The Skin Map (11 page)

It was the ladies who caught her attention, and from what she could see from her seat in the wagon, long hair was definitely in fashion—piled high and extravagantly curled or braided. Nearly everyone wore some sort of head covering; a scant handful of women covered their elaborate locks with fine, lace-trimmed hats; simple linen caps were in abundance, as were scarves. While their skirts might have been plain, their shawls were not; whether fringed, tasselled, square-cut, rounded, fine-woven, or knitted—all were as vivid and bright as possible: crimsons, yellows, blues, and greens, in any and all combinations. In fact, both men and women wore shawls. And children, of which there were many, were dressed exactly as their elders: adults in miniature.

The market crowd occupied her complete attention so that when the great clock in the city hall tower struck for the second time since her arrival in the square, she stirred and realized sitting so long in the wagon had made her cold. She rubbed her arms and blew into her cupped hands. Where had Etzel got to?

As if in answer to her thought, she heard a piping call and turned to see her companion, his arms laden with cloth-wrapped packages, bowling toward her through the throng, a small tribe of ragged foundlings around him. “Wilhelmina!” he called as he came to the wagon. “Our luck is good!”

He began handing up packages to her, which she took and stowed behind the wagon seat. The children were clamouring in a language Mina did not understand. What did they speak in Prague? Czech? Slovak?

“There is only one bakery on the square,” he announced, “and it is very small.” He passed her another package. “This one is for you.”

“For me?” Wilhelmina savoured an unexpected delight. “What is it?”

“Open it and see.”

She pulled one of the strings and unwrapped the parcel to reveal several small glazed cakes with chopped nuts and tiny seeds. “Honey cakes!” she cooed. “How sweet of you.”

He beamed. Taking another package, he handed it to the nearest and tallest of the ragamuffins around him. “Share with your brothers and sisters,” he instructed firmly in German, which the children seemed to understand.

The young lad opened the bag and distributed little white biscuits to his noisy comrades, who were now leaping up and down to receive their treats. The bag was soon empty, and Etzel shooed his entourage away, telling them to be good, attend Mass, obey their parents, and come back tomorrow.

“These are
lecker
!” exclaimed Mina, dusting off another of her grandmother’s words. She held out one of the cakes to him.

“I am glad you like them,” he said, biting into the little pastry. “This is a good place,” he observed, chewing thoughtfully. “I like it here.”

“What should we do now?” Mina wondered.

“We will start looking for a place to have my bakery.”

“Now?”

“Why not? It is a good day.”

“Very well,” she agreed. “Where do we start?”

“We begin here.”

After leaving the mules and wagon with a nearby livery service, Englebert and Wilhelmina made a thorough circuit of the square. They went shop by shop around the large open plaza that formed Prague’s busy commercial centre, and talked to many of the shopkeepers. Yes, the Old Square was the best in the city, the best in the entire region, even. And, yes, it was very expensive doing business in such a prime location. No, they did not know of any empty shops or premises on the square. “The landlord charges any price he wants for rent,” complained the butcher who worked out of a shop hardly bigger than a wagon bed. “Yet even at such high prices, these places do not stay empty long.”

The sentiment and explanation was echoed with only slight variation by everyone they approached. In the end, they were forced to conclude that even if there was a vacancy, Englebert would not be able to afford it with the limited funds he had brought from Rosenheim for the venture. “Everything is very expensive. I am beginning to think I have made a mistake in coming here,” he confessed. The thought cast a pall over his cheerful demeanour.

“How can you say that?” Mina chided. “It’s a big city, and we’ve only looked one place.”

“We’ve looked in the best place.” He sighed. “Everyone says this.”

“Maybe,” she allowed. “But there are bound to be others just as good. We just have to expand the search.”

Englebert allowed himself to be prodded into action once more, and they began scouring the interlocking network of side streets. These, they quickly discovered, were uniformly dark and narrow, and a far cry from the salubrious square. The shops and businesses were of a poorer, scrappier, even vaguely disreputable quality—as were the people frequenting these down-market establishments. The premises tended to be shoddy, the facades in need of cleaning and repair; there was rubbish everywhere; a few overly dressed ladies loitered about and, out of the corner of her eye now and then, Mina glimpsed rats.

