The Four Winds of Heaven (54 page)

Strange, she thought, as she began to read. Tania has never given me a book before. Pregnancy must do odd things to a woman. The story, a bit farfetched but still enjoyable, concerned a young woman, ambitious and selfish, who wished to wed a young man of ancient and noble lineage, who was deeply in love with her as well. As always in such novels, Sonia reflected with a wry smile, the heroine was named Clarissa. (Sometimes they were Vanessa or Alicia.) The lover had given Clarissa a lovely emerald engagement ring, and also a family jewel composed similarly of emeralds, a necklace which was passed from generation to generation. Therefore, the necklace did not rightly belong to the lady who wore it; it constituted a loan until her own son's wedding. She received it upon her engagement, but was not permitted to wear it until after the wedding. The vain Clarissa, however, insisted upon wearing the emeralds to a ball several days before her marriage, in spite of the supplications of her fiancé and his mother. The clasp was old and fragile, and during a mazurka, it opened, and the necklace fell to the ground. But in the time it took for her dancing partner to wheel about to pick it up, the crowd of dancers had moved, and it was nowhere to be seen. Someone had cleverly seized it. The young man, in a rage, broke the engagement.

Sonia could not continue. She flung the book aside, tears stinging her eyes and pressing through her long, curling lashes. Her breast rose and fell rapidly, her cheeks burned. How had Tania dared? Why had she been so cruel? She thought wildly: My ring, my betrothal necklace, were emeralds, too, and I wore them for three months before Kolya refused me. All of Petersburg knew these jewels. And now she lives in Kiev, and knows that he has married another woman! Why, Tania, why? She wept bitterly, as she had wanted to but had not done in front of Mossia Zlatopolsky. She would write Tania, she would accuse her angrily—she would have young Zlatopolsky return the book. And then she thought: No, of course not. I shall not give her the satisfaction. I shall even thank her for her present.

As she nodded resolutely to herself, tears upon her cheeks, she heard a vague scraping noise and rose quickly. Ossip! She dashed from her room, barely noticing that it was after three in the morning, and in her delicate slippered feet arrived at the back door, which no one but Ossip used, and he only after balls now when the rest of the house had retired early. She swung open the door before his key had unlocked it. Bewildered, he faced her in his top hat and tails. “Sonitchka! What is it?”

“Ossip! There are two policemen here searching your room, waiting to arrest you. You must go to a friend's house, and tomorrow I shall pack a bag for you and deliver it,” she whispered urgently.

For a flicker of an instant, he hesitated on the doorstep. Then, shaking his head, he pushed past her. “Sonitchka, my love,” he declared, “it can only be a mistake. I have done absolutely nothing. There is no cause for alarm—or cowardice. I shall go to them.”

Hat in hand, he strode elegantly into his bedroom and stood in the doorway, appraising his disarranged clothing strewn about the floor. “Come now, gentlemen, state secrets or no, you must improve your housekeeping,” he chided them lightly. “But what's all this about?”

Respectfully, the men stood up, and one of them said, “Please, Baron. Change into your daytime attire. We beg your pardon. We did not believe that you were attending a dance, but evidently we were wrong, as we can see by your clothing. But you will have to accompany us to the station. Take along your toilet articles.”

“Toilet articles? Where are they taking you, Ossip?” Sonia cried.

“Don't worry, we shall clear it up,” David said, putting an arm around his son's shoulders. He was glad Mathilde had gone to her room.

Ossip shrugged lightly. “Try to sleep, Papa,” he said soothingly.

Ossip excused himself, and returned dressed as for a day at the bank. He touched his sister's cheek with lingering softness. “Cheer up,” he murmured. “I cannot be sent to a worse place than Gino.”

Sonia's terrified face was the last thing he saw before leaving the room, between the two men. But when he had left, Sonia went at once to her father, and pulled his head onto her narrow shoulder. “It's going to be all right, beloved,” she whispered. “All right.”

B
aron David was
up at dawn, and his secretary, Alexei Fliederbaum, made many telephone calls. Sonia went to her Uncle Sasha, and explained the situation, begging him to round up all those who might help them locate Ossip and help him. Because of the havoc created by the war, they had no idea where Ossip had been taken. David recalled with anxiety how his friend Lopukhin had been sent to Siberia on charges of high treason, only to be pardoned after years of suffering when the case had been reviewed by the Tzar. If only Lopukhin were still Chief of Police, he might have been able to help, but David's friend had retired to Moscow after his release from exile. Now David's ministers were absent on war business or could learn nothing. What confusing times! Sasha's colleagues did little better. Even an aged general, on leave in the capital, was barely able to learn that Ossip had been taken to the most dreaded of prisons, the Pyotrpavlovsky Fortress. But he was not able to gain admittance to see him, nor to discover what the young man might have been charged with.

It is my fault, my fault, Sonia repeated to herself endlessly that day, as well as the next. It is because of my illegal work for the prisoners of war …

But six days later she was struck by an idea. Nervously turning an opal ring around on her slender finger, she went into her mother's boudoir and there faced Mathilde, her face frozen with fear and bewilderment. She kneeled before her, took her mother's cold fingers between her own, and gazed beseechingly into her eyes. “Mama,” she stated, “there is someone we had not thought to call upon.”

“Well?” her mother cried.

“It is... Senator Count Tagantsev. I know Papa would hate it, and hate me for even suggesting it. But you, Mama, you could write to the Countess, Maria Efimovna. It is worth a try, is it not?”

