The Four Winds of Heaven Page 41

  In speaking of her daughter Tatiana’s impending marriage, Baroness Rosa de Gunzburg told an acquaintance in Petrograd: “No, they are not at all distingue, my dear, and there’s no doubt that Tanitchka will add luster to their family tree. But don’t forget that they provide sugar to our army, and stand to make a considerable profit from this. I have heard it mentioned in high circles that in this sugar campaign alone they will sell seven million rubles’ worth to the troops. Seven million rubles!”

  “But surely you will not have a grand wedding, because of the state of our nation?” the acquaintance asked.

  Rosa arched her fine black eyebrows. “We have but one daughter,” she declared. “Would you have me give her away wearing beggar’s rags?”

  Chapter 15

  In the Baltic Provinces, bone-tired troops engaged in valiant battles as well as flustered skirmishes with the enemy, sometimes winning a fort, more frequently losing their hold over some ground that they had gained the day before. Gino was strangely exhilarated by this experience, for he was young and at the heart of the action. It no longer embittered him that he had lost his insignia. Starting out as a simple soldier, he had discovered that the sturdy young peasants who shouldered their rifles next to him were more like him than his mother had educated him to assume. Soon he was promoted to corporal, then rapidly to sergeant. He knew that he would rise no further, but he accepted this now with equanimity. Let it be, he thought, there is much that I can accomplish as a noncommissioned warrior. Perhaps more, with these few good people.

  He now had eight men under him, all peasants. They called him “Baron,” for Evgeni Davidovitch seemed too complex, and a more familiar appellation, though frequently used in army ranks, seemed to them out of place. And yet, if he felt superior at all, it was only in respect to his learning. Often in the evenings he would gather his men around a campfire and while they ate their meager ration of wheat and onions, he would teach them geography and history. They, in turn, told him about their wives and sisters, their farms, their crops, their gripes against their district governments, the Zemstvos. But when they talked about defeat, or the futility of this war, he would become fierce, and would cow them. Yet he could not explain why this war was so necessary, only that it was.

  The men were tired, and supplies were not always adequate. Frequently Gino noticed that the enemy was better furnished, that their guns were more recent models, that a strange, burning gas could decimate the Russians in one swift release. Nevertheless, he urged his small band to action. He was fascinated by his colonel, a deeply religious man, who would give the call to battle and then, as he applied the spurs to his horse, would cross himself and murmur a prayer, sometimes in the midst of flying debris and under the roar of a cannon. The colonel was never wounded. “There must be something to his faith,” Gino said to one of the young men under his command, Vassya, a cowherd from the Crimea.

  “But your God is not the same as his,” Vassya retorted with bewilderment.

  Gino smiled. “I think that under fire, God, the God of all of us, forgets these details.”

  In the spring of 1915, Russia was attempting to hold on to Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, and was even threatened in its own Byelorussia, and in the Ukraine, which wanted independence from the rest of the nation. The Germans were everywhere, giving encouragement to the separatists in the Ukraine. One of Gino’s soldiers was from that province and in the trenches he would moan, returning fire with slow movements that threatened his life and that of his companions. Gino upbraided him. “That’s it, Gorik!” he shouted, his eyes flashing. “No rations tonight if you aren’t with us all the way. Do a job well, or don’t do it at all. If you want to leave, then choose outright the path of desertion!” But the youth trembled, and looked away from his sergeant. The idea of being deprived of food was more overwhelming than his feelings of provincial loyalty.

  One morning, Gino was instructed by his captain to attempt to locate the enemy headquarters, which were known to be nearby. He took Vassya with him, and in the scarred countryside they proceeded with caution. The captain had chosen Gino because of his extraordinary capacity for long walks, an endurance that he had developed during his year in Hanover. He also knew that Gino spoke fluent German, and could bring back essential information. The two young men slid from bush to stump, pausing each time fire rang out in the distance.

