Czytaj książkę: «Dancing with Kings»

BERLIN, 1822: Water
Rosalia

In the end it fell to Rosalia to make sure that the imminent departure of Countess Sophie Potocka (accompanied by her daughter, Countess Olga Potocka, and companion Mademoiselle Rosalia Romanowicz) via Paris to the town of Spa for her prescribed water cure – had been announced three times in the Petersburg Gazette. Only then the passports could be collected and the padrogna – the permission to hire horses on the way – be signed by the Governor General.

The countess left St Petersburg on 12th July, 1822, (July 1st in the Russian style). ‘On Paris, I insist with utmost gravity,’ Dr Horn said – his voice raised, as if defending himself and not offering medical advice – ‘French surgeons are far superior, even to the English.’ Before departure, everyone, including the servants, sat around the breakfast table to pray for a safe journey. They had already been to confession, asked forgiveness for their sins from everyone in the household, and exchanged parting gifts with those who would be left behind, sashes with sweet-smelling lavender, ribbons, holy pictures, and boxes lined with birch bark.

The morning was cold and wet, but, thankfully, the thunderstorm had ended and there was no more talk of omens, in spite of Marusya’s dream about her teeth falling out and making a clunking sound as they scattered on the marble floor of the hall. (‘Why didn’t you stop this foolish talk,’ Olga snapped, as if Rosalia could have.)

The kitchen carriage left first, with provisions, cooking utensils and a collapsible table, since the inns en route with their smutty ceilings and walls grown shiny from the rubbings of customers’ backs were not to be trusted. Two more carriages were packed with luggage, one carrying a trunk that opened to convert into a bedstead with pillows, so that the countess could rest during the journey.

Rosalia may have come to St Petersburg as the countess’s companion, but it wasn’t long before the timely administration of compresses and salves became more important than keeping up with the daily correspondence, greeting guests, or reading aloud after dinner. Which, as Aunt Antonia triumphantly pointed out in one of her many letters was not that hard to foresee.

Aunt Antonia, who liked to remind Rosalia that she was her only living relative and, therefore, entitled to such straightforward expressions of concern, might have forgiven Jakub Romanowicz for marrying a penniless Jewess only to die and leave his wife and child on her doorstep, but she could not forgive Maria Romanowicz for writing to Countess Potocka and begging her to take care of her only child. In Zierniki, the family estate near Poznań, a room was waiting for Rosalia. A room overlooking the orchard, with an iron bed the maids washed with scalding water each spring. A room where her mother’s old dresser still stood, its drawers smelling of dried rosemary and mint to keep the mice away.

There had been many times on this long journey when Rosalia pleaded with the countess to stop. The sick needed peace to regain strength and how was she to assure these precious moments of peace with all the packing, unpacking, and constant ordering of vats of boiling water (the grime of the inns had to be washed before the beds could be brought in). She too had her limits, and her nerves were strained to the utmost with this constant migration of coffers, crates, and trunks, the nicks and bruises of carelessness and neglect, futile searches for what should have been there and wasn’t. (The embroidered scarves and votive lights for the holy icon of St Nicholas had been left behind three times in a row and a servant on horseback had to be sent back to retrieve them.) Through August and September they had travelled for not more than a few hours daily, usually from four until ten in the morning, to avoid the heat, and then, perhaps, for two more hours in the afternoon. Often, in spite of the hot-water compresses Dr Horn had prescribed for the journey, the countess was in too much pain to travel at all.

It was already the beginning of October when they reached Berlin where Graf Alfred von Haefen put a stop to the nonsense of further travel. The Graf met the countess at the city gates and did not even try to hide his horror at the sight of her. ‘I forbid you to spend another hour in this,’ he said, pointing at the Potocki’s carriage. ‘My ears shall remain deaf to all objections. You’ll have to submit to a man’s judgement. This is the price of friendship.’ His Berlin palace would be at their disposal and so would be his own personal physician, Doctor Ignacy Bolecki. Bolecki, one of the best doctors in Berlin, was a Pole but had been trained in Paris. After assuring himself that the drivers understood his directions and would not attempt to take the wrong turn at the first junction – on moonlit nights oil lamps were put out to conserve fuel and that made the sign of Under the Golden Goose tavern where the right turn had to be taken barely visible – the Graf said to no one in particular that if an operation were truly necessary, a French surgeon would be sent for immediately.

By the time their carriage rolled into Graf von Haefen’s courtyard, the party was greatly reduced in numbers. Five servants with the kitchen carriage were sent back to the countess’s Ukrainian palace at Uman, leaving Rosalia with only two maids, Olena and Marusya, Agaphya, the cook, and Pietka, the groom. Mademoiselle Collard, the French lady’s maid had left in Poznań without as much as giving notice. ‘I have to look after myself,’ she said to Rosalia before leaving. ‘If I don’t, who else will?’ Always eager to question the refinement of Countess Potocka’s tastes, she did not fail to remind Rosalia that the white Utrecht velvet upholstery and green morocco-leather seats of the Potocki carriage had been chosen by Countess Josephine, the Count’s previous wife.

‘You are my prisoner, mon ange,’ Graf von Haefen said, opening the carriage door to help the countess step out into the chair that was waiting already, kissing her hand twice and holding it to his heart, ‘and there is nothing you can do about it.’

To Rosalia’s relief, her mistress did not protest. By the time the countess was resting upstairs, awaiting the final arrangements of her sick room, their journey, she calculated, had lasted three months, three days, and five hours.

Sophie

The heat has abated. It is September, the month of the smallpox. Her time now, Mana says. She is old enough and she will not be alone. Six of her cousins will have it too.

‘Help yourself so God can help you,’ Mana says. In her hand Sophie is holding her mati, a blue stone, one of her birth presents. It has a black eye in its centre, and – like the red ribbon in Mana’s hair – it wards off the evil eye, human malice and the power of jealousy. Every time Maria Glavani hears that her daughter is growing up to be a beauty, she spits three times on the ground.

‘My precious Dou-Dou.’

Dou-Dou means a small parrot. A pleasing chirping bird everyone likes, everyone wants to touch and pet. Her true name is Sophie, or Sophitza. It means wisdom.

Mana cooks for three days so that there is enough food for the party: roasts slices of eggplant and marinates them in oil and lemon juice; cooks her best lamb ragout spiced with coriander. The meat will be tender enough to melt even in toothless mouths, and simmering for a long time, it absorbs the fragrance of spices. There is a big pot of soup with lentils and cardamom, pilaf sprinkled with cinnamon. And in the earthenware pot that is rarely used, chunks of feta cheese marinate in the best olive oil Mana can afford. Big jugs of country wine stand in the corner, by the window, like fat dwarfs. Strings of quinces and pomegranates, sage, mint, rosemary and savory hang from the beams. The water in the pitcher that greets the visitors at the front door has been drawn fresh from the well and is still cool. The hens are locked in the chicken coop and the goat is tied to the fence.

