Authors: Delia Sherman
Before too long, a very old woman shuffled into the room carrying a silver tray with two cut crystal glasses. She offered one glass to my father and the other to the count. Then she settled down into the other armchair, placed the silver tray under the chair, pulled an embroidery frame out of the pocket of her apron, and began to work.
Count Poniatowski raised his glass. “
Sto lata
.” (One hundred years.)
"
Sto lata.
” My father clinked glasses and downed his vodka.
Having grown up in communist Poland, my father never felt comfortable among aristocrats. For instance, a completely trivial problem gnawed away at the resolve with which he had arrived at the Marble Palace: what to do with the vodka glass? Eventually he gathered his wits, placed the glass on the rug under his armchair, and came right to the point:
"Count Poniatowski, I have studied your reign and the long and sad history of our country in great detail. I realize that I am a man of no consequence, nevertheless I believe that God has chosen me to come to you with a plan that will help you reclaim Poland.” Satisfied with the way his speech came out, my father wasted no time in producing from his briefcase a thick document, complete with diagrams and bibliography.
Poniatowski accepted the document with a sigh and let its bulk settle onto his lap. The beautiful chicken shifted her perch and clucked. The nurse made no sound at all.
"It's really quite simple,” my father continued. “All you have to do is go back seven years, to May 3, 1791, to the day you made your triumphant speech in front of the Assembly of Noblemen."
"That seems like a lifetime ago,” Poniatowksi replied sadly. “I can't even remember what I said last week, let alone the supposedly triumphant speech I made seven years ago."
My father gets very impatient with people who refuse to understand the thing he's trying to explain to them. But he mastered his irritation and continued.
"You made a speech to the assembly upon signing into law the new constitution. And for six glorious months, before the new government was overturned by a royal decree sent from Russia, you were able to unite the fiercely independent Polish nobility for the first time in the nation's history."
"Yes, I do remember those bickering idiots, the âPolish nobility.' What a nuisance it was to be their king,” Poniatowski sniffed, stroking the elegant feathers of his hen.
"If I may be so bold, Your Majesty,” said my father, the vodka loosening his tongue, “it was the first time in your twenty-seven-year reign that you had power independent of the Russian crown. Now, all you have to do is go back with me to the precise hour of your speech (he had made an additional pelastric suit for Poniatowski), right after you received the standing ovation from the members of the Assembly, and, instead of going home to tend to your art collection, you will come with me to see your nephew, Prince Adam Czartoryski. You will lay your crown at the feet of Prince Adamâa born leader and warrior, if you'll continue to forgive my boldnessâwho will then lead the Polish army to victory in 1792, and, like Garibaldi in Italy (but how could you know of Garibaldi, forgive me once again), would have united the Polish states. A unified Poland would have been able to rebuff the imperialistic designs of Empress Catherine and her devious ally, Frederick the Great of Prussia. A united, independent Poland would have grown and prospered at the same rate as every other country in Europe, so that by the time the German Panzers came rolling across the border in 1939 (for the Germans will come back, they always come back), instead of the sad spectacle of the Polish cavalry (horses fighting against tanks!), Hitler would have encountered a modern, fully equipped Polish army bound in steel! And while Poland held the Germans in check on the eastern front, the French would have had time to mount their offensive (900 division, 1,500 tanks, 1,400 planes) and attack Germany's western flank, thereby stopping their military machine in its tracks and ending World War II before it even began."
My father concluded his speech with a short bow and wiped his brow on his sleeve, panting softly. He retrieved the glass from under his chair and tipped the last drop of vodka into his parched throat.
Poniatowski smiled and nodded. He was a good listener, but, of course, most of what my father said to him made no sense at all. Except for one thing. “I accepted the throne of Poland only because I thought that Catherine would marry me if I, too, were a monarch. All of Europe thought the same."
"You were her puppet!” My father could not control himself any longer. “All of Europe knew that. But everything changed after your speech. That was the moment you showed your true self, your brilliance, Your Majesty. You could have done great things for your country had you simply done as I have just described."
