Garden of Venus (23 page)

Read Garden of Venus Online

Authors: Eva Stachniak

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

Yesterday, Joseph brought her a bowl of crayfish. Still warm, for he wrapped it in a blanket. From Jezierski’s, he said, the best in Poland. He also brought her a pineapple, as sweet and juicy as she remembered from Istanbul.

The news of your blessed condition has brought tears to my eyes
, Mana wrote.
May the Lord and All the Saints have you in their care
.

‘God,’ the King says, ‘is the greatest of gardeners, for He has created the Garden of Eden from which, Adam, in spite of original sin, salvaged the last shards of light
coming from the Tree of Knowledge. These shards of divine light, this primal truth, can only be retrieved when man returns to nature and begins to ponder its mysteries. If followed faithfully, Nature defies death with birth, decay with new growth. It makes no allowance for status or class, does not distinguish between kings or paupers. Naked we are all equal. We are all human. We all have the right to happiness.’

He picks up a book and reads to her:

The Melancholy Garden is to offer a somewhat sombre atmosphere, cause sweet reflection and lead our minds toward the contemplation of the eternal. Thick, shady forests, an abandoned cemetery, ruins overgrown with moss, a chapel-tomb splendid in its isolation, a moonlit path by the lake where shadows bathe in the velvet darkness of the water, all are fitting ornaments there. In such scenery thoughts naturally wander toward death and parting, toward the sweetness of friendship and the pangs of love. The best for such a garden are trees sheathed in dark bark, with gnarled trunks and drooping boughs.

‘Such a garden,’ the King says, ‘is nature cultivated by human toil, tamed by wisdom and tender friendship. Those who love gardens, love humanity itself. But not the formal gardens of the French. A straight line does not make for the shortest path. Human life is fraught with mysteries and secrets. Those who love gardens welcome that melancholy that seizes them in the labyrinth of paths and ruins, for they know that it is through this melancholy that they can free themselves from the shackles of the body.’

How much of the boy is still in him she thinks, in spite of all this talk of melancholy and death: a boy eager for another day, a curious boy whose mind cannot stay still.
His voice is soft and warm. She wonders what his face looks like without the powdered wig. Does he notice how his presence makes the students bend over their paintings, shoot furtive glances at them? She has heard that he likes to lecture them on the finer points of painting. He likes the colouring of Rubens, the contours of Veronese and the costumes of Rembrandt. He likes the blend of monumental and sensual.

‘The way to the Truth leads through a labyrinth.’

‘The way to Friendship leads through the language of the heart.’

‘The way to the depths of one’s soul leads through solitude.’

Wasn’t it his fault, she has heard, that, in 1772 Russia, Prussia, and Austria helped themselves to slices of Poland? A price for the crown his lover put on his head?

Anything he touches, she has heard, turns to dust.

A builder of ruins.

He takes her arm and leads her out of the studio, to the visible relief of the students whose shoulders slump and whose eyes wander away from the painted canvases. She can smell her own warm body, the wafts of attar of roses she had smeared on her wrists in the morning. In his right hand, spotted with brown patches, a white handkerchief wavers.

‘Is this a sign of your capitulation, Sire.’

‘Absolute surrender,’ he says. ‘My life is in your beautiful hands.’

‘You are pardoned then.’ She touches his arm with her fan. Lightly, like in a game of tag.

Mystery shall not be revealed too eagerly. In the King’s bedroom she stands still. The touch of his soft hand makes her tremble.

On the desk in his bedroom she has seen pages of the
digests his librarian prepares every day: digests of discoveries and theories, summaries of long books, files on things like serfdom or constitutional law in which she has little interest. A lightning conductor is another matter, drawing electric sparks from the clouds.

‘That I’d like to see,’ she murmurs.

‘I’ll show you one then. In Ujazdów. Tomorrow if you wish.’

The sounds of a harp reach them from the small antechamber beside the King’s bedroom. The curtains are drawn. The servants have been told not to disturb them. Sometimes their footsteps can be heard, fading into the distance.