‘We are not beggars yet,’ Mana says. Maria Glavani’s daughter is not going to go wanting. There will be four kinds of sweet pastry, and baklava soaked with honey is already laid out on the plate with a yellow rooster in it.

Even the thought of such delicacies is a temptation. Dou-Dou has touched just the rim of the plate, but when she wants to lick the tips of her fingers, to savour even the smallest traces of sweetness, Mana stops her. ‘You are not an orphan,’ she says. ‘You have a mother who has taught you how to eat properly.’

The Glavani smallpox party will be remembered in Bursa for the food and the laughter. And for the singing too.

Rain, rain, dear Virgin, Send snow and waters, To moisten our vineyards And our gardens…

The old woman who has the smallpox brings it in a nutshell. Her name is Agalia and she smells of soap and dried mint. Her own children have long left the house, but every one of her daughters sent for her when the grandchildren were old enough.

‘The best smallpox there is,’ Agalia assures the mothers and guests with a serious nod of her head and a smile of satisfaction. ‘Fresh as the morning bloom.’ There is a murmur of consent in the room, followed by sighs of relief. Maria Glavani has chosen well.

Dou-Dou giggles. Diamandi, most favourite of all her cousins, has poked her ribs, having pointed at Agalia’s grey hair. She’s so thin that her plait looks like a rat’s tail.

‘You are a happy one,’ Agalia says. ‘Good. Laughter is like sunshine. It makes everything grow. It makes people love you.’

The children are asked to present their veins. An ancient custom calls for four openings: on the forehead, on each arm and on the breast to mark the sign of the cross. Point to your thigh, Dou-Dou, Mana instructed her, up here. You don’t want a scar on your forehead. You don’t want anything to spoil your face.

Her cousins will all have the sign of the cross, but Sophie does as her mother had said. She turns around and points to the inside of her left thigh. Agalia hesitates for a split second. Then she rips the vein open and puts as much venom inside as she can fit on the head of her needle. ‘It won’t hurt,’ she mutters, but it does.

Sophie watches Agalia’s hands as the old woman takes an empty shell and places it on the wound. Bony hands with freckles, the skin paper thin. Watches as she binds it carefully with a clean strip of cloth.

One by one the children’s veins are opened and the venom is put inside while the mothers and the neighbours watch. Sophie saw a few frowns when she did not present her forehead and her arms to be pierced, but her mother’s laughter and the plates she fills with her best stew have lightened the mood. The women eat with delight, praising the softness of the lamb, the fragrance of the sauce. Maria Glavani is an excellent cook.

There will be singing and dancing, and secrets will be whispered in low voices so that the children would not hear them. In the courtyard, under the olive tree, the women will drink the young wine and laugh until their throats are hoarse. Mana will sing for them and they will dance, bodies swooning to the rhythm of the clapping hands.

The children will play together for the rest of the day, play hide and seek, and tag, chase each other until their mothers tell them to stop. Too much running around could upset the bindings. Seven days will pass and nothing will happen. On the eighth they’ll all come down with a fever.

‘Diamandi is sick already,’ Mana whispers. ‘And Costa and Attis.’

For two days Sophie stays in bed, like all the other children, her fever rising and falling, her head pounding. Mana, smelling of lemon blossom and laurel oil, wipes her forehead with a wet cloth. Cool and dripping with water which flows down her forehead and sinks into her pillow.

Mana sings to her, funny songs in which goats wish to become camels and flies envy the eagles in the sky. Mana’s cool hand on her forehead is an invitation to sleep. A tiny dab of the balm of Mecca on her finger, she rubs around the smallpox wound. It will keep her Dou-Dou beautiful, she says. Her epilda. Her hope for the future. Her only hope.

Thomas

Berlin, Doctor Thomas Lafleur thought, was a grim city, in spite of the profusion of oil lamps swinging on chains, illuminating small circles of the street below. The aftermath of the armies treading through these lands might account for some of this grimness, but Thomas liked to reflect on the universal human capacity for creating misery. He did not assume America would free him from the disgust he felt with the human race, but at least it would give him a chance.

‘Please hurry,’ Ignacy’s letter said, ‘my dear Thomas. The Art as we have learnt it serving the Great Man is unsurpassed here. I need you badly, and so does my new patient. America can wait. I cannot agree it will be such a Great Deliverance as you are trying to convince me, for Human Nature is the same everywhere. To me it looks more like a Great Escape. Graf von Haefen is sending his fastest carriage, so you can judge for yourself how much you are needed here.’

The mention of the fee he could charge for the operation, 50 louis d’or (and more if what I see is any indication Ignacy wrote), has been enough to make Dr Thomas Lafleur subject his body to the torture of travel. Like his colleagues, he may have saved thousands of lives on the battlefields of Europe, but his rewards had been meagre. A small pension of three thousand francs, a position at la Charité, a few anatomical demonstrations, a few lectures at the Val de Grace.

‘Sometimes I think I have dreamt all this,’ he had often told Ignacy. ‘Borodino, Berezina, Kowno, Waterloo. As if it were nothing but a mirage.’

Anticipating Thomas’s wishes, Ignacy had found him simple lodgings in Old Berlin, on Rosenstrasse, two rooms: a bedroom and a small parlour that could easily serve as his study. Frau Schmidt offered services of a maid, breakfast in the morning, and swore that the room would be kept warm if the French doctor were kept longer with his patient. ‘Another of your hiding holes,’ Ignacy had called it, this friend whose relentless lupine energy in the months of the Russian campaign Thomas had envied.

That the rooms looked poor and bare, with their simple poplar furniture and narrow bed, did not bother Thomas. After being tossed around and jolted in the black box of Graf von Haefen’s carriage, he was ready to welcome any place that did not move. Besides he had been an army surgeon long enough not to mind.

Sophie

Diamandi’s skin is as smooth as a fresh fig. ‘Catch me,’ she cries to him and reaches for the first branches of the oak tree at the edge of the meadow where the sheep graze. He is still standing, unsure of what he should do. After all, she is but a girl with scabs on her knees. Thick scabs she likes to tear off, impatient for the new pink skin underneath. She is but a girl, even if she can swim like a fish and steer a kaiak better than many boys he could name.

Even if she can outrun him. Make him gasp for breath. Make him pant right behind her like a dog.

‘Catch me, Diamandi.’

