Garden of Venus (41 page)

She is thirty-eight years old.

She is with child.

In St Petersburg, the eldest of Felix’s children, Yuri, is searching for an ally. His father’s anger at the constant news of gambling debts and bad company needs to be softened, disarmed. This is his fourth letter to her:

In the morning room Felix smiles at the sight of her. His eyelids are reddened at the edges. Letters and dispatches are scattered on the table. The Lubomirskis, their neighbours, have sent them a basket of tulip bulbs for Sophievka. ‘
Semper Augustus
,’ he says, holding the flesh-coloured bulb up to the light. ‘How very thoughtful.’

She sits down beside him. Mornings are not kind to her. Her mind is sluggish, dazed with sleep. Every morning she rubs her cheeks with chunks of ice, to bring up the colour and firm her skin. Felix wakes up at dawn. He has already taken a ride through the fields. His hair smells of wind, black earth and burning leaves.

This is the way he likes their days to be. The two of them, together, exchanging news. The price of wheat is up. The price of mutton is down. The steward of the Uman estate is asking what to do with the flock of sheep – sell them one by one, or as a herd? They will have to go to Uman soon, check the progress on the garden, mediate the disputes. The chief engineer Metzel, a strange man who never smiles at her, is making enemies. Mathematics is the key to all knowledge, he told her once. The kindest rumour that reaches them is his declaration that all people fall into two categories: they are either ‘mathematicians’ or ‘cattle’.

‘What are you reading now?’

The papers and dispatches bring disturbing news. A week ago, on February 12, 1798, the former King of Poland, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, died in St Petersburg, and speculations abound as to the cause of his death. He had a cup of bouillon in the morning, and by the evening he was dead. The Tsar was his last visitor. In France a young general, Napoleon Bonaparte is shipping his army from Tulon to some undisclosed location, which is news most troubling to the English, Felix says. From Italy rumours arrive of legions formed from Polish exiles and prisoners of war, getting ready to fight at Napoleon’s side for the resurrection of the lost motherland.

Felix’s voice is agitated. He doesn’t like the new Tsar, Catherine’s son. Calls him a deluded madman, unworthy of his mother, left to steer Mother Russia at this time of turmoil. Predictions increasingly fascinate him: trajectories of comets, patterns of floods and droughts, the swarms of locusts, the shape of bones found in the steppes. All these signs point to a time of confusion and spilled blood. There will be a war, he says, there will be slaughter. He refuses to go to St Petersburg. He refuses to go anywhere. He wants to live in peace, with her and the children.

The King is dead.

She closes her eyes and sees him bending over her, his kisses reaching deep into her womb in a teasing dance that will never be. It is the force of regret that surprises her. For years she has hardly thought of him at all, but now she can think of no one else, of nothing but the longing of her body, the dull pain of desire.

Quickly she mutters a prayer for him, a prayer for the dead. She will order a mass in the Tulchin chapel for his soul.

‘Any news from Yuri?’

Felix takes his eyes off the letter he is reading. He frowns, reluctant to think of what annoys him.

‘Yuri is in trouble again.’

‘Perhaps you are too severe with him.’

‘Two million zlotys in debt. They say he doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t eat. All he does is gamble.’

‘He should live here with us. In his father’s house. You said yourself that St Petersburg is not good for a young man. Here, we can make sure he does not fall into bad company.’

Felix gives her a puzzled look, but now the thought is planted in his head. She will make sure that it is not abandoned. Perhaps he has not been the best of fathers: too indulgent, too willing to let his wife spoil Yuri, give in to his childish whims.

‘Josephine is still spoiling him,’ he says. Still making excuses for all his transgressions; still protecting him from the consequences of his foolishness; making him waste away his life, his future.

When Felix is angry, his voice quivers and his mouth twists. Without a wig his head seems so much smaller.

‘A young man needs a good example,’ she says. He needs discipline. He needs to ride at his father’s side each morning. Learn to take care of what one day will be his.

‘Think of this unborn child,’ she says, placing his hand on her belly. ‘Our baby will need a brother.’

It is Yuri who informs his father that Countess Josephine has finally agreed to a divorce. On the 28th April, 1798 (17th April the Russian style) the marriage between Count Felix Potocki and Madame de Witt,
née
Glavani Celice de Maurocordato is performed twice, first by a Roman Catholic priest, second by a Greek Orthodox one.

There will be no more bastards.

