The Four Winds of Heaven (67 page)

“What is it you want?” the man repeated. Suddenly Ossip saw an old woman inside, a plump, neat old woman with white hair, and in his mind he visualized her young, with brown curls, in a large kitchen. “Are you Russians?” he asked. When the old peasant nodded, startled, Ossip examined him carefully and asked, “Podolians, by any chance?”

Now the woman arrived, holding up a cotton skirt. “Yes,” she said, “we're Podolians. What of it? What d'you want?” Her gaze, brown and round, grew slightly hostile taking in their disheveled and dirty appearance.

Ossip stared at her, bemused, while his wife stood next to him, knitting her brow. “Zina?” he asked, at length.

The old peasants regarded each other, their eyes widening. “I am Zina Tumarkina,” she assented. “But—we don't know you.”

“Then—you must be Eusebe!” Ossip cried, joy lighting his face as a candle shining upon the walls of a cavern. “Eusebe, Eusebe, the water carrier, and Zina, the kitchen maid. It's extraordinary! Don't you recognize me at all?” Then, in his excitement, he began to laugh self-consciously. “Of course, you wouldn't. It's been ages, ages since Mohilna, and besides, I'm dirty and unshaven. But I am Ossip Davidovitch de Gunzburg. Mohilna, where you met and married, was my summer home! Don't you remember me at all?”

Now the two old people drew him inside, talking at once. “Yes, yes, Ossip Davidovitch! See, Zina, his blue eyes, so like his mother's?” the old peasant exclaimed, and she nodded, and beamed. “I can see the Gunzburg face, too,” she said.

“We're starved, and cold, and exhausted. Will you take us in?” Ossip asked. “This is—my wife, Elizaveta Adolfovna, and our daughter Vera. And this is Stepan. Stepan was our maître d'hôtel in Petrograd; don't you remember how we all spoke of him so much? My sisters, my brother—”

The old woman took them all into the dining room with its high beamed ceiling, and sat them down at a large wooden table. She brought out sausages and bread and pickles and chicken and fresh vegetable soup. She passed her coarse fingers through Vera's hair, examined Lizette, and cried large round tears as she served Ossip. “What a family you have, Ossip Davidovitch, what a family,” she murmured. “And you—how you have grown from the frail small boy we knew. Do you recall the night your brother was born, how happy we all were? How is he, the sweet cherub?”

“We don't know,” Ossip answered. “We haven't been able to reach him. You see, Zina, Eusebe—we have no money. We cannot… pay you for your hospitality. My father is dead, and Mama and Sonia, the last I'd heard, were in Feodosia in the Crimea. Gino was in the Russian army, but then, that was before the peace treaty was signed, and Anna has been living in Switzerland—”

“Ah, yes, Anna Davidovna, my favorite child—I'm sorry, Ossip Davidovitch, I did not mean to offend you. But I loved your sister—” Eusebe's words hung in mid air, and his eyes were moist. Ossip patted his hand and said nothing. He was so infinitely tired, so drained, so empty.

The old water carrier had retired to this farm, he told them proudly, several years ago. The Baron—Baron David —had sent him a handsome sum to help him purchase this land. Now he escorted Ossip and his family to the bedroom where he and his wife usually slept, and settled them into it, bringing Stepan with him and Zina into the warm pantry. Tomorrow the Gunzburgs could sleep, and then, of course, Eusebe would drive Ossip to town and would give him the money to wire his uncle in France. It was understood.

Vera slept at the foot of the large bed, and breathed evenly, but Lizette twisted and turned restlessly next to her husband. Finally she whispered to him, “Oh, Ossip, isn't it dreadful? You, a Baron de Gunzburg, having to accept charity from your former servants. Don't you feel abused and violated?”

Softly rubbing her meager shoulder, Ossip remarked; “Why should I, my dear? The world is topsy turvy, and today it belongs to the Tumarkins. I wonder, actually, if it ever did belong to the likes of me...”