He makes the first cautious step toward the tree, his tanned hands reach toward the lowest of the branches. Then there is a snap of a twig. A curse. The sound of a body heaving up, pushing through the leaves. She is halfway up already where the branches are thinner, her hands grabbing, testing their strength. ‘Like a squirrel,’ Mana has said, in a voice half angry and half approving. A squirrel is agile and cheeky. Digs out bulbs and cuts the stems of flowers. A squirrel mocks the fat tabby who stalks it in hope of a skirmish.

From the top of the tree Bursa looks small and forlorn. Even the big houses of the rich seem insignificant, their gardens but patches of greenery, really no different to her mother’s small kitchen garden. The garden where the flowers are only allowed on the edges, for the soil is too valuable for ornaments.

‘Come on, Diamandi.’

He is right behind her, and gaining speed. His body is wiry and strong. Stronger than hers, even if not that fast. Her cousin is a ferryman and a shepherd. He is older by seven months, fourteen already, while she is still only thirteen and has not yet bled like a woman.

He wrestles with other boys, pins them to the ground, breathes in their faces until they squirm. His eyes are flashing with victory. He will not let her win that easily. He will hold her down, if he has to.

‘Dou-Dou!’

There is pleading in his voice and the promise of tenderness.

‘Dou-Dou!’

She stops right before reaching to the thinnest of the top branches that could still sustain her weight. She waits until Diamandi comes right behind her and orders her to climb down. ‘Right this minute,’ he says and his hand rests on her behind. Just for a moment, for a split second, but enough to make her skin hot and tingly.

‘You are crazy. Your mother would scratch my eyes out if anything happened to you.’

‘Then let’s see who can climb down first,’ she says.

She can feel his eyes on her as she climbs down. A tricky old tree. But she knows which of the branches are rotten through and would not support her. She trusts her strong hands. Her legs can wrap themselves around a branch and hold her. She does not mind the scratches on her skin. The thin trails of blood, the bruises. ‘A bit of pain always sweetens the pleasure,’ Mana says, laughing, her white teeth even and small. Her father’s eyes narrow at such moments. His fingers drum on the edge of the table, a funny rhythm, a staccato of sounds that end as suddenly as they started. There is something heavy in the air, a promise of a storm. She has often heard that her father is a jealous man, and that her mother gets nothing more than what is her due.

‘You are not to do it ever again,’ Diamandi says. What a voice he has, this boy-man. Pretending to be angry and yet wanting her to defy him. Daring her to shake her head and laugh in his face. Daring her to tell him he is nothing but a boy.

He has jumped off the last branch and is now holding her down. His hands are cool and dry. There is a smell of dried grass around him and of fresh milk. She wriggles away.

To this lithe, olive-skinned boy she is a mystery, the half-wild creature of his dreams. The wind is now cool against her cheeks. ‘I’ll race you,’ she cries and runs until, by the olive grove, he pulls her down onto the soft grass, kisses her lips and pushes his tongue through her teeth. The air is again sweet with blossoms, moist with the sea, and she is shivering.

‘I love you more than my own soul,’ he whispers, and for now she believes him.

Rosalia

Two tall German grooms who had brought the big empire bed trimmed with white satin asked where Rosalia wanted it. ‘By the wall,’ she said and pointed to the place far enough from the windows so that the light would not disturb the invalid. The grooms nodded and lifted the bed again. They had already removed the Persian carpets and, once the bed was in place, they would hang a thick curtain of garnet velvet that could be drawn across the room.

Countess Potocka was resting, waiting for the necessary transformations of the grand salon. (The Blue Room suggested by the Graf had proved too draughty.) In the afternoon light, her pallor was turning ashen. Her eyes, wide, liquid and filled with pain, followed Rosalia as she placed a bowl of fresh figs by the makeshift bedside. The countess reached and touched Rosalia’s hand.

‘Merci, ma fleur,’ she whispered.

Graf von Haefen had sent basketfuls of delicacies from his Potsdam estate; figs, pineapples, oranges from his greenhouses, fish from his ponds, venison from his forests. ‘Which Madame won’t even try,’ Marusya had said. Rosalia had to admit that flowers would please her mistress better. Roses in particular and orchids.

Only a few days before, at a roadside inn, the countess still had enough strength to make a few long-awaited decisions about Sophievka, her beloved garden right outside Uman. Since Dr Horn’s insistence that surgery alone could stop the haemorrhaging, there was no more talk of moving to the Uman palace for the summer (another disappointment that had to be endured). But the countess asked Rosalia to copy the drawings of the mountain ash that she wanted her chief gardener to plant in the spring. Sturdy and resistant, I am assured it will withstand most severe frosts, the countess dictated. A bed of purple irises, a symbol of a great orator and a great leader, was to be planted around the marble bust of Prince Joseph Poniatowski. New paths were to be charted. Make them lead to a vista, or a building. Otherwise a wanderer would turn back in disappointment. The giant oak by the river was not to be touched. Don’t trim the branches, a human hand has no right to correct such beauty. An oak once wounded, loses its primal force and will always grow slowly.

‘The bed will be ready soon,’ Rosalia said, but the countess only managed a slight nod.

Outside, in the courtyard, the hooves of the horses made a hollow noise; carriage wheels clattered and squeaked. Soon, Rosalia thought, Pietka would have to spread a straw carpet on the stones to muffle all noise. And he would have to stop singing, as he was doing now.

In Vinnytsia, on the border,

At the foot of a grave mound, on the bank of theBuh River,

Under the walls of the Kalnytsky charterhouse…

This palace in the heart of Berlin would provide some relief. From what she had seen, Rosalia could tell its workings would be flawless. Since their arrival, the marble floor in the entrance hall had already been washed and wiped dry. After mentioning that charpie would be necessary to dress the wounds and that the French surgeon would likely ask for an old mattress, she was reassured both would be procured without delay. Frau Kohl, the Graf’s housekeeper, had also brought a pile of old sheets, well-washed and soft.

Rosalia wiped her mistress’s face with a sponge dipped in warm, lavender-scented water, washing away stale sweat and caked powder. Her underclothes were again stained with blood, dark and clotted with what looked like pieces of chopped liver. Mademoiselle Collard used to complain she was a lady’s maid not a nurse. ‘Neither are you,’ she reminded Rosalia. Her family’s land may have been sequestered by the Russian Tsar, but Rosalia’s father had been a Polish noble and it was her duty to guard her own station in life. It was all too easy to slip down, let herself go. With that Rosalia had to agree, as she retrieved clean undergarments from a travelling trunk and helped the countess change into her lilac dress with little embroidered rosebuds, but then the question remained of who would do it. The maids had their hands full with all the unpacking, mending and ironing. Mademoiselle la Comtesse conveniently managed to vomit every time she caught the whiff of the basin. (‘She has her father’s constitution, Rosalia. Nature cannot be helped,’ the countess said.) Only this morning – having seen the bloodstained undergarments the maids were taking away to be soaked in cold water – she became so agitated that Rosalia had had to give her a double dose of laudanum to calm her down.

