The Confusion

The Elector of Saxony, who really was a great penis of a man, all purple-red, and laced about with throbbing veins, and crowned with a tremendous curling black wig, sat up just a bit straighter. One eye, then the other, strayed in the direction of the Countess von Roohlitz. She was everything that Eliza could have anticipated from Eleanor’s narration. Stuffed into a bag and smuggled a thousand miles to the southeast, she’d have sold, in a Constantinople slave-mart, for a whole stable of Arab race-horses. To ask her to make conversation, however, was a little bit like expecting a dog to cook his meat before eating it. Eliza had talked herself hoarse rather than shut up and listen to what these two would attempt to say to her. And like groundlings in a theatre, they were more than content simply to watch with open eyes, and, most of the time, open mouths.

“You don’t say,” said the Elector, after a while. “How do they… do it?”

Eliza let a beat or two pass in silence before letting go with a titter. She was not a great titterer by and large. This was a titter she had borrowed from a certain Duchess she had sat next to once at Versailles. She did not duplicate it very precisely, but here in the dower-house of Pretzsch it would serve. “Oh, monsieur,” she went on, “your double entendre almost got by me.”

“I beg your pardon-?”

“At first I supposed you meant, ‘How did they institute the practice of polygamy?’ but of course now I perceive you were really asking, ‘How does the Sultan make love to two women, or more, at the same time?’ I should be pleased to let you in on the secret, but I fear some of a more prudish disposition might object.” And she kicked Eleanor in the shin under the table, and jerked her head toward the room’s exit: which Eleanor had been pining for, as a prisoner regards a high window in the wall of his cell.

“I am exhausted,” Eleanor announced.

“You look it,” said the Countess, “or perhaps that is just age.”

“Exhaustion or age-who can guess? I shall let it remain my little secret,” Eleanor said equably. “I am sorry to leave the party so early, and when it appears that the conversation is about to take such a fascinating turn-”

“Or,” said Eliza, catching the eye of Johann Georg, “to turn into something else.”

“Pray, don’t get up!” Eleanor said to her husband, who had shown not the slightest intention of doing so. “I’ll to my bed, and shall see you all, I suppose, whenever you crawl out of yours. I do apologize once more for the miserable state of the accommodations.” This last was aimed at her husband, who did not penetrate its meaning.

“Right,” said Eliza, once the staircase, and the floorboards overhead, had let off creaking under the movements of Eleanor. She was in the salon now with the Elector of Saxony and his mistress, and she had their undivided attention. She brushed a bit of damp plaster out of her hair. “Where were we? Oh yes, the Chariot.”

“Chariot?”

“I’m sorry, it is the name given to the technique that-in those countries that are enlightened enough to sanction the ancient Biblical practice of polygamy-is used by a Sultan when he is at a numerical disadvantage to his wives. I could try to describe it. A picture would be ever so much more effective, but I can’t draw to save my life. Perhaps I should demonstrate it. Why, yes! That would be best. Would you be a dear, my good Elector, and flip yonder table upside down? I’ll fetch an ottoman from the other room-”

“A what!?” barked Johann Georg, and his hand shifted to the hilt of his sword.

“As in a piece of furniture. We’ll want something in lieu of reins-my dear Countess, if you’d care to unwind that silk sash from about your waist, ’twould serve.”

“But the sash is holding up my-”

“-?”

“-ah, j’ai compris, madame.”

“I knew you would, Fraulein.”

“I HAD TO FUCK SOMEONE,” Eliza mumbled through the hem of her blanket. “I suppose you’ll think me a whore. But my son-I refer to the legitimate one-Lucien-died. Adelaide is a gem, but she was foolhardy enough to have been born female. My husband requires a legitimate boy.”

“But-with him!?”

“You said yourself that his imbecility was not congenital.”

“But how will you explain the timing of it!?”

“There is nothing that can’t be explained away, if Etienne is willing to play along, and not ask difficult questions. And I think he is willing. None of it matters, probably.”

“What do you mean by that?”

By way of an answer, Eliza-who was lying flat on her back in bed with a blanket over most of her face-thrust out a hand.

Eleanor screamed.

“Be quiet! They’ll hear you,” said Eliza.

“They-they have already left,” said Eleanor from the uttermost corner of the room, whence she’d fled, quick as a sparrow.

“Oh. Then go ahead and scream all you like.”

“When did the bumps appear?”