Garden of Venus

‘Your son has written, just as he has promised,’ she said, spotting Bobiche’s handwriting on one of the letters. The countess’s youngest son had managed to write two whole pages instead of his usual one. L’abbé Chalenton was making progress.

When are you coming back, Maman? We have had terrible history with dogs. Fidelle bit a Postillion and Basilkien declared that she must be mad. But she continued to drink water and came when was called, so we thought she would be all right. Then she bit Basilkien’s finger and ran wildly in the yard and bit a pig. A week later, Basilkien showed symptoms of madness and the doctor made a cut on his finger to obtain a few drops of blood. Then he mixed the blood with milk and gave it to Basilkien to drink. He is much better as I write this and has stopped complaining! The Postillion, is also well, but the Doctor said Fidelle had to be killed, for there was no way of telling what will become of her, and so she is no more.

Everyone misses you very much. Tell Olena I’ll take her for a ride in my new carriage when she comes home.

Nothing, yet, from Odessa, from the countess’s elder daughter, Madame Kisielev. As soon as the news of her safe delivery reached them, Rosalia insisted that Madame Kisielev should be told the truth. The baby would no longer be affected by the mother’s agitation. Besides what daughter would want to be away from her mother in her time of need.

And so, in her last letter, the countess asked her daughter to come to Berlin. Please hurry, my dear Sophie, she wrote, if you want to see your mother alive. Enclosed with that letter was a bank order for 50,000 roubles. Madame Kisielev could well be on her way.

Sophie

That night, the silent servant with an unsmiling face takes Sophie to her bath. Her body is scrubbed and scraped clean with a sharp end of a seashell dabbed with precious drops of perfume. The dress that touches her skin is light as gossamer, soft like the skin of a newborn baby.

When her nail snags the soft fabric, the servant clucks her tongue. She is shaking her head, mouth twisted in a grimace. Without a veil, she is no longer mysterious. A woman with crooked teeth and nose too big for her face who pinches Sophie with impatience reserved for those whose position is not yet established. Reserved for a Greek slave girl with uncertain future who might not please the Princess after all.

‘Her Highness is waiting,’ the servant whispers. ‘Hurry up, girl.’

The Princess has her own apartments in the Harem. There is a tiled fireplace in her bedroom for nights cooler than this one. The walls are wainscoted with mother of pearl, ivory and olive wood, more beautiful than the lid of the best jewellery box in Aunt Helena’s home. The carpet on the floor is soft and thick. On the bed a golden throw glitters in the candlelight.

‘Come on, my sweet wisdom,’ the Princess says and pats the spot beside her. She is not wearing her pantaloons, but a loose dress. Through the slit of the dress Sophie can see her leg. White, smooth skin that she does not want to touch.

The Princess removes the smallest of her rings and extends her hand. ‘Take it,’ she says. ‘I want you to wear it.’

The ring is too big. It will have to be resized. The jeweller will be summoned first thing in the morning. For now, Sophie can wear the ring on a string around her neck.

Sophie casts her eyes down. Thoughts abandon her. Her body shudders, each movement is an effort.

‘Lean on me, my child. I want to feel your warmth.’

It is not cold, she wants to say but doesn’t. On her way here the silent servant ushered her into a latticed room and opened a large coffer. Inside there was nothing but a silk belt. The servant gave her a curious look and mimed strangling her own throat.

Sophie closes her eyes when the Princess’s hand caresses her cheek, her neck, her breasts. A hot, heavy hand, burrowing its way into her body. Is this what Mana knew would happen to her?

What a fool she was to dream of the Sultan’s love.

Someone walks by the Princess’s chamber, something rustles, something falls to the floor with a thud. The hand that touches her freezes, but only for a moment.

In this moment Sophie closes her eyes and tries to imagine this is the hand of a rich foreign diplomat, the man of the world who will teach her to dance and tell her stories of foreign lands. Stories in which women have carriages and beautiful jewels. Where their hair is piled up and adorned with flowers and birds and strings of pearls. Where men whisper sweet words into the women’s ears.

‘How soft your skin is, my sweet wisdom.’

‘Come closer. You are not afraid of me, are you?’

