The Four Winds of Heaven (6 page)

Anna's brown eyes appraised Johanna de Mey, and she felt a tremor at the base of her spine. The woman smiled at her, a wide smile revealing large white teeth, but still Anna regarded only the aquamarine eyes which did not shift from their unreadable expression.

“So,” the woman finally said, “you are the oldest. I hope that you set a fine example, Anna. You should be the most responsible girl in the family. I know, for you see, I am an oldest child.”

“I am afraid that our Annushka is not always the model child,” Mathilde said softly, laughing. A sudden nervousness had invaded her. She pushed it out of her mind. But the governess was stroking Anna's red hair, feeling its springy texture in her fingers, and Mathilde admired the woman's ability to reach each child in a special manner. Anna was regarding the quay, tapping her foot restlessly. “Stand up and be a lady,” Mathilde suddenly said to her daughter, and she was amazed at the sharpness in her tone. But Johanna de Mey continued to play with the girl's hair, and Mathilde, all at once, felt foolish.

Sonia, her eyes riveted to her beloved mother, saw her bite her lower lip and close her eyes momentarily, while Johanna de Mey examined Gino, the baby. The governess was stroking his cheek, then briskly patting it as Titine held him up proudly. But Anna saw the cursory glance the sylph-like Dutchwoman cast upon the Breton nurse, and heard the words, “That will be all,” with which she dismissed her. A sudden, swift pain hit Sonia between the ribs, and she went to Titine and put her arms about her. But Mademoiselle turned her back to the children and was placing her fine fingers upon Mathilde's arm, and now her voice was rich, melodious.

“You are so weary,” she said gently. “I fear that we are all too much for you. The holidays, bidding adieu to your parents—and now the return to this awesome city which you hope will not overwhelm you as once it did… You are a delicate spirit, Baroness, a spirit created for the boudoir and the salon, and not for train stations and baggage and restless children. Let me settle you in your compartment, with a pillow, and I shall handle the porters and our eager young family.”

Ossip, watching from the side, smiled. But Sonia's mouth dropped open, her countenance falling. Mama would do as this lady suggested, and then they would not see her nor have her read stories to them when the train started.

“I'm sure that Mademoiselle can tell a brighter story than any of us have ever heard,” Ossip whispered to his sister. She squeezed his hand, wondering at his capacity to read her thoughts. Dear Sonitchka, he was thinking, you are the most vulnerable of us three. For Anna has her anger to protect her, and you have only trust… And Mademoiselle, yes, could tell us all some stories.

Mathilde's ivory-tinted face grew bright at the cheekbones, and for an instant her calm face quickened. Her gloved hand touched Johanna's fingers, which were still resting on her arm. She nodded. “A small nap would do me a world of good,” she said, “I don't know why, but I am truly exhausted. Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

A half-smile flickered over the Dutchwoman's features. “This is presumptuous, and perhaps I shall offend you—but I would be honored if you called me by my given name. None of my employers ever has, and with you, I feel almost as though—if life had been different, and we had met as... as...”

Mathilde, the controlled, whose key to her emotions was never out of sight, was stirred by a swift, unexpected compassion. “I understand,” she murmured. Her voice was serene as always. But Johanna's own voice broke, and she pressed Mathilde's arm. “Nobody ever does,” she said quickly, bending her lovely head and examining the ground. Mathilde, embarrassed, disengaged herself. But she said no more, and sailed toward the stairway to her compartment like an elegant liner moving calmly over the sea. She paused on the first step: “Johanna,” she said, and smiled.

When the children had been settled comfortably in their own car, adjoining their mother's, Anna huddled near Titine but Sonia drew next to the beautiful lady who was their governess. Ossip, in his polite, well-modulated voice, so like his mother's, said, “Mademoiselle, in Russia people are not as they are in France. There is less formality. Friends say ‘tu' at once, and instead of being called ‘Madame' or ‘Monsieur' or ‘Mademoiselle,' well-bred people show respect simply by adding your father's name to your own given name. The servants call my sister Sonia, ‘Sofia Davidovna,' which is perfectly proper. ‘Sonia' is only for family, or Titine. But ‘Sofia' is her given name, and ‘Davidovna' means ‘daughter of David.' What was your father's name? We shall need to know, for our servants at home, and for people who come to visit with their own Mademoiselles.”

