The Four Winds of Heaven Page 29

  One evening in early spring, Ossip burst in upon her in her room. His face was ashen, and there were deep purple circles beneath his eyes. Without warning, he threw himself upon her bed, wracked with sobs. Sonia could not see his face, but she dropped her embroidery and rushed to him, propelled by love. She wrapped her arms about his trembling body, and tears sprang to her eyes, spilling over her lashes. She held him, and they cried together without a word. Never had she encountered such despair, except the night of Anna’s return, when her sister had been sent to the widows’ room to sleep. Yet somehow, Ossip’s pain reached even more deeply within her.

  Finally, he sat up, and whispered, “Natasha and her mother have left the country. It’s over, Sonia.”

  “She refused you?” his sister asked gently. But now she was outraged. “I thought that she had promised herself to you!”

  “She made only one error, and that was to speak to her father. We warned her not to—both Volodia and I. But she did not want to wait or hide. He has sent her to South America, with her mother. He would not let Volodia know where they are, for fear that he would tell me.”

  “But she will be back, Ossip! She will return, and then you can arrange matters between you! Papa is not made of stone! Papa will arrange things with Count Tagantsev! As long as Natasha still loves you, there is no reason to lose hope, Ossip! No reason!”

  He shook his head and turned aside. “It’s even worse than I said, Sonitchka. The Count has arranged a marriage for her when she does return. There is no way for me to reach her in time. There is a Prince Kurdukov, who is vaguely related to the Tagantsevs, who wants to marry her. The Count has sealed an agreement with him today—”

  “But that is medieval! And Natasha does not have to marry him! Come now, Ossip! You will be at the University, and will have a brilliant career ahead of you. The Count will not turn you away, and Papa will help you. Grandfather, too! All you need now is hope, and courage. And hard work, for you must soon pass your entrance examinations, and receive your gold medal! Think of the future, Ossip! This will work itself out. I believe in that. I do!”

  “Life does not work out for Jews,” Ossip muttered, his mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “You used to say, when you were a child, that we were the chosen people. Yes, I suppose that’s correct enough: chosen to be despised, and beaten. I would like to give up, and die, Sonia. There is no reason to continue. Yet I am too much of a coward to kill myself. Isn’t that ludicrous?”

  He began to laugh, hysterically, falling on his back upon the bed, tears rolling heedlessly down his cheeks. It was the most horrible sound Sonia had ever heard. She began to shiver. “I shall call Mama,” she whispered. “Maybe a sedative... a glass of Papa’s brandy…”

  But Ossip reached out and grabbed her by the arm. “I do not need my mother,” he said ironically. “Right now, there is too much hatred in my heart for her. Why did she allow me to be born?”

  “Ossip!” Sonia cried. But he had started to laugh again, and shocked, she took a step back.

  “You may as well bring the entire bottle!” he said. “Papa’s brandy, remember? But not Mama. She isn’t any fun: she is too serious, and we need to joke, and to laugh! Bring a servant or two—Marfa, and the little wench, Katia! That one looks like a nice healthy girl, who could take on ten men at once! Don’t you think so, Sonitchka?”

  His sister backed away from his maniacal laughter, horrified, nearly paralyzed. She reached the door, but she could not leave the room, nor utter a word.

  In May, Ossip and Volodia were to take their examinations, and so few weeks remained till then that Volodia, under pretext of studying, ceased his evening visits to the Gunzburg apartment. No one spoke of Natasha. Sonia had told Mathilde what had occurred, but no words were exchanged between mother and son. Ossip, gaunt and white, shut himself in his quarters and attacked his books. Mute pain was evident in his eyes, which were forever rimmed with red. Sonia brought him tidbits at night, and sat by his bed, embroidering. But they did not break the silence between them. She sat and ran her needle expertly over the linen, and she thought of the Tagantsev twins who had entered her life and Ossip’s, and who had wrought havoc there, like a sandstorm in the steppes. She saw Volodia’s quiet strength, his solid body, his dexterous fingers upon the piano, and she bent her face over her work, berating herself for dwelling on an impossible situation.

