Garden of Venus (15 page)

‘
Ne lekayte se. Boh z vami
,’ the Cossack said. Don’t be afraid. The Lord is with you.

‘
Budes zyty
,’ he added when they followed him. You will live. Their eyes were blinking at the daylight. Miriam never let go of Jakub’s hand. She had wet her skirt and the fabric clung to her legs as she walked. Jakub tried not to look at the human limbs lying in the dirt, tried not hear the moaning of the maimed, begging to be killed.

They followed the Cossack through the streets littered with black burnt-out wood. Before that June day in Uman, Jakub had never seen a house burn. He had not seen the wall of flames, the fiery boulders crashing to the ground, the smoke now gathering into black clouds, now soaring up with the glitter of sparks, filling up the streets. He never knew how bright the flames could be when they licked the dry wood, how hot the air that made its way to his lungs.

They walked quickly, behind their Cossack captor, past the piles of rubble, books with pages torn out, quilts emptied of feathers. Feathers covered the streets like snow, drifting in the wind. Floorboards torn out in search of buried treasures. A shoe, a yellow satin shoe with a bow, crushed and stained with blood.

‘I want to go home,’ Miriam whispered to him.

Yes, her father had been a Jacobin. For him it meant that there was a reason for everything, that there were lessons in betrayal and revenge. Nothing happened to one human being without affecting the lives of others, touching them in most unexpected ways. The progress of the human race may be rigged with pain, but it must take place.

The Polish troops did not come in time to save anyone. It was the Russian units who arrived first, coaxing the Ukrainian rebels to lay down their arms. ‘We are your brothers,’ they said, ‘bound by the same faith. You can trust us. Let’s celebrate your victory over the Poles. Let’s celebrate your newly won freedom.’ And so the Ukrainian leaders joined a feast prepared by their Russian brothers, a feast from which they woke up in chains, to be delivered into the hands of their Polish masters.

This, they heard, was the time of revenge.

Miriam and Jakub. This was the way Rosalia saw them, two children walking through the burnt-out streets of Uman. She knew that her father had covered her mother’s
eyes so that she wouldn’t see the corpses with outstretched hands and gaping eyes. That he whispered into her ear, ‘I would not go anywhere without you.’ She knew that, before Miriam’s uncle came to take her away so that a Jewish orphan could grow up among her own people, they stayed together in the charred remnants of her father’s ancestral house and that Miriam would let no one but Jakub put her to sleep.

True love, her father used to tell her, never died. Once joined, some souls would never part, no matter how hard they were prised apart.

Ten years passed before Miriam was to see Jakub again. Ten long years when only memories sustained them, when love could only be imagined. Ten long years of longing and dreams.

Jakub had just arrived from Warsaw, a captain in the Polish army, and he waited for Miriam, in the dark like a thief. He waited for her outside the Uman tavern where she had helped out since the day she turned fourteen. There would be a wedding soon, her hand was promised to a rabbi’s youngest son. ‘A good Jewish boy,’ she heard. ‘Who would make us all proud.’

Miriam wished there was no such thing as marriage. She wished she were old and grey and ugly or that she could run away and hide in the forest. Hide in a hole, a burrow, a den where no one would find her. Where they would all leave her alone. To a Jewish girl, a Polish man was danger, he was trouble. He was a dream better forgotten.

Lit by the moon, Jakub’s face seemed pale to her, haggard and yet so handsome and strangely familiar. He had a narrow nose and a mop of thick hair, tied in the back with a black ribbon. The light stopped on it, as if broken in half. His clothes were so fine – she thought, with a shot of shame at her own homespun dress – a cambric
shirt, leather breeches, silver clasps on his shoes.

‘Miriam,’ she heard. ‘Sweet little Miriam.’

She wanted to cry with shame. Shame at the smells of the inn, the sauerkraut and pickles she had put back into the barrels only a few minutes before. Shame at the coarseness of her hands.

She ran away that first evening of his return.

But Miriam did not run fast enough. The next evening she stopped to hear when Jakub spoke of the years of longing. Of his mind, wherever he was, always taking him to the streets of Uman in search of her. Of knowing that she too thought of him, of hearing her voice calling him through the steppes. A Polish and a Jewish child united by common fate, united by love stronger than everything that tried to pull them apart.

