The Four Winds of Heaven (46 page)

“It is my right!” she countered, and her lips trembled. But no tears came to her clear eyes, and Misha felt a spasm of horror at that face.

“Very well,” he assented. “Kolya has a mistress, who is energetic and authoritarian. To avoid any unpleasant scenes, he did not speak to her of his impending engagement, wishing to tell her about it only after the fact. But when he announced to her his wedding plans, she cried out against you, and threatened to cause a scandal. He took fear, and gave in.”

So, she thought, he did not have the strength to stand up for his feelings... He cares more for her than for me. “When did he give her the news?” she asked, controlling her voice.

“Just before coming for the Carnival,” Misha said.

Sonia clasped her hands together. Poor Kolya! How he must have suffered during those three days of rejoicing! But she was the one who was supposed to be wounded. She was silent. Misha regarded her quizzically, and then asked, “Well?”

“Well, nothing,” Sonia answered. “Since Kolya will not have me, I shall not marry him, and that is all. Thank you for taking it upon yourself to bring me this painful announcement. I know how much it must have cost you.” She extended her hands to him, and he took them, grateful for her lack of hysteria, but haunted by the large, distended gray eyes that stood out in her tiny bloodless face. She turned around and darted out of the room.

When she entered her bedroom, she latched the door and went to her secretary. She took out the pile of Kolya's letters, and opened the first one. No tears would come. She read the first, then the second, and one by one went through the entire pile. Her fingers began to tremble. Her teeth began to chatter. The candle on the secretary dimmed. She remained in the near darkness, immobile, gaunt, shivering. Someone knocked on her door. She did not answer. Her eyelids stung. But no tears came.

The next morning her mother came to her, and this time Sonia opened the door. The two women faced each other in silence. Sonia cleared her throat, and said, “Let us leave as planned, Mama. This way, no one shall know, and there will be no one to face. We can write Aunt Rosa from France, and tell her to make the announcement.”

“We shall do whatever you want,” Mathilde replied. “Sonia—”

“I just want to get out of here,” the young woman said in a low, tense voice. She regarded her mother, whose beautiful face reflected compassion and unspoken grief. Sonia's face became a grimace. “Nothing else,” she muttered. “Only to be left alone, and to leave this city!”

“Very well,” Mathilde replied. Her hands reached for her daughter, but Sonia stiffened and shook her head. Mathilde stepped back, repelled by this vision of naked pain. Sonia went to the door, opened it, and held it for her mother. On the threshold, Mathilde hesitated. But Sonia sucked in her breath, and her whole body seemed to shy away from the proffered sympathy. She stood alone, watching her mother leave, her face white, her hair black, her gown a muted gray like her enormous eyes. Sonia closed the door and returned to her secretary. She had placed the ring, the necklace and the purse upon it side by side, and now she stared at them, for hours.

Still the tears would not rise, but she refused food and tea for two days until it was time to leave. At the train station, her friends had congregated with boxes of sweets to wish her farewell, and to congratulate her on her upcoming wedding, to which most of them had not planned to come, for it would be too far away. She smiled at them, and accepted the wishes with graciousness. She answered their excited queries. Then the bell rang, and rang again, and she said her last good-byes and followed her mother into their compartment. When the train pulled away, her face was ashen. She could hardly breathe. But she kept repeating over and over to herself: There must be a reason, there must be a reason. If God killed Volodia and took him from me, it was so that I might meet Kolya. Surely, surely, he has taken Kolya from me for a reason, too! But she could think of none, and remained awake at night, wondering.

The tears never came. She and Mathilde went to France, for they had no reason to go to Brussels now. When Sonia arrived at her grandmother's house, she had neither spoken nor eaten since her departure from St. Petersburg. Her cheekbones stood out in her small face, her hands trembled. But her eyes were dry.

S
onia and Mathilde
remained in France for some time, in the suburban manor that belonged to Baron Yuri in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It had never been intended for Johanna de Mey to accompany them to Brussels, before the wedding: now, since her daughter remained locked inside her grief, Mathilde wrote to her friend that it would be better for her to take a vacation in Normandy, with her own family. For with Gino in Hanover, it seemed pointless for Johanna to wait in St. Petersburg alone with David and Ossip. Mathilde might suffer from the separation, but she was mother enough to know that Johanna's mere presence would kill whatever chance existed for Sonia's recovery.

