The Book of Shadows (30 page)

I took up my book from where it lay on the escritoire. It was heavy; I held it in both hands. Its cover was oxblood satin, vibrant, vital, a thing
alive
. And into the satin of the cover had been sewn a large, ornate H, a sister ornament to the S on Sebastiana's book; my initial was sewn in black and gold and red thread—ten shades of red, it seemed. Yes, it was needlework, fine needlework, yet it reminded me of those medieval manuscripts whose margins had been adorned, illuminated by monks painting with single-bristle brushes till the onset of blindness.

I opened my book for the first time that evening, as though to confirm what I already knew to be true. It was indeed empty. Nothing but an inscription in the upper inside corner of the front cover. That handwriting—tight, angled, and neat—had already become so familiar. It was Sebastiana, of course, who'd written:

“And if it hurt none, then let it be.” She'd signed it, simply, S.

I opened the black book, Sebastiana's. Its cover was faded to gray in places, and small silver triangles both reinforced and adorned its corners. A silver rod had been sewn onto its spine for strength. The pages showed their age: some were torn, others stained. They lacked the suppleness of my untried pages. But this was a book for the ages, of that there could be no doubt, hand-sewn in the old style, covered with care. And page after page was filled—left to right, top to bottom—with Sebastiana's orderly, exact script. Its inside cover bore that familiar S, complete with the toad sitting in the lower curve; it was colored with care. There too I found an inscription:

“
Tutto a te mi guida. Ciao, Soror Mystica
…”
Everything guides me to thee. Farewell, Mystic Sister
. It was signed,
Téotocchi,
and in the same hand dated, Venice, 19 May, 178—.

I opened by chance to an entry dated 6 August 181—, and I began to read.

I
N THE PARIS
of my day, there were suppers everywhere; nothing was embarrassing but your choice. These long years later, I struggle to convey a sense of the urbanity, the grace of ease, the affability of manner that made Paris such a charmed place. Women reigned then; it was the Revolution that dethroned them.

We would meet at nine, dine at half-past ten. The company was numerous and varied; no one thought of anything but amusement. Talk of politics was discouraged. We would chat easefully of music, art, literature. We would share anecdotes of the hour. And when the wine flowed we'd act charades—and, as many of our fellows came off the Paris stage, this was an absolute delight.

Need I report that certain rivalries were intense? There were arguments between the Gluckistes and Piccinnistes, which, like as not, would end in furious but funny bouts of wig-snatching! Another time some supposed friends of the writer Poinsinet, having gotten him quite drunk, convinced him that there was an opening at Court for an office called the King's Screen; as audition, they persuaded the poor man to stand before my fireplace till his calves were fairly roasted.

As for the suppers themselves, they were simple—some fowl, some fish, a dish of vegetables, and a salad. The first courses were but necessities, for without them dessert could not be served; and it was over dessert that the singing would begin. Nine was slow in coming; but then the hours passed fast as minutes, and midnight would arrive as a surprise.

I preferred to have a dozen at table, though there were many suppers that saw twice, sometimes thrice that number; often marshals of France sat on the floor for want of chairs. My only rule was to never dine at tables set for two or thirteen; the former was apt to be boring, and the latter begged bad luck.

My guests? There might be the Comte de P——, who lived near me in the rue Cl——and whose company I enjoyed. Or Madame M——, born of a famous father but charming in her own right. Most esteemed, most fun of all was the Comte de Vaudreuil (governor of the Citadel of Lille, Grand Falconer of France, et cetera), whose mistress was the Duchesse de Polignac, confidante to the Queen. Vaudreuil was equally esteemed as epicure and statesman, and he was rich beyond measure, owing to his family's acres of sugarcane on St. Domingue…. Such names! How they ring still in my ears!…Let me add: no name rang louder than my own; but it was a name I disdained.

Alors
, my name is…rather, my name is
not
Sebastiana d'Azur. That is the name I have taken. My birth name is a secret I will keep, and my married name I rejected long ago. In truth,
that
name would be easily discovered by one who wished to learn it, for I was famous in my field of portraiture. Of course, the name by which I was then known was my husband's name—a woman had little choice; a woman artist had no choice at all. A woman wishing to paint
had
to be allied to a man, preferably a dealer in pictures or a painter himself; and so it was I would attach fame to my husband's name. In time, of course, I'd drop the name, the man,
and
the fame.

I was orphaned at an early age. My father found his death at sword's end in some faraway place when I was four. My mother died before my eyes when I was eight. She was a witch, of course. Did she know it, did she practice the Craft? I don't know. And, as you know how witches die, or will learn soon enough, I spare myself the telling of
that
tale.