‘Will you let this love be our teacher,’ he asked, ‘make us better and wiser?’

For Captain Jakub Romanowicz had already asked Count Potocki for a permission to marry a Jewess from his town, and the Count promised to be her godfather at baptism.

It was still dark on that day when Miriam slipped away from her uncle’s house, and climbed into Jakub’s carriage, taking nothing with her but the small wooden star her uncle, a carpenter, once made for her. Her travelling cape covered the grey, homespun dress but not her shoes, rubbed at the sides.

This was how Rosalia would always see it. The carriage speeding toward Warsaw, past the ripening fields and the villages waking up. The wooden huts with whitewashed walls, thatches crowned with rows of crossed sticks. Barns, chicken coops, churches with onion domes and dark cedar shingles like scales of a giant fish. The small orchards fenced off with willow boughs where apples and cherries ripened. The gardens where beans and cucumbers and cabbage
grew. Where barefoot children wiped sleep from their eyes, herding the cows and geese. Where the women came out to the wooden porches and stretched their bodies for a short blissful moment before diving back inside.

Miriam and Jakub.

Ego, Andrzej Jankowski, baptisavi judeum, conversum ex infedilitate judaica cui imposui nomen Maria
.

This love, her father always said, was far greater than hatred and pain, greater than death.

Her mother was silent. ‘There is nothing to tell,’ she repeated when Rosalia asked about her grandparents, the aunt and uncle who raised her. About these years in Uman when she only imagined Jakub, somewhere in the world beyond the steppes. ‘I don’t remember,’ she repeated, pointing out something that needed doing: a button hanging on the last thread, an unfinished chore. She knew how to make herself invisible every time the Jewish factor came to the Zierniki manor, or black-clad men with side locks passed them by.

Przechrzta
.

A Jewess turned Catholic will always remain a Jewess.

It was this silence that would outlive her father’s words.

The private party is held in a rented house. It is a Turkish house. She can tell that from the brightly coloured pompom hanging over the portal, twirling in the wind, meant to catch the evil eye, divert its power from the house back to the Christian eyes that are carrying it.

In the room the internuncio leads her to, men sit on the floor Turkish style. The tablecloth is spread on the carpet, covered with bowls and platters. There are the partridges she likes so much, and slices of roasted lamb, pink inside; roasted aubergine and slices of red pepper;
plates of red caviar and slices of pineapple; oysters too – a whole platter of oysters, glistening in candlelight.

She tightens her grip on his arm.

‘Odalisque,’ someone says. One of the men bends forward as if to get a glimpse of her, but when she smiles at him, he makes a comic face and clutches at his heart as if pierced by an arrow. Her time will come, there is no reason to rush pleasure. She won’t go away, will she? For now the conversation can turn to far more interesting matters.

Turkish horses are praised for their gentle nature, their respect for their master. The Ottoman training of discipline and obedience. If their master lets a staff fall on the road, a Turkish horse will fetch it with its teeth and hold it up to him.

The internuncio laughs at that, though Sophie fails to see what is so funny about an obedient horse.

Turkish horses are beautiful, too, with long black manes, the immense, flaming eyes. Sweet and intelligent. In the darkness and solitude of the European stables, their very beauty and sweetness would be lost forever.

She watches them, men warmed with wine, their bodies stretched out on the carpet, propped against cushions: Franks, visitors, travellers in search of what they have imagined would entice them.

The talk turns to other matters: the Turks spying on the foreigners on the Sultan’s orders; the friends at home making too many requests. Balm of Mecca is coveted more than anything else, as if it were to be obtained for nothing in Istanbul. French women are declared far too bold and arrogant. Even the shortest trip to Paris makes one think that women rule France, and everybody knows what happens to countries governed by the weaker sex. ‘Monsieur Stachiev,’ the internuncio whispers in her ear, pointing at the man who has just come in, a stocky man
in a lopsided wig. Russian ambassador. His eyes dart across the room until they spot her. She can feel the internuncio’s hand pushing her toward him. ‘He likes his women face down. Nice and easy.’

The Russian ambassador’s face is pox marked and red. She sits beside him and folds her hands the way the internuncio has taught, on her lap. Monsieur Stachiev stares at her face openly, eyes blinking, as if she were not a woman but an apparition.