  All at once, pinpricks of alertness arose along Gino’s spine, and he reached out and touched his companion without turning to look at him. To their right stood what appeared to be an abandoned farmhouse. Gino bit the nail of his index finger, and breathed as silently as he knew how. Something was not quite as it should have been. Very slowly, he crawled on his belly, camouflaging his khaki uniform between bits of underbrush. He could sense Vassya’s progress behind him as they moved like slithering snakes, perspiring in fear.

  Suddenly they saw a slim figure emerge from the farmhouse, look about, adjust his helmet, and walk to the small well in front of the barn. Gino looked at Vassya, and the young man nodded: the figure in the distance was wearing a German helmet. They waited as the enemy soldier pumped some water into a can, and walked back to the farmhouse. They heard voices, crisp and merry, as the door opened to readmit him. There were at least a handful of men inside, but maybe more, maybe as many as two dozen. Gino and Vassya made their way back to their own camp, and Gino told the captain about the farmhouse.

  “I want you to return there, with your squad, and approach with caution. If there is only a handful—then you can take them. But if there are too many, send one of the men back to me and we shall reinforce you,” the captain ordered. Gino saluted and gathered his group together. He explained the situation quickly. Then he took the lead, and sandwiched his men between himself and Vassya, who brought up the rear. They duplicated their previous trip, keeping themselves well hidden. Now and then Gino’s arm would reach out to forcibly put down a head, to silence a whine or a whisper. They reached the farmhouse at noon, with a blazing sun above their heads. Gino made a motion with his arm, signaling the men to spread themselves out around the farmhouse, covering a side and a back entrance. Then he threw a hand grenade toward the main door.

  From the moment he released the weapon, Gino’s mind was filled with conflicting sensations. He experienced a total, gut-contracting fear, and for an instant he did not know what to do. Then, calm emerged, the fear receded, and excitement began to penetrate his veins. “Keep hidden!” he called out, as a volley of rifle shots was aimed from the farmhouse. A machine gun protruded from an attic window, and faces appeared surrounding it. Gino shouldered his gun and fired, and glass shattered. A figure toppled like a dismembered scarecrow from an upper story. His men followed suit, aiming from their hiding places. He thought, licking his dry lips: Anna was right, it is the Russian peasant who is most underestimated. They are not losing their heads, not even the simplest of them. He fired again, carefully.

  How long the skirmish lasted he could not tell, but suddenly Vassya was by his side, whispering, “We’re giving out. Shall I go back for the captain?”

  Gino thought of his group, of the eight men who trusted him with their lives. He nodded tersely, and Vassya slithered off like a desert animal, quick and noiseless. Gino threw a grenade toward a window, and heard a cry. Someone had been hit. But what about his own men? Were they hurt? Were they dead? Fire came from his left, and he sighed. At least one of them was all right.

  They held out until the captain arrived with two other sergeants and their fresh mounted squads, and with them they brought the field artillery drawn by very tired horses. The captain crouched by Gino’s side and placed a hand upon his shoulder. “This is good,” he muttered. “Very good indeed.” He ordered the cannon to be fired. But as Gino turned, he saw the men gingerly carry Kostya away.

  Within minutes of the first cannon fire, the front door was opened, and a white flag, suspended from a rifle butt, was held out toward the Russians. “Come out, those that are alive!” the capt
ain shouted. He turned to Gino and asked him to translate the message. The young man cleared his throat, found it constricted, and began to deliver the words.

  To his great surprise, the door creaked, and one youth, tall, blond, and very pale, appeared in the archway. He was bareheaded, and clutched his stomach. A surge of compassion knotted Gino’s nerves. He half-stepped toward the apparition but his captain stopped him. “How many are you?” he demanded, and repeated the question in halting German.

  The pale young man fell to his knees, and whispered something. Gino moved to him, put a hand on his arm, and said gently, “How many?”

  “I am the lieutenant of record,” the young wounded soldier replied, and a light flickered in his blue eyes as he regarded Gino. “There were... two dozen of us. Took us... by surprise. Headquarters for the day, about to move on, awaiting orders...” He made the feeblest of motions toward the farmhouse: “Inside... six wounded...” he whispered, and gagged on a flow of bile.

