Garden of Venus

They slash her dresses with razors. They smash the glass she keeps near her bed. They spit on her, on her bed, on the sheets folded neatly in the closet and smear it with something foul. Then they leave as suddenly as they have come. She hears their footsteps on the stairs, their braying laughter, their whistles of triumph. She gathers herself up, wipes the blood from her face, wraps herself in a blanket, and runs away to her mother.

The internuncio is shocked and very sorry. This is what his note says. He sends his own doctor to bleed her and clean the wounds. She has a fever and her body is rattled with shivers. ‘Tell my master,’ she says in a low whisper, ‘that I’ll die thinking of him.’

The doctor says she won’t die. ‘No one has ever died from a few scratches. Your bones are intact. You’ve just had a bad fright. Nothing more.’

Mana is sobbing in the corner, cursing her fate and her daughter’s misfortune. She doesn’t want to accuse anyone, but wouldn’t her daughter be safer within the Mission’s compound. Where she is now, anyone can find her. Only the other day someone came asking about a Greek girl called Sophie. A man with a red beard and shifty eyes. A sign that the Sultana has not forgotten.

By the time the internuncio comes to see her, it is already dark. The invalid is washed and bandaged, her breath is uneven, her forehead hot. ‘If she dies,’ Mana says, ‘I’ll never forgive myself.’

The internuncio is uneasy. He touches her forehead as a father might, checking how his daughter is feeling.

‘I thought I could trust you with my only child.’

‘Poor Dou-Dou,’ he says. In his voice there is something she could take for concern. When he raises the covers to check the bruises on her body, he is really looking at her.

He calls the doctor and takes him to another room. She can hear their raised voices, a barrage of questions followed by long explanations. When the two men emerge from the room, the internuncio smiles. To Mana he says that he will make sure Sophie gets the best of care. Two of his own servants will be at her disposal, day and night. She will have meals brought from his own kitchen.

‘Am I like Lais?’ she asks.

‘Only you won’t die,’ he tells her, holding her hand. ‘The doctor tells me you have a strong constitution. That it would take much more to kill you.’

She asks him to tell her about Poland.

He tells her of palaces with green lawns and hundreds of servants, hurrying around. Of carriages speeding through the streets, of balls where women of quality dance polonaises and mazurkas. Of tableaux vivants in which the court’s most beautiful ladies appear in the costumes of nymphs or muses.

What do they do?

Nothing. They pose as if a painter painted them. Let everyone admire their beauty. The themes of these tableaux often illustrate a saying or a proverb. Or an old story. Amor bending his golden locks over sleeping Psyche, Danae showered with golden rain.

She asks about the King. Do men tremble when they see him?

He laughs. In Poland, kings are elected and therefore weak. Their powers are limited by the golden freedom of the nobles. Liberum veto, he tells her. Remember that. It means that one Polish noble can stop the law, one Polish noble can break the Sejm for his own private reason. One Polish noble can oppose the king’s wish.

‘Eat, drink, and loosen your belt,’ he says, ‘that’s what the Poles care about.’

She listens.

He is not Polish by birth. His is a complicated story, he warns as if she were unable to understand anything of importance. He was born in Holland but his parents were French Huguenots. That of course would not mean anything to her, would it, but as any intelligent person would know, they had had to flee France to keep their heads on their shoulders. Having lost their estate, his parents could give him little more than his education. This he put to a good use, serving the Prussian King for seven years, and then moving on, to Poland, where the Polish King, then newly elected, recognized his outstanding qualities.

‘That’s why I became Polish, my little Dou-Dou. I thought it far superior to becoming Prussian.’

She doesn’t know when he jokes and when he is telling the truth. The Prussian court, he likes to say, is so enamoured with thrift that guests leave the table hungry and grey stuffing sticks out from the cushions of gilded chairs.

‘Can one just become Polish?’

He laughs. Not ‘just’. Not everyone. A foreign man has to prove his worth, document his belonging to the gentry class. It takes years of patient pleading, of favours bestowed on those with influence. But he has done all this. He even has a new Polish name now, Lasopolski, which means ‘coming from a Polish forest’.

