The Four Winds of Heaven (37 page)

“No,” Sonia murmured, “it was not you. I was merely thinking of... of...” But she could not proceed. Her cheeks were flooded with tears, and she held her handkerchief to her lips. “However will I tell him?” she whispered.

“Tell him? Tell whom?” Nina demanded.

“It does not matter,” Sonia said brokenly. “But I shall not give him the news. He would not survive it now!”

He will go to Japan, and get well, she thought grimly. Then, when he returns, I shall tell him the news. Perhaps by then he will have met someone else in Japan. Moise Mess has a niece… She turned to Nina and suddenly brightened. “Ninotchka!” she cried. “I had not thought to ask you—but Ossip will be going to Japan, and he will be homesick. Will you write to him while he is gone?”

Her friend blushed. “But he has not asked me to,” she said.

“He was too ill! And before that he worried so about his gold medal! I am certain—certain!—that if he had remained healthy he would now be asking you to wait for him until his studies are over. I am not asking you in his stead. When he returns, he can do so in person. But if you care for him, you must let him understand, by writing... Or else he will think you interested in someone else, and will not press his suit when he comes home!”

“All right,” Nina assented.

Sonia brought her friend's hands to her lips, and kissed them. “You are so good,” she declared, and poured them a new glass of tea. But her hand was still shaking.

O
ssip had been sent
to Normandy so quickly, his health so precarious, that his friends from the gymnasium had been unable to see him off. Now, one by one, Petri, Botkin, and Sokolov arrived at the Gunzburg apartment, and Sonia and David greeted them and received the good-byes that were meant for Ossip. All were planning to enter the University in the autumn: Petri to the Faculty of Letters, Botkin to History; Sokolov planned to become a chemist. Only Sokolov had been granted a silver medal; the others, like Ossip, had received gold ones, as had their companion, Volodia Tagantsev. David congratulated them warmly, for he was a profound admirer of scholarship and academic excellence. It hurt him to think of Ossip's disappointment in being held back once again because of illness.

The three young men expressed sympathy for their friend, and wrote down his address. When Botkin came, he was carrying a small flat package, and he took Sonia aside in the sitting room and bade her open it. She unwrapped it and stood back, tears coming to her eyes. It was a portrait of the five friends, Ossip, Volodia, Sokolov, Petri, and Botkin. “My father painted it from memory,” the young man said. “It was to be my graduation present. Now I want Ossip to have it, so that we may remain at his side even in Normandy and Japan.” Sergei Botkin, nephew of the Tzar's physician, was also the son of Mikhail Botkin, an artist of great repute. His name was signed in the bottom left corner.

After the news of Natasha's wedding, Sonia hesitated, and held back from sending the painting. She took it to her bedroom, and propped it by her secretary, near the etching of Gino that Anna had left there when she had gone to Switzerland. She would try not to look upon those faces, for she did not want to stare into the velvet brown eyes of Volodia, who had not come with the others. And yet she did not blame him. She understood his reasons. He had no way of knowing that she had not written to her brother about Prince Kurdukov.

Now and then, as though drawn by a magnet, her gray eyes would seek Volodia's face in its frame, and she would feel a surge of blood rising to her temples. But she raised her chin, and forced herself to distract her troubled thoughts. She was determined to put him out of her existence.

Then Mathilde and Johanna returned. Ossip was sufficiently recovered that he no longer needed constant care and nursing, and Johanna's family planned to remain in Normandy for the rest of the summer, until Ossip departed for the Far East. Mathilde had not wished to stay away from her two younger children. Summer vacation plans had been delayed because of Ossip's critical condition but now, in July, Mathilde wanted to take Sonia and Gino to see her parents, and their sister, Anna. She also intended to take them for a short farewell visit to Normandy.

T
he remainder
of the summer went quickly by. Baron Yuri and his wife, Ida, had rented a mansion in the Black Forest of Austria, and it was there that Sonia saw her sister, Anna, for the first time since their separation. Had Johanna not been absent, visiting her own family in Normandy, Anna would clearly not have come. She had brought along her friend, Dalia Hadjani, to meet the Gunzburgs.

When Mathilde first saw her daughter standing in front of her, in a suit of rich brown linen in the fashion of the day, she was somehow surprised. There was an awkward moment while they looked at each other mutely. Anna's eyes seemed to be asking whether she would now be unquestionably accepted, while for Mathilde there was the fear of rejection and, at the same time, refusal to be cowed into submission by her own child. It was Dalia Hadjani, the outsider, who broke the silence. She stepped toward Mathilde and took her hands, forcing her to look away from Anna to herself. Mathilde saw the black mourning clothes, the elegance, the handsome exotic face, and then she heard the gentle, well-modulated voice of the Persian saying to her: “Madame de Gunzburg, it is so kind of you to receive me on such short notice.”

“Not at all,” Mathilde replied. She felt drugged by Dalia's quiet presence, which forced politeness to the forefront of her own consciousness. If she allowed herself to go through the right motions, then she would not have to deal with Anna. “It is we who are delighted that you have come,” she remarked, and smiled. “Please sit down, Madame Hadjani.”

“No, you must call me ‘Dalia.' For you see, Anna has grown to be as my own sister—my own family, except for my son. In fact—Anna's help has been indispensable to me with him, too.”

Mathilde sat down and indicated some comfortable chairs for Dalia and Anna. She wondered where her daughter would sit; Anna chose a seat near her beautiful dark-haired friend. “And your baby?” Mathilde asked. “Is he well?”