Is this what fear does? Freezes the heart? Stops the mind from dreaming?

She lets the Princess hold her hand. Mana has taught her how to give pleasure. Each body has its own desires. She knows how to press a muscle, gently first, then harder, and harder, until the pressure inside it is released. She knows how to dissolve the knots of tension, to bring relief.

A smile is pasted to her lips, a contortion of flesh. It makes her mouth quiver. The Princess calls her an angel, a sweet, beautiful child. A temptress. Sophie will lack for nothing. Ever. Sophie will be like a queen.

‘Kiss me,’ the Princess says, pointing at her lips.

‘Not like this. Harder.’

There are bruises on her thighs and arms, but she has not felt pain. Her own body feels as if it belongs to someone else, to another woman she can see from above. A woman whose face is covered with kisses, whose body is pinned to the bed. Whose clothes are prised away from her and whose hands clutch to her naked breasts. This other woman has stopped fighting her fate. She is lying motionless in the soft bed, with her eyes closed. She is trying to sink so deep that no one would find her. She is trying to close herself to the touch that yanks her from her dreamlike state. Nothing is happening, she repeats to herself. This is nothing. Nothing.

‘What is done once,’ the Princess whispers, ‘cannot be undone. What is felt once, will never be forgotten. You are mine, now,’ she whispers. ‘My own little wisdom.’

In the darkness Sophie prays for time to hurry, to go faster. Her lips are sore where the Princess has bitten them.

‘I am making you happy. You cannot hide your own pleasure from me.’

‘Say it!’

‘You are making me happy. I cannot hide my own pleasure from you.’

‘I am your mistress. There is no one else but me.’

‘You are my mistress. There is no one else but you.’

‘Ever.’

‘Ever.’

The bed is crumpled and moist with sweat; pillows have fallen off, to the floor. Silk-covered pillows, soft and smooth. The Princess is still holding her arm, making her lie there. There are other kinds of wisdom, she says. Many crave it, but few are chosen. Only to the few it shall be revealed. Wisdom that speaks of the true delights of love, of secrets common women are not meant to know.

‘Listen, my little wisdom. With me you will know it all.’

These stories speak of mysterious journeys across parched deserts; of abandoned inns where, in spite of the worst fears, sumptuous meals await an exhausted traveller; of crossroads where the hanged long for the mercy of the burial; of old hermits who know the way. It is enough to close her eyes to see the deep dungeons where hatred and envy rule and the fragrant gardens where beauty and love meet in secret. In search of their fate, the travellers of those tales fight hunger and thirst, battle false desires—the phantoms that drive the soul away from its dream.

‘Such are the stories of the night,’ the Sultana whispers. ‘They are all for you, my sweet wisdom.’

For there are more stories. Stories wrenched away from the possessed. Stories from forbidden books, stories of women who know as much as the men, but who guard their secret knowledge with their lives.

‘I know them all, my sweet wisdom,’ the Sultana says. ‘And soon, you too will know them.’

But then, a moment later, she is snoring, her arm heavy on Sophie’s shoulder. For a long while Sophie tries to wriggle out from under this arm. To stand up, gasp for breath. Her stomach churns and the coffee she has drunk rises up her throat. For a brief moment of despair she considers standing on the edge of the window and throwing herself down, into the paved courtyard underneath, but she doesn’t want to die.

She lets the tears flow, silently, until sleep comes. In the morning, she will think of something. Luck will not abandon her like that. Without warning, without giving her another chance. Luck may have played a mean trick on her, but Sophie has not lost her faith.

‘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.

Thomas

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.

To steady himself, Thomas thought of his father who had been beaten by his mistress for being inadvertently in her way. He recalled wounds masters had inflicted on other servants: burns on the hands and legs, cuts, lashes. In Russia, he reminded himself, serfs were called ‘slaves’ for a good reason. Once, in Vilna, he had been asked to treat a man whose back had been broken by the lashes his master commanded. When the man died a few hours later, his master promptly ordered another serf to marry the widow.

‘What are you thinking of, Doctor Lafleur?’ the countess asked in a low, raspy voice that held a note of irony as if she had guessed his thoughts and already found fault with his reasoning.