Some gambles pay off, she thinks.

Hope, sometimes, is enough.

When they arrived in Berlin in the late afternoon, the courtyard of von Haefen’s palace was covered with straw to muffle the sounds of the wheels. Her mother’s groom, Pietka, who held the door open for her and unfolded the step was silent, too. In Uman, he would have whistled with joy to have seen her.

News of their arrival had caused a commotion. Lights appeared in the windows, doors opened and closed. There was a lot of ruckus with bundles and baskets and hampers carried into the hall.

This must be Rosalia, she thought when a young woman rushed down the marble staircase. She had a tired, drawn face lit up by a lovely smile, pretty, in spite of dark circles under her eyes. ‘Rosalia Romanowicz,’ she said in a quiet, resigned voice. ‘Madame la Comtesse will be so happy. She has talked of little else for days.’

‘How is Maman?’

‘The pain is coming back. Doctor Lafleur …’ But Volodia’s crying made her stop in mid sentence. ‘May I see him?’ she asked.

Sophie Kisielev was just about to say that the baby was tired, that they were all tired, that she wanted to see her mother right away, but then changed her mind. Maman had written that Rosalia had been of great help in the last months. Katia was scowling, but did not dare to protest. Rosalia leant over the baby who watched her with interest, big blue eyes fixed on her face.

‘May I hold him please,’ she asked.

Noting Katia’s growing annoyance, Madame Kisielev nodded permission. The baby, cradled in Rosalia’s arms, did not protest.

The wetnurse would not concede defeat. She was listing the christening gifts Volodia had received: the silver set
that consisted of a beaker, a dish, a spoon, a knife and a fork. They were decorated with vine leaves and the knife and the fork were inscribed,
To Volodia Pavlowich Kisielev from his Grandmother Sophie Potocka
. The beaker was covered in babies jumping around naked, big fat babies with plump hands and knees.

Then there were the apostle spoons.

‘That is enough,’ Sophie Kisielev interrupted, annoyed at herself for letting Katia go on for that long. Then Volodia yawned, and his body stiffened in Rosalia’s arms.

‘Oh! He’s just having his little pee, Miss,’ Katia laughed, seeing alarm on Rosalia’s face. ‘You’d better give him to me.’

Two German grooms were already taking the luggage upstairs. The rooms, Rosalia assured her, were ready. Bright and far enough from the grand salon not to disturb the invalid. She had made sure the fire was kept lit for the last two days. There would be no draughts.

Olga arrived breathless, having run down the marble stairs, and threw herself into Sophie’s arms, crying. She seemed taller and thinner. In her eyes she could see fear. Maman, Olga said, already knew of her arrival and was waiting.

‘She’s been asking for you every day,’ Olga said.

‘How is she?’

Olga lowered her eyes and shook her head. ‘Is that your son?’ she asked instead, her voice on the edge, extending her hands to Volodia. Katia gave a sigh of satisfaction when Volodia began crying as soon as he left her plump arms.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Olga asked.

‘Nothing is wrong,’ Sophie snapped. ‘He’s tired. We all are.’

I’ve heard that, in Kamieniec, one of the Armenian merchants painted a mural right over his store, depicting an old, naked man, his shrivelled balls crookedly falling to one side. On both sides of the figure, there was an inscription, cleverly broken into two: CURVA
VITOVA. In utter innocence, anyone unfamiliar with Latin was told that the inscription meant ‘crooked balls’ and referred to the old man’s shrivelled instruments, but the whole of Kamieniec reeled with laughter, repeating ‘curva vitowa’: Madame de Witt is a whore
.

A delightful story, my reader may say, but I’m not one of the galliardours, Your Royal Highness, these troubadours or singers known for blackening the reputations of beautiful women and thus bringing on themselves cruel punishment, like Vidal from Toulouse who, as Nostradamus tells us, was deprived of his tongue (it was cut in two) for having offended a beautiful young woman in his songs. I also remember what old Athenian theologians so wisely maintained: that if God Almighty were angered by all human transgressions, then no creature would be more unhappy than the Creator, for He would
have to be torn, ceaselessly, by the emotions caused by human sins. Shouldn’t we thus assume that our Lord has acquired a somewhat thicker skin and shouldn’t we, perhaps, follow His divine example?