A neighbor raised me along with her own five boys. She was a good woman, though husbandless and poor. I left her house when her middle son tried to misuse me and, I am proud to tell it, lost an eye in the attempt. Not yet fourteen, I took to the streets of Paris.

Though I hardly thrived, I survived; and never once did I sell my womanhood, due not to some scruple, but rather because it was expected of me, and so repugnant to me.

It was during those early years, spent begging, stealing, going where the day took me, that I somehow discovered my talent: I could draw. I could draw
well
; and I did so, decorating the banquettes of Paris with chalk and chunks of coal. I determined to become rich and famous when I grew up; and I succeeded, beyond the scale of my most fanciful dreams.

Which brings me again to that man who will remain nameless. My husband.

He was much older than I. A minor portraitist whose canvases possessed
nothing
of their subjects. He and his first wife,
une chocolatière,
had moved to Paris from Brest. She died of consumption. It was shortly after her death that I met the man; soon—aided by an acquaintance who knew of our mutual needs—we'd struck a deal. I would be, in appearance, his youthful bride; as for “conjugal favors,” he would seek them elsewhere. In exchange for my public if not private company, and my limited housekeeping skills, I would gain access to the tools of his trade, to his studio, to private collections, to other artists' studios, and to the Salon exhibitions.

It was an arrangement that might have worked well. He, however, soon sought more than I'd agreed to give. Worse, he fell in love. I put him off, retiring to the studio he rarely used and painting all through the night while my husband slept; when he woke at dawn, I would head off to bed. Eventually, quietly, I began to paint portraits professionally, keeping my fees. This was illegal, of course. I was reported—need I tell you by whom?—and officers of the Chatelet seized the studio in which I'd been practicing unlicensed. It was then I left my husband. Within the year, not yet nineteen but at long last having achieved my license from the Academie of St. Luc, I left Paris, too, taking my husband's name but none of his money.

I traveled for some years and only returned to Paris in 178—. Summoned by the Queen of the French, I had no choice but to put my studio under seal and quit Russia. Hastening a life-sized portrait of Prince Galitzen and leaving undone several half-length studies, I set off for Paris. (I was famous by then, though not as famous as I'd be by that decade's end, in the years nearer the Revolution.) This royal commission—among the most coveted in all of Europe—I owed to the Countess Skavronsky, Potemkin's niece, who
suffered
her wealth as no one else I've known…. Ah, Skavronsky…

Catherine Vassilievna Engelhardt, the Countess Skavronsky, was famously indolent, passing her days recumbent on a chaise longue, wrapped in a black cloak and wearing no stays. With neither education nor talent, her conversation could bore a nun. Yet she had a ravishing face and a sweet if simple disposition, and these things in combination with less readily defined characteristics constituted her charm. I liked her. And she me.

Typically, I would arrive for a sitting to find the Countess prostrated on one divan or another, black-clad and barefoot. On the carpet beneath her lay one of a corps of serfs charged with the recitation of the Countess's favorite stories, to which she'd doze each day between the hours of two and six. During our sittings—which were uncommonly easy, as the Countess could sit still for hours, like no other model I've known—box upon box would arrive from the capitals of fashion. The Countess would offer these boxes to me, unopened. She was disinterested, in fashion as in all else. Having hired a seamstress both talented and discreet, I eventually appeared in society very much à la mode; and jeweled at the ears, throat, wrists, and fingers. Doubtless it was Potemkin who caused to flow this steady stream
de luxe
.

Prince Grigori Alexandrovitch Potemkin was said to be the richest man in all the Empire. He was uncle to Catherine as well as her four sisters, two of whom, Alexandrina and Barbara, had preceded her as his mistress. For reasons I neither know nor care to contemplate, the Prince preferred his third niece to her sisters. The Prince showered her daily with silks and satins, and jewels. She had a jewelry box the size of a child's coffin!

I am reminded of a particular day that I must and will recount, shame-faced as I am.

This day, which, for reasons that will soon become clear, I will never forget…this day I arrived early for our sitting (for I was always rushing to paint by the earliest light, though the Countess would not be woken before noon) and I witnessed, in a far corner of the salon, the scene of the serf's preparation.
Mon Dieu,
what a tableau it was! Behind a half-screen of taut muslin, which was of no effect against the noonday light, a young serf—raven-haired, pale, and lithe, no older than eighteen, perhaps twenty—stood shin-deep in a copper tub while two other lecteurs washed him. These three possessed a fraternal familiarity with one another's bodies. Clearly, the ritual was familiar to them all. Clearly, too, it was conducted at the Countess's insistence: wafting up from beneath her divan would come not only her favored tales but the scent of rosewater and lime powder. Finally, the serf stood robed, awaiting the Countess's sign; with a wave of her fleshy hand, he came and took his position beneath her; a second wave of her hand and his recitation would begin. But on the day in question the Countess sought no story; instead, uncharacteristically, she spoke.

