The Four Winds of Heaven (44 page)

“I beg your pardon?”

“Add all the digits. They make up the number 13. And the year that is about to start will be 1913. A most unlucky circumstance. You shall have to celebrate your engagement on New Year's Eve, on the stroke of midnight. That way you can dispel ill omens, for you will be pledging your troth between two most unpromising years.”

Sonia cleared her throat. “But I am not the least superstitious,” she declared calmly.

Johanna placed her hands upon her hips, and cried, “You are ungrateful! I, in any event, shall take no part in this ill-fated celebration, unless you do it according to my plan! I, who have sacrificed my youth for you, will not even appear otherwise. Do you wish to insult me?”

“Sonia—” Mathilde interposed.

“Mama, you know how I feel about New Year's Eves! I have always spent them in quiet intimacy. My engagement is another matter altogether. That is one of the most important moments of my life! It is a public celebration! I do not want to mix the two events.”

“Then I shall return to France, where my family needs me. Here, my advice is repudiated by a mere girl—Mathilde, I am useless!” And Johanna burst into loud sobs, her thin shoulders shaking. Mathilde regarded her daughter, who stood erect and firm, and then her own eyes widened with sudden fear. Sonia sighed and turned away as Mathilde placed a gentle, hesitant hand upon her friend's arm, and murmured something inaudible. The Dutchwoman lifted her hands from her face, and encountered Sonia's cold, disdainful eyes. Her own, bloodshot, were full of hatred. She said, “Your mother, at least, is wise. You will be affianced between the years.”

Silently, Sonia squared her shoulders and stuck out her chin, and she stared with bitterness at her one-time governess. Then her face fell. “It is as Mama wants, of course,” she whispered. A flicker of a smile flashed across Johanna's tight features, and Sonia wheeled about and ran out of the room, feeling utterly defeated, dejected. Take me to Kiev! she thought pleadingly, speaking to the image of Kolya. She did not see her mother's distressed face, where fear mingled with anger and distaste and abject love.

The luncheon was cordial. David was feeling better and joined his daughter's future in-laws for a light repast, but Sonia noticed that although Johanna de Mey spoke with deference to Maxim Saxe, she as much as ignored his petite, round wife. Kolya was sitting at the table with Sonia, and the sheer excitement of his presence, with his marvelous black eyes and majestic deportment, was sufficient to send little prickles of delight up and down her spine.

The Saxes returned to their hotel, and reappeared for the evening's celebrations. After a light meal, the young couple was left alone for the first time ever. It was eleven o'clock, one hour before the moment of their official engagement. Kolya took hold of Sonia's hands, and pressed them in his larger, stronger ones. “Never in my life have I known such joy!” he said. “My love for you will never cease, my darling. It has grown from the instant of our encounter. I do not deserve you.”

Sonia raised her eyes to him, and the blood flowed into her cheeks. She murmured candidly, “I shall do anything to make you happy. I love you so!”

“Then,” he declared, “you must kiss me now. I have dreamed of this kiss, of this magic moment, since the evening when I was told that you had accepted my suit. Do you not wish to kiss me now, beloved, while we are alone?”

She hesitated thoughtfully. “I told my governess that I am not superstitious, Kolya,” she said. “But in one hour we shall be engaged. I have always wanted you to kiss me, that is true—but it would mean so much more if I were your declared fiancée… Can we not wait until the New Year?”

“Others will share that moment, which I wish to be a private one,” he countered gently.

Tears welled into her eyes. “Oh, Kolya, you think me silly, and old-fashioned… My cousin Tania kisses English fashion, in empty landaus and troikas that are parked outside ballrooms, when the coachmen have gathered together for a chat! I know that things have changed! It is not that. When I was much younger, my brother Ossip fell in love with a beautiful girl, and one day I saw them kiss. She was… wrong for him. He still suffers from the loss of her. I do not wish to cloud any part of our future. I do not wish to lose you, as Ossip lost Natasha! Can you understand?”

He reached out and touched her chin, and said, “You are a silly little doe, my Sonia. Whatever could come between us? We shall be married in 1913, and you will bear my children. I would like to tell those children that their mother and I shared a private festivity, before the public kiss. You are mine, and what I ask of you is hardly improper. Grant me my wish, Sonia.”

