Garden of Venus (38 page)

Underneath, below a thick line, in different ink:

Rosalia let the vellum pages drop to the floor. The injustice of these words was so enormous. Was it proof of what she had suspected all along, that her mother did not love her? The reason why Maman always reminded her of her duties and never of her pleasures?

My daughter should never have been born
.

She closed her eyes and thought of the sea, of that ship that had sunk, that ship her father didn’t want them to know about. She thought of the kite she had never managed to fly that afternoon for it kept falling down and there was never the tug of the string she knew should have come. Of the boy who had broken it and ran away from her to his proper family – to his father who had not gone away like hers.

‘You opened the drawer, Rosalia? You read my private papers?’

Her mother’s face was red with anger, ugly, in some unspeakable way, and distorted with pain.

‘Don’t you see this is a wicked thing to do? Dreadful, terrible thing!’

She could hear the voices in the garden of her cousins quarrelling. The maid was telling them to stop right this minute or she would call Madame and they would be sorry.

‘Why did you write that I should never have been born?’ she asked. Her mother acted as if she hadn’t heard her, as if her question did not exist, had never been asked.

‘Don’t you know it is wrong to pry through other people’s things?’

‘I know, Maman.’

‘Then I want you to promise that you will never ever do it again.’

‘I promise.’

And even if she lives, she too is going to suffer for my sins
.

Rosalia would have promised anything, anything to erase the sting of those lines she would try to blot out of her mind forever, to stop her mother from looking at her with such anger and disappointment.

‘I want you to go to your room now,’ she heard. ‘To think of what you have done.’

‘When I die, Rosalia,’ she heard just before Maman closed the door behind her. ‘You may read it all – when I die.’

Felix is talking to her. He has realised something.

‘Think of what has happened to the ancient Greeks. They have not died without offspring, so their descendants still walk the earth. Some may have become Turks, some Italians. Some may still be Greek, their blood flowing in your veins.’

They have now been in Hamburg for two years. Kotula is in the room next door, playing with the English governess.
He has already begun to speak. ‘Catch,’ he cries. ‘Catch me.’ He is not allowed to call Felix
Papa
. ‘My Lord,’ Kotula says, kissing his father’s portrait goodnight the way she has taught him. ‘Kiss kiss love love.’ Nicolai is still a baby. Boisterous, demanding attention. Ready to scream with anger when anything crosses him.

She thinks of the sea in Istanbul. One clear night, she remembers, when Mana was asleep, she climbed onto the roof of their house. The sky was strewn with stars, luminous and tempting. She tried to look beyond them, into the black void from which they had sprung but the nothingness did not hold her attention for long. Instead, she gazed at the spread of the sea, recalling how she stood on its shores, watching the rolling crest of the waves, thinking that the white foam was like Belgian lace on a rich lady’s cuffs. From the roof she could hear the dark waves, their edges splashing on the pebbles of the shore. Mana later found her there, staring into the distance. ‘Hope is not a course of action, Dou-Dou,’ she said. ‘You need something much stronger than hope.’

‘Think about it,’ Felix says.

She doesn’t know what to think. At moments like these, it seems to her that he is losing his mind, that the barrage of accusations, the gossip, the pamphlets and the jokes have finally cracked him open. He is unsure of her. He eyes with suspicion any man who comes up to her: young or old, handsome or ugly. He wants to know what she thinks of them, relieved if she pronounces them boring or pompous or foolish. If only he could marry her, he says. Right now. Right this minute. He trusts the power of the Potocki name more than he trusts himself.

‘Think about it,’ he repeats.

For who is he, he asks her. If fate had not thwarted him, he could have been the King of Poland. Wasn’t his blood purer than that of Poniatowski? But does he have
to remain Polish forever? Does he have to remain Polish when his countrymen would have drowned him in a spoonful of water?

He has had enough. Tulchin is now in Russia. So is Uman. His estates, his Ukrainian estates are part of the Russian empire and this makes him a Russian subject.

‘I’m Russian now,’ he declares. It is the Polish cruelty, he tells her, that makes him say these words, words that once would have seemed to him vicious and evil.

‘Russia is where my home is. Russia is where we shall live.’

Countries are like men, ma belle Phanariote. You leave them when a better one comes along
.

She has hardened. She is not like Felix, she thinks; she will not be judged. People can say what they want, but she will not care. She is her own judge, her own conscience.

Lovers come to her in her dreams. In the darkness she never sees their faces, but her body feels the grip of their fingers, the bite of their teeth. They are wild, ruthless in their desire, unstoppable. Strong from a life of struggle. Forged like iron, tried and true, without a scrap of excess in their bodies. To these lovers she surrenders with moans that wake Felix up.

‘Who is Lysander?’

‘A cousin of mine I grew up playing with. He drowned when he was twelve. His father carried him through the field, his body limp, his hands dangling. His eyes closed. All I could think of was: I will never see his eyes again.’

The ease with which lies flow no longer amazes her.

In Lvov her divorce trial is proceeding smoothly, thanks to Felix’s money. Joseph has raised no objections to the witnesses’ accounts. Madame Czerkies of Kamieniec has sworn that Lady Sophie Glavani, a virgin from Istanbul, was taken away from her house by Major de Witt, taken
by force and by force brought to the Zienkowice church where she was wed to her captor. In a few weeks she will have to go to Lvov and give her own sworn testimony confirming the same story. Then she will have to wait for Josephine’s change of heart.

