The Four Winds of Heaven (52 page)

After a fortnight, they were able to obtain their traveling papers, and they took a train to Calais, a boat to Dover, and another train to London, which lay shrouded in folds of bleak fog. But because of wartime emergencies, the consulates there too had become tangled in webs of paperwork, and the necessary visas and passports were not ready. Mathilde remained in their hotel, holding her fingers out toward the overworked radiator for warmth, while her daughter stood in line once more, her bones chilled to the marrow.

Ten days later, consumed with impatience, worries concerning Gino, and sensations of infuriating impotence, the three women, papers in hand, took yet another train to Hull, a British port on the North Sea. It had been decided that they would travel to Bergen, in Norway, on the only available passenger ship, a small Norwegian cruiser that could hold some forty people comfortably. When they arrived in Hull, it was evening. The
Haakon VII
stood before them on the pier, high upon the waves, so high, in fact, that Sonia was troubled at the sight of it. But she looked about her and shivered, dismayed. At least sixty people, indistinct in the mist and the oncoming night, were waiting to board the
Haakon VII.
“Come on, Mama,” she urged gently, and pushed her mother before her onto the deck. Johanna de Mey, her back erect and dignified, her features tightly drawn, climbed on behind Sonia.

The ship began to crowd, and soon Mathilde, Sonia, and Johanna were pushed against a rail, from which they could see the sea. The vessel pulled up its anchors, and took off, dancing like a nutshell over the waters. Sonia was an excellent sailor who had traveled by boat many times, and never felt too ill to take an interest in the sailing process. Now she winced. But she said nothing as she gazed at the swirling gray waters that threatened to upset the hull of the ship itself.

Before the hour was out they were caught in a tremendous storm, and passengers gathered in small groups that could hardly be perceived in the blackness. Many fell prey to seasickness. Mathilde retched, as Sonia held her by the waist and helped her to lean over the railing. Next to them, a girl with a Swiss accent kept repeating in French, “This is exactly like home! Exactly like it! Why do they have foreign countries if everything remains the same everywhere?” Sonia smiled grimly, clenching her teeth as the deck swayed back and forth and her feet slipped. Like everyone else, she was entirely drenched by the spray.

A surge of unquenchable frustration had taken hold of her, and the more the ship wavered, the less she could quiet her need to do something. “Please take care of Mama,” she asked Johanna. “I am going to find someone, if I can.” She did not explain, for she hardly knew what she would do in the raging storm, on this tossing deck. But she needed to move.

This was hardly easy. The young woman, holding on to her hat with one hand, and to her muff with the other, slid between groups of shrieking people whom she could barely make out, nearly falling on the slippery planks. And then, in the distance, toward the prow, she discerned a white figure moving about, and went toward it, hoping. She saw, as she grew closer, that the figure was indeed one of the ship's officers, giving orders to some sailors. A sudden gust of salt spray threw her against him, and she gasped with shock. “I beg your pardon!” the man cried in English. “You must look for something to hold onto, Madam.”

“I wanted to speak with you,” she stated evenly. She saw his look of polite annoyance, but nevertheless he took her arm and led her to the nearest railing. “I'm sorry to trouble you,” she said humbly. “But—doesn't the ship carry any cargo in its hold? We seem to be buffeted about as if we were inside a floating eggshell!”

An expression of alarm, for one small moment, appeared upon his face, and she began to tremble. “Madam,” he said, “leave the sailing to our captain. This is no time for chitchat. We are not rowing for Oxford, or taking a pleasure cruise to the Americas. Don't you have any friends on board?”

She jerked her arm from his patronizing hold and faced him, her gray eyes alive with anger. “I have asked you a simple question. You have evaded an answer. Why?” she asked.

“You are taking up my time,” he said gently, turning aside.

But she grabbed his sleeve. “All right,” she said tersely, looking around her at the little groups of people crowding the deck. “I shall yell, at the top of my voice, that there is something wrong with the ship! Or,” she continued matter-of-factly, “we can speak together as two adults, for five minutes, after which you will no longer be troubled by my presence.”

Reluctantly, he turned to her. “God and the captain forgive me,” he said in a low voice, in clipped tones. “But even before we pulled into Hull, we spotted an enemy submarine following us. The captain refused to accept any freight, and drastically reduced the ballast, so that we would float high and free above our shadow. In this storm, he could not plot a zigzagging course, so we have proceeded north, to the far north of Norway, in order to throw off our pursuer. There will be no submarines on the lookout there, and then we can make our way back to Bergen, and let the passengers off. Now I beg of you—”

“But,” Sonia interrupted indignantly, “how could you have accepted passengers, and endangered all our lives by sailing at all, if you knew you had already been trailed to Hull?”