Thus, it is best to say, My Merciful Sovereign and Benefactor, that we have arrived at the point of our story where it might be necessary to drag a sponge over Dou-Dou’s scandalous life and respect her in her new position in this vale of tears. To her most appropriate would be the saying, Quantum mutatas ab illa! Oh, how different you are from the creature you once were! Or even: Omnia homini, dum vivit, speranda sunt. As long as one is alive all is possible …

A finger cut by a piece of glass, the blood hesitating for a moment before pouring through the edges of separated skin. A lash of a whip across her back and her buttocks. A candle flame on her finger, pinching her skin with heat. Bruises from jealous fists and heels, scratches on her face and arms, hair pulled out by the fistfuls. A slap on her cheek, so hard that she could feel a loosened tooth and taste the salty blood. The pain of a body falling off a galloping horse, the dull thud when she reaches the ground, the radiating pain of the fall. The pain of childbirth, of her womb opening to release the baby’s head, pain that makes her shiver, her teeth chatter.

A warm stream of saliva is flowing down her cheek. By the time it reaches her neck, it will cool down.

Felix is standing at the foot of her bed, dressed in black. Alive but like a statue of some dark hero, his hands crossed over his chest. His eyes, she thinks, are like two empty holes. If she lets him look at her for too long, she will melt. How is it, she asks him, that what was once most fervently desired becomes so bitter? Where in this pain-ridden body
hides the source of defiance? Why one soul gives up in despair while for another the highest mountain is but another challenge?

‘You are dead, Felix,’ she mutters. ‘You should know everything now. Tell me.’

Refuge of sinners. Comforter of the afflicted. Those who pray to the Virgin, pray with faith and constancy, will always know the power of her healing. Is it really true that on a Saturday the sun has to shine because it is the Virgin’s day?

Scarlet stockings are the most alluring. A flash of red from beneath the black velvet. Her hands are made of wax. She has never liked her hands. They were too big, too clumsy. She has never liked her feet either. And lying down means she cannot toss her hair.

‘Tell me.’

How can a despairing soul be freed from itself? How can a way be lit for thoughts that stay somewhere too deep to be touched?

‘This pain is God’s punishment for your sins.’

She feels drops of water on her lips, cool water smelling of rose petals. She is dreaming it all and yet the dream seems as real as if she lived in two worlds, one underneath the other, transparent like a mountain stream. How like Felix to think God would always be on his side.

‘You betrayed me with my own son.’

Pain is breaking through her, tearing raw pieces from her womb. She wants to scream, but the scream dies in her throat. Felix is stopping her. No longer still, he is now kneeling on her chest, clutching at her throat.

‘Do you really think you can fool God?’ Felix says. ‘Make up for what you have done with a few good deeds? You who care only for yourself.’

She wants to protest. He doesn’t know her. He will never know her. How can he be her judge?

The faint sound of horses’ hooves penetrates the closed window, the grating of carriage wheels. She runs her tongue over parched lips. The pain is leaving no space to breathe, no movement, no thought that she can call her own.

Who said that?

‘It’s called morphine.’

The bitterness slid down her throat and spilled into her stomach. The doctor was watching her. She remembered a flock of birds in Istanbul, no bigger than robins. No one had ever seen them settle. They were always in flight. Mana said they were the souls of the women whom the Sultan had ordered drowned.

‘Is it very bitter?’ Rosalia in that grey dress, pulling a grey shawl over her shoulders, her lips twisted as if the bitterness of the drug touched her too. She was a soul most gentle, a child frightened by her own desires. What was she doing here, in that unbecoming dress, buttoned up to her chin?

An orphan’s heart is always hungry.

Bitter.

Very bitter.

‘Slowly,’ the doctor said. ‘Take a small sip.’

Bitterness that spread from deep within her. Depth without end, without limits, filled with words and storms that were welling up, breaking through her.

Mea culpa. Mea culpa
. Pray for me for I have sinned.

‘Your daughter is here.’

Rosalia was steadying herself, holding on to the edge of the bed. On her face was a frown of resolve, a shadow of resignation.

Do you know what it is to always eat with another’s mouth?

Move according to another’s will?

Speak with another’s tongue?

Feel with another’s heart?

Which is the graver sin: betrayal or resignation?

Outside the grand salon the clock struck twelve. Midnight, she thought, had become more like space than time, a territory filled with shadows. A vast land of perfect stillness where past and present live side by side.

The floor beside her bed was empty.

