The Four Winds of Heaven Read online

  “Not that way! Never that way!” the Count cried.

  “No, naturally, Nicolai, my dear. But as a human being. And, you must admit, a fine gentleman.” Her hand reached toward her husband’s, across the embroidered tablecloth. “My dear,” she said, “the young man has been arrested, and the Gunzburgs are beside themselves with worry. No one knows why, but he has been incarcerated at the Fortress. Would you—for the sake of the son we both cherished—would you go to see him, help him in his trouble? He must be innocent, Nicolai.”

  The Count withdrew his hand, and his eyes flashed malevolently at his wife. Now another specter hung between them, that of Volodia. A sudden quick pain constricted the Count’s heart. He turned aside. “For his sake— not yours!” he shouted hoarsely. Tears of gratitude and relief moistened his wife’s eyelids. She sighed, and beckoned the servant for some paper upon which to write her answer to Mathilde.

  In the vestibule, Anton, the servant, nearly collided with a tall, elegant young woman in a plumed hat, who was saying with a burst of gaiety to the small girl behind her, “Oh, come now, Larissa! You will not, will not beg Grandmother for anything, not so much as a sweet—” But she halted by the open front door when she saw the servant with his note. “Anton!” she exclaimed in surprise. “You look somewhat in shock! What is this paper? Is anything wrong?”

  The servant bowed his head. “It is not my business, Princess,” he replied.

  “Then give me that!” she said, extending her pretty hand with its elongated fingers. She laughed, and he passed her the note from her mother to the Baroness. She read the few lines, her color fading, put a hand to her throat, and blinked several times. Then, grabbing Anton by the arm, she began to shake him. “He is at the Fortress?” she demanded. “You are certain of this?”

  “Yes, Princess. The Countess spoke of it.”

  Now the little girl, tossing back her black curls, tugged insistently upon the jacket of her mother’s suit. “I can smell jam, Mama,” she said.

  The young woman said to the servant, “Tell my coachman to wait, Anton. I have an errand I must run.” Then, straightening her hat upon her head, she took a deep breath and followed the child into the breakfast room.

  Ossip sat in the dank cell, his hands crossed behind him, and thought for the hundredth time: This is insane. Did I, while in Poland, stay at the home of someone suspect to the government? He chewed on the inside of his lower lip, perplexed.

  Outside, the turnkey, at heart a jovial workman who was quite taken by this elegant, slender man of twenty-nine, with his gentleman’s attire, came to the door and said, through the grill panel, “There is somebody of great importance nosing around your business, Excellency. Do you know a Senator Count Something-or-Other?”

  Ossip grew very pale. “Senator Count Tagantsev, perhaps?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes, that’s it! Gentleman wouldn’t see you, though. But he sits in the Senate, doesn’t he? Friend of the Tzar?”

  “He is admitted at Court. What did he want?”

  “Well, here’s what’s odd, if you’ll pardon me, Excellency. He wanted to know, same as you, why you were here. Said he wanted to... help. But then, why d’you suppose he didn’t come to see you? Seems many’s the ones who tried to, starting with your own father. And the Minister of Education himself. But this Count—they allowed him to see the records, but he didn’t want to see you in person. Strange, no?”

  “Not really,” Ossip replied. He smiled sardonically. “The Count particularly detests me, and the feeling is quite mutual, I assure you, Popov. In fact, if he does succeed in getting me out, I shall be at pains what to do. Going to thank him would cause us both unbearable embarrassment. But then again, he wouldn’t receive me.”

  “Then why is he helping?”

  Ossip shrugged. “His God may know; mine doesn’t,” he said lightly. But he thought: Mama! He was filled at once with incredible bitterness and with a glimmer of hope. Oh, to get out of here, to return home! But to have to owe a debt to her father, to the man who had ruined their lives... It was like handing a glass of vinegar to a man dying of thirst.

  It was not long, however, before a prison official arrived, and Popov unlocked the door of Ossip’s cell. The young man nearly jumped to his feet. His clothing was rumpled and he had a six days’ growth of beard upon his face. But his eyes, sapphires above their mauve circles, shone with anticipation. “Well?” he breathed.

  “You may leave, Baron,” the official stated. “Now, if you wish. There have been many calls about you—”

  “But what was the problem?” Ossip cried.