‘I don’t want to see anyone but Graf von Haefen,’ the countess whispered, closing her eyes. ‘Let my daughter receive all other visitors.’

‘The French doctor will be here soon,’ Rosalia said. She was trying to foresee what else the surgeon might ask for. If he came from Paris, he would not have assistants. Doctor Bolecki would be of help, but this might not be enough. She wondered if the two grooms were strong enough to hold the countess down. And if they would withstand that much blood and the screaming.

‘I’m so tired, Rosalia,’ the countess whispered.

The pain was never far away, crouching inside her, but it was letting her breathe. It might let her fall asleep again. ‘Mademoiselle Rosalia, you should try to lead her thoughts away from death,’ Graf von Haefen had insisted with great firmness, before leaving. ‘Talk only of what brings her joy.’

The gardener reported that Sophievka was already covered in snow. He had seen icicles hanging from pine trees and from the gnarled branches of the oak tree by the lake. In the greenhouses roses and orchids were blooming and he wished he could send the countess some blooms the way he used to send them to St Petersburg, in a carriage kept warm with braziers. The nettle tree was doing fine and so was the Turkish filbert from Caucasus. He had planted it in complete shade, as instructed.

‘The nettle tree, I was assured,’ the countess said, ‘would not sink in water.’

When her mistress was dressed, Rosalia combed her hair, grey and so much thinned by her illness. Then, from the red travelling case, she took a black wig, a shapely halo of black locks, trying not to pull as she pinned it to her hair.

‘By the summer, you’ll be strong enough. We’ll go there together.’

The countess gave her the most beautiful of her smiles.

Perhaps, Rosalia thought, happiness could only come from such simple moments. From knowing that the touch of her hands calmed the sick and eased their pain. ‘Which is precisely why she would take advantage of you,’ Mademoiselle Collard would warn. ‘She already has two daughters, you know.’ It was in Rosalia’s disposition to take unending duties upon herself, feel responsible for the most insignificant of things. Like the lost charcoals, a whole box of cedar of Lebanon: Olena, the maid who had packed the dinner service at the last stop, was sure she put it in the same box with the silver. ‘Surely,’ Mademoiselle Collard would mock Rosalia’s agitation over this trifle if she were here, ‘she can afford to lose a box of charcoals. Isn’t she rich enough?’

The countess, her eyes closed, looked like a waxen figure. It was only the faint warmth of her skin that told Rosalia her mistress was still alive.

Sophie

Her cheeks still smart from her mother’s slaps. One, two, three. A fool. She is a fool. Or a whore. What was she thinking? What was on her mind? Doesn’t she understand anything? Anything at all? Hasn’t she seen and heard what human tongues can do?

The salty taste of blood inside her mouth frightens her. The memory of happiness, of lightness is gone. Instead, she has to face her mother’s fury.

‘What did he do?’ Mana screams and pushes her on her bed. Another slap, weaker than the one before. Her skirt is lifted, her legs spread. She has been damaged, nibbled at and spat out. Tried and left aside. Who will buy damaged goods now? What man in his right mind would pay for what he can have for free? Who would keep a cow if the milk comes for nothing?

Mana is poking inside her, feeling for the damage. How cruel her fingers can be. How rough.

‘Was he hard,’ she asks. ‘Did he put it in all the way? ‘Dou-Dou, I’m talking to you. Answer me, girl. ‘Tell me everything. I’m your mother.

‘It’s for your own good.

‘Plenty of dirty pots in the kitchen that need to be scrubbed. The maid can be let go, the scruffy thing she is, and dirty too. You want dirt? You can scrub the pots with ashes. See how your hands redden from scalding. See how your knuckles grow and crack open. See how they bleed.

‘Is that what you want, girl? Is that what I gave you your life for? Is that why I screamed with pain for the twelve hours you took to be born? Tearing me apart, almost killing me?

‘And for what? A poke from this runt? This good-fornothing? This high-and-mighty cavalier whose tongue is stronger than his dick. Who now walks around the town in his glory, telling everyone what you let him do.’

In the end Mana’s tears are harder to bear than her anger. Seeing her hide her face in her hands in shame. Hearing her sobs.

‘All I ever wanted for you is now lost.’

Dou-Dou wants to scream that this is not true. Isn’t she still her mother’s beloved daughter as she was a day ago? But her mother only looks at her with unseeing eyes.

‘You do not know the power of the human tongue.’

The sun is caught in Mana’s raven black hair. If angels have faces, that’s how they must look. The shape of the brows enlarging the eyes, the cheeks full and smooth. The lips like cherries, glistening from the tears that have rolled down her cheeks.

‘Is that what you want girl? Is that what I gave you your life for? Is that why I screamed from pain for the twelve hours you took to be born? Tearing me apart so badly that I could have no more children?

‘I’ve always wanted my daughter to do better than I’ve done. Not to waste what God has given her. Not to throw it away. Was it too much to hope for?’

Konstantin Glavani comes back from the tavern. Even from his steps, Dou-Dou can tell that he knows. From the force with which his heels hit the ground. From the way his fist lands on the table. With a thump. With choking anger. Something falls off, rolls, smashing on the floor.

There is a slap, then another one, and a scream. ‘Like mother, like daughter,’ he yells. ‘Is that what you teach her? To spread her legs for every loser in Bursa?

‘To be the talk of the town?’

The door opens and Sophie’s body softens like a kitten readying itself for a fall. She is lying on her stomach, sobbing into a pillow and her father is standing beside the bed. His breath is all she hears. In and out, in and out. In his big hand she can see the handle of the whip Konstantin Glavani uses to corral the sheep.

This silence frightens her more than Mana’s screams.

He lifts her skirt, her shift, and exposes her buttocks. If she doesn’t tense them, it will hurt less. The swish of leather through the air comes first, before the spasm, before the warmth of her pee dissolving into the mattress. When the strap touches her skin, she feels another spasm. And another until there is nothing but burning pain.

She doesn’t scream. Her face is buried in the pillow. Tears soak into the embroidered fabric. Mana had stitched these birds singing on branches, their beaks open wide. And the tall cypresses that sway in the wind. She did it in another time when Sophie was but a child and wanted to know about everything. How to make such a bird look real. How to make a thread go through the eye of the needle.

Her father stops and turns her over. ‘Look at me,’ he says. ‘See the man who can’t look his friends in the eye. Who has to listen in silence as his daughter’s name is dragged in filth. The man whose daughter is a whore.’

