Garden of Venus
‘You should not exert yourself, Madame la Comtesse,’ Thomas replied and he approached the bed. He tried not to look at her eyes but to observe. The shade of her skin, the spots on the pillowcase were all hints as to what her body was harbouring inside.
‘Yes, Doctor,’ she said, tilting her head slightly. ‘From now on, your words will be my commands.’
The smile she gave him lit up her face making him think of a child offered a rare treat, a reward long lost, despaired over, but never forgotten. In the morning light that swept over her, Thomas thought he had seen the secret of her attraction, the way she must have appeared to all those men Ignacy spoke about. Men who had loved her over other women. Yes, he had seen through her pale, luminous skin no longer fresh and supple; through her parched lips folding as if ready to grant him secrets revealed to no one else. You will be my saviour, her eyes said. There will be no one else, but you and me. You have all my attention, all my loyalty. Nothing and nobody else matters.
‘I’ve dismissed Doctor Horn, my Russian doctor. He was not helping me at all.’
‘Are you in much pain?’ Thomas asked, piqued by the casual reference to a hapless man who had, undoubtedly, tried his best.
The countess stopped smiling. Her beautiful eyes were dry.
‘They say that my womb is rotting, Doctor, and it hurts. Is that what you want me to describe to you?’
‘But Madame la Comtesse,’ Ignacy protested. ‘Courage! You are in the best of hands.’
‘Let Doctor Lafleur decide,’ the countess said.
The nurse stepped forward, placing her hand on the patient’s arm with a gesture of appropriation. A firm, steady gesture meant as a warning.
‘Madame slept well last night,’ she said. Her voice was pleasant, her French just slightly foreign. Foreign, Thomas would reflect later only because, in spite of its flawlessness, he could attach it to no specific region or city. ‘But today she complained of pain in her back. On both sides.’
A bit over twenty, the thought flashed through his mind, still considering the possibility (however slight) of an operation. Good solid constitution. There was no frailty about her, no threat of fainting spells. She would not be a nuisance.
‘Rosalia, my dear,’ the countess said. ‘Send everyone away. Let the doctor examine me.’
‘Everyone,’ she added, seeing how her daughter hesitated. ‘Only Rosalia and Dr Lafleur will stay. No one else.’
The countess was, indeed, in the last stages of the disease that had been ravaging her for years: her face a wax mask over the skull; her arms, hands transparent. Thomas could almost see the tendons clinging to her bones. She had prepared herself carefully for this visit. Her clothes were of embroidered velvet, the kind maids were told to be careful with for their wages would never pay for the damage carelessness might inflict on the fabric. He had noted that the dress had been hastily altered to fit a thinning body. The lingering smell of musk and wild roses told him that she had bathed and oiled her body for this encounter.
As she stood up, she tried to hold herself straight, but the effort it required was obvious. Even in her slippers, flat and soft, she rested her arm on the day bed, to steady herself. The nurse jumped forward to hold her, but the countess shook her head.
Her eyes were now following his every move. She was, he decided, studying him very carefully: the way he stood, sat down, opened his bag, assembled his stethoscope.
He began to establish her medical history, the way he had been examining his patients at la Charité. She said she was fifty, but even though traces of obvious beauty were still visible, he could see she was not telling the truth. Closer to sixty, he would say.
‘How many children have you had, Madame?’
‘Ten.’
‘How many are still alive?’
‘Six.’
‘How old were you when your first child was born?’
‘Is it important?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Your medical history is important.’
‘I was seventeen.’
‘Were there any complications?’
‘No, my children came easily to this world. They didn’t cause me trouble then.’
He asked if she remembered her childhood diseases, and she laughed. ‘In my childhood, Doctor, there were two kinds of diseases: those you survived and those you did not.’
‘How many of them did you survive?’
‘My mother told me of two times I was near death with fever. She prayed for me and the fever went away. I also had measles.’
He proceeded to ask her about her diet, her sleeping patterns, the ease of her bodily functions. She was frank and unembarrassed by his questions, a fact he noted with some pleasure for many female patients shied away from telling him about their bowel movements and gas. Many times it was their relatives who had to provide the information he needed for diagnosis. Countess Potocka said she ate very little, having lost her appetite quite some time ago. She was thirsty most of the time but couldn’t drink more than a few sips of water and found the simplest tasks tiring. The nurse was smoothing the folds of her patient’s dress, nodding as if to confirm her words.