Sonia dressed herself meticulously, arranged her raven hair into coils and twists, and replied courteously to her grandfather's bantering and her grandmother's concerned demands; but she hardly touched a morsel, for vivid nausea overpowered her almost as soon as she lifted a spoon to her lips. She greeted her grandmother's guests with ceremony, but excused herself almost at once. When she was alone with her mother, she did not speak at all. Mathilde had never witnessed such intense suffering, and felt helpless in its presence.

Sonia refused to take the coach to Paris, and would not face her Aunt Clara and her Uncle Misha at all. During the day she would go out into the garden with a book, and stare at its pages unseeingly. She thought only of Kolya, of his black eyes, of his kisses, and of her bereavement. But though she tortured herself with memories, she did not bask in self-pity. She did not think of her fiancé with anger, or with blame, nor did she see herself as cruelly wronged. She simply thought of him, and of the happiness they had shared. Still, the searing pain that accompanied her thoughts burned inside her without bringing the relief of tears. There was no outlet for her grief, for she was hard with herself, allowing none.

She had always been petite and slender. Now she lost weight until her clothes hung limply over her, and her bones showed everywhere. Her breasts had flattened, and her ribs gave the effect of a xylophone on display. She did not complain, but Mathilde noticed with growing alarm her sallow color, and her expression of physical agony. When Baron Yuri's physician came for his bimonthly visit, Mathilde drew him aside and begged him to examine Sonia. He discovered that she had developed a floating kidney.

It was nearly summer, and Mathilde resolved to take her daughter to Switzerland, to consult a specialist of great repute, Dr. Roux of Lausanne, where Anna lived too. She came to Sonia with a certain amount of apprehension, for the young woman had read her father's expressive letters, addressed to his “Little Dove,” with a stony silence, and had not even been moved by Ossip's lengthy missives to his beloved sister. Yet Ossip, too, had known a great sorrow, and Sonia had always accepted her father's devotion before. How would she take the notion of facing Anna? But Sonia regarded her mother with a quickened look. “Yes,” she said softly, “I do wish to see her. We have not seen her for a long time, and we have never visited her home. Will she let us stay with her, Mama?”

“I think that her wounds have healed by now,” Mathilde sighed. “And Dalia likes us. The… news… upset your sister, Sonitchka. She wanted to come here, to you. I wrote her that you did not seem to want company.”

“But I do want to see Anna. Of all people—yes, I want to be with my sister.”

Mathilde ordered the maids to pack their bags, and she thought, with bitterness: But the situations were different. Yes, I can see where Sonia now feels drawn toward Anna. But Anna caused her own misfortune. Sonia was wronged. Anna acted foolishly, brazenly. Sonia merely trusted, and was deceived. But Mathilde was relieved that her younger daughter seemed willing to visit Anna, and that the thought of seeing Dr. Roux did not frighten her.

The weather was warm in Switzerland. The sun shone through the blue-green pines and Lake Geneva gleamed placidly beneath them. Anna met her mother and Sonia at the train station, and Mathilde was struck by the composure of her older daughter. Anna stood before them, her red hair coiled behind her right ear, a feather in her chignon. She appeared young, and wore a necklace of colored beads she had made herself. She was neither the vibrant young artist of St. Petersburg, nor the severe, remote woman who had visited her family in the Black Forest after the debacle. Mathilde gave Anna her cheek, and Anna kissed it; yet there was a diffident quality to her kiss, and Mathilde stiffened inwardly. Anna wrapped her arms strongly about the frail, emaciated body of her little sister, and rocked her wordlessly in her embrace. If Anna could only bring solace to Sonia…

In the carriage that took them to Anna's house, the sisters were mostly silent. Anna had never been a talkative person, and since the shock of Kolya's abandonment, Sonia had preferred quiet to conversation. Mathilde cleared her throat and said, “Our old friend, Alexei Alexandrovitch Lopukhin, was pardoned earlier this year. Had Papa written you about it?”