  Then the qualifying examinations began. The great thaws had come to the capital, and Ossip studied. He alone among his friends felt the pressure. For Volodia, Petri, Botkin, and Sokolov were Eastern Orthodox and did not need to enter the University on a quota. The first three days of examinations went well, and Ossip returned home with “fives” and “five pluses.” Not a single “four” to mar his record. Only one day was left. He was confident, for he was fluent in French and German, the languages on which he was to receive final questioning. But during the evening, he knocked on his sister’s door, and when he entered Sonia gasped in fear. His skin was flushed, there were bags beneath his feverish eyes, and his teeth chattered.

  “I am ill, Sonia,” he whispered. He lowered his collar, and turned his head so that the nape of his neck was exposed. An enormous abscess stood out like a yellow mountain below his hair. He sat down beside her, and she pressed her small cool hand upon his brow. She withdrew it quickly.

  “You have a high fever,” she said. “You must go to bed, and let us telephone the doctor. Here—lie down at once.”

  “No, I cannot,” he replied. “Tomorrow I must pass the last tests. I cannot fail. After all this work—I cannot put them off or I shall lose an entire year, and have to repeat the exams next spring. You must promise me—not a word to Mama! Not until tomorrow afternoon, when the examinations are over!” he said, adding, as she started to protest, “You cannot let me lose that gold medal. I beg you, Sonia. Keep quiet about this.”

  She took him back to his room, and settled him into bed with warm milk and honey. She sat by his side and asked him questions about German literature, and when he closed his eyes with fever and exhaustion, she quietly tiptoed out of the room. She was assailed by doubts. The abscess—what did it mean? She hovered by her mother’s bedroom, thinking: He may die… and then, bravely, she returned to her room. She had given her sacred word. Natasha was no longer his. Could she remove the hope of a gold medal from her brother?

  Throughout the next day she was so anxious she could not eat. Her mother thought it strange that every time she tried to speak to her, Sonia found an excuse to leave the room, gazing at the floor. Then, when Ossip returned from school, Sonia bolted frantically toward the door crying, “Well, Ossip?”

  Ossip stumbled into the sitting room, his hair matted with perspiration, his eyes bulging with fever. Mathilde rose, her hand to her breast. “My God,” she breathed.

  Ossip swayed, and his sister pushed a chair under him. But he was smiling. “I have my gold,” he said. “Can you believe it? This fall, I can enter the Faculty of Far Eastern Studies. Papa… will be... pleased…” His voice trailed off, and he fell against the side of the chair in a faint.

  “Telephone the doctor, Mama,” Sonia said immediately. “He has an abscess the size of a fist on his neck.”

  It was the middle of the afternoon. Mathilde and Sonia took Ossip in the landau to the best surgeon in St. Petersburg. Ossip’s face was green, and when the horses missed a cobblestone he groaned with pain. Mathilde held his hand, Sonia had his head on her shoulder.

  When the surgeon had examined Ossip, he turned to Mathilde. “I shall have to admit him to my clinic tomorrow to remove the abscess. But this is far more serious than it may seem. What is your son’s medical history, my dear Baroness?”

  Mathilde regarded the man, her eyes enormous in her white face. “My God,” she murmured, “it was the doctor’s prediction! He is twenty—maybe he will die this time!”

  “What prediction, Mama?” Sonia questioned anxiously. She faced her mother and held her by the shoulders. “Mama! Tell us!”<
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  As though in a dream, Mathilde began to weep. “The physician who diagnosed Ossip’s illness seventeen years ago,” she mumbled. “My son had Pott’s disease. The doctor said it would recur, when he turned twenty…”

  “We shall hospitalize him at once, without a moment’s delay,” the surgeon stated. He rang for his nurse.

  Sonia and Mathilde looked at each other, and silently they fell into each other’s arms. “I have let him kill himself,” Sonia said with dazed wonder.

  The surgeon operated upon Ossip, but the wound would not close. Ossip hovered between life and death, his sister and his mother waiting outside his door, his father and brother coming each morning and each evening. Finally he was able to sit up, and three weeks later, to leave the clinic. But, to his chagrin, he was ordered away from St. Petersburg, where the air was miasmic.

