The Four Winds of Heaven (38 page)

“I understand, Vladimir Nicolaievitch,” Mathilde replied. She regarded the young man with indulgence. She had always liked him. “How is your mother?”

“Mama is fine, thank you. But Ossip?”

“Sit down, and Sonia will pour you some tea, and you can try some of these eclairs,” Mathilde said. He looked at Sonia and sat upon the sofa next to her, so that his leg touched hers under her pink skirt. She was silent as she poured from the magnificent silver pot, her tiny hand clutching the scrolled handle. Her mother began to speak of Ossip, and Volodia sat attentive, his brow knit, his face pensive. Once in a while he took a discreet bite of cake, or a sip of tea. But he did not interrupt. Mathilde was grateful to be speaking of her favorite, who was gone, and he allowed her this pleasure with unvoiced compassion.

Finally, Mathilde stopped speaking and Volodia made some comments, not once looking at Sonia beside him.

Johanna de Mey said, “Mathilde and I would enjoy some music. You always played so well, Vladimir Nicolaievitch. Sonia has been neglecting her practice these days —why not play some four-hand pieces for us, to encourage her?”

“It would be my pleasure, Johanna Ivanovna,” Volodia said. Sonia rose, and silently preceded him into the piano room. She sat down, holding some music sheets out to him. Still without a word, he made a selection and took a seat beside her. They began to play.

“I have not yet congratulated you upon winning your gold medal,” Sonia murmured.

“Thank you, Sofia Davidovna. That is very gracious of you. The chief honors belong to Ossip, though, who succeeded under such dreadful circumstances.”

“And what will you do now?”

“I am scheduled to begin classes at the Faculty of Law,” he replied.

“A family tradition?” she said with slight irony.

“Yes, it was my father's wish. But I do not always comply with his desires. I like the law. I would not do what did not please me.”

“I find that difficult to believe,” Sonia stated.

“You are being unnecessarily cruel, Sofia Davidovna. My sister is very unhappy. I would give the world to relieve her of her misery. But she is a woman. I am not, and my will is my own.”

“Your father is one of the most powerful men in the nation. Would you really defy him?” she asked, and this time, beneath her sarcasm, a soft note lingered. She raised her gray eyes to his brown ones, and then lowered them again with a blush.

“I would defy him in a minute,” he whispered. “I need but one word of encouragement.”

She stopped playing, and his fingers continued, by themselves, while she stared at him in wonder. He struck up a furious tempo, attacking the keyboard with frenzy. “Sofia Davidovna,” he said, “it should hardly be a secret to you that I love you. I have been mad about you since you were thirteen. Surely you knew?”

“You dare to say that, after what has happened?” she asked, in a hushed voice.

“No. I dare to speak
because
of what has happened. I swear—it will not happen to us! I never thought, all these years, that we could make it work. I thought Ossip and Natasha senseless fools. I thought they were romantic and silly. You shared my opinion. But now I am a man, and I realize that Ossip was right. It was his timing, and his sense of drama, which were wrong. I shall not take ‘no' for an answer, Sofia Davidovna. Two lives have been ruined. I shall not stand for two more.”

She said, aghast, “But I had no idea you felt so strongly! It occurred to me, once or twice, that I might have—appealed to you. But never this! I did not think you cared…”

“I have never been more serious in my life. I beg of you—do not turn me away. I love you. I could make you happy!”

“But I thought—and Ossip too—that you were being kind to me for his sake, out of friendship for him!”

“Please continue playing, while I talk to you,” he pleaded. “I never shared my feelings with Ossip. He might have revealed them to you, and I was certain that you did not care. Now that I am about to enter the University, I had to learn the truth. Tell me, Sofia Davidovna,” he whispered, “do you care for me at all? Could you spend your life with me? Do you love me?”

She opened her mouth and wanted to cry out: Of course I care! I too have always cared! But she could not speak. He read the answer in her eyes. Her fingers played from memory, without feeling, and her face, turned to his, was completely open, as though her entire being was pouring out to him through her pupils. He bent toward her and she lifted her lips, but before he could touch them with his own, he drew back and asked, in a trembling, husky voice, “Tell me aloud, Sofia Davidovna. I need to hear the words.”

She turned away. Then, in a detached monotone: “No, Vladimir Nicolaievitch. You are my sworn friend, but I do not love you. I am sorry.”

He stared at her in disbelief. This time it was she who kept playing. He said, “But—”

“You misunderstood me, Vladimir Nicolaievich. It was sympathy, and companionship. But not love.”

