The Four Winds of Heaven Read online

“I didn’t know! How did he look? Tell me, Vanya. I haven’t seen my brother for so long.”

  “Gino was a fierce fighter, and well liked,” Ivan replied. “He’s a man! To me, this was amazing. Little Gino. But this was before the peace. The peace must have infuriated him. By the way, he didn’t approve of me in the least. I don’t know if he ever liked me, but he certainly didn’t enjoy the commissars sent by Kerensky, and I was one of them. But—I liked him. He is a true Russian, as—”

  “As Annushka was,” Ossip said softly.

  Ivan Berson flicked an ash away, and drank some coffee. “Yes,” he said tersely.

  “I haven’t seen Anna in nearly as many years as you have,” Ossip said, in the same gentle tone of voice. “And you know how apolitical I’ve always been... But I’m sure of one thing: she’d be proud of what you are doing.”

  “Perhaps. I wonder sometimes if we’re not going to die as the Texans did in that fort, the Alamo—in a horrid way, but for a noble cause... You should leave, Ossip. If I knew you any less well, I’d ask you to join us. But, as you say, politics have never appealed to you. And with your back, you can’t fight. Take the first ship out of here, my friend. In this house, you’re offering yourself to those bastards for murder.”

  Ossip smiled. “I haven’t a kopeck, Vanya. Stepan and I will leave, but not until I can find a way of getting some passage money. What do you say to a destitute Gunzburg? Probably, if I were you, I’d laugh. Serve ‘em right! I’m sure you haven’t wasted any love upon our family, after what they... we... did to you.”

  “I don’t have time to hate,” Ivan Berson said shortly. “But you were not a part of that affair. I never hated you.”

  They remained quiet for several minutes, smoking and sipping coffee. Then Berson said, “At least you escaped from Petrograd. It was dreadful there. A great many wealthy families were slaughtered. I’m sorry—I heard about your father, and I know how badly you must feel. I also heard that my dear parents and sisters went to Paris. I don’t much care.”

  “Vanya—there is a family I’m concerned about in Petrograd.” Ossip’s bright blue eyes suddenly bored into Ivan’s green ones.

  “Go on—I’ll tell you what I know, if I know. Who were you going to ask about? Old friends?”

  “Yes... the Tagantsevs. Count and Countess Nicolai Tagantsev, and their children. Their second son, Volodia, was a schoolmate of mine, and my dearest friend. He was killed, years ago, in Persia.”

  “I don’t think I ever met him, but I knew he was your friend. I didn’t realize you’d kept up with the family.”

  Ossip’s eyes shone with insistent fervor. “Well?” he whispered. “Have you heard anything? Count Tagantsev was a well-known man. Surely someone must have heard something. His son-in-law was a general under Kornilov—”

  “A Prince Andrei Kurdukov.” Now Ivan tapped lightly on the table and looked toward the window. “I’m sorry, Ossip. The Tagantsevs are dead. Kurdukov is with us, heading up a White regiment. I know that the other son, the one who was a senator, was killed in Petrograd.”

  “And the daughter, Princess Kurdukova?”

  “I don’t see how she could have escaped. The palace was burned, the family decimated. We can’t be certain, Ossip, for it’s harder to keep track of women, people are always bringing news of men, the ones with whose names they are familiar—”

  “But you say that her husband is alive. Couldn’t she have joined him?”

  Ivan turned back to Ossip, and sighed. He said nothing, but Ossip’s bright blue gaze held him, mesmerized him, until all at once he was embarrassed by this naked vulnerability, by this silent grief. “Ossip,” he began, but gave up and shook his head. “In this country, these days... Don’t rely too heavily on what I say. Rumors are only that—not facts.”

  Ossip clasped his hands together, unseeing, his face white. He could picture the Count dead, even Maria Efimovna, who was a good woman. He made an effort to visualize little Lara, dismembered, but at the thought his features contracted in sorrow. He dared not think of her. “No,” he said, and there was the wonder of a child in this statement. Ivan Berson twisted in his seat, not knowing what to do. Where had Stepan vanished? Ossip bit his lower lip, and repeated, “No.” Then, oblivious of Ivan’s presence, he rose and went to the window. At first he stood, perfectly still, a statue peering out toward the park below. Then he bent over, as if in pain, and rocked back and forth upon his haunches, moaning. Ivan could not help but stare at him, overwhelmed with compassion and helplessness. He called out: “Stepan! Stepan!”

