The Four Winds of Heaven (2 page)

“I don't give a damn!” Antonov shouted. His voice was directly above their hiding place. “I wanted the little one, d'you hear? So I'm going to get what I can, even if it's poor merchandise! You shut up, and guard the front door!”

The woman's cries were a continuous moan now, punctuated by sharp little shrieks. Sonia could barely breathe. Frozen, she felt the floor move up and down, in cadence to Antonov's grunts, then one piercing female sob rent the night. She huddled motionless against the cold, damp stone, waiting. Finally, the woman above her began to weep, groaning slightly. It was then that Antonov said, “Can't you ever shut up, you slimy bitch?” A single gunshot reverberated in the darkness, and the moaning was cut off; then footsteps, and Plotkin's voice mingling into the plaintive sounds of the Crimean night. Sonia recognized the litany he was chanting over and over to himself in hushed tones: it was the Lord's Prayer.

“Shut up,” Antonov said, but he was no longer shouting. Sonia heard their footsteps leaving the room.

She smelled it before she felt it on her arm. But when she saw the drop of moisture seeping through a crack in the planks beneath the carpet, her mind did not work right away. She touched the spot of red on her white skin, rubbed her fingers together. She sniffed her fingers, licked them with the tip of her tongue—and for the first time since her early childhood, an animal terror coursed through her and she lost control of her muscles. A hot wetness flushed out of her down the insides of her thighs.

She felt her mother's weight crushing her, saw the salt and pepper hair pressed against her shoulder, yet all at once it was not gray, but a rich, raven black, and the bulky form that had collapsed against her was that of a young woman like herself, but clothed in fine mint-green silk, with pearls about her neck. And suddenly her own hair was no longer braided, it was flowing down her back, and she was running through a wheat field, her hand that of a small child, clutching a bouquet of primroses. She could feel the hot sun upon her shoulders, the wind in her face, and the voice that called out, “Look what I picked for you!” was her own, yet it was not her own, for it was the voice of a very little girl. And she could see the frilled pantalettes and her own blue pinafore…

B
ook One

I
n the mind
of Sonia de Gunzburg, the summer of 1895 marked the end of an era and the beginning of another, for it was then that Gino was born, completing the family, that Ossip's illness abated sufficiently for him to reenter the mainstream of their lives, and the time when Anna had been her most mischievous self—or perhaps it only appeared that way in retrospect, because afterward the family had never again been together alone, and Anna, especially, had suffered from this.

The Gunzburgs were spending three months at their summer home, Mohilna, in the south Russian province of Podolia where Papa had been born in 1857. He had never forgotten the aroma of the sun-warmed grass of his boyhood. Years before Sonia was born he had purchased this estate of several thousand acres so far removed from civilization. Papa was a scholar and a member of the government in St. Petersburg, but in his heart he fancied being a country squire, and overlooked with interest the workings of his two sugar factories. One of his grandfathers had been the most important sugar producer in Kiev, and Papa, with a smile, enjoyed carrying on this family tradition. But the children loved Mohilna best because there, and only there, were they allowed to run barefoot and free. For the Gunzburgs were isolated on their summer property; even Mama lived without formality there.

Sonia often heard stories about the Gunzburg family, and her sister Anna, who was ten, and her brother Ossip, eight, sometimes boasted to their friends that they belonged to the First Jewish Family of Russia. These words meant very little to Sonia, who would turn five at the end of June. The Jews were God's chosen people, her Papa had read to her from Bible stories, but did that not mean that everyone who lived in this world today was a Jew? For God had struck down Pharaoh, and surely he must have struck down all other nonbelievers by this advanced date. Sonia only knew that train controllers were very deferential to her Mama, that people in restaurants in Paris and Vienna always saved the best tables for the family, and that Papa, “the Baron David,” was said to speak more languages than anyone in Petersburg. Yes, the Gunzburg family was well respected, and yet it was not until that summer that all the pieces began to fit together in the small girl's head.

Sonia, who loved a fairy tale beyond all childish joys, thought the emergence of the Gunzburg family from anonymity was the choicest one of all. She did not fully understand all the steps involved in the process, but that hardly mattered. Her imagination supplied her with sufficient pictures to delight her totally. She could not quite sketch the portrait of the family patriarch, Gabriel, who had come to southern Russia from the town of Gunzburg in Bavaria, adopting the name of his birthplace for himself. He had made this voyage in the late 1700s, and had set up a single-loom clothmaking shop in the village of Orsha, which had no sidewalks, only rough wooden planks, and where most people spoke only Yiddish and could neither read nor write. But Sonia had no trouble picturing her great-grandfather, Gabriel's son Ossip, who was born in 1812.

