The Four Winds of Heaven (16 page)

“Then he may as well come tomorrow. But I shall make arrangements for you boys to eat before the rest of us, since you are limited to an hour, and your father's business in the city makes it difficult for him to be here before half past twelve. The rest of us shall eat at one, when you leave. This will allow you both to take your time, to chat together at your leisure. I shall tell Cook about it tonight.”

“Oh, Mama, thank you.” Blue eyes held blue eyes and Ossip took his mother's hand and brought it to his lips. “You will like my choice of a best friend,” he said eagerly.

But when David was told, the blood drained from his face. He rose from the supper table, gripping it with both hands. “Dear God,” he whispered. “Tomorrow.”

“What difference does it make if the boy comes then or another day?” his wife asked impatiently. Still, the Baron's pallor, the rigid tendons in his throat, alarmed her. It was not like David to give in to histrionics of any sort. She said, with some asperity, “What is the trouble?”

Her husband's light blue eyes rested upon her face, and she saw the eloquent exhaustion in him, and his eagerness, and a boyish appeal. “Tomorrow,” he murmured across the table, “we shall be employing the small apartment at the back. We are to have a widow and her three small children here for several days, while the lawyers and I tie up their affairs. The presence of the Tagantsev boy could present a problem as bad as anything I had thought—including the unexpected visit of the chief of the Petersburg police. The police, at least, have been properly bribed. We cannot say the same of this fourteen-year-old boy.”

“Volodia would never betray my father in our home,” Ossip said.

“Volodia may be a gentleman, but he is bound to put loyalty to his family higher than loyalty to you.” David sighed. “If he hears or sees one of the orphans, and tells the Senator—”

“Surely you can find a way to prevent that from happening,” Mathilde cut in.

“I do not know how to battle against fate, my dear. But it is true, I alone must find a way. Perhaps—” his light blue eyes wandered round the table, and finally rested upon his younger daughter—“perhaps someone here can be of help. Sonitchka. You are Ossip's love, he must have discussed you with his friend. Ossip would wish for Volodia to meet you. You could make certain that the widow and the children are safe and under lock for the hour in question, and then you could come out and entertain our visitor. He will not be curious about the house if you are there, as he might be with Ossip alone, whom he knows well enough to question. With you he will be the attentive guest. Will you do this to help me?”

“I beg your pardon, Papa, but Volodia is too well brought up to ever ask questions regarding someone's home. If he heard a child cry, I would tell him before he asked that Cook had a visiting niece—or another such tale,” Ossip stated. “Why should Sonia become involved?”

“But I want to be involved, Ossip,” Sonia said firmly. She looked at her brother with large, passionate eyes. “Volodia Tagantsev may be your friend, but he is causing Papa problems that you are only too quick to overlook. The first day that I went to visit Nina, I was bold enough to ask her to show me her home. I was curious about their ballroom. I admit it, even though I know Juanita will reprimand me later. Who is to say that Volodia might not be as curious as I? I shall come, and speak to him. I am not afraid. What can this boy do to frighten me? Or is it that you find me too unworldly to meet this elegant friend of yours?”

“Forgive me, Sonitchka,” Ossip murmured. He felt abashed. Never before had his sister spoken so to him. But he was also angered. “Do not place yourself above Volodia Tagantsev, Sofia Davidovna,” he added defensively. “Your high opinion of yourself may not be so deserved after all. Who are you to dislike a person before meeting him, anyway? It is unjust.”

“I cannot help the way I feel,” Sonia replied stoutly. She folded her napkin and regarded her mother with pain distorting her young face. “Please, Mama,” she whispered, “may I be excused from the table?”

Silently, Mathilde nodded. She was disgusted. David, and his obsessive causes, had come between her favorite children and caused them to quarrel and hurt each other. She had looked forward to Ossip's declaration at supper that the Tagantsevs had accepted with gratefulness. She had wanted to enjoy this triumph. And now no one was happy, and there was dissension among her kin, as there had always been dissension around the table of Baron Yuri, her father.

