Garden of Venus (49 page)

We had better not talk about Bobiche, Maman.

She remembers this son of hers from a day long ago, his fingernails bloodied from the lice he had squashed. ‘Go and wash your hands,’ she said. ‘No,’ he said. ‘And you can’t make me.’ She did make him though. Two maids held him while the third one washed his hands with soap. Brushed his fingernails hard, making sure no blood was left. When the maids let him go he spat in their faces and ran away. ‘Let him cry,’ she said then. ‘This is all he can do.’

He is looking at her with curiosity, as if she were an animal in a cage. A giraffe perhaps, with its impossible neck. He is waiting.

‘This is my home,’ she tells him in the calmest voice she can muster. That her own child can turn against her she cannot accept. Not yet.

‘How many homes does Maman need?’

This man, she tells herself, is my son.

‘Maman can live in Uman, if Maman wants. Maman would be close to her garden.’

His face when he says it, is almost joyful. He is the most handsome of her sons and the strongest. She has seen Marusya leave his room with her cheeks flushed, and with trembling hands.

What scares her is his voice. Perfectly level, almost bored. There is nothing to explain. He is who he is and he sees no reason why he should feel ashamed of it. Her presence in Tulchin bothers him. He wants to be alone. He resents even her coming and going. He has his own pursuits and his own life.

‘What life? What pursuits? Screwing the maids? You think I don’t see it?’

‘So you do see it. I was beginning to doubt.’

‘God will punish you,’ she says. She is that helpless against him.

‘I do not hate you,’ Mieczyslaw tells her. ‘I just do not wish to see Maman again.’

There is nothing she could say that could change his mind.

‘Let us not seek for perfection,’ he recites a line from something he must have read, ‘which nature never produces.’

In the grand salon, he could see the shadow of death in the wasted flesh. And yet in her eyes, wide, and as intense as ever, there was no fear.

Courage had always held General Kisielev’s respect. Even in this woman whose meddling was causing the rift between him and his wife. She had outwitted him once already, he thought. For four years she had kept him waiting before she set the wedding date. Four long years of longing he had mistaken for love. But now he had the upper hand.

‘So you’ve come to see me, at last, Pavel Dimitrievich. To see if I’m really dying?’

Bowing, he took the countess’s hand in his and brushed his lips over it. Briefly. She did not, as he had expected, withdraw her hand after it, and he had to put it down himself, on the silk eiderdown. A hand so transparent he could have crushed it in his fingers.

Better to have it done and over with. He would also have to talk to that German, von Haefen, and take over the arrangements. The body would have to be taken to Uman. Mieczyslaw had already made it clear that they would not be welcome in Tulchin.

‘You know I’m always glad to see you, Countess,’ he said, standing over her, breathing in herbs and perfume. Underneath he could tell there were the other smells of blood and rotting flesh.

‘I want to talk about my daughter,’ the countess said. He hadn’t quite expected it, but he should have. It was like his wife to come crying to her mother, and enlarging their little disagreements.

‘You don’t love her. I made a mistake. I should have sent you away.’

She was whispering now and he had to bend over to hear what she was saying. He had disappointed her. He could not make her Sophie happy.

Anger made his voice shrill.

‘Perhaps you should have trained her better,’ he said.

He saw no reason to keep silent. Now, once and for all he would extinguish this false glow, her affected sighs and hints at the cherished friendship with her beloved Emperor.

Her eyes measured him in silence for a long time. Cold eyes, he thought. What would she do? Scream at me, call the lackeys? Protest perhaps, and tell me more lies?

‘You are not bad, Pavel Dimitrievich,’ the countess said,
‘but you have never learnt what’s important, which is a pity for such a brilliant man.’

‘A daughter of a cattle trader and a whore.’

Later in his life General Kisielev would often recall this scene, still puzzled at the memory. He had expected shame and contrition. Or at least angry denials and a show of fading power he could ridicule. For in the end, he thought, it was all about power. Always about power.

‘So you think you know what I am and whence I come. You think this knowledge is enough. You want me punished for my transgressions. You would like to be my judge. Why would I let you do it,
mon general
? Why would your judgement be of any importance to me?’

She was looking at him as if he were a mere boy who needed to be taught a lesson. She was laughing at him.

‘Your revelations do not interest me, Pavel Dimitrievich. You’ll forgive me but my time is short, and I only have enough of it for really important matters.’

Her voice was cold as ice. She knew she could not make him love his wife, but, she had made sure her daughter was free from him if she ever wished it. These were ironclad arrangements, she assured him. Sophie’s share of the money was secured, out of his reach. Even if his wife died, that money would never be his. It would go to Volodia and other children, should there be any – legitimate or not.

‘My daughter is free and she will remain so. You can use what she wants to share with you as long as she wishes to. If she chooses to find her pleasure elsewhere, then,
mon general
, you’ll have to give it all up.’

She rang the bell beside her bed with strength he had not suspected.

‘I don’t know anyone in St Petersburg without some sinful secrets,
mon general
. Do you?’

On his way out he saw the Jewess on the way to her room. She gave him an annoying look as if she knew what had passed in the grand salon. Was she listening behind the door, he thought?

The waves of music carry her away. The soles of her bare feet sense its throbbing rhythm. She will not listen to anyone. She will be the judge of her own sins.

This is not a memory. This is what she wishes for.

Her body smells of jasmine oil. She sniffs at her own wrist and remembers from a time long gone breathing in the smell of her own skin, and her childish wonder at her own body. Her long hair loose, brushing her shoulders, she dances through the sweet disorder of the room. She dances toward this stranger with a body of a Greek hero, his eyes wide open, staring at her in bewilderment. His Prussian uniform is lying crumpled on the floor and she steps on it in her dance.