‘When did you begin feeling the first symptoms?’
‘Five years ago,’ she said, ‘I was losing weight, but I didn’t think much of it. And blood.’
Blood stained her undergarments, but the Russian doctor maintained that this was normal for a woman of her age, clearly not a point of concern. It was as if her menses returned, she continued, and she felt a slight pain in her belly. At that time it was more of a thought rather than a feeling.
But this pain began bothering her. That mere thought, uneasiness, soon became a constant companion. She woke up aware of it, and it was with her until the time she fell asleep. This pain began interfering with her days, forcing her to come home earlier from a ball, a soirée, or even stay in bed for a day.
‘I’m so tired, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I cannot stand up without feeling faint.’
Thomas ascertained that the first haemorrhage had been almost five years before. The treatments did not work. The dismissed Russian doctor bled her for five consecutive days, told her she had too much heat in her and that she needed cold baths. She was advised to take a water cure in Carlsbad, which she did. The haemorrhaging did not stop.
Thomas turned away as the nurse helped the countess take off her heavy velvet dress.
‘I’m ready,’ she said and when he turned back she was wearing nothing but a light, batiste nightgown. He asked her to lie down on the bed.
All there was to know, the evidence of her life was here, written on her body. He could see stretchmarks from pregnancies, dry patches of skin on her thighs and breasts. In her youth she must have been agile; the muscles, even in their deterioration, still preserved a shadow of their strength.
Her breasts were still relatively full and smooth. Obviously she did not breastfeed her ten children. On her thin thighs there were scars. A series of cuts on one, three burnt patches on the other. Two scars on the inside of her knees clearly were smallpox inoculations—round hollow pockmarks, whiter than the skin around them. He could also see scars on her back, long, white traces of something sharp slashing the skin. She closed her eyes often as he was examining her and breathed with difficulty.
Her disfigured, chafed belly was hardened by the mass growing over her uterus. Fixed. That realization alone was the death sentence. If it were mobile, he might have attempted an operation, but he would never operate on a fixed tumour. He agreed with Le Dran that cancer had commenced locally and was later spread by the lymphatic vessels to the lymph nodes and then into the general circulation. That’s why when he performed mastectomies, Thomas made sure that he dissected the associated lymph nodes in the axilla.
He put no faith whatsoever in various remedies that promised to dissolve the tumour. He had also seen disastrous effects of caustic pastes. As far as research into cancer was concerned he hadn’t seen much of value. Bernard Peyrilhe extracted fluid from a breast cancer and then injected it into a dog. But all he achieved was that the animal howled so much that his housekeeper objected and the dog had to be drowned.
‘The pain,’ the countess whispered. ‘It’s keeping me awake at night.’
He placed the stethoscope to her chest. Her lungs, he could tell, were clear. The difficulty with breathing was a sign of the general weakness of the body. Her pulse was fast and weak.
‘The bleeding,’ the nurse interrupted, ‘has never stopped.’ The pad she removed quickly from between the countess’s legs was stained with dark blood. He asked to see it and noted that the discharge was caked, clotted thick.
The children who died in infancy, Thomas ascertained, had no abnormalities. The countess had had the mercury cure a few times, but he could see no other evidence of syphilis than her weakened heart. When he pressed a fingernail on her index finger, he could see a pulsating vein, a sign of dilated aorta. This, however, was not what was killing her.
‘The pain,’ the countess repeated.
It was this pain that had made the journey impossible to continue and had forced them to stop here, in this Berlin palace so kindly offered by an old family friend. This pain took up all her thoughts, made travelling impossible.
‘It’s in my bones, Doctor. It is in my womb. I cannot move without crying.’
Carefully he disassembled his stethoscope, and put it back inside its leather case. He wished Ignacy had not been ordered out of the room with the others, leaving him alone to pronounce his diagnosis. The nurse, no matter how capable, would not be of much help at the moment of truth. He expected a fainting spell, a fit of screaming. This was the time to talk of God, of afterlife, of grace and repentance. Of fate and resignation. Not his kind of talk.