She shivered. But he lifted her small oval face, and he grasped it in both hands, and bent his head toward her. She closed her eyes, feeling queasy, and suddenly his lips were upon hers, his tongue had entered her mouth, and she abandoned herself to the delicious pleasure of this kiss, her very first. Her arms went round his neck, and she could hear buzzing in her ears, and pinpoints of red flashed from her closed eyelids. Then he drew away, and she laughed lightly, touching her hair in an embarrassed gesture. He laughed with her, seizing her hands. “It wasn't such a dreadful thing, was it, darling?” he teased her softly.

“It was wonderful. But it was not what I wanted. You are stronger than I, and have proved it. Are you always so willful, Kolya?”

A flicker of unexplained emotion passed like a film over his eyes. “I am not willful,” he declared. “It is my love for you that is so.”

Shortly before midnight, the Gunzburgs and Saxes passed into the dining room where a cold supper had been laid out. When midnight struck, champagne glasses clinked around the table and David stood up, magnificent in his dinner jacket with the decoration of State Councillor pinned to the lapel. “I toast the fiancés, my daughter Sonia and the man she has chosen, Kolya Saxe!” he stated. All through the room gay voices echoed: “To Sonia and Kolya! To Kolya and Sonia!” Kolya placed his glass before Sonia's lips, and she took a sip, while her family clapped. Then, gently, she reciprocated the gesture and made him drink from the glass. His eyes glittered over the rim, and she inhaled deeply. The bubbles tickled her chin and nose. But somewhere deep inside, she felt mournful. This was the New Year, and now people were toasting it along with her engagement to Kolya. She had not planned to share her celebration with anything else.

Now Kolya pulled out of his pocket the small box which held the ring. He had ordered it from Marshak, the most renowned jeweler in Kiev. In all the Russias, only Fabergé was held in higher repute than this jeweler. The ring was set in platinum, and was composed of an emerald and a diamond of the same size, placed side by side. Kolya placed it upon Sonia's slender finger, and the two families gathered around her to admire and kiss her. Johanna stood back, watching, and a vague glimmer of distaste shadowed her eyes. But she too approached the young woman and raised her fine eyebrows at the lovely gems. Sonia smiled and thanked her brother and parents and future mother- and father-in-law for their blessings, and thanked Johanna, too. She smiled and she smiled until lines of exhaustion began to form around her eyes. And then, under the magnificent chandelier, with its unique set of light bulbs, she fainted.

It was January 1, 1913.

O
n New Year's Day
the gentlemen of St. Petersburg went calling upon their acquaintances. Baron David and his son put on their jackets and their pinstriped pants, and filled their pockets with pieces of ten or twenty kopeks to tip all the Swiss doormen and the maîtres d'hôtel whom they would encounter that day. In the Gunzburg apartment Mathilde, Sonia, and Johanna, clad in their finery, awaited their own callers. And Kolya Saxe, unknown in the capital, tall, dark, and extremely elegant, stood by his fiance's side. Sonia, her gray eyes twinkling, took mischievous pleasure in introducing him to everyone as her husband-to-be. For no one had suspected an impending engagement in the Gunzburg family.

Svetlana Yakovlievna made a special present to the woman who was to become her son's wife. She had seen the love that shone in Sonia's face, a quality of enraptured passion that was close to idolatry. And Svetlana approved, for she herself considered her son greater than life. Ilya, her elder, was a normal man; but Kolya's character, so upright, strong, and commanding, made him in his mother's eyes worthy of unquestioned devotion. Consequently, she was pleased by Sonia's attitude, and took her aside. “My dear, I had this made for you,” she said, and handed the young woman a gold locket. When Sonia opened it, she saw, finely painted in enamel, her fiance's handsome face, laughing into her eyes. Touched, she pressed Svetlana's hand and kissed Kolya's portrait gratefully. Only a man's mother could truly release him to his beloved—and Svetlana had graciously made that gesture.

