Garden of Venus (22 page)

He opened the palace door for her. A smell of chicken broth reached her from the kitchen. Then the servants’ laughter. Marusya’s was the loudest, straight from her belly.

‘Yes,’ Rosalia said. ‘I’ll see to it, of course.’

Later that evening, in her room, in her nightdress, she tried to see herself as she might seem to someone else.

The light caught in her auburn hair, highlighted the paleness of her tired skin, her hands chapped from washing. (Why don’t you wear your gloves at night, Rosalia? Goose fat won’t work unless you wear gloves.) The gauntness of her cheeks, the eyes tired from lack of sleep.

Admit it, she challenged her own reflection. You can never manage the lightness, the bewilderment of charm. The lightness that comes from thinking yourself invincible.

Never.

The cold of the room climbed into her, rising from the floor through her bare feet. She kept looking at her own
reflection, the gentle slope of her shoulders, the disappointing flatness of her chest. Her skin was white and smooth, but that realisation failed to console her. And then her feet got too cold and she climbed back into bed, to warm herself up.

‘This is Warsaw,’ Joseph says with an indulgent smile.

Two miles before Warsaw, there is the hill from which they can get their first good glimpse of the city. He points out the town walls, the Saint-Cross Towers and the Royal Castle. He points out Praga, the busy district on the right bank of the Vistula River, where they would be obliged to stay that night, waiting for the boat to take them across to Warsaw, the following morning.

She has waited for this moment for fifteen months. Fifteen months in a fortress where prisoners in chains did serve at the table, where her bones chilled to the marrow in winter, where she tried to keep boredom at bay with the help of dancing instructors, French tutors and riding masters. Fifteen months of pleading with Joseph, of pointing out to him the wisdom of being known at court, of securing the good graces of the right people. It is not that he has been reluctant to show her off. She could tell how pleased he had been when Prince Czartoryski, after his official visit to Kamieniec, made it known that the delightful and charming Madame de Witt is the only attraction worth seeing for miles around. But still he kept putting off the date of their departure. The time was not good, the roads too muddy, his own father too overwhelmed with duties to be left alone. ‘Aren’t you happy with me here?’ he kept asking.

Happiness, she tried to make him see, was a tender plant. It needed room to grow, or it would wilt and
wither. ‘You do not wish to remain Major de Witt all your life?’

From his uneasy smile she knew this was the right path to take. Who, she asked him, would get the command of Kamieniec once his father dies? How could the King be sure that the son was worthy to step into his father’s shoes? How could anyone advance in this world without powerful friends?

‘You are not that jealous, are you?’

In the end, what made Joseph agree was a note from the King included in a letter to his father:

With the note came an offer. One of the King’s apartments is waiting for the young couple who, both General de Witt and his son would have to agree, should take
their long overdue honeymoon journey
.

The King of Poland has invited her to Warsaw. This is happiness, she wants to tell Joseph, but stops herself. Joseph likes to tell her that the King is desperate for allies. The seventeen years of his reign, he reminds her, have been one disaster after another. One by one, the Polish provinces have rebelled, calling him a Russian puppet unable to steer his country in any direction. The friends he still has hear nothing but his long lists of warnings. The Russians are too strong to oppose directly, diplomacy has to be used, allies sought at all cost. All talk, no action. And where has it led us, he likes to ask. What other country in Europe has allowed itself to be cut up and devoured by its neighbours. He once showed her the map
of Poland where, with red ink, his father had marked the territories lost in 1772, three slivers of land, one in the west, a bigger one in the east, and one in the south. ‘Stolen by Russia. Stolen by Prussia. Stolen by Austria,’ General de Witt wrote in thick, even letters. And isn’t it true, Joseph likes to continue in his mark-my-words tone, that appetite, once aroused, grows.

She keeps it to herself, but she thinks the King may not be as wrong as Joseph thinks. What else is there to be done, if one is weak? What’s the use of grand gestures and heroic deaths? She can see good reasons for powerful friends, for patient pressure, for quiet strengthening of the country. But such means have little respect among the men she talks to. Action, Joseph says. Any action is better than humiliation. Not that he himself is that eager to fight. Ordering his soldiers around, yes, she can see that. In a fury over some transgressions, yes. But smelling gunpowder, sleeping on the ground?

