Garden of Venus (18 page)

‘Oh, just go,’ Pavel said in the end, slamming the bedroom door behind him. She had not allowed him to touch her since Volodia’s birth, pleading that she was still sore, but after he left, she found herself sobbing for
hours in her bedroom. He would go to Berlin as soon as he got his permission, ‘the very hour I get it’ he promised, ‘but I’ll not disobey my orders hiding behind your mother’s skirts’. This he said, as she was climbing the steps to the carriage, just before the footman folded them away.

The two carriages were speeding toward Berlin. Madame Kisielev’s French maid, Colette, was in the other one, sharing the space with her clothes and supplies for the journey. Volodia and Katia, his wetnurse, were with her. Even with the superior Prussian roads, the constant shaking of the carriage was getting to her. Her stomach heaved, her legs hurt. The baby was crying, too, the poor soul. Choking on his tears, his dear face purple with exertion. If she were too late to see her mother alive, she would never forgive herself or Pavel and his insistence that there was no rush. ‘You are no longer at her beck and call,’ she remembered him saying, ‘You are a wife and mother first.’ To think that once she used to think of Pavel as droll and a bit awkward, in need of her love.

The carriage swayed and for a moment it seemed to her she could hear a knock on the door. ‘Maman is dead,’ she thought, her heart folding in fear. ‘I’ll never see her again.’

‘It’s the cord, Ma’am,’ Katia said, cheerfully. ‘The footmen never know how to tie it properly.’

It was the cord. She could see it, just above the window. Volodia’s birth five months ago had made her fearful. She couldn’t stand hearing people talk of babies dying or stillborn. She was still agonizing whether to inoculate her son against smallpox, an action her mother advised strongly. But Countess Sokolov’s daughter had died shortly after being given the inoculation. Was it really because she was sickly and would have died anyway?

You are a mother now. I tried to hide the truth from
you for so long, for I wanted your heart to be light when the baby was growing in you
.

Yes, she was a mother, and she was afraid. Her two brothers and an older sister were buried in Sophievka, among the flowers and the rocks. When she was little she stood by their graves and asked them to come and play with her. She even envied them for Maman said that they were angels, now. Hovering over the garden, hiding among the flowers, invisible, but all-seeing. She wondered if they liked watching her from the clouds. Now she wondered how her mother could have withstood such pain.

Volodia, her beautiful baby, had been born with his face down. The midwife didn’t want to tell her that, but Sophie had found out anyway. Face down toward the earth, toward the grave.

‘Please, Madame,’ the wetnurse said, her smile revealing a missing tooth. Volodia was snuggled in her arms, and Sophie found the sight painful. When she insisted Katia put the baby in the wicker cradle, the baby cried. He also cried when she, his mother, held him.

‘We shall stop soon,’ Sophie Kisielev said. ‘At the first post.’

This constant struggle over her own child was something Sophie had not foreseen even though many of her friends had warned her. ‘You begin to fight for your baby with them,’ they said about wetnurses. ‘As if the milk in their breasts gave them all the rights.’ Katia was unabashed in making her demands: beer in the morning; honey; big spoonfuls of jam on white bread, buttered. Everything Katia ate or drank nourished the baby and never in her life had she been so pampered. Sophie often caught the glimpse of the wetnurse touching the folds of fat over her hips with pleasure.

‘I want to pee,’ Katia said, still grinning.

There was a shadow of contempt in Katia’s eyes, contempt
covered with an elaborate show of affection and subservience. If Sophie could, she would have dismissed Katia long ago, but her milk was good for Volodia, and they both knew that with the first three wetnurses he had been vomiting curds.

‘He has the General’s eyes and his smile,’ Katia crooned, swaying back and forth. ‘My little hawk.’

The carriage was approaching the station and Volodia, sensing the change of pace, had woken up. Sophie insisted on taking him in her arms, and Katia relinquished the baby, pleased that he began to cry as soon as she handed him over.

