The Four Winds of Heaven (29 page)

Mute horror took possession of Anna. She recoiled from the other woman and clutched the towel rack in panic. “It can't be,” she whispered.

“You are not pleased?” the young woman asked, a look of surprise on her face. “You must tell your husband. Where is he? I can telephone him to pick you up here—or perhaps you were waiting for him…”

“No, no!” Anna cried wildly. She regarded the other woman, and noticed that she was extremely well dressed, but that below her breasts was a small, unconcealed bulge.

“It is not so frightening,” the woman said gently. “For me, the scare lies not in birth, but in miscarriage. I have already lost one baby. This would be my second, had I carried the first to term. Switzerland has the best physicians, Madame. Madame… ?”

“You do not understand,” Anna said. “It is not Madame. It is Mademoiselle. And there is no husband.”

The dark woman cocked her head and appraised Anna. She took in her green suit trimmed with sable, which Mathilde had insisted upon ordering for Anna before her departure, the elegant black boots, the fiery hair coiled in the strange macaroon to the right of her face. She noticed the emerald brooch, the matching earrings, and the youth of this strange woman whom she had never seen before and who had told her such shocking facts. “My dear,” she said, “these are not matters to discuss in public. Let us go to my hotel. We shall order our tea there, and we can rest, together. Both of us need to take care of ourselves.”

“But we are not acquainted,” Anna remarked in bewilderment.

“My name is Dalia Hadjani. I am from Teheran, in Persia. I am here in Switzerland to have my baby, for my country is not as advanced in these matters as the Swiss. Actually, my physician is in Lausanne, but I have not met him yet. My husband made all the arrangements when he learned that I was expecting. We had already lost one child—and we wished so much for a successful birth this time. But first I wanted to visit Zurich, and some of the other parts of the country, during the early months—that is why I am here right now.” As she spoke, her voice soothing and rhythmic, she was helping Anna to her feet, and gently guiding her out of the restroom and to the door of the tea room, where she hailed a passing coach.

In the luxurious hotel where Dalia Hadjani took her, Anna seemed oblivious to everything until she reached the woman's suite. All at once Anna burst into tears. “Oh, my God, my God!” she cried, sobs shaking her. Dalia ordered tea, and sat down beside her, taking one of her hands. Suddenly Anna turned to her, her cries abating. “Why are you helping me?” she asked abruptly.

“I have no friends here,” Dalia said simply. “When a woman is in this condition, she looks for a friend. Maybe I have found one who is also alone?”

Anna smiled for the first time. “Yes,” she admitted, “I am here alone. My name is Anna de Gunzburg, and my home is in St. Petersburg.
Was
in St. Petersburg. I shall never return there.”

The vehemence of her tone startled Dalia. “Because… of the father?” she questioned softly.

“Oh, no!” Anna cried. Tears welling anew in her eyes. “He is… was… a wonderful man. He is the only person who ever truly loved me, or understood me. He wanted to marry me. But I wouldn't tie him to me—you wouldn't see why, but I cannot explain. Things are too difficult to explain. He must never learn of…of this. Then he would find me, and force me to marry him—and—”

“If you love each other?”

“I would never bind him to me with his child. Our love was an act of freedom… But why am I telling you all this? How could you understand? You are a married woman.”

“Yes,” Dalia said, “I am married. I have a good life. And I love my husband. I do not have to understand, Anna. If you feel that you cannot return to him… then will you have the child?” She blushed and looked away. “You are evidently a person of means and distinction. There are... ways...”

Anna did not speak. She was thinking of Vanya, of his blond hair falling into his eyes, those brilliant green eyes that laughed, that danced, that wept. “I shall have the baby,” she whispered. “I do not care what anyone says. I shall have the baby, and love it, and rear it the way I wish I had been reared, in simplicity and joy, and freedom.”

“That is fine,” Dalia said. “But do not say you do not care about the world. For your child will have to bear the brunt of its whispers.”

There was a knock at the door, and Dalia rose to open it. A waiter wheeled in a cart with tea and cakes. He set it before the women, and Dalia waved him away. “That will do,” she told him. “We shall serve ourselves.” When he had left, she poured the hot liquid into fine china cups. Offering one to Anna, she asked, “Will you remain in Zurich? Are you known here?”

Anna was startled. “Yes, I know people here. I had planned to go to Darmstadt, to study painting. I was going to leave in a few days. Now... I don't know anymore. Suddenly I am two people—everything is happening so quickly!”

But Dalia's face had brightened. “You are a painter?” she cried. “How extraordinary! I am a dabbler, but that is my fondest hobby. In Teheran I belonged to a small class. We painted still lives, or garden scenes. Tell me, Anna, do they know you in Darmstadt?”

Anna shook her head. She felt too confused to comprehend what was happening around her. She felt dizzy again as though seeing things in slow motion. Dalia turned to her, a look of determination on her face. “We shall go together, my friend,” she stated. “You shall find a name—any name—that is not yours. Madame… Madame Kussova! A good Russian name, is it not? You shall be Madame Kussova, a widow, and we shall travel together to Darmstadt. I shall send my husband a telegram. He will be so happy that I have found a friend, and that I shall paint once more! And we will help each other. I am glad to have discovered you in that tea room, Anna de Gunzburg.”

Anna regarded the beige face, the heavy mass of black hair, and nodded in silence.

“Come now,” Dalia said, passing her a chocolate eclair, “we must celebrate our meeting by fortifying our constitutions! Eat, Anna de Gunzburg. Eat, Anna Kussova!”