February is not the best month for travelling, Joseph grumbles. They are bitterly cold in spite of the pile of furs and a foot-warmer filled with hot coals. But travelling in winter has its advantages. The roads, frozen, are free from the sticky mud, and a sleigh offers a much smoother ride.

Stories proceed her. Whispers of delighted amusement at her exotic beauty, her mysterious past. Some swear she has been a Sultan’s odalisque. Others that she is a Greek princess, impoverished by family misfortune. Prince Adam has praised her exquisite manners and her pleasing ways. She makes time pass like a dream, he has said. Boscamp’s name is mentioned too. An elderly suitor tricked out of his prize by Major de Witt, left seething with powerless rage.

Good stories, she thinks.

She misses Mana and Aunt Helena. She wishes they could see her now. See how Joseph dotes on her, how unsure he is of himself. Of Lysander she also thinks, when such thoughts cannot be helped. Sometimes she sees a shadow of his smile on a stranger’s lips, the sheen of his hair in another’s. I don’t hate him, she says to herself. He doesn’t matter. In a way, she is right. He does not matter any more. But there are thoughts she cannot stop. Thoughts of betrayal, of ridicule, of rejection. Thoughts that make her look beyond words and smiles, turn them around, search underneath, sniff them to catch the slightest whiff of wavering. Of danger. Of weakening. She has always been a quick pupil. Twice in her life men have betrayed her, and there will be no third time. This is what she swears now.

‘You will be so proud of me,’ she whispers to Joseph a day later, after they are settled in their Warsaw apartment, still cold in spite of the bearskin thrown over the floor, in spite of the fact that the servants assure them that they had kept the fire going all last week in anticipation of their arrival. Still cold even after the shot of vodka Joseph insists on, vodka that brings colour to her cheeks.

‘I promise,’ she whispers and watches how he stretches his neck with pleasure.

He is proud. Proud of her dresses, of emerald silk and rose chiffon. Of the flowers that arrive in baskets every day to the delight of the servants who scurry to tell Madame the good news. Of the frenzied anticipation with which their appearance is awaited at parties and soirées, of long lost acquaintances who find him out and remind him of their connections and insist on inviting the lovely couple to yet another salon. Of the calling cards that arrive daily, carriages that stop to let out another guest.
Of invitations from all quarters, with the most important one, from the King, displayed on the mantle.

He is proud when Stanislaw August, the King of Poland, receives them a mere week after their arrival in the capital, on 3rd March, Anno Domini 1781, while many others are kept waiting four times as long. When the King nods his head in appreciation of Sophie’s beauty, when he leads her in the
polonaise
, holding her perfumed hand in his as if it were made of bone china.

And is she proud too?

She turns this question over in her head. And hesitates. Please him, Mana’s voice says. It’s so easy. Make your husband believe he too is responsible for all this triumph. Is this what her new friends refer to when they mention words like
savoir vivre
and gentle manners?

Pride, she says brushing his cheek with her lips, does not satisfy Madame Major de Witt that easily. Have you noticed, she asks, that in the invitations they have received so far, among all the calling cards she keeps in a carved box in her boudoir, one name is always missing?

He has not noticed. What name?

‘The Potockis,’ she says, her lips twisting in a nonchalant half-smile. ‘Aren’t they the most powerful of the Polish magnates?’

Count Felix and Countess Josephine, of the Pilawa crest.

‘Most powerful?’ Joseph is ready to question the reason for the hurt in her voice. The Czartoryskis, he points out, are as powerful as the Potockis, and there have already been two invitations from their Blue Palace.

But Sophie will not accept such consolations. The Potockis are the true kings of eastern Poland, the owners of palaces far grander than the Royal Castle. ‘Too high a threshold for de Witt’s feet.’

‘Did they say it?’

‘No,’ she snaps with impatience. She does not know
what they have said or not. She is not interested in the Potockis or their bug-eyed children or their pride. She has other things to do. Other matters to attend to. Of more importance.