She stiffened, and retorted proudly: “It did, and it shall again. You aren't defeated, my love. Don't ever think it!”

In the darkness, under the soft quilt, he started to laugh. But she moved away from him, insulted. He kept on laughing, until Vera moaned in her sleep.

G
ino
, like his sister Sonia, was fiercely loyal to his own ideals, and it took the spring of 1918, after his reunion with the family, for him to take a different view of this “civil war” to which he was so violently opposed. He wanted his mother, sister, and former governess to leave the dangerous port of Feodosia, but it was not so easy to find rooms in Simferopol, the Crimean capital. Alexander Zevin, who had managed the properties belonging to the Gunzburg dynasty for several decades, had promised to locate inexpensive quarters for them, as well as for his old mother's friend of long standing, Nadezhda Igorovna Pomerantz, and her daughter, Olga. In the meantime, the Gunzburgs and Pomerantzes continued their lives in Feodosia, now the scene of constant skirmishes between bands of Reds and partisan White groups that had formed in the area. Gino was invited to participate in the night watch of the city, and he observed that the Whites were unruly and untrained, and that they did not hesitate to loot and molest the population as much as did the Reds who sporadically vied with them for control of the city.

What occurred to change his sentiments was a sudden, mass execution of officers in Sevastopol by Reds who had taken matters into their own hands. The brutality, the senselessness of these murders spread like ripples over the south of the Crimean peninsula. Gino marched into his mother's room and declared, “When real regiments of White soldiers begin to form here, with a truly military attitude, I am going to enlist. Our country is no longer merely divided into two political groups whose struggles do not concern me. These Bolsheviks are brigands who must not be permitted to seize control of our proud Russia.”

His mother regarded him with only a hint of a twinkle in her blue eyes. “So,” she stated, “you have changed your mind. Very well, my son. But you will not be able to do anything right away. Even near Dzhankoi, in the north of our peninsula, the Whites who are attempting to hold back the bulk of the Red forces are nothing like the regiments you fought with against the Central Powers. And, like Sonia, you are an organized person who likes life divided into black and white. I'm afraid, Gino, that right now our world is in shades of gray.”

He smiled sheepishly. How well she knew him, as did Ossip, his brilliant, cynical brother. They shook their heads over him, but he was aware of their pride in him, and even of a certain envy for his strong opinions and ideals. In a woman, such staunchness could sometimes be seen as rigidity—had he not often heard people speak thus of Sonia? Yet in him it constituted manliness. He blushed, thinking of Olga Pomerantz. He had begun to help her—and Sonia too, naturally—to try to improve her stenographic skills. The young woman could now decipher the symbols perfectly, but needed to increase her speed in the transcription of dictation. It had fallen upon Gino to read to her, and to Sonia, from articles and novels of his selection. One evening his sister remarked quite casually, “Why is it that we are now being deluged with passages of love scenes, while before you were intrigued by archaeology and chemistry?” Overcome by embarrassment, he had not replied. But he was finding it more and more difficult not to see, before his mind's eye, the pure hazel gaze and the yellow curls, that look of intense interest which so moved him, when Olga Arkadievna listened to his stories of the front, or to his dreams and hopes. Suddenly it occurred to him that she had become the personification of those dreams and hopes, that when he wished for the purification of Russia, he visualized his country as a woman resembling Olga. He was happy, but also frightened. What if, guessing at his feelings as his sister evidently had, she turned her beautiful eyes away from him completely?

In April, as if out of nowhere, a troop of Red soldiers came into Feodosia on the run, heading for the harbor. “The Germans are coming!” they cried. Gino said to his family, “That's absurd! Trotsky signed the peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk only last month—” and his handsome ruddy face brightened with shame— “and while the rest of the Allies are still fighting valiantly for their honor, we Russians are officially at peace.” But in spite of his words, the following day two or three German soldiers straggled into Feodosia, then a few others, and, to the consternation not only of the resident population but also of the White and Red partisan groups, finally an entire battalion arrived. By then, the fleeing members of the Red Army who had alerted everyone had already escaped by ship. And, not two days later, Olga appeared at the Gunzburg house, her heart-shaped face full of tears, and knelt by Mathilde's chair. “They have taken over the Crimea, although in the capital their emissaries have recognized the communist state. Now they are in Mama's office confiscating her goods for their own people.”