  “We can send him to my sister’s summer house, in Normandy,” Johanna suggested to Mathilde, who sat in rigid silence by her son. “I can go with him. You are not strong enough to take care of him, but I am an accomplished nurse. Let us go, tomorrow! He will be by the seashore, and will grow stronger. And then, you and the Baron can decide upon his future!”

  “Your sister?” Mathilde echoed, in a trance.

  “Yes! The one who has recently married. My family will help me to care for him.”

  Mathilde shook her head. “No,” she said firmly. “I will go with him. If it becomes too arduous, I shall hire a professional nurse. Thank you, Johanna. Ossip will go to Normandy, but I must be with him, every day. I must see to him, watch over his improvement with my own eyes. Please. Help me to pack, and write to your sister. I shall be forever grateful.”

  Johanna de Mey placed a firm arm upon Mathilde’s shoulder. “We shall go together,” she asserted. “I could not allow you to go through this alone. You need my strength.”

  So, together, the women took Ossip to Normandy. After several weeks, he wrote his sister: “I shall return by fall, to enter the University. Have you seen Volodia?”

  Sonia read between the lines. He wants to come home in time to find Natasha, she thought. She would have come back by then from her voyage… Perhaps, perhaps, something might be arranged, before she married Prince Kurdukov…. Ossip was holding onto that thought with all his might, she knew. It was his reason for staying alive.

  But Mathilde had written David: “The wound will not heal. He will not be able to come home for a long, long time. The doctor here has told me, in confidence, that he will need bracing sea air for at least two years. What are we to do?”

  And so, in early June, David said to his daughter, “This fall your brother will remain with Johanna’s family. Then, I have arranged for him to travel to Yokohama, where my friend, Moise Mess, runs his coal enterprise. Moise needs an assistant, and Ossip has always wanted to visit Japan. He will go by cargo ship, starting in Odessa and going through the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and along China’s coast. He will be at sea for two whole months, and will work in Yokohama, which is itself a port. The voyage will do him good, and he will enjoy his job. He will return having mastered the intricacies of the Japanese language, and that will place him at the head of his class at the Faculty for Far Eastern Studies.”

  “But then, we shall not see him for several years!” Sonia exclaimed.

  “It is the price that we must pay for your brother’s good health,” David replied.

  Sonia was overwhelmed with despair. Life without Ossip... It seemed impossible. Then, a week later, her friend Nina came to visit her. As the two girls sat drinking tea and munching on crumpets, Nina said, “I have news, Sonia. An important society wedding has taken place. I thought that it would interest you, for it concerns that family with whom you spent last summer.”

  “The Tagantsevs?” Sonia cried. Her pulse began to race. “Nicolai. The older brother. Correct?”

  Nina smiled sweetly. “No. It was the young girl. What did you tell me her name was? You never did seem to take to her, actually. What was her name?”

  “Natasha,” Sonia said softly.

  “Yes! Natalia. They say it was a splendid ceremony. The Tzar and Tzarina were present. She married a much older man—a Prince Somebody. I am not very good at names, Sonitchka.”

  But Sonia sat staring at the wall, all color drained from her face. She began to weep.

  “Sonitchka! Have I hurt your feelings?” Nina asked anxiously.

  “No,” Sonia murmured, “it was not you. I was merely thinking of... of...” But she could not proceed. Her cheeks were flooded with tears, and she held her handkerchief to her lips. “However will I tell him?” she whispered.

  “Tell him? Tell whom?” Nina demanded.

  “It does not matter,” Sonia said brokenly. “But I shall not give him the news. He would not survive it now!”

  He will go to Japan, and get well, she thought grimly. Then, when he returns, I shall tell him the news. Perhaps by then he will have met someone else in Japan. Moise Mess has a niece… She turned to Nina and suddenly brightened. “Ninotchka!” she cried. “I had not thought to ask you—but Ossip will be going to Japan, and he will be homesick. Will you write to him while he is gone?”

  Her friend blushed. “But he has not asked me to,” she said.

  “He was too ill! And before that he worried so about his gold medal! I am certain—certain!—that if he had remained healthy he would now be asking you to wait for him until his studies are over. I am not asking you in his stead. When he returns, he can do so in person. But if you care for him, you must let him understand, by writing... Or else he will think you interested in someone else, and will not press his suit when he comes home!”

