Garden of Venus (8 page)

‘I’m worthy of a king’s bed,’ she thinks, just before sleep comforts her, just before she remembers the smell of jessamine and honeysuckle; just before she forgets the silk belt in the black ebony coffer and the cold anger in the servant’s voice.

The Greeks are but our slaves, she hears, their race a perfect example of what happens when the men are not separated from the women. No work ever gets done, because with all these women running in the streets men only want to have fun. Idleness and lies rule them. And deceit.

But the Russians, she says in protest, do not separate the women. Or the French. Or the English. No one heeds her words. What does she know, a plaything that has caught the Princess’s fancy. Clanging bells on her arms so that her arrival does not go unnoticed.

The Harem, she hears, is a woman’s blessing. Without it, a woman would be exposed to curious glances in the streets. To prying eyes, to jeerings from the passersby. Here, a woman has everything she may ever want. Why would she want to venture outside? What is it that she lacks?

When she laughs, the women say: ‘Don’t laugh too much or you’ll cry soon.’

It is in the small courtyard, by the fountain, that the women gather: odalisques, servants, and slaves. On low tables the slaves have laid clays, dried pomegranate peel, nut bark, saffron, dried roses, myrtle, orange flowers. There are fresh eggs the whites of which will be rubbed with
shebba
to make the thick lumpy mass that will cleanse the skin. For it is with the skin, they say, that you touch the world.

The women, their faces covered with gooey masks, sit patiently and talk. Things have to be done right, the way they were done before. Only the conceited believe one could discover a better way than the one practised for generations. A better way of embroidering or preparing a face mask. A better way of dancing or making coffee. A better way to live.

But there is other talk too. Of slaves whose beauty caught the eye of the Master, of these moments for which
one prepares one’s whole life. A moment in which a man’s eye can change the woman’s fate; when a slave can become an odalisque; and then, if Allah wills that, maybe even a mother of a Sultan’s child. Unless, of course, one day, in the
hammam
, such a woman finds the doors locked, and the heat and the steam take her breath away. Why?

The women shrug their shoulders. Doesn’t she know how easy it is to cause envy? To make a false step, say one word too many. Doesn’t she know anything?

Every night it seems to Sophie that she can hear the locking of many doors. There is a restlessness in her. A force sets upon her as soon as she opens her eyes and does not leave her until she falls asleep under the heavy arm of her mistress. The same restlessness that makes a fox caught in a snare chew off its leg.

To stop it Sophie thinks of the black eunuch. His black skin has a warm tone, and he smells of sandalwood.
Hadim Effendi
, a learned one, the Princess sometimes calls him, laughing. He was but a boy when he was first brought to the Palace. A boy who cried and cried until one of the slave women had the presence of mind to sing to him. Now he is
kislar aghasi
, master of the maidens. Unlike the white eunuchs who guard the gates of the Seraglio, he is allowed to enter the chamber of the women. He is fond of bright embroidered patterns, of jackets trimmed with gold.

Hadim Effendi likes her. She has discovered that on one of the restless nights when her mistress sent her for a pearl necklace, and she got lost in the corridors of the Seraglio. To silence the clanking bells, she stopped by the latticed window and looked outside. A beautiful moon, milky white, illuminated the sleeping city. It was difficult to believe that people lived there, in these dimly lit streets. That they loved, worked, slept, died there. That there was anyone else there besides
Bekjih
, the night watchman, his
feet tapping on the cobbled stones as if he came from the kingdom of the dead.

‘Do you know the rules?’ Hadim asked, startling her with his presence.

‘Yes,’ she said, emboldened by the moon. ‘The rules do not allow holding any woman in the Palace against her will.’

‘The same rules also allow for killing anyone who has left. You should remember that.’

He was looking at her. There was much softness in his eyes, beside the sadness she had noticed before. She smiled.

‘The secrets of the Palace may not be shared among the living.’

Slowly, as if she were asleep, she opened her shirt and bared her breasts. He did not stop her. He did not touch her either, but stood there looking at her for a long time. She didn’t move.

She removes the clanking bells from her arms and knocks on the door to his room.

‘Come in,’ the master of the maidens says, lifting his eyes from a thick leather-bound volume.