‘Please, Doctor,’ the countess said. ‘I want to know.’
Ignacy would not agree with me, Thomas thought. What right do we have to take hope away, he would ask. Why cut off the flow of the vital force? Deprive the body of its only defence. But hope, as far as Thomas was concerned, was a fickle notion. He had come to value facts over feelings and so far, he had had little reason to doubt the wisdom of such an approach.
‘I cannot offer you any hope, Madame la Comtesse,’ he said, finally, defying Ignacy’s voice in his head. ‘The tumour emerges out of the womb. It feeds on your body. It is fixed. I cannot operate.’
She was silent. Her eyes followed the movement of his lips. The nurse, he had noticed, grasped the countess’s hand in hers. Two hands, one strong and smooth, the other like a claw of some starving bird.
‘Cancer is like an invasion,’ he went on. ‘Your body has fought bravely, but the battle has been lost.’ Encouraged by her calmness he told her that before death came she could expect a few better days. She would have more energy, not enough to walk, but clearly enough to take an account of her life and prepare herself for the end. He did not avoid her eyes as he said all this. Their beauty urged him on.
‘Thank you, Doctor Lafleur,’ she said when he put the rest of his instruments back into his leather coffer. ‘For telling me the truth.’
‘I’m truly sorry. All I can do is to try to diminish the pain.’
The countess closed her eyes.
‘I want to be alone now,’ she said.
Sophie
She is standing behind Mana, waiting for Monsieur Charles Boscamp, the internuncio of the Polish mission in Istanbul. The study in the mission building is a big, bright room with an enormous gilded desk in the centre. The portrait of the Polish King hangs above it. In it, the King is holding a map and is looking at an hourglass. As if he didn’t have time for all he wanted to do, for his face is sad and withdrawn. There are wrinkles of sorrow on his forehead. In his eyes she sees an uncertainty that makes her wonder what has he seen in his life to doubt like that.
Don’t touch anything, Carlo has warned her. It is for him that Mana reddens her lips with carmine, and makes them shiny with walnut leaves. It is hard to tell if he is a guard, a valet, or a butler in this house, for he is vague describing his duties; but sometimes he makes it sound as if the internuncio could not take a step without consulting him. For weeks Carlo has been a frequent visitor to their house, growing more and more alarmed by Sophie’s presence. The Sultana has been making inquiries, sending her spies to find out where her little ungrateful wisdom lived. No house in Istanbul would be safe for long.
‘Don’t show your face to anyone,’ Carlo has warned her every time, bringing his gifts of food and wine. Right from my master’s pantry, he always says, drawing their attention to the internuncio’s fine tastes. What he doesn’t see, he doesn’t miss, he also says. It is this master who will be Sophie’s salvation, her escape. Carlo has told him a story of a beautiful girl from Phanar who has to be saved from the ardour of a young, penniless pasha. It is Aunt Helena who lives in Phanar not them, but a little stretching of the truth never hurt anyone. A daughter of a friend of his, an honest Greek widow who wishes only for her daughter’s well-being. ‘A girl,’ he said, ‘worthy of a king’s bed.’
The internuncio is still not ready to see them, even if it is long past midday. The annual mission party to celebrate the King’s name day ended at dawn. Everyone had been there. The Russians, the French, the English. Diplomats and men of stature and importance. The whole house still smells of roasted meat and melted wax. Over a hundred candles, Carlo has said, all burnt to the very end.
Mana has placed a shawl over Sophie’s head. ‘We won’t let him see you right away,’ she whispers in her daughter’s ears. ‘Stand straight, but don’t look at him. Keep your eyes down.’
But Sophie cannot stop herself from looking. After the Harem, this is the most beautiful room she has ever seen. The walls are painted the blue of the sea and have its luminous shine. The glass in the window sparkles. On the shelves, there are rows of books bound in leather. Has the internuncio read them all? What sort of things are in them? Tales of other worlds, of ships sailing through seas and oceans? The maps on the desk are spread wide, their ends kept from rolling up by two white rocks, studded with white crystals.
She doesn’t even know the names of the lands drawn so beautifully on these maps. Her own ignorance angers her, for she can imagine another woman, a woman who can walk through such rooms with ease, who can talk about the books she has read and journeys she has taken.
