The Four Winds of Heaven Read online

  Ivan Berson gazed at the picture, then at Anna. His green eyes gleamed. “I shall take you to meet my friends who paint for their living,” he said. “You are as good as I had dreamed. For you see, I have dreamed of you. We were in a forest, hiding from the world, and then—” His hand reached out for hers, and in her total shock, she stepped back with an intake of breath. “Yes,” he said, smiling, “you are a lady. In spite of yourself.”

  Anna’s brown eyes suddenly filled with tears that spilled over her lashes, and she turned away from Ivan with an abrupt sob. The sketch fell to the floor. Neither of them noticed. Ivan rose, and placed his fingers on her shoulder. Tremors began to shake her entire body, and she cried, “You must go away! You are mocking me, and I shall not bear it. Go back to your student friends and leave me alone, or I shall scream, and Stepan will come.”

  But Ivan’s fingers tightened on her shoulder, and with force he wheeled her around to face him. She squirmed, turning her head to the right so that her deformity was hidden. She was sobbing convulsively. His hand stroked her shoulder, then moved up to her hair. Softly, he ran caressing fingers through the red coils. She shivered again and again, uncontrollably. He tilted her chin up with his index finger, and her eyes, with their hunted expression, shone their fear at him like those of a deer in flight. He bent down and touched her lips with his, and drew her toward him with a powerful movement of his arm. She could not budge. Stiff, she received his kiss, then gave a small animal cry and parted her lips, responding. He released her then and she stood before him, red and ashamed. “I did not come to mock you,” he said gravely. “And I shall find other opportunities to return.”

  Her hand touched her left cheek. “But why?” she whispered.

  “If I were a romantic, I might tell you that I was falling in love with you. If I were a peasant, I would merely tell you that I want you. What would you have me say, Anna Davidovna? I like you very much.”

  “You are a madman,” she breathed. Then, incongruously, she began to laugh, a high, uncontrolled laugh. She shook her head, turned, and ran out of the drawing room, still laughing. In the hallway she stopped, and touched her lips with wonder. She did not see Johanna watching her from the depths of the corridor. But she heard Stepan’s soft knock on David’s study, and his announcement that Ivan Aronovitch Berson had arrived. Once more Anna laughed, but this time without hysteria. Her laughter was soft and low and gentle.

  Sonia noticed that in the days preceding the New Year her sister seemed to unbend, to melt her hard resistance to the outer world. Often she would catch Anna with a softness in her eyes, a dreamy look which made her almost beautiful. If Sonia, at thirteen, became aware of this, then David did all the more. David’s heart held an ache for his older daughter. But the Baron did not know enough about women to associate this ripening of womanhood in Anna with the quite frequent appearances of Aron Berson’s son, who would deliver messages at all hours of the day, sometimes appearing at tea time and remaining with the younger members of the Gunzburg household. “It is strange, we had never seen much of Ivan,” he said one evening to his wife. “Now he is always around, for some reason or other.”

  “Yes,” Mathilde said. She was not sure whether she should be glad or angry. A Berson, in her home, was an affront. Yet, if he were truly paying court to Anna, if she could only be sure that his intentions were indeed those of a respectable young man toward the girl of his choice, then she would have to allow it. After all, Anna deserved happiness, and lately she had even consented to taking tea with her Aunt Rosa, another sign of her softening toward the world. Would Anna ever be wooed again? Mathilde, the anxious mother, would worry. But still—a Berson as son-in-law would be dreadful. Her friends would never understand. Or would Anna’s marriage restore her to the realm of normalcy in the eyes of people who thought her such an oddity?

  “But he has never come calling, as young men do,” she said to Johanna de Mey with a troubled expression. “He merely slips in and out of the house, running errands for his father. Could I be mistaken? Perhaps Ivan wants nothing of Anna?”

  The governess smoothed her fine golden pompadour. “Mathilde,” she finally said, “I am afraid that you are simply too naive to realize the truth. Some young men are indeed interested in girls—but not necessarily to wed them. Your Ivan Berson would soil Anna. If I were you, I would stop these visits. They are making the girl hope, where nothing will ensue. He is having fun at her expense. I have—observed them together.”

  Mathilde paled. “You have seen them—behave improperly?”