Anna shrugged. “All the prisoners were pardoned when the Tzar celebrated the three hundred years of the Romanov dynasty in February. I assumed that Alexei Alexandrovitch would be granted similar treatment.”

Mathilde held up her head with its heavy topknot. “But he was pardoned before the others. And his was not, actually, a pardon. It was an exoneration.”

“Then he must now be a most happy man,” her daughter concluded tersely. She passed a hand through the hair at the left side of her face. “He was one of the Tzar's own men; I wonder if he has forgiven the Tzar for what he was forced to undergo… But then, these days, political matters do not touch me. Here in Switzerland I am concerned with my art, and with the friends that I have made.”

“Alexei Alexandrovitch moved his family to Moscow,” Mathilde stated. “We have not seen them since.”

“That is too bad,” Anna murmured. “I know how fond Papa was of his friend. Papa has not been very well, has he?”

The carriage was drawing up to a gate, a small white gate in front of a green-grassed garden, not at all in the tradition of meticulous lawns and flowerbeds that characterized the landscaping trend of the day. Anna stepped out and gave her strong hand to her sister to help her down before the coachman offered his arm. She was smiling with anticipation.

When they had paid the coachman, and the horses had pulled away, Anna unlocked the gate and led Mathilde and Sonia toward a rather small brick house set behind the garden. Before they even reached the front door, it was opened from the inside, and Dalia Hadjani appeared on the threshold, her dark skin glowing, her ebony tresses piled high on top of her head. A boy of some six years stood beside her, and it was evident that it was he, in his eagerness to greet the guests, who had opened the door so impulsively. “Welcome, my dear Baroness, dear Sonia,” Dalia said, extending her hands to them. They stepped into the house. “Riri could not contain himself. He was wondering what our Russian visitors looked like. I'm afraid he had in mind ladies of a far more exotic nature!”

Anna was sitting on her haunches, close to the boy. “I told you that Russia was a civilized country, pussy cat,” she said laughingly. Then her hand reached out and mussed the boy's hair. He threw his arms about her and nearly toppled her over in the exuberance of his hug. She laughed and kissed him. “This is our Riri, Mama, Sonitchka,” she said. Her eyes sparkled. “Let us be proper, shall we, young man? This is Reza Hadjani.”

“But I don't like my name,” the lad said to the ladies. “Aunt Anna says that I must use it later, to please Mama. But I prefer the names in your family: Ossip, David, Gino. Did they not travel with you?”

“I am afraid not, sweetheart,” Sonia said. She smiled at him, and her mother thought: How extraordinary! This child has conquered one daughter, and now he is working on the second. But truly, he is a beautiful child.

Sonia was looking at the little boy, and something inexplicable stirred within her. It was as though she had met him before, yet she knew that she had not, ever. He had a fair complexion and bright green eyes beneath a shock of yellow hair, and his body was frail and slender, so that he appeared younger than his six years. Silently she placed her fingers upon the fine tow head. But as Dalia took them through the house, and the boy chattered on, her sensation of déjâ vu increased. “Why have you never sent us a photograph of Riri?” she asked Anna. “He is such a handsome young fellow.”

“Photographs are for well-organized ladies, and Aunt Anna is not organized,” the boy piped up. Sonia began to laugh and twinkled at her sister. “But Aunt Anna speaks a great deal about you. Could I call you Sonia, or must I say ‘Baroness'?”

“You may certainly call me Sonia,” she replied. She took his hand and allowed him to lead her ahead of the others into a large gallery enclosed with glass, in which pots were hanging and two easels had been set up. The pots were all hand-painted in gay, bright colors. Sonia wandered up and down, examining the various canvases which were stacked up by the sides of the room. “Your Mama and Auntie work here?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. But Aunt Anna is a better painter than my Mama. And when I am just a little more grown-up they will both teach me how to do still lifes, and landscapes. But I want to do people. Here, let me show you. Aunt Anna did a portrait of me, and it is to be my birthday present this August!” He scampered like an elf to a canvas that had been turned to face the wall, and held it up triumphantly to Sonia. “See how grown-up Aunt Anna has made me?”