Above the desk a woman’s face stares at her from a portrait.
If only a king can ask for your hand, then I will become king
. This is what he wrote to this
mistress of his fate
who gave him the Polish crown. ‘Her true name is Sophie too,’ he said with a lingering sadness. Empress Catherine, she has heard, has little patience with sentimental lovers.

‘It is all forgotten now,’ he lies. ‘Even the most acute of pains, is dulled with time.’

She closes her eyes and lets his lips caress her neck, slide down her breasts, his fingers are writing something on her belly. ‘Nothing,’ he says when she asks what it is. He is a gentle lover who waits for her to follow. His kisses are soft and fleeting, like the wings of butterflies, like snowflakes melting on her body.

‘Your skin is like fire,’ he whispers.

He smells of pomade and good perfume. He doesn’t touch wine or spirits. Not even to toast his infatuation, his delight and the moments of sweet oblivion.

How often she has dreamt of him. Once, in Istanbul, she vowed to become his slave. She would have held the towel for him in the Turkish bath, if he let her. Now, she
laughs out loud at the thought. He has made love to her, and now puts his head on her breast and talks of his burdens. The kingdom is like a stone around his neck, weighing him down. Poland is a weak country between strong, ruthless neighbours. Should we side with Russia, Prussia or Austria? Play one against the other? Resist their meddling with our affairs? Play for time and strengthen the kingdom with reforms? Play for time and do nothing, not to upset the delicate balance?

She never lets her eyes off him. This is a man, she thinks, who likes women.

‘Prince Potemkin,’ he says, ‘assures me that a strong union with Russia will not affect Polish sovereignty. Sometimes I can believe him. Sometimes I fear that the Russian power is too great to oppose. That it will crush us forever. That whatever we do we don’t have a chance.

‘Prince Potemkin,’ he says, seeing bewilderment in her eyes, ‘has been for some time the most-beloved favourite of the Russian Empress. He is a brilliant general. Catherine would like to see him rewarded with a kingdom. If he were elected to the Polish throne, once it becomes vacant, it would be in his interest to strengthen Poland, wouldn’t it? And Catherine might listen to him.’

The sigh with which he says it means that the Russian Empress is no longer ready to listen to Stanislaw August. It also means that these desperate measures
have
to be considered, if Poland is to survive – no more grand gestures, no more civil wars, no more discord – but how to do it in a country where magnates are richer and more powerful than the King?

In the night, surrounded by candles burning out, the King of Poland is confessing to her.

‘Once, everything I was doing seemed almost divine in its purpose. Now I think of nothing but the predictability of human emotions, of greed and intrigue.’

She recalls what he told her of souls rolling from one body to another. She has thought about this for a long time. The world is split into layers, of which we know but an outer one. We are like blind men touching an elephant, asking if it is long and flexible Or stout and solid? It is a world of invisible connections, of lives touching.

‘I’m tired of the human nature that always makes the same mistakes,’ he says. ‘That always moves in the same circles, in the same ruts. That destroys itself in the same way, by dwelling on the very thing that gives it pain. I’m tired of life.’

She touches his hand and says that it is the goodness of his nature, the warmth of his heart that makes him suffer like that, his sacrifices for the nation, for the betterment of his people. This is the fate of kings.

‘Istanbul,’ she says, ‘where I come from, is the city of fires. A fire can start in one wooden house and by the end of the night the whole quarter can be lost. It is the wind that carries these fires from one house to the other, until they stop at the edge of the Bosphorus, or at the top of one of the hills, or if there are no more houses to burn. But then life returns. New houses are always built on the ashes of the old, new gardens bloom.’

He thinks about it for a while. A lesson from a simpler world, he calls it, a world where every moment has to be measured against life or death.

The German musicians

The German musicians gathered in the antechamber as the Graf had ordered. They unpacked their flute, violins and cello. The grand piano was already in the salon where they were to play.

Behind the curtain, a dying Polish countess wished to listen to music. They would hear her sometimes but they
were not to pay any attention. Once she wished them to stop, a footman or a maid would come and tell them. If no one came, they were to continue playing. The countess was a grand lady, a great beauty whose name was mentioned alongside those of kings and queens. Their music was taking her mind off pain and death.

‘Marais?’ the first violinist asked, immediately deciding this would not be suitable.

