Garden of Venus (24 page)
He sits down on a chair, without asking permission,
without waiting for her to sit down first.
‘You are not as naïve as you seem to be, are you?’ he says. ‘You of all people should know that kings and princes care little for those beneath them.’
He spreads his legs. His riding boots are old, she notices. His cuffs frayed.
‘
Some
princes,’ she says. ‘
Some
kings.’
He shakes his head just the way she remembers, as if she were a child to be admonished. Outside the door the footman moves. One word, one scream and she can have Monsieur Boscamp thrown out into the street. The thought makes her laugh out loud.
‘How little you know,’ he sighs, looking up at the ceiling.
Balsam, when added to tar, ceases to be balsam but turns to tar; and tares, though sown in the finest field, will not become wheat. So, if a noblewoman marries a peasant, she will certainly give birth to an ignoble child. For what purity can come from such impurity, what perfume from such a stench? It is a wise proverb that goes: nightingales are not born from owls.
Piekarski from Przeworsk, a peasant’s son and a bastard who now passes himself for a noble from Podolia.
Dobrzecki from Kaleniów, a merchant from Torun who paid the Karwowski family to adopt him.
Nowacki, a Jew. His daughter married into the Wierzycki family.
His memory is as excellent as always, he can go on for
hours if she wants. There is a whole book of such revelations, a book she will find extremely popular among her new friends. No one who has ever sneaked into the Polish gentry has been spared. It’s all there, proven beyond doubt. He likes to consult this thick book at his leisure. It offers him new lessons in the deviousness of the human nature. It might one day have a new entry:
De Witt: His mother, Sophie Glavani, a Greek whore well versed in the knowledge of the school of Cytera and the mysteries of Paphos, has married into the de Witt family. His grandmother is a worshipper of Venus in Istanbul eager to service every passerby, circumcised or not, and is a famous procuress.
‘This sounds just right. Will it be a girl or a boy, I wonder?’ he says, looking at her belly. ‘You never thought that by the time this child is born the past would be forgotten, did you?’
She knows he is right.
‘Fortune, my dear Dou-Dou,’ he says in that old voice of his, ‘is fickle and can be easily smothered. Men like to believe the worst. The King might like to hear a story or two, a story of a kind one man of the world tells another.
Mes amours intimes avec la belle Phanariote
? The story of conniving, of false pretences, of virginity traded so many times.’
Outside, in the street, someone shrieks with a piercing scream that makes her hair stand on end.
Think
, she tells herself. What can you give him to buy his silence?
She can feel the baby move inside her.
‘Do you want an enemy or a friend in me,’ she asks. Her voice is light and cheerful. ‘You still have a choice,
mon ami
.’
He clears his throat. To make a point of his strength he pours himself claret from the same decanter she had
taken her sip only a few minutes before. This is her best claret, a gift from the King’s cellars.
‘You see,
mon ami
,’ she says, smiling, ‘there are enough valiant chevaliers in this city who would gladly challenge you to a duel and I’ve been told that you do not cherish the prospect much.’
This is no bluff. One word to Joseph would be enough. He is fast with pistols and his sabre. He has a good eye. Monsieur Boscamp’s lifeless body would soon be lying on the Blonie fields. He knows that.
‘You have two sons, don’t you, Charles.’ This is the first time she has called him by his name. A little moment once only imagined, now insignificant. ‘And a daughter who should be married soon. Married well, I presume, which is not very easy given her father’s reputation. Perhaps some people need to hear a word in her favour.’
He raises the glass to the light, admiring its crimson hue. Then he raises it to her. His eyes narrow, his lips twisted into a grimace. She can take it for a half-smile, if she so chooses.
‘Your health,’ he says, bowing to her. ‘Madame de Witt. Divine Madame de Witt.’
Your eyes are black and lovely,
But wild and disdainful as those of a stag.
When he leaves she takes the decanter and smashes it against the wall. The crystal breaks into a cascade of glass and the wine splashes red across the wall and down to the floor. The maid who rushes in looks at her with questioning eyes.
