“Of course, Ossip,” David said. Ossip smiled, and plumped the morsel of cake into his mouth. His clear eyes looked around the table, and glimmered for an instant at Johanna. She was sitting with her long, elegant fingers steepled before her face, hiding her mouth from his sight. But he saw the answering glint in her own aquamarine pupils. He looked at his mother, whose placid coolness pleased him, and at Gino, his brother, who had not truly understood the conversation and was wide-eyed with bewilderment. Anna sat remotely withdrawn, and he passed over her to find Sonia, his beloved. But in her gray eyes he did not find what he was seeking. He saw something that shook him back to reality, away from his sense of victory over their father. Sonia’s eyes, large and limpid, shone with a hard strength that bore no tender glow. Jolted, he was unable to meet the flintlike stare.
During the next months, the friendship between Ossip and Volodia Tagantsev deepened. Ossip spoke freely of the boy, and his mother would smile, listening with appreciation, knowing how precious it was for her child to have found so deep a friendship at long last. She understood even more than he realized, for she herself had found Johanna de Mey, and knew how much her own life had been transformed. She no longer felt alienated in a foreign land. And so she gently encouraged Ossip, a half-smile playing over her calm, poised features.
But Sonia sat rigid in her chair, on the edge of her seat, whenever Volodia was mentioned, her heart contracting with anger at this dreadful betrayal of their father. She was miserable, for she also wished to please her brother, her companion, who had chosen this friend in part because Volodia had reminded Ossip of herself. Without knowing him, Sonia felt strangely mingled emotions toward the son of the anti-Semitic Senator. She hated him on account of his parent’s cruel bias, yet felt Mathilde’s gratefulness on behalf of the child she loved most. The mere mention of Volodia Tagantsev’s name would make her acutely uncomfortable, divided as she felt in her strong, ardent loyalties.
Ossip returned home at noon every day for luncheon. But Volodia Tagantsev, who did not reside on Vassilievsky Island, had too long a distance to travel, and was forced to eat at school. “It is so dreary there,” Ossip told his mother. “Every four days the same meal is repeated, and there is no family cheer. I always feel so bad, leaving him behind.” Mathilde merely nodded. It was unthinkable for her to proceed any further: she was not only Jewish but also the wife of the foremost shtadlan in St. Petersburg. The Counts Tagantsev were of the highest nobility, second only to the Imperial Grand Dukes, whereas the Gunzburgs were merely Barons knighted in Hesse. She could not have conceived of inviting the scion of the Tagantsev clan to join her son in the Gunzburg home for luncheon. In France, a Gunzburg, a Fould, or a Rothschild might aspire to heights inconceivable in Russia. A Fould had become Minister of Finance at the court of Napoleon III; his nephew had married Mathilde’s own namesake aunt, and taken her to Court. Mathilde was a proud woman, a lady bred and born, but she was not one to defy tradition. Neither was her son. He did not hint at how happy an invitation to Volodia would have made him. Battling society was Anna’s game, not his, nor his mother’s. To some extent it was also David’s, insofar as the Jews of Russia were concerned. But Ossip was not a fighter in any arena.
In every way, the Gunzburg children had been taught the sports of their social standing, but Ossip’s condition had not permitted him to learn equestrian sports. At school, he played with his friends so long as strong physical contact was not part of the plan. There was only one boy who actively disliked Ossip. His name was Krinitsky, and he was a bad student, jealous of Ossip’s facility with learning and his easy relationships with the other boys. One morning, during a recess break in the school courtyard, Krinitsky saw Ossip deep in conversation with another pupil and, taking a leap, jumped onto Ossip’s back with limbs outstretched, bolting his legs around his waist and his arms around Ossip’s torso. The shock momentarily threatened to send Ossip forward onto his knees, but with a supreme effort he tensed his muscles and withstood the assault. Then, calmly, he loosened Krinitsky’s hands and legs and allowed him to slide down his back onto the ground. The entire class had stopped their games and talks, and, stupefied, watched entranced. When Krinitsky reached the ground, Ossip, his heart in his throat, collapsed into the arms of Volodia Tagantsev.