‘Bad boy,’ she said. ‘It’s your own Mama. Your Mamochka. Don’t cry.’

Sophie smiled at her son’s tiny face, trying to calm him down. She rocked him in her arms. She kissed his tiny cheeks. But his eyes were closed and, wailing, he paid no attention to her.

‘I’m hungry,’ Katia said. There were two wet spots on her dress where the milk leaked from her breasts. ‘You should eat, too, Madame General. You are too thin. Even His Highness Pavel Dimitrievich says so.’

An hour later, after the whole entourage had been settled at the inn, Sophie Kisielev came down to the dining room. She needed to stop thinking about death.

The proprietor welcomed her with a bow and pointed to the reserved, private dining room he kept, he informed her with another bow, only for his select guests. Two of his other guests were there already, an old, retired Prussian general with a wife who, Sophie decided, couldn’t be older than sixteen. ‘General Kolwitz,’ he introduced himself. ‘And Frau Kolwitz,’ he said, his wrinkled face – powdered and rouged – beaming with pride. The young wife bowed and smiled softly, not able to hide her pleasure at
the sight of her ringed finger which she placed on the edge of the table, the Belgian lace around her cuffs, and the string of pearls on her white neck. What do you know of me to judge, her eyes asked.

‘Tell Comtesse Kisielev what we have seen in Berlin, my darling,’ the General said, after they completed their introductions.

The General’s wife was delighted to oblige. Her high-pitched voice brought back the memory of the carriage and the insolence of the wetnurse. Sophie tried not to wince as her ears filled with the exclamations meant to describe a military parade in Berlin. ‘Such strength, such courage, such presence. Ah, the discipline of the soldiers who marched with one step! A giant machine of the army so well oiled.’

Frau Kolwitz leaned toward her and asked in a whisper, ‘Is it a girl or a boy?’

For a split second Sophie did not know what she meant. Only when she heard, ‘The baby,’ she understood that their arrival must have been observed and commented upon.

‘A boy,’ she said, smiling. ‘My first one.’

‘How wonderful,’ Frau Kolwitz said with such obvious rapture that Sophie’s irritation disappeared. This was why, when they had eaten the simple meal of consommé and roast beef, she agreed to a game of faro. ‘If I win,’ she decided, ‘all will be well. Maman will recover. Volodia will grow. Pavel will love me again, and I’ll be happy.’

General Kolwitz was the
tailleur
, the banker. Five other travellers joined them around the oval table covered in green baize, one agreeing to be the croupier. She bet on the jack of spades. She doubled her stake. Tripled it. She won. Then she won again. She would remember this moment for years when as Kis (to her friends) she would be playing in the casinos of Monte Carlo, Paris, Vienna.
Separated from her husband, a beautiful woman in a lamé turban, collecting her winnings with gloved hands. Writing to her younger sister from her Parisian boudoir, knowing Countess Olga Naryshkin would think her a sentimental fool.
We both married Russian Generals and now we have to atone for the sins against our beloved country
.

Every day she comes up with a new reason to stay in Fokshany: muddy roads; her own delicate health; rumours of brigands on the prowl.

The horse she is riding takes a sharp turn, to a clearing in the woods. Her two chaperones, ride past her, lost on their phantom chase. Lysander is waiting for her, his face beaming with joy that a simple trick could work so well. A beautiful carpet is laid on the grass, a basket is there with the delicacies she craves. (‘Are you always that hungry?’ he has asked.) Partridge pâté with cranberries, roasted lamb, fried aubergines. She claps her hands and jumps off her horse, right into this beautiful spring day, right into his arms.

He feeds her morsels of lamb, fresh figs, plump dates he fishes out from the basket. His hand brushes her cheek. It is a hot day and her skirt is slightly damp. He smiles and opens her blouse, so white against her skin.