Dazed, Anna picked up her fork and speared a bit of the eclair with it. All at once she was very hungry. She said, “I like you,” and her brown eyes caught the other's darker ones and held their gaze. The colors of the room had sharpened, and Anna thought: I am still alive! It was the first time the numbness had departed from her mind and body since her arrival in Switzerland. “Let me tell you about Herr Bader,” she began.

A
year before
, Ossip's physician had announced that as long as the family took frequent small trips to such resort areas as Imatra, in Finland, he would not have to interrupt his studies to leave St. Petersburg during the spring. This had always meant that the young man's work load upon his return was prodigious, and had he not been a brilliant student, he would never have succeeded in passing his exams. Now that he was completing his next to the last year at the gymnasium, Ossip was relieved to be allowed to proceed on schedule. But he had yet another reason not to wish to absent himself from the capital.

In March 1906, he could think of nothing but Natasha Tagantseva. He wandered about the apartment, singing, waltzing by himself, holding her dream form in his arms, and whispering into her invisible ear. At night he would compose poems to her, and sometimes, in reckless folly, he showed his poems to Volodia. His friend read them, smiling, and then with irony he said, “You did not think that our friendship alone was sufficiently dangerous?”

“Since my earliest childhood I have lived in fear of life itself, or rather, of losing it,” Ossip told him solemnly. “Would our fathers alone frighten me? For the first time in my existence I have someone for whom to risk my security. Is she not worth it? Tell me, does she ever think of me, Volodia?”

His friend sighed. “She thinks of you. You two have placed me in a damned awkward position. You speak to me of her, she speaks to me of you. But what good will that do except to cause you both unhappiness? I have no one dearer to me than the two of you. That is why I blame myself. I shall not give this poem to her, Ossip. It will only serve to feed useless fantasies.”

Angrily, Ossip cried, “And you are too self-assured to entertain fantasies?”

Volodia looked away. A searing pain tore his chest. He said, coldly, “I am less of a fool than you, or than Natasha. But that does not make me impervious to your feelings. All right. I shall give her the poem. But for the last time, Ossip.”

“Someday I shall repay you,” his friend said fervently. But Volodia turned his back to him.

“You cannot,” he stated grimly. But he took the ode and pocketed it.

Not long afterward, Mathilde received a small envelope, bearing an unusual crest, in the morning mail, and when she opened it, she could not speak. She merely passed the note, on the finest of vellums, to David. Johanna de Mey opened her mouth in bewilderment and exasperation that she had been passed over. David exclaimed: “That family baffles me more than ever! I am impressed by this gesture of the Countess. Surely her husband is unaware of it.”

“The Countess? Who?” Johanna cried.

“Countess Tagantseva. She writes to me that she wishes to come to tea on Thursday next, if it is convenient for me. It is a most gracious note,” Mathilde stated.

Ossip's face flushed quickly. “She is a gracious lady,” he commented.

“I am certain that this will be the first time Countess Tagantseva will ever pay a visit to a Jew,” David said.

“After all, my dear, the Prime Minister set the pace with Uncle Horace,” Mathilde commented softly. “Perhaps the Tagantsevs are learning to accept our humanity.” She looked with gentle irony on her older son, whose blue eyes matched hers. “Ossip is very human, and he has been to their palace.”

But David was annoyed. “That's beside the point, Mathilde! If the Countess learns to accept you, or even my son, in however small a measure, that has no bearing on the larger question. Her husband may accept one Jew, as a great exception—but is that progress?”

“You are picking lint from a clean carpet,” his wife replied.

It was Sonia who spoke up, her voice high and young, but firm: “Whatever passes between the Tagantsev children and us, or between Mama and the Countess, must not weaken your own position, Papa. Perhaps the Count does know of this proposed visit—and perhaps also he encourages it, to mollify you. You are the one man, besides Grandfather who has grown old, who can speak on behalf of the Jews. If you can be stilled, the Count's purpose will have been achieved that much faster.”

The family sat in stunned silence. Then Johanna de Mey, cords standing out in her long neck, rose in her chair and, leaning across the breakfast table, said shrilly, “You impudent chit of a girl! Go to your room at once!”

But her voice died in her throat. David also was standing, facing her, his jaw pushed forward, his eyes blazing, his fists clenched on the table. “Sonia will remain where she is,” he declared, and he saw his wife's lips part and the color leave her face. Johanna de Mey staggered, then fell back into her seat. But the Baron remained standing, regarding his family one by one until his eyes fell upon Sonia's, her fragile face childlike beneath the heavy pompadour, her chin quivering.

“This is the house of Gunzburg,” he said, “but only Sonia seems to have remembered that. Henceforth, no one shall forget it. Countess Tagantseva is welcome here, and I applaud her excellent breeding and her sense of justice in choosing to visit those who have made her son feel comfortable. We have had Christian friends before, and hope to have many more. But there will never be a bridging of the gap with the Tagantsevs until the Senator changes his position on the Jews of Russia. That is all.”

Ossip looked at his sister for a moment in silence. He had seen the quick flood of color upon her cheekbones when their father had spoken, saw her chin stop quivering. He met her cool gray eyes and murmured, so that no one could hear but her, “I thought you had come to like Volodia! Have you now turned against him for his father's sins?”

Sonia looked aside, fumbled with her napkin. “No,” she answered simply. Caught up in her sudden anguish, she did not notice Johanna's glance of interest in her direction. The governess no longer appeared cowed, and a glint of brightness shone in her aquamarine eyes. She bit into a piece of toast, and dabbed at her lips. Behind her napkin she was smiling.