“I cannot believe you,” he stammered. The healthy color had fled from his cheeks. “You did not lie to me with your eyes.”

“I am telling you the truth now. Please, do not hurt your pride! I have told you: I care, but not as you would have me care! And I am not even worthy of such caring! I am an average girl, Vladimir Nicolaievitch. You deserve someone far more exquisite, far more intelligent. Someone who could return your wondrous love. I—I cannot. I wish I could, for my own sake. But feelings occur when they occur—I cannot force them.”

He stood up then, his legs shaking. “My God,” he said.

She looked at him, and for a second her eyes lit again, and her hands reached to him; and then she shook her head, mutely. Without looking at her he walked out of the room, and he saw nothing of the undisguised adoration on her face as she watched him go. She heard his hasty farewell to her mother, and Johanna's surprised exclamation. She even heard Stepan in the vestibule calling for Volodia's footman. Her head came down upon the keys, and she began to weep, her arms outstretched upon the piano. Heavy sobs shook her and drowned out the other noises in the house.

It surprised her when no one came to rouse her. She lifted her head and dried her tears, and realized that it was completely dark in the piano room. Her mother and Johanna had long since left the sitting room, which was bathed in gentle evening light. She stood and smoothed out her hair. When she went into her room, she saw a tray on the bed. Beneath a glass dome was a breast of chicken with new potatoes and asparagus spears, a croissant, a dollop of butter, and a baked apple swimming in raisins and rum. There was a note by the tray, and to her amazement, it was written in Johanna's angular handwriting: “I thought that you might not feel up to supper,” it read.

Sonia was shaken. This was the first time her governess had performed an act of kindness toward her. Had she guessed? But Sonia had never spoken of her feelings. Not even Ossip, who loved and understood her better than anyone else, had known. In dazed bewilderment, she took the dome off the platter. A rich aroma reached her nostrils. She replaced the glass, nauseated, and once again began to cry.

The following week, her Aunt Rosa said, as she sat munching a honey cake, “I have heard the most extraordinary news! It seems that Ossip's young friend, Vladimir, has joined one of the regiments fighting the British for control of interests in Persia! Surely the son of Tagantsev would not be required to join. David says there is to be a settlement of this conflict any day now. So his enlistment can make little difference in the outcome of the fighting. It would seem like the act of a desperate man!”

“I thought he was about to enter the Faculty of Law,” Mathilde stated. “He was always so solid, so stable. I wonder what on earth possessed him?”

Early one morning, after the peace agreement had been made, Johanna entered Sonia's room. Sonia was doubly surprised, because it was Johanna's custom to awaken late. She sat up on her pillows, half asleep, while the older woman came to the side of her bed. “I did not want to wake you last night,” she stated. “We heard the news from a friend, by telephone. It seems that the fighting was bloody just before the peace. Volodia was killed.”

Sonia opened her mouth and jammed her fist into it between her teeth, biting fiercely on her knuckles. Johanna said, evenly, “He died at once. It was painless.”

The girl's eyes, huge and staring, repelled the governess. Sonia said nothing but remained upright, her hand in her mouth, her face white.

“Sonia?” Johanna de Mey regarded her with concern, but turned away when she saw the nakedness of the girl's pain. She tiptoed out of the room, closing the door gently behind her.

Sonia did not weep. She bit with all her might into her flesh, until the blood came spurting onto the clean sheet. It was cold, but she did not feel the chill. Her gray eyes sought the small portrait upon her secretary, and she stared at it with horror.

Then she rose and went to the painting, taking the small frame in her hands. She brought it to her lips, and kissed the nut-brown face, so small and perfectly etched. But when she replaced it, it faced the wall. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, and brought the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, so that it hurt. She was still standing there when Marfa's knock announced breakfast.

D
avid and Mathilde
never knew what ended their second daughter's childhood and turned her so suddenly into a woman. Had he known of Volodia's last moments with Sonia, David would have recalled the words of his friend, the sculptor Antokolsky, who had since passed away. The artist had said, contrasting the two cousins, “A man might commit murder on account of Tania. But for Sonia he would give his life.” Sonia had never heard Antokolsky's pronouncement; but her guilt was tremendous, and she carried it silently within her, not even writing Ossip about it. For where she knew her own ability to endure grief, she also suspected a weakness in her brother. She did not write him of Volodia's death until 1908, when she felt that he had sufficiently recovered his health to stand up to the loss of his dearest friend.