  “All right,” Nina assented.

  Sonia brought her friend’s hands to her lips, and kissed them. “You are so good,” she declared, and poured them a new glass of tea. But her hand was still shaking.

  Ossip had been sent to Normandy so quickly, his health so precarious, that his friends from the gymnasium had been unable to see him off. Now, one by one, Petri, Botkin, and Sokolov arrived at the Gunzburg apartment, and Sonia and David greeted them and received the good-byes that were meant for Ossip. All were planning to enter the University in the autumn: Petri to the Faculty of Letters, Botkin to History; Sokolov planned to become a chemist. Only Sokolov had been granted a silver medal; the others, like Ossip, had received gold ones, as had their companion, Volodia Tagantsev. David congratulated them warmly, for he was a profound admirer of scholarship and academic excellence. It hurt him to think of Ossip’s disappointment in being held back once again because of illness.

  The three young men expressed sympathy for their friend, and wrote down his address. When Botkin came, he was carrying a small flat package, and he took Sonia aside in the sitting room and bade her open it. She unwrapped it and stood back, tears coming to her eyes. It was a portrait of the five friends, Ossip, Volodia, Sokolov, Petri, and Botkin. “My father painted it from memory,” the young man said. “It was to be my graduation present. Now I want Ossip to have it, so that we may remain at his side even in Normandy and Japan.” Sergei Botkin, nephew of the Tzar’s physician, was also the son of Mikhail Botkin, an artist of great repute. His name was signed in the bottom left corner.

  After the news of Natasha’s wedding, Sonia hesitated, and held back from sending the painting. She took it to her bedroom, and propped it by her secretary, near the etching of Gino that Anna had left there when she had gone to Switzerland. She would try not to look upon those faces, for she did not want to stare into the velvet brown eyes of Volodia, who had not come with the others. And yet she did not blame him. She understood his reasons. He had no way of knowing that she had not written to her brother about Prince Kurdukov.

  Now and then, as though drawn by a magnet, her gray eyes would seek Volodia’s face in its frame, and she would feel a surge of blood rising to her temples. But she raised her chin, and forced herself to distract her troubled thoughts. She was determined to put him ou
t of her existence.

  Then Mathilde and Johanna returned. Ossip was sufficiently recovered that he no longer needed constant care and nursing, and Johanna’s family planned to remain in Normandy for the rest of the summer, until Ossip departed for the Far East. Mathilde had not wished to stay away from her two younger children. Summer vacation plans had been delayed because of Ossip’s critical condition but now, in July, Mathilde wanted to take Sonia and Gino to see her parents, and their sister, Anna. She also intended to take them for a short farewell visit to Normandy.

  The remainder of the summer went quickly by. Baron Yuri and his wife, Ida, had rented a mansion in the Black Forest of Austria, and it was there that Sonia saw her sister, Anna, for the first time since their separation. Had Johanna not been absent, visiting her own family in Normandy, Anna would clearly not have come. She had brought along her friend, Dalia Hadjani, to meet the Gunzburgs.

  When Mathilde first saw her daughter standing in front of her, in a suit of rich brown linen in the fashion of the day, she was somehow surprised. There was an awkward moment while they looked at each other mutely. Anna’s eyes seemed to be asking whether she would now be unquestionably accepted, while for Mathilde there was the fear of rejection and, at the same time, refusal to be cowed into submission by her own child. It was Dalia Hadjani, the outsider, who broke the silence. She stepped toward Mathilde and took her hands, forcing her to look away from Anna to herself. Mathilde saw the black mourning clothes, the elegance, the handsome exotic face, and then she heard the gentle, well-modulated voice of the Persian saying to her: “Madame de Gunzburg, it is so kind of you to receive me on such short notice.”

  “Not at all,” Mathilde replied. She felt drugged by Dalia’s quiet presence, which forced politeness to the forefront of her own consciousness. If she allowed herself to go through the right motions, then she would not have to deal with Anna. “It is we who are delighted that you have come,” she remarked, and smiled. “Please sit down, Madame Hadjani.”