The Four Winds of Heaven Page 62

  She walked out into the sunshine, a diminutive woman weighing less than eighty pounds. She was totally unfamiliar with Sevastopol, but her footsteps took her along the harbor docks, and whenever she encountered a White officer, she would stop him with her question regarding Kutepov. She walked and walked, until her feet ached so that she could hardly continue to lift them. But if Gino were anywhere near the city, and they departed without making contact, she would never forgive herself.

  Late in the afternoon, Sonia passed before a row of shops. In her weariness and disheartened condition, she nearly bumped into a lady strolling with a little girl. Sonia lifted her gray eyes to the woman’s face, a hasty apology upon her lips. Instead, the words choked her. Her eyes took in the black hair with its loose tendrils, the high color, the regal yet graceful stance. She said, “Natalia Nicolaievna.”

  The woman blushed, hastily touched her forehead, and her deep blue eyes became sapphires, points of brilliance. “Sofia Davidovna,” she replied. There was a softness in her voice, and yet embarrassment. She quickly motioned to the little girl, saying, “This is my daughter, Lara. Lara, this is Baroness de Gunzburg, a friend from Petrograd.”

  “How come we never saw you there?” the girl asked, with childish impudence. Then she blushed, resembling her mother, and added, “I am pleased to meet you.”

  “And I am pleased to meet you, too,” Sonia replied, smiling at the girl. She could not look at the mother, but knew that for an inexplicable reason Natasha wished to hold her there. Surely not for the past? Finally she raised her gray eyes and said, “My mother and I are sailing for Constantinople on the twenty-third. I was searching for my brother, Gino, who is serving under General Kutepov. I had so hoped he might be right here, in Sevastopol…”

  But Sonia realized that Natasha had stopped listening to her, that she had bitten her lower lip at the mention of the word “brother.” It was a word that hung between them. Now Natasha murmured, “And... Ossip?”

  “We haven’t heard from him in several years. He had gone to Odessa—”

  “Yes,” Natasha said. Sonia stopped, and regarded her once more, wondering. Natasha hesitated, then added nothing. Sonia waited. For a moment, intense discomfort gnawed at both of them, and each stood on the verge of exchanging confidences, on the brink of understanding, but held back. Finally Natasha broke the awkward silence and said, with infinite gentleness, “My husband, Prince Kurdukov, is stationed here with his troops. I shall ask him about your… about Evgeni Davidovitch. If I hear any news, where shall I come?”

  Sonia’s austere, alabaster features relaxed, and a tint of pink rose to her cheekbones. “That is most generous of your time and effort, Natalia Nicolaievna,” she replied. She gave the address of the family with whom the Gunzburgs were staying, and said good-bye to the woman and her daughter. When she returned home she could not shake off the odd sensation that had enveloped her and Natasha that afternoon. She kept fighting the desire to weep.

  The evening before their scheduled departure, their hostess told them that a lady had come to speak with them, a Princess Kurdukova. Sonia’s face lit up, and she clutched her mother’s hand. “That is Natalia Nicolaievna,” she said. “Perhaps she has located Gino!” The desperate hope in her voice filled the room.

  But when Natasha entered, her lovely eyes were opaque, and she was not smiling. Sonia’s heart plummeted. Natasha went toward Mathilde, took her hand, and said, “It is good to see you, Mathilde Yureyevna. But I have not found your son. However, my husband is on the lookout for him, and if we hear the slightest news...”

  “You are so kind,” Mathilde answered. She motioned for Natasha to take a seat on the small divan, and the young woman did so. The family had retired to other rooms in order to leave their guests alone with their visitor. Mathilde gazed upon Natasha and declared, “You are still as lovely as when we knew you. How are your parents? Maria Efimovna?”

  Now Natasha’s eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away quickly. “They are gone,” she murmured. “It was a dreadful tragedy. My daughter and I are the only ones alive today—and my husband, of course.” She looked away, then back to Mathilde, and said, intensely, “You do not know whether Ossip is safe?”

  Sonia cleared her throat, and all at once her features glazed with frost. She was remembering Ossip before his baccalaureate exams, telling her that his life was over, that Natasha would not be his wife. She spoke, startling her mother with the curtness of her words. “Natalia Nicolaievna,” she said, “why should it matter to you? Ossip has meant less than nothing to your existence. He was a despised Jew, to be hurt and eventually discarded.”