  Johanna bit her lower lip and cast her lovely blue eyes upon a speck of dust on the carpet. “They thought they were alone,” she murmured.

  Mathilde recoiled, and her features grew slack. “My God,” she moaned. She remembered her father with one of the kitchen maids in Paris one day, when he had thought himself similarly alone. She closed her eyes to the vision. “Not Anna,” she finally stated. There was an element of despair in her voice. Johanna de Mey placed a cool hand upon Mathilde’s clenched fingers, and softly stroked them. “I shall speak to Anna myself,” Mathilde said. “David will have to deal with the boy.” Johanna de Mey smiled.

  But when she stood before her in the boudoir, Anna did not flinch. She regarded her mother with wide-open eyes, and stood erect. “There is nothing for me to hide,” she said. “Ivan Aronovitch has done absolutely nothing wrong. He is not the sort to come courting. He is not social, nor am I. We understand each other. I am happy with him. I have never been happy before, except when I paint. He is nothing like his stupid, vapid sisters. If he has offended your sense of propriety, Mama, we are both sorry—he will tell you so himself, if you give him the chance. Neither one of us would feel comfortable in a formal courtship.”

  “Will he speak for you to your father?” Mathilde demanded.

  Anna flushed a deep scarlet. Her eyes blazed. “I would never ask him to,” she said with pride. “Perhaps one day he would marry me, but in the meantime there is much we wish to accomplish. He is still a student. I would never wish for him to be forced into a formal engagement, simply to make a good impression. I could not bear it, myself. I could not stand to have Papa humiliate us both by asking Ivan questions about his intentions. Why should our lives be so important to anybody? We are hurting no one, nor have we done… any unseemly acts.”

  “You have seen him alone, unchaperoned.”

  “But we still did no harm. He sat with me in the drawing room, but anyone could have walked in.”

  “Still, I shall not have this sort of behavior taking place in my household. You have set a fine example for Sonia! I would not mind if Ivan spoke for you, even though you know I would have preferred another son-in-law. But not this stealthy visiting, without permission. You are a woman now, Anna, and capable of compromising yourself. I shall not permit you to do this.”

  Mother and daughter stared at each other, Mathilde’s blue eyes proud and haughty, Anna’s brown ones shining with pain and anger. “If you really loved me, Mama, you would understand!” she finally cried out. “You gave me life. If I am deformed, part of the reason must lie in you. I know how much you are ashamed of me, of my face. Ivan—Vanya—does not care. He sees me as a whole person. He does not care, either, that Papa has set aside a dowry for me. You needn’t be afraid of that. Besides, his own father is a wealthy man. Vanya would like me even if I were poor, and a nobody.”

  Mathilde’s right temple began to throb. A migraine was coming on. She clasped the arms of her chair, thinking: Johanna, why have you deserted me now, of all times? And then she recalled that it had been her own decision to instigate this talk with Anna. She had never been physical, nor had she ever struck one of her children. The nursemaids had seen to spankings. Now she rose on an unaccustomed wave of passion and slapped her daughter fully across the face. At once, she collapsed back upon her pillows, nausea gripping her. She, Mathilde, the poised, the calm, the nonviolent, had done this. She regarded Anna with eyes that the girl could n
ot decipher. “I always honored my own mother,” Mathilde said finally.

  But Anna stood her ground. “I am only speaking what I have been feeling for years. I love you, Mama. I do not like to hurt you by my words. But I do not wish to spend my life as you do. I know that Vanya likes me, that I like him. I do not wish to be married. Marriage has never seemed, to my eyes, the wondrous thing that it is held to be. Women marry, and their husbands forget them; or they marry and forget their own dreams. Or each leads a life apart, while very respectably sharing the same children and the same roof. I want to paint, and to help people poorer than myself. I do not want to live in St. Petersburg, or Paris, or Vienna, or any other ‘civilized’ city. I simply want to be left alone, and perhaps that is what Vanya wants also. I have not discussed it with him. But it would be wrong to involve Papa, and Monsieur Berson, in Vanya’s life. Right now we enjoy each other, and that is sufficient to make us happy. If, one day, we find that there is more, perhaps I shall change my mind about marriage.” Anna paused. She was trembling. “But I shall not be regarded as an old maid, who needs to be bound into matrimony at the first sign of male interest. I may not be beautiful, but I am not a crushed hat in the basement of Worth’s milliner… something to be disposed of.”

