The Four Winds of Heaven (40 page)

I
n the fall of 1909
, David was introduced to a young Indian man of small stature and delicate fingers. His name was Naraian Kershaw, and he was the son of the deposed Maharaja of Baroda. He had come to St. Petersburg to arouse sympathy against the British colonialists, who had deposed his father. His slanting almond-shaped eyes glittered like rare Oriental gems, and Mathilde did not trust him. Nevertheless, David was intrigued by what Naraian Kershaw could offer him. The young man spoke an Indian tongue which the Baron had wished to learn for a long time. David proposed to Kershaw that he move into one of the apartments rented out by the Gunzburgs in the building where they lived, and in return David would come to him for lessons in the Marathi dialect.

In spite of her distaste for “the young serpent,” Mathilde was above all a woman of impeccable manners and form. As his hostess, she took Kershaw into society. He began to receive invitations from prominent people, and after supper he would launch into his plea for political support. St. Petersburg responded to his earnestness and his excellent breeding, and he was soon regarded as a rare bird to be displayed for effect. Ossip often spoke with him in Japanese, and Sonia, forever curious to learn, sometimes asked the young Indian prince to translate a word here and there for her into Chinese; she recorded his answers carefully into a notebook. And every day, Kershaw would hold telephone conversations in Japanese; no one paid them the slightest attention.

T
hat summer
, Alexei Lopukhin had gone to Paris, and had encountered his old opponent, the agent provocateur and double agent Azev. More than four years had passed since the events of the revolution, and the two men had walked through the Luxembourg Gardens companionably. Azev had said, “Now that these troubled times have gone by, and we have both become private citizens once again, will you not tell me what transpired on your side, and why you opposed me?” Lopukhin, smiling, had demurred: his orders had been secret. “But what does it matter, today?” Azev had insisted. Lopukhin had shrugged, and related his part in the matter. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, the Tzar's Secret Police, of which he was no longer the head, arrested him on the charge of high treason. Alexei Alexandrovitch was sent to the Pyotrpavlovsky Fortress, the most rigorous prison for political enemies, and at last Baron David understood that the kidnapping of the Lopukhin girl had been a form of blackmail—and that his friend had told Azev about his involvement only to prevent a second attempt to harm his family.

David was very frightened. What times were these, that an honest man had been coerced in the vilest, most inhuman manner into betraying his honor? He rushed to Lopukhin's apartment to seize his papers and burn them, to protect his friend. At this same time, Naraian Kershaw was making more and more frequent calls in Japanese on the Gunzburg telephone, but David was in no frame of mind to notice, or care. Lopukhin's trial was taking place, and his friend, who had helped to save Anna, was about to be condemned and sent with his family to Siberia as a political criminal. David's entire being, all his principles, bristled at this blatant injustice. But he was powerless to help Alexei Alexandrovitch.

Then, one day, Naraian Kershaw announced that he was leaving Russia to continue his trip. David gave him the address of friends in Vienna, which Kershaw planned to visit next, and courteously accompanied him to the train station. Shortly after the Prince's departure, Ossip stumbled upon Sonia's notation of Kershaw's Chinese interpretations. “What's this?” he cried. “Surely he fooled you! If this is Chinese, then I am King of England!” Nobody knew what to make of this oddity, and Sonia threw away the meaningless words.

A week elapsed. One evening, after supper, Stepan announced that a police official had arrived to confer with David. Bewildered, the Baron got up and received the man in his study. He was a policeman with whom David was not acquainted, and he spoke somewhat awkwardly. “Baron Gunzburg, I am afraid that I have orders to arrest you,” he announced. He coughed, to hide his confusion: Baron Gunzburg was a man with a reputation, and he was hardly accustomed to arresting notables.

“What does this mean?” David exclaimed, rising with alarm. The Lopukhin matter rushed into his mind and nearly blinded him: had someone discovered that he had burned his friend's papers? But the police official said; “I must arrest you for harboring a Japanese spy in your home. Naraian Kershaw.”

“Japanese spy? But the man is an Indian prince! And besides, I registered him at once as my guest with the authorities. Look to the records, my dear man.”