Something has broken out of her. Something free, soaring, more precious than life. Everything that has passed, has led her to this perfect moment and, therefore, everything that has passed can now be forgotten. Love knows no past, cares nothing for what has been. Love wipes away everything that is not bliss.

Her arms touch the back of his neck. Her lips part to receive him. If ever there were gods in that other, ancient Greece, they couldn’t have been more like them.

‘I love you,’ she whispers.

He is so hungry for her that his hands tremble with impatience. Fumble with the hooks and lace. Tear at the garters. She has to help him free herself from the clothes that try to hide her body. ‘Wait,’ she laughs. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

She is dazed by the sun, the wine, the food. Her Greek prince is the lover after her own soul.

In that meadow, impatience overcomes restraint. Pleasure washes over her like a spring torrent. In his arms she is without will. There is a force that links them together, a force more powerful than her own wishes. With him the world is before her. The world with no lies.

She has always been lucky, hasn’t she?

She is still giddy with love when she wakes up the next morning in her Fokshany inn, her skin tingling, her lips swollen from his bites. Carlo is giving her a dirty look. She doesn’t care.

‘Why such a long face?’ she asks cheerfully. ‘Don’t worry, Carlo, it’s not your fault.’

‘No,’ he says with venom. ‘It’s not my fault that you’ve made yourself into a whore.’

Something in his voice strikes her, makes her sit up on her bed. The whole town of Fokshany is talking of nothing else but how Prince bej Zadi had his way with the internuncio’s fiancée, thus avenging himself and his best friend the
hospodar
of Moldavia. Avenging himself for a transaction – a shipment of Arabian horses whose bloodlines turned out to be far from pure – in which the two had been the losers. Now, the dear internuncio is welcome to take what remains of the Territory the Prince has claimed with far more vigour.

This is not all.

The internuncio has not left many markings of his
exploits, the Prince says to anyone who will listen, being a mere potboiler in that department, for the
lady
in question is craving for the pleasures so long denied.

‘You want to hear what else he says?’ Carlo extracts a folded sheet from his breast pocket. His voice hisses with bitterness and fear. Carlo has been fooled and the Master will not forget such humiliation.

‘No,’ she says, but she cannot stop him.

‘You are lying,’ she screams and throws her shoe at Carlo who ducks and covers his ears. She can taste the bitterness of her tears, feel the flush of crimson on her cheeks. She should have known better, but didn’t. Mana was right.

But was she?

What if it is but a cruel joke. Or the work of her enemies who envy her. There could be so many reasons. A prince has fallen in love with a commoner. A prince has been thinking of marriage.

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ she screams.

In her mind she can see him harried with grief. He has been admonished for his love, chastised for the choice of his heart. Told she is not good enough for him. Is he crying with pain now, thinking she may believe these vicious lies?

She sits down at a writing table:

She places three kisses in the empty spot below and puts her name there. But Carlo will not deliver the message. From the window she spots a small boy who is helping the groom. The door to her room is locked again, so she throws the note wrapped in her own handkerchief and asks the boy to deliver it.

‘Yes,
kokona
,’ the boy says, but not until he picks up and examines the coin she throws down after her note.

She wants to climb down, lower herself on the sheets tied into a rope, run to her beloved, hear from his own lips what has happened. But she will wait. He will come soon, she tells herself. He will come to tell her how afraid he was she might believe these cruel words.

If you let them drink from the tit, Mana has often said, why would they buy the cow.

In the evening her throat is hoarse, swollen, her cheeks are hot with fever. She has to shield her eyes from candlelight and she is shivering. She feels something itchy on her neck, at the base of her hair. In the mirror she sees these are red blotches. When she looks closer she notes that the redness has spread to her neck and her face. She screams.

‘The girl has measles.’ The doctor’s voice is matter-of-fact, resigned. The calculation is simple. The contagion has entered her body and is spreading fast, weakening her defences. In her mouth there are small white spots with red circles around them. She needs all the strength now to fight death that wants to claim her.