The Four Winds of Heaven (36 page)

“But that is medieval! And Natasha does not have to marry him! Come now, Ossip! You will be at the University, and will have a brilliant career ahead of you. The Count will not turn you away, and Papa will help you. Grandfather, too! All you need now is hope, and courage. And hard work, for you must soon pass your entrance examinations, and receive your gold medal! Think of the future, Ossip! This will work itself out. I believe in that. I do!”

“Life does not work out for Jews,” Ossip muttered, his mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “You used to say, when you were a child, that we were the chosen people. Yes, I suppose that's correct enough: chosen to be despised, and beaten. I would like to give up, and die, Sonia. There is no reason to continue. Yet I am too much of a coward to kill myself. Isn't that ludicrous?”

He began to laugh, hysterically, falling on his back upon the bed, tears rolling heedlessly down his cheeks. It was the most horrible sound Sonia had ever heard. She began to shiver. “I shall call Mama,” she whispered. “Maybe a sedative... a glass of Papa's brandy…”

But Ossip reached out and grabbed her by the arm. “I do not need my mother,” he said ironically. “Right now, there is too much hatred in my heart for her. Why did she allow me to be born?”

“Ossip!” Sonia cried. But he had started to laugh again, and shocked, she took a step back.

“You may as well bring the entire bottle!” he said. “Papa's brandy, remember? But not Mama. She isn't any fun: she is too serious, and we need to joke, and to laugh! Bring a servant or two—Marfa, and the little wench, Katia! That one looks like a nice healthy girl, who could take on ten men at once! Don't you think so, Sonitchka?”

His sister backed away from his maniacal laughter, horrified, nearly paralyzed. She reached the door, but she could not leave the room, nor utter a word.

I
n May
, Ossip and Volodia were to take their examinations, and so few weeks remained till then that Volodia, under pretext of studying, ceased his evening visits to the Gunzburg apartment. No one spoke of Natasha. Sonia had told Mathilde what had occurred, but no words were exchanged between mother and son. Ossip, gaunt and white, shut himself in his quarters and attacked his books. Mute pain was evident in his eyes, which were forever rimmed with red. Sonia brought him tidbits at night, and sat by his bed, embroidering. But they did not break the silence between them. She sat and ran her needle expertly over the linen, and she thought of the Tagantsev twins who had entered her life and Ossip's, and who had wrought havoc there, like a sandstorm in the steppes. She saw Volodia's quiet strength, his solid body, his dexterous fingers upon the piano, and she bent her face over her work, berating herself for dwelling on an impossible situation.

Then the qualifying examinations began. The great thaws had come to the capital, and Ossip studied. He alone among his friends felt the pressure. For Volodia, Petri, Botkin, and Sokolov were Eastern Orthodox and did not need to enter the University on a quota. The first three days of examinations went well, and Ossip returned home with “fives” and “five pluses.” Not a single “four” to mar his record. Only one day was left. He was confident, for he was fluent in French and German, the languages on which he was to receive final questioning. But during the evening, he knocked on his sister's door, and when he entered Sonia gasped in fear. His skin was flushed, there were bags beneath his feverish eyes, and his teeth chattered.

“I am ill, Sonia,” he whispered. He lowered his collar, and turned his head so that the nape of his neck was exposed. An enormous abscess stood out like a yellow mountain below his hair. He sat down beside her, and she pressed her small cool hand upon his brow. She withdrew it quickly.

“You have a high fever,” she said. “You must go to bed, and let us telephone the doctor. Here—lie down at once.”

“No, I cannot,” he replied. “Tomorrow I must pass the last tests. I cannot fail. After all this work—I cannot put them off or I shall lose an entire year, and have to repeat the exams next spring. You must promise me—not a word to Mama! Not until tomorrow afternoon, when the examinations are over!” he said, adding, as she started to protest, “You cannot let me lose that gold medal. I beg you, Sonia. Keep quiet about this.”

She took him back to his room, and settled him into bed with warm milk and honey. She sat by his side and asked him questions about German literature, and when he closed his eyes with fever and exhaustion, she quietly tiptoed out of the room. She was assailed by doubts. The abscess—what did it mean? She hovered by her mother's bedroom, thinking: He may die… and then, bravely, she returned to her room. She had given her sacred word. Natasha was no longer his. Could she remove the hope of a gold medal from her brother?

Throughout the next day she was so anxious she could not eat. Her mother thought it strange that every time she tried to speak to her, Sonia found an excuse to leave the room, gazing at the floor. Then, when Ossip returned from school, Sonia bolted frantically toward the door crying, “Well, Ossip?”

Ossip stumbled into the sitting room, his hair matted with perspiration, his eyes bulging with fever. Mathilde rose, her hand to her breast. “My God,” she breathed.

Ossip swayed, and his sister pushed a chair under him. But he was smiling. “I have my gold,” he said. “Can you believe it? This fall, I can enter the Faculty of Far Eastern Studies. Papa… will be... pleased…” His voice trailed off, and he fell against the side of the chair in a faint.

