“No.” Anna’s eyes combed the room and rested with expressive longing upon a young man pressed against a far wall. “I did not come alone, and I shall not flee like a coward. Please, Alexei Alexandrovitch, take my sister home.”
The Chief of the Secret Police followed her look, then addressed one of his men. “This is a fine mess, indeed,” he said. “There, in back, with the mop of yellow hair: the son of Aron Berson, the banker. Bring him here, Popov.”
“If you arrest Vanya, you must take me, too,” Anna remarked calmly.
“Do not be a fool, Anna Davidovna,” Lopukhin replied. “Your father is one of my dearest friends. He is in business with Berson. We shall not arrest either one of you. There are ways of stifling the entire matter. The rest will spend a night or two in jail, and then will be let go. No one will ever know about your presence here—or for that matter, of the involvement of your young friend. He will go home, and I shall find a story to tell your parents about the two of you wandering around unchaperoned in the streets of Vassilievsky. But do not push me to the brink with your foolishness, Anna Davidovna. I have no time for that.”
Sonia opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. Pinpoints of painful red light erupted upon her field of vision, and she fell forward. She thought that she had uttered a loud, strident shriek, but nobody heard her. She had fainted in the arms of Alexei Alexandrovitch Lopukhin.
While the doctor gave Sonia an injection and put her to bed, David de Gunzburg sat in front of his haggard older daughter, his friend Lopukhin, and his maître d’hôtel. It was four in the morning. “You know that I do not believe you, any of you,” he said. “What kind of story is this, that Anna felt restless and asked Stepan to drive her around to gaze at the stars, in the middle of a subzero St. Petersburg winter? Where was Vova? In all my years I have never heard such a pack of obvious lies. Anna is not crazy, and neither is Stepan. And then the rest! You would have me believe, Alexei—you, a man of responsibility—that Sonia, my thirteen-year-old, was so concerned about her sister’s disappearance from their room that instead of coming to me, or her mother, or one of our other servants, she telephoned you in the middle of the night, and that you found her shivering downstairs, searching for Anna? Am I dreaming?”
“We ask you to believe us, Baron,” Stepan said with the utmost respect. “I know that I deserve to be dismissed on the spot for allowing Anna Davidovna to talk me into such foolishness.”
“But you will not dismiss Stepan, will you, Papa?” Anna pleaded. “He knew that I was upset, that I had not been sleeping well these past few nights. If I had asked Vova, he would have refused. I was at fault, asking Stepan, who is so devoted…”
“So devoted that he is willing to risk his position to swear to a pack of lies.” David was trembling with rage. “I shall not tell Mathilde. And you, Alexei, I know that if you are involved, a catastrophe must have been narrowly averted. I thank you. What else can I do? I have no conception of what is going on, of what we have escaped. Only that I am in your debt. And Stepan—there is a purse of gold on that table. It is for you. See to it that you don’t usurp the place of my coachman again! My daughter—my two daughters—have lied to me. Yet I cannot disprove them. Sonia is terribly ill. The doctor fears pneumonia. Whatever else has occurred tonight, this is of uppermost concern. Pneumonia! That is sufficient worry for her mother. Alexei—”
The Baron opened his arms, and his friend embraced him. Lopukhin felt the hot tears that had welled from David’s eyes, and he released him. “Go,” he said gently, “go to Sonia. She needs you. And you need to be with her. She is a valiant little lass.”
Anna placed an arm about her father, and in her face the Baron read pain and anguish beyond words. Together they entered the corridor. They were met by the doctor and Johanna de Mey in her silk dressing gown. “She will be all right, I think,” the physician said. “Mathilde Yureyevna is with her now. Do not stay too long, or she will hear you and awaken. She is half delirious. Let her ramble, it does no harm.”
Johanna de Mey’s steel-like gaze encountered Anna’s brown eyes. “Have you made heads or tails out of what she is saying in her sleep, Juanita?” the girl asked. Her father felt her body stiffen as she held him, and he heard the sharp, contained hatred in the girl’s words.
“You have heard the doctor: she is delirious,” the Dutchwoman replied. For a brief instant, David saw a flash of fear pass over her features. He cleared his throat. “Anna,” he said distinctly, “the next time you cannot sleep, do not ask Stepan to show you the moonlight. We are extremely lucky that only one of our girls has fallen ill. These are not the tropics, my child.”