  It was the manservant who picked up Ossip, who literally dragged him to a sofa, who laid him down and brought compresses for his forehead. “I did not know he would take it so badly,” Ivan said. “The Tagantsev boy died such a long time ago...” He searched through his pockets, thrust some bills into Stepan’s hands. “Get yourselves out of here, on a ship to France or England,” he said quickly. “Get him out of here! The Red Army is sure to come, and...”

  “God be with you, Ivan Aronovitch.” Stepan did not escort him to the door, but watched him walk rapidly away. Stepan remained with Ossip, and made a sign of the cross above his head. He counted the bills, and sighed. He thought of Anna, and of Natalia Tagantseva. They did not know, he thought, these two young men, how much they had in common... But Ivan Aronovitch is a survivor. If only I could be so sure about Ossip Davidovitch. Only God can help him now, though he does not believe in His bounty... And Stepan remembered the elegant little apartment where he had recuperated from his wound, and the voice of the Princess, so strong and lovely. It was no wonder that his master had loved her. He also remembered her as a young girl, when she and her mother had visited the Baroness. What a fine young woman she had been! No less fine, thought Stepan stubbornly, regarding the bills anew, than Anna Davidovna’s young man.

  It was Stepan who located the two rooms in a poorer section of Odessa, in a small house far from the center of the city. He packed his master’s bags and his own, and escorted Ossip to their new “home.” “We must leave the Ashkenasy house,” he kept repeating to the dazed young man, who followed him without expression, his features frozen. When they moved in, they crossed the path of the lady who lived in the small apartment upstairs, and Stepan bowed, seeing her eyes widen as she regarded Ossip. She was a tall, angular woman, impoverished to be sure, but wearing her clothes with the elegance of a gentlewoman. She was not pretty, with her short black hair and strong features, her thin red lips and piercing ebony eyes. She looked each one of her thirty years.

  The following day Stepan saw a little girl with her, a comely young child with blond hair and dimples. She said, “Hello,” and he answered her respectfully. Stepan mentioned the child to Ossip, to cheer him up. But the young man seemed emptied of all emotion, and merely nodded absently. When Ossip himself came face to face with the black-haired woman, and she said, “I am Elizaveta Adolfovna Dietrich,” he merely intoned his name, and went rapidly into his own two rooms. She stood in the common hallway, staring after his slender form, musing.

  Several days later, Stepan knocked on Ossip’s door and declared, “There is a British ship due in tomorrow. I have booked passage upon it, for us both.” Ossip nodded, smiled vaguely, and returned to his reverie. That day, the lady from upstairs came to their apartment, bearing a tray of home-baked cakes. She said to Stepan, “The Baron looks very peaked. My daughter, Vera, baked these. I am afraid they aren’t very good, for the child is only eight, and our ingredients aren’t as excellent as they should be—but do offer some to him.”

  “Thank you, Madame,” Stepan replied. He was about to close the door when she smiled and asked, “Please—let me come in and chat with him, if he’s up to it. We too are very lonely, Vera and I. We came here from Tomsk, and have few friends...”

  He allowed her into the apartment, not wishing to affront a lady, yet certain that Ossip would send her politely away. But Ossip was in no mood to pay the slightest attention to this thin, bony woman,
and he allowed her to talk in the way a weary mother permits her child to run rampant about a room. He regarded her without seeing her. Well, Stepan thought, she does possess a certain style, although she has no beauty… She insisted upon serving Ossip tea, and told him that she was a native of the Baltic provinces, a Protestant who had married an officer, named Tchernavin, of Eastern Orthodox faith, which was why her daughter was neither of the same faith nor of the same name as she. Elizaveta Adolfovna was divorced, and bore her maiden name of Dietrich. Ossip heard her, and he nodded courteously but didn’t listen, all the while thinking only of Natasha, thinking that it was not true, that Natasha could not have died. “The Barons Gunzburg are well reputed,” Elizaveta Adolfovna Dietrich said, as if to encourage him to bare his own past. But it was Stepan who was forced to reply in his stead, and the woman appeared annoyed. Then she sighed and returned upstairs, and Stepan finished the remainder of their packing.

  The next morning, baggage in hand, Ossip and Stepan walked to the port, and joined the crowd of passengers who had booked places on the British ship. When it came time to board, one of the stewards came forward and, examining Ossip’s papers, declared: “You are a Russian citizen. Why, then, are you not fighting with the White Army against the Bolsheviks?”