He was a comely boy, as she imagined him, lithe, with thick black hair, and blue-gray eyes set close together, like Sonia's own. And he was a genius. First he set out to learn perfect Russian, and went to the public school. This took place during the reign of Tzar Nicholas I. Ossip helped his father make such a success of the shop that Gabriel moved to Simferopol, the beautiful capital of the Crimea. Sonia had visited his house, which was wide and comfortable, and stood at a busy crossroads.

Ossip fell in love with a girl from his village, Rosa Dynin, and he married her, even though she did not share his dreams of success and could speak no Russian. He also arranged for his two beautiful sisters to marry brilliantly. Bella was wed to Grigori Rosenberg, whose family owned the most prosperous sugar factories in Russia, and who was the most eligible Jew in Kiev. Louise did almost as well, marrying Vladimir Merpert, of Chernikhov, who worked in the provincial government. And then Ossip proceeded to stretch his business interests in all directions, providing supplies for the troops during the Crimean War, sponsoring the building of the Trans-Siberian railroad. Finally, with the special dispensation granted only to the wealthiest Jews, he moved to the capital, St. Petersburg, and set up the first private bank in the country.

Although he had bought a splendid house in the Russian capital, Ossip Gunzburg did not remain there for very long. Accompanied by his large family, and their entourage of servants and governesses, Ossip set off in ten horse carriages from Russia to Spa in Belgium to take the waters. It was 1861.

But it was Paris with which he fell in love, and where he decided to remain. He secured permission to construct his house near the Etoile where Napoleon I had erected his Arch of Triumph. His son Alexander settled in a different dwelling, but Horace, Yuri, and Solomon chose to live with their father.

Ossip was well received in Paris. His sons had learned French as boys, for the Russian bourgeoisie and the nobility spoke French among themselves. Ossip had learned right along with them, from their tutors. Now a wealthy international banker, he was sought after in French society, and his own house was known for its excellent receptions. Rosa always sat at the head of the table, with the guest of honor on her right, even though she could understand no one, and missed the simplicity of her native Orsha. She did not follow the fashions, and always wore a bright red wig, as the village Rabbi had instructed her to do after her wedding, when her hair had been shorn in the Jewish Orthodox tradition.

Sonia thought that Ossip's love for his Rosa must have been strong and beautiful, for he had never failed in his respect for her. True, he asked Anna, Horace's wife, to plan his menus with him and to act as hostess for his dinners, but that was because Anna spoke French and knew all the ways of the world. And she possessed a rare beauty. She was milk-white of complexion, with dark hair and blue-gray eyes. Horace, small, elegant, with conservative good taste and his father's own business acumen, had found her perfect for him. Anna made Horace laugh, Horace the serious banker, and she gave him three children. Sonia's Papa, David, was the first son of their union.

In the meantime, Yuri had married also. Yuri looked much like his brother Horace and like his father, but he was flamboyant where Horace was sober, a spendthrift where Horace was a shrewd businessman. He was gay and handsome and selfish, and totally unsuited for the shy young girl whom he had married upon his father's request. Ida, in turn, looked much like her sister-in-law Anna, but she lacked Anna's tremendous capacity for enjoyment of life. There was not much laughter between her and Yuri, but they did have nine children, and Sonia's Mama, Mathilde, was their second daughter.

It was Papa's father, Horace, who had given the family its title. For in 1875, the beautiful Anna had died, and, brokenhearted, Horace had returned to St. Petersburg and the Gunzburg banking dynasty there. He had been chosen by the government of Hesse-Darmstadt, a small German state, to represent its interests as its consul, and when the young Archduke Louis had come to Russia for a stint in the Guard, he had come to Horace for an important loan, which had been granted to him with the utmost discretion. As his reward, Horace had been made a Baron; a “de” had been added to his name, and the title had been extended to his father, brothers, and their heirs. The Tzar had permitted the title to stand in Russia as well. Anna had not lived to be a baroness, but old Ossip enjoyed the privilege for one year before his death.

Sonia knew that Papa had fallen in love with Mama during their childhood in Paris, when they had lived as cousins in their grandfather's house at the Etoile. But he had gone to Russia for his military duty, and had served with the Uhlans at Lomzha, and, like his father, he had felt the strong pull of his Russian roots. He had decided to live in St. Petersburg, not Paris, though Mama had felt totally French and had not shared his feelings. So, following their wedding in December 1883, Sonia's parents had come to the Russian capital. Now Papa served in the Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs.

At the end of August, a new baby was expected, and Sonia, more than the other two children, was particularly excited. She had more reason to be. Anna, named after her Papa's mother, possessed so much verve and inner resourcefulness that she might even have been happy as an only child, and Ossip, who bore the name of his illustrious great-grandfather, had been confined to a special crib for nearly three years, so that now, frail and unable to participate in any physical game, he was barely capable of enjoying his boyhood. Both older children had been struck with illness at an early age, Anna as a baby with convulsions that had caused the left side of her face to sag, and Ossip with Pott's disease, which attacked the vertebrae and had kept him supine for almost half his life. But Sonia had been healthy, and she was tired of being the baby of the family.

