Sex with the Queen (39 page)

Ever the romantic, if Stanislaus had hoped for some rekin-dling of ancient passions, he was disappointed. Disappointed in her appearance, for one thing; where was the shapely young brunette he had loved? Disappointed in her manner, for an-other; polite but coolly distant. In a private conversation, Stanislaus asked for a new constitution for Poland. Catherine re-fused; she wanted Poland to remain weak. Dinner was difficult; the empress looked embarrassed, the king depressed. After din-ner the empress refused to attend the ball Stanislaus had pre-pared for her, even though he had built a special ballroom just for the occasion. As for Stanislaus, his shimmering memories had vanished. “I don’t know her anymore,” he said sadly.81 She had not set a crown on his head, but a dunce cap. While guests danced at the king’s ball, Catherine stood on the deck of her gal-ley and watched the fireworks. “The king bores me,” she told Alexander Momonov.

But without a doubt the most bored traveler on the journey was not Catherine but Momonov himself. During the inter-minable months of travel in closed sleighs or onboard the impe-rial galley, Momonov was dying of boredom and called his job

“imprisonment.”82 Though the empress constantly tried to bribe him into contentment, he complained bitterly. When Catherine confided to Potemkin her many grievances against her spoiled lover, Serenissimus replied with characteristic gusto,

“Eh, Little Mother, spit on him!”83

Catherine, seeing Potemkin in his own kingdom, glittering like a maharaja, his fleet bobbing in the Black Sea firing their guns for their sovereign, could not help comparing him with the bored and boring Momonov. She wrote Potemkin impassioned letters, and he responded with gratitude and devotion. But not with passion. As dirty and careless as he often was with his own appearance, he was fastidious with his women and was only aroused by slender blooming girls, not tubs of wrinkled flesh.

Once Catherine and her entourage spilled out of their car-riages in St. Petersburg, the Turks, alarmed by Potemkin’s naval maneuvers during his three-ring circus for the empress, at-tacked. Potemkin, barely convalescing from the greatest, biggest, e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y r u s s i a 1 7 7

longest-lasting show on earth, was totally unprepared. His men were scattered, manning far-reaching outposts. Potemkin quickly recruited tens of thousands of soldiers from across Eu-rope. One young Corsican officer volunteered but was summar-ily turned down because he insolently demanded too high a rank. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte.

In the first year of the Turkish War, Potemkin suddenly sunk into a dark swirl of apathy and could not be roused to defend, much less attack. Many wondered whether he was in the pay of the Turks. The fact was that his health had been deteriorating for several years from a rich diet, sexual excess, overindulgence in alcohol, and recurring bouts of malaria. Now, in his deepest de-pression, he was waited on by seven hundred servants as his one-hundred-twenty-piece orchestra played. The Prince of Princes regaled himself with a harem of women chosen from his officers’

wives. He had an underground palace built for one of his mis-tresses, and each time he approached orgasm, he tugged on a bellpull to signal the cannoneers to fire. When the woman’s hus-band heard the cannon, he yawned, “What a lot of noise about nothing.”84

Back in St. Petersburg, Momonov wrote Potemkin imploring him to release him from his onerous duties as Catherine’s lover.

Potemkin replied angrily, “It is your duty to remain at your post for the duration of the war, and don’t be a fool and ruin your ca-reer.”85

By the spring of 1789 Alexander Momonov was suffering from sexual exhaustion, complaining he could no longer perform. He confessed to Catherine that he was in love with another woman.

Wiping away her tears, she summoned his beloved and realized that the young woman was heavily pregnant. Catherine suggested they marry immediately and told the trembling girl—who had been fearing exile in Siberia—that the imperial wedding gift would be a country estate and one hundred thousand rubles.

The bride promptly fainted. On the day of the wedding, the em-press dressed the girl’s hair with a diamond coronet and presided over the wedding supper. “God be with them!” she said wistfully.

“Let them be happy.”86

1 7 8

s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n

A few days after the wedding the empress took a new lover.

Twenty-two-year-old Plato Zubov had not been selected by Potemkin but thrust in at the right moment by the prince’s ene-mies when he had returned to the war. Catherine gave Zubov one hundred thousand rubles, made him a general, and appointed him her personal aide-de-camp. The new lover quickly lifted her sadness over Momonov’s betrayal. “I am healthy and merry and have come alive like a fly,” she wrote Potemkin.87

Catherine and Zubov were an incongruous pair. She was a barrel-shaped toothless grandmother; he was young, slender, and the handsomest of all her lovers since Orlov. His face was a study in elegant curves with its high cheekbones, refined jawline, and small cleft in the middle of his chin. His eyes were deep and hooded, his nose aristocratic, his lips perfectly shaped. One of her advisers, looking at the two, remarked, “The empress wears him like a decoration.”88 Others eyeing the pair believed that Zubov earned every last penny of his pay.