She looks at him. He is standing above her, big body swaying, his breath smelling of wine and roasted lamb. Red blotches have sprung up on his neck, his mouth is twisted into a grimace of disgust. She remembers that his fingers can bend a horseshoe. He will not be made the laughing-stock of Bursa. He will not allow his daughter to disgrace his name. He will kill her first, and then kill himself.

‘A brood mare.’

He lifts his hand in the air. A big hand, calloused and reddened, with chapped skin on the knuckles. Will her neck snap with a crack, like that of a chicken?

She fixes her eyes on him. Everything can happen now. Everything is nestled in such moments, the malice, the revenge, the pain. The hand falls down slowly, limp, alongside his body. It clenches into a fist and then relaxes, defeated.

How does one escape the power of human tongues?

She has heard of a man slashing his daughter’s face with a razor. Of burning her cheeks with hot coals to scar her beauty. Her father keeps looking at her, forcing himself to keep looking, until, in an instant, he turns on his heel, and walks away. The door slams after him, and she wipes the tears from her eyes and cheeks. There is a pitcher of water and a basin her mother has left for her, and she splashes cold water on her face. Then she squats over the basin and washes the place between her legs, still wet from her pee. Where the strap hit her, she can feel needles of pain in a web of punishment, the memory of her defeat.

Konstantin Glavani announces that they are leaving Bursa.

She watches his quick, determined steps, listens to the stomping of his heels on the floor. Outside, the earth smells of camomile, lemon blossom, and laurel. Her friends are in the fields, running or riding horses. Or making bonfires on the edge of the river. Diamandi is there too, but she won’t see him. She is not allowed to leave the house of shame.

The stories flow, thicker and more poisonous each day. The stories men whisper in low, lusty whispers. The stories women repeat with gasps of disbelief. There will be no end to them now, no end to the malice of lashing tongues. The torrent of gossip will follow her until the day God pleases to call her to His presence and account for her sins. An egg once broken cannot be made whole again.

Konstantin Glavani is pacing the room. He has been punished for the sins of the flesh, for marrying beneath himself. For being a fool and closing his ears to the words of the wise. Slash her throat, people tell him. Make her kneel in the dust and cut your daughter’s throat. Make her bellow like a heifer when she sees a knife raised above her head.

What a fool he has been for thinking that God has blessed him when his daughter was born. For thinking his little Dou-Dou would be the light of his soul, the blessing of his old age. For thinking that he, a father of but one child, would sit in her garden one day and rock his grandchildren on his knees.

This is not what God in His wisdom has prepared for him. The sins of women are bred in the bone, working their silent way from the day a woman is born until the day she dies. He should have known that this daughter of his would be his Gehenna. The day she was born he should have sprinkled ashes on his head.

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 ruthlessness 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 Kościuszko 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 Kościuszko 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 Kościuszko, 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.

Bare of furniture, with just the armchair in the middle covered with three white, freshly laundered sheets, the parlour looked bigger and far too bright. The wallpaper was darker where the picture and the oval mirror had hung. The ceiling, Rosalia saw, needed a fresh coat of paint. Her mother’s hand when she held it was cold and dry but then, without warning, perspiration broke out.

‘When you were giving birth, Madame,’ the surgeon asked. ‘Did you scream?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Then I want you to scream – scream as much as you can.’

The operation was performed in absolute silence. The doctor seated Maman in the armchair, gave her a glass of wine cordial to drink, and covered her face with a cambric handkerchief. Then he motioned to the tallest assistant who placed a pillow under her head and positioned himself behind. The other two assistants silently came to stand on each side of the armchair, holding her arms. Her mother motioned to them that it was not necessary, but when, through the fine mesh of the handkerchief, she saw the glitter of steel she tried to stand up. The men held her so fast that she flinched.

Nothing, no past memory of love would ever equal this moment when Rosalia could feel her mother’s fingers clutch hers like clamps and saw her knuckles becoming white. It did not seem odd that her own body registered her mother’s pain. That this pain united them, sealed them to each other. That together, she with a clear eye and her mother through the mesh of her handkerchief, they watched as the surgeon made the sign of incision in the air, with a straight line from top to bottom of the breast, a cross and a circle. That they shuddered together when the blade cut horizontally, nearly in the direction of the rib, a little below the nipple. That the scream that came, came from them both.

The two assistants on either side pressed their fingers on the arteries, and the surgeon began the cleaning, his hand separating the tumour from the skin and muscles, cutting off the cancerous tissue. Blood splattered his hands and arms. There were a few drops of it on his face. When Rosalia heard the blade scraping the breast bone, she could feel her mother’s hand loosening her grip. Maman had fainted and for a moment something close to panic overtook her until she reminded herself that, unconscious, her mother was free from pain.

The procedure took twenty minutes. There were operations that could be performed well and fast, but this was not one of them. The whole of the diseased structure had to be removed, the surgeon said afterwards, and he could not afford to miss anything. ‘I can amputate in under two minutes,’ he said. ‘But with this, no half measures will do. If the reoccurrence of the mischief is to be prevented…’

Rosalia was so hopeful then. The surgeon assured her that the operation had gone well and showed her how to dress the wound, applying a large, thick compress of charpie to the sutures and binding it on with a flannel roller. It didn’t take long for blood to appear through all the bandages. Maman’s face had lost all its colour and her limbs all life. The assistants carried her to her bed, and Rosalia was told to change her dressings every two hours and watch for signs of infection, for the weakening of the body.

At midnight her mother opened her eyes, but she did not seem to know where she was.

‘He is standing by the window,’ she kept saying.

‘Who is?’ Rosalia asked. All she wanted was to throw herself into her mother’s arms, to hide her face in her breasts the way she did when she was a child. Instead she could still hear the knife scraping against the bones.

‘He is pointing at his heart.’

Her lips were parched and she drank a few sips of water. ‘I am going with him,’ she said. ‘I have to.’

Rosalia tried to quiet her. The surgeon had assured her the operation was a success. The cancer was removed, all of it. ‘You must be strong, Maman,’ she pleaded. ‘You cannot leave me alone. You cannot leave your only child.’

‘I have to go,’ her mother whispered and closed her eyes. ‘He is waiting for me. He will take me away.’

Seeing that the blood had penetrated the dressing again, Rosalia replaced it with a fresh one. Maman did not open her eyes, but she no longer seemed in pain. Perhaps, Rosalia thought, the crisis had passed. She promised herself not to fall asleep, but the silence and her mother’s calm, soft breaths proved too much. When she woke up, startled, it was still dark. The windowpanes were covered with the white, intricate patterns she loved to watch in Zierniki where the windows froze for most of the winter. Beautiful white ferns, branches of trees with spiked leaves, flowers of tiny petals that reminded her of figures her father drew to amuse her: pentagons, hexagons, octagons.