  The face that stared back at Sonia was red, and bathed in tears. “You have no idea,” Natasha whispered. “No idea at all... How could you, Sofia Davidovna? I, at least, gave Ossip what I could. Small gifts indeed, compared to what he should have been given. But I did not let him kill himself in a reckless ambush, at the end of a crazy war. You may be able to live with your upright purity, but there are only venial sins on my own conscience. I am sorry that it was Jesus who said, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ I wish it had been Moses or David. Then you would not accuse me of prejudice…”

  “I did what I thought best, for both of us,” Sonia replied quietly.

  “Ah, yes. We each do what it is in our nature to let us do. It was Ossip who taught me to stop hating you, Sofia Davidovna. But I cannot hate you, for after all, you are his sister.”

  “This is no time for hatred, in any event,” Sonia commented tersely. Her own eyes had filled with tears, and she clasped her hands in her lap.

  “No. But... if you see him... when you see him... would you give him a message? I want him to know— that—” Natasha stood up suddenly, her face distorted. She looked at Mathilde who sat uncomprehending of the scene that had so shaken her daughter and the Princess, and now Natasha could not continue. She went toward Mathilde, took her hand once again, and whispered, “It was so good to see you, to know that you are well. Good-bye, Mathilde Yureyevna.” She walked hastily to the door.

  On the threshold, Sonia caught up with her, placing a hand upon the other’s arm. “What is the message?” she murmured.

  Natasha saw the earnest expression of the gray eyes, the stillness of delicate features. She replied, her voice low, “I am going to ask my husband to grant me a divorce, when this is over. Even if it means that he will take Larissa from me—”

  But Sonia shook her head. “Wait,” she said softly. “Let us see where life takes you, where it may take Ossip, and your husband. I would not raise my brother’s hopes—nor indeed should you raise your own. Good luck, Natalia Nicolaievna.”

  Sonia did not speak to her mother after Natasha’s departure. She finished the packing, and left Mathilde to wonder at the cold, hard passion she had seen surface in her frail, beautiful daughter, whose back seemed so fragile as she bent over the luggage. And Mathilde thought: I do not know my children. She thought of Riri, a searing vision; then her mind lit upon Natasha, and she sighed. She remembered Johanna, and her agony in the end. Some of us love forever, she reflected, and this love devours us until it has decimated our existence. She worried about her sons. Where were they now, and were they safe? Would their lives ever be normal again?

  “Sleep, Mama,” Sonia told her, and obediently Mathilde lay down and closed her eyes upon the pain and the lack of answers.

  On the following morning, the twenty-third of August, Zevin’s peasant guide drove Sonia to the port, where she found their ship and climbed aboard to assume possession of the cabin she and her mother were to share with three other women. In the meantime, Mathilde made her rounds with the remnant of her Russian money, finishing with the peasant himself whom she tipped lavishly with their last rubles. He was now ready to return to Simferopol, his mission accomplished. In the late afternoon, he made his final stop, taking Mathilde to the ship with all the sacks of luggage. She found Sonia in the cabin, and then, togethe
r, they climbed on deck.

  When the ship lifted anchor, it was early evening, and by the docks an immense crowd stood watching as the ship began to move. Dusk had settled over Sevastopol. Sonia watched as Russia receded to a thin line on the horizon. Salt spray tingled upon her face. A strange tranquility had seeped into her soul, had settled there as a thick quilt upon a bed. It seemed fitting that her last memory of Russia should be of the south, as was her first, of Mohilna. She was burying Russia, as once she had buried Volodia Tagantsev. “We each do what it is in our own nature to let us do.” Or, thought Sonia, what must be done.

  The next day the sea grew rough and rain came. Between the showers, bursts of sunshine appeared to relieve the darkness. The Gunzburgs ate their provisions. In the early morning the ship entered the Bosporus, and at noon it dropped anchor in a shaded cove between some wooded hills near Kavaca. Officials—Senegalese soldiers—stepped on board, rounded up the passengers, and divided the men and women. Each group was made to line up in twos, and the men went off in one direction while the women were sent off the ship into a hot waiting room with bars upon its windows.