‘Komm maybe,’ the second violinist suggested.

‘Hoffnung might be better.’

‘Beethoven?’

‘Mozart,’ the pianist said, to everyone’s agreement.

The singer would come on certain days, the Graf’s footman informed them. His Lordship’s own choice, a beautiful soprano. Frau Hellmann. She would like to sing ‘Wie Nahte Mir Der Schlummer’, from
Der Freischutz
.

‘She can sing whatever she wishes,’ the pianist said. ‘We are professionals.’

The doors to the countess’s room opened, and the footman ushered them inside, holding a finger on his lips. They would have to learn to walk like cats, feeling their way around, for a thick, burgundy curtain was drawn across the room, cutting them off from daylight. They took their places, placed sheets of music on their stands. The footman lit thick wax candles that gave them enough light to see the scores. The grand piano was in excellent condition: polished, well-kept, no sluggish hammers. They were now to tune the instruments to it, as quietly as they could. This would be, they were told, a most satisfactory engagement.

They began to play. Mozart was a good choice. Then they would follow with Beethoven – the string quartet in F minor.

During their first intermission, they spoke of Berlin where, since the royal power would not have the people
discuss politics or social matters, men fought over music. Now Spontini was pitted against von Weber. Spontini had been called a simplistic fool, and his Kappelmeister’s salary of 4000 thalers had been declared excessive.

‘The price of royal favour,’ the violinist said.

‘But the whole of Berlin from the Hallish Gate to the King’s Castle sings
Jungfernkranz
,’ the flautist said. ‘What would you rather have?’

‘The money,’ the violinist laughed.

When the talk returned to their present engagement, they all came to the same conclusion that the worst part of it would be the uncertainty. There might be days when they would play for merely an hour; there might be days when six hours might pass and there would be no sign of the footman.

‘How can we conserve energy,’ the violinist asked, ‘if we do not know even, in approximation, how long we are to play.’

But he had to confess that he liked the idea of playing to defy death.

Sophie

Warsaw is at her feet. Madame de Witt is the darling of the salons. Madame de Witt, a beautiful Greek, her past shrouded in delightful contradictions. Was she really a Sultan’s slave, an odalisque, and did a mysterious European prince really buy her freedom? Is she really related to the Maurocordato princes? Why has she ever married this dreadful de Witt? Is it true that the King himself had to intervene, for the de Witts wanted to keep her immured in Kamieniec?

Monsieur Charles Boscamp requests the honour of seeing Madame de Witt.

He is a pimp, she has heard and a traitor who takes
money from the Russians. A coward who has feigned illness to avoid duels and who would invent any slander that might fetch him a few ducats. Even the King, whose judgement in people has to be doubted, has lost patience and turned away: ‘Oh, don’t even mention that despicable creature, my dear Sophie,’ Princess Lubomirska exclaimed, holding her nose.

She makes him wait in the antechamber and peeks at him through the keyhole before letting him in. He is thinner than she remembers and stooped. Without a wig his head looks smaller. He is a man of earthen complexion pacing the room like a wolf in a cage. No, not a wolf, like an old, mangy dog hoping for a treat. His
Jewel
, his
Precious Stones
. How easy it had been to impress her then!

Don’t spit on those below you, Mana would say. Think what they might do when you fall. From a crystal decanter she takes a sip of claret. Right from the bottle, without bothering with a glass. The claret warms her up.

‘Monsieur Charles Boscamp,’ the footman announces and the internuncio walks in.

She cherishes his uncertainty, the quick look at her dressing table, at the crystal vases of orchids and tulips, the silver brush and mirror, her string of pearls.

Not bad for little Dou-Dou, a daughter of a cattle trader and a whore.

‘This,’ she announces, ‘will be a brief encounter. I don’t have much time. Life is curious at times, isn’t it?’

‘My precious Dou-Dou,’ he says, laughing. ‘I
know
you.’

Underneath the layer of powder, his face is covered in blotches. Have his teeth been always so stained or is the morning light always harsh, unflattering? She winces at the thought of her old self. She wonders how she could have ever doubted herself, thought him powerful or attractive.

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