The Four Winds of Heaven Read online

  “I’m not… going to allow Gino to marry that girl!” Johanna cried hysterically. “Mathilde will never permit it so long as I can prevent her.” She smiled malevolently at Sonia. “Do you remember Kolya’s mother, who was unsuitable? I showed your mother the foolishness of it, and you see? He did not marry you. Like Anna. I made Mathilde see how wrong it was for that Berson boy to keep calling, without openly declaring himself. He never did declare himself, did he? No, Gino will not have that girl, any more than you had your handsome Kolya Saxe. I shall see to it.”

  “We were all fools and weaklings,” Sonia said as calmly as she could. “But Gino is strong, and he is a man. You never hurt Ossip, did you?”

  “No,” she replied. “Ossip was passive and obedient. There was no need for interference. But I hurt your father. Never forget it, little girl.”

  “I’m not about to,” Sonia whispered. Her face was completely white, and there was not the slightest touch of red to her lips. She went to the fallen book, flipped through its pages, and found her place. She resumed her seat by Johanna’s side and began to read: “ ‘So, Celine thought, depositing the brown chiffon scarf upon the sofa...’ “

  Her voice, clear and strong, rang through the small sitting room until the clock in Madame Solovéichik’s kitchen struck twelve thirty. Sonia placed the book face down upon Johanna’s cot, and rose to make luncheon. “Make sure not to burn my food,” the sick woman said. Sonia nodded and left the room. In the hallway she leaned against the wall, rubbing her temples with tremulous fingers. No, she thought, I shall not cry. Never again for her. Clenching her fists, she walked quickly into the kitchen.

  She had learned a new way of cooking oats. Instead of simply boiling the cereal, she whisked it in a dry pan over the fire for ten minutes, and only then poured it into the boiling water. This was Johanna’s preferred method, and Sonia went through the steps of this more troublesome procedure, grilling the oats first. But when she brought the bowl to her governess, the woman rose on her elbow and began to shout, in her shrewish tones, “You have purposely done this, serving me what I detest above all, and preparing it in such an odious manner! You did this to be mean, because your mother is not here to protect me! You don’t know what more to invent against me. One of these days, you will poison my food, I know it positively. There, you little monster, you plain little sparrow—see what I do with your meal!” She called Kaffa, the small dog, who had been, once again, at Sonia’s heels. To the girl’s humiliation, Johanna placed the bowl on the floor before the dog, gloating while Kaffa lapped up the oats. Sonia uttered not a word. She swallowed hard, and kept her eyes on the dog. When Kaffa had finished her snack, Sonia took the empty bowl and returned it to the kitchen. But, as she walked, she wept.

  That evening, she took her brother aside and said, “Why don’t you marry Olga, as soon as possible? She is so much in love with you.”

  “What’s come over you?” Gino asked. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m worried, that’s all. I’m… afraid. I want to make certain that nothing prevents you from marrying Olga. You do want to, don’t you?”

  Her brother chuckled softly. “Olga is very young, Sonitchka, and we are in the midst of such bad times. I’m going to sign up with a White regiment, when a decent one forms here. I’d rather wait until all that’s behind us before proposing to Olga. Besides, I have no money. I don’t want her to think I want her because she still has some. Give us a little time, Sonia.”

  Inexplicably, his sister broke down and began to cry, and when he took her in his arms, he did not know why he was comforting her. Poor Sonitchka. What kind of existence was this for a society girl from Petrograd?

  The Gunzburgs no longer were in official mourning for Baron David by the end of 1918. A year had elapsed since his death, but Sonia had no wish to wear bright clothing or to dance. She was too busy to fuss over pleasure or appearance. She felt that she deserved her moments at the Zevin piano, for they relaxed her taut nerves and enabled her to face each day as it came. In December she had discovered a new outlet for her passionate idealism. A battered White force had reclaimed Simferopol from the Red troops, and a canteen had been set up for the officers in the kitchen and dining room of the Hotel de l’Europe, the largest such establishment in the city. Nadezhda Igorovna and Olga, Mathilde, Sonia and Johanna all signed up to help serve the men. Every woman was asked to serve at least one luncheon and one supper per week, but still Sonia thought that, compared to the rigors she had endured packaging food for the prisoners of war, this was a small thing indeed.