  Later, two Turkish women ordered the women to undress, and all but their hats, boots, corsets, coats, and change purses were taken out to be disinfected. Then, in groups of four, they were taken to four small shower stalls where, for the first time in days, Sonia and Mathilde washed away the soot and grime of their travels. In the next room they redressed, feeling rehabilitated by their cleansing, and at two thirty in the afternoon men and women were reunited and allowed to reboard the ship. It was time for the crew to be disinfected.

  They arrived in Constantinople at four thirty. A commission of Allied representatives—French, English, Italian, Greek and Turkish—came at once on board to examine the entrance visas. When they were done, dock officials arrived, offering to find rooms for those who were disembarking. But Sonia heard one of them telling a lady that he would obtain a room for “a mere twenty-five Turkish pounds” for her and her small son. Sonia turned to her mother, horror-struck. The two women only possessed a total of thirty pounds, with which they also needed to wire Misha de Gunzburg in Paris. Sonia could not move. They could hardly afford a porter, but if they left the ship without all their bags, they would never be permitted back on board to claim the rest at a later time. And Sonia intended to hold on to the few valued books and functional clothes which represented their only possessions. These bags, which now stood upon the deck, were Russia and their past, as well as their link with the future.

  A dock official was telling Mathilde that they were the last ones, that they needed to disembark at once. Quickly Sonia stated, “Please. We are expecting friends. Give us a few more moments.” When he moved away, doubtful, she whispered to her mother, “This will give me time to think up something. I don’t know what, though…”

  But the official had gone to fetch a companion, who said to Sonia, “We know how it is. You have very little money. Maybe we can help you. I know of a place where you can sleep for only three Turkish pounds a night. Come with me.”

  Three pounds! One-tenth the asking price of the other officials. As they followed the man off the ship, Sonia visualized a rat-infested cellar or a sordid attic. But they were almost beggars and had no choice. He had offered them their only way off the ship.

  A truck came onto the pier, and the official helped the driver load the Gunzburg bags onto it. Then he helped the two women inside. Slowly the vehicle began to climb from Galata Avenue to Pera, the most elegant thoroughfare of Constantinople. To Sonia’s astonishment, the driver halted in front of the once splendid Hotel d’Angleterre. “Our hotels can no longer feed their guests,” the official explained, helping them step down. “This one possesses an enormous dining room which is no longer in use. I know the manager. He will let you sleep there for only three pounds.”

  Sonia’s eyes flew to the kind face of the stranger, and she placed a hand upon his arm. “However can we thank you?” she whispered tremulously. “God alone can understand how desperate our situation would be without your efforts!”

  “It’s quite all right,” the official replied. He was clearly embarrassed by the intensity of Sonia’s gratitude.

  They were escorted to a large room where two iron beds had been set up in a corner. The women were told that they could place their clothing inside the sideboard drawers. The manager brought in a portable sink and a wooden table, and Sonia paid him for several days in advance and tipped the official. These transactions left the Gunzburgs with sufficient funds for frugal meals and their telegram.

  Alone, mother and daughter looked around them, their odyssey ended, if only until Misha’s response. Sonia’s dark hair shone above her clear white brow, and her gray eyes were calm yet firm. Bolshevism was behind them, out of their life. Only the diamond crab had come with them from Petrograd, from another existence. As Sonia unpinned it from her undergarment to go to sleep, she said to her mother, “One day my daughter will wear this jewel, and imagine spires and cupolas that her eyes may never see. To think that a man nearly murdered us for it...”

  But Mathilde was thinking of something quite different. She wondered at Sonia’s absurd confidence that she would one day marry to produce such a daughter. Now that they had nothing, would there be a David to claim her?

  Chapter 24

  Baron Mikhail de Gunzburg wired sufficient money to his niece and sister-in-law for them to make proper reservations to travel to Paris on the Orient Express. It would be their first time on this noted train, and Misha had sent them enough funds for a wagon-lit. This incredible luxury loomed magnificent in Mathilde’s head, but Sonia had other reasons for rejoicing. Misha had made her a proposal, in answer to her request for help in finding a position in Paris. His son, Sergei, who knew little of Russia and was called by his French name of Serge, was now ten, and needed the firm hand of an excellent governess. Would Sonia consent to come to him and her Aunt Clara, in their mansion on rue de Lubeck, near the Place d’Iena, to care for Serge?

