The Four Winds of Heaven (61 page)

Sonia read the account her brother had given of their father's death, and she sat down, holding her stomach as though someone had kicked her with brute strength. At first she felt nothing at all but this purely physical pain. She had left her mother and Johanna in the next room, wanting to be alone with her grief. But it was not sadness that filled her. It was a terrible, boiling anger that flared inside her stomach, like lye eating away at its lining. I knew it! she thought. I knew I should have stayed with him in Petrograd—I knew it because I loved him, more than the others did. Anna never forgave him for Vanya, and for not listening to the Union of Unions; Ossip always despised him, and was ashamed of being a Jew; yes, Gino loved him, but then again he was young and never knew our father, did not truly comprehend him in mind and soul, as I did. Mama? Oh, I do not want to think, I do not want to think! But Mama should never have married him. She had no understanding of his passions, nor did she want to have any; instead, she permitted Juanita to ridicule and scorn him. Uncle Sasha envied Papa, and Uncle Misha? Yes, he loved him, but from far away, as Gino did, for Misha was so much younger, and they lived apart… There was Grandfather Horace, then, and I. And I loved him more than any other man in my life, even more than Volodia, for when I had to choose between them, I chose Papa!

What could it possibly matter that they were ruined, apart from the remainder of the summer harvest money from the Crimean estates; that Rosa and Sasha were destitute and reduced to begging from their daughter's in-laws? She could work, her hands were good, her mind was clever. But she would never kiss her father again, never hear him call her his “little pigeon.” She thought with a surge of passion that she had wanted him to know of Anna's boy. He would have understood, because he had loved Anna, and had wanted grandchildren.

Suddenly she felt two soft hands upon her, and in rebuff she jerked upright and was astounded to find Olga Pomerantz next to her. The young girl, with her fine blond curls, said, “I know that you mind my intrusion. But I came because, you see, I know what it feels like. My father died also, and left me with a hole this big in my chest.” She made a vast gesture with her hands. “One morning, getting dressed. It was also… heart trouble.” Her wide hazel eyes filled with tears. “And I was jealous of Mama. Such attention to the bereaved widow! I was certain that she had not loved Papa as much as I. Sometimes, I still wonder.”

“With me,” Sonia stated bitterly, “there is nothing to wonder about.”

“But there are different kinds of love,” Olga said tentatively. She was suddenly afraid of this beautiful girl who was older and wiser but also so harsh, so stark in her brutal anguish.

“Yes,” Sonia agreed, and thought: Kolya, Kolya! Why isn't there someone to hold me?

“I came with a proposition,” Olga stated. “Mita, the Rabbi's daughter, needs money, too. She wants to teach us stenography. I do not know how long our enterprise will belong to us, before the Reds will decide to come into the Crimea and ‘nationalize' us, too. So—I shall need to learn a trade, Sonia. And, I thought you would, too.”

Her eyes rested upon her friend's gray ones, and Sonia slowly came alive. Her chin trembled, then her mouth. She pressed Olga's arm with her frail fingers. “That would be perfect,” she stammered. “We must think of ways to economize. We shall have to rent out part of this house, or move somewhere else. The harvest money will have to see us through an indefinite period of time. Thank you, Olga.”

Finally she went to her mother, and placed her arms around Mathilde's shoulders. Olga left silently, but Johanna stood in a corner, watching with eyes that darted like quicksilver from woman to woman. Mathilde stood erect, dignified, her beautiful gray hair coiled elegantly atop her head, and her sapphire eyes moist but not overflowing. “Sonia,” she said. “Sonia, I loved him... as much as it was possible for me to love him. I admired and revered him, and I gave him four unique children who helped fill his life. We all disappointed him, my daughter. He was better than each of us. But he loved us, and now we must treasure the bounty of that love. Condemnation, even self-condemnation, will not help either of us, remember that.”

“I know, Mama,” Sonia answered softly, kissing her mother on the cheek. “I have come to discuss our future with you, now that we are poor. I am certain that Ossip will earn enough for his passage to France, or England, at the Ashkenasy bank. Anna has some savings, and sells her work, and is safely out of this mess. Eventually Uncle Misha, whose fortune is intact, and our other relatives in Paris will be able to send us funds. But, in the meantime, all we have is from the last harvest. I am going to take stenography lessons with Olga, and we can look for boarders to share our rent here. It will be difficult for you, Mama. Life will be simpler than you ever conceived…”

“Not so difficult,” Mathilde retorted with a half-smile that brought Ossip's image to Sonia's mind. “I would much rather live in rags than beyond our income, as my father did. You forget my childhood. For every diamond cufflink he bought, Papa increased his ruin, and the ruin of his children.” Now tears glistened on the edge of her black lashes. “Your father must have loved me very deeply, Sonia. Not only did he choose a bride without a dowry, but it was he, and his own father, who paid my father a price for the honor of marrying me.”

Sonia touched her mother's hand. “That is not hard to believe,” she remarked. She did not notice that her mother's smile faded, that an icy expression replaced it momentarily. Mathilde was thinking: But David was my cousin, and had known me from birth! Who will take my Sonia, now that there is no longer any dowry? She began to panic but Sonia's voice brought her back to the problem at hand. “We shall have to write this news to Gino,” Sonia stated. “He will want to be reassured that we are all right, although I'm certain Ossip will have let him know about… Papa. Mama, I need your help now.”