By this time, Sergei Botkin and Vassili Petri had rushed to the scene, and were pummeling Krinitsky. Volodia made Ossip take a seat, and wiped his brow for him with his monogrammed handkerchief. But Ossip’s faintness did not last long. “Stop!” he cried to Botkin and Petri. “It is not worth the effort to beat him so. Leave him alone.”
“You must tell the headmaster,” Volodia said to Ossip. “We were all warned that this sort of thing might kill you. He should be expelled.”
“But I am not the sort who tells on people,” Ossip said. “Besides, Vassya and Sergei have already punished him. I am grateful for your loyalty, all of you—but this matter will not go further.”
“It certainly shall,” Volodia said. He rose, and with a motion, gathered the rest of the class toward him. “We are going to go to the headmaster as a body, and it does not make any difference if you approve or not. What Krinitsky did was cowardly, and might have cost you your life. It was an unprovoked assault. Who will accompany me to the office, right this minute?”
Bewildered, short of breath, Ossip watched as not one student remained behind. Krinitsky looked at Ossip, his eyes bare with hatred. They were the only two left inside the courtyard. “You have made me lose my place at the gymnasium,” Krinitsky said.
“No,” Ossip murmured. “You did this yourself. I only care that I am still alive and well. I do not wish you harm. But you have lost your friends because of a stupid, thoughtless act. What did I ever do to hurt you?”
“You were simply yourself,” the other replied. “I do not like sickly Jews too proud for their own good. You are an arrogant nobody, with a title you don’t deserve.”
“A man may be a Jew, a nobleman, a tramp, or a chimneysweep,” Ossip said softly, “but as long as he is proud of his accomplishments, he will be honored to be called a man. Do you suppose, Krinitsky, that your accomplishments merit you that title?”
He was exceptionally tired, and the director sent him home earlier than was customary. He entered the hallway just as Mathilde was making her way to the drawing room for tea. She was shocked by her son’s pallor and by his untimely appearance. “What is the matter?” she cried, holding out her hands to him. He took them in his own, and told her what had happened. Mathilde’s eyes grew hard, then moist, then hard again. She said, “So you were almost killed.” Very gently, she pressed her lips to the boy’s forehead and held him by the shoulders.
“But Krinitsky has been expelled, because of Volodia and the others,” Ossip stated. “Now there is no one left to do me the slightest harm. Volodia saw to that.”
“Yes,” Mathilde echoed slowly, “Volodia saw to it. Tomorrow, I want you to do me a favor. You will ask Volodia to tell his parents that if they will not consider me impudent, I should be pleased if every day, instead of remaining at school, he would come home with you and share your noon meal. I cannot write them a note about it, for that would not be proper. But perhaps he will relay my message through you…”
“Oh, Mama, you are an angel from heaven!” Ossip cried. He kissed his mother on both cheeks and pressed her hands in his.
But she shook her head. “I am hardly that, my dear,” she commented with a wry half-smile. “For angels belong to the Christians…”
For thirteen-year-old Sonia, Anna’s absorption in her painting and reading, and Ossip’s departure for the gymnasium, left a space that was like an oozing wound, not seriously dangerous but continually painful. Gino was too young to become a companion, and her father was too busy with pressing affairs. She adored her mother and felt at once terrified and fascinated by Johanna. Now, it seemed, she had become the focal point in the governess’s field of observation, her primary pupil and the person with whom she mos
t frequently spent time. Under this scrutiny, Sonia squirmed.
Moments with Mathilde were sheer ecstasy while they lasted, but Sonia could never fully enjoy them, for she knew that afterward, Johanna would have reprimands for her. “Why did you blush at tea when Vera Abramovna complimented you on the cushion you embroidered?” the girl would be asked.
“But you have taught me that flattery is undeserved, that young people should not receive praise,” Sonia would answer, hesitating.
“If a lady is silly enough to offer praise to a mere child, then it behooves that child to accept it with grace, and not the awkwardness of a peasant. You are summoned to tea because you are supposed to be growing up. Yet there is always something that occurs to prove to me that you are just a child.” The governess would dismiss her with a helpless wave of the hand. Sonia would emerge cowed, humiliated, yet also determined. No, I shall not let you take my heart away, nor my mind, she would silently vow. And then she would vacillate between her anger at her own inability to please the talented Johanna, and hurt at the injustice of never seeming to win, no matter what she did. I can play better than most of my friends, she would think in bewilderment after Johanna berated her lack of talent at the piano. I know that is so. But somehow, that knowledge was not sufficient.