‘Look down,’ Mana whispers, pinching her elbow.
The internuncio is not as she imagined him. She thought he would be big, with strong hands, ramrod straight. Instead he is small and sinewy with rouged, wrinkled cheeks. Like an apple stored for the winter. She doesn’t like his stained and crooked teeth either.
His name may be Charles Boscamp, but, even in her mind, she cannot bring herself to call him anything but the internuncio.
‘Better be right,’ the internuncio says to Carlo who towers over his master. There is no anger in this voice though. No tension. No, he is not quite as she imagined him, but his clothes are rich. A green velvet dressing-gown embroidered with gold, white stockings and silver clasps on his shoes. The powder from the wig has spilled over on his vest. His valet should be told to be more careful. She is trying to keep her eyes down, the way her mother told her to, but cannot stop watching him.
There is an air of importance around the internuncio, in the force of his steps, the upward curve of his spine. In the way he wrings his hands, which are the white perfumed hands of a noble. She can imagine him riding, his legs spurring a horse on to greater effort. She can imagine him touching her.
She likes that thought.
Mana is talking fast, assuring the internuncio of her beloved daughter’s meek nature and good humour. Dou-Dou will not be a burden to a gentleman. There is not a trace of moodiness in her, or anger. She is sweetness itself. She is love and devotion and purity, so unlike these French ladies she hears so much about, brought up to speak their minds and put their wants ahead of anyone else’s. Dou-Dou’s heart is filled with nothing but the desire to please. She knows how to be grateful.
‘She is my daughter,’ Mana says. ‘My beloved Sophie. You will not be sorry.’
The internuncio looks at her sharply, as if doubting all these words. She keeps her eyes down, fixed on the clasps of his brown leather shoes. She crosses her arms across her chest and trembles.
‘Is that what you really want, child,’ the internuncio asks. He has lifted her chin up. His finger is soft and warm. Dry like a handful of sand. His eyes are blue, like the sky over Bursa, the whites reddened by last night’s excitement. Can she really make these eyes see nothing but her?
She doesn’t say anything. Her chin rests heavily on his finger. Her hands clutch at the shawl that covers her breasts.
His lips are thin and pale, but there is a smile on them. A smile of pleasure.
He touches her lips, slowly, lingering over their shape. He parts them gently with his finger and touches her teeth. There is a taste to his skin, bitter, pungent but not unpleasant.
‘Leave her then,’ the internuncio sighs. He is so close to her that she catches a sour whiff penetrating his shield of musk and snuff.
‘Not now, My Illustrious Lord. Not yet,’ Mana says. ‘The girl is suffering from her menses and our Lord forbids a woman to lie with a man at a time like that. Wait a few days and I’ll bring her back to you, clean and scrubbed.’
Her mother is not leaving anything to chance. There will be a deposit of 1500 piastrs made with Kosta Lemoni in Phanar, the spice merchant who will keep the money in trust for Sophie, her daughter’s dowry to be paid to her on the day she stands at the altar beside her groom. There will be assurances for the rides in a carriage, and the new dresses, and shawls Dou-Dou likes so much. She could keep all the gifts he might give her: the dresses, the rings, the pendants.
‘Do you want my soul too, woman,’ the internuncio laughs, but Sophie can tell he is not angered by her mother’s shrewdness. He is a man of honour, he assures Mana. He will do what is right.
‘If she pleases me though,’ he says, his finger raised in the air as if he were warning her that not all is settled yet.
‘A virgin,’ Mana answers boldly, ‘needs a good teacher. Then she will learn how to please.’
He likes that. His laughter rings out, shaking his belly up and down, bringing moisture to his eyes.
He takes a small ring from his finger and slips it into Mana’s hand. They examine it later, carefully. Note the thickness of gold, and the shine of the small sapphire. The colour, Mana would tell her later as if Sophie hadn’t noticed it herself, of his eyes.
The crimson robe is wrapped tightly around him. Crimson, he will tell her later, is the colour of the Polish nobles.