  “The Baron suffers from the aftereffects of Pott’s disease,” Stepan replied for Ossip. He looked through their effects and brandished a white exemption paper. “See here,” he exclaimed.

  The steward shook his head doubtfully and went off to find the captain. Stepan, tall and erect, stood by his master, but Ossip looked vague and ill, and his eyes did not focus properly. The captain arrived, in his neat uniform, and his eyes softened as they rested upon the young man. “I’m sorry, Baron,” he stated. “But I have my orders from my government. We are not to take any man of age to be serving. The British must consider you a traitor—a deserter.”

  “But what about his back? The Baron cannot fight, and the Red Army is coming! You must take us,” Stepan cried.

  “I cannot. But, sir, I can take you,” the captain said to the maître d’hôtel.

  “Yes,” Ossip murmured vaguely. “Go, Stepan. I did not save you from those soldiers so that you would die here. You must go.”

  Stepan’s eyes first scanned the captain, then his master. In his pupils shone the deepest indignation he could muster. “If you will not take the Baron, then you shall leave without me, too,” he asserted. He picked up the luggage and turned around. Ossip followed docilely, and this time tears came to his eyes. It was surely his time to perish. He placed a trembling hand on Stepan’s arm, unbearably moved. They walked back to the apartment, and there, suddenly, Ossip collapsed, all color drained from his face and lips. Stepan felt his forehead with alarm. The fever was so high that he put Ossip to bed and went up the stairs to Elizaveta Dietrich’s rooms. When she admitted him, he said, “Forgive me this intrusion, but the Baron is ill, and I must fetch a doctor. Could you look in on him while I am gone, Madame?”

  An expression of alarm passed over her angular features. “There is typhus in Odessa,” she said. “Is his fever high?”

  “At least 105 degrees,” Stepan replied.

  “Then it must be typhus. Wait. I know how to treat it. I have treated members of my family, in Estonia. But were you and the Baron not leaving this morning?”

  “Yes, Madame. But we could not.”

  Elizaveta Adolfovna peered at the maître d’hôtel with shrewd eyes, appraising him. “Go for the doctor, if indeed you can find one,” she said peremptorily. “I shall be with your master. Verotchka! Come with Mama, my dear. And bring rags, clean rags, many rags. And vinegar and alcohol and pans.”

  Stepan watched her thin form move rapidly about and he went down the stairs. As he went out into the street, he heard the woman and her daughter go into Ossip’s rooms. They may kill him with talk, but that is better than letting him die of the typhus, he thought with uncustomary irreverence. He could not help being reminded of someone in Elizaveta Adolfovna Dietrich, with her Teuton name. As he walked quickly in search of medical help, he nodded to himself. Yes, he thought, Johanna Ivanovna, although they don’t look alike. Still, there are similarities…

  Ossip was terribly sick with the typhus, so sick, indeed, that the physician summoned by Stepan and well paid from the remainder of Ivan’s bills, declared that he would surely die. Elizaveta Dietrich and her daughter, Vera Tchernavina, stayed quietly by his bedside, and Stepan was forced to admire them. They appeared unafraid of the terrible possibility of contagion. Indeed, Stepan found it most unusual that this woman would permit her own small child to remain so close to someone afflicted with such illness. He thought: Johanna Ivanovna also nursed him, when he was but twenty.

  During his moments of consciousness, which was only partial consciousness, Ossip saw a woman’s face bending over him, and a vague outline of black hair. He tried to smile in his happiness. “Natasha...” he sighed.

  “Yes, yes,” the woman replied encouragingly. She touched his forehead with cool fingers.

  “Don’t... go,” he pleaded.

  “No,” she answered.

  “Never again...”

  “Do not tire yourself,” the woman said. Then, quickly, “No, don’t try to rise. Never again.”

  He sighed once more. “Love,” he whispered.

  Another time he said rapidly, incoherently, “Divorce! Must… get… divorce!” His eyes shone with such intensity that the woman knew it signified more than mere fever.

  “But I am already divorced,” she stated gently. His features softened; he smiled, fell asleep.

  Later he awakened abruptly, and saw the face of a child. “Lara?” he asked, breathlessly.

  “Verotchka,” the girl replied.

  “Ah,” he murmured, “then you must take another kopeck, and get another sweet roll.” He could not understand what the child from the station in Poland was doing here with him, with Natasha. “Love!” he cried, and would rest only when the woman with the dark hair took his hand and stroked it. Then he slept fitfully.