“My sweet, they cannot be worse than those Bolsheviks who were there before,” Mathilde replied soothingly, patting the girl's thick curls. “Maybe they will even be better mannered. After all, these Germans are doing what they're told, as occupants do, but they will not kill us, as the Reds might have.”

“Olga Arkadievna is right, Mama. No matter how disgracefully the communists behave, they are usurpers, not invaders. I shall go to your mother's office,” Gino exclaimed. “I shall tell them that if they send one grain of your wheat to their accursed country, I shall fight them for it! Your mother may be an exceptional woman of business —yet still, she is a woman, and this is a man's affair. I have fought the Germans before—”

“Gino, don't be a fool,” his mother stated. But the young man hastened to his room, ignoring her, and dressed in his discarded Russian uniform. Reemerging onto the porch where his mother and Olga sat huddled in apprehension, he noted, with a sudden surge of cockiness, that Olga's eyes were full of admiration and gratefulness. That was all that he had needed. He stood tall, defying his mother and rendering her helpless with his determination. He had fought many battles for the sake of his country's honor. This one was for Olga's sake alone.

Mathilde bit her lower lip, regarding Olga sideways. What chance was there for them, for those two comely, good young people, who were learning to find love in an atmosphere fraught with dangers and difficulties? Love. It had not occurred between her and David, not for her; and her three older children had suffered and lost. Tears rose to her eyes when she thought of Anna and little Riri, of Ossip and the Tagantsev girl, and Sonia's broken engagement… She wanted to say: Don't even try, Gino, Olga. But instead she sighed, her hand still on the girl's head.

Gino was not quite certain of what he would do, once in Nadezhda Igorovna's office. He knew only that he was outraged, that he had fought these people, and that they had broken a treaty. When he entered the wheat exporter's office, and saw two men bending over her account books, his anger rose. “Get out!” he said in short, clipped tones.

Two heads flew up, two common faces regarded him with open-eyed astonishment. He, Gino, did not choose to remember the son of General von Falkenhayn, who had died in his arms with such bravery, whom for nights he had imagined having shot from his own rifle. They stared with disbelief at the red-faced young sergeant before them, and when he withdrew a gun from his holster threateningly, the older man clutched his companion with fear, and exclaimed;
“Nein! Bitter”
They were both dressed as civilians, and pointed at their garb to explain that they possessed no weapons.

At that moment voices broke out behind Gino, one of them the resonant alto of Nadezhda Igorovna Pomerantz, others harsh Teuton voices. Gino heard only Nadia, crying out, “Gino! For God's sake—” He felt something sharp prod him in the area of his ribs, and saw that he was flanked by two German officers with bayonets. “I told you, Frau Pomerantz, we wished for no trouble,” one of them stated. Nadia shook her head, saying, “But this is merely our friend, who got carried away—” Her black hair, as always, was messy and badly pinned, and she appeared distraught and surprised by all this commotion. Gino looked at her, his clear brown eyes shining with both youthful abashment and courage. He saw that she seemed about to upbraid him, and talk to him as his mother had—and yet she was proud, for a young Russian had dared to come forward, no matter how foolishly. “Ach!” she spat out, and looked away. She was a strong, willful woman, but suddenly words failed her totally.

“We simply can't allow this,” the senior officer declared. “We'll have to arrest him for disturbing the peace.”

“You would dare?” Gino cried, in his perfect German. Now he turned to the colonel, and his eyes blazed with passion. “It is you who have broken the peace, the peace of Brest-Litovsk, the—” But he was being forcibly led away. His eyes encountered those of Olga's mother, who stood motionless in her office, her brow wrinkled with anguish. Her face was harsh, and as Gino was marched off, he could not help being pursued by that haunting look, which signified so much, and which would never have been leveled at him had this woman not known that her daughter cared for him. She understood the brashness of his action as a Russian and as the man who loved Olga.