He sighed. “It was not an easy decision, Madam. But during the war, nations prevail over mere human beings. There is an important diplomatic courier on board. He needed to leave today, and we were his only means.”

“Well.” Sonia stood numbly in front of him, overwhelmed. She had requested information, but had not expected anything such as this. Now she only nodded. “You have been most kind and courteous,” she stated. “I was a nuisance. Forgive me. And God be with you—and with us all!”

She left him by the railing, and made her way back to her mother. How she found her footing, how she wound through the clusters of people in the slippery darkness, she never knew. She did not have time to ponder over the officer's words. It was only when she found herself holding Mathilde by the shoulders that a wave of pure fear, as well as relief that she was no longer lost among strangers, exploded within her. She held her mother and thought: Dear Lord, if I so much as breathe wrong, she will know that there is danger… And she started to talk, loudly, incoherently, her phrases jumbling together. Mathilde nodded, nodded again, reassured not by the words, which she could hardly make out, but by the sound of her daughter's strong voice.

Thirty-six hours later scores of bedraggled passengers disembarked from the
Haakon VII.
Once safely ashore, Sonia considered, then rejected, the notion of telling the others about their near-confrontation with the submarine. The Gunzburgs and Johanna then took the train to Oslo, which had been named Christiana when they had been there last, then proceeded far north to the border of Finland, at Hammerfest. At the border they changed to a Russian train, for Finland was part of the Russian Empire, but to reach it they had to travel a mile on foot, between the two customs stations. The snow lay deep, and Sonia could feel her toes tingling with the slush and ice that penetrated through her leather boots. Thankfully, the luggage was being driven from one train to another on sleighs. The three women, Sonia and Johanna sandwiching Mathilde in her sealskin coat, crossed a long bridge, and at length passed through the Russian customs booths. They were on home soil!

The next day they arrived in Petrograd, where David and Ossip and Vova, the coachman, were waiting for them with the landau. David! How pale he looks, Mathilde thought with a surge of emotion as she allowed her husband to clasp her tenderly to him. And he was thinking: How gray she has become in two years! Sonia was rocking back and forth in Ossip's arms, crying and laughing with exhaustion and joy. Only Johanna remained apart, seemingly forgotten in this reunion. “You will be cold if you don't climb in, Johanna Ivanovna,” Vova chided her with deference. He and the other servants had always feared her.

There was no blackout, no soldiers on leave in the streets, and because of the immensity of the population, and of the dispensation of the precious white exemption papers, there were still young men around, doffing their hats at ladies. It was almost as if there were no war at all, it was so far away. A welcome numbness spread over Mathilde and Sonia in the landau. But it did not last long. “How is Gino?” they demanded, almost simultaneously.

“He will be here soon,” David smiled. “He has a leave coming up, and he saved it till after your return. How is Aunt Ida? And my Annushka?”

As soon as they had unpacked their most essential bags, Sonia left her mother, father, and brother talking animatedly in the sitting room, in front of a roaring fire, with hot tea and cakes. She went into her room, closed the door, unpinned her hair, and let it fall loosely about her frail sloping shoulders. She sat at her secretary and dipped her favorite quill into the inkwell. Her notepaper, a muted gray, lay before her. She pressed her left hand over her aching forehead, then resolutely began to write. She had forty messages to compose for forty Russians scattered all over the nation, and she knew that she must do this now, before she rested and forgot.

Many hours later, she opened her door, and found to her surprise that it was twilight. She tiptoed into the drawing room but it was empty. She halted before her father's study, and heard him cough. She smiled. Her hand was raised to knock, but she reconsidered, and resolved to allow him uninterrupted work. As she was about to walk away she heard a joyful laugh from inside, and a smile spread over her features: Mama was in there, with him. She turned to leave.

In the corridor she passed her mother's boudoir, and saw the flicker of a handheld candle from the room within. The door had been left ajar, and Sonia saw a form huddled upon the bed. She bit her lower lip, uneasily. Soft moaning reached her ears. She ground one fist into the other, and clenched her teeth. Resolutely, she headed back toward her bedroom.