  One morning, when he was half awake, Ossip said to Verotchka, “You see? I am going to... marry your mother. Doesn’t matter... about religion.”

  “Is he awake, Mama?” the child asked with disbelief.

  “Enough to know what he is saying, sweetheart,” her mother replied. “He is aware that I am Protestant, and he, of course, is a Jew.”

  Several days later, Ossip was able to sit up, and for the first time a coolness came over him. He said, “Where am I? Who are you?” He perceived a strange angular woman with jet black hair, cropped short, and a little girl of some eight years, blond and pretty.

  “You’ve been very ill, with the typhus,” Elizaveta Adolfovna Dietrich said.

  But her daughter jumped up and clapped her hands, and cried out, “You’re going to live! And then you’re going to do what you promised, and marry Mama!”

  “Where is Stepan?” Ossip asked. He felt that he was dreaming. He stared at the odd child, clapping and spouting nonsense, and said, “Where’s Natasha?”

  “Stepan has gone for food,” the woman stated softly.

  “Who’s Natasha?” the little girl asked.

  “Hush, sweet. No one. No one important,” her mother answered. Ossip had fallen asleep, resembling a cherub with a growth of beard, and she smiled at him. “Baroness Ossip de Gunzburg,” she intoned in a singsong manner. Then she repeated, “No one at all.”

  But Ossip, asleep, was crying out, suddenly drenched with perspiration, “Don’t die! Never go away again...”

  “He’s afraid of dying,” Elizaveta Dietrich said to her daughter. “We all are, aren’t we?”

  When Ossip had sufficiently recovered, Stepan explained to him that the Red Army was approaching rapidly, and that the little money they still had would be sufficient to get them across the Dniester River and into Rumania. He cleared his throat, and added, averting his eyes, “Madame Dietrich and her daughter would like to trave
l with us, for protection. And besides, their funds have run out, too.”

  “Ah,” Ossip stated. He chewed upon his lower lip, pensively. It was a miracle that he was still alive, and there was no doubt that the nursing of the lady from upstairs, Elizaveta Adolfovna, had made the crucial difference. She had stayed up nights to sponge off his brow, had exhausted herself to restore him to health. And yet, he had been a virtual stranger, and she did not seem to Ossip to be the sort of woman for selfless devotion. He was somewhat baffled. He owed her his life—and yet, why had she not remained outside the sphere of his existence, now that nothing remained for him to live for? A deep, dull anguish pervaded his body. Now he felt angry at the Dietrich woman for her interference. “Damn,” he muttered. “I suppose it would be most ungenerous to refuse them, after all that they have done on my behalf. We owe them whatever we can offer, which is very little indeed.” Oh, to indulge in pure cowardice, he thought, not to face this obligation… He sighed deeply and sank into the cushions of the old sofa.

  “There is another matter, in regard to the ladies, which I must bring to your attention,” Stepan said gently. “It appears that you… that when you were ill, you were delirious, and told the child that you were planning to... marry her mother. And Madame Dietrich... well, took this proposal seriously. It seemed to make her very happy, Ossip Davidovitch.”

  The young man bolted upright, his blue eyes blazing. “Is this an attempt at humor?” he demanded. When Stepan did not reply, he uttered a low moan and struck his forehead with his fist. “My God!” he cried. “Stepan—fetch Elizaveta Adolfovna for me, please. I must discuss it with her at once—explain that it is all a grave mistake, some kind of unconscious blabber—”

  Deft on his feet, Stepan disappeared immediately and did not return. Moments later, the door swung open and a tall, thin form blew into the apartment. Ossip sat staring at Elizaveta Adolfovna, as if for the first time. She wore her hair short and straight, with bangs, and her lips were rouged—sensuous, perhaps. Her bony figure was anything but enticing, yet it touched him strangely. The meager breast was proud, showing its vulnerability, its poverty, yet demonstrating by the carriage of her shoulders that she was a lady of good breeding in spite of appearances. He shuddered slightly, finding her most unappealing—and yet, as an afterthought, he felt shame, for this was a woman who had sacrificed her own well-being to restore him to health. She stood before him, her prominent cheekbones with spots of color, her black eyes moist. He had found her hard; now, watching the smile that trembled on her thin lips, he was not so sure of his initial appraisal. “Sit down, please, Elizaveta Adolfovna,” he said, courteously. “I beg you to forgive me for not rising. I still feel—weak.”