Mathilde sat back and regarded her daughter with a brilliant stare. “I do not care whether your father approves or not,” she declared at length. “Thank you, Sonia. I shall write to the Countess. If she ignores my plea, I shall have lost little but my pride. And Ossip's safety is worth that risk, isn't it?”

She quickly composed a note, and gave it to her maid with the order that it be hand-delivered to the Countess Tagantseva at her mansion, and, she added, “Tell the footman to await a reply.” Then she lay back and closed her eyes, not daring to hope. Her Ossip, in the Fortress! It was as ludicrous as that unspeakably immoral peasant, Rasputin, in the Winter Palace. Yet there they were, both of them, incontestably. She began to wait.

In the Tagantsev palace, the Count and Countess were finishing a late breakfast when a footman was announced from the Gunzburg house. “The Baron David de Gunzburg?” the Count exclaimed, and his hirsute eyebrows lifted. “Give me the note, Anton.”

“It is actually for the Countess, from the Baroness,” his servant interposed with deference. The Count regarded his wife with shock, and Maria Efimovna blushed. She took the note and quickly looked away from her husband's angry face.

“Oh, Nicolai, this is dreadful!” she finally cried. “Poor Mathilde Yureyevna! It seems that—”

“It seems only that my wife has gone behind my back to make the acquaintance of that Jewess!” the Count exploded, oblivious to the servant shrinking timidly against the paneling.

“Oh, Nicolai, that was… years ago. I visited her once, out of courtesy. You must remember how kind the Gunzburgs were toward Volodia.” Her eyes filled with tears. “She is a lady, Nicolai. And her children… were perfect. Do you not remember them, that summer?”

“I remember only… afterward.” The husband and wife locked eyes, the specter of Natasha between them, while he thought of the shame his daughter had escaped, and she thought only of the girl's abject distress.

“But, they were so young, it was such a meaningless flirtation,” Maria Efimovna finally said. “You rather liked Ossip. Didn't you?”

“Not that way! Never that way!” the Count cried.

“No, naturally, Nicolai, my dear. But as a human being. And, you must admit, a fine gentleman.” Her hand reached toward her husband's, across the embroidered tablecloth. “My dear,” she said, “the young man has been arrested, and the Gunzburgs are beside themselves with worry. No one knows why, but he has been incarcerated at the Fortress. Would you—for the sake of the son we both cherished—would you go to see him, help him in his trouble? He must be innocent, Nicolai.”

The Count withdrew his hand, and his eyes flashed malevolently at his wife. Now another specter hung between them, that of Volodia. A sudden quick pain constricted the Count's heart. He turned aside. “For his sake— not yours!” he shouted hoarsely. Tears of gratitude and relief moistened his wife's eyelids. She sighed, and beckoned the servant for some paper upon which to write her answer to Mathilde.

In the vestibule, Anton, the servant, nearly collided with a tall, elegant young woman in a plumed hat, who was saying with a burst of gaiety to the small girl behind her, “Oh, come now, Larissa! You will not, will not beg Grandmother for anything, not so much as a sweet—” But she halted by the open front door when she saw the servant with his note. “Anton!” she exclaimed in surprise. “You look somewhat in shock! What is this paper? Is anything wrong?”

The servant bowed his head. “It is not my business, Princess,” he replied.

“Then give me that!” she said, extending her pretty hand with its elongated fingers. She laughed, and he passed her the note from her mother to the Baroness. She read the few lines, her color fading, put a hand to her throat, and blinked several times. Then, grabbing Anton by the arm, she began to shake him. “He is at the Fortress?” she demanded. “You are certain of this?”

“Yes, Princess. The Countess spoke of it.”

Now the little girl, tossing back her black curls, tugged insistently upon the jacket of her mother's suit. “I can smell jam, Mama,” she said.

The young woman said to the servant, “Tell my coachman to wait, Anton. I have an errand I must run.” Then, straightening her hat upon her head, she took a deep breath and followed the child into the breakfast room.

O
ssip sat
in the dank cell, his hands crossed behind him, and thought for the hundredth time: This is insane. Did I, while in Poland, stay at the home of someone suspect to the government? He chewed on the inside of his lower lip, perplexed.

Outside, the turnkey, at heart a jovial workman who was quite taken by this elegant, slender man of twenty-nine, with his gentleman's attire, came to the door and said, through the grill panel, “There is somebody of great importance nosing around your business, Excellency. Do you know a Senator Count Something-or-Other?”

Ossip grew very pale. “Senator Count Tagantsev, perhaps?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, that's it! Gentleman wouldn't see you, though. But he sits in the Senate, doesn't he? Friend of the Tzar?”

“He is admitted at Court. What did he want?”

“Well, here's what's odd, if you'll pardon me, Excellency. He wanted to know, same as you, why you were here. Said he wanted to... help. But then, why d'you suppose he didn't come to see you? Seems many's the ones who tried to, starting with your own father. And the Minister of Education himself. But this Count—they allowed him to see the records, but he didn't want to see you in person. Strange, no?”

“Not really,” Ossip replied. He smiled sardonically. “The Count particularly detests me, and the feeling is quite mutual, I assure you, Popov. In fact, if he does succeed in getting me out, I shall be at pains what to do. Going to thank him would cause us both unbearable embarrassment. But then again, he wouldn't receive me.”