The room was silent and still. Death she thought was like that. A moment of loss too profound to comprehend. A moment in which love fuses with pain. A moment from which there is no now and no future. Nothing but memories of the past, crumbling and fading with time.

She didn’t have to touch Maman’s face to know she was dead.

Just as she did on winter days in Zierniki, Rosalia breathed at the windowpane. When the ice petals melted, she peered through the hole and saw a boy pass by. He was carrying a lantern carved out of a turnip, slits in its side let out enough light for him to see where he was going.

There were a few other objects in Rosalia’s travelling chest but these would remain unpacked, a testimony to the temporary nature of her stay in this Berlin palace: a small wooden star she had found among her mother’s things; her father’s snuffbox with the Rights of Man engraved on the lid; a black silhouette of Kościuszko’s profile and three sketches of Napoleon in a wreath of oak leaves – her father’s heroes.

These treasures Rosalia kept locked in a mahogany box, underneath her clothes in the trunk. It was a flimsy hiding place. Any of the servant girls might want to go through her things, try on her dresses or petticoats. Smell her rosewater or jasmine oil and dab a few drops on her brow. In St Petersburg handkerchiefs and sheets of paper disappeared routinely. The paper was what the cook used to curl her hair with. ‘If it wasn’t meant to be taken, it wouldn’t be lying around,’ Rosalia had heard Marusya mutter.

Her back hurt from lifting sacks of clothes, from helping the countess stand up. Taking off her shoes and her stockings, she walked about the room, until her aching feet were consoled by the smoothness of the carpet. If only Olga cared to help more, but some people were born to luxury and some were not. ‘It’s your own mother,’ Rosalia was often tempted to say, but never did.

Her most excellent bed, as Frau Kohl – the Graf’s housekeeper – had described it, did not help. It felt too big, too cold. Rosalia turned and tossed around, trying to warm up the clammy sheet, wondering if she should call for another eiderdown. There were noises outside her room; German words exchanged by the footmen; the sounds of doors opening and closing – the life of this palace, temporarily interrupted by their arrival. She recalled Marusya’s talking about strange noises in the maid’s room, like someone’s knocking on the windowpane, and complaining that the room smelled of mice. ‘Perhaps the Count has come for the Mistress,’ the cook had said.

Sophie

She opens the gate. The fence of their Istanbul house is made of staves of wood fastened with wire. The wind pushes her back, and the first rain drops fall on her face. She is thinking of the smooth feel of velvet on her cheek.

‘Quick,’ Mana screams. ‘Upstairs. To your room.’

The front door is hanging open. A doctor is in her parents’ bedroom, bending over her father. Or someone who looks like her father, in spite of the swollen red face, an eyeless face locked in a scowl.

‘Go,’ Mana screams.

Upstairs, in her small room, Sophie throws herself on her bed and listens. The doctor’s voice is harsh and commanding. He is calling for water, and he is pounding something. Pounding hard and shouting at Mana who rushes outside and then comes back.

She can smell her own body. A slightly sour smell she breathes in and out. For a moment she feels that she is growing large, her feet are endless and wide, stretching to the edge of the world, but then she moves and the feeling is gone.

She remembers the time when he was proud of her. When he told Mana to dress his daughter in her best dress and to plait her hair with ribbons so that her father could take her with him to the garden where, under the deep shade of almond blossoms, his friends gathered for their evening coffee and sweetmeats.

Her father stood her on the carpet and clapped his hands. She bowed and smiled, eyes stealing swiftly across the faces of the men and back again to her father. From the overgrown lake, right beside them, came a rotting smell of reeds.

Her father took a garland of flowers and put it around her neck. A beautiful garland of reds and yellows, of roses and wild daffodils. She sniffed at the flowers and their scent made her sneeze. ‘A sign,’ her father said. Someone was talking about her now. Right this minute someone was saying her name.

The thought pleased her. The waves of whispers, the eyes of strangers following her.

‘Pray to the Lord,’ her father said, ‘that what they say is always good. Once soiled, a good name is lost forever.’

The men laughed and clapped their hands.

This is what she wants to remember: the wine glasses raised to the sky, toasting her health and her good luck. Toasting her beautiful voice breaking into a song of love. A song sad and sweet. A song she has heard shepherds sing in the fields.

A child thrice blessed. A child kissed by an angel.

Her father carried her home that evening, and she remembers his breath, in which wine and coffee mingled. He carried her in his arms like a princess so that her embroidered slippers would not, Heaven forbid, be soiled. The soft slippers Mana had made out of an old dress she had stopped wearing.

Downstairs the pounding stops and there is silence. She crosses herself three times. She is sorry for all the times she has been angry at him.

In Jerusalem, in the Temple, she cried as the friars lifted up the cross and led the pilgrims to the place where Our Lord suffered and died. She was holding a candle and the wax, melting, scorched her skin, but she did not feel pain. When they reached the Mount of Calvary she fell to her knees, recalling the suffering of Our Lord and those who were with him in these dark moments of pain and despair. Recalling Mary Magdalene, forgiven for her sins, taken back into the heart of the Lord. And then her own heart filled with love and compassion for all human suffering, and she could not think of anything she wanted so much as to lie there, on the holy ground and let her tears soak into the earth.

Mana is standing at the door, her hands hanging loose, her lips moving. There is a drop of sweat rolling down her forehead.

‘It’s Tuesday,’ she hears.

Tuesday is a bad, unlucky day. On a Tuesday, Constantinople, the heart of the Byzantine Empire, fell to the Turks and would from now on be called Istanbul. On a Tuesday the Emperor Constantine turned into marble. Just before he was to be struck down by the Turks, Byzantium’s last Emperor was seized by an angel. The angel, his golden wings shining in the rays of the sun, carried him to a cave near the Golden Gate and turned him into a statue. ‘You will wait here,’ he said, ‘for the time when God our Lord is ready to restore freedom to the Greeks.’

‘Cry, Dou-Dou,’ she says, ‘cry for your father. We are all alone in the world.’

But her own eyes are dry.

In the Istanbul port, where the straits merge with the sea, opaque patterns glide over the water and flocks of shearwaters skim low over the surface, never to rest. The Turks say they are the souls of the damned.

Mana says these tiny birds are the souls of the odalisques the Sultan sent to their deaths. Drowned in the Bosphorus, in brown burlap sacks, their hands tied, their mouths gagged. In this world it is better to be a dog than a woman, Mana says, for she has seen carriages stop for a dog lying in the sun. She has seen servants get out, lift the dog up, and carry it out of the way.