Johanna de Mey regarded the little boy with humor. “I see. But I thought everyone in Russia spoke French?”

“Oh no, Mademoiselle,” Sonia piped up gravely. “Only those who are most refined, like my Mama. But Mama and Papa know many people, and unless they are very, very close to us, we, the children, and sometimes even our parents, call them by their patronyms. They say, ‘Bonjour, Anna Davidovna,' or other things in French—but the names are the Russian way. Ossip is right. And I have learned all about that!” She beamed at Johanna, who patted her curls.

“In that case, I shall have to learn, too,” the governess said. “My father's name was Johan. That is ‘Jean' in French. What would it be in Russian?”

“It would be ‘Ivan,' Mademoiselle,” Ossip said, coloring slightly. “I heard Mama call out your name before—Johanna—so you would be ‘Johanna Ivanovna.' That is very pretty,” he added, to hide his confusion.

“And you are very pretty, Mademoiselle,” Sonia stated.

Johanna de Mey began to laugh. “My. my, what have we here? My first lesson in Russian custom,
and
a fine compliment! I shall have to reward you both. Let me see, now… Perhaps you would like to call me by a special name, just among us?” She glanced at Anna and the baby. “Something only you four would call me. No more ‘Mademoiselle,' for, as you say, everyone else has a Mademoiselle, too. ‘Johanna' would be improper, for, after all, you are children and I am a lady, and it would seem disrespectful for you to call me by my name, the way you do Célestine, for example.”

“But we don't call her that at all,” Anna broke in, her voice clear and somewhat sharp. “We call her ‘Titiné,' because that is our love-name for her.”

The eyes of blue crystal gleamed, but without warmth. “A love-name? Well then, Sonia, how about a love-name for me, something very different and exciting?” She pointed to the Spanish doll on the small girl's lap. “I have it! My name in Spain would be ‘Juanita,' and I always preferred it to Johanna. You will call me Juanita, and you may even say ‘tu' to me, since we are on our way to this great Russia, where formality seems to be out of fashion.”

Sonia clapped her hands, and Ossip smiled. But Anna, her brown eyes solemn, commented softly: “Not out of fashion, Juanita. Just—different.”

Sonia turned to her sister, and did not understand the sudden darkness which shadowed her face. Her own bright joy shook within her, and suddenly she missed her mother.

But she continued to smile, her hand on the Spanish doll, her eyes abstracted. She snuggled against her brother and fell asleep.

T
he patriarch
of the Gunzburg clan, Baron Horace, had three sons: the youngest, Mikhail, who did not reside in the Russian capital, and his two other sons, David and Alexander, “Sasha” to his intimates. Horace, since the death of his beloved wife, Anna Rosenberg, was not given to much joie de vivre. It had been she whose liveliness and femininity had brightened his serious temperament. A stately man, his elegance was somber, and he occupied himself solely with matters of import. He was still the head of his bank, the Maison Gunzburg, which his father Ossip had founded in the late ‘50s; and he was also the most well-known
shtadlan
in Russia, a mediator between the government and the Jewish population. Horace was still Consul of Hesse, and now a Hessian princess, Alix, had become the Tzarina Alexandra Feodorovna; her father had granted the Gunzburgs their title. Horace, as his own father before him, found it his honored duty to attempt, little by little, to ease the burdens carried by his fellow Jews. He was proud of the fact that because of his intervention, St. Petersburg was now open to Jews of means and education, as well as to artisans contributing to the national economy. These were the members of the exalted First and most useful Second Guilds. When poorer men complained that he thought only of his own kind, he would reply: “Give the government time. Our Tzars have always been anti-Semitic. Now, at least, they have made a first step.” The difference, he might have pointed out, lay between the Gunzburgs and the inhabitants of Hashchévato.

Between Horace and David, his first son, empathy existed. It was David who now took over the major part of Horace's charitable work. Passionate where his father was gloomy, sinewy where the older man was massive, David nevertheless believed in his heart that the Jews of Russia belonged in Russia, soon to obtain their deserved full citizenship, and should not escape to the haven promised by the growing number of Zionists. But Sasha, younger than David by seven years, was only amused by his kinsmen's zeal. His principal concerns were with his own position in the social circles of the capital, where he seconded his father at the bank.

