The Four Winds of Heaven (74 page)

T
he Red militia
, on the information given by Aspasia Vassilievna, arrested Antonov, and he and Igor Plotkin were immediately sent to the front. Mathilde felt somewhat sorry for Plotkin, but not Sonia. Her love of the noble, and her outright condemnation of baser human faculties, had returned to her in full force. She knew that the younger soldier had stood by and allowed atrocities to be perpetrated. Mathilde, on the other hand, was able to step outside herself and examine the breadth of a situation. She felt that Plotkin, young, weak, and small of stature, had done what he could to ensure his own survival. She comprehended his position and felt compassion.

“The Reds cannot afford to permit even the slightest plunder,” Aspasia Vassiliena reiterated afterward. “Their army is strong now, and well organized, because the men are penalized for such actions. You can rest assured that after this other Red soldiers will be more careful, and the militia will be more watchful.”

But still Sonia and Mathilde could not return to the little house where Johanna had betrayed them and had, in turn, been betrayed herself. The fact that she had expected it did not make Sonia accept her governess's actions, and for Mathilde the defection of her most beloved soulmate was a frightening shadow that threatened to engulf her forever. She wanted, above all, to forget, to obliterate. Sonia could not and would not: she carried Johanna's memory foremost in her mind, an open sore that she would not allow to heal. They moved into the house where Aspasia Vassilievna lived, and, after Sonia had vigorously cleaned and scoured the room that Johanna had occupied, took up residence there.

Their memories would not die, however, for the two women had to deal with Olga's survivors. Nadezhda Igorovna came at last to Stary Krym, driving her own buggy from Feodosia, during the dry hot summer. Her black hair was heavily streaked with white. Her lean face was more leathery, and her clothes hung limply over her big bones and sinews. She wanted to know the truth, which Mathilde herself did not know, and so she cornered Sonia, who told her, quickly and tersely, not allowing herself to relive the horror of Olga's death. Nadezhda Igorovna lowered her face into her large hands and sobbed dry, heaving sobs, until Sonia thought that she would tear herself apart with grief. But she was strong, and could look anew at Sonia after her cry. With a face bathed in tears, she said quietly, “You are good people. Olga would have liked to be part of this family.”

“But she already was,” Sonia replied gently.

Nadezhda Igorovna was silent, but nodded, expressionless. Then she went to find Mathilde, and the two women faced each other, their eyes speaking to each other. Neither was a passionate, overt individual, and so the words that were left unsaid meant the most. Mathilde took her friend by the shoulders and gave her a brief hug. “If Gino comes to you—” she said hesitantly. “He does not know that she is dead. Will you tell him?”

Nadezhda Pomerantz sighed. “He is stronger than you think. He can accept the truth.”

But Sonia disagreed, though her brother Gino was not like Ossip, whom she had spared so carefully from learning of Volodia's death and Natasha's wedding, eons ago: a generation ago, she decided, touching the coils of her hair and wondering if any strands of gray had mingled yet with the soft black. Gino was able to deal with his own imminent death, even with their father's. He was earthy and almost peasantlike in his acceptance of what had to be. But he was also too much like herself, a man of principle and ideals. He had never accepted the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, for he had felt outraged by the indignity committed in the name of his beloved country. And he had loved Olga, somehow seeing her entwined with Russia in his ardent adoration. To know that she had killed herself because a man had defiled her would not be acceptable. He would turn his anger against himself, and what would happen then? Sonia realized that, for Gino's sake, Mathilde could no longer be shielded from the facts of Olga's death. She, as his mother, needed to know why it would be better just to tell him that she had died, and that was all. He would rebel, but he would finally accept the undeniable aspect of this simple truth, despite his grief. Sonia knew this because she knew that if Kolya Saxe had died in 1913, she would have recovered more quickly than she had from his cowardly abandonment. Volodia's memory stood out, in its purity, glowing in her heart, whereas now Kolya lurked there in shadows of disgrace and anger and lost hope. Gino would feel the guilt of Olga's unavenged death, her desperate action pointing to a lack of trust in him, in his ability to realize that there should be no question of forgiveness, for in her rape there was no shame to be forgiven. Olga had, by her suicide, doubted him.

S
onia and Mathilde
had not received news of Gino for so long that when they saw him on their doorstep one morning, their first emotion was one of wild relief that he was alive and well. They had trained their minds not to think about unpleasant matters: too much had to be handled as it was, day by day. But every news bulletin that came created a bubble of questions in their minds: had he fought there? Had he survived? And then, by the sheer force of their will, they would make the bubble burst. An unspoken silence existed on this subject between mother and daughter; neither would have broken it for any reason.

But the young man appeared well, his cheeks ruddy and his eyes glowing. The front, apparently, agreed with him. He hugged his mother with vehemence and burst into the house as a fresh wind. “You've no idea how difficult it was to find you!” he exclaimed, his arm wound tightly around Sonia's thin shoulders. “They still had your letter in Karasúbazar. But that must have been written a century ago! We've been all over. When they finally gave us leave, I went to Simferopol. It was Zevin who sent me toward Karasúbazar. Something about a blacklist... Oh yes, you did mention it in the letter. I didn't read it properly. I just wanted to find you, to know you were all right! Is Olga with you?”

