The Four Winds of Heaven Page 50

  “Do not torture yourself like this, my beloved,” Natasha comforted, wringing her hands. Her own tears fell upon his hair, which she caressed. “You were very brave, Ossip. I am proud of you. Your father would have been proud. I’m sure that he was proud, for he saw what you accomplished to save him—”

  “And now you must leave this accursed city!” Ossip interrupted, taking her face into his feverish hands. “Go— to the Tambov, anywhere! Come with us.”

  Her beautiful features softened, her eyes glowed under their veil of tears. “The Tambov property is no longer ours, nor is Mohilna yours, nor the estates in the Crimea. Didn’t Pavel tell you about the Decree of Land issued today? Our property is gone, Ossip. At least for now. Papa believes things will quiet down, that the Bolsheviks will be quelled. He wants to remain here, but Mama wants us to go to France while we still can. The safest way for me and Lara is... to try to find... my husband, at the front. The army will protect us. If we are ever to recapture Petrograd, the army shall have to do it for us.”

  “You would do that? Go to him?”

  She could not speak. Tears blinded her. At length, she kissed his hands and said, “You must escape to guard your very life, my darling. Already, Stepan will be a burden. Do you honestly wish for Lara and me to add to that? A small child is difficult enough to handle in a large city. Think, Ossip. There is the future—”

  “What future, if you go to him, and I go my way?” he exclaimed.

  “I shall not live with him. I told you, Ossip, I shall not. After all this is finished, when the war ends, when Petrograd is ours again—”

  “But that will never happen!” he cried fiercely.

  “Then we shall have to keep in touch, somehow. If things are bad, if we are driven out, we shall go to France. And then we can be together—have our own children—” Her face twisted into a grimace of pain, and she turned away. “I want our own children,” she repeated.

  “I don’t care! I only want you, you’re all I’ve ever wanted. Until I met you I never cared for anyone except for my sister Sonia. But I lost you once, and that means more to me than having lost life, for I did not love life as I loved—love—you.”

  It was a strange sight that greeted Baron Alexander de Gunzburg when he followed Pavel into the apartment and saw his nephew, disheveled, with circles under his eyes, sobbing in the arms of a beautiful young woman whose mass of black hair would not remain in pins above her head. Sasha saw her rear her head proudly, meet his eyes with the brightest eyes he had ever encountered, and hold his gaze without flinching. To draw Ossip’s attention, Pavel gently cleared his throat.

  Ossip saw his uncle and jumped to his feet. He looked from Sasha to Natasha, pure horror etched upon his features. But it was she who spoke first. She said, calmly, “There is hardly need for protocol during moments such as these.” Her delicate hand, with its long, tapered fingers, waved about the room. “I am Princess Kurdukova, Natalia Nicolaievna Kurdukova. And you… are Ossip’s uncle?”

  “Yes. Alexander Goratsievitch de Gunzburg. Under different circumstances, I would say that I am most honored to meet you, Princess. But there has been the tragedy, and my manners fail me.” Sasha could not help thinking that his nephew had more in him than he would have assumed, ferreting away this extraordinary beauty, wife of a general and daughter of a well-known senator. For all of Petrograd had heard of this young noblewoman, of her illustrious connections. Then he vaguely recalled that a Tagantsev—wasn’t her maiden name Tagantsev?—had been a bitter opponent of his brother, and of his father, and that there had been quite a to-do over the fact that Ossip’s best friend at the gymnasium had been this Tagantsev’s son. Apparently there had been further entanglements. He wet his lips, admiring Natasha’s bravura, but thinking also of David, the brother he had spent a lifetime envying, but who was now dead. Sasha was much distressed at his own lack of ability to fit into this absurd situation, he, a man of the world.

  “I must go now, my love,” Natasha murmured. She wound her arms around Ossip’s neck and buried her face in the lapels of his waistcoat. Briefly, her full red lips reached to his, and she clung to him with unrestrained passion. He attempted to hold her to him, but suddenly she broke loose and ran, holding up her skirt, her head bent down. She stopped in the doorway, her fingers eloquently placed upon her half-parted lips. Then she hastened down the stairs, out of sight.

  “Well,” Sasha stated dully. He sat down beside his nephew on the sofa. “You are not going to hold on to her?” But Ossip’s eyes, blue-black, turned toward him with so much unspoken menace that he colored, and changed the position of his crossed legs. He said, “David. My God, Ossip! Why him? The most just of us all…”

  “Perhaps because of that,” the young man replied. “To spare him what’s to come…”

  “Where are you going to go?” his uncle demanded. “And Stepan?”

  “Stepan is conscious now. We shall leave within the week, I suppose. I don’t know where to go. If we go north, through Sweden, I shall end up in Berlin in the midst of the war. I suppose I can go to Odessa, and attempt to catch a ship to Marseilles. But I shall have to let you know. We will need money.”

  “Of course. I shall have to send money to your mother, too, for with this Decree of Land she has lost her Crimean estate. My share is gone too,” he said, smiling wanly. He added, “Will you have sufficient funds for the trip—to Odessa?”

  “I think so. If not, I can always pray. I wouldn’t know to whom to address my prayers, though.” Ossip smiled back at his uncle.

  “You know the Ashkenasys of Odessa? They are relatives, and own a prosperous bank. Should we become cut off, call on them.” Sasha examined his neatly manicured fingers, and bit his lower lip. “Why did David insist upon keeping all that Zionist money in his private safe?” he cried. “From the sale of the Judaica books? Why didn’t it go to us, in the bank? Whoever thought of hoarding hundreds of thousands of rubles in his house, for God’s sweet sake?”

  “Papa was never a businessman, Uncle Sasha. He wanted access to large amounts of money to help the Jews from Poland. No wonder the soldiers came straight to our house! It could not have been hard for them to make some poor frightened Jew talk, and give them Papa’s name. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Nothing really does, my boy. I only hope the Halperins take good care of Tania and Gorik, in Kiev. And you—be careful, Ossip. Rosa and I—have always cared about you, most of all. Now, with David gone—”

  “I know, Uncle Sasha.” He paused, his eyes downcast. “The funeral?”

  The big man nodded, heavily. He placed a hand upon Ossip’s shoulder, rested it there, and shook his head silently. Neither one could look into the eyes of the other. Here we are, the selfish ones, Ossip thought wryly, while the only one who truly cared is killed. He could not think of Natasha, nor of his mother and Sonia. If only he could go to Gino…

  Pavel entered discreetly and spoke up: “The man, Stepan, Monsieur, he tells me that he feels much improved. Do you wish to go in to speak with him? I have changed the dressing on his wound.”

  “And I must go,” his uncle declared, rising. The two men now faced each other, and silently embraced. At the door, Sasha called out, “God preserve you, Ossip!” Ossip watched his bulky shoulders disappear down the staircase, and he sighed. Everyone of meaning was gone. There was no haven now but from within. Yet what lay within but hollow sounds? I am a coward, he thought, only now there is no doubt remaining, no doubt to shield me from myself. I have a journey to plan…

  Letters came irregularly to Feodosia, but reached their destination. So, almost at once, the Gunzburg women learned that the Bolsheviks had seized control of the capital, that David was dead, that the family safe had been robbed, and that Ossip had fled with a wounded Stepan to Odessa. Then they learned from Rosa that the banks had been taken in hand by the new government, and that she and Sasha, destitute (as were Mathilde and her children), had tried to flee the capital northward, but had been turned back
at the Swedish border because their papers had not been properly signed by the new authorities. Sasha had been placed in jail, and had only been released when it was discovered that he possessed no hidden reserve of funds. They planned, Rosa wrote, to arrange to have their visas properly attested, and Tania would send them sufficient funds to join her in Kiev. Then they would all leave the country together, somehow. Ossip sent word that he had reached Odessa, not without adventures, but that he had run out of money, and knew that the Maison Gunzburg had been “nationalized” by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd; so he had gone to the family connection in Odessa, the Ashkenasys, and obtained a position in their bank. The Bolshevik system had not yet spread to Odessa.

  Sonia read the account her brother had given of their father’s death, and she sat down, holding her stomach as though someone had kicked her with brute strength. At first she felt nothing at all but this purely physical pain. She had left her mother and Johanna in the next room, wanting to be alone with her grief. But it was not sadness that filled her. It was a terrible, boiling anger that flared inside her stomach, like lye eating away at its lining. I knew it! she thought. I knew I should have stayed with him in Petrograd—I knew it because I loved him, more than the others did. Anna never forgave him for Vanya, and for not listening to the Union of Unions; Ossip always despised him, and was ashamed of being a Jew; yes, Gino loved him, but then again he was young and never knew our father, did not truly comprehend him in mind and soul, as I did. Mama? Oh, I do not want to think, I do not want to think! But Mama should never have married him. She had no understanding of his passions, nor did she want to have any; instead, she permitted Juanita to ridicule and scorn him. Uncle Sasha envied Papa, and Uncle Misha? Yes, he loved him, but from far away, as Gino did, for Misha was so much younger, and they lived apart… There was Grandfather Horace, then, and I. And I loved him more than any other man in my life, even more than Volodia, for when I had to choose between them, I chose Papa!

  What could it possibly matter that they were ruined, apart from the remainder of the summer harvest money from the Crimean estates; that Rosa and Sasha were destitute and reduced to begging from their daughter’s in-laws? She could work, her hands were good, her mind was clever. But she would never kiss her father again, never hear him call her his “little pigeon.” She thought with a surge of passion that she had wanted him to know of Anna’s boy. He would have understood, because he had loved Anna, and had wanted grandchildren.

  Suddenly she felt two soft hands upon her, and in rebuff she jerked upright and was astounded to find Olga Pomerantz next to her. The young girl, with her fine blond curls, said, “I know that you mind my intrusion. But I came because, you see, I know what it feels like. My father died also, and left me with a hole this big in my chest.” She made a vast gesture with her hands. “One morning, getting dressed. It was also… heart trouble.” Her wide hazel eyes filled with tears. “And I was jealous of Mama. Such attention to the bereaved widow! I was certain that she had not loved Papa as much as I. Sometimes, I still wonder.”

  “With me,” Sonia stated bitterly, “there is nothing to wonder about.”

  “But there are different kinds of love,” Olga said tentatively. She was suddenly afraid of this beautiful girl who was older and wiser but also so harsh, so stark in her brutal anguish.

  “Yes,” Sonia agreed, and thought: Kolya, Kolya! Why isn’t there someone to hold me?

  “I came with a proposition,” Olga stated. “Mita, the Rabbi’s daughter, needs money, too. She wants to teach us stenography. I do not know how long our enterprise will belong to us, before the Reds will decide to come into the Crimea and ‘nationalize’ us, too. So—I shall need to learn a trade, Sonia. And, I thought you would, too.”

  Her eyes rested upon her friend’s gray ones, and Sonia slowly came alive. Her chin trembled, then her mouth. She pressed Olga’s arm with her frail fingers. “That would be perfect,” she stammered. “We must think of ways to economize. We shall have to rent out part of this house, or move somewhere else. The harvest money will have to see us through an indefinite period of time. Thank you, Olga.”

  Finally she went to her mother, and placed her arms around Mathilde’s shoulders. Olga left silently, but Johanna stood in a corner, watching with eyes that darted like quicksilver from woman to woman. Mathilde stood erect, dignified, her beautiful gray hair coiled elegantly atop her head, and her sapphire eyes moist but not overflowing. “Sonia,” she said. “Sonia, I loved him... as much as it was possible for me to love him. I admired and revered him, and I gave him four unique children who helped fill his life. We all disappointed him, my daughter. He was better than each of us. But he loved us, and now we must treasure the bounty of that love. Condemnation, even self-condemnation, will not help either of us, remember that.”

  “I know, Mama,” Sonia answered softly, kissing her mother on the cheek. “I have come to discuss our future with you, now that we are poor. I am certain that Ossip will earn enough for his passage to France, or England, at the Ashkenasy bank. Anna has some savings, and sells her work, and is safely out of this mess. Eventually Uncle Misha, whose fortune is intact, and our other relatives in Paris will be able to send us funds. But, in the meantime, all we have is from the last harvest. I am going to take stenography lessons with Olga, and we can look for boarders to share our rent here. It will be difficult for you, Mama. Life will be simpler than you ever conceived…”

  “Not so difficult,” Mathilde retorted with a half-smile that brought Ossip’s image to Sonia’s mind. “I would much rather live in rags than beyond our income, as my father did. You forget my childhood. For every diamond cufflink he bought, Papa increased his ruin, and the ruin of his children.” Now tears glistened on the edge of her black lashes. “Your father must have loved me very deeply, Sonia. Not only did he choose a bride without a dowry, but it was he, and his own father, who paid my father a price for the honor of marrying me.”

  Sonia touched her mother’s hand. “That is not hard to believe,” she remarked. She did not notice that her mother’s smile faded, that an icy expression replaced it momentarily. Mathilde was thinking: But David was my cousin, and had known me from birth! Who will take my Sonia, now that there is no longer any dowry? She began to panic but Sonia’s voice brought her back to the problem at hand. “We shall have to write this news to Gino,” Sonia stated. “He will want to be reassured that we are all right, although I’m certain Ossip will have let him know about… Papa. Mama, I need your help now.”

  Johanna de Mey stood apart, wondering why this death, so longed for by herself, was not changing her life as she had hoped and expected. Mathilde was not guilty. She was serene, poised. Why was she not coming to her? She turned her face away, unable to watch her companion, unable to bear her own acute misery. Tears of frustration flowed down her cheeks, but the two women did not see them. Mathilde and Sonia sat side by side upon the divan, composing a letter for their brave soldier, thinking of his sufferings, and not at all of hers, which twisted through her entrails like a sharply honed sickle. She thought: Nobody has ever loved me, nobody at all, and if I have come to this point in my life, stranded in a foreign nation in political strife, with a destitute family, it was a sacrifice which brought me nothing, nothing but humiliation. Suddenly, she regarded Mathilde with an expression of pure hatred.

  Gino could not believe what was happening around him. On December 3, official negotiations for a separate peace treaty were begun between the Bolsheviks and the Central Powers, and the army began to disintegrate. Everything was happening so quickly, so haphazardly, it seemed. It was impossible to follow. In the south, where he was stationed, a counterrevolutionary movement was being organized, and his regiment was being transformed into what was called a “White” regiment. But the “Red,” or Workers’ and Peasants’ Army, was now the official force of the nation, and was largely composed of the same officers as those who had served under Kornilov, and under whom he, as a sergeant, had served. So, Gino thought,
our army now has two sides, and good men take part in civil war. This is not what we enlisted for! This is not noble fighting to defeat the Central Powers. He remembered Ivan Berson, Anna’s lover, who was a Kerensky socialist. Yet he, Gino, had thought of him merely as an old Petrograd acquaintance from the old days. So men who had once served together proposed to slaughter one another—and all for political purposes which he did not as yet understand. He watched, baffled and outraged.

  The officers were taking sides, but for many of the soldiers a joyride had begun. Officially, the nation was still at war, and all men wore the same khaki uniforms, with only small insignias on the cap, the shoulder, or the collar to differentiate among the various regiments. But the men, hearing of revolution, thought themselves free, and soon young soldiers were abandoning their posts and going home. Others, taking advantage of a wartime regulation that permitted members of the army first access, free of charge, on any train, hopped aboard and rode for days, changing trains as though they were merry-go-rounds at a fair. Gino realized that he would either have to sign up in the new White regiment, or leave the disintegrated army which was no longer fighting a war. He went to his captain, and, attempting to keep his voice firm, he declared: “I am a born Russian, and in good conscience, after much consideration, I cannot bear arms against a fellow Russian. I do not favor the Petrograd government. But I cannot kill my countrymen.”

  Besides, he wanted to go to his mother and sister at once, before the New Year, if possible. Feodosia was a port, and also had a railroad, and if the Reds came to the Crimea, they would reach the accessible cities first, and there would be street fights and destruction. Gino’s heart was heavy with sorrow for his wounded country and for his father, whom he had loved devotedly. Unlike Ossip, he had never considered their father weak; he had found him a model of courageous dignity, of idealism pushed to the extreme. Gino did not find these traits ludicrous; he found them moving. He himself was a patriot, and could only sustain simpler passions. But he had admired David’s character, and recalled their walks in Mohilna, their long talks of nature. Now he wept for the loss of this magnificent man, and for his mother and sister, who had lost so much as well. And on a cold winter’s day, he too boarded a train, in his khaki uniform, knowing that no one would harm him, Red or White, for all soldiers looked alike. The thought was hardly a consolation.