Garden of Venus (44 page)

‘I have enough,’ Ignacy said to Thomas, defeated by the cacophony of voices he hoped to bring together. ‘You see, my friend. We are a condemned nation. Only a miracle can save us.’

Thomas held out his hand to squeeze Ignacy’s arm, but his friend was already up waving his hands.

‘Friends,’ Ignacy cried, his cheeks flushed. ‘Countrymen!’ His voice drowned in the agitated noises of the flaring arguments, until the maid appeared again.

The bell that sounded this time was a huge brass one. When the ringing stopped Ignacy announced that the food was growing cold and the cook, God forbid, might be upset. All the kasha, pierogis, borsch! The thought of such waste was enough to quench all divisions.

‘What more proof do you want. Food unites you. Poles are very reasonable people,’ Thomas said.

‘Never for long, my friend,’ Ignacy laughed, putting his hand on Thomas’s shoulder. ‘Never for long.’

Later, after everyone had left, Thomas and Ignacy sat together in the salon watching the fire burn itself out. Sex was the need of the body, he used to tell his students. He tried to evoke Minou, her red hair, her lisping voice, her black lace and scarlet stockings. The image when it came failed to please, or even distract. Something had happened to him in this grim German palace. Something it would take a long time to extract himself from. Something he had long since stopped expecting.

‘Come with me to Philadelphia,’ Thomas said. It was an impulse, a foolish proposition, but he felt better after having said the words.

Ignacy shook his head.

‘It wouldn’t help me, and it won’t help you, Thomas.’

What Ignacy wanted was a moral cauldron in which to cast a new Polish heart. Drown all these dissenting voices, drown all doubt. ‘An uprising,’ he said in a low voice, a whisper almost. ‘Against the Russians.’ He had already heard rumours of clandestine organisations forming among the young. Destiny now ceded to a new generation. The young were whispering already that one should measure strength by the power of dreams. The young, he told Thomas, had forgotten the cynicism of their fathers. Napoleon, for them was a symbol of human dignity and freedom. The D
browski mazurka, the song that started with
Poland is not yet dead as long as we are alive
, had a line in it,
Bonaparte showed us how to win
. This was what the young wanted to remember, Ignacy said.

Will you make her happy, Thomas wanted to ask.

‘Did he really show you how to win?’ he asked instead as Ignacy saw him off to the door. From Santo Domingo only a handful had returned, but to what? The Russian campaign? Over dinner Captain Przybylski had told them of a gruesome discovery. In the dark Russian forests between Borissov and Studzianka, Russian serfs had unearthed a mass of leatherwear, strips of felt, scraps of cloth and shako covers of the Grande Armée. Beside all this there were bones: Human and animal, skulls, tin fittings, bandoliers, bridles, scraps of the Guard’s bearskin.

‘Corpses covered in mud and sand, whole vehicles buried there,’ the Captain had said, ‘have formed an island. That’s where the grass grows now.’ Then, leaning toward Thomas, he added, ‘And forget-me-nots.’

The footman announces that Count Yuri has arrived.

‘Ask him to wait,’ she says.

In the mirror she inspects her simple house dress, white as snow, a bright red ribbon under her breasts drawing attention to itself, and away from her pregnancy. The footman stands motionless by the door holding a cashmere shawl, should she need it to cover her arms. She motions to him to fetch her workbag.

Her fingers pushing the needle through and retrieving it on the other side, she thinks of the baby. She would like another daughter and name her Maria, after Mana.

Yuri when he walks in is shivering. His blond wavy hair is matted and stuck together. His clothes are put together in a haphazard, slovenly way, testifying to many hours spent with a bottle in questionable company. His beige breeches are smudged with wine, his shirt open at the chest, yellowed at the collar.

In his pocket she sees the outline of a pack of cards. She has heard that this morning he lost ten ducats to his own footman on a wager consisting of nothing more than guessing the length of a straw, half-hidden under a dinner napkin.