‘It is too warm here, don’t you think?’

‘Yes. I wish we could go riding,’ she answers. ‘Just to feel the breeze on my cheeks.’

Encouraged by her attention, he paints pictures for her, of St Petersburg, of Empress Catherine, of the beauty of mighty Russia, his motherland, which he misses greatly, even the dead cold of winter. A Russian heart is not happy among strangers, he tells her.

‘Friends, Monsieur,’ she says, leaning toward him. ‘Friends who would do everything to bring you happiness.’

The servants bring in glasses of vodka. She only takes small sips herself, but Monsieur Stachiev does not miss his turns. Soon he is leaning on her shoulder, his pungent breath over her face. His hand is on her lap, digging into the folds of her dress. She lifts it up and places it on the table.

‘Monsieur Boscamp is watching,’ she says. ‘Please, sir, do not get me in trouble.’

‘Monsieur Boscamp is a lucky man. With a knack to find jewels where other men would not even look.’

She half listens to what he says, aware that the men are stealing looks at her all the time. They look away when she turns in their direction, but they are all clearly watching her. As if she were a cricket in a wooden cage. Or a bird.

It is the internuncio’s voice. His is a pleasant baritone, rich and vibrant. She has taught him that Turkish song about Istanbul, where virtue has long been forgotten. There is a round of applause and with the corner of her eye, she can see that her internuncio bows his head to her.

Monsieur Stachiev’s voice is more and more garbled. He tells her that the Russian Empress herself never wastes a night with an untried man. One of her ladies-in-waiting has to pronounce the man able before she lets him into her bed. This is not a bad strategy and he intends to follow it – whose recommendation could possibly be better than Monsieur Boscamp’s.

The internuncio is deep in conversation with the French ambassador. His head is bent, and he motions to the servants to bring him more wine. He must be talking about something funny for the Frenchman laughs and claps his hands. Then he looks at her, across the room, still laughing, shaking his head in disbelief.

‘I need some air,’ she says and rises from her cushion. Her hair is ruffled where Monsieur Stachiev has pulled at it. He is far too drunk now to remember what he does or hears anyway. She kicks his shin as she stands up, hard enough for him to wince, to have a bruise the next day and wonder where he got it from.

‘A beautiful mare,’ he says. He tries to rise too and follow her, but his legs wobble and he sits down. Before she gets out of the room she can see his head loll onto the shoulder of his companion on the left.

The internuncio comes after her, his hand is patting her
behind. ‘You are a sensation, Dou-Dou,’ he whispers. ‘Just as I thought.’

‘How would I know,’ she says shrugging.

A tear rolls down her cheek. He sees it and wipes it off with his thumb.

Is this one of her ‘moods’, a recent appearance of a flaw in her otherwise remarkable disposition? A sign that she needs reigning in, more stringent discipline of the spirit. Is she expecting her menses perhaps? Has anyone been nasty to her? Cruel? Unreasonable? Has
he
done anything to make her angry? Isn’t she well-fed, well-clothed?

Her new shoes have cost him a fortune, so why is she twisting her leg in this way. She will chafe the side and spoil the form.

‘What is it now, Dou-Dou?’

‘Nothing,’ she says.

But he insists, and there is anger in his voice. Anger at these unreasonable expectations, he has certainly never encouraged. There is only one way to disarm him.

‘In four months,’ she whispers, defeated, ‘you will be gone, and I’ll never see you again.’

He laughs now, and kisses her. His tongue smells of oysters and white wine.

‘Dear child,’ he says pleased. ‘You will forget me the minute I’m gone.’

‘Never,’ she says. ‘I’ll never forget you.’

He hands her a silk sack. ‘Put this on,’ he says. ‘I’ve promised you would dance for them.’

‘Now?’

‘They are waiting.’

She can hear the sound of a citra, a peal of laughter, a loud belch.

‘They think I’ve bought you from the Harem for a sack of gold. They want to see an odalisque dance.’

He points to a small room separated by a heavy curtain. Inside, on a dressing table, there is a mirror and a candle. Two cushions are stacked in the corner, but there are no chairs. The room smells of must; it has not been used for a long time.