Before he has the time to chide her about it, she covers his eyes with her hands and laughs as he wriggles out of her grasp. He takes her hand, his warm lips closing on the tips of her fingers. With her free hand, she ruffles the hair on the back of his head. His body is half-hidden in shadow, but she can feel its every inch.

The flames of the candles dance on the walls, chasing one another like children at play. A shadow flutters over the spider web. Her breasts are full, her body limp as if she has forgotten how to stand. She could count each hair on her body; her hand when it touches the edge of the nightstand is caressing the wood.

The scent of candle smoke drifts into her nostrils. She pinches the candle and feels the softness of wax between her forefinger and her thumb. Gently she rolls it into a
ball and lets it drop on the floor. There is no reason to rush, is there? She still has time.

In her bedroom, Rosalia closed the door and turned the key in the lock. Slowly she took off her dress and petticoats. The dress fell off her, like a discarded skin. She unlaced her corset and let it slip to the floor. A thought crossed her mind that she shouldn’t let her clothes lie on the floor like that but it seemed to her that if she were to bend and pick them up, she would snap in two.

When she had nothing on but a cambric chemise, she sat on the edge of the bed and unpinned the tresses wound over her ears. Her hair took a while before it relinquished the shape of the braids. With a hard brush she brushed her hair, massaging the tired skin of her scalp. Fifty times one way, then another fifty in the opposite direction. When she had finished the hair was thick and supple and little ringlets had begun to form around her face. It was auburn with the shine of copper, abundant and thick. From her room she could hear little Volodia screaming in pain or anger. The baby wailed and choked on his tears.

Rosalia stood up and walked to the mirror above the chest of drawers. Surrounded by auburn ringlets her face seemed smaller. She stared at herself as if she were some outlandish animal. As if one careless gesture would send her scurrying into the thicket. Slowly she ran her fingers over her cheeks, her mouth, her neck. She opened her chemise and let it slide down her shoulders to the floor. Like her mother’s, her skin was milky white.

With her hands she cupped her breasts. Her nipples hardened. She thought of little Volodia’s hungry, toothless mouth closing over the milk-laden breasts of the wetnurse.

Her body’s whiteness seemed ghostly. A few more years and her lips would lose their fullness. Even now she knew that part of the loveliness she watched was a gift from the soft glow of the coals and the flame of the candle. In the morning the sun would reveal a harsher picture.

Only the day before the countess gave her a box of
agate arborisée
set in gold. Rosalia protested that such a gift was far too valuable for her to accept, but her mistress insisted. It was her
gage d’amitié
, she said. Once she had intended to have it buried with her, but now she changed her mind. ‘Beauty should not be buried,’ she said. ‘Don’t you agree?’

Rosalia sat down at the writing table and dipped her quill in the ink-well.
Dear Doctor Bolecki
, she wrote.

Outside, in the courtyard she could hear Pietka play his bandura. It was an old tune her father had used to sing, too.

Men, the couplings of her life, are like shining pebbles in a stream. Lifted from the water they have all turned dull and ordinary. But each of her children are so different. It amazes her still to think of them so independent of her. Once they were all like her grandson. Little bundles of pleasure and fear, hunger and contentment, little mysteries that would unravel. Warm, tiny hands, plump faces, eyes looking at her with such trust.

Small things are important, my child, she could tell her daughter: the gleam of white glistening teeth; the glitter of diamonds; the whiteness of her complexion. Isn’t a magpie’s nest always filled with bright and shiny objects, a silver spoon, a watch, a golden chain? The words of submission, the fickle promises of love. ‘My hope, my angel, my saviour.’ The rustle of silk. The folds of her dress being raised, revealing the shape of an ankle. The looks of other men, the spice of jealousy.

She knows a set of tricks as old as the world, tricks
her daughters don’t have to know. I’ve made sure love doesn’t fool you, she mutters. There are people whose hearts believe in decency and goodness, who carry this faith in them all their lives, who nurture it and pass it on to others. Blessed but delicate, she thinks, like this daughter of hers. Like her gentle Rosalia too, afraid of anything that is not duty, as if pleasure were a warning, a measurement of pain. These are beautiful souls that have to be protected from things that could disrupt that balance inside them. To such people one cannot reveal too much.

Her daughters are free to love or stop loving as they wish. Her daughters do not have to please anyone. This is all she has ever wanted for them.

Hasn’t Napoleon crowned himself Emperor? What has she done that’s so very different? Used whatever gifts God has given her and used them well.

The pain is beginning to stir again, awaking from its slumber, its sharp teeth making their incisions in her flesh. Little inroads of pain, of faintness, stirring, growing. But this pain comes too late. She can already see herself lying in this enormous bed, a mere raised shape under the quilt, a mound, like the
kurhany
in the Ukrainian steppes. Her body is of little concern to her now, an empty shell, it is a battlefield of humours, bile, and blood.

You will die without pain
, she suddenly remembers hearing.

How funny they all are and how blind. Her stepsons still wanting to poison the last drops of her life. Kisielev trying to make her ashamed of who she has been. The French doctor shielding himself from the love that could save him. Marusya believing her visits to her son’s bedroom have gone unobserved.

Why can’t they see how life seeps out of the body each moment? Each body, no matter how young and strong.
Each breath, each movement whips up a cloud of energy that floats away and is lost. Does no one really notice it, but her? Don’t wait, she is telling them. Don’t waste time. Life is fleeing away fast enough.