Garden of Venus (13 page)
There are many such reveries. In some she is no longer at the royal
hammam
, but has her own little palace in Warsaw, a carriage with six white horses, a valet and a whole army of servants. She is the King’s mistress, a lady of distinction. Monsieur Boscamp has to wait in the antechamber until she deigns to see him. When she admits him into her boudoir, he falls to his knees and tells her that her word, whispered at the right moment, could change his fate.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she says, fanning her cheeks. The fan is trimmed with purple feathers. Then she turns away from him. In her mirror she can see his face, lost and unsure.
He’ll want to remind her of Istanbul, but the King’s displeasure is too dangerous to risk. The King’s grace is too precious to squander.
There is a note of triumph in the internuncio’s voice when he tells her that the King has changed his mind and no longer needs a bath attendant. He tells her that, in passing,
when he is leaving her room in the morning, just before closing the door. As if it were not terribly important. He doesn’t tell her reasons for the King’s decision. It simply won’t happen, that’s all.
‘There might be other opportunities,’ he says, stressing the word
might
. ‘Count Humeniecki is asking for a Greek girl for his sister’s
frauzimmer
. A pretty girl with good breasts.’
She is pretty enough, he tells her, but her breasts are withered, shapeless and quite inflexible. They hang like pears on her belly and would disappoint any man with discerning tastes.
The German staff of von Haefen’s palace – a skeleton staff as Frau Kohl put it, but more than adequate under the present circumstances – kept to themselves. The German maids could be seen dusting the portraits, polishing silver. The footmen quietly moved furniture from the east wing. A decorator hired to give the front rooms a new look, much admired in Berlin, had already been told that the renovations would have to be postponed. Rosalia saw his painting of the new décor: big slabs of beige marble on the walls, narrow blue curtains, white vases at both ends of the salon. Clean, sparse lines, almost embarrassing in their simplicity, were to replace plump putti and crimson silk-covered walls.
‘You have an exceptional nurse,’ she had overheard Dr Bolecki say to the countess. ‘A treasure most rare these days when greed and selfishness rule the world.’
‘I’ve always been lucky, dear Doctor.’
‘I have to protest. Such luck is always earned, Madame la Comtesse.’
Unpinned, Rosalia’s hair spilled over her shoulders. She
was aware of the growing pressure in her temples, a pressure that, if unchecked by laudanum, would soon turn into a headache. Doctor Bolecki was right to insist she had her own supply, right in her room. She poured five drops into a shot of water and swallowed before the bitterness spread inside her mouth.
‘Despondency is a sort of treason,’ Dr Bolecki had also said to her. ‘It is true of politics, and it is true of life.’
The hurry with which he spoke, waving hands in agitation had something boyish about it, something reassuring. ‘Please do not misunderstand me. I do not mean to question Dr Lafleur’s diagnosis. Or his decisions. But how can life proceed otherwise? The fate of nations or individuals is quite similar after all. Death has to be fought until the last breath and beyond. Fought with hope that is stronger than despair.’
‘My father would have agreed with you,’ she had said.
‘How honoured I would be.’
She was aware of the hissing fire, the waves of warmth reaching her feet, the hooves of horses rushing through the streets, and the pressure at her temples relenting. Beyond this half-empty palace there was a city, teeming with life. The whole world filled with life and death, hope and despair.
The chair screeched on the floor as she sat down at her writing desk and took out her diary. Each entry was carefully separated with a thick, even line. The inkwell was of rare beauty, amber in colour, with silver top. One of the German maids had brought the sander she requested on a silver tray and placed it, silently, on the writing table.
Since her arrival in St Petersburg, in October last year, Rosalia had kept notes trying to record the details of what her mistress called her ‘little indispositions’. She did not like the word ‘little’. After her mother’s funeral she ran
into her mother’s surgeon in the street. ‘Grave illnesses, Mademoiselle Romanowicz’, he said then, ‘come from small symptoms ignored. Neglect of what seems of little importance at the beginning is what kills us.’
It was all there, in her brown leather-bound notebook. Even in the first week, with all the talk of her duties and accommodations, the dresses, the visiting hours, the procedures to be followed with calling cards, the countess had complained five times of exhaustion and lack of energy. Of having to come home earlier from soirées and having missed Countess Naryshkin’s autumn ball.
