Garden of Venus. Eva Stachniak

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СКАЧАТЬ assessed to assure the safety of his precious cargo. Its Waters explored with Proper Instruments that will measure its width and depths.

      Just do what he wants you to do, Mana has said. Make him happy.

      The candles in the room make the shadows dance on the ceiling. She tries not to look at his sagging skin. His Instrument and his precious Stones are of excellent order, he assures her. She should thank her lucky stars.

      She thinks of Diamandi’s smooth olive skin and the strength of his boyish arms. She thinks of their run across the fields, their mad run of desire.

      She can smell the wine on his breath, or is it hers. Somewhere in the back of her mind questions hammer. What if she is not pleasing him? What if she is not what he has expected? What if she doesn’t know what a man wants?

      He is grunting, crushing her with the weight of his body. He has pushed himself into her, as if he were squeezing in something soft and lifeless. His hands rest upon her breasts, pinching her nipples.

      Her scream pleases him.

      But it is only when he wakes up in the morning, when he pats her buttocks and tells her that the Fortifications were not very strong after all, not a match for his Vigorous Attack, and when he sees the blood on the sheets that she knows she has not disappointed him at all. He will not send her back to her mother.

       Thomas

      Outside, in the small vestibule decorated with panels of pale green marble and white Grecian urns, Mademoiselle Rosalia stopped him.

      ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Just a few words.’ Her hazel eyes were bloodshot and the dark circles under her eyes spoke of sleepless nights. A daughter of a Polish hero and a Jewess from Uman. He knew what she would ask before he heard the words.

      ‘Is there really no hope, Doctor?’

      ‘None.’

      ‘I thought so too,’ she said, which killed the note of irritation in his voice. ‘But both Dr Bolecki and Dr Horn before him sounded so sure that an operation could save her.’

      Rosalia, for this was how Thomas began thinking of her from that moment on, insisted on reporting the details of Dr Horn’s last treatments. It would be important for him to know, wouldn’t it. She had been taking detailed notes, if he only cared to take a look: purgings with senna and salts; thirty leeches, every two hours to restore the body’s internal harmony; no solid food.

      ‘Doctor Horn said that cancer always starts in the stomach,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘Is that what you also believe?’

      ‘I haven’t seen much evidence to support this theory.’

      ‘What is it that you believe then?’

      ‘Nothing I cannot prove. Not much I’m afraid.’

      She gave him a quizzical look, but did not ask anything else.

      Dr Horn, with whom Thomas had less and less sympathy, clearly was an ardent follower of Brossais’s methods. It was his caustic salves that had irritated the stomach area. He scribbled a note for the pharmacist for a lotion that would calm down the skin.

      ‘For now,’ he said, ‘I would double the dose of laudanum. Then switch to pure opium to dull the pain.’

      She took the note from him. ‘I’ll send the maid for it right away.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You must think me cruel.’

      ‘No,’ she shook her head in protest. ‘Madame la Comtesse wanted the truth. You were right not to lie to her.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’

      Olga Potocka, Mademoiselle la Comtesse, called him a complete fool. She bit her lip and said she insisted on a second opinion. ‘Doctor Bolecki assured me that a skilled surgeon would be able to remove the tumour,’ she said.

      ‘Of course, by all means, you should consult another doctor,’ Thomas said. ‘I’m not God.’

      ‘But Thomas,’ Ignacy’s face was red, either with exertion or embarrassment, he couldn’t tell. ‘Are you that sure?’

      From the corner of his eye he could see Rosalia lean forward as if she wanted to defend him. A thought flashed through his mind: I wonder why she is not married.

      ‘Yes,’ Thomas said. ‘I’m that sure.’

      He had to repeat the same words a few minutes later when the Potocki coachman drove them through the Berlin streets, swearing at the horses in either Russian or Ukrainian, Thomas couldn’t tell.

      ‘I’m not saying you should have operated, Thomas, but you should’ve given her hope,’ Ignacy said with an impatient gesture.

      ‘I didn’t think she wanted false hope. And I don’t believe in lying.’

      ‘This is but one way of looking at it, my truth-loving friend,’ Ignacy said, obviously vexed. He was breathing with difficulty. ‘Now, she will let some charlatan take advantage of her.’

      ‘That I cannot stop,’ Thomas said, preparing for a long tirade, but nothing else followed.

      They kept silent until the carriage reached Ignacy’s home. Ignacy alighted but did not continue his reproaches. He didn’t wish him good day either. Thomas watched until his friend’s ample figure disappeared behind the front door. Disappointed. There would be no influence in the Russian court for him now, Thomas thought not without some malice.

      As the Potocki’s carriage rolled on the cobblestones toward Rosenstrasse, Thomas tried to talk to the coachman and find out where he was from, a task rendered difficult by the fact that they only had a few French and German words in common. His name was Pietka and he was a Cossack.

      ‘Zaporozhian,’ he said with pride. The skin encircling his eyes had a sallow tint. ‘Here,’ he said, pointing to the street. ‘No good. No life.’

      Thomas would have liked to learn what a Cossack considered life, but Pietka’s French ended there. As he spat onto the ground, his teeth, Thomas noticed, were black with decay.

      ‘Uman,’ Pietka said. ‘Beautiful. Doctor know where?’

      ‘Poland,’ Thomas asked. ‘Russia?’ He was trying to recall what Ignacy had explained so often. The shifting borders of the east. The changing of hands, loyalties, the trajectories of hope and despair. Ukraine, once the easternmost Polish province, now part of the Russian Empire. Poland no longer on the map of Europe, partitioned by her neighbours. Who did this Cossack side with?

      ‘Ukraine?’ he said now. The name caused a vigorous nod of Pietka’s head and a torrent of words, fleeting, like a melody. He must have touched on something he was not aware of. He did not know what to say next.

      When Thomas made his first step toward Frau Schmidt’s pension, the Cossack turned to him and said, ‘People here. No heart!’ He cracked his whip and was gone.

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