The innocence of that question hit Sonia in the stomach. She reeled from it. The idea of having to face Gino with this had always hovered in the back of her mind: how could it not have haunted her? But the relief at seeing him had momentarily pushed this preoccupation from its normal place. But no sooner had he uttered this than he came back with yet another question: “Where's Juanita?” he asked.

Mathilde's face contracted in a spasm of pain, and her lips parted. But her daughter said, “It's all right, Mama. I can tell Gino.” She took her brother by the arm to the small sofa. He looked in shock from mother to sister— what was going on? “Juanita is dead,” Sonia said softly. “She lost her mind, and did… something dreadful. She betrayed us to a Red soldier, who wanted to kill us, to rob us—and in the end it was she who was murdered. I'm sorry, Gino.”

“Juanita? But Juanita loved Mama. It makes no sense!”

“Nothing makes any sense now,” Sonia stated with cold bitterness.

“You still haven't told me where I can find Olga,” Gino said. “I bought her a small trinket, and I thought...” He blushed, and stopped. His sister's eyes had filled with tears, and her small face was crumpled in such total misery that he became speechless. An awful realization entered his brain. “Olga?”

“My darling, Olga caught a chill, shortly after we arrived here. She—”

“A chill? My God, it can't be!”

Seeing the expression of abject despair upon her brother's face, Sonia shook her head and took his hand. She began to speak in a low, trembling voice. The voyage from Simferopol had been fraught with dangers, she explained. Olga's chill had turned into pneumonia. There had been no adequate medical supplies… No, there was no tombstone. So many murders had taken place that the cemetery had fallen into disarray. But yes, the funeral had been properly performed. Nadezhda Igorovna knew. The need to keep speaking, to prevent Gino from losing touch with the present was so strong that she could not stop to feel her own pain, unexpressed for such a long time.

He sat, dumbfounded, unable to react. Then, slowly, tears rolled down his ruddy cheeks, and continued to fall. He said nothing: he had never been a speaker, unlike Sonia and Ossip. In this, he resembled most his sister Anna. He wept, and Sonia did not know what to do, so she took his hand and wept with him. Mathilde, framed silently in the doorway, watched them, and thought bitterly: All my children are cursed, because they have come through me, and my corruption, and from my father, who was the bad seed of this family. She surprised herself in her judgment, she who would not judge. But her children, in their pain, had been more than she could bear to regard with open, clear eyes.

When Gino returned to the front, Sonia felt as if a tremendous burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Her brother had seemed to accept Olga's death and appeared to be learning to cope with his grief. Yet he was not. She did not know, nor did anyone, that the young man's spirit was breaking. All the goodness of the world, all his simple faith, had been concentrated upon Olga. He felt disoriented, at odds. He wavered, and felt his own weakness and futility.
Why?
he asked himself, in bewilderment. Why am I being left behind in the tumult of the times? He returned to his unit, but in his deep brown eyes were questions that no one could answer. In losing Olga, Gino had lost his God, his true guiding spirit.

D
uring the winter
, Sonia decided that it was time to return to Simferopol. In October, the Reds had stopped Denikin's army at Orel, and what was left of his troops withdrew to Novorossiik, on the northeast shore of the Black Sea. Gino would be among them, might even be evacuated by the British. Sonia clung to the hope that the Allies of White Russia, who had taken such interest in overthrowing the communist government, would not abandon her country now that the White Army was performing so badly. But in January 1920, prompted by the British, the Allies yielded, ceasing their economic blockade of communist Russia. Sonia's soul let go like exhausted fingernails finally releasing their grip on a steep cliff: she sighed away the fierce hope that the Whites would triumph and restore the life that had been hers in Russia.

Forgive me, Papa, Sonia then thought, acquiescing to the inevitable. There is no other choice for us. It is one thing to be patriotic, but quite another to commit suicide. The Reds will never leave our beloved country, not now. And Mama has grown old. She needs peace. We are going to have to leave you, Papa, and leave you, my Russia. Surely Ossip, the realist, the cynic, has already departed. And Gino is a soldier: he will survive. What good can Mama and I possibly do him by remaining here?

Gino would want us to leave, to think of Mama's safety, she decided. He would not think that we were abandoning him. She wrote him a letter, explaining that she was going to try to put her own and their mother's papers in order from Simferopol, so that the two of them might sail to Constantinople from Sevastopol, the most important city in the south of Russia. Sevastopol was a mere three hours' drive from Simferopol, and it therefore made sense for the Gunzburgs to move there first. Alexander Zevin would be able to help them to prepare for their journey.

One of the peasants of Stary Krym offered to drive Mathilde and Sonia, with their potato sacks filled with dry goods, to the Crimean capital. So, in the cold, the two women made the journey, dragged in a wagon by two tired farm horses. They had to sleep in Karasúbazar, midway between the village and the city, to rest the horses. Mathilde fell asleep, exhaustion marking her face, but Sonia was kept awake by the ghosts of her past. She could not obliterate the memory of Olga's face as she had died in her arms. Close your eyes, Olga, Sonia said to the ghost. Juanita has paid for her share in your death. But the hazel eyes pursued her when she fell into fitful sleep. They were Olga's eyes, then browner ones, Gino's own. Was her brother reproaching her for leaving Russia, as he might have reproached her for not having guarded his beloved more carefully?