  The captain had reached them, and now requested Gino’s translation. But all at once feverish hands seized Gino, and the young wounded soldier, blood trickling from his parted lips, spoke urgently. “You—” he said to Gino, “you speak... excellent German. You ... are a gentleman. I am going to die. Please, help me. I want... to send a message to my parents...”

  Gino did not even search his captain’s face for approval. He reached inside his coat and removed a crumpled and soiled strip of paper, and a pencil stub. “I shall be glad to write the words for you,” he answered. “My name is Evgeni—Eugene—de Gunzburg, and I shall forward your letter.”

  “Thank you,” the German mumbled. Gino sat down beside him and placed the boy’s head upon his lap. The young soldier murmured, “I am the only son of General von Falkenhayn, and I am nineteen. My father is fighting somewhere in Russia, I am not certain exactly where. You will have to send this to my mother, in Germany.” He gave Gino an address, then began the dictation of his message. Gino bent his face toward the paper and wrote rapidly: “My dear parents, I am fatally wounded and shall die in a short while. Please do not allow this to break your hearts, for I am dying for the fatherland, and love you dearly.” The page blurred before Gino’s eyes, and he placed the pencil in the limp fingers of the young man. Closing his own strong fingers over that cold hand, he guided it in a final signature.

  The blue eyes gleamed toward Gino. A smile cracked the young face. “You have been good to me,” the dying man murmured. He gasped painfully on Gino’s lap. “I... thank you... with all my heart.” And his hand fell away from Gino’s. The brilliant blue of his eyes stared at the Russian, and Gino drew the lids down over them and slowly removed the boy’s head from his knees, placing it carefully upon the moist farm earth. He folded the paper in his hands, putting it in his coat pocket. Then he dropped his head into his upturned palms and began to sob.

  It was Vassya who came to him and touched his arm. “That was a kind thing you did, Baron,” he said tentatively.

  But Gino pushed him roughly aside. “What ‘kind thing’?” he cried. “He was nineteen years old, the same as I—and I have no idea if it was my own bullet that killed him!”

  “If not him, Baron, then you,” Vassya replied. He shook his head mournfully. Gino gazed at him, stunned, dazed, then followed his resolute steps back to the remainder of the troop. Gurneys were being sent into the farmhouse for the German wounded. Gino’s mind flashed with the vision of little Kostya.

  “I shall recommend you for the Cross of St. George,” the captain told him. “What you accomplished was of utmost bravery and resourcefulness.”

  “Vassya stated it better than I, sir,” Gino answered with bitterness. “It was my men against the enemy. There was little choice in what I could have done.”

  “Nevertheless, it was a splendid display of action,” the captain retorted.

  But Gino, head bent, was thinking of something else. He would have to send that letter, somehow, to the boy’s mother, the wife of one of the top Prussian generals. How could he, a Russian soldier on the battlefront, achieve this miracle?

  In Geneva, Sonia had been contacted by a young woman from the Red Cross who received and sent letters to and from the occupied territories where no other mail was permitted. Now that she had become an expert in the sewing of pajamas, she did this at night until the dawn’s pink rays pierced the sky. She only worked at the milk cooperative once a week, and began going to help at the Red Cross. It was more important, she thought, for her to help transcribe letters for the sensitive eyes of the censors, than for her to wash bottles. Any young woman might do that, whereas she had been approached because of her fluency in Russian, French, English, and German. She might accomplish more work than someone who knew fewer languages, and therefore she felt duty-bound to perform this task.

  She would mount the steps to a large hall where long tables were spaced about, with seven or eight chairs around each table. Young girls and old women sat diligently copying missives destined for those in Poland or the east of France, leaving out lines that might be considered compromising. She also did the reverse, checking through letters written by those living under enemy domination. Sonia had a clear, even script, and day in and day out she would sit at her place, her posture erect, her right hand racing across pages and pages of words that she copied and edited, eventually without even comprehending them. Like her sewing, the work had become a routine to her.

