The Four Winds of Heaven Page 21

  “Johanna!” Mathilde cried, appalled. Her face turned whiter than ever, then bright red, then white again. She attempted to withdraw her fingers from the other’s grasp, but Johanna only tightened her own over them. Mathilde began to shudder, and Johanna said, “You are furious with me, because you believe you have been violated in the deepest privacy of your thoughts. But I am not an intruder, my dear Mathilde. I belong there. I am the only human being who has completely understood you, and that is because my love for you is undivided. Even the Baron has his children, his father, his Jews, his Russia. The children each have their father, one another, their grandparents, their friends. But I have only you, Mathilde. Only you. I think of you when I awaken in the morning, when I turn out the lamp at night. I yearn to be with you, to comfort and love you. You are my life.”

  For a moment Mathilde could not speak. Then, shaking her head vehemently from side to side, she cried, “But no! That cannot be! You have your own mother, your sisters…”

  Very softly Johanna said, “No. I have only you. And you have me, for I shall never turn my love away from you. I shall never disappoint you as others have. Isn’t it good to know that there is someone who will love you no matter what happens?”

  Mathilde was silent, and let Johanna’s steps guide her back toward the gardens. As they walked, Johanna kept her fingers over Mathilde’s muff, not pressing, merely holding. Snow began to fall gently about them. It was then that she saw that Mathilde’s bowed face was bathed in tears.

  During the night, when she heard Baron Yuri, always the last to retire, mount the stairs to his chambers, Johanna de Mey, clad in her nightdress of lavender silk, left her room with a candle, and made her way to Mathilde’s door. She turned the handle. The door yielded silently. The room was dark. Mathilde sat by the bed, her hands clasped, her magnificent black hair flowing over her shoulders and back. She whispered, “Johanna? I could not sleep tonight.” Her voice trembled.

  “I could not, either.” The Dutchwoman kneeled by Mathilde’s feet, took the clasped hands, and kissed them. “Come to bed,” she murmured. She pulled back the sheet and made Mathilde lie down on her side. Then she began to massage her neck, her back, her arms. Tears flowed from her eyes, and she let them fall upon Mathilde’s pale skin. She bent down and kissed the shoulders, the arms, the neck, and then her long, elegant fingers became entangled in Mathilde’s dark hair. She caught the soft strands and curled them about her hands, kissing the curls. Then all at once Johanna slid beneath the sheet and pressed her body against Mathilde’s back. She encircled her waist and held her powerfully, but Mathilde did not, could not, move.

  “Only I know how to love you,” Johanna said at length, burying her face in Mathilde’s hair. “Only I, and that is good, for you can trust me. Trust me, Mathilde, my darling, my sweet, my beloved…”

  The lone candle flickered on the nightstand.

  Alia Berson, with her customary frivolity, had ordered, several years before, a magnificent covered troika, so that she and her sister could take drives through the snow without fear of the elements. The landau, a kind of brougham drawn by two horses, seemed too staid to her, and because the victoria was open it was therefore unsuitable—and entirely too connected with the despised British queen. Only a troika would do: it was a totally Russian mode of transport, designed for Russian snows and ice, for it was a sleigh and not a wheeled carriage. It was drawn by a team of three horses, which pleased Alia. The only problem was that most troikas were not enclosed, and Alia Berson, novelist laureate, would not risk uncurling a single tendril in the wind. She had cajoled her father into ordering hers covered.

  But Alia was not one to persevere in any area of life. Suitors were soon found boring, novels were also discovered to require a surfeit of imagination and diligence; she abandoned her efforts with a trilling laugh. And so, when her brother Ivan showed interest in her troika, she had given it to him as a present for his twenty-first birthday. “A lawyer must ride in style,” she had stated with a flourish. Ivan had protested, somewhat outraged, that he would not accept such a costly, useless present. Alia knew that his way of life was simple, that he would never use this extravagant toy of hers. But she had patted his cheek and burst into giggles. “I want my brother to be a gentleman,” she had declared. “Whether you use it or not, the troika is yours, forever. And if you continue to reject it, then I shall feel rejected, and pout. My brother does not love me sufficiently to receive tokens of my affection.”

