Garden of Venus (48 page)

Now he sulks for days whenever she laughs off his desire to marry her. But why would she want a husband again? Why would she want to give up her freedom, the sweet possibilities of widowhood? To suffer a husband’s bouts of jealousy from which, unlike now, there would
be no escape? To lose control over her children’s fate? Four years ago she lost her husband. A few weeks ago a letter had come from Yuri’s valet that his master died peacefully, leaving everything he owned to her and her children and – in the last letter he ever wrote – asking his brothers to respect his last will. They won’t of course. Yuri is buried in a small cemetery in Barèges, and her stepchildren are taking her to court.
My brother’s last will was written under duress, in a state of mental anguish
, Jeroslav has written to the Tsar.

If it weren’t for Nicolai Nicolaievich, she might worry.

‘I thrive on betrayals,’ she likes to whisper into her lovers’ ears. ‘Watch out. This is a fair warning.’

The crystal glasses sparkle in the sun. Count Kapodistrias who will never become her husband is trying to get her attention by clinking a knife on his wine glass. She should tell him not to wear black. It makes his skin look sickly.

She stops to take it all in. It is a scene of immense beauty. Her daughters, Olga and Sophie, in their white muslin dresses, the boys, Alexander, Mieczyslaw and Bobiche, in their green velvet ensembles. Count de Lagarde, his eyes upon her every move, raises his glass to her. A sweet, silly man, still young looking, still hoping she might let him into her bed. But his footman has more life in his eyes than him – and far better calves. For now poor de Lagarde is busying himself translating the poem about Sophievka, trying to impress her with poetic nonsense. All nature is a garden, he maintains and her Ukrainian shepherds are philosophers of nature, watching after the flocks of deer that graze on the Elysian fields. They are the solemn students of the natural we should all be learning from.

‘If I ever let nature rule, my dear friend,’ she has told him, ‘my shepherds would cut my throat. What makes
you think they are any different from the Parisian mob? And what of the deer? The deer would eat my saplings and ruin my lawn.’

She has offered to show him the ha-ha fence her architect put in to keep the deer away. A sunken fence, invisible from afar, but one the deer could not cross.

‘My tribute to your beauty, Madame la Comtesse,’ de Lagarde is standing up, clearing his throat:

She claps her hands and says she is flattered.

‘Your ear for poetry, Madame,’ he whispers, his leg seeking hers under the table. She laughs and pats his shoulder with her fan. She might go to the Crimea with him, after all, just to amuse herself. He makes her laugh with his stories of the Ukraine. ‘But, my dear countess, the women here. I saw a whole group of them, all naked, swimming in the river, splashing around like ancient nymphs.’

This is all he sees. He glories in the expanse of wheat, fields of watermelons, vastness of the steppes. He talks of colour and texture. Once he bent and took a clump of soil between his fingers. It was black, almost purple in the sun. ‘I should have been a painter, Madame la Comtesse. But then I would have painted nothing but you.’

Little Sophie waves to her and rises from the table, hands outstretched. In a moment she feels a slender arm embracing her waist, a smooth cheek begging for a kiss.
Her most loved daughter is still a child, a beautiful child.

‘Maman,’ little Sophie says. ‘Monsieur Allen has given me this.’ In her hand is a sketch of her in profile. A fairly good one, she has to say, the lines bold and sparse, yet able to suggest the likeness and the softness that warms her child’s face. ‘He said I was going to be as beautiful as you are.’

‘Of course you will,’ she whispers. She finds it all so amusing. This summer day with the sun slowly withdrawing, the buzzing of flies, the coming and going of the servants silently following a familiar ritual. The blood flowing through her body, warm, plentiful. Her heart is beating steadily, her skin smooth as velvet. There is no past and no future, just this moment in time, and she is right there at the head of the long table, listening to her children. Alexander made his horse jump through all the barriers today. Mieczyslaw, with a frown across his forehead, declares that he could teach the frogs to obey him. Bobiche just smiles from Olena’s arms, even though, at four, he is far too big to be carried around like that, and waves his plump hand at her. Olga wants to know what games they are going to play after dinner.