‘Clean it up, and help me get ready,’ she says, trying on a new pair of white damask gloves. ‘Tonight is Princess Lubomirska’s
soirée
. I cannot disappoint a dear friend.’
Among the letters that arrived that day there was one from Jeroslav, her stepbrother, addressed to Olga personally. The letter had been dispatched three months before, from Odessa. It had been sent to St Petersburg and then, having missed them by a few days, forwarded to Berlin.
Olga took the letter to her room and closed the door. She broke the Potocki seal.
My dear sister
, Jeroslav began. Even in this opening she could hear his voice, the ironic twinge, the haughtiness of a Potocki. A better Potocki, a son of Josephine,
née
Mnishek. A distinction subtle but significant, hinting at the delicate matter of provenance and lineage and the talk of cuckoo’s chicks.
I pray that these few words will find you, my dear sister, in good health. In such trying times one has to remember how delicate one’s constitution is and how easy it is to abuse it.
She eyed quickly Jeroslav’s long-winded exposé on the vicissitudes of life. She had no idea what her half-brother meant by the importance of upholding the highest of values and following in the footsteps of the golden tradition.
As children of the same father, my dear sister, we need to help one another in times like this, and preserve whatever is still left of our patrimony. I have been given to understand that this clever little Jewess is gaining undue influence over your mother. I was told that your mother has made a far too generous endowment on her behalf, and that she is showering her with quite expensive and entirely inappropriate gifts. Could you arrange to have the girl’s things searched before you leave for Paris? One
hears stories of ingratitude that make one’s blood curdle. I have to warn you, my dear sister, that at the time of illness the mind is often weak.
Is it really insupportable to ask for the account of your mother’s expenses, not of her own funds, of course, but those which, by law, belong to her children?
Olga read on quickly: about the pearls that should be hers but would, undoubtedly, go to her elder sister; about yet another endowment for Jan de Witt, son of that
disgusting
de Witt whom her mother had insisted on receiving in Tulchin after their father’s death as if it weren’t enough that he was paid off handsomely for giving up his rights to Madame de Witt.
I wouldn’t like to suggest that it is all happening at our expense, yours as much as mine, but the unfortunate facts speak for themselves
.
She tore the letter to pieces and threw it into the fire. The paper smoked and smouldered for a while before disappearing in the flames. In the Tulchin palace where she had grown up, the palace now claimed by her brother Mieczyslaw in spite of Maman’s protests, there had always been a grateful chorus of residents. Madame Czerkies, toothless, rambling on and on about the need for gratitude and the rewards kept in store for charitable hearts. Monsieur Trembecki going on and on about how only beans and water were good for you and how one should never touch animal flesh. They couldn’t ever leave Maman alone, could they? As if she did not have her own children who could take care of her?
For it hurt to remember that when Olga offered to write to her sister and ask her to hurry, Maman said she had already asked Rosalia to do it.
She felt a chill strike her, thoughts a torrent of anger kept stale for too long. The sight of Rosalia in St Petersburg on the day she arrived, awkward in that black dress, her
uneasy smile that grew so fast in confidence and that story of the books taken away from her at the customs. Olga’s own elation at the thought that she would be free from those tedious tasks of helping Maman. The moments she must have missed, ignored, moments of immense importance, now so plain for everyone to see.
There is no need to trouble yourself. Madame la Comtesse is very comfortable
.
Madame is resting now and should not be disturbed
.
Madame had such a bad dream last night, but it is just a memory now
.
Who does this Mlle Romanowicz think she is? What gives her the right to order me around like that? Does she think Maman cares for her more than she cares for her own daughters?
How quickly those who are lifted from the gutter forget their place. Claim what was never theirs.
But there are other thoughts too, one bringing a smile of satisfaction to Olga’s lips. Rosalia, so freshly out of mourning, preening at the mirror; letting her curls fall loose on her forehead; asking Marusya for ice in the morning to rub her cheeks with; staring at the French doctor. Staring at him like … like a calf at a painted door.
Rosalia trying out her faded charms.
Yes,
Monsieur le docteur
. No,
Monsieur le docteur
.