Kolya's parents had to return to Kiev on the third of January, although their son could remain two days longer. Accordingly, Sonia said to her mother, “Let us have an intimate supper for the Saxes and our immediate family tomorrow night. Even if Aunt Rosa is busy, we shall have made the gesture. You see, Kolya told me that he and Papa discussed where to hold the wedding, and it will go as you and I had anticipated, Mama. We are to be married closer to Grandmother Ida and Grandfather Yuri, who are too old to travel to Petersburg. They had thought perhaps in Belgium, to avoid the long residency requirements of France. The Saxes shall therefore not meet the Russian Gunzburgs unless we organize something now.”

“Madame Saxe is too provincial to introduce to your Uncle Sasha,” Johanna interposed.

“That is not so!” Sonia retorted at once. “And besides, she is Kolya's mother, and will be the grandmother of my children. I am not ashamed of her—so why should you be?”

“The Saxes are fine people, Johanna,” Mathilde said. “The family stands high in Kiev society, and is related by marriage to my sister-in-law, Clara. What do you have against Svetlana Yakovlievna? Has she offended you?”

Johanna de Mey clenched her fists and unclenched them, then ran her fingers through the blond strands of hair gathered into an elaborate coiffure on top of her head. She grew quickly red, then white. “Svetlana Yakovlievna! Have you no taste, Mathilde? I am shocked at you. The woman dresses badly. I am certain that if you listened carefully, you would even detect... an accent of sorts. All she needs is the scent of pickle brine to complete the picture. How could you humiliate yourself by introducing such a person to your most intimate relations? Rosa is a snob. She would mock you.”

“Juanita means that Svetlana Yakovlievna is too obviously a Jewess,” Sonia declared. Her eyes were like hard pebbles. Her mother turned to her, her lips parted in surprise. But Sonia continued, adamantly: “She is to be my mother-in-law. I, too, am Jewish, and I do not care how provincial she looks. My great-grandmother, Rosa Dynin Gunzburg, spoke only the Yiddish dialect, and ministers of France sat on her right. She wore a red wig, and yes, she made her own pickles, too, in the magnificent house where my mother was born, on the Barrière de l'Etoile in Paris! Svetlana Yakovlievna is in good company!”

“All Petersburg will laugh at you, after Rosa describes her,” Johanna said. Her aquamarine eyes flashed. “Maxim Saxe is a gentleman, and looks the part. But his wife is not presentable to a Baroness Gunzburg. However—I need not be present. I may as well take a long trip now, and visit my mother in France. There I shall be listened to.”

“Johanna!” Mathilde cried. “You would not do this, merely on account of a family dinner?”

“I could not bear to have you be the laughing stock of Petersburg, my dear,” the Dutchwoman declared. Her pupils contracted, and her eyelids narrowed. She turned her face and regarded Sonia pointedly.

“It really does not matter,” Mathilde sighed. She said to her daughter, “After you are married, when everyone knows our distinguished Kolya, your mother- and father-in-law will surely come for a visit to the capital. We shall entertain them properly at that time. Right now, your Papa is not well, and the excitement of such a celebration might be unwise. Kolya will understand. He knows of David's condition.”

“The only conditions I feel restricted by are those imposed upon us by Juanita,” Sonia declared. Her face was very red, and she was breathing rapidly, hoarsely. For a moment she remained where she had been standing, a diminutive figure of barely controlled anger; then she turned and exited, her skirts swishing noisily. Mathilde sank upon the sofa, and fanned herself with the back of her hand. But Johanna de Mey arched her back like a proud cat observing a dismembered canary.

When Mathilde gently explained to Svetlana and Maxim Saxe that it would be impossible to organize even a small family dinner in a single day, and that her husband, Baron David, had not been well, the Kiev couple nodded, and Svetlana Yakovlievna murmured, “But of course, Mathilde Yureyevna. Do not concern yourself on our account. We have met you, and David Goratsievitch, and Ossip. That was the point of our coming.” But Sonia saw the proud rearing of Kolya's dark head, the flash in his eyes. She felt the tension inside him as he came to his mother and took her hand, stroking it. It was evident to the young woman that all three Saxes knew that her mother had not told the truth, and that they were somewhat stunned by the slight. Sonia was more embarrassed than she had ever been, and for the first time in her entire life her great admiration for Mathilde was rattled. She quickly concentrated her fury upon Johanna, who was its cause. It was unbearable to blame Mama.