Eva Stachniak - Garden of Venus

‘You are not to do it ever again,’ Diamandi says. What a voice he has, this boy-man. Pretending to be angry and yet wanting her to defy him. Daring her to shake her head and laugh in his face. Daring her to tell him he is nothing but a boy.

He has jumped off the last branch and is now holding her down. His hands are cool and dry. There is a smell of dried grass around him and of fresh milk. She wriggles away.

To this lithe, olive-skinned boy she is a mystery, the half-wild creature of his dreams. The wind is now cool against her cheeks. ‘I’ll race you,’ she cries and runs until, by the olive grove, he pulls her down onto the soft grass, kisses her lips and pushes his tongue through her teeth. The air is again sweet with blossoms, moist with the sea, and she is shivering.

‘I love you more than my own soul,’ he whispers, and for now she believes him.

Two tall German grooms who had brought the big empire bed trimmed with white satin asked where Rosalia wanted it. ‘By the wall,’ she said and pointed to the place far enough from the windows so that the light would not disturb the invalid. The grooms nodded and lifted the bed again. They had already removed the Persian carpets and, once the bed was in place, they would hang a thick curtain of garnet velvet that could be drawn across the room.

Countess Potocka was resting, waiting for the necessary transformations of the grand salon. (The Blue Room suggested by the Graf had proved too draughty.) In the afternoon light, her pallor was turning ashen. Her eyes, wide, liquid and filled with pain, followed Rosalia as she placed a bowl of fresh figs by the makeshift bedside. The countess reached and touched Rosalia’s hand.

‘ Merci, ma fleur ,’ she whispered.

Graf von Haefen had sent basketfuls of delicacies from his Potsdam estate; figs, pineapples, oranges from his greenhouses, fish from his ponds, venison from his forests. ‘Which Madame won’t even try,’ Marusya had said. Rosalia had to admit that flowers would please her mistress better. Roses in particular and orchids.

Only a few days before, at a roadside inn, the countess still had enough strength to make a few long-awaited decisions about Sophievka, her beloved garden right outside Uman. Since Dr Horn’s insistence that surgery alone could stop the haemorrhaging, there was no more talk of moving to the Uman palace for the summer (another disappointment that had to be endured). But the countess asked Rosalia to copy the drawings of the mountain ash that she wanted her chief gardener to plant in the spring. Sturdy and resistant, I am assured it will withstand most severe frosts, the countess dictated. A bed of purple irises, a symbol of a great orator and a great leader, was to be planted around the marble bust of Prince Joseph Poniatowski. New paths were to be charted. Make them lead to a vista, or a building. Otherwise a wanderer would turn back in disappointment. The giant oak by the river was not to be touched. Don’t trim the branches, a human hand has no right to correct such beauty. An oak once wounded, loses its primal force and will always grow slowly.

‘The bed will be ready soon,’ Rosalia said, but the countess only managed a slight nod.

Outside, in the courtyard, the hooves of the horses made a hollow noise; carriage wheels clattered and squeaked. Soon, Rosalia thought, Pietka would have to spread a straw carpet on the stones to muffle all noise. And he would have to stop singing, as he was doing now.

In Vinnytsia, on the border,

At the foot of a grave mound, on the bank of the Buh River,

Under the walls of the Kalnytsky charterhouse…

This palace in the heart of Berlin would provide some relief. From what she had seen, Rosalia could tell its workings would be flawless. Since their arrival, the marble floor in the entrance hall had already been washed and wiped dry. After mentioning that charpie would be necessary to dress the wounds and that the French surgeon would likely ask for an old mattress, she was reassured both would be procured without delay. Frau Kohl, the Graf’s housekeeper, had also brought a pile of old sheets, well-washed and soft.

Rosalia wiped her mistress’s face with a sponge dipped in warm, lavender-scented water, washing away stale sweat and caked powder. Her underclothes were again stained with blood, dark and clotted with what looked like pieces of chopped liver. Mademoiselle Collard used to complain she was a lady’s maid not a nurse. ‘Neither are you,’ she reminded Rosalia. Her family’s land may have been sequestered by the Russian Tsar, but Rosalia’s father had been a Polish noble and it was her duty to guard her own station in life. It was all too easy to slip down, let herself go. With that Rosalia had to agree, as she retrieved clean undergarments from a travelling trunk and helped the countess change into her lilac dress with little embroidered rosebuds, but then the question remained of who would do it. The maids had their hands full with all the unpacking, mending and ironing. Mademoiselle la Comtesse conveniently managed to vomit every time she caught the whiff of the basin. (‘She has her father’s constitution, Rosalia. Nature cannot be helped,’ the countess said.) Only this morning—having seen the bloodstained undergarments the maids were taking away to be soaked in cold water—she became so agitated that Rosalia had had to give her a double dose of laudanum to calm her down.

‘I don’t want to see anyone but Graf von Haefen,’ the countess whispered, closing her eyes. ‘Let my daughter receive all other visitors.’

‘The French doctor will be here soon,’ Rosalia said. She was trying to foresee what else the surgeon might ask for. If he came from Paris, he would not have assistants. Doctor Bolecki would be of help, but this might not be enough. She wondered if the two grooms were strong enough to hold the countess down. And if they would withstand that much blood and the screaming.

‘I’m so tired, Rosalia,’ the countess whispered.

The pain was never far away, crouching inside her, but it was letting her breathe. It might let her fall asleep again. ‘Mademoiselle Rosalia, you should try to lead her thoughts away from death,’ Graf von Haefen had insisted with great firmness, before leaving. ‘Talk only of what brings her joy.’

The gardener reported that Sophievka was already covered in snow. He had seen icicles hanging from pine trees and from the gnarled branches of the oak tree by the lake. In the greenhouses roses and orchids were blooming and he wished he could send the countess some blooms the way he used to send them to St Petersburg, in a carriage kept warm with braziers. The nettle tree was doing fine and so was the Turkish filbert from Caucasus. He had planted it in complete shade, as instructed.

‘The nettle tree, I was assured,’ the countess said, ‘would not sink in water.’

When her mistress was dressed, Rosalia combed her hair, grey and so much thinned by her illness. Then, from the red travelling case, she took a black wig, a shapely halo of black locks, trying not to pull as she pinned it to her hair.

‘By the summer, you’ll be strong enough. We’ll go there together.’

The countess gave her the most beautiful of her smiles.

Perhaps, Rosalia thought, happiness could only come from such simple moments. From knowing that the touch of her hands calmed the sick and eased their pain. ‘Which is precisely why she would take advantage of you,’ Mademoiselle Collard would warn. ‘She already has two daughters, you know.’ It was in Rosalia’s disposition to take unending duties upon herself, feel responsible for the most insignificant of things. Like the lost charcoals, a whole box of cedar of Lebanon: Olena, the maid who had packed the dinner service at the last stop, was sure she put it in the same box with the silver. ‘Surely,’ Mademoiselle Collard would mock Rosalia’s agitation over this trifle if she were here, ‘she can afford to lose a box of charcoals. Isn’t she rich enough?’