked reluctantly to the Oreum and raised the metal shutter, for no good reason, I stood there watching the stream of passersby, it was utterly pointless, none of them even glanced at me or my Oreum, not a single eye was drawn to that revolving turntable in all its mirrored splendor, at those moments I began to think back on the little town I had left behind, my bed standing peacefully in the quiet of the nighttime brewery, surrounded by fruit trees and grapevines, at such moments I nearly groaned at the memory of the little town and my brewery, also, of course, because fate had so completely deceived me, making me believe that this would be my joy and happiness, but it had all turned against me. Francin stopped coming to visit, he didn’t come for a whole week, and then one day when I arrived at my perfume shop, I suddenly changed my mind and didn’t even bother to raise the shutter, but went and sat in the café across the street, a long, narrow pub no wider than its own front doors, I sat there drinking coffee, I even ate lunch there in the midst of the smoke, the coughing and singing, the smell of spilled beer, and looked out the window at the opposite side of the street, where my perfumery stood, at about ten in the morning the mailman came and pushed a summons and a few letters under the shutter, and even from a distance I recognized them, my creditors, who came by several times a day and beat their canes against the door or pounded it with their fists, they listened closely, some of them knelt down and peered through the keyhole, and when they found that it was dark inside, they beat their fists against the door again and hurled profanities at the shutter … After a week I couldn’t bear it anymore and went back to the little town, where my time stood still, in the brewery I fell to my knees before Francin and begged for mercy, I saw him smiling, saw how happy he was, he even tried to cheer me up, comfort me, and when I’d stopped crying, he burst out laughing, I don’t think I’d ever seen Francin as happy as when he went to borrow money to pay back everything I owed, according to the contract I was even supposed to have paid six months’ rent in advance … but I wanted nothing better than to live in the brewery and do my shopping in the little town where my time had stood still but now, like a severed cord whose ends had been tied together again, seemed endless. And Francin sang day and night, he couldn’t hide his joy at the fact that I was broke because I’d been unfaithful to the little country town. And one day it was hours before Francin returned from Prague, he didn’t arrive until evening. In the courtyard was a big truck and the back seat had been removed from the Škoda, when the driver and his assistant lifted the tarp, I saw that the truck was crammed fu
ll of perfumes and powders and beauty soaps, everything packed in boxes, Francin sang and hummed, he and the driver’s assistant carried two cabinets down from the attic, they opened another large cabinet that was built into the wall, and then the men worked until midnight loading my whole Oreum into those cabinets, including the contents of the storeroom, among which were demijohns of cheap perfumes and essences. And Francin paid for the transportation and from then on our whole house smelled like a perfumery, the smells and scents wafted into the kitchen and from there to the rooms, the whole attic and cellar smelled of perfume, the bushels of apples in the attic and the potatoes in the cellar, even the liver sausages after hog-killing time. For me, those smells were a permanent reproach, Francin knew that, and so everyone who worked with him on the Škoda, every week from Saturday to Sunday someone came over to help Francin work on the car, and he let them choose whatever they wanted from the cabinets. And since nearly all the citizens of the little town helped Francin work on the car, ten years after the perfumery affair the whole town still smelled of perfume, because people took home bags and boxes full, so that in the movie theater and the playhouse, in the pubs and clubs every man came in smelling of my cologne, which he’d doused himself with after shaving, women’s faces were rosy with my rouge and lightly dusted with my powder, I also recognized my combs and brushes … but what good did it do, when all I had left was a single cabinet, a cabinet that I moved to our new house when Francin was forced to retire, to the little villa on the Elbe, which I had designed myself, but which was so drafty and where such a stormy wind blew off the river that after a while the cabinet of powders and perfumes had flooded our home on the river too …