Sonia had decided to write to her brother about Natasha's wedding at the same time. “I know what you are feeling, reading this,” she had told him. “I feel it with you. Today I know you loved these two more than anyone, except perhaps Mama, and me. Volodia will never return, and Natasha's life will surely never be the same because of this loss. Think of me a little in your grief: for your health and happiness are the only hope I have that my fate will be different from Natasha's. Do not allow the life and love inside you to perish.” Her brother would never know what writing these phrases cost her, or what a sacrifice she had made to try to ease his grief while letting her own resurface.

Only Johanna de Mey knew what Sonia was feeling. She had said to Mathilde, “The Baron is stifling the life out of his children one by one,” but her friend had not understood, and Johanna had thought better of explaining it, now that the Tagantsev twins, by death and marriage, could no longer influence David's relationship with his wife. She had allowed the matter to drop, and with it her sympathy for Sonia, so brief and incomprehensible to the girl, had ceased. Johanna sensed that Sonia had grown, had hardened from Volodia's death. And in this newly matured young woman Johanna de Mey saw an adversary.

T
he government
of Switzerland had decided to send an ambassador to St. Petersburg, and had selected a Monsieur Odier, whose wife Mathilde had met on one of her vacations with her parents. Madame Odier, who had never traveled, had been afraid to come to a country so distant from her own. And so, to make her life easier, David had set up the bottom floor of the house on Vassilievsky Island for the new Minister and his family. Now the Swiss flag hung from a long pole outside the front door.

Sonia was mostly an observer during these months. Her father had opened a school of Oriental languages, for being a Jew, he was not allowed to teach at the University. He was also busy making speeches before the Duma and the Senate. But Sonia thought that there was a new sadness in his eyes when he looked at her mother: could it be that something was not going well between them? she wondered. The idea was too disturbing, and she fought against it with all her might. Mathilde's behavior toward her husband could not have been more courteous. Still, Sonia watched for signs of ill feeling to explain the look in David's eyes.

She was also observing Johanna. How odd this friendship was between her governess and her mother. Sonia's studies were nearly complete, and Gino, at thirteen, was attending the gymnasium where Ossip had gone before him. In spite of this, Johanna was around more than ever, and acted primarily as a companion to Mathilde, a companion who never left Mathilde alone with her daughter. Johanna was a wedge between them and the constant devotion and attention she paid Sonia's mother made the young girl most uncomfortable. Yet she herself was devoted to her own friend Nina, whom she loved very much; why, then, was this friendship different? And why did she always feel as if Johanna, in her dealings with David, behaved as the winner in a game that he had never chosen to play with her?

Baron David gave a reception for the Minister of Education late in the winter season. His niece, Tania, was nearly seventeen, and had made an early debut to emulate Sonia. Now she stood in the drawing room, tossing back her golden locks, her small, well-shaped body draped in yellow satin. The young men flocked to her, even Minister Fedorov's assistants, who were considerably older than she. Sonia sat at the piano, admiring her cousin who was speaking to a group of three young men dressed in the elegant fashion of Savile Row. “I love London,” she was saying. “Do you know that Adeline Genée, the ballerina from Copenhagen, dances there? And they have wonderful vaudeville comedy at the Alhambra!” Sonia began to play a piece by Scarlatti, thinking to herself, Tania is so beautiful, so comfortable in company. But these reflections were untinged by envy. Sonia knew she and Tania were two very different people, and each could only be herself.

When Minister Fedorov said to her, “Sofia Davidovna, your fingers are like lightning! Do you realize that Scarlatti is almost impossible to play correctly and with feeling?” she could only shake her head and blush, charmingly. Surely the great man had not heard her governess, Johanna de Mey…

D
uring that summer of 1908
, Mathilde took the two children who still remained at home with her to France. Baron David took them to the train station, and once more Sonia felt, in her own body, the pathetic sadness on his face. It was the face of a man who was bewildered: he knew there was not another man in his wife's life, and yet he also knew, deep within, that she was somehow not truly his own. It made no sense. He could only flail about helplessly, searching for the answer, prey to attacks of migraine and indigestion.

The day before Mathilde's scheduled return on the Berlin express with Sonia and Gino, David awakened to Stepan's knock with a dreadful migraine. “The Baron has an important appointment today, Alexei tells me,” the maître d'hôtel reminded him, while applying a compress of ice water to David's left temple.

“Appointment? I am too ill to move,” David groaned.

“But the Baron must go to the island of Yelaghin, to confer with Prime Minister Stolypin,” Stepan insisted.

“Tell him to go to the devil,” David said. He fell back against his pillows, wracked by waves of nausea and the pounding pain at his temples.