But Johanna de Mey smiled behind her embroidered napkin. Her heart soared with sheer pleasure.

M
ost days
, after their lesson, Johanna would take Sonia and Gino for a long walk, but this time Gino went off with his governess by himself. Sonia closed the door of the lesson room gently, and then slipped to the opposite side of the Gunzburg apartment beyond the kitchen and pantry, to a large door. She turned the handle noiselessly and entered the rooms on the other side. A musty smell greeted her, and she thought: Alexei has been lax. For in the first room there was nothing but books, books of all sorts, bound in fine, ancient leathers with gold-trimmed pages, books of prints, books that unfolded into antique scrolls. They lay heaped upon four gigantic bookcases that were starting to sag in the middle.

She shook the dust out of her hair, and entered the room behind this. More bookcases heaved their burdens to the very ceiling, but in the center of the open space at the core of the room, a cot had been placed, and a small table. A young woman in a brown dress sat on the cot, her hair pulled into a simple knot. Cradled in her arms was an infant not more than four months old. “Good morning, Ekaterina Yakovlievna,” Sonia said in a low voice. At once the woman started to her feet. Sonia held out a hand to restrain her. “We must be very silent, for this noon we are having a visitor who will come every day from now on. Were he to see you here today, he might take you for a new servant, but your children would shock him, and children can say things that are not for certain ears. If this were to be his only visit, we could explain your presence adequately, I'm sure. But soon he will know the ways of this house—who runs it, who visits at noontime. He is only a young boy, and will probably not pay the slightest bit of attention. But his father is a dangerous man, and if the son let slip the wrong description to his parents, we would all be in great trouble, and Papa would not be able to continue to harbor the widows. So I shall have to lock you in while he is here, and you will have to make certain that the baby, and the boys in the other room, do not utter a single cry. Then I shall unlock you, and all will be well.”

The woman seemed frightened. She nodded several times, her face pale and her eyes wide. Sonia smiled. “Do not worry,” she murmured. Then she went into a third room where, among more books, stood two smaller cots upon which two boys, one five and the other perhaps three years old, were playing. “Good morning, Shura and Mishka,” Sonia said softly. The boys' clear faces looked up at her, and quickly, deftly, she placed each of her index fingers upon their parted lips. “We are going to play a game, with your Mama and the baby,” she said. “We are going to see if all four of you can be absolutely silent for one entire hour. If you cannot stand it, then… well... we shall allow you to whisper. What do you say? Or rather—don't say it. Simply nod your heads. I shall bring you honey cakes from the kitchen when the hour is over. But not one crumb to anyone who utters a gasp. All right?”

They both nodded, bewildered, and she ruffled the top of each of their heads. Then, on tiptoe, she made her way back to the mother, gently touched her shoulder and squeezed it once, and came out through the third, book-filled storeroom. She closed the big door and locked it with a key which had been in the pocket of her pinafore. Resolutely, she returned to her own room.

Anna was not there. Sonia slid the pinafore from her shoulders and folded it neatly on her bed. She selected a simple woolen blouse, off-white with long sleeves that were cuffed with ivory lace, and a skirt of tan camel's hair. Thoughtfully, she pinned a single pearl flower to her breast, and combed her fine long hair. She took the two side panels up into a high, partial ponytail which she tied with a simple ribbon of ivory velvet. The tall mirror reflected back a small, slim person with large gray eyes and a straight firm nose, pink lips and white cheeks. Making a grimace, she pinched her cheeks for color, and thought: Tania and Juanita are right; I am a dim, pale thing, with no flair. Anna, despite her plainness, was thought by all to have flair. Sonia despaired. Volodia Tagantsev would not even want to talk to her—and then what would she do?