Sonia lay upon her pillows, and an absurd thought entered her mind. What would her father say if he learned that he had a grandson? She wept softly, then stood and dried her eyes. She went to her secretary, which she opened to find the small painting by Mikhail Botkin, and she took it in her hands. Silent tears flowed down her thin cheeks. Volodia… She thought of Ossip kissing Natasha, of his hurling himself from the rowboat into the lake, of Volodia holding her in the hallway of the Senate, where his father was arguing against hers. Then she reached farther back into the secretary and brought out a gold locket, which she opened. A young man, painted in enamels, laughed back at her with brilliant eyes. His hair was black and waved elegantly. Kolya…

Perhaps Riri is the only grandchild that Papa will ever have, she thought. A piercing doubt filled her chest: Maybe he would, after all, have preferred the fruit of his enemy's own children, rather than this barrenness.

She fell asleep, her mind tortured by recriminations, by wavering faith and loneliness. The homecoming had not been sweet; it had reopened wounds the rawness of which had not softened, as she had thought they had during the long months away. She was twenty-five now, the age at which her mother had been carrying her inside her own body. She fell into uneasy slumber with her fingers clutching her flat belly.

A
s soon as
Sonia had become settled once again in her native city, she went to see her friend, Nina Abelson. Although it was fall, fast turning to winter, the normal brilliance of the social season was quite subdued. Apart from the few young girls who had turned seventeen or eighteen that year, and whose mothers gave them a small ball to allow them entry into a society from which most eligible young men had vanished, nobody organized social events. Most families had at least one member at the front, and could not consider dancing away the hours while their men were fighting for their lives.

But, Nina said, there was a new fashion, and that was for girls to turn themselves into angels of mercy—nurses. “Everyone we know has become one,” she stated. “Naturally, there are those of us who are truly dedicated, and who are willing to go to the front, where the critically wounded are. Those soldiers who are able to withstand the trip to Petrograd are not badly off, some even convalescing. And many of the girls feel that the uniforms are flattering, and they enjoy flirting with handsome officers, bringing them flowers and goodies, writing letters for them.” She smiled and blushed, looking at her hands with sudden embarrassment. “But I am being cruel. After all, Sonitchka, they do perform helpful tasks. The men are glad to see a pretty face: it brightens their day. And perhaps I'm jealous. If I were not married, and tied to my home, would I not have joined their ranks?”

“Perhaps not,” her friend replied, patting her hand. “I wish I could go to the front. But I tried nursing and I was a dismal failure. I faint when I see a bad wound, and so I cannot be useful. No, Ninotchka, I shall have to discover other means of helping in this wretched war. Are you doing… anything else?”

Nina's brown eyes flashed. “Yes,” she murmured swiftly. “But it's against the law... so maybe you wouldn't be interested.”

Sonia began to laugh. “Something illegal? You, Nina? I can't believe it!”

“It's true,” the other replied earnestly. She took a swallow of tea. “You know that the government considers all prisoners of war to be traitors. ‘One gives up one's life, but one does not give oneself up,' is the motto. And in the camps our poor prisoners watch their French and British comrades receive packages from their homes, to supplement the food—but they receive nothing. So certain ladies have formed a committee to find out the number of Russian prisoners in each camp, and to obtain foodstuffs to be sent every month. There is an office to take care of administrative duties, and to purchase the items to be mailed. And centers have sprung up throughout the city where ladies go to make up packages and wrap them. The Baroness Sokolova chairs our committee, and we are short-handed. If you could join us, Sonitchka—”

“Oh, but there is no question about it! I shall join tomorrow, of course!” Sonia exclaimed. Her gray eyes sparkled. “You see, my sweet, who is to predict that Gino might not, one day, be a prisoner too? I could not bear to think him forgotten, dismissed as worse than dead by our government. What an unspeakable injustice!”

“I know,” Nina echoed gently. “I had similar thoughts. For if my Akim were alive today, he would be at the front, with your Gino…” Her eyes filled with tears at the memory of her dead brother. Her husband possessed a white paper.

Sonia went to work for the prisoners of war. She helped for three hours each morning and three or four hours in the afternoon. With the old Baroness Sokolova and Nina, she weighed white beans, barley grains, rice, flour, and sugar, and placed them into individual bags; they would add tea, tobacco, and cigarette paper, chocolate bars, a bar of soap, and made as many packages as there were names on the list for a specified camp. A hired boy placed these parcels into huge cases and when a case was filled he would nail it shut and surround it with metal strips. The ladies would then inscribe the name and address of the camp in red paint on each of the four sides of the case.

