Eva Stachniak - Garden of Venus

‘When you were giving birth, Madame,’ the surgeon asked. ‘Did you scream?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Then I want you to scream—scream as much as you can.’

The operation was performed in absolute silence. The doctor seated Maman in the armchair, gave her a glass of wine cordial to drink, and covered her face with a cambric handkerchief. Then he motioned to the tallest assistant who placed a pillow under her head and positioned himself behind. The other two assistants silently came to stand on each side of the armchair, holding her arms. Her mother motioned to them that it was not necessary, but when, through the fine mesh of the handkerchief, she saw the glitter of steel she tried to stand up. The men held her so fast that she flinched.

Nothing, no past memory of love would ever equal this moment when Rosalia could feel her mother’s fingers clutch hers like clamps and saw her knuckles becoming white. It did not seem odd that her own body registered her mother’s pain. That this pain united them, sealed them to each other. That together, she with a clear eye and her mother through the mesh of her handkerchief, they watched as the surgeon made the sign of incision in the air, with a straight line from top to bottom of the breast, a cross and a circle. That they shuddered together when the blade cut horizontally, nearly in the direction of the rib, a little below the nipple. That the scream that came, came from them both.

The two assistants on either side pressed their fingers on the arteries, and the surgeon began the cleaning, his hand separating the tumour from the skin and muscles, cutting off the cancerous tissue. Blood splattered his hands and arms. There were a few drops of it on his face. When Rosalia heard the blade scraping the breast bone, she could feel her mother’s hand loosening her grip. Maman had fainted and for a moment something close to panic overtook her until she reminded herself that, unconscious, her mother was free from pain.

The procedure took twenty minutes. There were operations that could be performed well and fast, but this was not one of them. The whole of the diseased structure had to be removed, the surgeon said afterwards, and he could not afford to miss anything. ‘I can amputate in under two minutes,’ he said. ‘But with this, no half measures will do. If the reoccurrence of the mischief is to be prevented…’

Rosalia was so hopeful then. The surgeon assured her that the operation had gone well and showed her how to dress the wound, applying a large, thick compress of charpie to the sutures and binding it on with a flannel roller. It didn’t take long for blood to appear through all the bandages. Maman’s face had lost all its colour and her limbs all life. The assistants carried her to her bed, and Rosalia was told to change her dressings every two hours and watch for signs of infection, for the weakening of the body.

At midnight her mother opened her eyes, but she did not seem to know where she was.

‘He is standing by the window,’ she kept saying.

‘Who is?’ Rosalia asked. All she wanted was to throw herself into her mother’s arms, to hide her face in her breasts the way she did when she was a child. Instead she could still hear the knife scraping against the bones.

‘He is pointing at his heart.’

Her lips were parched and she drank a few sips of water. ‘I am going with him,’ she said. ‘I have to.’

Rosalia tried to quiet her. The surgeon had assured her the operation was a success. The cancer was removed, all of it. ‘You must be strong, Maman,’ she pleaded. ‘You cannot leave me alone. You cannot leave your only child.’

‘I have to go,’ her mother whispered and closed her eyes. ‘He is waiting for me. He will take me away.’

Seeing that the blood had penetrated the dressing again, Rosalia replaced it with a fresh one. Maman did not open her eyes, but she no longer seemed in pain. Perhaps, Rosalia thought, the crisis had passed. She promised herself not to fall asleep, but the silence and her mother’s calm, soft breaths proved too much. When she woke up, startled, it was still dark. The windowpanes were covered with the white, intricate patterns she loved to watch in Zierniki where the windows froze for most of the winter. Beautiful white ferns, branches of trees with spiked leaves, flowers of tiny petals that reminded her of figures her father drew to amuse her: pentagons, hexagons, octagons.

The room was silent and still. Death she thought was like that. A moment of loss too profound to comprehend. A moment in which love fuses with pain. A moment from which there is no now and no future. Nothing but memories of the past, crumbling and fading with time.

She didn’t have to touch Maman’s face to know she was dead.

Just as she did on winter days in Zierniki, Rosalia breathed at the windowpane. When the ice petals melted, she peered through the hole and saw a boy pass by. He was carrying a lantern carved out of a turnip, slits in its side let out enough light for him to see where he was going.

There were a few other objects in Rosalia’s travelling chest but these would remain unpacked, a testimony to the temporary nature of her stay in this Berlin palace: a small wooden star she had found among her mother’s things; her father’s snuffbox with the Rights of Man engraved on the lid; a black silhouette of Ko?ciuszko’s profile and three sketches of Napoleon in a wreath of oak leaves—her father’s heroes.

These treasures Rosalia kept locked in a mahogany box, underneath her clothes in the trunk. It was a flimsy hiding place. Any of the servant girls might want to go through her things, try on her dresses or petticoats. Smell her rosewater or jasmine oil and dab a few drops on her brow. In St Petersburg handkerchiefs and sheets of paper disappeared routinely. The paper was what the cook used to curl her hair with. ‘If it wasn’t meant to be taken, it wouldn’t be lying around,’ Rosalia had heard Marusya mutter.

Her back hurt from lifting sacks of clothes, from helping the countess stand up. Taking off her shoes and her stockings, she walked about the room, until her aching feet were consoled by the smoothness of the carpet. If only Olga cared to help more, but some people were born to luxury and some were not. ‘It’s your own mother,’ Rosalia was often tempted to say, but never did.

Her most excellent bed, as Frau Kohl—the Graf’s housekeeper—had described it, did not help. It felt too big, too cold. Rosalia turned and tossed around, trying to warm up the clammy sheet, wondering if she should call for another eiderdown. There were noises outside her room; German words exchanged by the footmen; the sounds of doors opening and closing—the life of this palace, temporarily interrupted by their arrival. She recalled Marusya’s talking about strange noises in the maid’s room, like someone’s knocking on the window-pane, and complaining that the room smelled of mice. ‘Perhaps the Count has come for the Mistress,’ the cook had said.

She opens the gate. The fence of their Istanbul house is made of staves of wood fastened with wire. The wind pushes her back, and the first rain drops fall on her face. She is thinking of the smooth feel of velvet on her cheek.

‘Quick,’ Mana screams. ‘Upstairs. To your room.’

The front door is hanging open. A doctor is in her parents’ bedroom, bending over her father. Or someone who looks like her father, in spite of the swollen red face, an eyeless face locked in a scowl.

‘Go,’ Mana screams.

Upstairs, in her small room, Sophie throws herself on her bed and listens. The doctor’s voice is harsh and commanding. He is calling for water, and he is pounding something. Pounding hard and shouting at Mana who rushes outside and then comes back.