"Kings are the slaves of history,” Poniatowski murmured sadly and reached up to stroke his chicken. She dipped her white plumed head under his caresses and shook out her tail. A single milk-white feather flew up, caught a draft, and landed on my father's knee. He picked it up and tucked it into the breast pocket of his sport coat.
Poniatowski wiped a tear that had escaped from his rheumy old man's eyes and rearranged the folds of his velvet robe. “You are wrong about me. I never had power other than the power Catherine gave me. I was not born to do great things. An excellent education enabled me to conceal my mental and physical defects. I have sufficient wit to take part in any conversation but not enough to converse long and in detail on any subject. I have a natural penchant for the arts. My indolence, however, prevents me from going as far as I should like to go, either in the arts or in the sciences. I work overmuch, or not at all. I can see the faults of any plan but am very much in need of good counsel in order to carry out any plans of my own. In short, I would have made Catherine a good husband. Why do you think she stopped loving me?"
The vodka buzz had worn off, and suddenly my father felt sober, cold, and tired. Though not an intuitive person, he now saw Poniatowski more clearly and realized that there had been a flaw in his approach. The former king of Poland was ruled not by his mind, but by his broken heart.
"I understand,” my father said evenly, as if trying to calm a child who has broken a favorite toy. “I, too, was once married to a Russian woman. Though she wasn't a tsarina, she carried herself as one. I remember the day I came home from work to find the apartment completely empty. She had taken everythingâmy furniture, my daughter, even the cooking pots."
My father looked up to find Poniatowski nodding sympathetically. “Catherine also took our daughter away from me. A child for a throne. I never saw her again.” A second tear slid down Poniatowski's withered cheek. “She did not live past her second birthday. Is your daughter alive?"
"She's alive, thank God,” my father put his hands together and glanced heavenward. “I should have gone after them, but something stopped me. I should have at least tried to take my daughter, but times were different then. Divorce courts almost always granted custody to the mother. I also believe that the child, especially a daughter, should stay with the mother, but I still regret not doing more. It wasn't until she became an adult that my daughter and I renewed our relationship. In short, I understand how difficult Russian women can be."
"But Catherine was German,” Poniatowski protested.
"Only until she came to Russia, and then she was more Russian than the Russians,” said my father.
"What does that mean?” Poniatowksi leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, finally interested in what my father was saying.
"Nobody knows. The Russians can't even decide what it means to be Russian. In any case, I'm sure Catherine loved you. Women only torture the men they love."
Poniatowski clapped his hands. “Bravo!” The beautiful chicken flapped her wings and settled back down on his shoulder. “You understand everything. I promise to read your proposal, but not until tomorrow morning, after we've both had a good night's sleep. In the meantime, you shall have supper with me."
Not having any relatives in eighteenth century St. Petersburg to stay with, my father gladly accepted the count's hospitality. For dinner they would have a simple omelet. Poniatowski told my father how he had learned to cook in Paris, during his first trip abroad. Now that he was older and had a sensitive stomach, it gave him great pleasure to eat at home rather than in one of those expensive St. Petersburg restaurants, which he could no longer afford anyway. My father, who hated to waste money, was glad that he and Poniatowski were able to agree on something besides the curious nature of Russian women.
In the basement kitchen of the Marble Palace, my father sat on a high wooden stool and watched Poniatowski cook. The beautiful chicken walked around the rough wooden table pecking at breadcrumbs.
"Why do you examine each egg over a candle flame before breaking it?” My father was hoping that the question about the eggs would lead to an explanation about the chicken. In lieu of an explanation, my father got a story.
"I used to sneak into the aviary of the Summer Garden in the morning. It was Catherine's favorite place to have her intimate dinner parties,” Poniatowski began. “I spent many a pleasant evening there in my youth, back when I used to be invited to her parties. The aviary has fallen into disrepair since Paul became tsar. Now I visit the place for an hour or two each day, to keep the birds company. I pick up an egg every now and then, not wanting them to go to waste."
What harm was there in stealing eggs from a dead lover, especially when one is poor and hungry, my father wanted to ask. But he kept silent.
