Garden of Venus (25 page)

‘May I,’ she asks, pointing at the torches.

The juggler nods silently and picks up two of the torches. He watches as she tries to throw them into the air. She is clumsy at first, but soon remembers the secret of juggling. She has to throw them in the right way – not too high, not above eye-level, and always at the same interval. The juggler gives her one more torch. ‘Three are easier than two,’ he seems to be saying. She does not understand German, but she understands the vigorous nod of his head and big smile.

The body remembers. The hands, the eyes slip into a pattern once thought forgotten. A rhythm she can feel inside her. All that is left is to surrender to it and follow.

‘
Gut
,’ the juggler says. ‘
Sehr gut
.’

A small crowd is gathering around her, she can hear a hushed whisper, a gasp, a rustle of a dress. Behind her something is burning. The juggler is waiting for her to pause. As soon as she does, catching the torches in her hands, he lights them with a rag drenched in oil and motions to her to start again.

The flame is a distraction, for she already knows the secret of success. Absolute concentration. Refusal to look
anywhere but at what is essential, what is in front of her, until the juggler steps right beside her and takes over. Only then, breasts heaving with excitement, her nostrils flaring, she closes her eyes and steps into a sea of applause.

Before the de Witts are ready to leave for Spa, a story makes its rounds in the Berlin salons. Graf Alfred von Haefen put on a blue coat and a yellow vest and stole Joseph de Witt’s pistol. He made sure the de Witts were not at home and told the servants Major de Witt asked him to fetch something from his room. Pistol in hand, the Graf went to see his best friend and, in the friend’s living room, declared that he was going to shoot himself because he loved Comtesse de Witt, and further life without her was impossible. Then, he made a great show of aiming at his heart, banging his head against the wall, and smashing a marble bust of Caesar. His friend, von Rutenberg, with the help of his valet, restrained the Graf and tried to calm him down. It was he who, the following day, brought Comtesse de Witt the very note her suitor had planned to leave for her, stained with his blood:

The leather-bound
sztambuch
with gilded pages of best vellum paper is filling up with poems, sketches, and confessions. Calligraphed words adorned with dried flowers:

Beside you, my sweet countess, Venus herself stands outshone;

I have come, I have seen, I have been conquered;

To please her all eagerly sought …

Men, she has decided, do not always like to win. They too know that there is sweetness in surrender, a thick, sticky sweetness of surprising strength. Honey, as someone told her, can help move frescoes. A thick layer is strong enough to tear a layer of plaster off a wall.

Animal magnetism, this property of heavenly bodies, the earth, and all living creatures, renders us susceptible to our reciprocal actions. You, Madame, possess that force in concentration higher than anyone else
.

Like light reflected and multiplied by mirrors
.

Propagated and increased by sound
.

A magnet?

A goddess?

Spa is no different than Berlin or Warsaw. Men follow her as if bewitched. Invitations pour in. Not a day passes without another tribute to her charm and beauty. Not a day passes without dancing, laughing and rushing from one salon to another.

In Spa her most ardent admirer is Emperor Joseph II of Austria. All he asks for is her presence at his side and undivided attention to his monologues on the quality of the sturgeons sent to him by Catherine of Russia, or on how ancient Roman and Greek monarchies differ from modern. The progress of civilisation, he likes to say, must be ascribed to stability. He likes to make her laugh at her suitors, their undisguised ardour, their jostling for her attention. ‘Look, look at this tall chevalier who is staring at you,’ he whispers in her ear. ‘Is he a fool or a barbarian?’

Comtesse de Witt, the Emperor of Austria insists, cannot be allowed to proceed on her journey without proper introductions. In Paris, especially, she will be his protégée and this is why he entrusts
la belle comtesse
to the care of his beloved sister, the Queen of France.
A
friend so special and dear
, he writes to Marie Antoinette in a letter he ordered copied for her,
who has warmed my heart. The word boredom is banished forever from the place where the beautiful Comtesse de Witt stamps her foot
.

Why does it delight her so much?

Joseph likes to read this letter to her, raising a glass across the table, in anticipation of further conquests. This and other follies men commit for her, lured by admiration, lust, or mere hope.