The off-streets were depressed, to be sure, and ultimately depressing to Englebert, whose hopes dwindled with each dingy urban corridor they explored. His sighs became heavier and more frequent. Yet, these grubby backstreets did offer the one thing the more respectable and prosperous square lacked: cheap space, and plenty of it. Indeed, every third or fourth shop seemed to be either empty or going out of business; and those that weren’t gave every impression of clinging precariously to their existence.

“I have seen enough,” said the now disheartened baker. “Let us go back.”

Mina felt sorry for her dejected companion and concern over her own prospects, which were now enmeshed with his. She gave him a pat on the shoulder, and they started for the open air and sunlight of the square. Working their way back through the tangle of interwoven byways, they turned onto a street they had not searched. Halfway along, they saw that the way was blocked by a horse and wagon drawn up outside of one of the buildings. There was a man in the wagon stacking furniture and boxes into a very tipsy pyramid. Now and again, a woman appeared in the doorway with another box that she handed up to the man to be added to the unstable mound.

“I think they’re moving out,” surmised Mina.

“Who can blame them?” commiserated Englebert.

Drawing near the wagon, they paused. “Good day to you, sir. God bless you!” called Englebert, who seemed incapable of passing anyone without offering a greeting.

The man looked up from his labours and grunted a reply. The woman appeared in the doorway with a rolled-up rug. On a whim, Mina felt moved to address her. “Good day,” she said. “Are you moving out?”

“
Achso, Deutsch!
” The woman gave her a dark, disparaging look and answered in her own language. “Are you blind, girl?”

The surly response knocked Wilhelmina back a step, but it made her more determined. “Please,” she said, “it is just that we are looking for a place to open a bakery.”

“You can have this one,” the woman told her, “if you can hold your water until we’ve gone. And good luck to you.”

“Now, Ivanka, there’s no cause to be rude,” said the man in the wagon, pausing to wipe his face with a dirty rag. “It is not her fault.” The woman lifted her lip at him, turned without another word, and went back inside. To Wilhelmina, he said, “Landlord is inside. You talk to him, good woman, and find out all you wish to know.”

Without consulting Englebert, she stooped to enter the shop, which was almost empty save for two more rugs and a few wooden boxes. A long-faced, sallow man with a neatly trimmed goatee beard that only served to accentuate his already elongated face was standing at a wooden counter writing in a tiny book with a quill pen. Like so many of the men Wilhelmina had seen, he wore a long black coat and a white shirt with an odd little white starched neck ruff; his head was enveloped in a large bag hat of green silk with the flourish of a white feather sweeping out to one side. “Yes?” he said without looking up. “What is it?”

Wilhelmina tried to think how best to phrase her request, and wondered if he, too, would understand her German.

“Well? Speak up, man! I am very busy.”

“Sir,” said Mina, “are you the landlord?”

“Yes, of course.” He glanced around at her without moving his head more than necessary. “Who else should I be?”

“I am certain I don’t know,” answered Mina. “Is this shop for rent?”

“Why? Do you want it?”

“Yes,” replied Mina rashly.

“Sixty
Guldiners
.”

“Pardon?”

“Sixty
Guldiners
—for six months.” He returned to his little book. “Away with you. Come back with your father.”

“We will give you fifty,” she said, “for a year.”

“Get out!” said the man. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out of my shop—and do not come back.”

“Wilhelmina,” called Englebert from the door. “What are you doing? Come away.”

Reluctantly, she rejoined Englebert on the street outside. “He wants sixty
Guldiners
,” she told him, “for six months.”

“That is too much,” said Englebert. “For a place like this”—he wrinkled his nose—“it is too much.”

“I agree.” She frowned. “What is a
Guldiner
anyway?”

Etzel gave her a curious look. “Do they not have such as this where you come from?”

“They have similar,” she allowed. “But not
Guldiners
. What is it?”

He lifted the hem of his coat and, after a moment’s fuss, brought out a small leather pouch. He untied it and reached inside. “This is a
Groschen
,” he said, producing a small silver coin. “It is worth six
Kreuzer
.”