After the fainting spell at the Winter Palace, the Tsar wrote to inquire about Madame’s health and sent a bouquet of white orchids. The letter from the Tsar is to be placed on the small table at the entrance to the salon. No other letter is to cover it. ‘Make sure Countess Naryshkin sees it, when she calls,’ Madame la Comtesse said and smiled as if it were the best of pranks. There was blood on the undergarments in the evening, again, but it was not the return of ‘dame Thérèse’.
‘Hasn’t the fate of our families been linked before,’ she has asked me when I tried to thank her for taking me into her home after Maman’s death. The countess assured me with great force she was doing nothing less than her late husband would expect, taking care of a child of the Uman orphans. Hadn’t the late Count stood godfather to my dear mother the day she was baptised and married my father? All the countess wanted in return is that I pray for her in her time of trouble. That I promised, of course.
Gifts: pins with black pearls for the countess’s sons.
Each pin is set in a gold wreath of tiny oak leaves. (Also two dozens of white gloves.) The daughters will receive a diamond pendant. In her last letter Madame Kisielev described a bad dream she had. A wave from the Black Sea rose and washed away her house. All that was left were a few timbers, smashed and floating on the waves. The countess is very upset on account of her daughter’s pregnancy. She has sent Madame Kisielev an icon of the Virgin Mary and a special prayer to say every morning and evening. ‘It will protect you,’ she asked me to write. ‘As it protected me when you were in my womb, waiting to come to this world.’
Order: quilts filled with eider down, one for each of the countess’s children.
Count Jeroslav is in St Petersburg, trying to get the Tsar’s attention, on behalf of his brothers and sisters. ‘I presume he will never stop,’ the countess said. I could see her hands were trembling and she had to hold on to a chair to steady herself. ‘My step-children would drown me in a spoonful of water if they could.’ There had been talk of some vicious letters copied and circulated in St Petersburg. I didn’t want to ask, but the countess told me herself: ‘My stepchildren accuse me of killing their father and stealing the Potocki fortune. Luckily their motives are too obvious to His Majesty and they’ll achieve nothing.’
Today the Tsar sent another bouquet of orchids and Madame la Comtesse felt strong enough to spend a day at Tsarskye Siolo. I expected her back around nine, but she stayed well past midnight and returned in a good mood. ‘Appearing at balls,’ she said, ‘is to
make sure the world does not forget us. As soon as your mourning is over, I expect you to accompany me.’ That evening she opened a secret drawer in her escritoire and showed me three miniatures of two boys and a baby girl. Kotula, Nicolai and Helena – all three died within days of each other and were buried in her Sophievka gardens. On consecrated ground, she said. Each spring the gardener sends her the first flowers that bloom on the graves.
A gypsy came to read the countess’s cards. ‘You will see your grandchildren grow,’ she said. ‘The great pain will come and go. There will be a long journey.’ The countess gave me her green satin dress, to wear when the mourning is over. She said that green will go well with the colour of my hair. The dress is too big for her for she has lost weight again.
I washed the skin on the countess’s stomach with soap and water, then again with water alone. The leeches were of superior quality, from Bordeaux. Dr Horn let them creep over a dry cloth first, to make them thirsty. He started with two leeches, but they did not attach themselves, so he asked for sweetened cream and spread it on the skin. When this failed, he punctured the skin with a lancet.
Dr Horn gave me a lotion (an ounce and a half of the tincture of muriate of iron, with several ounces of distilled water) for calming down the skin. He said it was much better than the pulp from boiled carrots I had been using before. Allowed food: camomile tea and a cup of broth followed by a glass of strong red wine.
For rheumatic pains: purgings with senna and salts, massage followed by nettle pulp for the joints and nettle tea to drink. The pain in the womb is growing and so are the haemorrhages. Dr Horn continues with daily bleedings, to restore the body’s internal harmony. Her arms and legs are bruised and sore from the lancet. The countess is very strong, but I can see she is getting tired. ‘Does he think he is paid for every quart of blood he drains from me?’ she asked me in the morning.
