Garden of Venus. Eva Stachniak

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      Women are like bitches in heat, bringing nothing but trouble, but Diamandi is no better. Diamandi is a traitor. A man of no honour, no family loyalty. For what he has done to his own cousin, for bragging to his friends about it, he should be hung from the tree. Or branded on his forehead like the liar he is. But Konstantin Glavani is not a murderer. He is not a Turk. He is a Christian man. A Greek. A man of honour. If he were a lesser man, he could have dug out some dirt too. Everyone knows what Diamandi’s elder brother is doing. A barber, his father says. Working for a Turk, a man from Istanbul who calls himself a philosopher. A worshipper of Sodom who carries his lovers’ powdered filth in the box around his neck.

      ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,’ he says.

      Has he forgiven her?

      Mana is listening, too, her silence dark, furtive. There is a black bruise around her left eye and her neck has red blotches on it. Her eyes rest on Sophie, tell her to keep quiet, to wait it all through.

      Yes, this daughter of his is his burden, but Konstantin Glavani will not refuse it.

      He has already sold all his cattle. For a song. For a quarter of what the herd is worth, but such is the ruth-lessness of those who know he cannot afford to wait. The house will be rented to a distant cousin. An honest man, even if a bit slow in the head. They are going to Jerusalem, to the Holy Grave. The three of them, together. To beg God Almighty for forgiveness.

      When their journey is over, they will not come back here. They will go to Istanbul where no one knows them. Where, with the money he got for his cattle, Konstantin Glavani will buy a position with the Istanbul police. He will be in charge of Christian butchers in the district of Pera, and there no one will dare spit after him when he walks the streets.

       Rosalia

      In the room Frau Kohl has chosen for her, on account of its closeness to the grand salon, Rosalia took out her dresses from the travelling trunk, gave each a vigorous shake, and put them in the wardrobe which smelled of varnish. That’s also where she placed her dark grey overcoat, but even then the wardrobe was only half filled. The three hats and two bonnets went on the top shelf. Her petticoats and chemises filled only one of the five drawers.

      ‘An operation,’ the countess had said, ‘cannot be on a Tuesday.’

      ‘If there is an operation,’ Dr Bolecki had said. The examination had been a short one, the smile on his face forced.

      From the bottom of the trunk Rosalia took out the miniatures of her parents, Jakub and Maria Romanowicz, and placed them on the small table beside her bed. The silver-framed miniatures had been painted right before the Ko?ciuszko Insurrection of 1794 and the final defeat, before the day the word Poland had been erased from the map of Europe. The painter was not skilled. The expression of the two pairs of eyes were identical, as if mere copies of each other. Both her parents were looking ahead with melancholy, as if they could already see the future.

      ‘It is that Tuesday is a bad day,’ the countess had said.

      ‘Will it hurt much,’ Olga asked. The way she bit her lower lip touched Rosalia more than the sobs she sometimes heard at night; a sign that Olga too feared the worst. Perhaps because the sobbing was invisible.

      In the miniature her father was in the Ko?ciuszko uniform, a white peasant sukmana, a cravat tied in a bow under his chin, a symbol of Equality and Freedom for all Poles. His face was clean-shaven and, like Ko?ciuszko, he was not wearing a wig. Her mother’s black hair was parted in the middle. It encircled her white, porcelain face and dissolved into the background. A string of pearls was woven in her hair and she was holding a fan with which she covered her chest. Rosalia remembered that fan. When it was flicked open, Artemis appeared. The goddess with a leopard’s skin on her shoulders, its limp paws hanging behind her like a train. Where was it now? Lost in one of their many moves, forgotten perhaps in one of the trunks Aunt Antonia was keeping for her in the dusty attic in Zierniki.

       You have already turned twenty-six, Rosalia, and I shall never believe you are foolish enough to trust your mother’s misguided hopes. Did she really think that being Count Potocki’s godchild would give her some special rights? That it would make the count’s wife take special care of her orphan? Sometimes I think it best your dear father had not lived to see this.

      Two years before, on such an October night as this one, Rosalia had listened as her mother moved about her bedroom. Drawers opened and closed; the floorboards creaked. The smell of burning paper wafted through the doors. For a moment it seemed that she could hear sobs but, when she rose from her bed and listened, what she took for crying turned out to be the sound of wind in the chimney.

      ‘The matter has to be treated most seriously, Madame Romanowicz,’ the surgeon said. He looked pale in his black suit and drops of perspiration appeared on his forehead. He wiped them off with a chequered handkerchief. ‘Most seriously, Madame,’ he repeated. Her mother’s eyes had a vacant look Rosalia didn’t like. The examination had been short. The breast was swollen, the tumour had grown to the size of a plum. Time had already been lost, too much time. The surgeon spoke of women who withdrew from the world suffering only a trusted nurse to come and wash the fetid running sores as their breasts were eaten away, drowning in filth.

      He would not reveal the date of the operation. He never did. All he could do was to offer a warning of two hours at the most, for anything longer would only be the source of undue agitation. He would need old linen, charpie, old undergarments freshly laundered. Soft. An old armchair. No carpet. Nothing that could be splattered with blood and would be hard to wash. ‘But first, Madame Romanowicz will have to sign a permission. This is of utmost importance. Without it I cannot proceed.’

      The note from the surgeon came as they were sitting down to breakfast. Today at ten o’clock. The maid brought it on a tray, perched against the coffee pot.

      ‘I’ve made my peace with God. There is nothing else for you to do,’ Maman said. She had been to confession, she took communion and asked for extreme unction. Seeing the alarm in Rosalia’s eyes, she assured her that the last rites had been known to heal the sick.

      She won’t die, Rosalia repeated to herself, registering the progress of fear. In Zierniki, in winter, she had seen ducks imprisoned by ice in the pond. At first they were still able to move, until the ice thickened and refused to crack. Then to free them, the grooms had to hack at the ice with an axe and take the birds to the warm kitchen to thaw.

      I won’t let her, she repeated over and over again. I won’t.

      When the doctor arrived with three assistants, all dressed in black, Maman emerged from her room in a light batiste nightdress. If she were afraid, Rosalia could not see it. Her voice was steady and her eyes dry.

      ‘I want all the women to leave,’ the surgeon said. The maid scurried in the direction of the kitchen and closed the door. Her muffled sobs reached them a moment later.

      ‘I’m a soldier’s daughter,’ Rosalia said. ‘Let me stay.’

      The surgeon glared at her as if she were creating difficulties, but she met his eyes without flinching.

      ‘If you faint, no one will have the time to attend you,’ he said sharply.

      ‘I won’t faint,’ she replied. Maman looked at her with relief.

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