Sonia was shy but only because Johanna de Mey, in her golden splendor, had repeatedly drummed into her signs of her own “weakness.” Actually, she was a stalwart girl, a young person with tremendous inner pride combined with control, the control of her mother, the regal, poised Mathilde. Sonia was not cynical like Ossip, nor was she all reckless idealism like her sister. Sonia was thoughtful, and opinionated, in love with nobility of spirit and at war with baseness, as she had been even as a small child. But now, after years of Johanna, she had learned to face life, to realize when one had to employ control. She would not allow the governess to vanquish her strength of character, but at the same time she refused to grapple with her as did Anna, again and again. For Sonia despised ugliness, and found Anna’s humiliations at the hands of Johanna de Mey ugly. Anna never won, and Johanna always employed tricks to make her lose.
Johanna still found Sonia difficult to handle. She was not weak, like Ossip, who allowed her to wreak her unfairness without stepping in. She was not foolhardy, like Anna, who foolishly stepped in every time. Sonia was vulnerable, but only to a point. She would not break, for there was an inner reserve that held her together. And the governess did not know how far she could push before the gray eyes would harden, and she, Johanna, would cease to exist. Sonia, at thirteen, presented Johanna with a strange challenge; sometimes the Dutchwoman prepared to enjoy it, while at other moments her resentment would propel her into hating the girl.
And then there was the added complication of Mathilde’s role in this confrontation. Sonia was a balm for Mathilde. She was quiet, with a melodious voice. Her hair was glossy, and though not as thick as the golden locks of her cousin Tatiana, it hung in neat rolls down her virginal back. She was slim, with budding breasts that promised fullness like her mother’s and sister’s. Her eyes were blue-gray pools of clarity, the clarity of the just, and of the strong. And yet she was meek, and never violent, and never strident. She moved with the grace of a young nymph, her years of ballet lessons having taught her the art of elegant posture. She was an understatement, dressed simply in her soft pastels, and to Mathilde, who was the mistress of understatement, and to Ossip, who knew its value, she was a truly lovely thing, soft, like a nightingale, without the peacock glamor of Tatiana. “A man,” David’s friend, the sculptor Antokolsky, had said to him, “might commit murder on account of Tania. But for Sonia he would give his life.”
Just as Mathilde’s silent exchanges with Ossip took place behind Johanna’s back, her approval of her second daughter lay hidden beneath her walled-in composure. Sonia did not know, for she did not possess her brother’s sixth sense, developed as a child to cope with his lack of mobility, how central she was to Mathilde’s well-being. She thought her mother perfect, and herself untalented, as Johanna had told her.
Johanna had begun to teach Sonia to sew, once a week. She herself created all her own clothes, mostly from remnants of costlier pieces of material, for only recently had ready-made gowns made their appearance in Paris. One day Johanna de Mey cut a pattern for a blouse, according to the fashion, high-necked and with long sleeves. It was to be made of wool, which was a difficult fabric with which to work, and the winter months were drawing to an end. “You are so slow,” the governess complained, wiping her brow with a lace handkerchief. “At your age, Sonia, I could finish two of these in half the time it will take you to complete this one. But what else could I have expected of you? You are a plodder, child.”
It was true; Sonia had been advancing slowly. Methodically, with precise stitches, she had sewn all but the cuffs on the sleeves. She listened to her governess, and her cheeks grew pink. “I have been doing my best,” she said softly.
“It was a paltry best.” Johanna shook her head. Then, with one swift movement, she seized the material from Sonia’s hands and whisked it into the sewing basket. “That will be all for this week. Uninspiring, to say the least.” She yawned, stretching her sylphlike arms and her elongated fingers in a gesture of dismissal.