When Sonia looked from his eager face to that of the portrait, she sucked in her breath with shock. Her hand flew to her throat and her gray eyes widened, for the face that was regarding her from the canvas possessed the gift of life. “You do indeed look older,” she murmured. She stood mesmerized by the green eyes of the portrait, by the nose, by the thin sensuous lips and the line of intensity between the fair brows. This was not the reproduction of this child. It was a rendering of someone else, someone from the past, someone forbidden and expelled…

But Anna was coming into the room, and when she saw Riri and Sonia she shook her head abruptly, and turned the canvas back toward the wall. “Now Riri, that was impertinent of you, before your birthday!” she admonished. Sonia saw that quick color had jumped to Anna's cheekbones, that she was not looking at her. The little boy replied something in his defense, and Sonia moved away, lost in thought.

“You have not yet seen my bedroom,” Dalia said, holding her elbow. “Anna has made such lovely curtains for me. Come, I'll show you.” Sonia allowed herself to be led away, although her eyes were unseeing and her breath was short. She went down the stairs behind Dalia, and entered a sunny room with a large bed and curtains of gay cotton, upon which had been painted three children picking a bouquet of posies from an antique garden. But Sonia's eyes were drawn to the photographs which had been placed in silver frames upon Dalia's dresser. Without a word, she walked up to them and held each up to the light. There were three. One represented a very young Dalia, her hair loose about her shoulders. The second was clearly of Riri, his face aglow with laughter and good humor. And the last showed a handsome man in his thirties, with features that reminded Sonia of Dalia herself. He had dark hair, black eyes, and thick dark lashes. “You are admiring my late husband,” the hostess said softly. “He was very striking, don't you think?”

“Yes, indeed,” Sonia murmured. Her eyes had filled with tears and suddenly one spilled from her lower lid. She pressed it away with the back of her hand in a gesture of embarrassment. But Dalia came to her, and placed an arm about her shoulders. “I, too, lost someone dear to me. I understand,” Dalia declared. Inexplicably, Sonia shook her head. It was the first time since losing Kolya that she had cried, but he was not the reason.

Sonia excused herself early from supper that evening. Nobody thought to question her, for Dalia and Anna had heard from Mathilde about Sonia's condition, and understood that she needed to rest. Visible signs of strain had appeared around her mouth and eyes, and she had eaten little, Mathilde thought. Thank heaven, tomorrow we shall see the specialist, and he will know what to do about her kidney.

The next several days were taken up with visits to Dr. Roux, who placed Sonia under strict observation and on a rigid diet. Mathilde wished now that she had allowed Johanna to accompany them, for the latter was an able nurse and had boundless energy. But Dalia and Anna took Sonia in hand. She spent her days reclining on a padded chaise longue in the painting gallery, watching the two artists and the small boy who played at their feet. There was an expression of deep pain in her gray eyes when she looked at him. Maybe I made a mistake, Mathilde thought. Perhaps Sonia was not ready to face Anna after all. They hardly seem to spend any time alone. Dalia is always there, as though to shield them from each other. I do not like this at all. But she said nothing.

It was not until a few weeks after their arrival in Lausanne that Dalia took the boy into town one afternoon, leaving Sonia with her sister in the gallery. Mathilde was reading outside in the garden, under the warming sun, and the fresh scent of Anna's wildflowers filled the air. The two sisters were silent, Anna busy at her easel, Sonia writing notes in her diary. Suddenly, Anna could stand it no longer. She turned her face to her sister and cried out; “You are holding something against me! For God's sake, what have I done? I want to help, but you won't let me near you!”

Sonia turned very pale, and clenched her fists in her lap. “It is nothing,” she whispered hoarsely.

“You are lying!” Anna stated. Their eyes met and locked, hers brown with spots of molten copper, Sonia's gray with points of fiery blue. It was Anna who looked away first, fumbling with her brush.

“He is yours, isn't he?” Sonia said. Her voice was low and steady, cutting through the silence like lightning in the dark. Anna wheeled about, her painter's smock splotched with reds and blues, her face flushed. Her eyes appeared enormous in her face. “I don't understand,” Sonia added.