“Riri is fine. Our little maid is taking care of him during our absence. But naturally, we are uncomfortable about having left him.”

“Of course. It must be so difficult for you, my dear. After the tragedy… alone with a child.”

“But I am not alone,” Dalia smiled. “I have Anna.”

“Yes, Mama. I am always there for Dalia and Riri.” Mathilde looked at her daughter, and saw a glow of defiance in the fine brown eyes. What have I said to offend her now? she thought. “You look very well, Mama,” Anna remarked in her stilted tone.

“And you.” Mathilde gazed at the simple garnet earrings and the gold watch pinned upon Anna's breast. There were no feathers or ribbons on her hat, no exotic belt—as a matter of fact Anna wore no bizarre accoutrements at all. She looked sedate. Subdued. The warm brown color of her suit was pleasing to the eye without crying out for attention. Had her daughter changed so much in so short a time?

Then Sonia entered, with Gino. Anna's features lost their stiffness, and became tender as she took them both into her arms. But even in her pleasure she was not the boisterous, exuberant girl of before. Sonia went to sit on an ottoman at her feet, but Gino went to Dalia. “You must tell me all about Persia, if you please,” he said, and sat next to her, his young face full of questions.

“Very well,” Dalia replied. She laughed, and her voice became conspiratorial. “What would you like to know? About the veils that the women wear?”

Anna and her friend remained in the Black Forest for two weeks. Dalia made an excellent impression upon the family. Baron Yuri found her a receptive listener to his colorful tales. Baroness Ida liked her poised manner, her clean coiled black hair, her smooth creamy complexion which demonstrated a solid background of gentility. Dalia talked with Ida about her life in Persia, about her husband's business, about her upbringing. And while Dalia was thus entertaining their grandparents, Anna, Sonia, and Gino attempted to regain lost ground to make up for the time together they had lost. But Sonia could not quite grasp this new Anna. She wrote to Ossip: “Anna is afraid to be close to me, as she once was. And there is something else, something difficult to explain. It is almost as if she were trying to negate those very qualities that made her unique.” Sonia attempted to hide her sadness from Anna, but their reunion was a great disappointment to her.

After a fortnight, it was Anna who announced one morning that she would have to end her visit. “We have been away from Riri for too long,” she explained. “We have never gone anywhere without him, and it is time we returned.”

“You should have brought him, Dalia,” Baroness Ida remonstrated.

But Anna answered first: “Trains are not good for babies, Grandmother.”

“You all traveled during infancy,” Mathilde contested. “Nobody became ill.”

“Nevertheless, we did not want to take any risks with him,” Anna said. Her face had become strangely animated.

“It was I who insisted,” Dalia cut in pleasantly. “You know how nervous a first-time mother can be…” She smiled wistfully: “And... I shall probably never have another little one…”

After their departure, Mathilde said to Ida, “At least she came, even if she did refuse to have us visit her in Lausanne. Maybe the time will come when we will be comfortable together again. I must hope so.”

“She is your own child,” her mother answered. “And I must say she has become a lady. One day she will be grateful that you stepped in to stop her eccentric behavior.”

“I don't know, Mama,” Mathilde sighed wearily. “With Anna, who can tell? I least of all.”

At the end of July, Mathilde took Gino and Sonia to Normandy. Johanna de Mey's younger sister had a summer residence in the beach town of Arromanches, and Mathilde took several rooms at the local hotel so that she and her children might visit Ossip each day. He had grown stronger, but still appeared drained of energy, his skin ashen, his eyes enormous in his gaunt face. Even his hair hung limp, the crisp curls gone. Sonia found him a pathetic semblance of his former self, as she sat near him on the beach. They spoke of Petri and Botkin and Sokolov, but not a word was spoken of the Tagantsevs. Sonia did not mention Mikhail Botkin's portrait.

The day before Sonia's departure, a letter arrived, and Ossip's eyes glowed when he began to read it. “Imagine!” he cried. “It is from Nina Mikhailovna Tobias! She says that they are in Imatra, in Finland, for the summer. Did you know that she planned to write to me?”

“She spoke of it in passing,” his sister replied softly.

Mathilde took the family home early, for Ossip had grown tired from too many visits. In the train, Sonia thought with infinite sadness of her brother's face, of Natasha in the boat, of her own loneliness in St. Petersburg. Her entire life had been tied to Ossip. Even her feelings for Volodia… She saw the spires and onion-shaped cupolas of her city and for the first time they did not make her heart rise on a crest of emotion. A numbness had taken possession of her senses.

When, one mid-August afternoon, Stepan entered the sitting room where she was serving tea for her mother and Johanna, Sonia hardly lifted her head until he said, “Vladimir Nicolaievitch Tagantsev is here to see you, Baroness.”

“Volodia? Please, show him in!” Mathilde said. She exchanged looks with Johanna.

The young man strode into the room, clad in rich chocolate wool and a neatly starched shirt. As always, he struck Sonia as appearing older than his not-quite-nineteen years, and her pulse began to pound blindly in her temples. She could hardly breathe. When she raised her clear gray eyes to his face, he colored slightly.

He came to Mathilde, bowed over her hand, and did the same with Johanna. “Mathilde Yureyevna,” he began, “I wanted to come, long before this. Circumstances prevented me. I have written to Ossip, and plan to do so every week. Now I came to learn of his progress from you, and to apologize for not coming… sooner.”