"The Summer Garden reminds me of when Catherine was young and I was the love she had not found in her marriage,” Poniatowski continued. “She was beautiful back then, and absolutely fearless. She would sneak into my rooms dressed as a cadet, in breeches and boots with shiny silver spurs, wrapped in a fur-lined cloak. In her later years, she grew fat and pitifully prone to flattery. Her last lover before she died was an insipid boy of twenty-six. Can you imagine? I was once such a boy."
My father nodded. He, too, had once been such a boy.
"I still laugh when I recall the anticsâI never really liked sex. Did you know that she was my first lover? I found it degrading the way she used to ride me around the bed like a pony, though I will never forget the feeling of her powerful, slender thighs clenched around my back. I tried to talk to Catherine about my love for her, that it was so pure as to be almost platonic, but she just laughed in my face. She liked to sing during our lovemaking, compose little operettas, dress me up like a doll. All idiocy. I can just imagine what it would have been like for her last Favorite, what the New One thought when a graying mountain of a woman climbed on top and grasped him with her old-womanish hams ... but that's all in the past now."
My father, who hated to interrupt someone in the middle of a story even more than he hated to listen to people talk about intimate matter), cleared his throat and said, “You were going to tell me about the eggs."
"I understand,” Poniatowski smiled. “You want to know about my chicken."
My father began to protest, because he felt it was important to continue in the charade that the chicken simply wasn't there, or that it wasn't odd to meet a former monarch living with a pet chicken, but the count waved him off with another laugh.
"One morning I returned from the Imperial Aviary with a pocket full of fresh eggs. When I tried to crack the first one, it cheeped back at me! It was fertile, and, moreover, the chick inside had been just minutes from hatching when I so rudely invaded its shell. So I took the egg, which was largely intact, though cracked, and placed it inside a fur-lined glove. Eventually, pieces of the shell flew out of the glove, and I was able to sustain the newborn chick on mashed flies and droppers full of water. One day a perfect little yellow chick emerged, and now look at her,” Poniatowski grabbed the chicken and kissed her fine feathered neck. “Isn't she beautiful? She's a gift, after all my suffering."
Let me repeat: my father is a scientist. He deals with the physical world, governed by the predictable laws of cause and effect. He has no mental construct for the metaphorical (or metaphysical) significance of a chicken born from a lover's garden. Or so I thought. Nevertheless, he made no comment about the chicken-and-egg story, simply agreeing with his host that she was indeed a handsome bird.
Poniatowksi and my father finished their meal in companionable silence and wished each other pleasant dreams ("
Spokojny sen
"). It really was an unusually warm night in February. There should have been piles of snow along the embankment, but the sleepless citizens of St. Petersburg were strolling about amid daffodils tricked into premature bloom.
Later that night, there was a terrible storm, one of the hundreds of storms that regularly flooded the city until Brezhnev dammed the Neva River in the 1970s. Sometime after midnight the air changed from a caress to a claw. The waiting winter cold rolled in, making the Neva thrash in her canals like a sick man upon a pillow. The howling wind and rain and wicked waves stalked thief-like through the empty streets, creeping under doors and through partially opened windows, breaking up the bridges and sweeping out the foundations like coffins from sodden graveyards.
My father, exhausted from his journey through the centuries, slept through it all, until the wraith like figure of Count Poniatowski in a nightshirt bent over his bed and inadvertently dripped candle wax on his forehead. “You must help me!” He cried. “It was so warm, I left the window open, and now she is gone. I've searched the entire house. She is out there in this storm. Please help me."
Outside, the wind tore at their hair and clothing. Frigid water gushed out of the canals and numbed their feet. People driven from their ground-floor beds ran through the streets, scrambling over each other to get to higher ground. But Poniatowski did not seem to feel the sting of the sleet on his face. His eyes were fixed on a single spot on the embankment, where a beautiful willow swayed in the midst of a broken pile of pleasure boats. There, perched on a bobbing limb, was a luminous white speck, a ghostly flutter of wing. And then a wave came down upon the tree, and the speck was gone.