  “I am not at liberty to disclose this,” the other replied. “Now, if you’ll follow me…”

  In his exhilaration at being released, in his frustration at still not learning what had occurred to bring him to this wretched place, Ossip nearly tripped as he walked out to freedom. The sunlight made him blink with pain, for he had been in near darkness for six days. All at once, before the gates, a footman in red and gold livery approached him, and he stepped back instinctively, afraid of once again being captured. But the man bowed and Ossip frowned. He could not remember this uniform. Besides, his family would not yet have learned of his sudden release. “You are Baron Gunzburg?” the footman demanded.

  When Ossip nodded, dazed, the man said, “Then, if you please, the Princess is waiting in the carriage.” Ossip followed his gaze and saw an English tilbury parked to his left. It was a tiny, open carriage drawn by a single horse, and inside sat a lady wrapped in white furs, with an elegant plumed hat set pertly upon her black hair. She held up one gloved hand. He could not move. His hand touched his unkempt beard, his limp collar. His eyes were full of tears, and he did not discern, through the blur, whether she had smiled or not. “The Princess has been out in the cold for two hours, Baron,” the footman said with polite concern. “Please come inside.”

  It was not yet springtime, in 1916, and a chilly wind blew around the tilbury. The footman opened the door for him, and he sat down, bewildered in the passenger seat beside the lady. She said, clearly; “Drive anywhere, Ivan! Oh! Not on the Nevsky, please. Just—around.” The footman tucked Ossip’s knees under a silk and fur coverlet, and the coachman cracked his whip. The carriage began to move, swaying slightly in the wind.

  “I do not understand, not at all, not any of this,” Ossip said, without looking at her. The footman stood behind them, but neither he nor the coachman could hear because of the wind and the tapping of the horse’s hooves.

  “It was nothing but a silly mistake. You took some pictures of your young brother, in Pskov, and the police confiscated your equipment. Later, it was returned. But then, you see, a new chief of police was named in Pskov, and in an excess of zeal, to please his superiors, he reopened all the old cases. It was those silly pictures they were searching for in your room. They didn’t know that they were harmless family photographs. But it’s all right now, everything’s been cleared up—”

  “I’m grateful. Your father will be thanked, as is proper.” Ossip sat stiffly, his face impassive. Suddenly he turned to her, and asked, “What on earth are we doing here, you and I?”

  Her beautiful face, he thought, had hardly changed in eight years, although it was a bit leaner, and her great blue eyes seemed deeper and yet less merry. Her lips parted, she tried to speak and shook her head with self-annoyance. “For God’s sake!” she cried. “Words! I—I haven’t seen you for—for half a lifetime, and you’ve been in prison, and you ask me—nonsense! Not how I am, or how I’ve managed, without you.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said rapidly, “but this is all so unreal! First the arrest—and now you! One minute I am a criminal, the next minute I am mysteriously released, and then you, of all people, are here to greet me, in what can only be called the most ridiculous of carriages, in wintertime, in public!”

  “I was out with my daughter, Larissa,” she said defensively, tears coming to her magnificent eyes. “She’s only five, and the tilbury is not ridi
culous, it’s British, and Lara wanted a ride! How was I to know that you were in prison, and that I’d have to take this contraption all the way out here, to wait for you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Oh, Ossip, look at me! Did I come here for nothing, after all?”

  Soft gloved fingers touched his face, and turned it so that he was looking at the pert nose, the red cheeks, the smooth forehead with tendrils curling about it underneath the hat. “It was you who married,” he said cruelly.

  “You could have found a way to come to me.”

  “Nobody forced you to say ‘yes’ beneath the icons.”

  “I—I had lost all hope. For any sort of life for myself.”

  “Then why—now? Eight years later! Why not simply have pretended to forget?”

  “Because that’s all it was: pretense! A vast self-deception. When I read the notes between our mothers—when I learned you were at the Fortress—it all came back, and I had to come. My… husband... is a general on the Northwestern front, where we are planning an attack on the center of the German front. I went into the Fortress and told them I was... his wife, and Papa’s daughter. They told me that Papa had helped you, and how. That way, I did not have to ask him, personally. Then, I simply waited.”

