The Four Winds of Heaven (70 page)

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 situation 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 fled. 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.

O
n 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.

Mossia found himself among other civilians inside an area bordered by rough wooden fences. His companions wore expressions of complete hopelessness. “Wait for nightfall,” one of them muttered. Mossia was bewildered, but he was not quick to take fright. Later, when a black mist had enveloped the camp, a group of guards with searchlights came among the prisoners. “Clean-up duty for Raffalovitch, Kubelsky, Timoshenko, Lesnick!” one of the Cheka commissars announced. Mossia saw three men and one woman troop out behind the Reds. They did not return.