“We have had many problems since the war with Japan,” the policeman explained. “Spies have entered our country on a steady basis. Many of them have been Indians; the Japanese wish to come steadily west, and these spies are, in a sense, attempting to pry open a gate for them into our country. You are an honorable man, Baron; had you no suspicions?”

“I am hardly the sort who meddles in the affairs of his guests. But, look here: does the Chief of Police know you are here? He would not, I am certain, permit you to arrest me.”

The other considered. Baron David was a wealthy Jew, and men such as he paid well for their freedom. He said cautiously, “Let me call the Chief on your line, if you please. I shall discuss it with him.”

When the two men emerged from the study an hour later, David was white-faced and his hair lay matted upon his temples. The policeman was smiling broadly and bowing. Stepan let him out as David returned to the drawing room. Mathilde stood up, her lips parted in concern. “It's all right,” he reassured her quietly. “I have paid him well. And his superiors, too. But I shall not be able to sleep for many nights after this. Perhaps I shall never be able to sleep again.” When a little cry escaped her, he shook his head. “No,” he stated, “we are not going to leave the country. We have done no wrong.”

B
efore the New Year
, Baron Horace passed away at the age of seventy-six. He had caught a chill, which had developed into pneumonia and later pleurisy. David began to notice that his father was seriously ill toward Hanukkah: the old Baron was red with fever, and did not allow his grandchildren to enter his bedroom to visit him. He lay upon his pillows, pathetically attempting to gulp air which his tired lungs could not absorb. When David sat next to him, he shook his head, and even that effort seemed too much for him. David kissed him and left the room precipitously. In the landau he wept soundlessly. If Mathilde was the muse of his life, his father was the strength and the example.

In the days that followed, David and his brother, Sasha, spent nearly every hour at the dying man's bedside. But it was only when finally he lost consciousness that the rest of the family was allowed in. Sonia, Gino, and Ossip sat together on the small sofa, their faces drawn, each with his own precious memories. Ossip had not shared the ideals of Horace's life, his religious beliefs; but he had found his grandfather a great man, and as such, unique. Gino and Sonia had truly loved him, and had always tried to please him, so that some of his sternness might dissipate in momentary joy. Tania came too, although she had not really loved Horace. He had been the only man to escape her charms. But the occasion was momentous, and she shared it with her cousins. This was the first death that would have a profound effect on all their lives.

Mathilde grieved for her husband. Her Uncle Horace had represented so many conflicting emotions for her. He had “bought” her from Yuri, and she had resented him at first. Later, she had accepted the deed as less humiliating and more an unspoken compliment. After all, most women came endowed to the marriage dais: her father-in-law had instead reversed the situation, and he had been too much the gentleman to ever make her feel the oddness of what had taken place. She knew what to expect from her Uncle Horace. Perhaps she too, like Ossip, had never entered into his world of piety, but at least she had grasped the real man. He had been decent, and good, unlike her own father, Yuri. She knew, most of all, what Horace meant to David. As she watched the old man die, as she heard his final death rattle slow down to silence, compassion flowed through her toward David, compassion so strong that it was almost like love. And the only one who noticed it was Johanna de Mey.

During the long vigil nobody spoke, nobody looked into any of the other faces in the room. Sasha and Rosa, Tania, Mathilde, her three children, David—each sat quietly, waiting. At five in the morning the erratic breathing stopped. Then Mathilde quickly ushered her children from the room, and Rosa led Tania away too. Only the sons remained.

The cemetery was eight miles from Vassilievsky Island, out of the city, which had to be crossed to reach it. David had built there the small gray synagogue where the last rites could be administered.

It was the end of December. The road was paved with ice, and the wind howled dismally on the day of the funeral. But Baron Horace had been the most respected
shtadlan
in St. Petersburg, perhaps even in all of Russia. The procession was therefore very long. Carriages bearing innumerable friends and fellow statesmen lined up behind the coffin. Sonia, Ossip, Gino, and Tania decided to join the younger people on foot, in order to pay in full their final respects toward their grandfather. Mathilde had never been able to walk long distances, and she and Rosa rode together. The two sons of the old Baron headed the procession, and walked the entire eight miles; David's own sons accompanied them. But the two young girls, exhausted and emotionally drained, had to stop their mothers' car at the confines of the city, to be driven the last few miles. They had made a valiant effort.