Monsieur Allen has been painting Sophievka. She has taken a liking to him, a Scot with a reddish moustache and hands which betray the evidence of his experiments with a burnt patch of skin and a nail broken in half. For Monsieur Allen is also an amateur chemist and a passionate lover of machines. As a child, he confided, he saw a silver figure of a lady who danced, holding a bird in her hand. The bird opened its beak and flapped its wings. Ever since, he has striven to create intricate systems of wheels and levers.

‘What do they do?’ she asked him once, but he only smiled.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘But I like them that way.’

At Sophievka he asked to be shown the hydraulic system that pumped the water from the river to the fountains. He marvelled at the sketches, but insisted that the design could be improved. She likes him.

The French maid is hoping he would notice her. She preens herself like a hen, and feigns interest in his structures. She is a silly woman, for the eyes of Monsieur Allen follow the stable lads and young footmen. He is discreet, but Sophie is too well attuned to human desires not to notice. Today he must have found gratification for there is a change in him. Most of the afternoons he has been silent, lost in his thoughts, but today he laughs loudly. ‘Not a minute longer. Not one more minute,’ he says. ‘The children can’t wait for their games.’

‘Charades,’ her little Sophie exclaims. ‘Maman, let’s play charades.’

L’abbé Chalenton is explaining to Mieczyslaw that frogs do not possess enough intelligence to be trained. Their bodies are nothing but simple mechanisms of stimulus and reaction. Her son’s eyes darken and his jaw sets.

Sophie laughs. She knows that this happiness will not last, but such thoughts have never troubled her. There is a lightness in her, a giddiness she cherishes as the music caresses her ears. She can feel de Lagarde’s hand covering hers, hear him whispering his silly love.

In a moment Mieczyslaw will point in the direction of Uman and ask, ‘what’s that?’ and they will all see the red glow of fire. The music will cease, the servants will huddle together and point toward the glow and they will all begin to smell the first wafts of smoke. She will later learn how one careless spark was enough to ignite a wagon full of hay and how the wind scattered the flaming tufts all over the town. And then, for days, after the fire has been extinguished, she will smear balm onto the burnt skin of children, and distribute money and clothes to those who lost
their homes. ‘Our little mother,’ the serfs will call her and kiss her hand and promise to pray for her until the day they die.

In her mind, softened by morphine, she floats away from them all, watching the diminishing figures of her children and guests, mere puppets now. But what she is floating toward is still hidden.

Somewhere a soprano is still singing:

The carriage was slowing down, rolling along Unter den Linden, into the courtyard of von Haefen’s palace. General Kisielev took note of the straw carpet laid on the stones, muffling the horses’ hoofs, and the tallow candles in the lanterns. The dusk was obscuring the faces of the servants and now, at times, they seemed to him little more than shadows.

After making sure his valet was alert enough to take care of his luggage, he let himself be shown upstairs. He was hoping his wife would be there, waiting, but a man greeted him, introducing himself as Graf von Haefen, his host.

‘Welcome, General,’ he said with a frown. ‘Welcome to Berlin.’ He must have had cognac not long ago, for General Kisielev could smell it in his breath. He too would have liked a drink, but he was not going to ask for it.

The Graf was pacing the room, limping slightly as he walked. If General Kisielev had any doubt as to the seriousness of his mother-in-law’s condition, it would have to leave him now.

Small, hurried steps approached. The door squeaked open.

‘Pavel, my darling,’ his wife threw herself into his arms. ‘You’ve come after all.’ Her face was reddened from crying. Olga came in, too, walking just behind her sister, watching him through narrowed eyes, her face gaunt and pale. He kissed his wife’s tear-stricken cheeks, and enquired about his son.

‘He must be feeling Maman’s pain, my little dove,’ she sobbed. ‘He couldn’t sleep all night. The nurse carried him in her arms.’

He had forbidden such mollycoddling, but he was not without feelings. This was not the time to exert his will.

‘Thank God, you are here, Pavel Dimitrievich,’ Olga said.

General Kisielev noted that her pale face looked good in the blue silk, and that she clasped his arm strongly with her bony fingers. Her waist was so small he could have encircled it with his hands.