There is pride in Joseph’s voice. Isn’t a woman’s worth measured with trophies of the heart, with games of conquest and surrender? Isn’t a man’s worth measured with the importance of his wife’s conquests?

But then, one night, he touches her belly gently and places his hand on it, waiting. His hand is warm and soft and for a brief moment she thinks of Lysander’s kiss, in that beautiful meadow. If he had truly loved her, would she still be there?

There is a scar on his right cheek and her fingers know its contours by heart.

‘One of your future soldiers, Sir,’ she whispers into his ear, ‘is very badly behaved and kicks me in the stomach!’

From her dream that night she remembers sailing on a beautiful lake, its surface smooth and shiny. She dips her hand in the cool water and puts it to her lips. The boat she is in creaks and sways like a wooden cradle.

By the time they reach Paris she has seen enough to know that Joseph de Witt has his merits. He may be just a major in the Polish army with no clear prospects, curiously blind to the simplest of human desires, deaf to the finer points of elegant conversation, but – unlike other husbands she has seen – he is not jealous of his wife’s advancements.

Sophie, Comtesse de Witt. Her travelling trunks are packed with Greek chitons and dresses of pale muslin and chintz, the colour of the spring sky. Her stockings are scarlet or the colour of ripe cherries. Sometimes she cannot stop herself from touching the smooth velvet of the carriage seat, the ribbed silk of her shoes, or smelling the sandalwood handle of her fan.

Every day her hair is transformed into a thick and frizzed mass of black curls, puffed and padded to surround her face and shoulders. She needs five chests for her hats alone.

In a letter to her mother she describes a Parisian lady sticking her head through the carriage window, for the height of her hair allowed no other way to travel. Paris, she writes is not unlike a district of Phanar, in Istanbul, where Maria Glavani lives now, thanks to her daughter’s generosity. Lives in comfort though not yet in luxury, next door to a rich spice merchant whose wife impatiently awaits Sophie’s sketches of Parisian fashions and her descriptions of the city. Sophie can almost hear this woman she has never seen, black lace revealing white skin, gold rings flashing, talking to her friends. ‘Comtesse de Witt, my neighbour’s daughter, says Paris is just like Phanar. The best families live there, the most select society. She’s married to a Polish count now, a friend of kings and queens.

‘One of the Phanariots, one of us.’

Comtesse de Witt has seen the crowd of pedlars and merchants in the corridors of Versailles, so
that the Queen cannot step out of her private rooms without breathing in the effluvia of their merchandise and tripping over the sellers who hope to entice her fancy
. (She is very fond of collecting elegant words. Someone in Berlin had assured her that she was ‘dispersing seductive
effluvia
.’)

Comtesse de Witt is also making sure to let everyone
know that her good fortune is not excessive and not without shadows. She complains that the fashions are exceedingly dear and, with her husband’s limited resources, she can afford but an imitation of Chinese lacquer and very ordinary
chiné
for her dresses (lavender blue and shades of lilac are
de rigueur –
white too but patterned like marble or foliage).
If it weren’t for the thoughtful gifts we receive from most illustrious benefactors, my dear Maman, I would have to blush with shame at the state of my wardrobe
.

Mana sent back words of caution.
Wishing for too much
, she writes,
can bring you down. Perhaps, now that the Lord has blessed you and you are with child, you should devote yourself to your family
. To her repeated invitation to come and live with her in Kamieniec, Mana always sends the same words of refusal.
Your happiness and well-being is more important than my comfort. With the money you’ve sent me, I lack for nothing here. May the Lord and Saint Nicholas bless you, my beloved daughter, as I bless you
.

So she does not tell Mana that Comte d’Artois has sent yet another bouquet of flowers, snow-white roses from his garden, and presented her with an ostrich feather for her hair. Or that Comtesse de Polignac, her new best friend, assures her that the Queen herself wishes to receive her in Trianon, where even the King of France is not always welcome and where, if he is too boring, clocks are set forward to make him depart earlier than he has planned. ‘
La Belle Phanariote
,’ Marie Antoinette has said, ‘my brother says that she knows the mysteries of the Seraglio.’