He approaches her with nervous steps and tries to kiss her on the lips but she makes a sudden turn and his lips brush her cheek.

‘How much have you lost today,’ she asks.

Yuri tries to laugh.

‘I won,’ he says. ‘Two hundred ducats.’

‘From whom.’

‘Karwowski.’

‘He has no money.’

‘But I won it anyway,’ he says and tries to kiss her belly. The thought that there is a baby inside her, a child that is his own flesh and blood moves him. Death is no longer frightening, he has told her. He can think of the future, now. A future with her and his child.

‘If you don’t gamble it all before that,’ she says sharply.

The walls of her boudoir are her favourite colour,
cuisse de nymph effrayée
. It was the right choice, she thinks every time she looks at them.

‘Will you eat something, Yuri?’

‘No.’

‘You should. I insist.’

‘All right then,’ he agrees. A small thing to please her. He is so thin that she could count his ribs.

She points at the mother of pearl inlaid table where the servants have placed Chinese tea cups, without handles, and
zakuska
: Small round canapés with smoked salmon and sturgeon and round slices of egg sprinkled with red caviar.

She eats hungrily. He pecks at the egg, making a face as if forced to swallow wormwood.

The pregnancy has made her legs swell, and he kneels beside her and slowly massages her calves and feet. His hands can be gentle and strong. She closes her eyes and feels the baby move inside her. A boy, she decides, kicking and elbowing his way. I’ll have to think of another name.

‘Remember the first time I saw you,’ Yuri says.

A constable brought him from St Petersburg in a black carriage. Felix’s first born, the prodigal son who has stolen his mother’s silver and pawned it to pay his gambling debts. He had been caught drunk at the Winter Palace, so drunk that he leaned out of the windows and yelled,
Come here everybody so I can puke all over you
. Appearances matter, she told him then. The late Empress knew that well. You could not have caught her yelling her contempt from the palace window.

‘You were wearing a blue dress,’ he says, ‘with a small bow right here,’ he touches her swollen breasts. ‘You were wagging your finger at me. It was such a bright day, the air so pure, I could smell the mowed grass. And I thought I had never seen a woman that beautiful in my life.’

He leans back as if to see her better. There is sweat on his forehead. He should drink two glasses of milk every morning; avoid draughts and dampness; and be in bed before ten, the doctor said.

‘That’s when I fell in love with you,’ he says. ‘And you? When did you know you loved me?’

Before she can come up with an answer, his body is racked by a cough that stains his handkerchief red. It is his suffering that moves her. He is a child, in spite of his twenty-nine years. A weak, spoilt child who has never known what it is to want anything. A man-child who pushes himself inside her like a slippery snake, eyes begging for a sign – a gasp, a moan of pleasure – the lover’s alms.

‘They will not stab you in the back,’ he says, when he recovers his voice, her protector. ‘I won’t allow it.’

He’ll swear to it if she wants him to, swear on St Yuri, his patron saint, that he will not let his brothers and sisters destroy her. He has made sure that, if he dies, she and her children get his share of the Potockis’ fortune. ‘What is mine is now yours,’ he repeats over and over again, kissing her protruding belly.

She wants to ask him what he would do if this baby takes her life, but she doesn’t. Hope is not a course of action. She doesn’t want empty promises he can forget at the first glimpse of a deck of cards.

These are not promises, he assures her. He will marry her and give her everything he owns. He has made his will. If he dies before her, everything he owns will be hers.

‘You are an angel,’ he says. ‘Without you I would’ve sent a bullet through my head hundreds of times.’

He is right though far too dramatic as usual. Without her he would have drunk himself to death in some brothel. In St Petersburg a whore once told him he was of no use
to a woman. He had no blood left in him, she said and sent him back home with a bottle of vodka. He gave her ten ducats anyway. He still might manage to drink himself to death, if the weak lungs do not claim him first.

‘Run away with me,’ he begs. ‘Let’s leave this cursed place. They hate you here. I can feel it. They are praying for this baby to kill you. No one has ever been happy here. Let’s go to Italy, or Spain. Where it’s warm and where our baby can grow strong.’

