Garden of Venus

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Your medical history is important.’

‘I was seventeen.’

‘Were there any complications?’

‘No, my children came easily to this world. They didn’t cause me trouble then.’

He asked if she remembered her childhood diseases, and she laughed. ‘In my childhood, Doctor, there were two kinds of diseases: those you survived and those you did not.’

‘How many of them did you survive?’

‘My mother told me of two times I was near death with fever. She prayed for me and the fever went away. I also had measles.’

He proceeded to ask her about her diet, her sleeping patterns, the ease of her bodily functions. She was frank and unembarrassed by his questions, a fact he noted with some pleasure for many female patients shied away from telling him about their bowel movements and gas. Many times it was their relatives who had to provide the information he needed for diagnosis. Countess Potocka said she ate very little, having lost her appetite quite some time ago. She was thirsty most of the time but couldn’t drink more than a few sips of water and found the simplest tasks tiring. The nurse was smoothing the folds of her patient’s dress, nodding as if to confirm her words.

‘When did you begin feeling the first symptoms?’

‘Five years ago,’ she said, ‘I was losing weight, but I didn’t think much of it. And blood.’

Blood stained her undergarments, but the Russian doctor maintained that this was normal for a woman of her age, clearly not a point of concern. It was as if her menses returned, she continued, and she felt a slight pain in her belly. At that time it was more of a thought rather than a feeling.

But this pain began bothering her. That mere thought, uneasiness, soon became a constant companion. She woke up aware of it, and it was with her until the time she fell asleep. This pain began interfering with her days, forcing her to come home earlier from a ball, a soirée, or even stay in bed for a day.

‘I’m so tired, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I cannot stand up without feeling faint.’

Thomas ascertained that the first haemorrhage had been almost five years before. The treatments did not work. The dismissed Russian doctor bled her for five consecutive days, told her she had too much heat in her and that she needed cold baths. She was advised to take a water cure in Carlsbad, which she did. The haemorrhaging did not stop.

Thomas turned away as the nurse helped the countess take off her heavy velvet dress.

‘I’m ready,’ she said and when he turned back she was wearing nothing but a light, batiste nightgown. He asked her to lie down on the bed.

All there was to know, the evidence of her life was here, written on her body. He could see stretchmarks from pregnancies, dry patches of skin on her thighs and breasts. In her youth she must have been agile; the muscles, even in their deterioration, still preserved a shadow of their strength.

Her breasts were still relatively full and smooth. Obviously she did not breastfeed her ten children. On her thin thighs there were scars. A series of cuts on one, three burnt patches on the other. Two scars on the inside of her knees clearly were smallpox inoculations—round hollow pockmarks, whiter than the skin around them. He could also see scars on her back, long, white traces of something sharp slashing the skin. She closed her eyes often as he was examining her and breathed with difficulty.

Her disfigured, chafed belly was hardened by the mass growing over her uterus. Fixed. That realization alone was the death sentence. If it were mobile, he might have attempted an operation, but he would never operate on a fixed tumour. He agreed with Le Dran that cancer had commenced locally and was later spread by the lymphatic vessels to the lymph nodes and then into the general circulation. That’s why when he performed mastectomies, Thomas made sure that he dissected the associated lymph nodes in the axilla.

He put no faith whatsoever in various remedies that promised to dissolve the tumour. He had also seen disastrous effects of caustic pastes. As far as research into cancer was concerned he hadn’t seen much of value. Bernard Peyrilhe extracted fluid from a breast cancer and then injected it into a dog. But all he achieved was that the animal howled so much that his housekeeper objected and the dog had to be drowned.

‘The pain,’ the countess whispered. ‘It’s keeping me awake at night.’

He placed the stethoscope to her chest. Her lungs, he could tell, were clear. The difficulty with breathing was a sign of the general weakness of the body. Her pulse was fast and weak.

‘The bleeding,’ the nurse interrupted, ‘has never stopped.’ The pad she removed quickly from between the countess’s legs was stained with dark blood. He asked to see it and noted that the discharge was caked, clotted thick.

The children who died in infancy, Thomas ascertained, had no abnormalities. The countess had had the mercury cure a few times, but he could see no other evidence of syphilis than her weakened heart. When he pressed a fingernail on her index finger, he could see a pulsating vein, a sign of dilated aorta. This, however, was not what was killing her.

‘The pain,’ the countess repeated.

It was this pain that had made the journey impossible to continue and had forced them to stop here, in this Berlin palace so kindly offered by an old family friend. This pain took up all her thoughts, made travelling impossible.

‘It’s in my bones, Doctor. It is in my womb. I cannot move without crying.’

Carefully he disassembled his stethoscope, and put it back inside its leather case. He wished Ignacy had not been ordered out of the room with the others, leaving him alone to pronounce his diagnosis. The nurse, no matter how capable, would not be of much help at the moment of truth. He expected a fainting spell, a fit of screaming. This was the time to talk of God, of afterlife, of grace and repentance. Of fate and resignation. Not his kind of talk.

‘Please, Doctor,’ the countess said. ‘I want to know.’