  Now it was Petya Orlov, the dour-faced little printer, who sat on the driver’s stoop of the troika and guided the three thoroughbreds through the Russian countryside. He was wearing three overcoats, the last one made of sheepskin with a fleece lining, and high felt boots. Covering his knees was a heavy blanket from Mathilde de Gunzburg’s closets. Inside the carriage sat Anna, with Ivan’s arm around her to keep her warmer, and on the seat facing them, the thin schoolteacher, Lolya, and the sacks containing their food and the arms destined for the peasants. Now she gave a small, harsh chuckle at the thought that during these times of strike and crisis, no one had stopped the elegant vehicle. “You are useful after all,” she said to Ivan. “It is not I alone who take you for a burshui.”

  It was only the middle of December, and winter had not yet attacked in full force. But the winds were like small tornadoes, and the horses, terrified, reared more than once as they were blinded by snowdrifts. The roads were bad, sometimes mere tracks. But Petya Orlov knew them well. He headed south toward Novgorod, stopping frequently in small hamlets along the way to distribute arms, shoe the horses, and let them rest, and pausing for nights at larger villages, where one hut would open its doors to him and Lolya, and another to Ivan and Anna. The huts were always alike: one room for an entire family, with a big square earthenware oven to keep them warm.

  Past Tsarskoe Selo, where the Tzar had his Summer Palace, and Pavlosk, where his uncle, the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovitch, had a magnificent residence, the countryside became farmland, now white with snow. Each day, Petya found that he could drive nine miles, even though at times he had to make detours because of bad weather conditions. Anna, her face stinging with cold, huddled near Ivan, who would draw her head upon his shoulder. Nobody spoke much during the drives. Perhaps Lolya was thinking of the peasants, and of their mission, but Anna was so weary and chilled that her mind was as numb as her body.

  When they stopped in the villages, they consumed bowls of potato soup and raw onions with black bread, and Ivan introduced her as his wife. Once, in Lyuban, she whispered to him, “Why does Lolya jeer at us, and detest me so?”

  He shrugged lightly, and pressed her fingertips. “It is an old story, my sweet. Of no importance. Lolya is a very bitter girl, and vindictive.”

  “But why? Have you ever done anything to hurt her?” Anna cried.

  A half-smile passed over his face. “It was very simple, really. Long ago, before I ever met you, she and I were students together, and we shared a few… lonely moments. That is all. Maybe she believes that nothing came of our relationship because she was poor, and I was a Berson. She is wrong. I never pretended to love her, nor she me. But she is angry that I have found another to love, and that you belie your origins and feel a true commitment to our cause. She would prefer to fling your aristocracy in my face—but she cannot, and is galled.”

  Anna’s face whitened, then reddened abruptly. “I cannot understand jealousy,” she said. “If Lolya loved you, she would have found happiness in your joy, even if that joy is shared with another woman. If I lost you, I still would wish for you to have joy. We do not own one another in this world, and love is a selfless emotion.”

  His eyes filled with tears, and softly, she kissed his eyelids and his cheeks. “You are truly my wife,” he murmured.

  And so, in the cold and the worry caused by their grim duties, this journey, with Lolya facing them and Petya as their driver, was their honeymoon. The peasants were kind to them, and smiled upon their clasped hands and whispere
d words of love, seeming to understand the look in their eyes far more than they did Petya’s dry instructions regarding the revolution, and Lolya’s exhortations against the Tzar. They stared with glazed expressions when the little printer distributed weapons and demonstrated how to make them work. “We are cold, our crops lie beneath blankets of snow,” they said with wonder to Anna and Ivan. “What need do we have of weapons, or even of this Duma your companions have discussed?”

  With infinite patience, Ivan explained that the way to a fuller stomach was through elected officials, that Russia’s peasants made up a large majority which needed to be represented, that they possessed the right to demand laws to better their living conditions. “But why the arms?” they asked him tentatively.

  Stiffening himself against his natural peace-loving disposition, he replied, “The workers in our capitals have made their requests known by going on strike. Now the government is afraid not to listen to them. It is your turn. If you accept your lot, and allow yourselves to become dulled with hunger and fatigue, you will never accomplish anything to give yourselves an easier life. The government wanted to issue land grants to you but the gentry has persuaded it to rescind this decision. You must display your strength to turn the tide once more in your direction.”