‘You should go, darling,’ she says softly. ‘Go to Spa. Go to Barèges. The waters there are excellent. I’ll follow you when things settle down here. When people stop talking. They always stop. They always find something else to amuse themselves with.’

‘You know I can’t be alone.’

She smoothes the hair on his head gently. It is thin hair, just like Felix’s but not yet grey. Her voice is soothing, calm. His love for her has already done enough damage, risen enough brows. Appearances matter, Yuri, she wants to tell him. This is not the time for foolish gestures.

‘I have four other children, Yuri,’ she says, ‘besides this unborn one. Do you wish me to forget about them?’

How big the tears are that flow down his hollow cheeks, how white his lips, the strained look, the sorrow. His very soul is in these eyes. Sad and wistful and yearning for something that always eludes him. She promises she will join him as soon as she can. As soon as the baby can travel with her, as soon as the most pressing matters are resolved. Her reasons cannot be dismissed. What she needs to do is to build their future together, build its foundations. His brothers have already threatened to take her to court. She needs to go to St Petersburg, make sure the Emperor understands her delicate situation and to form alliances, entreat the protection of friends.

‘If you let them touch you, I’ll kill you.’

Her face turns into a grimace of disgust. Jealousy she cannot take. Not anymore.

‘I’ll kill them too. All of them.’

He staggers. Petulance is not endearing. Neither is sulking. She longs for a manly man; for arms she can wrestle with; for the smattering of danger, of blood.

‘You are so impractical, my love,’ she says. ‘You would want us to live on air, but I can’t. If you are like that, it falls to me to be reasonable, to do the right thing.’

Her arguments convince him for the moment or perhaps it is something else. A thought of some wager he might propose the minute he leaves her room. Yes, he agrees, she needs to stay in Tulchin for a while and then go to St Petersburg, but in this case he will go with her. She needs his protection more than ever. His word against the lies of his brothers. They have never liked her. Always sided against her with their mother, always scheming against her.

‘You are sick,’ she reminds him. ‘The doctor said you will not live through another Russian winter. St Petersburg is bad for you even in the summer. Do you think that seeing you lose your health every day is going to help me?’

There is another tear in his eye. It swells and begins rolling down his cheek. There is so much wavering in him and so little strength. Is that what her baby will inherit?

‘I want you to get better,’ she says. ‘I want you to love me. To come to me like you used to, every night.’

He smiles as she slides her hand inside his breeches and squeezes him, softly at first, then harder. He laughs and kisses her on the lips.

That night the footman wakes her up, the flame of the candle in his hands flickering. In the dark his pallid face looks ghostlike.

He doesn’t have to say it. She knows it already. She can feel death in the air. She is a widow.

The blood rushes to her head and the waters break. The baby has decided that the time has come to enter this world.

Now that Madame Kisielev was here, she found herself unemployed. After the morning duties, her presence at the countess’s side was no longer required. The daughters were at their mother’s side and she was urged to take some much needed rest.

Blood – Rosalia thought – was always thicker than water.

‘Death without pain,’ Doctor Lafleur said. He had waited for her outside the grand salon. He would walk her to her room, he said. She should lie down. Put her feet up on a pillow. Rest.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will.’ She was trying to remember how she had longed for such moments only a few days ago when the duties of nursing had made mockery of sleep.

‘The miracle of morphine.’

The end, she thought. This is how it will all end. The countess will die and he will leave for America. She will never be allowed to forget. Forget what her life could have been.

The success of morphine had made Doctor Lafleur exceedingly optimistic. Perhaps, at last, this was the much awaited means of controlling pain. Not just for a chosen few, but for everyone. Perhaps even eliminating pain all together, even though there were bound to be adverse effects. With prolonged use, it might stop working, of course, but still, given the gravity of the patient’s condition,
this might not be much of a concern. Yes, what they were both witnessing was nothing short of a miracle.