In spite of the French doctor’s fears, Maman was fully conscious, seated on the empire bed, the folds of her dress, the colour of olive leaves arranged as if she were a doll, an ornament in this glittering salon. The bed was covered with a golden throw.

Sophie ran to her mother as if she were still a little girl and her Maman had just returned from one of her trips to St Petersburg or Kiev, her arms loaded with gifts, her voice filled with surprises. She ran so fast, holding her breath, that the muscles in her neck locked in a spasm only her mother could soothe. She didn’t have to talk to the French doctor or to Olga. She didn’t need Rosalia’s furtive looks. She could see death in her mother’s face, in the whiteness of her skin, in that strange elation of her eyes – wide open, fixed upon her.

‘Maman,’ she sobbed and threw herself at her mother’s feet. The smells of the journey still lingered on her dress: the horses, the inns, the smoke, the peculiar smell of the carriage, of leather and damp upholstery.

‘I’ve waited,’ her mother said. In her voice there was no reproach. ‘I knew you would come.’

‘It was Pavel, Maman,’ she said. ‘He kept me from leaving.’

That sounded childish, she thought, an accusation, an excuse. If she had insisted earlier, he wouldn’t have stopped her. He didn’t stop her in the end, did he? Still sobbing, Sophie took her mother’s hand in hers. Skin and bones, she thought. So little life left. She was angry at Pavel, at herself.

‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier, Maman?’ Her voice was sounding just the way it used to sound in childhood when she was cross, her eyes were filled with tears. ‘I should’ve known.’

‘You were in no condition to help me,’ her mother said. ‘I wish I did not cry so easily. I cry so easily these days.’

Unlike Olga, Sophie had no time to get used to the sight of her mother, the skin melting on her face, the disappearing muscles, the sores in her mouth. Even with the windows covered at all times, the light was too harsh, too revealing. Even in the darkened room, a dying body couldn’t be hidden.

‘My children,’ her mother said. ‘I have my children. I have always loved my children.’

Why this insistence in her mother’s voice? Why repeat twice that Jan was writing to her every week? That his wife always added at least one line of her own, even to the shortest of notes. That they had planted the tulip bulbs from Sophievka by the pond, commissioned a painter to paint them when they bloomed.

‘He doesn’t know, does he?’ Her half-brother, the eldest. Always spared from the bad news, from problems. Given far too much. Too often. Pavel did not like him at all and soon called him a spy.

‘You’ll take care of the youngest ones. Bobiche and Olga need you. They are still children. Promise me that. See that your sister marries well. Alexander will help you. In my will I’ve asked him to help you.’

Alexander, her elder brother. If she ever called him her
eldest, Maman always objected. Don’t ever forget Jan, she insisted. He is your eldest brother.

‘I promise.’

Sophie Kisielev wiped the tears off her cheeks, slowly regaining her breath. Her mother kept talking. The pearls were for her (they had to be restrung soon) and so was the furniture from the Uman palace. She had asked Rosalia to make a list of what would go to whom. The will was ready. Had been ready for some time. It was deposited with Monsieur Rashkin in St Petersburg. There were provisions for everyone except Mieczyslaw. This son of hers who cared for no one but himself had already taken more than his share.

‘I can die now,’ her mother said. ‘In peace. I know you will do everything I ask you to. Twelve thousand roubles will go to the servants.’

‘You won’t die.’

But Maman did not listen. Her fingers drummed a staccato rhythm on the side of the bed. As if time passed too slowly, as if it needed to be urged on.

‘I want to see my grandson now.’

Sophie Kisielev wanted so much to tell her mother about her fears, cry out all her pain, her premonitions, her uneasiness. ‘You know how to make men love you,’ she wanted to say. ‘Teach me.’ But all she could do was sob like a lost, frightened child until the doors opened and Katia came in with Volodia.

‘Volodia resembles His Highness Pavel Dimitrievich. Like two drops of water,’ Katia managed to say before she was ordered to leave. She did it reluctantly, staring at them as she walked toward the door. From behind the curtain came the soft sounds of a flute.

‘My first grandson,’ Maman said, taking Volodia in her arms, which were so thin that her bones showed through them. ‘
Mon
Elpida
.’

Sophie Kisielev was grateful that the baby did not cry. She was grateful for the tears of joy in her mother’s eyes, for the tenderness in them. If such were her last memories of her, she would take them gladly.

Was the French doctor really good, Maman, she asked. Could he be trusted? He did say that Volodia was a healthy baby. Tired, of course, he was tired, the poor dove. That’s why he cried all night. And also because Katia liked to carry him when he cried, and he had got used to it now. Katia was also healthy, even though her own child died of smallpox. In Odessa the air was mild, even in winter. The palace needed renovations, but it would be just right for them. Tulchin, in the end, was always too big, wasn’t it.

Her mother smiled.

‘Maman, Pavel said he doesn’t like when I call Volodia “my dove”.’

She knew not how to make her husband love her. She wanted her mother to tell her what to do. If only she could stretch out the time they still had, make it last longer. By a day, an hour even. She clasped her hands to stop them from trembling. She was trying not to cry.

‘Do you ever think of Papa?’

Her mother gave her a soft, indulgent look.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I don’t remember much of him, Maman. Just that he always wore this long black jacket and it used to frighten me. Once he took me to a strange room where there were apples and pears on shelves. He peeled an apple for me and asked if I liked it. I said I did, even though I didn’t.’

‘You weren’t even four when he died. You can’t remember him much. He loved you,’ her mother whispered.

‘Are you all right, Maman? Am I tiring you?’

‘No,
ma cherie
.’

There was a twitch on her mother’s face, a spasm of pain.

‘Go,
ma cherie
,’ her mother said gently. ‘Tell the doctor to come here right away. Tell him I need more of his medicine.’

Her ankle is well turned. She has always liked satin bows on her shoes. Gold on black. Shiny. A picture: Felix lifting her shoe, holding it up to his nose. Breathing in and out. Her smell, her effluvia. ‘You are all I’ve got,’ he says.

If only he had stayed that way, she could have found it in her heart to love him until the end. But something happened to him. Something dark, sticky and feverish, spilling out of the dreams from which he wakes up screaming. Frightening her, frightening the children.

Each morning before breakfast, he drinks a glass of water in which his valet has tried to dissolve a teaspoon of tar. The tar turns the water brown and oily. It never fully dissolves, only softens, and black patches stick to his teeth long afterward. ‘I know what I am doing,’ he says when she objects. This is his doctor’s remedy and he trusts his doctor more than he trusts her.

He is still giving balls and dinner parties, theatricals and fêtes. He has to, being a Potocki. He is lord of the Tulchin palace, lord of the Uman lands. He still owns Ukrainian towns, villages, and vast expanses of the steppes. But when guests arrive he lets her be the hostess and withdraws into his rooms. He may appear reluctantly toward the end of the party, a tall man in black wandering through the rooms, silent witness to their merriment. She could have sworn that often the guests do not recognise him.

In his dreams, is she the Devil’s child? The temptress
for whom he has sinned? The cause of all his fears, of all his transgressions?

She has tried reasoning with him, urging trips to St Petersburg. They have a house there that needs supervision. The new Tsar, Alexander, does not resemble his late father, and is awaiting their presence at his court. What’s wrong, darling, she keeps asking. There is no war, there is no slaughter. Why all this gloom?

And why now: when we have our children, our friends; when the old turmoils have died; when the past is forgotten?

‘Forgotten,’ he repeats back at her. There is derision in his voice as if she tried to tell him that the sun is black and trees grow with their roots up in the air.

Sometimes she succeeds though. Sometimes she can still make him laugh. Sometimes he lets her take his hands and pull him toward her. Softly she kisses his lips, his eyelids, and feels him stirring, feels his hands touch her breasts. How gentle she has become, how careful not to extinguish his passion with a movement too free, too daring. He likes when she whispers into his ear: My Lord, My Master, My King. He likes when she lets him lift her skirts, when she lies under him motionless and soft like a rag doll. But now even such moments are rare, and when they pass she sees him in the Tulchin chapel, prostrate on the floor, praying long into the night.

Mea culpa
, he mutters.
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa
.

There is a resident in the Tulchin palace, a man she cannot stand. His name is Monsieur Grabianka and he does not leave Felix’s side. He calls himself the King of New Israel, claiming that
superieur inconnu
has given him the secret of prolonging human life, that he possesses three tears shed by St John the Baptist, capable of healing all sickness. He talks of helping Man return to his state before the Fall, to restore the power he has lost through sin. If
his mission fails, Monsieur Grabianka predicts great changes in the world. She may have little patience with his speeches, but she remembers that in this new world, servants will take away the possessions of their masters and an Anti-Christ from France will conquer the world.