  “But it was dangerous for you,” he said, suddenly gentle. “You are a married woman. This tilbury—it’s open—”

  “Oh, it’s all right! That’s why I told Ivan to avoid the Prospect. You are a family friend—my poor brother’s best friend. It is natural that I should try to help you—even to socialize with you.”

  He peered at her, and swallowed. “You say… you have a child? Or is it children?”

  “One daughter, Lara. And you, Ossip? You are not married?”

  Brusquely, he turned away. He could no longer bear her presence, smell her perfume, listen to her voice. But she whispered, “I still love you, Ossip.” He faced her, and took her hands, squeezing them beneath the coverlet, so that the footman might not see. As he said nothing, she began to weep, softly. “He... is a kind enough man, much older than I. Once I hated him. But he gave me Larissa, and now he’s away, and...” She stopped, and their eyes met. She became red with shame as their thoughts coincided about her husband. “He is Lara’s father,” she said staunchly, to dispel her own wishes.

  “Yes.” But he continued to stare at her, and thought: Uriah too died at the front, and then David took Bathsheba. What does hope cost me?

  “He is very valiant and patriotic,” she said emptily.

  “Of course,” he assented. He had heard of General Prince Kurdukov. Did she take him for an illiterate fool?

  “I still grieve for Volodia, every day,” she continued changing the topic. “More now than ever.”

  “I, too,” he murmured. Would this never stop? Would she not go and leave him in peace?

  All at once she said, fiercely, “It was your sister who killed him! I could not forgive her—or you! Did you know that, Ossip?”

  Again his eyes filled with tears. “I suspected it,” he said. “But she did not kill him, Natasha. She loved him. You must believe me.”

  “How can I? My darling brother, my twin? She sent him away! And he would have fought to keep her, more than you ever did on my behalf, Ossip Davidovitch!” Now it was she who turned away, her face distorted with pain. “You both left me at the same time! Was I truly such a worthless, evil person?”

  She began to sob, her shoulders shaking, and he grabbed them and held them, stroking her back. All at once she sighed, and regarded him with enormous eyes. “You are twenty-nine now,” she stated in a low, trembling voice. “You earn a living. Rent a discreet apartment in the city, Ossip. Then I shall come to you. You cannot come to me. My home is near Mama’s. But so long as he is... away... we are both free, aren’t we?”

  Aghast, he released her, unable to think clearly. “You will do it?” she asked urgently. “Soon?”

  “Yes, my life, my love, soon,” he said, and knew that he had made a commitment greater than marriage, greater than God or country. The tears flowed freely from his tired eyes beneath the cold clouds of Petrograd.

  “You may now drive the Baron home, to Vassilievsky Island,” Natasha said, tapping her coachman on the back and raising her voice above the wind. She smiled at Ossip, and touched his hand beneath the cover. “It’s all right,” she said, her eyes full of love. “Remember our Volodia. He would have waited six days in the cold, not two hours, and would have personally bundled you home. I am merely carrying out his wishes.” The old mischief sparkled in her eyes, but there was also pain, naked and vulnerable.

  When he appeared in the foyer of his parents’ home, Stepan nearly kissed him. His mother, his father, his sister, even his former governess clustered about him, asking so many questions that he could not begin to answer them. The cook unceremoniously brought out hot soup, even before Ossip could change his clothing. He laughed out loud, and there was a hysterical note to the laughter that alarmed his mother and vaguely disquieted his sister. But his father stated, “The boy is famished, and tired, and happy, and angry, and dirty. What he needs is some peace and quiet…”

  “And this, Baron, if you please,” Stepan said, offering a glass of brandy to the young master.

  During the week that followed, Sonia noticed Ossip’s high color, his quick jokes, his good humor. She watched him when his mother carefully sent a basket of exotic fruit, set in bowls of silver and crystal, to Countess Tagantseva. He marveled over the selection, his eyes dancing with merriment. Something was strange here, Sonia thought. But she could not figure out what had happened to the broken remnant of her brother’s spirit during his stay at the Fortress. She watched him surreptitiously, with concern. But he would tell her nothing, and she was too respectful of his privacy to intrude.