‘This is what I said in the first place,’ Joseph says with triumph. He has just caught her, he seems to be saying, in another display of her feminine inconsistency. Her lack of logic, so charming really. ‘Just listen to your husband,’ he says and pats her on her behind, now separated from his touch with layers of fabric and a cushioned bustle.

In March 1781, the Polish King, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, does not look like the portrait of him she remembers from the internuncio’s study. He is older, now, nearing fifty, his forehead more wrinkled, his robes less grand. But his large black eyes are warmer, softer and two dimples still form in the corners of his lips.

Besides, now she knows that it was only a copy. The real one is here, in Warsaw.

The three grand chambers on the ground floor of the Royal Castle have been turned into a studio. Painters, sculptors and furniture-makers work there together. Apprentices and students who come there, are allowed to copy the paintings by Lampi, Baciarelli, Grassi, Norblin, from the King’s personal collection.

‘Sometimes I feel as if the paths of our lives have crossed many a time,’ His Royal Highness tells Madame Sophie de Witt. ‘Perhaps we have lived before?’

The notion that souls may come back to earth for another life intrigues him. In the Hebrew Cabbala he has studied for some time now souls come back to atone for their sins, or to assist other souls in their journeys.
Gilgul
, he says, the rolling of souls from one body to another. The Hassidim believe in it too, although the
Talmud scholars assure him that there is no basis for these beliefs.

‘If our lives crossed before, I could’ve been your slave.’ ‘Or I yours,’ the King says.

She laughs and spreads her fan. There are real flakes of gold on her new gown. After the bored calm of Kamieniec, Warsaw delights her. The crowded streets, carriages, horses. Her apartment on Krakowskie Przedmiescie, for which the King pays twelve talars each month. Joseph does not like Warsaw. ‘Look at that whore,’ he told her, pointing at a woman, her face obscured by a coarse shawl. She was carrying what looked like a small bundle of rags. Stopping beside the church, she put the bundle inside the trap door of a church, and rang the bell. ‘Another bastard,’ Joseph said, ‘left at the mercy of the Church.’ The woman rushed away, without looking back.

Better than leaving them by the Vistula, drowned in the mud. Better than strangling the baby with her own hands, or smothering it with a pillow. Life is always a better choice, even if it is nothing more than a chance at it.

‘Ah, the joy on your face,’ the King says. ‘I could drink it.’ He takes her hand in his, peels off her white glove and his warm lips touch her skin. She cannot quite name the pleasure she feels, but she wants to stretch this moment to the utmost. Her skin has preserved the touch of his lips and she can still feel it when he leads her to one of the students copying a landscape. Tubes of paint are piled up in a wooden box, colours bleeding, staining the wood. The painter’s hands are speckled with colour, and there are spots of red and yellow smeared on his cheeks.

‘This is how I would like a garden to be,’ the King says, pointing at the luminous landscape the student is copying. ‘The sky, the earth, the sea, the eternal forces of nature. But it is always the fire that dominates it.’

She asks who the painter is.

‘Lorraine,’ the King says. ‘The worshipper of the sun.’

In a beautiful garden the sun should illuminate beauty, lead the visitors to perfection. In such a garden death would not frighten us any more. It would be nothing more than a moment of passage, leading us away from the passing pleasures of the body into the world of Reason.

‘What does
he
talk to you about all the time?’ Joseph keeps asking.

She is wearing a dress of pale pink muslin. The fullness of the skirt draws the eyes away from her thickening waist. In the morning she vomits. It’s a boy, Joseph whispers with pride. You don’t get sick like that for a girl. She sends him away to bring her pickled cucumbers and herring in oil. She demands oysters or a pint of beer. When her face gets bloated in the morning, she rubs her skin with a chunk of ice until the bloating goes away and the pink glow returns to her cheeks. She prefers to be seen in the soft light of the candles.

‘God,’ the King says, ‘knows not only the laws of geometry according to which the world is built, but is also an artist creating according the rules of beauty. Beauty, together with Wisdom, and Strength is the basis of all knowledge.’