Dancing with Kings. Eva Stachniak

the man yelled at the closed windows and walked away.

      Thomas followed the man from a distance, hoping he would lead him to a neighbourhood tavern where he could have a beer and drown the constant stutter of the carriage wheels in his head, but when the man walked into a dim alley Thomas decided to turn back. This time he took a different direction and in one of the windows, its curtains parted to allow for a glimpse inside, he saw the glow of red and blue lanterns, golden tassels, scarlet ottomans. Two young women in low-cut gowns sat at a small table staring at cards, laid out in a cross. Beside them stood two glasses of clear yellow liqueur.

      Sex was the need of a body. A fundamental need, Thomas stressed when he lectured to his students at Val de Grâce, that kept the disintegration of life at bay. He was not entirely convinced by Dr Brown’s theory that the flow of life needed to be controlled, boosted or dampened according to need. ‘The word need,’ he liked to warn his students, ‘is the problem. How would one know one’s true needs?’ Such doubts, of course, did not trouble Dr Brown. In London he was known to lecture with a glass of whisky in one hand and a bottle of laudanum in another, taking sips from one or the other.

      For Thomas, the sight of the corpse stretched on the metal table was enough to renounce vain discussions and hypotheses. Life and death, he told his students, should be observed and examined without preconceived notions. Ars medica tota in observationibus, as Laennec had repeated ad nauseam. There was always something theatrical about that first incision. A moment pregnant with revelation, best approached in expectant silence. ‘Gentlemen, watch and take note. Refraining, if you can, from idle speculations.’ Ignoring the flicker of impatience in some of the eyes set on him, Thomas would perform his magic. His arm slightly raised, aware of the glitter of steel, he would wordlessly bend over the corpse and cut the skin without further declarations, defeated by the eagerness of youth.

      One of the women in the window must have noticed him, for her hand slid down her neck in a well rehearsed gesture, inside her frilled décolletage, revealing full breasts. It was only then that Thomas realised with embarrassment that he was staring at her, the mute cause of her performance to which a smile was now added, tongue lingering over the bottom lip. Quickly he wrapped his cloak around him and turned away, walking down the dark alley as if pursued, though he could hear nothing but the pounding of his own heels on the pavement.

      In Paris, in Rue de Clairmont, Minou expected him on Fridays. Dressed in black lace, with her smooth breasts pushed up by her corset, she smiled gently and poured a glass of red wine for him the moment he walked in. There was a pleasant smell of lavender and he liked her room, in spite of its garish combination of red and black, the lowered blinds and the smoky lamp. Minou didn’t try to talk or pretend he was anything but a paying client. She washed in front of him and made love with a pleasant efficiency that both excited and released him from desire. He paid her well, and his demands were simple. When the lovemaking was over, he liked to watch her comb her long, reddish hair. Thomas suspected she dyed it with henna. Redheads made more money, he had heard. She came from St-Malo; her father and her two brothers were sailors.

      ‘A sailor,’ Ignacy once said to him in response to a statement long forgotten. ‘You know what they say of sailors’ wives? Femme de marin-femme de chagrin.’

      It was ten o’clock by the time Thomas returned to his lodgings. His landlady was in the living room with her embroidery hoop. In her heavy dress, plaited hair arranged into a tight bun, she looked the embodiment of domesticity. She offered him tea, but he made a lame excuse and rushed up the stairs to his rooms.

      Upstairs, he poured cold water from the jug into a porcelain basin, took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He didn’t think of himself as handsome or well-built, in spite of Minou’s protestations to the contrary. She liked his ruddy skin and brown eyes, and, with an air of fake ease, swore that his nose was ‘aquiline’. Where did she get a word like this, he wondered. In the mirror he could see that his hair was thinning already. He was not as tall as Ignacy and far thinner, but his body had the sturdiness of generations of peasants, and could carry him in the saddle for hours.

      He lay down on the hard, narrow bed and closed his eyes. He thought of a young woman, a girl he healed once, at la Charité. She was not older than fifteen, with red, lush curls and little freckles all over her face. She was writhing in pain, her lips livid and bleeding from the pressure of her crooked teeth biting into flesh. He had ascertained that the patient was brought by a young man who had left as soon as he could, without leaving his name or address. When he examined the girl, he found a pig’s tail pushed into her anus. The nun who had helped him undress her, averted her eyes. Someone had tried to remove it, but the hair on the tail had got stuck in her flesh. The girl was bleeding and her anus was filled with pus.

      Thomas inserted a small tube around the tail and extracted it. He didn’t take the girl’s money. He didn’t warn her against continuing her trade. He didn’t tell her how often he saw women with their private parts torn, with broken glass stuck in their vaginas. He figured she knew all that. She cried and thanked him in her thick, Breton accent. He kept her at la Charité for a few days until her wound began to show the signs of healing. Then he let her go.

       Sophie

      The plague is stalking the streets of Istanbul, this city of golden towers, of mosques and minarets, of crescents, kiosks, palaces and bazaars. At street corners bodies of the diseased are being burnt, together with all their possessions. The smoke has already filled the air, spilled into every street, lodged deep into the fibres of everyone’s clothes. Whole sections of Istanbul have been cordoned off, though people say that well-placed bakshish can do wonders. Announcements in Turkish and in Greek forbid all contacts with foreigners, especially visits to the foreign missions. Any Greek woman caught with a foreigner would be beaten in public. Forty lashes to the heels of her feet.

      Maria Glavani is carrying cloves of garlic in a sash around her neck and blue beads to ward off the evil eye. She never leaves the house without the holy picture of St Nicholas to whom she prays until her knees turn red and sore. In the mornings, when she comes back home smelling of liquor and men, she washes her hands and face with water to which she adds a few spoonfuls of vinegar.

      ‘You stay inside!’

      Mana’s voice is harsh, impatient. The lines on her face are deepening, no matter how diligently she massages them every day. Sophie does not like these frenzied preparations, the ironing of dresses, the pinning of hair. The slaps when she is too slow or clumsy; when a hem is ripped; a pin misplaced; a line of kohl smudged. But after Mana leaves, the silence of their small house chokes Sophie. In her empty bed she hugs herself. What comes back to her is the smell of smoke and vinegar mixed with her own sweat. Everything that has happened in her life so far seems to have curled up in her, poised and waiting for release.

      Death does not frighten her. In the street she does not turn her eyes away from the burning bodies. This is not the way she will die. She knows that. A fortune-teller told her once that she would die after a long life, without pain. Far away from home, but among those who loved her.

      Mana’s black crêpe mourning dress is folded at the bottom of her coffer. In Bursa Maria Glavani would have been the talk of the town. Here, no one remembers Konstantin, the unlucky Greek with greying hair, or his widow. If only she knew what life had in store when she looked into his black eyes for that first time. If only she listened to her own mother who pointed out the threadbare clothes and the chaffed shoes of this man who talked incessantly of diamonds big as walnuts, of herds of cattle, of silk and gold lace. Such is the fault of love. Love that brings a woman down and leaves her at the mercy of strangers.

      Mana no longer talks of Christian duties, of sin and honour and the good name. They are eating meat again, and fresh fruit Mana buys at the market herself. The days are still cool. To keep warm, they put hot ashes into the tandir and sit with their feet on it. The warmth stays in their bodies for a long time. They need to be strong and round off their hips. By the time a fat man gets thin, a thin man dies.

      ‘I want the best for you,’ Mana says, and Sophie believes that. Her thoughts fold and refold