The fishermen come back from the sea with swordfish, red and grey mullet, sea bass, lobsters and mussels. Sprats are caught with a lantern. The light reflected in the water makes the fish blind, she has heard, and they do not see the net.

‘Sing for us, gorgeous,’ the sailors ask.

In the market her mother has shown her how to watch out for bad fish. The stink of decay can be rubbed away with pine tar; dull skin buffed with a piece of rag until it shines. Air can be blown inside the belly to make a catch look bigger and more succulent.

Watch out, Mana says. You have already bled like a woman. Men can pick that scent. Men can tell.

She likes the sight of them. The young men with olive skin, shirts stained with grease, open at the chest. Their muscles tense as they pull on the ropes.

‘I won’t,’ she laughs and hurries away.

For a Christian woman the streets of Istanbul are fraught with danger. Even if she casts her eyes down and follows her mother, quickly, without looking. Even if she promises herself not to stare at the rich, handsome cavaliers who come to the district of Phanar where the Greek merchants’ wives lounge on their verandas, attended by servant girls. Men whose steps are light and sprightly. Whose embroidered belts are fastened with broad golden clasps. Whose horses prance and neigh, impatient with restraint imposed on them by their riders’ hands. Men whose eyes are on the prowl.

She has seen the Janissaries with white feathers on their heads, and the royal gardeners dressed in their habits of different colours so that from afar they looked like flowers themselves. She has seen the Aga of the Janissaries in a robe of purple velvet lined with silver tissue. His horse was led by two slaves. Next to him was the Kilar Aga, the chief eunuch of the Seraglio in a deep yellow cloth lined with sable. The Sultan was mounted on a horse whose saddle was studded with jewels.

She often thinks of fate. Fate that can push her any which way, make her a slave or a queen, a lady or a whore. Lady Fate whose breath she feels right behind her, tickling the skin on her neck. Lady Fate, blind, fickle and full of spite.

Or is it benevolence.

Help yourself so God can help you, Mana says.

‘Look at yourself, Dou-Dou.’

This is her aunt who says she could be her sister. Whose dresses are made of Genoan damask and silk. Whose rings catch the rays of the sun and reflect them back with a rainbow of colours. ‘These, my little Dou-Dou, are real diamonds.’

Aunt Helena, Mana’s younger sister, hardly hides her annoyance at their hungry eyes trailing after her clothes, after the food on the table, after the trinkets with which she adorns herself. Aunt Helena with her sweet voice and the scent of roses around her, with hands soft and white.

‘Look at yourself,’ Sophie hears and watches how her cheap, coarse dress drops down, how her aunt’s fingers gently release the hooks of her petticoats, the folds of her chemise. How nothing obstructs the sight of her body. The shapely breasts, the belly button, the mound of black curls below. ‘Move your hips, Dou-Dou,’ Aunt Helena whispers into her ear, the hot air of her breath tickling. ‘Slowly, slowly. Don’t shake too much.’

She sways her hips, shy at first, cautious. But she likes what she sees, she likes this nymph, this slender, beautiful girl framed by the gilded mirror. Standing beside this aunt of hers, her mother’s sister who now braids a string of pearls into her long hair. Is this the way Eve felt in the Garden of Eden when she saw her own reflection in the mirror of still water?

‘You are so beautiful, Dou-Dou. You can have everything you want. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, girl.’

She turns her back to the mirror and looks over her shoulder. Her back is smooth and flexible. She can bend as easily as she climbed the branches of the oak tree in Bursa. She can kneel on the floor and let her body fall backwards, into a graceful curve, and then come back, slowly, her eyes locked on her own image.

‘You are worthy of a king’s bed.’

The longing in her is like an ill wind that makes the air clammy with heat, filled with dust, unbearable. There has to be a release to all this want that has gathered in her. In the mirror her own eyes stare back at her. Two black coals of desire.

She lowers her eyes, as if she were ashamed of her own beauty, and her aunt claps her hands and laughs. ‘Perhaps, I don’t need to teach you that much after all,’ she says.

From the big mahogany chest of drawers, Aunt Helena takes out her best cashmere shawl, the one on which there is a flower on a stem, its roots dangling in the air. Long tendrils, clean of soil, no longer hidden in the earth. Such is the taste of the true ladies, her aunt says. They like botanicals. Botanicals, the word itself sounds different, more worldly than mere plants or flowers.

Soft and silky to the touch, the shawl envelops her with misty warmth, a promise of a caress.

‘For a woman, nothing, my little Dou-Dou, works better than a bit of mystery.’

A length of gauze replaces the cashmere shawl. Her aunt drapes it over her hair, around her waist. There is something flowery about the girl in the mirror now. A promise of lightness and fragrance of petals.

Sophie laughs. She preens and coos, and kneels in front of the mirror. She bows her head in a sweet gesture of submission her eyes deny. For the girl in the mirror is no longer a girl; she is a young, beautiful woman. A woman who likes her own boldness. A woman who likes the brightness of her own eyes; the flash of her beautiful white teeth; the dimple in her cheeks, and the pink nipple peeking from underneath the white gauze.

‘I’ll teach you to dance,’ her aunt whispers into her ear. ‘The Oriental dance.’

Thomas

Right after his arrival in Berlin, Thomas took a brisk walk, past an old church with twin spires and a red roof. Rosenstrasse was a narrow street, lit only by the light coming through the windows. A night watchman with a horn under his belt gave him a quick, cautious look, his sabre catching the reflection of the light. The insides of the houses were hidden behind curtains, lace, muslin, silk screens that kept secrets well. Sometimes Thomas could get a glimpse of someone moving inside, like a figure in a shadow play or magic lantern.

In his letter Ignacy had mentioned the patient was a rich Polish countess who had just arrived from St Petersburg. Countess Potocka, once the most beautiful belle of Europe, in search of a healer. She is unable to travel to Paris, so Paris will have to come to her. After all, my friend, you too will profit from a change of place and a good dose of forgetting.

‘Please, the best of friends,’ Thomas muttered in response. ‘Don’t.’

In spite of his fur-lined cape and high boots, the leather soles squeaking as he walked, he could not warm up. The air was clammy. The whiff of the sewers made him cringe. As he almost stepped onto gobbets of horses’ dung, he heard a woman and a man quarrelling behind one of the impenetrable windows. The woman’s voice was whiny, drowning the man’s complaints in a barrage of reproaches. Then the doors of the house opened and the man stepped out. Tall, lanky, tattered leather jacket on his back. The door slammed. ‘Du blöde Hure,’ 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 around the promises of the future. She knows her mother has been making enquiries. Do any of the foreign diplomats in Istanbul show the first signs of boredom with their current mistresses? A Frank, rich and powerful, and refined. A man who would not slap her daughter around and then leave her without means to lead an honest life. The girl, she hears her mother’s whisper, is an unspoiled virgin, worthy of a king’s bed.