With Diane de Polignac, Sophie curls up like a cat before the fire. Their bursts of uncontrolled laughter annoy Joseph who makes a show of leaving them alone, just like any Parisian husband. They could have been sisters, the way they understand each other’s moods, when to talk and when to keep silent.

Diane likes lists. Where you have to be seen: Opera, les Tuileries, the palace of Madame de la Reynière. Who should paint your portrait: Madame Vigée-Lebrun. What you absolutely must have: an ostrich feather for your hat.

They plan
tableaux vivantes
. Anchises, a shepherd tending his sheep on the wild scarps of Mount Ida, Aphrodite appearing to him clad in a gown brighter than gleaming fire, like an unwed maiden, filling him with sweet longing of the flesh. Or, Aphrodite redeemed, depicting the moment in which Hephaestos having placed an invisible net to capture his wayward wife with Hermes, and having called all gods to bear witness to his wife’s shame, sees them overcome with desire for her, demanding her freedom.

In Paris days begin long past noon. Only tradesmen see the light of the morning. Real life prefers the dimmed hours of the twilight, moonlit promenades, the masquerades of the night. Sophie needs to learn so much, shed her provincial ways. Forget Kamieniec, Warsaw.

She is a good pupil. ‘I don’t have to tell you anything any more,’ Diane de Polignac tells her friend with awe after Sophie manoeuvres her way past her creditors, her chin up, an act impossible only a few days before.

They talk of men. Of lovers. Of how love likes the drama of a perpetual crisis: a death threat, a fainting spell, a torrent of panegyrics and recriminations, a touch of jealousy. A lover should never be sure; never unthreatened, never bored.

A slave? No. You don’t want to make them think that.

To this friend Sophie confesses her restlessness. Even in the most sumptuous of rooms, something compels her to stand up and walk from the curtained window to the door, from the bookcase to the ormolu clock. As if every room were a cage, every door an escape, a promise of something better. While Joseph complains about the tedious carriage
rides, she welcomes any movement. She will not miss a ball or a hunt, not until the baby won’t let her jump out of bed in the morning. She knows what’s best for her. She knows that it is stillness that would harm her.

‘Joseph,’ Diane gasps. ‘You can do better than de Witt. You should do better. I hope you do.’

Diane does not believe in husbands having much to say in the matter of their wives’ daily occupations. A marriage is but a contract of two estates, of two independent people who lead their own lives. If a husband dares protest …

Joseph dares not protest. Sometimes in the rage he can evoke in her, she throws things at him, a slipper, a book, a jar with cream, a silver box from which the calling cards spill to the floor, and tells him to go away and never come back. Tells him she deserves better than the bowlegged major of a provincial fortress with a pockmarked face. He takes it as if it were a joke. He ducks her blows, and she does not insist. For now she delights in his surrender, in the fact that he has chosen to please and placate rather than demand. Perhaps he too knows that this is the only way to keep her.

For as long as he can.

Diane says she looks ravishing. She says that placing a soft kiss on her perfumed cheek. ‘You look ravishing too,’ Sophie gasps in return. They both laugh. There is no jealousy in Diane de Polignac, no resentment at Sophie’s conquests. As if she lived for the moments when the two of them, loosening their corsets and kicking off their shoes, would lie down on an ottoman and recall the sweet moments of triumph. Have you seen the way Comte d’Artois looked at you? Have you seen his eyes?

‘No,’ Sophie lies. At the royal hunt the other day, when she outraced him on her grey mare and plunged her hand first into the bleeding neck of a slain stag, the King’s
brother had grabbed her hand and licked the hot blood off her fingers.

‘Come,’ she says to her friend. ‘Forget them all. I have an idea.’

‘What is it?’ Diane asks, her eyes twinkling.

They throw off their gowns and jewels. They unpin their hair. The maids are aghast as they put on the simple dresses of servant girls. Diane’s footman is ordered to come with them and not give away their disguise at the threat of instant dismissal. ‘You,’ Sophie says, lifting his chin with her finger, ‘look like a man who would know where two beautiful country girls could dance until their legs can’t carry them any more.’