‘I’ll die here if you don’t help me,’ she says and holds her breath. With one word he could have her flogged. With one word he could have her begging for her life.

He closes the book and motions to her to come closer.

‘You won’t die,’ he says. ‘Your eyes have nothing but life in them.’

He hands her a cup of coffee and motions to her to drink. She takes a sip, then another, but he shakes his head. ‘Drink it all up,’ he says.

In her coffee grounds he reads her future. He doesn’t talk of death without pain. He sees five dogs that bring her gifts. He sees three camels with more gifts and light shining in her way and a great door opening up. There
is a tree too, its branches touching the sky. A tree with thick foliage, its branches laden with fruit.

‘Please,’ she whispers. ‘Tell me what to do.’

The master of the maidens stares at her coffee grounds. ‘You will travel far and wide,’ he says, smiling at her. ‘There is no cage in this world that will hold you.’

‘Will I be rich,’ she asks, pleased by what she takes as a promise of a merchant husband who might take her with him on his journeys.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Richer than you can imagine.’

‘Happy?’ she asks.

He puts her hand down and shakes his head. ‘This,’ he says, ‘your coffee grounds do not reveal.’

There is a long moment of silence. She moves her fingers to her blouse, wanting to open it as she did before, but he extends his hand and stops her. It is a warm, chocolate colour against the whiteness of hers. When his fingers touch her lips, she kisses them.

‘Tell me what to do,’ she asks. ‘Please.’

‘I’ll never have children, but this does not bar me from having pleasure,’ he says.

She closes her eyes and feels his hand caress her neck.

She is to wait for the time of great commotion. When she sees the camels in the courtyard, she has to be ready. She will have to climb down the vine to the courtyard, wrapped in a servant’s yashmak. It is high time for the Princess might well have noticed the change in her. She has become careless, impatient. The other day, she turned so abruptly that one of the slaves dropped the tray of coffee cups and smashed them all.

‘Will you be there?’ she has asked, but the master of the maidens shook his head. No one should see them together. But under the jasmine bush, she will find a basket she will carry right outside the gates.

On the fourth day, at dawn, she hears a soft tap on the door. The Princess is fast asleep, and Sophie dresses quickly, in the dark. Pantaloons, a kaftan. The plainest yashmak she can find. The bells she stuffs under the big cushion in the corner.

There is no one in the hall when she opens the window. Outside, she holds on to the thickest of the vine, and doesn’t look down. For a moment she is the child in Bursa again, Dou-Dou who can outrun every boy and climb the tallest trees. Her hands tell her that the vine is old and sturdy.

On the ground, under the jasmine bush, she finds the basket. Inside there is a gift.
Nazar Bonjuk
, a blue glass eye to guard her against the evil look. She pins it to her kaftan and waits for what seems a long time, until the gates open and the caravan arrives. As soon as the first camel enters, she leaves her hiding place and heads to the gate. A servant on her master’s errand. When the time comes, the master of the maidens said, eyes will be averted, swords will stay in their sheaths, and no one will be sent after her.

The guard takes one look at her basket and waves her through.

At Graf von Haefen’s palace, their arrival was anticipated with visible impatience. As Ignacy’s carriage approached the front courtyard, Thomas saw that one of the Graf’s Swiss guards was standing on tiptoe, shouting in the direction of the carriage house, summoning a groom to hold their horses. A tall footman who had been waiting in the open doors disappeared as soon as he saw the carriage roll in.

‘Gossip I take to be not unlike cancer,’ Ignacy said,
oblivious to the signs of impatience they were the source of, concluding the monologue of the last ten minutes. ‘Insidious. Surfacing when we think it conquered.’ He hadn’t changed at all, Thomas thought, if one overlooked the grey in his hair.

Thomas was not paying as much attention as he perhaps should have. But why really? The countess, like most women of her class, had had many lovers so did it really matter if this German Graf had been one of these
liaisons amoureuses
? He could see why Ignacy was so keen on her
unprecedented
influence in St Petersburg. (‘After all, the Tsar, Thomas,
is
her close friend and, I take it, quite ready to listen.’) Why was it ‘unprecedented’, Thomas could not tell, but it had to have something to do with the late Count Potocki’s position at the Russian court. Or with the perennial Polish hopes, doomed fights for the lost independence. Yes, the Poles had been dealt a rotten hand. No other country had been eaten alive in the middle of the Enlightened Europe and told it was for her own good. But wasn’t it all part of what old Europe had always been? A whore siding with the strong and the mighty. Preening herself for the favours of the rich?