He threw off his guards and walked away proudly, between them, to the Feodosia jailhouse. He had accomplished no good, had perhaps jeopardized Nadia Pomerantz's relationship with the Germans. He knew that he had appeared ridiculous in his bravado. But thinking of the heart-shaped face of Olga Arkadievna, he did not regret what he had done, any more than he had regretted his charity toward young Lieutenant von Falkenhayn. Gino de Gunzburg was not one to rehash a past action. What was done, was simply done with.

H
e was thrown
into a large cell with a dozen other men of all classes and ages. He was the only one in uniform. Looking into the corridor through the bars, he thought of Olga, and wondered if she would come to see him, if she would be angry or worried. The glow which he had felt was now giving way to a more realistic annoyance, and apprehension. He remembered Sonia's letter about Ossip's imprisonment at the Fortress. Of course, his mother had no money now, no influence, and he had threatened enemy civilians with a gun, whereas his brother had merely taken some photographs in a military zone. So absorbed was he in these reflections that he was unaware of his companions. But he could feel somebody tugging at his jacket from the back, and presently a voice inserted itself into his consciousness: “Baron! Baron, aren't you going to recognize me?”

That voice! He wheeled about, his face alert, and encountered a most shaggy young man whose expression, both shrewd and humorous, brought him back to the trenches. “Vassya?” he said doubtfully. The other shrugged lightly, as if to say: You should know me without confirmation, shaved or not, after all we've been through… Gino began to laugh. “Vassya! What luck, finding you here!”

“Luck indeed,” he said ironically. “Baron, if our luck persists, we'll share the same grave. Why'd they put you here, the bastards? And—what're you doing in uniform? Have you joined the Whites?”

“No, not yet. I... stormed the offices of a friend of my mother, to get those Germans out of there. It was all very dramatic—worthy of my brother Ossip, and not at all like me. But—here I am. And you?”

“Came here to do some livestock trading, and they grabbed my merchandise. Wouldn't stand for it. D'you think they'll kill us, Baron?”

“I think they want to make sure that we feisty ones remain out of the way while they do as they please,” Gino said with bitterness and anger. Then, more gently, almost as if to a child, he said reassuringly, “But I don't think death lies in our cards.”

“Your Papa'd be right proud of you, standing up to them,” Vassya said warmly.

“I'm not so sure. He might find the entire matter absurd. I suppose it is, too.” Gino paused and shook his head, memories flooding his mind. “Do you remember when I asked you if you had a girl, and told you I'd never had one? Well—I do now, sort of. If she ever considered me, she probably won't, after this....”

But a third person had come up to them, and Gino stopped, glancing at the stranger with quick appraisal. He was a young man, under thirty, with powerful shoulders and a massive head of black hair. His clothing was somewhat threadbare but well cut, and he possessed blue-green eyes that Gino liked. “I beg your pardon,” the stranger now cut in, addressing Gino. “I must ask you—your friend here calls you ‘Baron,' and I couldn't help overhearing you speak of a brother called ‘Ossip.' You yourself are in a sergeant's uniform. Are you, by any chance, a Baron Gunzburg, of Petrograd?”

Taken by surprise, Gino nodded. “Yes. I am Evgeni Davidovitch de Gunzburg. I was in the army, and Vassya here was one of my men, until he too became a sergeant. Now we are friends. But you? You know my brother? Have you seen him?”

“I have not seen him since the early months of 1916, when my father and I had the pleasure of dining at your home,” the young man declared. “It was there that I met Ossip Davidovitch. I had met your sister before—Sofia Davidovna. The first time was in Kiev, when we were children; the next… when she visited there as a young woman. My name is Mossia Zlatopolsky—Moissei Gillelovitch Zlatopolsky. I have heard of you, and knew your cousin, Tatiana Alexandrovna Halperina, quite well.”