Sonia's memory of the burial was unclear. She knew that they carried the coffin to the small gray synagogue, and that the Rabbi said a prayer. Then they brought her grandfather's remains to the relatively empty third section of the cemetery. Horace had asked to be placed in the third section, among the petty artisans and small businessmen, hoping to show his peers that there was no dishonor in sharing the space of death with poorer men than he.

The Neva flowed close by, and here the swamps were worse than anywhere else in the city: when Baron Horace's coffin was lowered below the ground, Sonia heard the most undignified sound in the world.
Ploof,
said the water as it lapped around the cedar box. She put her gloved fist to her mouth and stifled a sob.

After David recited the Kaddish, Sonia took her brothers' arms to return to the carriage. But the mourners were not leaving the cemetery. One by one, old men and women in black shawls lined up in front of them, facing Baron David. Sonia and Ossip and Gino were pushed aside in the melee, but it was not a mob that was forming: rather a neat, organized procession toward their father. David appeared surprised when the first person kissed his hand, and he made a motion for him to stop—but then another came, and a third. The Jews of St. Petersburg were coming to pay homage to the new head of their community, their new leader. Soon Sonia and her brothers saw that their father was weeping freely. And they, too, wept.

Sonia and Ossip began their year of mourning for their grandfather in hard work, and even the bright, blond Tania did not dance at the start of 1910, when Petersburg was alive with joy. Mathilde slept in her husband's arms many times during the days that followed Horace's death. She mopped his fevered brow and stayed awake to soothe his anxieties, never guessing that behind the door Johanna de Mey was clenching her fist so hard that her sharp nails cut into the delicate flesh of her palms. Mathilde de Gunzburg believed in the Gunzburg family and knew that as others had sacrificed for its welfare, so too must she; this was David's time of need.

Ossip had resolved to accelerate his education at the Faculty of Far Eastern Studies, and was to obtain his degree in the spring of 1911. Gino, at the gymnasium, struggled to maintain a good average and, at fifteen, was one year ahead scholastically. His father, who knew that his second son did not possess the brilliance of the first, had started Gino one year before the usual age so that, if he needed to repeat a level, he would not feel humiliated. Ossip had been physically disabled, and had never felt awkward about his age; but Gino had no excuses for failure. His father was proud that his precautions had been taken in vain, and that Gino was a solid student, if not a distinguished one. He was to take his baccalaureate examinations in the spring of 1912, and that, David knew, would represent a considerably more difficult hurdle to surmount.

Baron David was a scholar of repute, and his particular field of interest was the languages of the Middle East. He was so well respected that when University professors happened across students of special merit in the Arabic and Semitic tongues, they would send them to the Baron. In 1909, David found that his small study could no longer hold these eager young people, for now there were more than fifteen of them, so with two associates he formed a School of Mid-Eastern Languages, for which he rented an apartment near their house on Vassilievsky Island. Sonia, when not at work on the piano, was most frequently found at the back of her father's classroom, notebook in hand. She was one of a few young women among the men, and was the only one who had not passed her baccalaureate examinations or been a member of the University. The year 1910 was a year of introspection for her; she ruminated about Volodia, and about her father. She did not appear to miss society gatherings, although Nina visited her frequently, as before.

With the death of Horace, the patriarch, David became head of the Jewish community of Petersburg, and Sasha of the Maison Gunzburg. Ossip, at twenty-three, was still working for his uncle, and was being groomed for a more important position after the granting of his University degree. He was neither pleased nor unhappy about this turn of events; even his passion for the Far East had diminished, and he received his uncle's praise with due courtesy and gratitude, but no enthusiasm. It did not escape him that his uncle encouraged Tania's flirtations, nor that his sister found ways of placing him near her friend, Nina Tobias. He was amused by these maneuvers, but not inspired to act beyond the blandest of courtships.

But with the New Year, the period of mourning came to an end, and the Gunzburgs learned that their French cousin Jean was arriving to spend the social season in St. Petersburg. Tania ran into her aunt's sitting room, her blue eyes sparkling, and declared, “Jean is going to inject some life into this dull city! Don't you remember him, Sonia? From our visit to Uncle Misha in Kiev?”