  Sonia had no free time, and therefore no time to think, as she had done in the kitchen of the milk cooperative. She merely labored, under the fearful gaze of Mathilde. Whenever her mother would offer her tea and biscuits, she would shake her head with its coiled black tresses, and reply, “It’s all right, Mama. I’m not hungry.” Sometimes she would sit at her rented piano, but her mother knew that she was doing so out of a sense of obligation toward her, and not from any inner joy or desire. Clasping her hands to her breast, Mathilde cried out one day, “How like your father you have become! Duty, duty. Is there no life for the likes of you?”

  Sonia merely smiled, and arched her brows. She was hardly accustomed to bursts of emotion from her placid mother. She looked into her mother’s eyes and said gently, “During such times the world has need of people like Papa and me. Or at least like me. Papa is a brilliant man, a linguist, a scholar, a diplomat, and his talents are always in demand. I am simply a worker, who does what needs to be done. There is no time now for joy, or even for a life of my own. Later, when the war is over, I shall dance, and sing duets, and eat delicacies. But now I cannot. I suppose you are right, that I am obsessed by duty. But I am what I am.” She thought wryly of her beloved brother, Ossip. How like their mother he was! Ossip, so gay and charming, would now have found his Sonitchka an unbearable bore, as Mathilde probably did. But it could not be helped.

  If Sonia spent so much time away from the Pension de la Grande Bretagne, a small part of her reason was selfish. Johanna’s nervousness was making life even more unpleasant than the circumstances warranted. With age, Mathilde had grown plumper, more gray, but her skin was still smooth, her figure agreeable. Johanna, on the other hand, had lost that marvelous supple slenderness, the full breast, and had become thinner with the years, so that she now resembled a high voltage wire, taut and sinewy. Her eyes were the same, almond-shaped and aquamarine, and her hair was still gold, but now it, too, was thin. She made a big to-do over her nursing duties, and complained endlessly of fatigue each morning. If she noticed Sonia’s loss of weight or her pallor, she failed to mention them to Mathilde. In fact, she spent her time with Mathilde fretting, sighing, pacing the carpeted sitting room, picking up a book and then thrusting it down impatiently.

  One day at breakfast, Mathilde broached a familiar subject with her friend: she wanted to leave Switzerland to return to Russia where she belonged. But Johanna flew into a rage. She berated Mathilde, who sat eating her meal: “You think that you could do some good by merely being in the same country as Gino—that’s nonsense! As for Ossip, you moan
about missing him, but a young man such as he has better things to do than spend time with his mother. And then, the way you carry on about Sonia! She is strong, and willing. One thing I have noticed about Sonia —she only does what she wants, the selfish girl, and to the devil with other people! Aren’t you at all happy to be here with me—away from your household worries?”

  Mathilde carefully swallowed, then dabbed at her lower lip with a lace napkin. “I long to return home, Johanna,” she stated. Dear God, she added silently, now I would even welcome David and his obsessions, his religious and patriotic fervor… She sighed and said, “These are strenuous times. You do not need to accompany me if the voyage will upset you.”

  But at the idea of such a trip without her, Johanna shrieked with anger and terror. Mathilde took her calmly into the bathroom and sponged her forehead with cold water. “It was only for your sake that I suggested it,” she murmured, her sapphire eyes gleaming with tears. “You are now in a neutral nation. Clearly you have less reason than I to wish to return to Petersburg—Petrograd.”

  Some days later, the pension bellboy delivered a letter from the Russian front, which Mathilde tore open with trembling fingers. Her mouth, as she read the news, formed a small circle. “This is extraordinary, indeed,” she commented. Turning to her daughter, she said, “Gino sends me a letter dictated to him by the dying son of a Prussian general, von Falkenhayn. He writes: ‘Mama dear, Upon my honor I promised this boy that I would make this message reach his mother, in Germany. No one can help me but you, who are in a neutral zone and can send mail anywhere. Here is the address of Frau von Falkenhayn.’ But I can’t write to this woman, can I? I, who am not only an enemy but a Jewess as well? I fear she would find me indelicate, and her grief would be all the greater, wouldn’t it?”