She knew that babies, when the time came, were left in the fields to be picked like berries or wildflowers by their mothers. But, unlike the brilliant poppies that openly vied with sunny buttercups for the attention of their collectors, babies came one at a time, and the mother was forced to take home whatever child was left for her. Mama, of course, being a great lady, would be permitted to send another woman, a servant perhaps, into the fields in her stead. Still, when Sonia's birthday came in June, Papa asked her which she would prefer, a new sister or a brother. One Anna was sufficient, replete as this one was with wild schemes and projects, whereas Ossip was gentle and passive. Therefore, Sonia had said, “A brother, please.”

That summer, Anna's imagination was more highly developed than ever. Sonia felt a fierce love for her sister, comprised of admiration, compassion, but also lack of understanding. She thought that no one was more daring than Anna, that every part of Anna was filled with a fiery spirit. She herself, diminutive and shy, was pushed to her heights of bravery only in order to please or placate her sister. She was angry that some people smirked behind Anna's back, or said unkind things about her “ugliness”— for how could they ignore the gleam of her flame-red hair, so like Papa's, and of her intelligent brown eyes? True, Anna's hair resisted the curling irons just as Anna herself resisted direction. But Sonia was baffled by Anna's wayward tastes: Anna much preferred the company of servants and peasants to that of Mama's friends, and she did not try, as Sonia did, to emulate Mama in each of her feminine perfections. She said, quite simply, that she did not plan to ever be a lady.

Anna was particularly fond of Eusebe, the water carrier, a young man whose principal duty on the estate was to drive the cart upon which lay the enormous barrel in which water was brought to the various parts of Mohilna. She would rest her elbows on the windowsill of the bedroom, prop her chin upon the palms of her hands and stare out toward the vast courtyard and beyond it, to the woods that seemed to stretch forever toward the sugar factories. “There he goes,” she would murmur, and then one morning she had added, her eyes ablaze, “I'm going to ask him to take me along!”

But later, when Sonia found her sister in the pantry, her bare feet tucked beneath her skirts as she sat on the floor, she realized that Eusebe had foiled Anna's plan. Anna, shaking her ornery red curls in anger, was saying, “But Eusebe, you aren't on Count Tuminsky's estate! Papa never whips his servants! You are being a ridiculous fool, and I thought otherwise of you. Why, I think you have the most important job I have ever heard of: so many people depend on you, for who can work and bathe and cook without water? In fact—” and her brown eyes glinted slyly—“if you were truly a brave man, I would choose your profession for myself. For I wish to perform great deeds, to help many people. But if you are a weakling, I shall not wish to imitate you at all.” And her lower lip began to protrude forlornly.

The water carrier started to laugh. “Anna Davidovna! You must not even whisper such things. You, a baroness, with my job! Why, you will meet a handsome man, a count perhaps, and he shall give you a beautiful house like your Mama's. I have never heard such nonsense before.”

Anna rose with dignity. “Laughs best who laughs last,” she said. “But I shall bet you a kopek that I shall never marry, except maybe a man like you. But he would have to be more courageous, and not afraid of my Papa. And anyway, dear Eusebe, who would marry me, with my ugly face?”

Eusebe wrung his hands together. “0h, my dear Anna Davidovna! To me you are a little flower, a wild one, but a sweet-smelling one, too. Do not say such dreadful things about yourself!”

“I speak only the truth. But I do not care if I am pretty or not. Pretty girls have debuts, and must go visiting with their mothers. I shall have more fun!” With that, Anna tossed her head defiantly, and ran out of the pantry, nearly knocking Sonia down in the process. Her small sister had been standing on the threshold, her tiny hands clenched together, her oval face alive with misery at her sister's words. Now she meekly took Anna's arm and walked with her into the courtyard. Her blue-gray eyes were filled with tears.

Sonia's mind was so crammed with conflicting emotions—pain for Anna because of her face, anger with her for not wanting to be like Mama, shock that Anna had expressed desire to hold Eusebe's job and perhaps marry a servant, when surely a man such as Papa fit the image of Prince Charming far more closely, that she did not object when her sister announced that they would hide behind the water barrel where it tilted in the cart. When Eusebe set off for the sugar factories, he would never know that two small passengers were coming along.

Sonia could see that Anna was determined. Briefly she thought of the time her sister had made a tent of the dining room curtains, and how Mama had withdrawn dessert privileges from her for two weeks. But then, grasping Anna's strong, sun-browned hand, she climbed into the cart and huddled beside her in the shadow of the large barrel. If only Ossip were able to come… She thought of her brother, who had become ill around the time of her own birth, and who, when he had finally emerged from his crib at age six, had begun to discover the world, step by step, almost at her own pace. Sonia and Ossip had been drawn together by circumstance. They were very close friends.