The internuncio is sitting in a gilded armchair, a glass of wine in hand, legs spread. ‘Come,’ he says and she walks slowly, her eyes cast down. Slowly, holding her legs together, just the way Mana has shown her. Inside her, her mother’s fingers have slid a pessary made from a lamb’s bladder. She is not to upset it by too sudden a movement. A vial of dove’s blood is hidden in a secret pocket in the fold of her shift. When he is asleep beside her, she is to quietly spill the blood on the sheets. She takes small steps, her hips swaying gently.
‘Closer,’ he says. Her feet are bare, the skin tingling at the smoothness and richness of the carpet.
Her head is spinning with her mother’s words. Don’t look him in the eye. Hold your head down. Smile, don’t laugh. There will be time for laughter later. There will be time for dancing and for rejoicing when your future is assured. Not now, not yet.
‘He is a libertine,’ Aunt Helena has said. ‘For such a man there is nothing sweeter than corrupting innocence.’
Now her shift is lying on the floor. Her naked body is covered with a sheet, so white that it shines. Her hair has been beautifully braided and pinned high, revealing the nape of her neck. Her eyes have been kohled, lips reddened. At the hammam her mother has helped her scrape the hair off her legs and made a special nourishing face mask from an egg yolk and honey. Her skin when she touches it is smooth.
‘Closer. You are not afraid, are you?’ he asks, rising from the chair, putting his glass aside. There is another glass of wine on the side table, filled to the brim. It’s for her. She is to drink it with him. To pleasure. To love. To the good times.
‘Life is so short, Dou-Dou, so fleeting. Shouldn’t we suck the pleasure out of each moment?’
Nodding, she takes one more step toward him. She takes the glass in her hand and sips the wine slowly, avoiding his eyes. One small sip after another. The wine smells of oak and berries. It is heavy, with a tinge of sweetness.
‘Is it good?’ he asks.
She nods. She can hardly stop her eyes from darting to the sides. The internuncio’s bed is big. The four posts rise almost to the ceiling. Underneath she can see a white chamber pot, covered with a lid.
The wine dizzies her. She giggles and puts the empty glass back on the table. The room is hot and she feels drops of sweat gather and roll slowly down her back. The internuncio fills the glass again, but he is not asking her to drink, so she doesn’t reach for it.
She closes her eyes, just like Mana told her to do, when he parts the edges of the sheet and stares at her for a long, long time. He is muttering something in a language she doesn’t understand. He sniffs her like a dog might, nose close to her skin, tickling her. There is a grimace of displeasure on his face.
‘Your odour,’ he says. ‘Too strong for my taste.’
She reaches for the second glass of wine and drinks it fast. Then, standing straight, she lets the sheet fall down from her body. It’s her beauty that needs to speak now. The shine in her eyes, their brightness. The purity of her skin. She takes his hand in hers and kisses it. Kisses it again and again.
His hand caresses her breasts, her belly. Then it slides down, touches the mound of Venus. She shivers.
The internuncio calls it Mon Plaisir.
The robe unwraps. He is naked, his belly protruding, over a patch of grey curly hair. He turns his back to her and makes a few steps to lie on his bed. His bottom is sagging. ‘Turn your eyes away,’ Mana has said. ‘Tell him you are afraid. Tell him he is too big for you. That he will break you inside and make you scream.’
But she has no time to say anything for he sits on the edge of the bed and motions to her to come to him. He is smiling, his eyes narrow, like folds of fabric. The vein on his temple has thickened and darkened.
She sits beside him on the bed and waits.
‘Come on, girl,’ he says. ‘Hasn’t your mother taught you what to do? Should I have taken her instead?’
She shakes her head and crosses her arms, as if to cover her breasts. In his voice there is a note of anger, but perhaps she only thinks it is.
‘Do what I tell you then,’ he says.
She is thinking of the pessary inside her. What if it slips out. What if he puts his own hand there and retrieves it, calling her a liar. Sending her back to her mother. The orders are a relief, for at least she knows what to do to please him.
‘Lie down.’
He is a traveller in the land of Venus, he tells her, a true Explorer, for whom the sight of a Foreign Land is always welcome. A Land with all its Harbours, Bays, Rocks, Beacons and Caverns. Especially a Land not Ploughed before. A Land for which Directions have to be established. A Harbour which has to be thoroughly assessed to assure the safety of his precious cargo. Its Waters explored with Proper Instruments that will measure its width and depths.