Ignacy would not agree with me, Thomas thought. What right do we have to take hope away, he would ask. Why cut off the flow of the vital force? Deprive the body of its only defence. But hope, as far as Thomas was concerned, was a fickle notion. He had come to value facts over feelings and so far, he had had little reason to doubt the wisdom of such an approach.

‘I cannot offer you any hope, Madame la Comtesse,’ he said, finally, defying Ignacy’s voice in his head. ‘The tumour emerges out of the womb. It feeds on your body. It is fixed. I cannot operate.’

She was silent. Her eyes followed the movement of his lips. The nurse, he had noticed, grasped the countess’s hand in hers. Two hands, one strong and smooth, the other like a claw of some starving bird.

‘Cancer is like an invasion,’ he went on. ‘Your body has fought bravely, but the battle has been lost.’ Encouraged by her calmness he told her that before death came she could expect a few better days. She would have more energy, not enough to walk, but clearly enough to take an account of her life and prepare herself for the end. He did not avoid her eyes as he said all this. Their beauty urged him on.

‘Thank you, Doctor Lafleur,’ she said when he put the rest of his instruments back into his leather coffer. ‘For telling me the truth.’

‘I’m truly sorry. All I can do is to try to diminish the pain.’

The countess closed her eyes.

‘I want to be alone now,’ she said.

Sophie

She is standing behind Mana, waiting for Monsieur Charles Boscamp, the internuncio of the Polish mission in Istanbul. The study in the mission building is a big, bright room with an enormous gilded desk in the centre. The portrait of the Polish King hangs above it. In it, the King is holding a map and is looking at an hourglass. As if he didn’t have time for all he wanted to do, for his face is sad and withdrawn. There are wrinkles of sorrow on his forehead. In his eyes she sees an uncertainty that makes her wonder what has he seen in his life to doubt like that.

Don’t touch anything, Carlo has warned her. It is for him that Mana reddens her lips with carmine, and makes them shiny with walnut leaves. It is hard to tell if he is a guard, a valet, or a butler in this house, for he is vague describing his duties; but sometimes he makes it sound as if the internuncio could not take a step without consulting him. For weeks Carlo has been a frequent visitor to their house, growing more and more alarmed by Sophie’s presence. The Sultana has been making inquiries, sending her spies to find out where her little ungrateful wisdom lived. No house in Istanbul would be safe for long.

‘Don’t show your face to anyone,’ Carlo has warned her every time, bringing his gifts of food and wine. Right from my master’s pantry, he always says, drawing their attention to the internuncio’s fine tastes. What he doesn’t see, he doesn’t miss, he also says. It is this master who will be Sophie’s salvation, her escape. Carlo has told him a story of a beautiful girl from Phanar who has to be saved from the ardour of a young, penniless pasha. It is Aunt Helena who lives in Phanar not them, but a little stretching of the truth never hurt anyone. A daughter of a friend of his, an honest Greek widow who wishes only for her daughter’s well-being. ‘A girl,’ he said, ‘worthy of a king’s bed.’

The internuncio is still not ready to see them, even if it is long past midday. The annual mission party to celebrate the King’s name day ended at dawn. Everyone had been there. The Russians, the French, the English. Diplomats and men of stature and importance. The whole house still smells of roasted meat and melted wax. Over a hundred candles, Carlo has said, all burnt to the very end.

Mana has placed a shawl over Sophie’s head. ‘We won’t let him see you right away,’ she whispers in her daughter’s ears. ‘Stand straight, but don’t look at him. Keep your eyes down.’

But Sophie cannot stop herself from looking. After the Harem, this is the most beautiful room she has ever seen. The walls are painted the blue of the sea and have its luminous shine. The glass in the window sparkles. On the shelves, there are rows of books bound in leather. Has the internuncio read them all? What sort of things are in them? Tales of other worlds, of ships sailing through seas and oceans? The maps on the desk are spread wide, their ends kept from rolling up by two white rocks, studded with white crystals.

She doesn’t even know the names of the lands drawn so beautifully on these maps. Her own ignorance angers her, for she can imagine another woman, a woman who can walk through such rooms with ease, who can talk about the books she has read and journeys she has taken.

‘Look down,’ Mana whispers, pinching her elbow.

The internuncio is not as she imagined him. She thought he would be big, with strong hands, ramrod straight. Instead he is small and sinewy with rouged, wrinkled cheeks. Like an apple stored for the winter. She doesn’t like his stained and crooked teeth either.

His name may be Charles Boscamp, but, even in her mind, she cannot bring herself to call him anything but the internuncio.

‘Better be right,’ the internuncio says to Carlo who towers over his master. There is no anger in this voice though. No tension. No, he is not quite as she imagined him, but his clothes are rich. A green velvet dressing-gown embroidered with gold, white stockings and silver clasps on his shoes. The powder from the wig has spilled over on his vest. His valet should be told to be more careful. She is trying to keep her eyes down, the way her mother told her to, but cannot stop watching him.

There is an air of importance around the internuncio, in the force of his steps, the upward curve of his spine. In the way he wrings his hands, which are the white perfumed hands of a noble. She can imagine him riding, his legs spurring a horse on to greater effort. She can imagine him touching her.