  But Anna murmured to him, “Your words are those of a University scholar. You must simplify your expressions, my Vanya.” And then, sitting upon the surface of the ovens, her legs crossed beneath her thick skirts, she began to talk, the way that she had spoken as a child to Eusebe the water carrier and to the other peasants of Mohilna. It was not rhetoric, not exhortation. She spoke calmly, sometimes flaring into momentary anger, but she was not self-righteous or political. The peasants knew that she was one of them.

  Sometimes, during the first nights of their journey, she cried in her sleep, dreaming of her father. Ivan held her tightly against him then.

  Although it seemed to her that they had left St. Petersburg months before, they crossed the frozen Volkhna River in ten days. “We shall be in Novgorod in a day or two,” Petya announced to them. “And then we shall meet up with other groups, and with the Novgorod leaders.”

  But Anna thought: Is that all the distance we have traveled? When the railroads were running, it took only a single day to go from the capital to Novgorod. She shivered, and looked out the window of the troika. An immensity of whiteness faced her, flat and bleak. And she thought: I love you, my Russia, I love all of you, your spaces and your forests alike. Papa loved you too. Why is it then that we oppose each other on your behalf? She felt cold and unwashed, and drained of emotion.

  The telegram was delivered to a startled Mathilde during the midday meal. When she opened it, her fingers trembled. As she read David’s message, her face blanched, and she fell back into her chair. The piece of paper fell to the floor, and Gino squirmed near her, his eager young features scrutinizing her. “Who’s it from, who’s it from?” he demanded in his boyish tones. Yuri rose, and placed strong arms around Mathilde’s shoulders. “What is it?” he asked.

  But she could not reply. Only Ossip saw Johanna de Mey pick up the telegram and run her eyes over its contents, then pocket it noiselessly. It was she whose voice now came, crisp and decisive: “Come, children. We must all begin to pack at once. We are returning to Petersburg.”

  In the bedlam that followed, Sonia clung to her older brother, and when Johanna ushered them from their mother’s presence, Ossip spoke to Sonia in his calm voice, quieting her fears with little jokes. She did as she was told, packing her clothes, and helping Gino. But all the while her restless gaze ran back to Ossip, and she did not hear the smaller boy’s exclamations. Her heart constricted in the fear that their father had died. Nothing could dispel this vision from her mind.

  Anna did not know that the majority of Russian liberals had accepted the Tzar’s manifesto of October 30, and his further explanation as to the formation of a Duma. She had not realized that their backing would give the Tzar sufficient strength to finally control the second railroad strike that had placed St. Petersburg in virtual isolation from the end of November to the middle of December. She believed, as did her companions, that the city would exist without rails at least until the New Year. But her grandfather, Baron Horace de Gunzburg, was one of the first to learn of the strike’s end. He was still a major investor in the Russian railways, and possessed a network of intelligence that could supply him with information almost upon demand.

  Dulled by the wintry journey south, Ivan had not thought that his troika might have been noticed. When Baron Horace began his inquiries concerning the disappearance of his granddaughter, it was not long before he put together the fact that Alia’s brother possessed certain revolutionary connections. But the railroad was still out, and the old Baron, above all, wished to avoid alerting the Secret Police to anything that might cause harm to his oldest granddaughter. He sat with his son, David, and the two men smoked their pipes, sharing a tense silence. The old man was astute enough to know how tortured David felt, how he blamed himself for Anna’s disappearance. Though he would never have voiced this to his son, the patriarch blamed the absent Mathilde.

  When the trains began to move once more, it was only a matter of days before several of Baron Horace’s agents picked up the trail of the fugitives. Aron Berson had come to him, his face ashen. “Perhaps they have eloped,” he suggested, wringing his hands. But Horace’s blue eyes silenced him with their icy disdain. Berson did not dare approach David. But even more than he feared Horace or David, Berson feared Mathilde. He knew that she would return soon, and he dreaded facing her.