“Your father speaks sense,” the governess said. Once again, her almond-shaped eyes bored into Anna’s.
“My father always speaks sense,” Anna replied. She began to walk again, holding David, in the direction of her room where Sonia lay.
Chapter 6
In Russia, the height of the social season was always the winter months. But this November of 1904, Sonia was midway between her fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays, too young to participate in the swirl of events which rendered giddy those young girls who made their debut at the age of seventeen; and Anna, who was nineteen, had no interest in masked balls and soirees at the theater. For war with Japan had erupted in February, and the Russians had taken tremendous losses.
While Mathilde and Johanna de Mey organized their social calendar, David and his two older children watched the war unfold from afar. Ossip was fascinated by the scene of the drama, the Far East. David had a friend, a Russian Jew, who had made his fortune in the production of coal in Japan. His name was Moise Mess, and early on Ossip had begun asking questions about this man. When war broke out, Mess had transferred his enterprise to Port Arthur as David had predicted. There, he was able to come to the rescue of the Russian navy, which had calculated the amount of coal necessary to get their ships to the Far East, and neatly forgotten that a return voyage would have to be undertaken. But Moise Mess salvaged the situation by putting his own coal at the disposal of his countrymen. David was deeply distressed by the government’s mistakes; but for Ossip, the war meant only an intriguing game, in which he chose to involve himself as one does in a chess tournament. Besides, he wanted to make certain that his own plans to one day travel to the East would not be ruined by the present situation. And he admired Moise Mess, whom he considered a true adventurer a la Marco Polo.
Anna, however, was concerned with the war’s effect upon the Russian people. She continued to meet Ivan Berson and his friends, with whom she found she could speak freely. But she was more careful now. She always made sure to be accompanied openly by one of the University girls, and to return at a decent hour. “You see, Anna can make friends,” her mother would say, smiling. Her smiles were somewhat forced. Anna’s friends were plainly clothed and never came to tea to chat with normal girlish relish. Still, she would think, they are young girls her own age, and if they attend the University, they are certainly not stupid.
“Women scholars are either terribly rich and terribly eccentric, or of modest means and in search of a suitable profession,” Johanna had told her. Uncertain which category best described Anna’s female companions, Mathilde said nothing. She had never forgotten Anna’s words to her about marriage, and although she did not see Ivan Berson any longer in her house, she wondered at times if her daughter had truly put him out of her mind. And if so, whether that was a good sign, or whether it meant that Anna had shunted aside the one man who might have made her his wife.
The Russian defeats had done nothing to strengthen the faith of the people in their government. To David’s shock, a group of professional, liberal men, many of whom were known to him personally, formed the first union in the country, calling it the Union of Unions. Men of letters came to him, wanting to know what he thought, if he would join them. And Anna, almost beautiful with her ardent, passionate look, waited by his side for his answer. “It is too soon,” he said. “The Tzar will grant
us a constitution. I have faith in his vision for his people.” That night Anna cried herself bitterly to sleep.
But Sonia was too young to understand, and her mother, Mathilde, kept her well sheltered. Then an invitation came which, Mathilde thought, could not have arrived at a better moment. For with Anna and David silently at odds, with Ossip’s unhealthy interest in this war, and with the dreadful cold of winter which made Mathilde remember Sonia’s pneumonia of the previous year, a time away from the capital would provide Sonia with proper distraction.
The invitation was from Kiev, which had, centuries before, been the capital of Russia. It was still called the Mother City of all the Russias, and it was the center of the prosperous manufacturing of sugar from beets. Years ago, David’s grandfather, Grigori Rosenberg, had been the most important sugar producer of Kiev, but now another family, the Brodskys, had surpassed Grigori’s descendants, and were the foremost Jews of the area. David and Sasha had a younger brother, Mikhail, Misha to his intimates, who had married one of the Brodsky heiresses and taken over the management of her father’s sugar factories. It was Clara, Misha de Gunzburg’s young wife, who was inviting Sonia to spend the New Year with them in Kiev.
