The Four Winds of Heaven (65 page)

I
t was
Stepan who located the two rooms in a poorer section of Odessa, in a small house far from the center of the city. He packed his master's bags and his own, and escorted Ossip to their new “home.” “We must leave the Ashkenasy house,” he kept repeating to the dazed young man, who followed him without expression, his features frozen. When they moved in, they crossed the path of the lady who lived in the small apartment upstairs, and Stepan bowed, seeing her eyes widen as she regarded Ossip. She was a tall, angular woman, impoverished to be sure, but wearing her clothes with the elegance of a gentlewoman. She was not pretty, with her short black hair and strong features, her thin red lips and piercing ebony eyes. She looked each one of her thirty years.

The following day Stepan saw a little girl with her, a comely young child with blond hair and dimples. She said, “Hello,” and he answered her respectfully. Stepan mentioned the child to Ossip, to cheer him up. But the young man seemed emptied of all emotion, and merely nodded absently. When Ossip himself came face to face with the black-haired woman, and she said, “I am Elizaveta Adolfovna Dietrich,” he merely intoned his name, and went rapidly into his own two rooms. She stood in the common hallway, staring after his slender form, musing.

Several days later, Stepan knocked on Ossip's door and declared, “There is a British ship due in tomorrow. I have booked passage upon it, for us both.” Ossip nodded, smiled vaguely, and returned to his reverie. That day, the lady from upstairs came to their apartment, bearing a tray of home-baked cakes. She said to Stepan, “The Baron looks very peaked. My daughter, Vera, baked these. I am afraid they aren't very good, for the child is only eight, and our ingredients aren't as excellent as they should be—but do offer some to him.”

“Thank you, Madame,” Stepan replied. He was about to close the door when she smiled and asked, “Please—let me come in and chat with him, if he's up to it. We too are very lonely, Vera and I. We came here from Tomsk, and have few friends...”

He allowed her into the apartment, not wishing to affront a lady, yet certain that Ossip would send her politely away. But Ossip was in no mood to pay the slightest attention to this thin, bony woman, and he allowed her to talk in the way a weary mother permits her child to run rampant about a room. He regarded her without seeing her. Well, Stepan thought, she does possess a certain style, although she has no beauty… She insisted upon serving Ossip tea, and told him that she was a native of the Baltic provinces, a Protestant who had married an officer, named Tchernavin, of Eastern Orthodox faith, which was why her daughter was neither of the same faith nor of the same name as she. Elizaveta Adolfovna was divorced, and bore her maiden name of Dietrich. Ossip heard her, and he nodded courteously but didn't listen, all the while thinking only of Natasha, thinking that it was not true, that Natasha could not have died. “The Barons Gunzburg are well reputed,” Elizaveta Adolfovna Dietrich said, as if to encourage him to bare his own past. But it was Stepan who was forced to reply in his stead, and the woman appeared annoyed. Then she sighed and returned upstairs, and Stepan finished the remainder of their packing.

The next morning, baggage in hand, Ossip and Stepan walked to the port, and joined the crowd of passengers who had booked places on the British ship. When it came time to board, one of the stewards came forward and, examining Ossip's papers, declared: “You are a Russian citizen. Why, then, are you not fighting with the White Army against the Bolsheviks?”

“The Baron suffers from the aftereffects of Pott's disease,” Stepan replied for Ossip. He looked through their effects and brandished a white exemption paper. “See here,” he exclaimed.

The steward shook his head doubtfully and went off to find the captain. Stepan, tall and erect, stood by his master, but Ossip looked vague and ill, and his eyes did not focus properly. The captain arrived, in his neat uniform, and his eyes softened as they rested upon the young man. “I'm sorry, Baron,” he stated. “But I have my orders from my government. We are not to take any man of age to be serving. The British must consider you a traitor—a deserter.”

“But what about his back? The Baron cannot fight, and the Red Army is coming! You must take us,” Stepan cried.

“I cannot. But, sir, I can take you,” the captain said to the maître d'hôtel.

“Yes,” Ossip murmured vaguely. “Go, Stepan. I did not save you from those soldiers so that you would die here. You must go.”

Stepan's eyes first scanned the captain, then his master. In his pupils shone the deepest indignation he could muster. “If you will not take the Baron, then you shall leave without me, too,” he asserted. He picked up the luggage and turned around. Ossip followed docilely, and this time tears came to his eyes. It was surely his time to perish. He placed a trembling hand on Stepan's arm, unbearably moved. They walked back to the apartment, and there, suddenly, Ossip collapsed, all color drained from his face and lips. Stepan felt his forehead with alarm. The fever was so high that he put Ossip to bed and went up the stairs to Elizaveta Dietrich's rooms. When she admitted him, he said, “Forgive me this intrusion, but the Baron is ill, and I must fetch a doctor. Could you look in on him while I am gone, Madame?”

An expression of alarm passed over her angular features. “There is typhus in Odessa,” she said. “Is his fever high?”

“At least 105 degrees,” Stepan replied.

“Then it must be typhus. Wait. I know how to treat it. I have treated members of my family, in Estonia. But were you and the Baron not leaving this morning?”

“Yes, Madame. But we could not.”

