The Four Winds of Heaven (8 page)

Fumbling wildly, she rang for Stepan. When he appeared, Mathilde said with a supreme effort at control, “Please help the Baroness. She is much distressed. She will need her coach, and her daughter. I must tend—to something.” Without looking at Rosa, she hurried from the room, knowing but not caring that the maître d'hôtel was staring at her in shock and bewilderment. Only one thing mattered, and that was to convince Johanna not to leave.

I
f Johanna de Mey
had made a lifelong enemy of Rosa de Gunzburg, it did not ruffle her in the least. Quite to the contrary, she smiled to herself, for the incident in the living room had, she knew, created a permanent, if unspoken, breach between Mathilde and her sister-in-law. And that was all to Johanna's advantage.

Mathilde had spoken to David about “Rosa's appalling lack of tact,” and had indicated that she expected to receive a note of apology. As she lay upon her pillows, her face whiter than usual, a cautious David sat on the bed and held her hand soothingly. “It is a matter best forgotten, dearest,” he said. “Rosa is a snob, and she behaved like an impudent child. But perhaps henceforth you had best refrain from asking Johanna to tea.”

Mathilde, outraged, silenced his protests. She would not go to supper unless he spoke to his brother about the apology. It was Johanna who had been cruelly wronged.

David, who was a diplomat in business affairs, felt acutely uncomfortable. Family was precious to him, even if Sasha was imperious and envious, and they had never been close. Surely Rosa, whom David privately disliked, deserved priority over his children's governess. But thoughts of Mathilde, distressed, flooded his mind. In an agony of embarrassment, David went to the bank to speak to his brother. Sasha laughed. Women were foolish creatures, though it amazed him that Mathilde, whom he had always admired for her regal beauty and elegant poise, would stoop to this sort of silliness. Had David, by the way, seen that little milliner whom Sasha now kept near the Nevsky Prospect? Imagine, renting an apartment there! The girl was a saucy piece, but costly, costly. David was wise not to indulge in passions of the flesh. David smiled, thinking of Mathilde. He had his passions; had they not driven him here against his better judgment?

After much deliberation, and a burst of anger from Sasha, the brothers had agreed that for the sake of family relations Rosa would send the note. At home, Sasha had to contend with his wife, who flew into a wild fury, throwing a precious vase against a wall and pummeling his chest. He had calmed her and repeated what he expected of her. Then, after she had rewritten the apology three times, he had taken her to bed. And so Mathilde had informed Johanna that her sister-in-law had begged forgiveness, that most certainly Mademoiselle de Mey was to be included in her dinner party. Johanna had known how to play this, too, to her own advantage.

“My dear Mathilde,” she said, “I could not possibly attend. Rosa is doing this only for courtesy. Her heart is not in this invitation, and I do not wish to upset her further by being present where I am not truly a welcome guest.”

Mathilde had agreed.

Johanna reflected upon all this as she munched daintily upon a crumpet. It was nine o'clock and she was partaking of breakfast in bed. The children had had their Hebrew lesson—what nonsense!—with their father at seven thirty, and now awaited her in the lesson room. But Baron David would be occupied in his study, receiving his daily petitioners and reviewing each of their cases before taking the carriage into town and the ministries where he worked. She pursed her lips with disgust. Never had she seen such an array of evil-smelling tatterdemalions as inhabited the waiting room outside the Baron's study. But then, it was just like this religious fanatic to work himself to death over supposed injustices committed against some poor Jews. Well, let him waste his time! It kept him from visiting the lesson room and discovering that she was not present. The children had their assignments: they were to learn a passage from the history book by memory, and that would take them a good hour. She would arrive at ten.

She remembered her own education. She had been the eldest daughter of Johan de Mey van Alkemade, of Utrecht. Her father, imperious, tall, and handsome, had possessed much noble blood, although her sweet, delicate mother came only from a bourgeois background. Her parents had bought a magnificent house on Lake Geneva during her childhood, and she had loved the blue-green, cool beauty of Switzerland. She had also loved her splendid, aristocratic father, after whom she had been named. She had vaguely despised her more common mother, always so gentle and kind. She herself had been authoritative from the start, and her father had said: “She is named for me, she resembles me, and she is strong-willed like me. I shall educate her well, not like these cream-puff females who adorn the world and are of no use to anybody.”

His wife had blushed, knowing he was referring to her.

So Johanna had been sent to the best school for young ladies in Geneva, a boarding establishment run by two spinster ladies, the Frauleins Broun and Weichbrodt. They tolerated no nonsense, and were rigid disciplinarians. She had been the pet of the Frauleins; she followed discipline marvelously.

When she had completed her education, the Meys had moved to Neuilly, an elegant suburb of Paris. Not realizing that her husband was nearly ruined from mismanagement of his affairs, Lise de Mey had entertained lavishly. Her husband was too proud to admit his failures to her, and too stubborn to admit the extent of the damage to himself. Johanna, as beautiful and stately as an iris, had been courted by many wealthy young men. But compared to her father, they all seemed stupid and graceless. And Johan encouraged her dispassion, for it fed his own ego. He had reared his daughter to be brilliant, like a man. It did not matter to him that Lise was distressed.