“Yes,” Sonia replied. “The handsome young man who had been unable to find a military exemption among the family papers in Paris! Why didn't he ever return to serve his tour of duty?”

“He was extremely lucky,” Mathilde explained. “My father was able to locate one last exemption. Papa is not always careful in business affairs, and had failed to check one of his safes. Jean, therefore, did not have to come here to serve. And I understand his reluctance—he is a Frenchman, by everything but passport!”

“Yes, he is a Parisian—and I do so love foreigners!” Tania cried.

Her Uncle David ignored her. “Jean was all the more lucky, for by 1905 new restrictions had been imposed, regulations that did not exist when I was in the Uhlans at Lomzha. I was, as the British say, an officer and a gentleman. So was your father, Tania. But Jean, because he is a Jew and would have served after the new ruling, could not have received a commission. Gino, as a second son, will have to be a simple soldier.”

Mathilde shivered. “He is still a child,” she said stiffly.

“And children are uninteresting,” Tania added, nodding conspiratorially at her aunt. “Let us talk of how we shall entertain Jean. Was he not to have visited us once before?”

“The pogrom curtailed his trip,” Mathilde said quietly, looking at Sonia as Tania blushed and bit her lip. “Now he is making up for lost time. At twenty-six he will fit right into your group of young people, although he is our first cousin—mine, and your father's, and your Uncle Sasha's. He is only three years older than Ossip.” Mathilde smiled at her daughter, hoping to see a spark of excitement light up her features. But Sonia's expression did not change.

“Sonia is far too serious for a man like Jean,” Tania interposed. “He was my pet in Kiev. I wonder if he remembers me at all?”

“My love, you would clout the man that might forget you,” Ossip stated. His cousin threw an embroidered cushion at him, and he deftly avoided it by moving his head out of the way, and the cushion landed only inches away from the tea tray. Mathilde regarded her niece severely, and Tania looked away, playing with a ruby ring upon one of her slender fingers. “Poor Jean…” Ossip moaned.

J
ean de Gunzburg
, tall, elegant, his black hair waving and his blue eyes alert, was to divide his stay in the Russian capital between the homes of his two cousins, David and Sasha. He was warmly welcomed by Mathilde, but when he saw Sonia, his face became gentle with remembrance. “Jean,” she said, and held out her hands to him. He thought: She has become as lovely as a porcelain figurine, delicate and fine—but who has robbed her of her gaiety? He kissed her, as one would kiss a favored young sister. When he saw Ossip, who matched him in sartorial good taste, he could not help feeling the same letdown. Here was a young man, laughing, telling amusing stories, complimenting the ladies, yet without excitement, without life. What had taken the joy from these two beautiful young people?

Although the first part of his stay was to be with David and Mathilde, Rosa de Gunzburg gave a splendid dinner in his honor shortly after his arrival. He entered with his cousins, and there, on the threshold, stood Tatiana, her hair a mass of golden ringlets, her throat aglow with rubies, her gown crimson to match. He sucked in his breath.

“Well?” she cried, and pirouetted for him. “Have I changed?”

“You are a woman now,” Jean declared. He could not remove his eyes from her lush figure.

During dinner they sat side by side, and she spoke to him in small gulps, gazing at him over the rim of her champagne glass through half-closed eyes. He thought: She is spoiled and a damned nuisance. But he could not take his eyes from her. His own body felt alive with desire. A nineteen-year-old brat, and he with Mademoiselle Singer and Madeleine Hirsch each awaiting marriage proposals in Paris… He did not need an entanglement such as this, for he knew women like Tania. His mother, Henriette de Gunzburg, had been one of them—splendid to behold, avaricious in the extreme, and with only financial interest at heart. She had arrived in Paris an orphan from Vienna without benefit of dowry. His father, Baron Solomon de Gunzburg, had married her, wild with love. But once she had acquired his name and fortune, Henriette had abandoned him for a string of lovers. Jean de Gunzburg did not like his mother, and he admitted to himself that he did not like Tania either. He had not even liked her as a child, in Kiev. Why then did he have this sudden uncontrollable urge to crush her against him here and now, before all the guests in attendance?