Catherine’s favorite was expected to hold levees for visitors, fa-vor seekers, and supporters, but Zubov’s levees were nothing short of a demonstration of arrogance. Comte Antoine de Langeron reported, “Every day, starting at eight o’clock in the morning, his antechamber was filled with ministers, courtiers, generals, for-eigners, petitioners, seekers after appointments or favors. Usually, they had to wait four or five hours before being admitted. . . . At last the double doors would swing open, the crowd would rush in and the favorite would be found seated before his mirror having his hair dressed, and ordinarily resting one foot on a chair or a corner of the dressing table. After bowing low, the courtiers would range themselves before him two or three deep, silent and motionless, in the midst of a cloud of powder.”89

Grand Duke Paul’s tutor, the Swiss-born Charles Masson, twittered, “The old generals, the great men of the Empire, did not blush to ingratiate themselves with the least of his valets.

Stretched out in an armchair in the most indecent, careless at-tire, with his little finger in his nose and his eyes fixed vaguely on the ceiling, this young man with his cold, vain face, scarcely deigned to pay attention to the people around him.”90

e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y r u s s i a 1 7 9

Courtiers had to put up not only with Zubov’s rudeness, but with his monkey. This nasty little creature jumped on visitors’

shoulders and plucked off their wigs, at which they were required to chuckle politely.

Having finally won the war against the Turks, Potemkin re-turned to a triumphal hero’s welcome in St. Petersburg. Zubov fidgeted with jealousy. Courtiers rushed to see the face-off be-tween the empress’s lovers, and most placed their wagers on Potemkin. As Serenissimus descended his carriage and marched into the palace, a servant behind him carried his hat, which was so loaded with diamonds it was too heavy to wear.

When the empress and Potemkin faced each other once more, both were sadly changed. Potemkin had been under tremendous strain from the Turkish War and suffered from exhaustion and depression. Catherine had become so obese that she took up two seats at the theater. Her legs were so swollen that she could hardly walk, and architects installed gently sloping ramps over the palace stairs. Worse, the former brilliance of her mind was dim-ming. Tired and cranky, she increasingly left political matters in the inept hands of Zubov. At court Potemkin’s friends advised him to oust the arrogant Zubov and resume his position in Catherine’s bed. Potemkin was horrified at the thought.

But he did try to warn Catherine of the danger of allowing the feckless, stupid Zubov to take over state affairs. Catherine loudly proclaimed that the boy was a budding political genius who only required a bit of training to mature. “I am doing a great service to the state by educating young men,” she said with a straight face.91 Too tired to fight further, Potemkin gave up. Russia was now in the hands of a conceited youth whose sole recommenda-tion was the sexual satisfaction he gave an old woman.

Turning to something at which he excelled, Potemkin gave a show—one last, brilliant show that would be talked about for de-cades after his death—Potemkin’s ball. Fountains ran with wine.

Three thousand guests were invited to dance in a room lit by 200 chandeliers; the fragrant gardens shimmered with the light of 140,000 lanterns, 20,000 candles, and fireworks bursting overhead. Draped in Persian silks, a dark-skinned African sit-1 8 0

s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n

ting on a mechanical golden elephant called the guests to dine as the elephant’s trunk, studded with diamonds, rose and fell.

After dinner Potemkin led Catherine into the Winter Garden and presented her with a valuable statue bearing the inscription

“To one who is Mother, and more than Mother to me.”92 At the end of it all Potemkin fell on his knees before Catherine and, kissing her hand, wept. Was it joy? Sadness? Fear? Loss of all the beauties of youth? Or knowledge that the end was coming? She, too, wept.

Before he left St. Petersburg for the south, a countess asked him what he planned to do when Catherine died. “Don’t worry,”

he replied. “I’ll die before the Sovereign. I’ll die soon.”93

Potemkin left St. Petersburg in the scorching heat of summer to make peace with the Turks in the south. In the town of Jassy, burning with malarial fever, ravaged by liver failure and pneu-monia, he insisted that he continue his journey despite the grave warnings of doctors. But on the second day of travel he suddenly cried to stop. “I’m dying,” he groaned. “There is no point in going any further. I want to die on the ground.”94 On the Rus-sian soil from which he had sprung. They laid a mattress on the side of the road. Within an hour the mighty Cyclops was dead.

The orchestra had ceased playing, the lights had faded, and the curtain had fallen. Potemkin’s show was over.