  In the meantime, the young men had formed a night watch, as in Feodosia, and Gino took an active part in it. The guard was divided into two watches, the first from eleven at night until two in the morning, the second from two until six. The weather had grown cold and this duty was most arduous, frequently taking place in the snow or in glacial windstorms. Gino spoke to the officers in the city, and learned that a General Kutepov was recruiting White soldiers in the Isthmus of Perekop, where the fighting was fiercest and the Whites were attempting to hold off a new onslaught from the Reds in the north of the peninsula. He considered this carefully, then when he picked Olga up at the officers’ canteen at seven one evening, he took her for a long walk in the dusk.

  At first they said nothing, merely synchronizing their footsteps. She was clad in a tawny woolen coat with a fur collar and fur trim at the sleeves and hem, and she wore a toque of similar fur on her golden curls. He thought, absurdly, that his sister might never again possess a fur, and for a moment he felt disheartened. But Olga placed her hand upon his arm, and once again he was secure in the knowledge of her love for him. Not looking at her bright hazel eyes he said, “I have reached a decision, Olga. I am going to have to fight for my fellow Russians. I hope that if there is a God, he will forgive me.”

  She nodded. “Remember that a God who forgives a man for killing a member of his own kind is a forgiving God, a God of nuances. Sometimes, Gino, you fail to think of nuances, of shades of gray. You would not engage in civil war, yet if Hans Blumenfeld had faced you in combat, your own cousin by marriage, you would have felt justified in killing him. You would have felt ennobled by your patriotism. Of course, you would have been unhappy at having had to kill—is that not so?”

  “Absolutely,” he murmured. “You know that I have never enjoyed this so-called ‘heroism.’ I did not deserve the Cross of St. George.”

  “Yes, you did. Enjoying is one matter, and believing is quite another. You believed you had no choice. And that is what you have decided now.”

  He stopped, and ran a tired finger over the smooth grain of her skin. “And when I return?” he asked softly.

  “You needn’t ask,” she told him quietly.

  “You are not afraid that I want you because you are still wealthy, Olga?”

  She saw the pain, the humiliation on his face, in his eyes. She turned aside. “Perhaps I merely wish to wear your title,” she replied. Then she looked back at him, and her eyes were full of tears. “I wish you didn’t have to go so soon,” she said, and she placed her hand in the palm of his, trustfully.

  The next morning, Madame Solovéichik came to Gino at breakfast and said, “My farm manager in Beshterek is ill, my dear. He was to bring me the account books and some fresh produce. I wonder if I might impose upon you, Gino, to make the trip there and back, in his stead?” The young man readily accepted. He would take a buggy in the afternoon and enjoy the eight-mile drive. He needed fresh air to clear his mind and to fully accept his decision. It would do him good to have time to think.

  On the way to the farm, Gino recalled the speech he, Sonia, and Olga had gone to hear at the University only days before. The lecturer had been a Conservative who had served in the Duma, and who had taken part in the assassination of the lecherous and self-seeking Rasputin, adviser to the deluded Tzarina Alexandra. An able speaker, this statesman of much controversy, Purishkevitch, had made good points. He had discussed the political situatio
n in the south of Russia, which comprised the Crimea, the Ukraine, and Bessarabia; the German colonists, the Siberians, the hopes of the people, plans for various governments, duties of the White Army. To think that this man now fought for the same goals as Ivan Berson, Anna’s beau, who had been a Kerensky socialist! Gino thought: How strange, I have been meaning for months to tell Mama and Sonitchka about my encounter with Vanya at the front. Why haven’t I remembered to do so?

  Yes, he thought, Purishkevitch, whom I had always considered somewhat extreme, like Ossip’s friend’s father, Senator Count Tagantsev—Purishkevitch is helping me to justify my stand against my own countrymen. Shaking the thought from his mind, Gino looked up and noticed that he was arriving at the farm. He stepped down from the carriage, tied up the horse, and went into the main house, where the manager, Feodor Rubashov, resided. His wife brought Gino to the ailing man, and together they began a thorough examination of the books.