It was ten minutes past twelve when Sonia left the bedroom and walked quietly into the dining room. Stepan was the only person present and his dark eyes gleamed at her. “I was told that you would join the young men for luncheon, Sofia Davidovna,” he said. “I took the liberty of placing a rose by your water goblet.”

She blushed. “Oh, Stepan…” But her words were interrupted by the ringing doorbell and the maître d'hôtel strode off to open the front door. Gay voices of young men boomed through the paneling. Sonia stood very still and straight, wondering suddenly with a burning curiosity what this Tagantsev would be like, what he would say, how he would look. And then, side by side, Ossip and the stranger entered the dining room, and he, the intruder, the trouble causer, was before her.

He was fairly tall and rather stolid, and in his brown suit, she thought, he resembled a smooth brown nut. His hair was dark brown with glints of mahogany, and beneath thick brown brows were large brown eyes. Even his complexion was a creamy tan with ruddy cheekbones. He was not handsome, but he was pleasant looking enough, she told herself. And then he smiled, and she saw even, large teeth of a pure white, and she found herself making efforts not to stare at him. She had never liked pretty boys, she thought, only Ossip, and even in Ossip the prettiness denoted a weakness. This boy was strong, and looked older than fourteen. Suddenly, she was thinking how nice it would be to dance with him. And then she was ashamed. Never in a million years would she, Sonia de Gunzburg, accept even a single waltz with this…Tagantsev! Besides, there were still at least three years before her debut…

“Sofia Davidovna, it is a pleasure to meet you,” he was saying.

“Vladimir Nicolaievitch,” she replied, extending her hand quite primly. Ossip stood by, amused. Sonia seemed very lady like in her camel's hair skirt, all thirteen years of her, and damned if Volodia was not turning red, like a schoolboy.

“I'm hungry,” Ossip declared. “If you two aren't, all the better. I shall eat your portions.”

“Please sit down, Vladimir Nicolaievitch,” Sonia said. She motioned to the place next to Ossip, who was already seated. But Volodia came over to the opposite side of the table and pulled out her chair. “Allow me,” he said. She sat down, and only then did he take his own place. Sonia was trying not to blush, but the red was burning her cheeks and she wished that Ossip would stop his idiotic smiling. “We are having sherried consommé,” she announced, her voice clear.

“That will be delicious, I am certain,” Volodia said.

“Our cook will be glad to hear it. Do you and Ossip share all the same courses at the gymnasium?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Ossip replied, and his friend laughed.

“Yes, we are partners in crime,” Volodia added. His brown eyes twinkled. But the words “partners” and “crime” made a sudden chill creep up Sonia's backbone, and she thought of Ekaterina Yakovlievna hidden behind the door with the baby and her two sons. She shivered, the corner of her upper lip curling in spite of herself, in anger at the presence of this boy today. How dare he banter with her when matters of life and death were transpiring in this very house, and because of him?

“Ossip tells me that you play the piano exquisitely. I should like to hear you, Sofia Davidovna. The piano is my forte, too. Well—‘forte' is an immodest word. I meant it is my greatest pleasure. We could try to do a piece for four hands some time.”

Sonia allowed the servant girl to remove the empty dishes, and Stepan entered with a veal roast surrounded by new potatoes and baby peas. Then her clear gray eyes met the brown, frank gaze of their young guest. “I hardly think that we could accomplish much during the space of fifty minutes, Vladimir Nicolaievitch,” she remarked with a note of irony. “And besides, I do not customarily take luncheon with my brother. Today was just… a special occasion.”

“Ossip speaks most highly of you,” Volodia said. He was serving himself a healthy helping of meat and vegetables.

“You, too, have a sister, don't you?” Sonia asked.

“My twin, Natalia. Natasha. We are not at all alike, actually. She is bright, and funny, and gay, and very beautiful, with thick black hair and bright blue eyes. In fact, she resembles Ossip here far more than she does me. I am the ordinary member of the family.”