Sasha, whose brooding good looks Mathilde had once so admired, was the most striking of the Gunzburgs. He was the tallest one, and sported a black beard and a large shoulder span. He possessed the Gunzburg eyes, set close together, and his were brilliant blue, like Mathilde's. But he had married a woman who was anything but his equal in looks, for, like some extraordinarily handsome men who are somewhat insecure at heart, he had chosen a wife who showed off his own splendor, and whom he need not fear would ever cease her adoration of him. Rosa Warburg de Gunzburg was all angles and bones, a small brown bird of a woman, and although she did indeed admire her husband beyond words, she was as shrewd as he, as snobbish, and as petty in her envies and social exhibitionism. But at heart she was a German Frau, protective of her family and always ready to advance their personal cause. They had a single daughter, Tatiana, a year younger than Sonia. No one ever understood how the little wren Rosa had produced such an exquisite porcelain doll with hair as fair as that of Rapunzel. Sasha and his wife found her the loveliest child in St. Petersburg. Few disagreed.

This, then, was the family that awaited the return of Mathilde and her four children to the capital. The children had only met their aunt and their cousin once, in Europe, and they did not quite remember either one. They were rather afraid of their paternal grandfather, for he was not gay and charming like Grandfather Yuri, his flamboyant brother in Paris, who told them incredible stories and made them laugh. But Mathilde had said to them: “How we feel is unimportant. Family is family. You, Sonia, will be good and kind to your cousin Tania.”

Mathilde was enchanted with the house David had purchased on Vassilievsky Island, and which he had furnished so carefully. She was surprised, and touched. As they walked up the marble steps to the apartment on the top story, she noted with pleasure that enormous potted palms stood on each landing, and that a reproduction by David's friend, the sculptor Antokolsky, of his best work, the
Mephistopheles,
adorned the lowest landing. Antokolsky had been commissioned to make marble busts of Tzar Nicholas II and his wife and mother.

They had been greeted at the door by two familiar figures who had served the family when David and Mathilde had resided in Horace's own mansion. Stepan, tall, dignified, and well-dressed, was the maître d'hôtel. Alexei Fliederbaum, small and quick, had once been David's orderly in the Uhlans in Lomzha. Later he had served Sasha too in that regiment, until David had taken him out of the ranks and trained him as his bookkeeper and librarian. Their presence had made Mathilde smile through her exhaustion, and had enhanced her pleasure in the apartment. But the children had reacted with awe and suspended breath, for after the overwhelming spectacle of the spires and the Neva River, and the furious windswept drive across the bridge, they had been unprepared for so much magnificence inside their own home. And Stepan dwarfed even Papa, who was almost as tall as Uncle Sasha.

David had awaited his family's arrival with near-childlike exultation. He had been alone so long in this city, dining with sympathetic friends whose wives treated him with somewhat overt compassion, or poring over his work into the wee hours of the morning. He had frankly missed Mathilde in his bed. Now, for their first supper in his new home, she chose a gown of mint-green silk trimmed with ermine, and he was moved, knowing that this was her tacit signal of approval of the pale green bedroom. He had perhaps dreamed of greater effusion, but then Mathilde had never been effusive, not even on their wedding day. No, he considered, she is content, and she is glad to be here, with me. His pale blue eyes shone across the table, encountering hers.

His children were around him. Anna, her eyes rimmed with red after a long session with the curling irons; Ossip, quietly observant; and little Sonia, who appeared smaller even than Sasha's Tania, her little face rosy and ringed with bright black waves of hair. Between the two girls sat the new governess, Mademoiselle de Mey. David knit his brow, tasting his Madeira. He felt uneasy about Mademoiselle de Mey.

There she sat, erect and graceful, in a peach-colored gown, her golden hair glimmering beneath the chandelier. David had known many women in his life, some grand, like his wife, serenely beautiful in magnificent understatement. They were good listeners, they were kindhearted, they were true ladies. They did not shine by their wit, nor overwhelm by their jewels. They glowed with tranquility, and with them he felt comfortable. He classed his wife with these women, seeing her desire for peace as greatness of heart, judging her cool cynicism as penetrating, generous observation of others. He thought her wonderful, because she was never strident—and did not perceive that Mathilde's dream of peace was sometimes purchased at the price of true valor.