  But before they had gotten far a commotion was heard, and the front door of the house was pushed open. Gino left the books with the manager and rushed into the dining room, where he was confronted with the sight of all of the farm workers and peasants, including children, being shoved into the room by nine men with rifles and bayonets. One of the assailants seized Gino and pushed him roughly against a wall. “Your property is surrounded,” he announced. “We are Red anarchists, and have come for the money. Are you the manager?”

  “I have been sent by the owner,” Gino replied carefully, afraid for the sick Feodor Rubashov. “What can I do for you?”

  By now the rest of the band had bound the peasants and the children, and gagged them as well. “Bring the books,” the leader ordered Gino. The young man went into the bedroom and returned with the ledgers, which he laid upon the dining room table. But the anarchists’ leader was dissatisfied. “You will bring us all the money, or tell us where you are printing the counterfeit,” he ordered.

  Gino was very frightened. At any moment they might begin to shoot. Besides, he knew of no money beyond what was owed to the salaried peasants, and he felt that it was not his business to give away their pay. And counterfeit? That was preposterous. He said nothing. Then the leader, with a furious shout, bound Gino’s hands behind his back and pushed him into the room where Feodor Rubashov lay in bed. They began to ransack the house, and, with yelps of delight, came to their leader with seven hundred rubles. “We wanted twenty thousand,” he declared, pointing a bayonet under Gino’s chin and watching one of his men similarly threaten the manager. But Feodor, trembling all over, stammered, “That is all we have! Take it, and be gone.”

  One of the bandits aimed his rifle at the ill man, who shook his head again and again, becoming gray with fear. “We have no more,” he kept repeating. The bandit called out, “One! Two! Three!” and the gun went off. To Gino’s horror, the pleasant face of Feodor Rubashov was transformed into a gaping red wound. The manager was dead. “If he could have told you, he would have, to save his life,” Gino said, surprised that he could even utter the words. But, strange as it was, he felt calm, as though ready for whatever was going to happen now. Not even the raised bayonets frazzled him. “And I know nothing, either,” he added. “I have come from Simferopol for the first time today.”

  “You will name the richest of the peasants,” the leader said. But Gino shook his head, as Feodor Rubashov had done, and told them that he was not even familiar with anyone but the poor manager. Angered beyond reason, they began to beat him about the head and arms, until he fell unconscious to the floor.

  When he came to, they reiterated their barrage of questions, and when he failed to give them replies they beat him a second time. Then they awakened him by throwing cold water on him, and propped his weak body against the wall. The man who had shot the manager shouldered his rifle again, took aim at Gino’s head, and started to count. Gino felt his legs give way, saw swaying figures, and collapsed, wondering why the fellow had not fired. He heard laughter above him, and fainted with this bizarre sound in his ears. When he came to, this time, his first thought was: Yes, God forgives. But why have I been spared, and not Feodor Rubashov?

  The bandits had untied him, and told him that it was six thirty in the evening. Only two hours had passed since his arrival. They pushed him into his buggy, and climbed in beside him. “Drive,” they said, pointing a rifle to his right temple. Several miles beyond, near Dubky, they passed a carriage, and one man remained in the buggy with Gino while the others looted the vehicle and its passengers. Gino was ill, seeing spots before his eyes, unaware of the passage of time except to note that he had miraculously stayed alive until this point. He had met the devil, and survived. Nothing would ever be worse for him. When they had gone another mile, the Red attackers jumped out of the buggy and climbed into a stolen landau which they had left there on the roadside before arriving at the farm in Beshterek. When they drove away, Gino fell forward, and the old horse made its way back to Simferopol without guidance.

  It was after supper when Gino, pale and shaken, appeared before his mother and Madame Solovéichik. His clothing was in tatters, his hair on end, his eyes vague and staring. He opened his mouth and fell to his knees before the terrified, stricken women. Sonia dropped beside him and took him in her arms, peering at his face with terrified concern. She held him tightly and cried, “Call a doctor, for heaven’s sake!” Keeping her own warmth close, she soothed him with tender whispers, crooning his name over and over. When at last the doctor arrived, they carried Gino to the cot in the alcove where he customarily slept.