  Mathilde looked at her daughter, whose sagging face was now streaked with red from her own fingers. An impulse ran through her, to touch the girl and apologize. But hardness replaced the impulse at Anna’s words. “You are a Gunzburg, and have obligations,” she said coldly. She wanted to add: What you say is not untrue, my little one. For what is my life? What was my mother’s life? We married the men we were told to marry. At least Mama loved Papa, but what did her love bring her, save shame and misery? And what of my emptiness of feeling for David? Compassion, yes, friendship, yes again. But I could have felt this way about him simply as my cousin, without making him my husband for life. “It is not for us to question the mores of society,” she said, more gently.

  But Anna did not know what her mother had been thinking in her silence. Her shoulders hunched forward, she resembled a broken marionette. A pang of pity shot through Mathilde, but Anna, once again, was not aware of it. She lifted her brown eyes to her mother, and they were filled with tears. “I should like to go to my room, Mama,” she murmured.

  Mathilde’s lips parted, but no sound emerged. She felt as though, somehow, she herself had been the one slapped. She found that she did not possess the strength to rise from her chair. Her daughter turned around, swishing her long skirt of crocheted wool around her ankles, and nearly ran into her own bedroom, grateful that Sonia was not there. Her face contorted with grief, Anna sat down at the small secretary and brought out a sheet of paper, a quilled pen, and an inkwell. She began to write:

  * * *

  Vanya—What can I say except that I do not wish for you to visit me here, in my home, any longer? I cannot explain to you the reasons why. They have nothing, my dear, to do with you, or what I think of you. Please believe me. Anna.

  * * *

  She began to cry. What a dry note, how devoid of sentiment! But this was how things had to be. Vanya wanted to change the government. He did not have time to love her. It was not right to ask it of him, to demand any commitments. Besides—she wanted to help, too. What did her personal feelings matter in the grander scale of their ideals?

  Anna rang for the little maid who took care of her and Sonia. “Marfa,” she said, “please see that somehow, soon, this message is brought to Ivan Aronovitch Berson. But please, be discreet. I do not want Mademoiselle de Mey to learn of this.”

  When Marfa had departed, Anna’s head fell forward onto the blotter, and her shoulders began to shake with dry sobs.

  In St. Petersburg, matters requiring the highest political finesse were handled by the Secret Police, and the more routine problems of crime and disorder by the local police. Baron David and his father, Baron Horace, had established a pattern of bribing all levels of officials. As Jews, this was the only way that they could hope for the same measure of justice granted to Christian citizens. If a pogrom was brewing, the local police chief would warn David in advance; and in the case of the women and children illegally harbored by the Gunzburgs after the death of the head of the family, the police pretended ignorance. Corruption was rampant.

  One of the few truly honest men in the city was Alexei Alexandrovitch Lopukhin. David had first encountered him socially many years before, for the Lopukhins were an old, established Russian family who, for an unknown reason, had shown themselves too proud to accept a title from the Tzars. Lopukhin’s wife was also a member of the highest aristocracy. David and Mathilde saw them frequently, and their children also were acquainted with one another. And so, when Alexei Alexandrovitch had been named Chief of the Secret Police, David had felt that at last God had justified his faith in the Russian government. Here was a man above bribery, above manipulation of any sort.

  That night, at supper, Alexei Alexandrovitch was seated at Mathilde’s right, and on his own right sat Johanna de Mey, resplendent in a mauve taffeta gown, daring in its ruffled bateau collar which displayed her long neck and collarbone usually covered by laces and jabots. Madame Lopukhin was ill, and had not come. The chandelier’s refractions bounced off Johanna’s golden hair, and Mathilde thought: What infinite style she has, my good, my dear friend. She herself wore a gown of ivory-colored silk, but with a more modest neckline than Johanna’s. She sported a “dog collar,” five rows of pearls wound tightly about her throat in the new fashion. With gentle amusement, David had compared her to an elegant poodle. The dinner was small, tinged with the intimacy of friendship and good food.

  Johanna de Mey liked Alexei Alexandrovitch. She professed to be fascinated by his work, about which he was discreet. She teased him coyly: “There are rumors of disturbances, of arrests. Is the Tzar truly concerned?”