Trailing her hand through that jewelry box—always within reach—she said, rather absently, “It is a shame, really, that I dislike such things. So hard, so bright.” She moved her hand through the jewels as one would through water. She held a diamond up to the light. She could not close her fist around this rock, which shot light to the four corners of the room! She added, addressing me, “…but I was heartened to hear you say the other day that
you
dislike them as well—and you so
fine
an artist.”

“I beg your indulgence, Countess, but I meant only to say that diamonds are rather difficult to paint.” (This is true; one tries to render their brilliance without success, achieving but a mass of white pigment.) “In fact,” I ventured on, “I am quite
fond
of diamonds.”

“Are you?” she asked, her voice uncommonly light.

“I am indeed.”

“Well, then…” and she handed the diamond down to the serf, gesturing over to the large canvas bag at my side in which I carried my brushes, half-opened tubes of pigment, spatulas, blades, and…The serf dropped the diamond into the bag: it was mine. The Countess proceeded to arrange herself just as she had for our previous sittings.

The serf, returned to his place, showed his amusement at my shock and surprise; and he showed much else. In crawling toward my bag, his robe had opened, and now he let it fall open farther. And there the two of them lay: the Countess teetering on the brink of sleep, the serf penetrating me with a stare so deep, so…Dare I tell all?

Within the quarter-hour it was the sighing of the serf I heard, broken only by the dissonance of Skavronsky's rattling snore. My subject asleep (as often she was), I finally felt my brush fall still; and I returned the boy's dark, unsettling, and oddly satisfying stare. Did I raise my skirt well above my ankle, did I unfasten the brooch that held tight a lace fichu over my bosom? Perhaps I did…. Time passed. We did not touch, of course; but with our eyes in a heated lock, that boy—and what life was that, for a boy of such beauty and grace?—from that boy's flattering tumescence there issued a stream of…of pearlescent compliment. Or at least I took it as such. No words were said, but there came then two complicit smiles, sighs, and finally laughter loud enough to rouse the Countess.

“I am ready,” announced she, her piled hair askew; she wiped backhandedly at a string of spittle that slid from her thickly painted lower lip.

“Ah,” said I, “but the day's work is done.” My brush was
atremble
in my hands. I stood no hope of harnessing discipline that day; indeed, what little I'd managed to add to the countess's portrait had to be scraped away that evening.

“So it is,” sighed the Countess, “so it is.” She excused the serf. (I asked his name, but she did not know it; indeed, stunned was she to consider that he might even
have
a name.) Soon, she descended again into sleep. And I took my leave, amused and newly rich.

(Eventually, upon my return to Paris, I took the diamond to three jewelers. Finally, a fourth dealt honestly with me and said these things: that the diamond belonged in a museum, not a jeweler's shop; that I was doubtless being trailed though the streets by agents of the first three jewelers; and lastly, should I ever find someone with resources enough to purchase the diamond, I might live out my days in an excess of luxury. As I was making money enough, and as no purchasers presented themselves, I kept the Countess's diamond. I have it still.)

…Ah, yes, such luck and fun I found in Russia!…And first love, too; or so it seems now.

When I met the Prince of Nassau (at a supper held at the home of the Countess Stroganoff) he was in full bloom. As a younger man, he'd proven himself in the Seven Years' War, and spent three years with Bougainville circumnavigating the globe. Wherever he went, detractors and admirers alike spoke of his storied encounter with the Tahitian Queen. It was reputed that she'd offered him a crown. (She had, and he'd declined.)…Tall and broad, he was, with black hair and the bluest of eyes. And what a repertoire of love he'd amassed the world over!

Knowing each other but a few weeks, the Prince and I set out one winter morning in a carriage-and-four, eventually debarking along the banks of the Neva, where, to my astonishment, there were gathered hundreds, nay
thousands
of pilgrims, come for the blessing of the river.

When the ice of the Neva is about to break, the archimandrite comes to its banks in the company of the Imperials to bestow a benediction. Holes are cut in the ice and the faithful draw up a share of what is now holy water. In a cruel custom, women dip their newborn children in the water; not infrequently one slips away beneath the ice, leaving the mother not to grieve but to give thanks for the angel that has ascended.