And then, quite suddenly, catastrophe struck. Headstrong, vain, Johan de Mey continued to spend extravagant sums of money until one day there was nothing left. He had gone into his study, shut the door, and put a bullet through his left temple. Johanna had found him, slumped in a pool of blood, and her heart had ruptured. She was twenty-five. In her agony she had shaken her dead father, splattering his blood over her fine gown, screaming again and again, “Why have you done this to me?” Then, hardening herself, she had thought brutally: He never loved me, it was I who was a fool to think he did. He was a... nothing. I thought he was God, but he was nothing.

Lise was shattered and helpless, wracked by her pain, paralyzed by catastrophe. It was Johanna who took matters in hand. First, she paid off the servants with proceeds from the sale of the house, then she faced her father's creditors with rigid posture, meeting their cruel eyes with her own proud stare. It was she who auctioned off the paintings—beloved Vermeers and a small, treasured Rembrandt—the furnishings of buhl and rosewood and fine mahogany. Her heart did not stir with pain; it remained numb and cold inside her.

Johanna transferred the family to a small apartment in one of the less expensive areas of Paris, and raised her fine head as she took the degrading step of finding work for herself. She became a ladies' companion to a young American girl. She was well treated, for Americans felt insecure about their breeding, and hers, so properly European, had impressed the girl's family. But they had been ready, after several years, to return to America. It was a stroke of fortune that had allowed their return to coincide with Mathilde's need for a governess.

Mathilde. Johanna ran a finger down her nose, smiled, and touched a golden tendril on her forehead. She passed her hand over her chest, then parted the fine blue gauze of her nightdress and felt her small but well-formed breasts, like half-apples, and their hard nipples. A tremor of delight ran through her, and she shook herself out of it. Mathilde, in many ways, was like a child. She was an accomplished woman of the world, but innocent too, for it was clear that she had never been aroused. Certainly not by that sapless husband of hers. Mathilde tolerated him, but surely bore him little love and no passion. And had Mathilde not told her that they had been betrothed during her childhood? Certainly, then, no other man had stimulated Mathilde's imagination. Women, in truth, could only be appreciated by other women. Suddenly blood rushed through Johanna's body and she clasped her hands in blind yearning. For while her senses had known pleasure before, no one had ever possessed them in full save herself. Until now. But one had to be careful, to tread lightly—or all would be lost. She had to be more astute than ever before. Mathilde de Gunzburg was a proper woman, who would need to be deluded.

It was nearly ten o'clock. Johanna de Mey drank a last swallow of cafe au lait and wiped her delicate mouth with a linen napkin. Those damned children! She slipped out of bed and let the nightdress fall to the floor. The full-length mirror on the wall revealed her to herself, firm, pink, and sylphlike. She smiled, her ill humor dwindling. It was time for her to be with someone her own age. And Mathilde, at thirty-one, was exactly two weeks older than she.

A
fter a month in St. Petersburg
, Sonia's mind was filled with conflicting emotions. She loved the city. She thought the Neva splendid, and the drives along the Nevsky Prospect fairylike. And naturally, there was the apartment, which she admired in its every detail, though Anna had told her secretly that when she grew up her own house would be uncluttered with objets d'art, and that she herself intended to design each piece of furniture. But Sonia disagreed. Every inlay, every filament of gold was precious to her. Her Mama fit in here, with her calm grandeur. One day she, Sonia, would wear her thick black hair in a pompadour and sit amid antique furnishings too.

Tania was the single villain in Sonia's fairy tale. She was continually shocked by her cousin's lack of manners, and by her presumption. She particularly resented Tania's fondling of Ossip, who was her own treasured brother, and who politely bore the golden girl's attentions in quiet desolation. She did not like Tania's impudence toward Anna, who largely ignored her. But she did admire, with awe, her cousin's great beauty. How strange then that gloomy Grandfather Horace always asked her, Sonia, to perch on his lap! For the world seemed to grovel before Tania, especially the girl's own parents. Sonia also did not like her Aunt Rosa. Why was Aunt Rosa forever telling people about things that Tania performed better than Sonia? Whenever her aunt kissed her, Sonia felt ill at ease. She does not like me, and yet I have always been polite to her, Sonia would think.

But her confusion was even greater when she considered Juanita. What a lovely lady she was, so perfectly dressed and coiffed! And she was kind to Mama. Yet Sonia never knew when Juanita's temper might explode, or how to guard against it. During lessons, if one of the three children misrecited a single word Juanita's anger flared. A second error brought the textbook hurtling to the floor, and Juanita standing in fury over the head of the small criminal. Sonia sometimes made mistakes, and Anna made them constantly, but Ossip rarely did, for he had apparently learned that by doing exactly what Juanita required, furious tantrums were averted. But Ossip was brilliant. Sonia was not, and so even if she tried as hard as she could, until tears came, mistakes still happened. When they did, Juanita was merciless. “You are dishonoring me,” the governess would say. “I was the best student at the Broun School, and I am doing my best to pound some knowledge into that stubborn brain of yours. You are a sore disappointment to me.”

Poor Anna. She had never been good at lessons, only at drawing. She so disliked to sit at a desk and learn “all this useless nonsense” that she did not try very hard. She and Ossip, though two years apart, were at the same level. But it was almost as though Anna sought Juanita's anger, as though she were trying not to learn in order to show her active resentment of the governess. This was bewildering to Sonia, who thought that they were all indeed shaming poor Juanita and worthy of her anger and despair. “After all, she is so perfect,” she would wail to her sister, who replied tartly: “Yes, she does tell us so each day, doesn't she?”