Sonia also gave time to another cause. On Thursday afternoons, she would accompany Baroness Sokolova to the Winter Palace, where the Tzarina had transformed an immense hall into an area for the production of gauze bandages. Against the wall stood machines of different sizes which men operated with hand cranks, unrolling gauze bands of all widths and lengths. They would bring them to the long tables where five or six women sat with readied scissors, to snip off the loose threads on both ends. Nina would stay home those afternoons, for she had a household to run, but Sonia respected the old Baroness who thought first of her duty and last of herself.

One evening, when the young woman returned from her work for the prisoners of war, she felt particularly exhausted as Stepan helped her to remove her boots and cape in the foyer. Her tired gaze landed upon two hats and overcoats which looked unfamiliar to her. “These are not Papa's and Ossip Davidovitch's wraps?” she asked the maître d'hôtel, to check her assumption.

He blushed, which was an unusual reaction for Stepan. “I beg your pardon, but these belong to two of the Baron's guests… from Kiev, Sofia Davidovna.”

“From Kiev? Not my uncle Mikhail Goratsievitch?” But the breath had stopped in her throat, and she thought wildly: He has reconsidered. He is coming to me, to beg forgiveness, to ask if I will marry him in spite of everything… Oh, God is indeed wonderful. He is merciful…

She turned her face, radiant, tendrils falling about her forehead, grateful to Stepan for being the harbinger of such good news. But he averted his eyes, and the smile, so pure, so loving, died upon her lips. Her heart beat out of control, inside her throat. When she lifted her misty eyes, she saw the young man before her, the one who was not Kolya. She stood, in her war outfit of black velvet, her eyes wide and dazed, as he took her pallid hand in his and kissed the cold fingertips. “Sofia Davidovna,” the strong voice said, with evident cheer. “What a pleasure to see you!”

She blinked, and took in the tall stature of this young man, the one who simply registered in her mind as “not he,” and saw his massive shoulder span, his thick crest of black hair, virile and untamed, and his blue-green eyes. “This time, I deserve a recognition,” he murmured, gently deprecating.

“Mossia Gillelovitch Zlatopolsky?” she asked, with hesitation.

“None other. Your father has been telling us of your noble effort for the war. I wanted to enlist, myself—”

“Then why didn't you?” she asked pointedly, regarding him with eyes that shone feverishly, and removing her hand. She turned red, but continued to stare boldly at him, daring him to answer.

He replied softly, “I am of greater use to my country this way, Sofia Davidovna. You see, I am second in command, so to speak, in Papa's enterprises. We provide the army with metal for weapons. Papa now owns several metal works—and sugar, and even textiles, which will make blankets—”

“How comfortable for you!” she commented. “For one million rubles a year, you work for your father, who in turn makes a profit of many millions. And how you will be remembered, at dinners and luncheons! While my brother merely offers one insignificant life. You are a hero, Mossia Gillelovitch. I admire you.”

“Sonia!” It was her father, Baron David, coming toward them, his face bewildered and angry. He turned to the young man, and stopped in his tracks.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “My daughter—is not herself, it seems. Sonia! Mossia Gillelovitch and his father, who are in the process of transferring the headquarters of their enterprises to Moscow, have come to see me about the Judaica books. They are our honored guests. They have made me an offer, on behalf of the University of Jerusalem, which has not yet been constructed but is in the offing. Their presence is an honor to us and you will please treat them with respect.”

“There has been no problem, my dear Baron,” Mossia stated. “Your daughter is correct in her appraisal of my situation. I am certainly getting off more lightly than your son, who is in the army. But it was not I who decided to stay, it was our government who decided for me. As for my salary, it is large, doubtless. But I do earn it. My hours are long and arduous, and business is good.” He said to Sonia, “Is the precise amount of my earnings truly that well known about the nation, Sofia Davidovna?” His eyes twinkled merrily.

Had her father not been present, she would have turned aside in embarrassment and fury. But now, calmly, she met his gaze and replied, “My cousin, Tania Halperina, resides in Kiev, you know. She has always… paid attention to such matters. I believe it was from her letters that I learned this fact, which is neither my business nor hers.”

“But Tania is not one to notice such details,” Mossia stated with a wide smile.

All at once, Sonia laughed. “That is true,” she commented. “And Sioma, her husband, is only a third son, and tightly supervised by his father. You, however, are trusted by yours, and given free rein. The Halperins are not unduly fond of you.”