  The physician administered sedatives to Gino, and announced to his family that the young man had suffered a slight concussion and many contusions, but that, after several days of total rest, they might be assured of his health. “He has an iron constitution,” the doctor said to Mathilde. “Many men would have died of the shock.”

  But Sonia stated proudly, “Gino is a survivor, Doctor.”

  It was in Olga’s arms that Gino relived, at length, the murder of Feodor Rubashov and his own threatened death and cruel beatings. It was she who soothed him when he became hysterical, refusing to take his sedative, afraid to sleep for fear of reawakening in the midst of the killers. Olga spent that night by Gino’s bed, holding his hand, and not even Johanna dared to utter the slightest word of criticism. But when it was time for another dosage of the medicine, it was she who insisted upon administering it to her former charge, and Olga, deferentially, moved aside in silence. They did not speak, but clearly, by her manner, Olga was saying: This man is pledged to me, and I am not afraid of anyone. Do what you will, you shall not separate us.

  Several days later, Gino said to Olga, “Are the peasants all right at the farm? Did someone go to help them?”

  “Yes, sweetest, it’s been taken care of. Sonia and I reported all you told us to the Committee for Counterespionage. Would you like some tea?”

  “No,” he asserted. “I only want to go out and crush those monsters! You were right, of course. The Germans were not ‘bad,’ only political foes. But the Reds will massacre our entire country. I must go to Perekop, Olga, to join up.”

  She did not find it possible to answer him. But in her heart there was a terrible sadness, a weight that would not leave her. When he was well, Gino donned his old uniform and mounted a horse that he had been given by one of the White officers stationed in Simferopol. He bent down from his saddle and looked at Olga, and saw his love reflected in her hazel eyes. He smiled, and twisted the ends of his glossy mustache. Then he touched his spurs to the flanks of his horse and rode off at a gallop.

  Sonia placed her hand on Olga’s shoulder, and together, mutely, they watched him recede into the distance. Next to them, Mathilde felt another part of herself splintering away. First David, then Ossip, now her youngest child. And for what, dear God? she reflected bitterly. But this time, she knew. Gino had seen death and had not succumbed to it, and now he was going to crush those who had threatened him—just as Ossip had seen death, and fl
ed. But we are all individuals, she thought with a surge of unusual passion, and there are no absolutes, no guidelines in terror. My sons are neither heroes nor cowards. They are men.

  On March 19, 1919, the French took over the city of Odessa and began to send their own battalions against the Red Army. With the signing of the Armistice in November of 1918, the British and French had rallied, though somewhat haphazardly, to the cause of the Whites against the communists who had betrayed them with the treaty at Brest-Litovsk. But the Red Cheka was not about to relinquish this major southern stronghold, which had already seen foreign occupation under the Central Powers the previous year.

  The Red Army had become more cohesive, as had the White forces under Generals Denikin and Kolchak. Although the peasants did not for the most part like the role assigned to them, they could not resist the general conscription which had gone into effect in June of 1918. The Crimean and Moldavian peasantry was less harassed than that of central Russia, a stronghold of Red power. But as more young men such as Gino joined the White Army, and rendered it powerful in the south, the Reds were forced to become better organized themselves, as a retaliatory measure.

  When the Reds realized that the French were taking over Odessa, they experienced a moment of panic. The Cheka began to seize citizens haphazardly from various parts of the city, herding them as hostages into makeshift camps. At the time, Hillel Zlatopolsky, his wife Fanny, his daughter Shoshana and her husband, and his son Mossia and Mossia’s spouse, Elena, had taken refuge in a small house away from the center of the city. Hillel had succeeded in booking passage for everyone on board a French ship. Meanwhile, he and his son kept a close watch on their “fortune”: five bags of sugar beets previously garnered from their Kiev plantations. But one day as Mossia was stepping out of the house, he was roughly grabbed by two members of the Cheka, and dispatched to an enclosed area outside Odessa. His wife and mother watched from the window, helpless.