‘You must be very tired, Pavel Dimitrievich,’ Olga said. ‘Our host will forgive us. Won’t you, dear Graf?’

‘But of course,’ the Graf stammered. A schoolboy caught at something shameful, General Kisielev thought. His cheeks were far too red. Don’t they have a doctor here who could bleed him.

‘Let me show you to your room, Pavel Dimitrievich,’ Olga said. ‘And then you should go and see Maman right away. The French doctor says the confusion has cleared. Only he doesn’t know for how long.’

Something is happening to her. Something she cannot control.

She can feel a man’s lips on her nipples, sucking the blood out of her. His hair under her hand feels limp and thin. She tries to push him away, but her arms are cottony
and soft. She tries to scream but no sound comes through her lips. Out of all the things in the world, it is weakness that she fears the most. The kind of weakness dogs and horses can smell on the human skin.

Someone comes into the room. A man, young, with firm olive skin, black hair falling over his forehead. Lysander? How could that be? But it is him and joy at his presence overcomes her. How has he escaped time? For her, life has become an act of camouflage: false hair, rouge, rice powder, the remedies from her gardens. First strawberries mashed into a pulp absorbed by the skin, cucumber slices on her eyes, honey, bee pollen, oats soaked in buttermilk. He doesn’t need any of this. His skin is radiant and smooth, the way she remembers it.

Her chest is heaving, her nostrils widen. What will she say when anyone comes in? She will say that Prince bey Zadi is an old family friend, from long ago. From Istanbul.

‘But I’m dead,’ Prince bey Zadi says. ‘A boating accident on the Bosphorus,’ he adds with a roguish smile.

He is not lying.

‘You will always astound me,’ she whispers into his ear. She marvels at the warmth of his hands. Her breath is hot and moist. Lysander, when he turns toward her, fixes his eyes on hers. They are black, bottomless.

She can feel the silky smoothness of his tongue on her thighs.

‘Madame de Witt’s bastards have no right to my father’s money,’ Jeroslav says. She cannot see him, but she can hear his voice. Why has Rosalia let him in?

I want to wake up, she thinks. I do not have time for hatred.

‘Why cannot you trust me?’ Felix asks. ‘Why are you fighting me all the time? Who are you without me?’

He is bending over her, his face livid. He is pointing at his heart. When he died the doctor who opened him up said his kidneys were rotten from an overdose of Spanish fly. Is that what he worried about in the end: making love to her?

Was she mistaken about him after all?

She thinks. He cursed me. He cursed this child I carried in me.

‘Why cannot you trust me, Sophie? Why have you never trusted love? Why have you let the Devil into your life?’

How distant the pain has become, how blurred. A presence she can marvel at but not be drawn into. The French doctor is the man who can kill pain.

So why would she talk to a ghost?

‘Drink,’ a voice says.

A man’s voice, tempting, soothing.

‘One more sip.’

She feels the familiar bitterness on her tongue, its slow progress down her throat. There is another kind of knowledge, Doctor, she should tell him. The knowledge of blood and guts and unchecked growth. The knowledge of the body: of teeth, eyes, limbs. The knowledge hunters have when they stroke the blood-stained fur and feel the shape of the skull.

She has always been lucky with men. This one will also do what she wants. All she has to do is ask.

‘I’m yours, flesh and blood,’ her own son tells her. ‘Like you I have no shame and no regrets.’

She would like to close her eyes and make him disappear. A pile of crates is waiting for her in the Tulchin hall. Her steward has a detailed list of the status quo.
Nothing has been omitted from it, not a ribbon or pin, Mieczyslaw tells her. How calm he is, how sure of himself.

‘I haven’t taken anything that belongs to Maman. No dresses, no jewellery, no furniture.’

A draught of cold air envelops her shoulders. In one of these crates there must be a shawl she could wrap herself in.

Tulchin belongs to him, Mieczyslaw tells her. His stepbrothers, thanks to her clever scheming and her lovers’ influence in St Petersburg, have no part of it. Jan has already got far more than he deserves. After all he is de Witt, not Potocki. As to his brothers, Alexander is too weak to fight him, besides he doesn’t care for Tulchin. He would much rather live in St Petersburg or Warsaw. And Bobiche?