Garden of Venus. Eva Stachniak

the Princess says.

      Sophie raises her eyes. There is a flash of defiance, though she is trying to disguise it.

      ‘My name is Sophie,’ she says. ‘It means wisdom.’

      She watches how, with one gesture of dismissal, her mother is made to leave the room, the purse of gold cekins in her hands. How she takes one more look at her daughter, a look of such pain and despair that Sophie wants to run toward her and throw her hands around her neck. ‘I’ve failed you after all,’ Mana’s eyes say. ‘I have not kept you from danger. Forgive me.’

      The doors close after her, silently, like the doors of a tomb.

       Rosalia

      Only a week had passed, even if the memory of the journey seemed already faded and oddly remote, as if whole weeks separated them from the grimy inns and the jostling carriage.

      In the first days of October, morning took a long time to arrive. With curtains drawn, the only light in the grand salon was a votive lamp underneath the icon of St Nicholas. In the twilight, the red reflections on the Saint’s bearded face made the holy image waver and float.

      The countess was awake already. She tried to lift herself up, but the task was too strenuous and she fell back on the pillow.

      ‘Don’t look at me, Rosalia,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to remember me like that.’

      Blood stained her clothes, seeped through the sheets, the blankets. They should be soaked in cold water right away. The mattress would have to be burned. The maids have to stop gossiping in the kitchen and clean more carefully. Rosalia could see the patches missed by the duster, the trails of neglect. One cannot rejoice at this constant lowering of your station in life, Aunt Antonia had written, hinting once again at the disastrous but perhaps foreseeable consequences of her father’s Jacobin dreams, the true cause of all her misfortunes. She herself was far from supporting tyranny or injustice, but all this talk of freeing the serfs or making Poland a republic frightened her. Like everything else in life, equality too had its limits. Your place is here, her letters to Rosalia invariably ended, at my side.

      An operation would take place right in this room. A mattress could go on a table. She did warn Frau Kohl that one might be needed at short notice. A fairly big one, with sturdy legs.

      Since their arrival in Berlin, breakfast meant a few morsels of bread dipped in red wine to strengthen blood and on a better morning a few sips of consommé the cook prepared fresh every day. Dr Bolecki always came around ten o’clock and, after a short examination of the countess, insisted that Rosalia escorted him downstairs. This was the only time, he said, they could exchange their observations about the patient, only they never did.

      On the first day Dr Bolecki told her that his father had fought in the Ko?ciuszko Insurrection; that he, Dr Bolecki, trained in Paris, thanks to Napoleon’s insatiable need for army surgeons; and that the French doctor who was coming from Paris could amputate a limb in under two minutes. On the following day she learned that Dr Bolecki’s beloved wife died of consumption and his only daughter was a Carmelite nun, in Rome. He had to take her there himself, in January last year. On a day so cold that he couldn’t stop thinking of Napoleon’s Russian campaign. ‘Was it really that terrible?’ Rosalia asked, out of politeness. ‘I mean the campaign,’ she added quickly lest he thought she was prying into his life. He hesitated for a moment, and said that the most eerie was the silence before the Moscow fires started. ‘A void,’ he said, ‘awaiting human screams.’ Of the march back he refused to speak at all. ‘It’s better for you not to know,’ he said. But then, even though Rosalia did not insist on returning to the subject, he added that death from cold was kind. ‘The worst,’ he said, ‘always comes from a human hand.’

      ‘I think him very pleasant,’ Rosalia said when the countess asked how she liked Dr Bolecki. She meant ‘reliable’, but ‘pleasant’ seemed a safer word to use. Olga had complained, on two occasions, that Rosalia was putting on airs. ‘As if she were a doctor here,’ were Olga’s words.

      Today, as the examination followed its usual route—pulse, signs of fever, the usual questions about appetite, bleeding, and acuteness of pain—a lock of grey hair kept falling over Doctor Bolecki’s left eye. This, Rosalia thought, might be responsible for his air of restlessness. The countess suffered these ministrations without a sign of impatience, but let Rosalia answer all the questions. Only Dr Bolecki’s assurance that he would bring the French surgeon the next day, restored some alertness to her face. ‘As soon as possible,’ he kept saying. He kept looking at her too, Rosalia noted, as if something managed to change about her since the day before. Her nursing skills, he said, were most impressive. Not every patient was thus blessed. ‘I trust you, Mademoiselle, completely.’ This he repeated three times in a row, adding that he was sure his high regard would be shared by Doctor Lafleur.

      There was a sound of footsteps outside the grand salon, then silence. The door opened and Marusya appeared, balancing a tray with letters and a pot of coffee with some difficulty. It was one of the countess’s whims, a pot of freshly brewed coffee at her bedside. The smell of it, she said, was enough. She could not drink any of it, but that shouldn’t stop Rosalia from having some. The maid put the tray on the table. Her eyes were fixed on the tray and her chore, as if any distraction could cause her to lose control. The tray wobbled and Rosalia half expected to hear the crash of china falling to the floor, but this did not happen.

      ‘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