For now she has consolations. She has a new passion: fans. When a fan is trimmed with down it catches to the lips, like gossamer. And then there is swanskin. When she touched this thin parchment for the first time she thought that’s what it really was. Swan’s skin. But then she was told that this fine parchment was made from the skin of an unborn lamb, then limed, scraped very thin, and smoothed down with pumice and chalk.

Luxury too has to be learned. Tasted first, before it yields all its pleasures. Like wild honey, Siberian apples, and smoked sturgeon. Like Utrecht velvet and Moroccan leather.

‘We are going back to Russia. I’ve already informed my wife that I wish to live in Tulchin with you. You will have whatever you wish,’ he says, holding on to her, smothering her with impatience, making her into someone she doesn’t know. ‘My Sophie.
Zosiu
,
Zosienko
.’

She is not sorry to have left Hamburg. She is travelling alone, for Felix has been summoned to St Petersburg by Catherine of Russia, and she needs to go to Lvov. But
alone
means with Kotula and Nicolai, Kotula’s two English governesses and one French, Nicolai’s German nurse, her Polish housekeeper and her French maids.
It is the true Tower of Babel
, she has written to Felix.
Endless quarrels and bickering and I have to solve and judge. Mrs David told me that she would prefer to command a whole troop of grenadiers than one wetnurse! Only the English governesses cause me no trouble, and I worried about them the most
.

In Poland, the last desperate insurrection against the Russians has ended in defeat, just as Felix had predicted. In 1795, the last, third partition erased Poland from the map of Europe. Kosciuszko and hundreds of his officers and soldiers are prisoners in St Petersburg; and those who managed to evade capture have left the country, a wave of exiles searching for means to fight for Poland, assessing alliances, choosing with whom to side. She has seen a group of them in Berlin, on her way from Hamburg. Five men draped in the Polish flag on a street corner, giving out leaflets, on the lookout for Prussian guards. Men with tired, bloodshot eyes, appealing to the conscience of Europe.

Hope is not a course of action she wants to tell them.

Stanislaw August, the last King of Poland, has been forced to abdicate and become a
guest
of the Russian court. Catherine does not want him to gather sympathy for Poland at the palaces of Europe.

Sophie refuses to think of him like that. For her Stanislaw August will always remain as he was on the day she saw him for the last time. In the Lazienki palace, kissing her hand, three times. A man with a thick, seductive voice and a half-smile on his fine, narrow lips. She has asked Felix to make inquiries at the Russian court. Perhaps something could be done to ease his fate, something however small. She has always believed in the power of small steps, little imperceptible victories, twists where steps are impossible.

On her way from Hamburg to Lvov she has made some pleasant discoveries.

In Nieborów, the Radziwill estate a few hours’ ride outside Warsaw, Madame de Witt is received with an open heart. Count Potocki is not a traitor to everyone. He is still a Potocki, after all. He still has his millions in spite of all that has happened. Felix’s influence in St Petersburg
is also not to be discounted, now that so much of Poland is part of Russia. More than ever, one needs good friends at the Russian court.

A transformation, she thinks. Away from her, Felix has become better, more attractive.

Here, in Nieborów, it matters that he loves her. It matters that he wants to marry her as soon as Josephine gives her consent. It matters far more than she has hoped it would. All these burdens, these passing troubles, the uncertainty, the humiliations, her hostess says, will soon be just a memory.

‘The truth can only be found in oneself, in peace and solitude, my dear friend,’ Princess Helena Radziwill continues. ‘One should not dwell in the past or nurture bitterness for what cannot be changed.’

The Princess wraps a cashmere shawl over her loose muslin dress, tied with an embroidered sash. ‘I’ll be your guide,’ she says, slipping one hand under Sophie’s arm. Her cheeks are flushed with pride. Arkadia, the Princess’s garden, is her beloved treasure.

The most beautiful part of Arkadia, the Princess tells her, is the temple of Diana, built at the top of the lake. It catches the rising and the setting sun. In the evening the last rays of sunlight are reflected by a crystal mirror, guarded by two stone lions. The mirror wrapped in the wafts of smoke coming from censers placed at the temple’s entrance.

‘Earth, Air, Water and Fire meet here,’ the Princess says.

Dove pace trovai d’ogni mia guerra
, she reads the inscription over the portal. ‘It is from Petrarch. Here I find my peace after each war.’

A beautiful garden is a place of solitude and true friendship. It will admit only those whose spirit is pure. ‘Oh, my dear friend,’ the Princess says. ‘Without it, I would not have survived the turmoils of life.’

Arkadia is not big, but her guide is clever. While winding paths may deposit her where she has already been, every vista is different, every stone, every ruin has a story. From afar, she can hear the children laugh. The two ‘kittens’ delight Princess Helena’s children who refuse to leave the guests alone.

And to think, she wants to say, that in Hamburg no one wanted to shake our hands. But she will not dwell on the miseries of the past. Every day is a new day. Every day is new chance. In a few months she will be free to marry again. As soon as Josephine consents, her children will be Potockis, not just ‘kittens’ without a name.

That afternoon she sits down at her desk and writes to Felix: