The Four Winds of Heaven (5 page)

A
fter a drive of several hours
, they left Mohilna behind them and entered county property. It was there, Papa explained, that Hashchévato was located. An old statute had forbidden the inhabitants of that village to extend their boundaries to accommodate increases in their population. As the victoria approached, Sonia saw a jagged cluster of houses, one-room shacks made of rough planks. Then the road ended, and was replaced by dirt. The carriage slowed, and now the children could see the village. The shacks were low and gray and sagging, huddled like cramped crates in an attic. But what struck Sonia most of all was the crowd. It seemed as though every inch of space was taken up by people—ragged people, screaming people, women with torn shawls and puling babies, bent old men with yarmulkes worn to shreds. She held her breath, shivers shaking her small frame, horror assailing her. It was as though all the tramps she had ever seen in the gutters of Paris had suddenly converged upon this miserable village.

The coachman stopped the victoria and she felt the door being pulled open. She heard, “Baron! Baron!” as Papa descended, and then someone lifted her from her seat and into the commotion. She was being passed like a small bundle from one pair of hands to another. Finally, a strong man heaved her up on his shoulders, and she felt the stench of pickles and garlic from his breath, the sour odor of poverty around her. The coachman, she saw, had kept frail Ossip beside him, and had lifted him to his own seat. Anna was somewhere in the air, as Sonia herself was, on another man's shoulders. Sonia was filled with wild terror. This multitude of evil-smelling, ill-clad people descending on Papa was beyond her comprehension. Then she caught sight of Anna's face, and saw the tears in her eyes, and how Anna was bending down to hear what was being said. Surely Anna did not understand, for these people spoke a strange dialect, but Anna was nodding, and Sonia saw her stroke the top of a baby's head. Sonia's fear melted then. Her sister had made friends among these people. Now, to her, they appeared no more harmful than the kindly servants Anna had befriended in the kitchens of Mohilna.

At long last she was placed on the ground, and found Papa and Anna beside her. Papa spoke to the people in their dialect, and then, to his daughters, explained that they spoke Yiddish, the only tongue that their own great-grandmother, Rosa Dynin, had ever learned to speak. He took his daughters' hands and led them into a small shop, where he purchased some greasy cakes, then into another where he bought thread, and down the entire length of the dirt highway, not bypassing a single store. When he was finished, he stood still, and now a wailing arose around him, which he stilled with his hand. He pointed to a thin man holding onto the tails of his baronial waistcoat. At once the man began to plead, bowing to David many times. David handed him a purse, and the man released David's coat and, still bowing, backed off into the crowd. “He needed ten rubles for his daughter's dowry,” Papa told the girls. In the space of ten minutes, Papa had handed many purses and coins to the people surrounding him. Then, deftly, he removed from his coat pocket a sack of rock candies he had purchased only moments before, and distributed the sweets to the children. When the sack was empty, he walked back to the victoria. The coachman helped Ossip inside after his sisters, the door was closed, and the Gunzburgs turned back toward Mohilna.

For a long time the only sound came from the hooves of the horses. Then, her throat throbbing, Sonia said, “Oh, the poor Jews! To suffer so because they are the chosen people!”

Ossip said nothing, but his eyes, bright blue, rested with brief compassion upon his small sister. Anna cried out, “No! It is not because of that! It is because they are poor! They need money from us to live, if they can survive in those horrid houses.” She burst into nervous tears. “Jews, or Eastern Orthodox, or Catholic! What does it matter? We are rich, and they are poor, and that is why they are reduced to needing our few rubles.” Then, to her father: “How large is
my
dowry going to be, Papa?”

But Sonia exclaimed in shock: “Annushka! You know that we must never ask such questions! Papa will not answer you, he will punish you!” She gazed beseechingly at her older sister, who had trespassed into the world of grown-ups.

Anna said resentfully, “Well, then, never mind, Papa. I am old enough to know a dowry for us would be hundreds of thousands of rubles. And that man was happy to have ten, for his own daughter!”

David was very grave. At length he spoke. “You are not entirely wrong, Anna. Of course we must help all poor people. But you see, there are so many wealthy Russians, and so few of them are Jews. That means that we must give first to those who are most frequently ignored. Do you understand?”

Anna said, “A poor man is a poor man. I still think you must help whichever poor man happens to be near you when your purse has money in it—even if I am still a child,” she added petulantly.

But Sonia, her pure voice rising like the trill of a bird, said, “Yes, Papa, I understand. I shall do as you do when I am a lady, and have money of my own.”

The horses' hooves continued to clop with even regularity, and Ossip said nothing. His eyes never left his father's face. When he finally spoke, it was barely a whisper. “Papa? In Russia the Jews have a worse life than anywhere else, don't they?”

David's face, with its gaunt intensity, was very somber. He regarded the small boy in his brace as though he were an equal, another man. “I cannot deny that, my observant one,” he murmured.

“Then why are we here? Why are we not in Paris, with Grandfather Yuri and Grandmother Ida? What is the purpose?”

David said staunchly, “One day you will understand. The Gunzburgs have worked hard, since your grandfather's day, to build a reputation and a fortune, so that the powerful men of Russia have learned to respect us. Now we can speak for those who are weaker than we, for the other Jews. We have a duty to help them, to make those who hate all Jews accept the fact that we are human beings, too, as they are. We, my son, are here because it is our duty, and also because Russia is our home. We have no reason to run from it. One must do battle for those things that are most valuable to us.”

Ossip was silent, and David thought: Now what have I done? I have voiced adult sentiments in adult phrases, and I have lost the lad. But suddenly Ossip said, “I don't see why people need suffer for methods of worship. Why not, instead, make the Russian Orthodox happy and change our way of worship?”

His father's lips parted and he paled. Ossip shrugged lightly and smiled his conciliatory gentle grin, the grin of a child, after all, and said softly, “But that is the sensible fashion, is it not, Papa?”

S
onia slept soundly that night
; the visit to Hashchévato had drained her. By the time the victoria had pulled up to the residence at Mohilna, twilight had gathered and Mama was nowhere in sight. Mama, she observed to herself, was always exhausted. It was a good thing she had not come with them to the village.

When she awakened, the sky outside was filtering its white predawn glare into her bedroom. Soon Papa would be beneath the window, calling out to her and Anna for their walk. But when she searched for her sister's huddled form in the neighboring bed, she found it rumpled and empty. Sonia rose and looked for Titine. But the old nurse had disappeared as mysteriously as had her sister.

In a panic, she rushed to the connecting door that led to Ossip's room, and began to call out his name. Only silence replied. They have all gone away without me, and I shall never see my family again, she thought, and her heart constricted with a terrible loss. Tears spilled from her eyes. Why didn't someone wake me, so I could have gone along? she asked mutely. Then she sank to the floor and began to sob.

Suddenly someone was pulling her upright, and Titine's rough voice echoed in her ear. “Well now, sobbing and throbbing! That's what they call you, you know, behind your back. And well they may! Crying on such a day, when the whole house is joyful!”

Joyful? Sonia felt as though someone had shaken her out of a nightmare, but she did not understand. The old woman took her hand and hurried her out of the room, up the staircase and across to the adjacent wing of the house where Papa and Mama slept. The door to her mother's room was opened wide. Titine placed a finger on her lips and tiptoed inside with Sonia, whose eyes had grown round with astonishment. Her entire family was gathered there.

In the large four-poster bed, on a mound of white pillows, Sonia saw Mama, pale and with her eyes closed. Her magnificent black hair lay all about her, like the locks of Snow White, the child thought. Papa, his thin red hair disheveled, was bending over her, her hand in his. Anna stood with Ossip, both in their nightshirts, at the foot of the bed, and, to Sonia's intense surprise, Madame Gilina, with a white smock thrown over her habitual brown dress, was in a corner, busying herself with what looked like a half dozen pots of still steaming water. “Look,” Titine whispered softly, and Sonia watched as her leathery finger pointed to the large window. Just below it, Sonia saw the white wicker cradle, with its curtains and skirts of lace cascading down to the carpet. She held her breath with sudden ecstasy, and her gray eyes sparkled.

On the balls of her feet, she scampered across the room to the cradle, and then was struck with awe. Papa saw her, and came to her. “Yes,” he said gently, “you may look between the curtains.” And he lifted a corner of delicate lace for her. A small dark head, a round face, two tiny fists clenched on the coverlet. “You have that brother you had hoped for,” Papa murmured softly. “We shall name him Eugene, Evgeni in Russian. It means ‘well born,' as your name means ‘wise one.' But we will call him Gino.”

Sonia was radiant. Her eyes glided about the room, then rested on Madame Gilina, and she wondered again what she was doing here. And then the solution struck her: Why, of course! Kind, goodly Madame Gilina was the person Mama had sent into the fields to find Gino! All at once, Sonia understood a great many things. Papa must have told this good woman about Sonia's wish for a brother, and Madame Gilina must have searched extra hard to fulfill Sonia's hopes. Sonia left the marvelous white cradle with its tiny occupant, and resolutely directed her steps toward the woman in the corner. Without a word, she wrapped her small arms around Madame Gilina's legs and hugged her tightly.

W
hen the summer was over
, David returned to St. Petersburg, and life was never again to be the same for the Gunzburg family. Mathilde took the children and Titine to France, to conduct a serious search for a proper governess. Fraulein Roggenhagen, the Prussian girl who had served in that capacity for nearly a year, and who had vacationed at home during the Gunzburgs' stay at Mohilna, was due to be married in November, and Mathilde had enlisted the aid of all her relatives in her search for someone more responsible, less youthful, and more polished than the Prussian miss. In the meantime, David was to find a suitable residence for his family, who would return to St. Petersburg in time to celebrate the Russian New Year.

St. Petersburg was a beautiful city, unlike any in the rest of Europe. It had been named after Peter the Great who had wanted a “window on the world” and had resolved to build a city near the Baltic Sea. Peter had seen this marshland and declared that it would be dried out, and streets would be paved upon it, and it would replace Moscow as capital of all the Russias. Thousands of workers had died of diseases bred in the miasmic swamps, but they had been replaced by others, and finally, after some four years, the city was ready to welcome the Tzar and all his boyars. Splendid palaces with spires and rounded cupolas had risen, and the banks of the Neva River had been transformed into elegant quays with parapets of granite.

The Neva was short, only thirty-eight miles, beginning at Lake Ladoga and ending in the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea; but it was fifteen hundred feet wide at its narrowest, as it ran through St. Petersburg itself, emerging finally into a delta from which several islands projected. Vassilievsky was the first and largest of these, and the only one on which people resided. Here stood the Academies of Arts and Sciences, the University, a military school, and the Exchange. It was connected to St. Petersburg by a wide bridge. The other isles were park like, comprised of alleys and trees, and elegant society converged in their carriages to the last one, from which they watched the sun set over the sea during the summer. It was on Vassilievsky Island that David found a house for his family.

Before Ossip's illness, Mathilde, David, and the two small children had lived in an apartment in the vast residence of Baron Horace, David's father. He owned a building in the city proper, on one of the most distinguished quays where, further down, also lay the Tzar's Winter Palace. But now there were four children, more servants, and David, the scholar, had accumulated an enormous collection of books, so that new quarters were definitely in order. Because he wanted the third and top story of the house on Vassilievsky, and it was already rented out, he purchased the entire building and leased the two lower floors to other tenants.

Mathilde had always thought her husband a dreamer, impractical in day-to-day matters, and she was apprehensive when he wrote to her that he was furnishing their new, spacious apartment according to her tastes. But she failed to realize that in anything deeply concerning his wife, David's eye took in the smallest detail. He ordered their bedroom walls hung with the finest raw silk imported from Lyon, in her favorite shade of restful pale green, matching the exquisite bedspread and drapes from the four-posters. He chose all Louis XIII, with a fireplace of carved ebony, and the dining room, large enough for state dinners, had walls of tooled Cordova leather in three rich coppery shades, and molded ceilings of blue and gold. Above, magnificent chandeliers glistened, lit by electricity. Only in his study had David given vent to his own sturdier, simple tastes; here was leather and mahogany, and tall bookcases crammed with precious first editions. In every room gleamed a white enamel furnace.

It was already December when one of Mathilde's acquaintances in Paris told her of Johanna de Mey, who had been a lady's companion to a young American recently returned to her homeland. Feeling the pressure of time, Mathilde set up a meeting in a tea shop near the Luxembourg Gardens. She had been told that Mademoiselle de Mey was her own age, and of Dutch parents, but that she had been reared in France and educated in Switzerland. “It must be said, however, that she has never been a children's governess before,” Mathilde's friend had added.

The woman who presented herself to Mathilde was tall, with a narrow waist, sloping shoulders, an oval face colored in light peach, and eyes of the purest aquamarine. Her hair, pulled into a modest chignon, was like fine threads of honey or Florentine gold. Her posture was erect, her attire fashionable. Why, this is a lady! Mathilde thought with true wonder. A lady fit for a salon, not a children's classroom. “Surely,” she said with a smile, “my friend was in error. She told me I might, perhaps, offer you a…a…position… but you will have to forgive me, for you are certainly not searching for work.” Mathilde, who was rarely ruffled, felt herself, to her own intense humiliation, turn red.

The other woman smiled back. “But yes, my dear Baroness,” she said gently, “I am in most desperate need of work. You see—” unbidden, she sat down, crossing her elegant, long legs—“I have a mother and two sisters to support, and have been working for several years.”

Mathilde was moved, and again wondered. “It is most noble of you to carry this burden,” she commented. “Your father is deceased?”

Johanna de Mey's long nose twitched slightly, and her head jerked up with a small spasm. She looked closely at Mathilde. “I may as well admit the truth.” She hesitated slightly. “It is necessary for me to explain m...situation. My father was a gentleman in the Netherlands. When I was young, there was much money, and I received an impeccable education. But then—” and her eyes hardened perceptibly—“one day we heard a shot, and he was dead. He could not face us after having squandered all the family wealth. I was the oldest child, and the most educated one. I became a paid companion.”

Mathilde, whose emotions were rarely summoned, felt as though something warm and soft had entered her heart. She saw the stiffness in the other woman, her dignity, her sense of pride. She thought, I respect her, for she is strong, but there is something more… Yes, she is a lady, my equal—that is it! My father, her father: two peas in a pod, selfish and careless and hurtful. For Papa there was always Uncle Horace, or I might be this woman, sitting in her place, earning a living… She felt little beads of perspiration gather at the base of her hairline, and darts of light painfully pushing at her eyes. She said, softly, “Thank you for explaining. I shall not betray this confidence.” And then, once more, she wondered: why had she said that, when this was a mere interview for a position with the family, and David would surely have to be told? The other had not told her as a confidence, but as a matter of honesty.

“I hear that Petersburg is very beautiful,” Miss de Mey was saying.

Mathilde said, “Yes, it has a charm all its own. But the climate in winter is dreadful. It is night for twenty hours, and the houses have double walls and windows that are filled with cotton to keep out the winds. You will not mind? Everyone of the nobility and the haute bourgeoisie speaks French.”

“Are you offering me the position, Baroness?” Johanna de Mey was looking at her with amusement.

Impulsively, with only a moment's hesitation, Mathilde, for the first time in her entire life, plunged into an endeavor. “Yes, I am. Will you accept?”

A little smile formed on the perfect oval face of the Dutchwoman. She twinkled at Mathilde, then briskly nodded. “Yes, I accept,” she replied, her aquamarine eyes resting on Mathilde's deep blue ones. She extended her long, elegant hand, and took Mathilde's small white one in her strong fingers. “Let us shake hands as men are wont to do,” she said with humor.

Having taken this plunge, Mathilde relaxed. As she still had ten minutes before an appointment with a friend at the couturier Worth, she lingered for a moment with Johanna de Mey. She told her of the house David had purchased, and how her brother-in-law, Alexander de Gunzburg—David's brother, Sasha, who handled the family bank in St. Petersburg—and his wife had criticized the location, calling Vassilievsky “a mere suburb.” Mathilde scoffed at their snobbery, and described how charmingly David had furnished their new home. She was relaxing, chatting with another woman of taste, as though she had known Johanna de Mey for many years and as though they were equals. Then, abruptly, she realized the time, and made a rapid departure out of the tea room. Johanna de Mey rested her fine, pointed chin on an upturned palm, and her eyes looked after the velvet-clad Mathilde with her thick black pompadour and her shapely figure. A half-smile appeared on her lips, and she nodded twice to herself.

But in the street, Mathilde suddenly stopped, a cold tremor running through her. “You are a fool!” she exclaimed aloud, now aware that she had forgotten to discuss her children with this woman, that she had hired her without asking to see letters of reference, and that she had not seen proof of Mademoiselle de Mey's education, which was of such importance to David. Another thought struck her, too: If she had been careless enough not to mention the children, in her strange confusion, then why had the other, who had not been confused at all, not questioned her about her future charges, or the nature of the work?

A vision of Johanna de Mey, in her elegant tailored jacket, with her fine eyes and golden hair, interposed itself between Mathilde and her dreadful self-recrimination. She shook her head: No, Mathilde de Gunzburg never acted on impulse unless the right reasons motivated her. She resumed her brisk walk, putting out of her mind the fact that Mathilde de Gunzburg, to tell the exact truth, never acted on impulse at all.

S
onia was prepared
to adore the woman, Ossip was perplexed, and Anna made an ungainly face, saying, “She will be a perfect lady—how boring for us!” None of them had yet met Johanna de Mey.

They first saw her in the Gard du Nord, where they stood by the luggage, waiting for the porters to load it into their reserved compartments. Sonia's small mouth fell open as a vision in sky blue, tall, erect, swanlike, approached. Johanna de Mey was wearing a two-piece ensemble that matched her remarkable eyes. Over a simple white blouse buttoned to her long, slender throat, she wore a jacket with sleeves that puffed below the sloping shoulders. The jacket terminated at her tiny waist, from which descended the simple folds of her blue skirt. Her hat was small, tilted at a saucy angle, with a single feather ornamenting it. Her golden hair was pulled away from her face. Sonia's heart rose on a note of pure admiration. Mama was the loveliest woman in the world, but Mama was real, even if she moved with grace and never raised her voice. This other woman was a finely chiseled piece of porcelain, as perfect as one of Grandmother's Dresden figurines, and beautiful in a totally different fashion.

Ossip grasped his sister's hand and squeezed it. “Yes,” he whispered, “she is like a work of art.” He thought of Madame Tussaud's wax replicas in London, and wondered why. After all, those were just waxen dolls, not real people.

But Anna, who had always possessed a gift for visual art, who had painted with feeling since her toddler days, thought of Switzerland. “A cool blue lake, in which we cannot swim because it is too cold; or the Mont Blanc, which rises so perfectly into the sky—and which the sun cannot thaw.”

“You are crazy, Annushka,” Ossip said gently, but he was amused.

Mama had gone to meet the vision in blue, and the three children, flanked by Titine with Gino in her arms, watched their heads draw together, saw the long, tapered hand rest for a moment on their mother's rich crimson jacket sleeve. Mama's figure was more womanly, rounded at the bustline and at the hips, and she was smaller than the blond woman. They came together to the children, and Mama said, “Mademoiselle, these are my daughters, Anna and Sonia, and my son, Ossip. And this is our faithful Titine—Célestine Varon—and the baby of the family, Gino.”

Mademoiselle smiled. Her large aquamarine eyes shifted from Anna to Ossip, and finally rested on Sonia. She cocked her fine golden head to one side, and then said, “This one resembles you, my dear Baroness.” She touched the top of Sonia's red hat. Sonia stared up into her face, her eyes round with adoration. The woman's smile twinkled. “You are a sweet thing,” she said, and Sonia's cheeks turned bright with pleasure. “You will have to tell me the name of that splendid Spanish doll you are carrying, once our journey has begun. I am most intrigued.”

“I call her Señorita, Mademoiselle,” Sonia said proudly. She lifted the doll into Johanna de Mey's arms.

But the governess turned to Ossip. “That's a fine sailor suit you're wearing,” she said. “And I have always appreciated elegant men. You are indeed an elegant little man, my Ossip.” She regarded him with a straightforward expression, and he met the blue eyes with his own, gravely. He made a small bow and she inclined her head. Then she turned her full attention to Anna, who stood nervously next to her brother, her red hair already losing its precarious curl.