Misha de Gunzburg was seventeen years younger than David. In 1904 he was barely thirty, and his wife, Clara, twenty-four. He was the golden boy of Horace’s sons, handsome and light where Sasha was dark and somewhat primeval. He had obtained a degree from the University of St. Petersburg in the Faculty of Mathematics, and had not known what to do with himself, until he had met Clara Lazarevna Brodsky. She, too, had been gifted in mathematics, and could play the piano more than adequately while Misha sang. But he had married her because of her colossal dowry, and because her father wanted him to supervise his sugar factories. For Clara was tall and thin, and in spite of the finery she affected, was nothing short of ugly.
Misha de Gunzburg had built a magnificent town house in Kiev. One entered his home through a large hallway, two stories high, and topped by a panel of glass. Adjacent to this hall, and equally tall, were a study and a dining room, and farther back, behind the staircase, a vast drawing room. The bedrooms and guest apartments were off a gallery that circled the hall on three sides, as a balcony at a theater. Throughout this mansion were strewn ancient Persian carpets, and on the walls hung paintings by the Old Masters. Misha had selected everything, while Clara, open-mouthed and filled with love, had simply watched. Her husband, a Russian and German baron, had ordered their china from England, and unlike Sasha’s and David’s, which was ornamented with a coronet of seven pearls as befitted barons of the German states, his bore the French coronet of four pearls—to which he was not entitled. But so fine was this china that if a demitasse were laid upon a marble table without first being placed upon a saucer, it would shatter at once.
Mathilde liked her cousin Misha, of whom she had grown fond during the early years of her marriage, when David had first brought her to his father’s house in St. Petersburg. Misha was ten years younger than she, and she had watched him grow. Unlike Sasha, Misha loved beauty for its own sake, and if he had made a marriage of convenience, he had done so without malice, but with the simple ease that characterized all his gestures and deeds. He was genuinely fond of Clara, and most discreet in his choice of mistresses. Certainly his cousin and sister-in-law, Mathilde, was not aware of them. He was not a snob like Sasha. He enjoyed his life, and indeed had no need to improve his position: for with his father’s name and title, with his father-in-law’s business, and with his own charm and good looks, he was unrivaled in Kiev society.
Rosa de Gunzburg, when she heard of Clara’s invitation to her niece Sonia, became hysterical. Facing Mathilde with fury and clenching her small brown fists against her temples where the curling irons had been busy making fine tendrils, she cried out, “But this cannot be borne! What does she mean, that upstart, that provincial nobody, excluding Tania? Why only Sonia? Tania would delight all of Kiev, and Misha would love her. I shall write to Clara, and tell her of my indignation, and of my hurt. Tania is her niece also, and deserves equal treatment. And,” she added irrelevantly, “Kiev is farther removed from this horrid war, too.”
“I doubt very much, Rosinka, that Japan shall invade our capital tomorrow,” Mathilde replied, a half-smile playing over her full lips. But her sister-in-law merely regarded her with a malevolent expression.
The upshot of the matter was that Tania, now nearly thirteen, was bundled off to Kiev for the holidays, along with her cousin Sonia. Both girls were diminutive, but Sonia was slimmer, more delicate, with milk-white porcelain hands and an oval face surrounded by thick dark hair which she wore parted in the center and held up by two ivory combs with pearl studs.
Tania was already endowed with feminine curves, more pronounced than Sonia’s. She sported a tiny waist, a small, plump bosom, and magnificent golden curls which she wore gathered at the neck in sausage loops. Her eyes were a periwinkle blue, and twinkled constantly. She ate lustily, and did not gain weight, and when she spoke her curls danced about her. She found Sonia too quiet, and Sonia found her too self-centered. Indeed, although her precocious ways had made her a favorite at her mother’s teas, Tania de Gunzburg was not much appreciated by her cousins on Vassilievsky Island.