Johanna de Mey stood apart, wondering why this death, so longed for by herself, was not changing her life as she had hoped and expected. Mathilde was not guilty. She was serene, poised. Why was she not coming to her? She turned her face away, unable to watch her companion, unable to bear her own acute misery. Tears of frustration flowed down her cheeks, but the two women did not see them. Mathilde and Sonia sat side by side upon the divan, composing a letter for their brave soldier, thinking of his sufferings, and not at all of hers, which twisted through her entrails like a sharply honed sickle. She thought: Nobody has ever loved me, nobody at all, and if I have come to this point in my life, stranded in a foreign nation in political strife, with a destitute family, it was a sacrifice which brought me nothing, nothing but humiliation. Suddenly, she regarded Mathilde with an expression of pure hatred.

G
ino could not believe
what was happening around him. On December 3, official negotiations for a separate peace treaty were begun between the Bolsheviks and the Central Powers, and the army began to disintegrate. Everything was happening so quickly, so haphazardly, it seemed. It was impossible to follow. In the south, where he was stationed, a counterrevolutionary movement was being organized, and his regiment was being transformed into what was called a “White” regiment. But the “Red,” or Workers' and Peasants' Army, was now the official force of the nation, and was largely composed of the same officers as those who had served under Kornilov, and under whom he, as a sergeant, had served. So, Gino thought, our army now has two sides, and good men take part in civil war. This is not what we enlisted for! This is not noble fighting to defeat the Central Powers. He remembered Ivan Berson, Anna's lover, who was a Kerensky socialist. Yet he, Gino, had thought of him merely as an old Petrograd acquaintance from the old days. So men who had once served together proposed to slaughter one another—and all for political purposes which he did not as yet understand. He watched, baffled and outraged.

The officers were taking sides, but for many of the soldiers a joyride had begun. Officially, the nation was still at war, and all men wore the same khaki uniforms, with only small insignias on the cap, the shoulder, or the collar to differentiate among the various regiments. But the men, hearing of revolution, thought themselves free, and soon young soldiers were abandoning their posts and going home. Others, taking advantage of a wartime regulation that permitted members of the army first access, free of charge, on any train, hopped aboard and rode for days, changing trains as though they were merry-go-rounds at a fair. Gino realized that he would either have to sign up in the new White regiment, or leave the disintegrated army which was no longer fighting a war. He went to his captain, and, attempting to keep his voice firm, he declared: “I am a born Russian, and in good conscience, after much consideration, I cannot bear arms against a fellow Russian. I do not favor the Petrograd government. But I cannot kill my countrymen.”

Besides, he wanted to go to his mother and sister at once, before the New Year, if possible. Feodosia was a port, and also had a railroad, and if the Reds came to the Crimea, they would reach the accessible cities first, and there would be street fights and destruction. Gino's heart was heavy with sorrow for his wounded country and for his father, whom he had loved devotedly. Unlike Ossip, he had never considered their father weak; he had found him a model of courageous dignity, of idealism pushed to the extreme. Gino did not find these traits ludicrous; he found them moving. He himself was a patriot, and could only sustain simpler passions. But he had admired David's character, and recalled their walks in Mohilna, their long talks of nature. Now he wept for the loss of this magnificent man, and for his mother and sister, who had lost so much as well. And on a cold winter's day, he too boarded a train, in his khaki uniform, knowing that no one would harm him, Red or White, for all soldiers looked alike. The thought was hardly a consolation.

S
he sat just underneath a staircase
, on the deck that was crowded with howling refugees of all ages and backgrounds. She cradled her son in her arms, and crooned to him a song of her childhood. Her golden hair blew about her face in the wind, her cornflower-blue eyes glistening with memories of dances and gay moments, of the Mariin-sky Theater, of a watch crafted by Fabergé. “But you, my love, are a Russian, don't you ever forget it,” she said to the little boy, bouncing him precariously on her knee.

She had wanted to find Ossip, to take him with them all on this exodus. Her mother and father, impoverished, had told her he had gone to Odessa when last they had heard. Sioma had said, “Why not? We are already a crowd, and he is family.” But the old man, the hideously miserly old man, her father-in-law, had shaken his head and propelled them all like a flock of sheep toward this ship. He could not wait, the Reds would catch up with them if they stopped to fetch this cousin of Tania. How she detested him, the old man, she thought, as she rocked her baby in her arms, and was jostled by another woman. Here she was, Baroness Tatiana Alexandrovna de Gunzburg, and she had been lucky to locate this tiny space beneath the staircase for herself and her son. Tears of rage came to her eyes.

But, she thought, it is this dreadful family, these ugly Kiev upstarts who are saving Mama and Papa today. Her father-in-law had hoarded a veritable fortune in a Swiss bank, and the Halperins were not ruined. She thought painfully of Jean, then dismissed the memory, and thought of Ossip, her companion-in-thoughts, her friend. Should she have married him? She licked her lips and mused. He would have enchanted her, given her passion of the flesh, made her collapse with hilarity. But he would never have amassed a fortune, would not have found a way to save her parents from ruin. Twenty years ago, Ossip would have made her a fine husband, with inherited wealth. Today, hard as it was to accept, she desperately needed Sioma Halperin.