She looks at him with pride.

A foreign woman, he says, reading the question in her eyes, has an easier path before her. All she has to do is marry a Polish noble.

He pinches her cheek as he says it, laughing at the thought. ‘Let this not turn your pretty head,’ he warns her. ‘Your father was a cattle trader. You should be happy with what you’ve got.’

She gives him a mischievous smile and nods.

In her dreams Poland is very close by, a place she stumbles upon almost by chance. She knows it is Poland for everyone speaks in a strange language she doesn’t understand, and she bows and asks to be taken to the King. ‘He will know who I am,’ she repeats. ‘The King,’ she says slowly, and makes the sign of a crown over her head. The people stare at her for a long time, nodding, but not moving at all.

The dream always ends before she can see the King, for when she starts running toward him, the distance between them never diminishes, as if she were running, on soft legs that sink into the ground.

When she is alone in the Polish mission she goes to the internuncio’s study to look at the King’s portrait. In His presence she practises her curtsying and gentle bows of the head. She looks into his blue eyes and says things like, ‘My soul thirsts for you, Sire.’ Or ‘The light of your eyes is too bright for your humble servant, My Lord.’ She says it in her new voice, which is sweet and lingering, thick like honey dripping from a spoon.

One day as she is practising what she thinks of as her manners the internuncio surprises her. Having hidden himself behind the door, he cracks with laughter and tells her that she is ludicrous, a true spectacle.

His hand is pinching her bottom as he says that. ‘Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself, Dou-Dou?’ he asks. ‘Forgetting your place? Your god-given station in life?’

‘The King,’ the internuncio says, ‘is in need of a bath attendant à la Turque.’

When she enters his study he is sprinkling sand over the letter he has just finished writing. He motions to her to sit and begins to read it out.

Massages given by men resembles torture so that one has to be a Turk or a devil to enjoy them. Those who had experienced such baths here say similar things one hears in Warsaw about male and female cooks, i.e. that the latter are cleaner and it is better to be served by them when it comes to the main dish. It is only in the company of a pleasant woman who can bathe, massage, and dry the body of her companion in so many ways, that one can imagine the delights promised by Muhammad to his faithful Muslims. I know of a girl from Phanar, sixteen years of age, who would please Your Majesty highly. I could arrange for her to travel to Warsaw as soon as I received word from Your Majesty.

Without thinking she rises and throws her arms around his neck. She covers his face with kisses. She jumps up and down with joy.

The internuncio likes being able to speak French to her. The true language of the salons, he says, of intelligent conversations. She will now take French lessons. Every day for three hours. If she doesn’t make progress, he will whip her.

‘I’ll take any punishment,’ she says meeting his eye, ‘if it comes from my master.’

‘What an eager girl you are?’ he murmurs, but she can hear from his voice that her exuberance pleases him. ‘Perhaps I should be a bit jealous?’

Jealousy, Mana says, is a good sign.

That day—when she prepares to give him his daily release—he pulls her toward him and places a kiss on her lips. A long, lingering kiss that she will remember for a long time for it tells her that—perhaps—she is not as worthless to him as he wants her to believe.

In the weeks that follow she can’t hide her excitement. When she is alone she likes to imagine herself in Warsaw, this city filled with palaces and green lawns. In her dream, the King is brought to the hammam by his attendants, but he waves them away and enters it alone. He is naked but for a thick towel wrapped around his body, a towel she will peel off. His skin is soft and perfumed, his hands slender. A bath pavilion she imagines covered with tiles. Musicians are cleverly hidden in tunnels, and they fill the royal bath chamber with delightful music. Warmed by the fire, her hands are soothing and strong. Around her she imagines jars with the scents of jasmine and musk. The King is tired after the long day of ruling. He talks to her, his only real friend. He tells her of all the people who want something from him, who make his life a misery. With each motion of her hands, she melts his tensions and soothes his sadness. She alone is different, the King says. She alone understands him, makes him laugh. She alone brings life back into his heart.

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