“I see,” replied Mina, repeating the formula to herself. “One
Groschen
equals six
Kreuzer
.”

“There’s more,” he said. “Ten
Groschen
make a
Guldengroschen
—or
Guldiner
, as we say.” He fished inside the pouch and brought out a larger silver coin. “This is a
Guldiner
—very good.”

Mina nodded. “Ten
Groschen
make up a
Guldiner
. Got it. Are there any more?”

“There is a new one called a
Thaler
—this is also very good, though you may not see so many of them. They are worth twenty-four
Groschen
.”

“So,
Thalers
are even better,” observed Mina. She plucked the silver
guldiner
from between Englebert’s thumb and forefinger.

The departing woman reappeared with another rolled-up rug under her arm. “How much?” she asked as she passed. To Mina’s puzzled look, she jerked her head towards the shop door and said, “Him inside—how much did he demand?”

“Sixty
Guldiners
,” replied Etzel.

“The greedy miser,” scoffed the woman, handing up the rug to her husband in the wagon. “We only paid him thirty for the entire year.”

“How long were you—” She hesitated, amending her thought. “How long did you rent from him?”

“We were here four years,” replied the woman, “and never a good day in all that time. May the Devil take him
and
his shop. I never want to see either of them again.”

“Do not take on so, Ivanka,” chided the man. “It is hard to lose a business.”

“Where will you go now?” asked Etzel.

“We are going to Presburg,” replied the man. “My wife has a sister there, and we will get a new shop.”

“What kind of shop did you have?” Mina wondered.

“It was a candle shop,” answered the man. “I make candles.”

“The best in the city,” put in his wife proudly. “No more. Let them live in the darkness.” She spat in the doorway for emphasis.

“She’s very angry,” explained the man.

Wilhelmina thanked the couple for their help and went back into the shop. “Fifty
Guldiners
is more than you will get from anyone else,” she announced. “We want it for a year.”

The man in the green hat laid aside his book and stood. “Am I not to be rid of you?”

“No,” said Mina, “not until I get a reasonable answer.”

“Sixty
Guldiners
is reasonable,” replied the landlord.

“Not when the current occupants are paying only thirty a year.”

“Times change.”

“I agree,” replied Mina. “That is why we are offering fifty.”

The man in the black coat snapped shut his tiny book. “Very well. Fifty, then. It is done.”

Englebert, standing in the doorway, opened his mouth to object.

“Not so fast,” said Wilhelmina. “This room will need to be painted—and the outside as well.”

The landlord frowned. His eyes narrowed. “A woman?” he wondered aloud. “And you talk to me like this?”

“Fifty
Guldiners
,” Wilhelmina reminded him.

“Very well, anything else?”

“Yes,” she said, “there is one other thing. We will need an oven.”

“An oven . . .” He did not seem to appreciate the nature of the request.

“This is to be a bakery,” she told him. “We need an oven.”

“A large one,” put in Englebert hopefully, “with four shelves.”

The black-coated landlord pulled on his beard in a way that suggested he thought he might be talking to crazy people, but could not be sure. “No,” he said at last. “It is too much.”

“Fine,” replied Mina. “Come, Etzel, I saw a better shop closer to the square. It is empty, and I am sure the landlord would be happy for our business.” Taking Englebert by the arm, she started through the door.

“Wait,” called the landlord.

She turned back, smiling.

“If I do this, I will need a full year’s payment in hand.” He tapped his open palm.

“We have the money,” Wilhelmina assured him before thinking to ask Englebert if that was, in fact, true. “Assuming the rooms upstairs are suitable for living, of course. We will need furniture—beds, tables, chairs. Simple things.”

“You will find all you need upstairs.” The landlord waved at the staircase at the back of the shop.

A quick look around the four rooms on the second floor assured Mina that this was indeed the case. There were beds in two rooms, and a table with four chairs in another, and a spare room with two chairs more and a large chest.

“It is acceptable,” said Mina upon returning to the ground floor. “Two new rugs would make it more acceptable.”