  Sonia did not hesitate in accepting. Although her mother balked at the notion of her daughter’s being placed “in a false situation,” Sonia expressed astonishment. “Your best friend was a governess in your own household,” she chided her mother.

  But Mathilde thought of how Rosa had slighted Johanna, and of others who had treated her as hardly a step up from a servant. “Eight years ago you spent time with Misha and Clara,” she admonished her daughter, “and you were their guest. Now you would be returning, in a very different situation, as a salaried employee. Could you endure that, Sonia?”

  “I endured the Crimea for three years, and I endured being rejected by Kolya for another woman,” Sonia declared quietly. “I need to earn a living, and Uncle Misha is a good man. Also—I love children.”

  Ah, thought Mathilde, wincing. Anna too loved them, loved her own child, caring for him as though he were another woman’s. Suddenly, the serene Mathilde was furious, furious with Kolya Saxe for what he had done: if he had not abandoned Sonia, she would not now be planning to serve in her uncle’s house. But Sonia refused to reconsider her decision. Mathilde said, “You cannot accept without informing Misha of your condition. Your ribs are showing, Sonia. We shall need time, six or eight weeks’ worth, to recuperate here.”

  Mikhail de Gunzburg replied that he and Clara were willing to wait. In the meanwhile, the two women walked about the city of Constantinople, meeting acquaintances from Petrograd and the Crimea who had similarly sought refuge there from the destructive forces of the Red Army. Then came a letter from Paris, and Sonia recognized the handwriting with a lurch of her heart: it came from Ossip! The first news in two years. She opened the envelope and scanned its contents, growing pale. “Mama,” she said, “Ossip is married! He married a woman called Lizette Dietrich, from the Baltic provinces, and they are in Paris. Uncle Misha told him we were here. Ossip is working at the Franco-Asian Bank, which is owned by a cousin, and he is going to be sent to Tokyo. Lizette ha
s a daughter by a former marriage—” She stopped, simply handing the missive to her mother, who awaited it with trembling hands. News of her favorite son. Stunned, hopeful, also frightened, Mathilde had let her daughter read the smooth handwriting first. But now she could not concentrate on Ossip’s own words. Visions of Natalia Kurdukova printed themselves upon her memory, and she compressed her lips.

  Sonia knew what was in her mother’s mind, but she remembered more: those last few phrases uttered by Natasha about a divorce. Sonia knew her brother. But she did not sense joy in this letter, certainly no personal joy. She remembered Natasha in Ossip’s arms, in the Tambov, by the lake. Fool, she thought suddenly, weak fool. But who was she to decide now in favor of Natasha, she who had so ardently sought to make her brother give her up?

  While Sonia and Mathilde grew stronger in Constantinople, the White Army was dying, unsung, in the Crimean peninsula. General Wrangel, admitting defeat, began to send convoys of troops to the Bosporus, and to evacuate the wounded and the families of soldiers as well. The communists had finally, unquestionably, won, both in government and in strength of battle. The seventy thousand remaining Whites began to depart, on ships, though some had been retained for one last stand on the Isthmus of Perekop in the north of the Crimea.

  Master Sergeant Gino de Gunzburg was given orders, in early October, to board the convoy ship Don, en route to Gallipoli. Eighty-five hundred others received the same command. The seventh regiment of the cavalry was being evacuated. The young man was cold and tired, especially in his heart. He and his companions were herded together in the third story hold, where their horses were likewise accommodated. He was leaving his country for life, and, turning to Afanassiev, a young sergeant who had fought alongside him, Gino said, “This is truly exile and orphanage. I know only of one of my sisters, in Switzerland, who has survived. She is ten years my senior and I haven’t seen her for a long time. My brother has disappeared, I have heard nothing of my mother and my other sister. Papa is dead, our fortune is gone—and we are quitting Russia in abject defeat. Somehow, this seems too much to accept.”