When she hears this, Sophie thinks of Diamandi’s hand on her breasts, his body crushing her to the ground, his hot tongue parting her teeth, its earthy, lingering taste. She thinks of his strong, smooth legs, the man’s hair on the boy’s chest. The sharp pain of his love, and the blood on her legs.

An innocent girl, her mother says, with a good heart who could be grateful, who would be so grateful for a nice home, a carriage, beautiful dresses that would show off her skin and her hair. Dresses that would add glitter to these beautiful black eyes in which some have already seen the moon and the stars.

Dou-Dou. A virgin. Unspoiled. Innocent. Naïve to the highest degree, and with a good heart.

Yes, Dou-Dou can be grateful and funny and good at pleasing. Skilful, too, in the art of massage. Her touch is light, her skin is warm and dry. The girl is no weakling, she can press what needs to be pressed, knead what needs to be kneaded.

A foreign diplomat, her mother whispers, would leave one day. But, as any honest man would do in such a situation, he would provide a dowry for his girl. Sweeten the nibbled goods for his successor, a merchant or a shopkeeper. Someone solid, honest. Someone who would want children and a beautiful wife with a handsome dowry, even if he had to close his eyes and take a jewel from the second floor.

Why is Mana hiding all these schemes from me, Sophie thinks. Why the charades, the pretence, the games. I’m no longer a child. I know no one will marry me without a dowry. In bed at night she lets her fingers run down her neck, over her breasts, down to her belly. There is a moment in which a touch turns into a caress. A sweet moment of pleasure. She likes the thought of a rich man of the world who would tell her what lies behind Istanbul and Bursa. A man who would teach her the dances of the Frank courts, tell her what the ladies do to hold their hair so high. A man who would teach her to speak French. She is quick with languages, has always been. Greek, Turkish and Armenian come to her naturally like breath. She has already picked quite a few French words from her aunt, and some Russian ones too: Bonjour mon cherie. Spassiba. Slichnotka.

Aunt Helena, a frequent guest at the Russian mission’s balls and soirees, has promised to keep her eyes open. She has always liked the Russians whom she calls ‘the fair race from the North’, and ‘the people who know the meaning of pleasure’. She has always liked their caviar from Astrakhan, their clear vodka that goes right to your veins. Liked their dances until dawn, as if there were no tomorrow, as if the world would end that very day. Glasses, she tells her niece, get smashed against the wall so that they could not hold another drink at an inferior time. There is one more thing that pleases Aunt Helena. The Russian victories over the Turks. ‘The black camel of death will soon kneel at his doors,’ she says, pointing in the direction of the Sultan’s palace.

Yes, a Russian diplomat would be best for Dou-Dou.

All talk, Mana says with bitterness. Liars are branded in this country for a reason. Her sister, may dear Lord forgive a widow’s bitterness, has always been fickle and not above jealousy. Just because she lives in the district of Phanar does not make her rich and powerful. And all these stories she comes with are nothing more than accounts of her own goodness. Fanciful accounts given to them like scraps from her own table. Maria Glavani knows such talk when she hears it. Didn’t she have a good teacher? Konstantin too never stopped weaving his schemes until the day of his death.

So Aunt Helena’s words are listened to but not believed. For there is always a little mishap in her stories, a small obstacle that would have to be waited through, ironed out, removed. The undersecretary who kept asking to see Dou-Dou before he would recommend her to his superiors was a known libertine and his request to meet Sophie had to be dismissed. We don’t want to cheapen her, Maria, her aunt has said. No touching if they are not buying.

The plague is what makes Sophie’s situation worse. The plague cools many a heart. In the presence of death, amour wilts and shrivels. Besides, even a foreign diplomat caught with a Greek woman would have to face the Ottoman justice. Not everyone wants to risk that much. Not even for such a beautiful pair of eyes.

In the Russian Mission, Monsieur Stachiev’s wife is so terrified of the plague that she has locked herself and her children in an upstairs bedroom and refuses to see or meet anyone. This, in itself, is not such a bad thing, for it leaves Monsieur Stachiev free to pursue his own merry interests. But it doesn’t help to have people talk that she has sent her surgeon away for wanting to bleed her. That she screams at the top of her voice. ‘We’ll all die here in this infidel country. We’ll all be punished.’ She has already cursed her husband. ‘Your sons will pay for your fornication,’ she said. ‘You will kneel at their coffins and then where will your whores be?’ She will call the Janissaries, if she but spots a Greek woman entering the mission building.

‘Dou-Dou, you are slowing me down,’ Mana says. They are coming back from the market, their baskets heavy with meat and fruit. As always, people stare at them as they pass. The men look at them with longing and often stop them, asking for directions or pretending they have mistaken them for someone else. Women’s eyes are curious, assessing their beauty as if it were a threat, a challenge.

‘Come on, girl, we don’t have all day.’

A black man who stops them is a eunuch. Not an ordinary eunuch either, but a eunuch from the Sultan’s court. His robes are woven with gold and silver and mazanne blue. The face under the burgundy fez is smooth, layers of fat testifying to the richness of his table. His voice is soft and warm. Having lived his life among women, he knows how to calm their fears.

‘Beautiful ladies,’ he says and smiles, flashing his teeth. As white as hers, Sophie thinks.

The Ottoman Princess, the Sultan’s daughter, has ordered him to stop them. He was summoned by his mistress, told to drop all he was doing, and go after them. Go after two Christian women who have caught the Princess’s eye.

Sophie’s eyes travel upwards, toward the palace windows. She cannot see anyone there. Perhaps it is the Sultan himself who has seen her. Perhaps, with one look of His eyes, her life has changed forever.

‘Follow me. We mustn’t make the Princess wait.’

‘Are you sure you are not taking us for someone else,’ Mana asks the eunuch, but the black man laughs. His mistress’s mind is an open book to him. They should not doubt their luck. The heavy baskets can be left with the servants who can take them to their home. ‘Just tell me where you live,’ he says.

‘We’ll take them on our way back,’ Mana says sharply. ‘Ourselves!’

Is there is a note of fear in Mana’s voice? Unease? Anger as she clasps her daughter’s hand in a firm grip as if she wanted them to turn away and run? But how can a Christian woman refuse an Ottoman princess? How can a Greek say no to a Turkish master?

Dou-Dou does not want to notice Mana’s fear. Her mind flutters with delicious visions of glittering jewels, gauzy dresses and garden paths bathing in sweet, dappled shade. She can feel the harsh impatience of her mother’s hand, the reluctance of her steps. She wants to laugh and assure her Mana there is nothing to worry about. She is ready. When her chance comes, she will know what to do.