  In the spring, Tania and her husband came for a visit to Petrograd. Tania was heavy with child, and in a delicate condition. Rosa, birdlike and excited, said to Mathilde, “The dear child is so sentimental! She insists upon delivering the baby in our home. She, who used to complain so about Russia, is now more Russian than all of us. She says that she knows she will have a son, and hesitates between the names ‘Horace,’ like her grandfather, or ‘Boris.’ I do not know whether to embroider the layette with an ‘H’ or a ‘B.’”

  “I should think you would have more pressing concerns,” Mathilde commented. She thought of her strong-headed niece, who was being treated for a difficult pregnancy with complications of the liver, and whose doctor in Kiev had forbidden her to undertake a voyage at that time. Rosa reproached her with her eyes. Mathilde said, “But if she feels up to it, David and I should like to give her and Sioma a dinner. We have not entertained at all, so to speak, since the war.”

  “Tanitchka will be so pleased!” Rosa cried.

  The Halperins arrived, and Sonia was forced to pay them a visit almost at once. She was annoyed with Ossip for being unable to accompany her—in fact, he seemed forever occupied these days with his own affairs. She wished she could confide in her parents concerning the book which had so turned her against her cousin Tania, but she had determined not to speak of it. So, resolutely, she dressed herself simply, as became a wartime lady, in an afternoon suit of blue. Her distaste was coupled with dread at once again seeing Sioma, for whom she felt such revulsion. But she stepped into her aunt’s Elizabethan house, and breathed in as if to steel herself, handing her cloak to the maid who admitted her. “Tatiana Alexandrovna is expecting you,” she was told.

  Sonia braced herself for her first encounter with her married cousin, but the woman who appeared before her took her breath away. It was Tania, the blond, cornflower-eyed Tania, but with sunken cheeks, pale lips, and bone-thin arms, a Tania carrying her child in front, with nothing, it seemed, on the hips. Sonia’s set lips, her erect back, slackened. She opened her arms and closed them about her poor cousin, and wanted to cry. Instead, she said, “I have missed you, my love. Tell me all about yourself. Letters, you
know, are never sufficient.”

  Tania sighed, and this heartfelt sigh pierced Sonia’s flesh like an arrow. They sat down together in the sitting room, and Tania ordered tea. It was Sonia who poured it, and while she did so, Tania’s eyes jumped all about the room, taking in its elegant blue upholstery, its oil canvases. She came alive. “I could not stand the idea of giving birth anywhere but here!” she cried.

  “But your home—surely you like it?” Sonia asked with care.

  “Oh, that! Sioma’s mother changed it all during our honeymoon. If you thought that Svetlana Yakovlievna was a tasteless provincial, you never met my—” Tania clapped her hand to her mouth, and blushed a deep, unhealthy crimson. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Sonia smiled, and regarded her cousin levelly. “There is nothing to feel sorry about. First of all, I never thought anything of the kind. Let us be clear on this point. I admired and respected Kolya’s mother. It was Juanita who felt that she was… shall we say, not quite the cosmopolitan gem she wished to display to our society. I was staunchly opposed to her treatment of Svetlana Yakovlievna. If she felt insulted, I cannot blame her. Living in Kiev, it is normal that you would hear things there that are passed around as gossip. But I do not wish to hear them. I know that Kolya has a wife, and stepdaughter, too. I am pleased for him. As for me—if I am to remain a spinster, don’t worry, I shan’t be a bored one. Now tell me more about you.”

  Tania seemed subdued. “Sioma spends much time at his mother’s. He wishes me to come there often, too. But I don’t like her, Sonia. She is... vulgar, and possessive. A young married man should spend his evenings with his wife, shouldn’t he? Shouldn’t he?”

  “He can spend time with both,” Sonia said gently. She passed her cousin a cake, but Tania pushed the silver platter aside. At that moment, a tall man entered the room, and Sonia turned to face him pleasantly. It was Sioma, stooped, pockmarked, with watery eyes. He, at least, was little changed. He bowed over Sonia’s hand, then sat and gulped down a glass of tea, his Adam’s apple making vulgar throat noises. Tania watched him with wide-eyed dismay, and Sonia’s compassion grew. They spoke about little things, about the trip, about the child that was about to come. Sioma’s eyes brightened in anticipation, but Tania’s grew fearful. Sonia squeezed her hand. “June will come and go before we know it,” she said with too much cheer. And thought: But what do I know of childbirth?