Rosalia melting with hope.
At your expense, my dear sister, as well as mine
.
Their itinerary is: from Warsaw to Berlin, from Berlin to the town of Spa where all fashionable people drink their mineral waters, from Spa to Paris. From Paris to Vienna, from Vienna back home to Kamieniec.
As soon as they left Poland, in the first inn where they
stopped for the night she saw that Joseph signed them as Comte and Comtesse de Witt. This, he assured her, was the only accurate translation of their true station in life.
‘Our real honeymoon journey,’ he calls it. Delayed by a year and a half but so much sweeter for it. General de Witt’s generous allowance has proved a good investment in his son’s career, though Sophie likes to remind her husband that De Witt’s money goes much further for all along the way their new friends are eager to offer their houses and carriages.
In the Berlin Lustgarden, firecrackers explode with loud bangs. Contrary to what Charles Boscamp told her once, grey stuffing does not stick out of the gilded chairs in the Berlin palace and the guests of the Prussian King do not leave the table hungry, even if many complain that the food is rather crude. Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia is a man of thrift, who believes in simplicity.
She is wearing a Greek chiton. It is made of one big rectangle of red silk woven with threads of silver and gold. The top edges of the fabric, on her shoulders, are fastened with golden clasps. Her hair is pinned up, adorned with pearls. Her laughter has a new tinge to it, impetuous and confident. On the day she arrived at court the King of Prussia asked her if she liked to dance.
‘Always,’ she said. ‘Especially with kings.’
But the King of Prussia did not want to dance. He wanted to see her dance with one of his officers, Graf von Haefen. ‘Will you indulge me?’ the King had asked.
She would dance as long as he wanted, she said and let the Graf lead her through the waxed floor, to the hushed whispers of the guests. Bets were being taken, she heard, on who was more beautiful: Comtesse de Witt or a certain German Fraulein whose position in Berlin society had not been contested until now.
The verdict, her new friend Alfred von Haefen has informed her, was in her favour. He has not left her side for the last four days. He is beside her now, in the Lustgarden where the King and his guests have come to watch the entertainment.
A young juggler is wearing a costume on which blue, red and green triangles are linked with yellow braid. In his eyes, she can see the reflections of the flaming torches he throws in the air and catches with his deft hands.
In Bursa her cousins taught her to juggle with wooden balls and held contests around the bonfire. Diamandi always beat her then, his hands faster, his eyes more alert. He was a foolish boy, still herding sheep for his father. This is what Mana wrote with undisguised triumph, with a toothless wife and five snotty children. Mana does not believe in forgiveness, but Sophie likes to think that if it hadn’t been for Diamandi, she might still be in Bursa.
The juggler is the first one in a long string of entertainers the King of Prussia has ordered for the evening. There will be fighters, wrestlers, boxers and fencers. A tightrope has been strung between two windows of the palace. A muzzled bear stands on his hind legs, awaiting its turn. She claps with delight. She has never seen a dancing bear.
Graf von Haefen already has a rival, young Prince Naryshkin from St Petersburg, another visitor to the Prussian capital, who has also placed himself firmly at her side. Both bore her slightly. All they can do is repeat what she has said or done or what has been said about her. The King of Prussia thinks her ravishing. ‘If there are more such pretty faces there,’ they repeat his words, ‘perhaps I should visit Poland more often.’
The King of Prussia may prefer the love of men, but Comtesse de Witt has charmed him nevertheless. She sang him a drinking song about the myrtle of Venus and
Bacchus’s vine. ‘Once,’ she whispered into the King’s ear, ‘I sang it dressed as a page.’
The juggler has finished his act and stepped aside. He is sitting on an oak barrel, watching the firecrackers, a half-smile on his lips. The torches, extinguished, are lying at his feet in a pile.
To escape her adoring companions, Sophie walks up to the juggler. The man is young and muscular, just the way the King likes them. As she approaches, he smiles awkwardly and stands up. She is a lady and the guest of the Prussian King. Her silk chiton sparkles with streaks of gold. He is very tall. Even if she stood on tiptoe she would reach no higher than his chest.