‘Only one does not die from being talked about, Ignacy,’ he said.

Graf von Haefen’s palace was a two-storey sand-coloured edifice in the Renaissance style. On the entrance gate of wrought iron two plump-looking angels were clinging to their posts. The footman, still panting from a rushed run upstairs and back, the gold trim of his crimson livery slightly dull at the edges, led them into a small vestibule whose tapestry of nymphs, monkeys, and flowers was reflected back in giant gilded mirrors. A few moments later, a thin, young woman appeared, black hair coiled around her head. The diamond on her neck, Thomas thought, could have paid for a good pair of horses. She
extended her hand to be kissed. Ignacy took it first, in both hands. Then Thomas bowed over it, awkwardly, merely brushing it with his lips.

‘Mademoiselle la Comtesse! How is your dear Maman? Has she slept well? Has the pain lessened?’

‘You’ve arrived at last, Doctor,’ Mademoiselle la Comtesse said, ignoring Ignacy’s questions. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hands trembled slightly, but her voice was calm and composed. ‘Maman has been waiting all morning.’

The countess’s daughter was wearing a simple morning dress, and, Thomas noted with some bemusement, her right cuff was stained brown. Youth made her attractive in a coltish sort of way, but she could do with some fresh air and less coffee. There was a gauntness to her face he did not quite like.

‘Doctor Lafleur I spoke to Graf von Haefen about,’ Ignacy said, pointing at Thomas who bowed slightly, ‘straight from Paris. Heartily recommended by Baron Larrey.’

Larrey’s name made no visible impression on young Countess Potocka who led them upstairs and into a grand salon that had been turned into the sick room. The enormous empire bed, by the wall, was covered by a golden throw. A day bed and an armchair had been placed beside it. An Oriental screen hid the paraphernalia of illness, the medicine bottles, the chamber pot. The air was thick with the smells of almond milk, camomile, and mint. The underlying whiff of ammonia made Thomas clear his throat.

The countess was fully dressed, reclining on the bed, her eyes closed, black eyelashes evenly set in her white lids. She was breathing slowly, as if asleep. One look was enough to make Thomas see that the illness had melted the skin on her bones. She was deathly pale.

She doesn’t need a doctor, he thought, she needs a miracle.

His eyes lingered over two women standing by their mistress. One was obviously a maid, of rosy plumpness, flaxen braids wound around her head like a crown. The other, in her pale yellow dress, a cameo brooch pinned to a lace collar around her neck, he decided, was the nurse. Mademoiselle Rosalia Romanowicz. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to Ignacy’s words. He vaguely recalled the praises of her nursing and her devotion to her mistress.
A daughter of a Polish hero and a Jewess from Uman
. Or was that someone else entirely? He noted the thick auburn hair, pulled back and held tight by a barrette, in the shape of folded hands.

‘Good morning, Doctor Bolecki,’ the countess said, turning to Ignacy. The back of her head rested on the day bed. ‘I’ve been waiting for you all this time.’

This was a reproach.

‘I came as soon as I could, Madame,’ Ignacy replied in what Thomas thought was too much of an eager schoolboy’s tone.

Thomas made a step toward the bed, but stopped, unsure if the examination should begin that abruptly. The countess’s eyes were clearly her most striking feature. Large, black and luminous eyes that lit up her face. Fixed on him, now, probing. Suddenly he became aware of how baggy his trousers had become and wished he had ordered a new pair.

‘Doctor Lafleur, great surgeon, Madame la Comtesse,’ Ignacy continued what to Thomas sounded like a mountebank’s pitch for snake oil and the elixir of youth. ‘The only one, Your Highness, I would trust with my own life.’ He mentioned the years spent at la Charité, lectures at Val de Grâce, and once again flaunted Baron Larrey’s personal recommendation.

‘Please, my dear Doctor,’ the countess said, lifting her hand to her lips, and Ignacy stopped. Her eyes did not
leave Thomas for a second, taking in the aquiline nose, his reddened hands, and baggy trousers shiny at the knees.