“Probably not. My father is my friend. In that, and in many things, I am a lucky man. Although the beautiful Tatiana is a lucky asset for her husband that cannot be equaled in rubles.”

Sonia's eyes crinkled with mischief. “But you, Mossia Gillelovitch, would not part with your rubles for a wife— correct?”

Once again, a shocked David exclaimed: “Sonia! What has gotten into you?”

Mossia Zlatopolsky was laughing, his head thrown back. “I am pleased,” he said, “that your daughter has remembered one of our last conversations in the Jewish hospital of Kiev, three years ago. It was to that she was referring.”

Sonia left her father with their guest and went into her room to prepare for dinner. Her dreadful misery had seeped away with the immense good humor of young Mossia Gillelovitch. Yes, she thought as she repinned her hair, he is charming in his way. He is truly a man. And she thought, suddenly blanching: He reminds me of Gino, and of Volodia. For, like them, he exudes self-liking, which is most different from arrogance. He is comfortable with himself. She clasped a string of pearls modestly about her neck, pinched her pale cheeks for color, and went into the sitting room.

Supper was simple, but it was animated by the presence of the two men from Kiev. Hillel Zlatopolsky sat on Mathilde's right, stroking his dapper Vandyke beard. His suit was elegant but subdued. His son sat between Sonia and Ossip, dominating them with his largeness and his sonorous laughter. Only Johanna de Mey seemed distracted, her eyes shifting from point to point along the table, picking at her food with ill-concealed nervous tension. She did not like the fact that Baron David, at the head of the table, was the focal point of the visitors' attention.

“What has happened to your sister, Shoshana?” Sonia asked of Mossia.

“It is because of her that we are transferring our business to Moscow,” he answered. “After she was expelled from school—when you met her—she insisted upon studying for her baccalaureate examinations at home, on her own, without even the benefit of a tutor. Papa gave in, and she passed with brilliant marks. But not too much later she met Yosif Persitz, of Moscow, and became his wife. Or, should I say, he became her husband! Shoshana does things her own way. Her household is the first in that large city in which they speak Hebrew night and day. We spoke Russian at home.”

“What? Not French?” Johanna cried.

Mossia smiled. “No, Johanna Ivanovna. My mother, in particular, is very modest. Her family was bourgeois, not aristocratic.”

“And yet, Russian as you feel, you are a Zionist, Hillel Israelovitch,” David remarked. He took a second helping of parsleyed potatoes. “I must admit that I cannot understand that. If you love your country—and I can see that you do—then why are you at the head of so many Zionist organizations that are purchasing land in Palestine? Why prepare to leave a beloved country?”

“Ah, but times are bad, my friend,” Hillel Zlatopolsky replied, smiling. “I am a Russian, yes. But Palestine is for all Jews, not merely Russian ones. The German Jew is persecuted, so is the French. One day, these Jews will have a choice: either to stay and fight for their freedom, as you would advocate, or to leave for a land composed of their own kind, where they will be able to sleep nights without fear of pogroms. Palestine constitutes a necessity for the poor Jews, the ones who cannot buy privileges as, you will admit, we can. I am not even certain that I would leave Russia myself—but I would want to have such an option left if my businesses floundered. My daughter will go, I am certain, for she believes the Jews have suffered so much that they deserve to live in a country where they are the majority. Can you blame her?”

“But Papa cannot believe in the need for a Palestine, when he is spending his life trying to better Russia herself for the Jewish citizen,” Sonia interposed. “We must have a nationality. What if all the Catholics demanded their own state, or the Orthodox?”

“Dear Sofia Davidovna, the Catholics can turn to Rome to resolve their crises. At least you can agree with me on this point,” Hillel Zlatopolsky said with a smile. “I am attempting to convince your father to sell us the Judaica, rather than let it go to the University of Pennsylvania, for one important reason. Many scholars in America will read the marvelous collection of works in Chaldean, Aramaic, Assyrian, Arabic, and of course Hebrew; many will peruse your father's Bibles and Talmuds, his rarest of manuscripts. But a Jewish state
needs
his books. It needs them the way a house needs its foundation. In Pennsylvania, young people will use it as research. But in Palestine—what can I say except that the most intricate and ancient masterpieces of the Saints' works, handcrafted by medieval monks, belong to the Vatican, and I would like to see the works of our faith in the homeland of our faith.”

“And your wife does not feel slighted by the amount of time you spend on behalf of Palestine?” Mathilde asked.