Sonia stood up, smoothed her skirt, looked at the lithe stretching body with a slight shiver of revulsion, and walked out of the room. But her mind was determined. She would surprise Juanita, make her take back her words of disdain. She would prove her worth. She would complete the cuffs on the blouse in her own time, and Juanita would have to be proud. Softly, she closed the door behind her and returned to her own bedroom.
The following week, Sonia was waiting for her instructress when Johanna de Mey made her entrance. She was taken aback. Her pupil, eyes aglow, cheeks shining, was sitting quietly by the sewing table. In front of her was the blouse, completed down to the last detail. Sonia was smiling. “I wanted to surprise you,” she said.
An overpowering rage seized hold of the governess at this sight. Blood came racing to her temples and began to pound behind her eyes. She clenched her fists and approached the girl, her fine features distorted into a mask of pure hatred. She began to scream, her nerves out of control. The shrill voice pierced the walls and reverberated around the room, so that Sonia, bewildered beyond belief, the smile disappearing from her lovely oval face, felt battered by the sight and sound.
“So you have gone behind my back, you sniveling little monster! So you have sneaked, and you have lied, and you have cheated! I thought of you as dull, as slow, but not as what you are—a weasel in girl’s garb! How dare you not tell me what you do with the materials which I order for you, how dare you not consult me on the steps to take? What am I here for, if not to educate you, stupid, thoughtless, spoiled child? I shall tell your mother that I am returning to France, that no one wants me here, that no one needs me, that I am despised by her chit of a daughter—”
“But Juanita, it was you who complained about my being too slow. I thought you would be pleased if I finished. Why are you bringing Mama into this?” Sonia asked. She felt concern and shock. A strange dizziness had begun to make her head spin.
“Your mother needs to know what you do. She will punish you.” Tears of anger welled from Johanna’s eyes, and her nose looked pinched and pointed. She wanted to tear the blouse in front of Sonia, to violate her. But Sonia did not move. Johanna seized the material and rent it in half, and then, at last, the girl’s eyes grew round and moist and her little hand, so white and delicate, rushed to cover her opened mouth. Johanna saw the expression and began to laugh, a wild, hysterical sound which made goosebumps appear on Sonia’s arms and back. At that moment the door silently swung on its hinges, and Mathilde stood on the threshold of the sewing room, her beautiful creamy face a serene, poised counterpoint to Johanna’s wrath. She glanced at her daughter; Sonia’s face mirrored naked fear. Mathilde’s resonant, even voice said, “What is all this?”
“She
has gone behind my back, she has cheated and lied,” Johanna cried. She pointed at Sonia and at the pile of torn material. “She has tried to make a mockery out of our sewing lessons.”
Mathilde merely regarded her daughter, and her thick dark eyebrows shot up, questioningly. “I wanted to surprise Juanita by finishing my blouse, Mama,” Sonia began. “I thought… she would be pleased.”
“Well, evidently the surprise was too much for her. Pick up these rags, Sonia, and go to your room. We shall not discuss this matter further.” Mathilde met her daughter’s hurt expression with her usual face—calm, austere, even-tempered. Inside she ached for the girl and felt a surge of anger toward her friend. But she merely stood her ground, as Sonia gathered the remains of her blouse together and walked hurriedly from the scene. Then Mathilde sat down, and said to the sobbing Johanna, “It was a child’s effort. No harm was meant. She would never try to sneak. Perhaps Sonia’s problem in life is that her ways are too direct, too straight, too uncompromising. You must remember that.”
“I know only that she has made me a fool in your estimation,” Johanna murmured.
“That could never happen,” Mathilde found herself saying. And as she did so, she felt a catch in her throat, and her hand shot out toward the other woman, whose blond hair had fallen out of its French twist and was tossing around her sloping shoulders. Johanna felt the hand on her shoulder, and one of her own hands found its way on top of it. She pressed Mathilde’s fingers in her own trembling ones, and smiled through her tears. She could not understand what had caused her to lose her temper in this fashion, to want to kill this pretty, harmless girl as she had, substituting a piece of wool for the slender young body which she had wished to tear to shreds. She did not know, but nothing mattered any longer, for the girl had lost, her creation was ruined, and Mathilde had not sided with her own child. No, Mathilde had not sided with Sonia.
The Four Winds of Heaven Page 12