“Telephone the doctor, Mama,” Sonia said immediately. “He has an abscess the size of a fist on his neck.”

I
t was
the middle of the afternoon. Mathilde and Sonia took Ossip in the landau to the best surgeon in St. Petersburg. Ossip's face was green, and when the horses missed a cobblestone he groaned with pain. Mathilde held his hand, Sonia had his head on her shoulder.

When the surgeon had examined Ossip, he turned to Mathilde. “I shall have to admit him to my clinic tomorrow to remove the abscess. But this is far more serious than it may seem. What is your son's medical history, my dear Baroness?”

Mathilde regarded the man, her eyes enormous in her white face. “My God,” she murmured, “it was the doctor's prediction! He is twenty—maybe he will die this time!”

“What prediction, Mama?” Sonia questioned anxiously. She faced her mother and held her by the shoulders. “Mama! Tell us!”

As though in a dream, Mathilde began to weep. “The physician who diagnosed Ossip's illness seventeen years ago,” she mumbled. “My son had Pott's disease. The doctor said it would recur, when he turned twenty…”

“We shall hospitalize him at once, without a moment's delay,” the surgeon stated. He rang for his nurse.

Sonia and Mathilde looked at each other, and silently they fell into each other's arms. “I have let him kill himself,” Sonia said with dazed wonder.

T
he surgeon operated upon Ossip
, but the wound would not close. Ossip hovered between life and death, his sister and his mother waiting outside his door, his father and brother coming each morning and each evening. Finally he was able to sit up, and three weeks later, to leave the clinic. But, to his chagrin, he was ordered away from St. Petersburg, where the air was miasmic.

“We can send him to my sister's summer house, in Normandy,” Johanna suggested to Mathilde, who sat in rigid silence by her son. “I can go with him. You are not strong enough to take care of him, but I am an accomplished nurse. Let us go, tomorrow! He will be by the seashore, and will grow stronger. And then, you and the Baron can decide upon his future!”

“Your sister?” Mathilde echoed, in a trance.

“Yes! The one who has recently married. My family will help me to care for him.”

Mathilde shook her head. “No,” she said firmly. “I will go with him. If it becomes too arduous, I shall hire a professional nurse. Thank you, Johanna. Ossip will go to Normandy, but I must be with him, every day. I must see to him, watch over his improvement with my own eyes. Please. Help me to pack, and write to your sister. I shall be forever grateful.”

Johanna de Mey placed a firm arm upon Mathilde's shoulder. “We shall go together,” she asserted. “I could not allow you to go through this alone. You need my strength.”

So, together, the women took Ossip to Normandy. After several weeks, he wrote his sister: “I shall return by fall, to enter the University. Have you seen Volodia?”

Sonia read between the lines. He wants to come home in time to find Natasha, she thought. She would have come back by then from her voyage… Perhaps, perhaps, something might be arranged, before she married Prince Kurdukov…. Ossip was holding onto that thought with all his might, she knew. It was his reason for staying alive.

But Mathilde had written David: “The wound will not heal. He will not be able to come home for a long, long time. The doctor here has told me, in confidence, that he will need bracing sea air for at least two years. What are we to do?”

And so, in early June, David said to his daughter, “This fall your brother will remain with Johanna's family. Then, I have arranged for him to travel to Yokohama, where my friend, Moise Mess, runs his coal enterprise. Moise needs an assistant, and Ossip has always wanted to visit Japan. He will go by cargo ship, starting in Odessa and going through the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and along China's coast. He will be at sea for two whole months, and will work in Yokohama, which is itself a port. The voyage will do him good, and he will enjoy his job. He will return having mastered the intricacies of the Japanese language, and that will place him at the head of his class at the Faculty for Far Eastern Studies.”

“But then, we shall not see him for several years!” Sonia exclaimed.

“It is the price that we must pay for your brother's good health,” David replied.

Sonia was overwhelmed with despair. Life without Ossip... It seemed impossible. Then, a week later, her friend Nina came to visit her. As the two girls sat drinking tea and munching on crumpets, Nina said, “I have news, Sonia. An important society wedding has taken place. I thought that it would interest you, for it concerns that family with whom you spent last summer.”

“The Tagantsevs?” Sonia cried. Her pulse began to race. “Nicolai. The older brother. Correct?”

Nina smiled sweetly. “No. It was the young girl. What did you tell me her name was? You never did seem to take to her, actually. What was her name?”

“Natasha,” Sonia said softly.

“Yes! Natalia. They say it was a splendid ceremony. The Tzar and Tzarina were present. She married a much older man—a Prince Somebody. I am not very good at names, Sonitchka.”

But Sonia sat staring at the wall, all color drained from her face. She began to weep.

“Sonitchka! Have I hurt your feelings?” Nina asked anxiously.