  Horace’s agents took the first available train to Novgorod, then doubled back to the small village of Netylskiy. They came upon Ivan and Anna as the two were about to head south for the final few miles to the larger city. They seized Anna as gently as possible, but she cried out, kicking them, and called for Vanya. “Your grandfather sent us, Baroness,” they told her respectfully. “You have nothing to fear. But we shall not leave without you.”

  “Then I shall come, too, and we shall stop somewhere and be married,” Ivan stated firmly.

  Anna burst into tears, and kissed his hands. “It does not matter about me,” she said, shaking her head wildly. “But I will not have your life ruined. If you return, they will change you, Vanya! They will make us live their lives! If I return alone—what else can they do but send me away? I would not wish it otherwise. I shall not remain on Russian land enslaved by their ways! In another country, perhaps there will be some peace for me…”

  His arms were about her, and he would not let her go. “You cannot leave my life,” he murmured. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but he was unmindful of them. “I have always wanted you to be my wife! These men will allow us to be married. That is the life I want: a life with you!”

  “But I do not want that! I have told you many times—I shall not marry you, especially not like this, almost by force, to please my family. Nor even to please you, my darling. For one day you would hate me! I would rather go, and have you love me, than cling, and cause you to turn from me later. A banker’s life is not for you. Please, Vanya! Stay here, do what you must—but don’t ever return to St. Petersburg. No, no—don’t talk anymore!”

  She hurled herself away from him, catapulting herself into the arms of one of Horace’s men. They took her by the shoulders and led her toward their carriage, and Ivan followed, screaming incoherently and attempting to grab her from behind. But they kept him from her. He could hear her muffled sobs, which rang pathetically in his ears. A frenzied anger seized him, and he began to shout, but the doors of the carriage were closing. He beat his fists against them. Her tiny face appeared in the window, the brown eyes dilated, her mouth parted, and he felt his face contort with grief, uncomprehending. Then the carriage started off, and he stood in the snow, his tears slowly freezing upon his cheeks, his face numbed with cold.

  He felt someone put thin arms about his body, and a harsh, yet strangely warm female
voice murmured, “Come, Vanya. The troika is ready.” Lolya’s face, with its angular nose and chin, and its beady eyes behind their rimless spectacles, took shape before his eyes. He heard her sigh. “When Russians suffer, their pain is like a roar in the wilderness,” she said softly. And then, pressing his arm: “You don’t have time to suffer. She knew it, too.”

  Sonia thought that she had never spent a stranger New Year’s Eve, waiting in her room for Anna. Johanna had not allowed her to wait in the sitting room, with Mama, Papa, Uncle Sasha, and Grandfather Horace. So she sat on her bed, twisting her handkerchief. Gino had been sent to bed, but Ossip was beside her, stroking her small hand. “I don’t understand at all,” she murmured.

  “Anna was never happy here,” Ossip stated. “Perhaps she could not stand it. We never really knew what she went through, did we?”

  Her sister shook her head mutely. “Vanya Berson must have loved her after all,” Ossip murmured pensively. But Sonia stood up, rejecting him with a jerk of the hand.

  “No!” she cried. “Once I believed him, when he said he loved Anna! But when you love someone, you do not bring shame to that person, you do not tear a family apart. Ossip, have you no honor?”

  He began to chuckle gently. “Oh, Sonitchka, Sonitchka. Will nothing ever make you see the way things really are? You are my little Joan of Arc, my little Bernadette, my Esther. Anna is made of flesh and blood. As for poor Ivan—I myself will not condemn him as everyone else seems to be doing. He simply had ideas of his own.”

  When Anna appeared inside the threshold of her home, she saw the adult members of her family awaiting her. Her grandfather, somewhat stooped, surveyed her from beneath his severe brows, and swiftly, she felt a hatred for him swell within her. She dismissed her uncle as unimportant, with his derisive look that said: The children of my favored brother are not so pure. Her brown eyes, angry and shot with small red veins, moved to her mother, who stood carved in alabaster, her face bloodless, her eyes proud and hurt and haughty. Anna shivered, then turned to her father who stood slightly apart from the rest, his face gray, his cheeks sunken, his eyes filled with sadness and defeat.