  “My dear, I could be sent to Siberia for discussing matters of state. If the Tzar didn’t, the Tzarina would, to punish me for being political in front of you ladies.”

  David smiled. “Come now, Johanna, Mathilde is firm about the subjects we are not permitted to approach at her table. Think of it this way: if Alexei were to suggest an after-dinner game of cards, would you not become offended, knowing that at the Gunzburgs no games of chance ever take place?”

  “Yes, we all know of your austerity, my dear Baron,” Johanna replied somewhat tartly. Then, ignoring him, she turned once again to the guest of honor. “But tell us simply this—who is stirring up the trouble?”

  Alexei Alexandrovitch Lopukhin scratched his dark beard. “You need not be frightened, Johanna Ivanovna. Some students have formed besedas, informal conversation groups. They speak of Maxim Gorky, who has inflamed their hearts. We do not like this, but after all, they are merely young people, in the throes of their idealism. Once in a while, reprisals occur, and our police make an arrest. But these arrests are more to scare the youths than to punish them. We do not like secret organizations, especially organizations that believe the Tzar is guilty of mismanagement. But surely, he has nothing to fear from these young dreamers.”

  “But the young can be unruly, and need to be stopped before they start to do wrong. Do you not agree?” Johanna said.

  “That is a precept for rearing children,” Mathilde inserted with a smile.

  “Perhaps. I am not in a position to pass judgment on what I am commanded to do,” Lopukhin said.

  David looked kindly at his friend. “For if you were, Alexei, you might be more indulgent. Is that not also a fact? Our young people are an impulsive lot. But hardly evil.”

  “The Baron sees innocence everywhere,” Johanna commented.

  But David merely shook his head and took a bite of poached salmon en gelée. The governess regarded him with her aquamarine eyes, and he caught the expression of brittle disdain which flashed over them. He thought: She truly detests me! and was amazed. Then, as he ate, he came to a second realization: She is the least ingenuous person I know. He wondered w
hy he had never before seen the reptilian form of her slim body. A serpent in our garden.

  But Mathilde was gazing lovingly at the golden-haired Dutchwoman, who had evidently finished a clever anecdote. “David and I have been so lucky,” she was saying to their friend, “to be graced by Johanna. A true gem.”

  And hard as a diamond, David added in his thoughts. In the face of Mathilde’s relaxed air, her tranquil joy, he had a searing realization: He was helpless in his own home, at his own table. “The Baron appears to have lost his appetite,” Johanna de Mey remarked, with teasing concern.

  “I intend to finish the last morsel,” David stated. He smiled.

  “Ivan Aronovitch is here to see you, Sofia Davidovna,” Stepan announced after luncheon. Sonia was alone. Johanna had taken a tray into Mathilde’s boudoir, for Mathilde was suffering from an acute attack of migraine. Anna had refused to eat, her eyes rimmed with red, and Ossip with his friend Volodia Tagantsev had taken his meal earlier, as usual. Sonia remembered the pounding in her temples when she had crossed the dining room and found Volodia at the table, peeling his apple. He had risen quickly, coloring, and extended his hand. “Good day, Sofia Davidovna,” he had said brightly, shining his smile at her, and she had felt momentarily weak. Yet she had returned his greeting with cool composure. Afterward, she had shared her own meal with her father and brother Gino, but now Papa was being driven back to the city, to one of the Ministries, and Gino was taking his afternoon nap, burying himself surreptitiously in an adventure story.

  “Me?” the girl repeated, with disbelief, and tucked a tendril of black hair behind her ear. She began to wonder. Ivan was Anna’s special friend, and hardly knew her, Sonia. She liked him, for he was direct and frank, and made her sister’s face glow. Anna’s acute discomfort in the presence of others always seemed to fade when Ivan stayed to tea. He would tease Sonia, kindly, the way Ossip did. But still, they were not exactly friends. He was seven or eight years older, a law student. What business had he with her? And then she recalled her sister’s ghastly appearance that day, her refusal to discuss anything, her silence in the face of gentle looks of inquiry. He has done something offensive, Sonia thought, and her little face stiffened. It is he who has caused Annushka to suffer. And now he is too cowardly to apologize to her directly.