“Yes, sir,” Stepan answered. He backed away into the dressing room, and noiselessly selected David's clothing. He laid it out for him, meticulously, and then stepped out of the room. David sat up, cursing under his breath. Everything was prepared, down to the diamond pin for his cravat. Stepan knew him well…

He rose, shaking slightly, and went to wash and dress. When he emerged, the only tell-tale sign of illness was his half-shut left eye. He smiled at the tall maître d'hôtel. “Is Vova ready to drive me?”

“He is in front, with the footman. Alexei has given me this briefcase for the interview with the Prime Minister.” Stepan knew that on mornings when David suffered migraines, the mere suggestion of breakfast was enough to upset David's stomach. He held out his master's cape, and helped him to the door.

Inside the landau, David closed his eyes and attempted to go over his proposed speech to Pyotr Stolypin. The drive was a long, jarring one. The plaid cover on his knees fell to the floor, but David was too weak to pick it up. He began to shiver, though the sun shone brightly. He was accustomed to working in spite of the headaches, but this time he could hardly turn his head without feeling alarmingly dizzy. The Prime Minister had a sumptuous villa on Yelaghin, and once Vova had reached the island, David, from his seat, began to tap violently upon the windowpane. The footman signaled to Vova, who reined in the horses. From where the landau was parked, David could see the silhouette of Stolypin's house. “I must rest here,” he said. “The audience is scheduled for ten thirty. I have never been late in my life. This time, I shall arrive five minutes late—but that cannot be helped.”

He pressed his fingers against his aching temples, and looked out idly over the countryside. All at once, his vision was filled with flying debris. A loud explosion resounded. The horses neighed and reared. The carriage shook; David, holding onto the sides of the landau in shock, forgot his pain. He saw a wall collapsing, an entire house, parapets included, mushrooming into a cloud of smoke and brick. His pale blue eyes protruded incredulously as the earth beneath him trembled, and one of the horses jumped forward. Vova fell from his seat, and one of the wheels of the landau rolled off. David felt himself swaying as the footman grasped for the reins, and soon Vova was tugging at the door, trying to help David from the damaged carriage. “Oh, my God,” David murmured, pointing to the scene before him. “That was the Prime Minister's home. He must be dead. They must all be dead inside.” Only a crater remained.

Later that evening, when the newspapers arrived at the Gunzburg house, David read about the bomb that had been planted in Stolypin's residence. But it seemed that the Prime Minister had been detained at a previous conference somewhere else and had escaped harm. When David met his family at the station the following day, they had not yet seen a newspaper, and were horrified by his account. Mathilde clung to his arm. “It was the migraine that saved you,” she stammered. “Thank heavens!” He thought, gratefully, that whatever might have separated them in the past, this incident had drawn his wife closer to him.

“Let us move to Paris,” Mathilde entreated.

But David shook his head. “Perhaps our country is besieged by demons and madmen,” he stated, “but it is still our country, and I shall never abandon it.”

Mathilde said nothing more. But several nights later, a new crisis occurred to further jolt the household. David's old friend, Alexei Alexandrovitch Lopukhin, came to call, ashen-faced and disheveled. For several years Lopukhin had been retired from politics. Now his older daughter had been mysteriously kidnapped during a visit to London. David did not hesitate: over Mathilde's fearful protests, he packed his bag and accompanied his friend to the British capital. They suspected that Evzo Azev, an agent provocateur against whom Lopukhin had worked during the revolution of 1905, might somehow have engineered the kidnapping. But once in London, they found the girl with her sister and governess at the hotel: she had been brought back, with as little explanation as when she had been taken. Mathilde said, “I wish that you had kept out of this matter, David. You are a Jew, and I am afraid of reprisals.”

He was moved by the concern in her wide blue eyes, and he touched his finger to her lips. “I know, my love. But in the matter of daughters, I owed Alexei a debt.” He did not elaborate, and Mathilde remained perplexed by his comment.

T
hat December
, Mathilde gave David a lavish formal dinner and ball as a silver anniversary present. Sonia played the piano, and noted poets, scholars, and diplomats were in attendance. Mathilde wore a simple gown of blue velvet, and her
kokoshnik,
the jeweled tiara her husband had had made for her to commemorate the Tzar's coronation in 1896. Johanna de Mey watched the couple as they prepared to initiate the dancing, and Mathilde's smile chilled her. It was not that she melted into her husband's arms, for Mathilde had never done that; but the way she listened to his whispered words, her head tilted to the side, suggested quiet contentment. She was forty-three years of age and still beautiful. The Dutchwoman clasped her hands together and thought: Let me not lose her. Let me not upset the delicate balance by some foolish act…