Marfa, the little maid who served Anna and Sonia, accompanied the two girls to Kiev in a private compartment which had been reserved for them. The conductor had been well paid to take special care of the young Baronesses, and he acquitted himself admirably. Kiev was only one day’s travel from Mohilna, and thus, much of the countryside was familiar to Sonia. But the gentleman who met them at the terminal at Kiev was a complete stranger. Had he not possessed thick black hair and blue-gray eyes set close together, and had Misha’s coachman not been next to him awaiting the guests, the two girls and Marfa would not have looked at him a second time. But Tania, placing her plump little hand to her lips, cried out: “That young man! He resembles Papa, and our grandfather! And even Aunt Mathilde…”
The young man was twenty, tall and elegant in gray broadcloth and fine silk shirt. He greeted the girls with a charming smile. “I do not know which of you is Sonia, and which one Tania,” he stated, “but then again, you do not know me, either. I am your cousin, Jean de Gunzburg, and I too am a guest at Clara and Misha’s. I have recently come from Paris.”
“Jean? But how can you be our cousin?” Tania demanded, archly raising her brows. “Whose son are you?”
“I am Solomon’s son.” Solomon, Barons Horace and Yuri’s youngest brother, had died years before, the girls knew. “So,” Jean continued, “I am only your second cousin.” He looked pleased with his explanation. “This is my first trip to Russia,” he said, “but long ago, when you were in Paris, you visited my mother. I was a small boy, and you were both babies. We probably ignored one another.” He smiled brightly and Tania opened her mouth to reveal her tiny well-formed teeth and proceeded to seat herself next to the handsome French cousin in Uncle Misha’s carriage.
Sonia said softly; “Yes, I remember Aunt Henriette. She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. I shall never forget her.”
“I do not remember her at all,” Tania said regretfully, gazing deeply into the face of Jean de Gunzburg. She remembered quite well, however, the tales her mother had told her about the infamous Henriette de Gunzburg, and she could not repress a giggle. Jean stared at her, wrinkling his brow. Henriette, it was whispered, had had a scandalous number of lovers, including—and here, voices always lowered and eyebrows raised—King Edward VII when he had still been the Prince of Wales. (People still suspected Jean’s younger brother of having been fathered by Queen Victoria’s heir.) When Solomon committed suicide it was generally agreed that his wife’s amours were the cause of this dreadful tragedy. Tania now regarded the Frenchman with her full blue gaze, and dimpled at him. How terribly exciting. Mama would simply have expired to know that Aunt Henriette’s son was a guest at Uncle Misha’s.
But Sonia was smiling he
r pure, fresh smile, for she did not know anything of the family scandal. Mathilde and David had been most careful to refrain from any mention of it in her presence. But Tania had overheard much, and read her mother’s yellow-backed romances in secret. Tania knew what a mistress was.
Clara and Misha greeted their nieces effusively and settled them into adjoining rooms. Sonia was delighted by the mansion and by her Uncle Misha and cousin Jean. When the two men were together, one so dark, the other so blond, it hardly appeared that ten years separated them. It was strange, Sonia realized with a start, that she and her Aunt Clara were also a mere ten years apart. She thought with compassion of this ugly young aunt who had been sheltered all her life, and who, in spite of her father’s tremendous fortune, had traveled little and received so few social graces. Clara was shy, and reminded Sonia somewhat of Anna, for in her shyness she was abrupt. But as the wife of Mikhail de Gunzburg, who possessed the most sumptuous townhouse in the city, her social duties were ceaseless. They must weigh heavily upon her, Sonia thought.
During the first week of the girls’ stay it became clear that Jean had not come to Russia merely to visit relatives and amuse himself. Long ago, when the first Ossip, great-grandfather to Sonia and Tania, had established himself in Paris, he had told his children that under no circumstances would he tolerate their becoming French citizens. He had purchased a great number of military exemptions for his children and grandchildren, for only the oldest or only sons in Russian families were exempt from military service. David, Sonia’s father, had chosen to serve in the Uhlans at Lomzha, as had Sasha, Tania’s father. But Misha had taken advantage of one of the family exemptions to escape bearing arms. For Jean, who had been raised in France, and who did not even speak Russian, there had never been the slightest question as to whether or not he should serve in a Russian regiment. But he was a second son. He had searched through his dead father’s papers for the needed exemption notice, but he had found nothing. In terror, he had gone to his Uncle Yuri, and to other relatives, but no one could help him. And so, in desperation, he decided, before his twenty-first birthday, to come to Russia to learn its language. In that way, when the time came the following year, he would be able to do his duty.
The Four Winds of Heaven Page 17