Dr Horn wants to stimulate the vital functions of the body, and then to dissolve the growth with medications. His explanation: diseases are the direct result of the over-stimulation of organs that cause lesions. The irritants are cold air, food, drugs, miasmata in the air, and the percepta, moral influences on the nervous system. All of the stimuli produce contractions in different organs. Disease begins as a change of function of the irritated organ which, through sympathy, soon spreads to other parts of the body. Cancer is the aftermath of inflammation. In the countess’s case the womb is a secondary symptom. The stomach is the seat of disease, for this is where the over-stimulation always appears first. The only way to cure the womb is to reduce this irritation. Then the tumour will dissolve and the illness will retreat.
The countess called me to her bed and gave me a turquoise ring and a necklace; the stones are arranged in such a way as to resemble forget-me-nots.
The entries she made on the journey were short. The list of inns and distances covered, the objects lost and
misplaced. The moments when strength and hope were seeping away.
Today we covered merely 3 versts before the morning heat.
Lost: red scarf, two cambric chemises, a new box with toothpowder that has only just arrived from Freiberg, a bottle of Schweizer-oel, a box of whalebone buttons. The saddest loss: a watercolour of the Uman palace made by the countess’s eldest son. Olga insisted it was because of my negligence, painful words that made me cry.
Under the Golden Goose – the third inn of that name in the last five days! The White Eagle. Under the Golden Horseshoe. The Lone Heron. Under the Wild Boar.
Broken: the china cup with the panorama of St Petersburg and the second ivory comb this week.
Before we left St Petersburg, the countess spent two whole evenings with her lawyer, and then she wrote farewell letters to all her children, except Count Mieczyslaw with whom she had fallen out. ‘Because of him, my foot will never cross the threshold of the Tulchin palace,’ she had said. The letters are in my care, sealed, addressed in her own handwriting. I am to make sure they are delivered to her children, if she does not survive the operation.
Berlin: ‘I have seen patients recover from bigger tumours,’ Doctor Bolecki assured the countess. ‘Patients who lacked your strength and courage, Madame la
Comtesse.’ In the morning the priest came and the countess received extreme unction. ‘To give health and strength to the soul,’ the priest said. The countess called Olga and me to her side and asked us to kneel in front of St Nicholas and thank him for this day of hope.
The countess asked for the fresh figs Graf von Haefen sent her, but only held one in her hands and smelled it. Then she asked me to place it on her night table. She said that when she was little, she climbed trees to get them. ‘Have you ever climbed a tree, Rosalia,’ she asked. When I said I had, she smiled. ‘Alone?’ she asked. ‘No, with my cousin. It was quite a big tree,’ I said. ‘And you did not fall down,’ she asked. ‘No,’ I said. A conversation even that short tires her.
I put compresses of camomile tea on her eyelids, for she constantly complains of redness and eyestrain. I have also tried eyebright with excellent effects.
The French doctor, recommended so highly by Dr Bolecki, has arrived. There is in him the complete absence of servitude my father always noted and praised. He is tall and rather thin and there is a certain carelessness about him, a touch of absent-minded neglect, a cuff button undone, a scarf needing retying but I have found him most capable. He agreed that Dr Horn’s bleedings were excessive and caused too much weakness. He has no trust in the water cure.
There will be no operation. The French doctor says it is too late.
‘Nature creates redundancy,’ the internuncio tells her. They are taking a walk in the Mission garden, a neglected garden of few trees and unruly bushes. He points out the seedlings hopefully pushing through the spring soil round an old oak.
‘See how many of them have high hopes,’ he asks. ‘How many, do you think will be allowed to grow.’
‘One,’ she says. ‘Perhaps.’ Some of the seedlings are trampled already, others are growing too close to the tree. The gardener will mow the rest with his scythe. All she can hear now is the clanking of metal on the whetting stone and the swish of the blade.
‘Perhaps. If it is of use.’
‘Beauty is cheap,’ he tells her, and she knows he is right. Mana repeats this too, over and over again. ‘Being of use is not.’
With Mana she can still quarrel. She can say that the internuncio likes her more than he lets on. That her company pleases him and pleasure is good. She can make him laugh, and he likes that too. When they eat together, he teaches her how to hold the fork, the spoon. How to lift a cup of coffee so that people would not stare at her in polite society. Doesn’t that mean that he has plans for her?