Elizaveta Adolfovna peered at the maître d'hôtel with shrewd eyes, appraising him. “Go for the doctor, if indeed you can find one,” she said peremptorily. “I shall be with your master. Verotchka! Come with Mama, my dear. And bring rags, clean rags, many rags. And vinegar and alcohol and pans.”

Stepan watched her thin form move rapidly about and he went down the stairs. As he went out into the street, he heard the woman and her daughter go into Ossip's rooms. They may kill him with talk, but that is better than letting him die of the typhus, he thought with uncustomary irreverence. He could not help being reminded of someone in Elizaveta Adolfovna Dietrich, with her Teuton name. As he walked quickly in search of medical help, he nodded to himself. Yes, he thought, Johanna Ivanovna, although they don't look alike. Still, there are similarities…

O
ssip was terribly
sick with the typhus, so sick, indeed, that the physician summoned by Stepan and well paid from the remainder of Ivan's bills, declared that he would surely die. Elizaveta Dietrich and her daughter, Vera Tchernavina, stayed quietly by his bedside, and Stepan was forced to admire them. They appeared unafraid of the terrible possibility of contagion. Indeed, Stepan found it most unusual that this woman would permit her own small child to remain so close to someone afflicted with such illness. He thought: Johanna Ivanovna also nursed him, when he was but twenty.

During his moments of consciousness, which was only partial consciousness, Ossip saw a woman's face bending over him, and a vague outline of black hair. He tried to smile in his happiness. “Natasha...” he sighed.

“Yes, yes,” the woman replied encouragingly. She touched his forehead with cool fingers.

“Don't... go,” he pleaded.

“No,” she answered.

“Never again...”

“Do not tire yourself,” the woman said. Then, quickly, “No, don't try to rise. Never again.”

He sighed once more. “Love,” he whispered.

Another time he said rapidly, incoherently, “Divorce! Must… get… divorce!” His eyes shone with such intensity that the woman knew it signified more than mere fever.

“But I am already divorced,” she stated gently. His features softened; he smiled, fell asleep.

Later he awakened abruptly, and saw the face of a child. “Lara?” he asked, breathlessly.

“Verotchka,” the girl replied.

“Ah,” he murmured, “then you must take another kopeck, and get another sweet roll.” He could not understand what the child from the station in Poland was doing here with him, with Natasha. “Love!” he cried, and would rest only when the woman with the dark hair took his hand and stroked it. Then he slept fitfully.

One morning, when he was half awake, Ossip said to Verotchka, “You see? I am going to... marry your mother. Doesn't matter... about religion.”

“Is he awake, Mama?” the child asked with disbelief.

“Enough to know what he is saying, sweetheart,” her mother replied. “He is aware that I am Protestant, and he, of course, is a Jew.”

Several days later, Ossip was able to sit up, and for the first time a coolness came over him. He said, “Where am I? Who are you?” He perceived a strange angular woman with jet black hair, cropped short, and a little girl of some eight years, blond and pretty.

“You've been very ill, with the typhus,” Elizaveta Adolfovna Dietrich said.

But her daughter jumped up and clapped her hands, and cried out, “You're going to live! And then you're going to do what you promised, and marry Mama!”

“Where is Stepan?” Ossip asked. He felt that he was dreaming. He stared at the odd child, clapping and spouting nonsense, and said, “Where's Natasha?”

“Stepan has gone for food,” the woman stated softly.

“Who's Natasha?” the little girl asked.

“Hush, sweet. No one. No one important,” her mother answered. Ossip had fallen asleep, resembling a cherub with a growth of beard, and she smiled at him. “Baroness Ossip de Gunzburg,” she intoned in a singsong manner. Then she repeated, “No one at all.”

But Ossip, asleep, was crying out, suddenly drenched with perspiration, “Don't die! Never go away again...”

“He's afraid of dying,” Elizaveta Dietrich said to her daughter. “We all are, aren't we?”

W
hen Ossip had sufficiently recovered
, Stepan explained to him that the Red Army was approaching rapidly, and that the little money they still had would be sufficient to get them across the Dniester River and into Rumania. He cleared his throat, and added, averting his eyes, “Madame Dietrich and her daughter would like to travel with us, for protection. And besides, their funds have run out, too.”

“Ah,” Ossip stated. He chewed upon his lower lip, pensively. It was a miracle that he was still alive, and there was no doubt that the nursing of the lady from upstairs, Elizaveta Adolfovna, had made the crucial difference. She had stayed up nights to sponge off his brow, had exhausted herself to restore him to health. And yet, he had been a virtual stranger, and she did not seem to Ossip to be the sort of woman for selfless devotion. He was somewhat baffled. He owed her his life—and yet, why had she not remained outside the sphere of his existence, now that nothing remained for him to live for? A deep, dull anguish pervaded his body. Now he felt angry at the Dietrich woman for her interference. “Damn,” he muttered. “I suppose it would be most ungenerous to refuse them, after all that they have done on my behalf. We owe them whatever we can offer, which is very little indeed.” Oh, to indulge in pure cowardice, he thought, not to face this obligation… He sighed deeply and sank into the cushions of the old sofa.