Sonia was mostly an observer during these months. Her father had opened a school of Oriental languages, for being a Jew, he was not allowed to teach at the University. He was also busy making speeches before the Duma and the Senate. But Sonia thought that there was a new sadness in his eyes when he looked at her mother: could it be that something was not going well between them? she wondered. The idea was too disturbing, and she fought against it with all her might. Mathilde’s behavior toward her husband could not have been more courteous. Still, Sonia watched for signs of ill feeling to explain the look in David’s eyes.
She was also observing Johanna. How odd this friendship was between her governess and her mother. Sonia’s studies were nearly complete, and Gino, at thirteen, was attending the gymnasium where Ossip had gone before him. In spite of this, Johanna was around more than ever, and acted primarily as a companion to Mathilde, a companion who never left Mathilde alone with her daughter. Johanna was a wedge between them and the constant devotion and attention she paid Sonia’s mother made the young girl most uncomfortable. Yet she herself was devoted to her own friend Nina, whom she loved very much; why, then, was this friendship different? And why did she always feel as if Johanna, in her dealings with David, behaved as the winner in a game that he had never chosen to play with her?
Baron David gave a reception for the Minister of Education late in the winter season. His niece, Tania, was nearly seventeen, and had made an early debut to emulate Sonia. Now she stood in the drawing room, tossing back her golden locks, her small, well-shaped body draped in yellow satin. The young men flocked to her, even Minister Fedorov’s assistants, who were considerably older than she. Sonia sat at the piano, admiring her cousin who was speaking to a group of three young men dressed in the elegant fashion of Savile Row. “I love London,” she was saying. “Do you know that Adeline Genée, the ballerina from Copenhagen, dances there? And they have wonderful vaudeville comedy at the Alhambra!” Sonia began to play a piece by Scarlatti, thinking to herself, Tania is so beautiful, so comfortable in company. But these reflections were untinged by envy. Sonia knew she and Tania were two very different people, and each could only be herself.
When Minister Fedorov said to her, “Sofia Davidovna, your fingers are like lightning! Do you realize that Scarlatti is almost impossible to play correctly and with feeling?” she could only shake her head and blush, charmingly. Surely the great man had not heard her governess, Johanna de Mey…
During that summer of 1908, Mathilde took the two children who still remained at home with her to France. Baron David took them to the train station, and once more Sonia felt, in her own body, the pathetic sadness on his face. It was the face of a man who was bewildered: he knew there was not another man in his wife’s life, and yet he also knew, deep within, that she was somehow not truly his own. It made no sense. He could only flail about helplessly, searching for the answer, prey to attacks of migraine and indigestion.
The day before Mathilde’s scheduled return on the Berlin express with Sonia and Gino, David awakened to Stepan’s knock with a dreadful migraine. “The Baron has an important appointment today, Alexei tells me,” the maître d’hôtel reminded him, while applying a compress of ice water to David’s left temple.
“Appointment? I am too ill to move,” David groaned.
“But the Baron must go to the island of Yelaghin, to confer with Prime Minister Stolypin,” Stepan insisted.
“Tell him to go to the devil,” David said. He fell back against his pillows, wracked by waves of nausea and the pounding pain at his temples.
“Yes, sir,” Stepan answered. He backed away into the dressing room, and noiselessly selected David’s clothing. He laid it out for him, meticulously, and then stepped out of the room. David sat up, cursing under his breath. Everything was prepared, down to the diamond pin for his cravat. Stepan knew him well…
He rose, shaking slightly, and went to wash and dress. When he emerged, the only tell-tale sign of illness was his half-shut left eye. He smiled at the tall maître d’hôtel. “Is Vova ready to drive me?”
“He is in front, with the footman. Alexei has given me this briefcase for the interview with the Prime Minister.” Stepan knew that on mornings when David suffered migraines, the mere suggestion of breakfast was enough to upset David’s stomach. He held out his master’s cape, and helped him to the door.
Inside the landau, David closed his eyes and attempted to go over his proposed speech to Pyotr Stolypin. The drive was a long, jarring one. The plaid cover on his knees fell to the floor, but David was too weak to pick it up. He began to shiver, though the sun shone brightly. He was accustomed to working in spite of the headaches, but this time he could hardly turn his head without feeling alarmingly dizzy. The Prime Minister had a sumptuous villa on Yelaghin, and once Vova had reached the island, David, from his seat, began to tap violently upon the windowpane. The footman signaled to Vova, who reined in the horses. From where the landau was parked, David could see the silhouette of Stolypin’s house. “I must rest here,” he said. “The audience is scheduled for ten thirty. I have never been late in my life. This time, I shall arrive five minutes late—but that cannot be helped.”
He pressed his fingers against his aching temples, and looked out idly over the countryside. All at once, his vision was filled with flying debris. A loud explosion resounded. The horses neighed and reared. The carriage shook; David, holding onto the sides of the landau in shock, forgot his pain. He saw a wall collapsing, an entire house, parapets included, mushrooming into a cloud of smoke and brick. His pale blue eyes protruded incredulously as the earth beneath him trembled, and one of the horses jumped forward. Vova fell from his seat, and one of the wheels of the landau rolled off. David felt himself swaying as the footman grasped for the reins, and soon Vova was tugging at the door, trying to help David from the damaged carriage. “Oh, my God,” David murmured, pointing to the scene before him. “That was the Prime Minister’s home. He must be dead. They must all be dead inside.” Only a crater remained.
Later that evening, when the newspapers arrived at the Gunzburg house, David read about the bomb that had been planted in Stolypin’s residence. But it seemed that the Prime Minister had been detained at a previous conference somewhere else and had escaped harm. When David met his family at the station the following day, they had not yet seen a newspaper, and were horrified by his account. Mathilde clung to his arm. “It was the migraine that saved you,” she stammered. “Thank heavens!” He thought, gratefully, that whatever might have separated them in the past, this incident had drawn his wife closer to him.
“Let us move to Paris,” Mathilde entreated.
But David shook his head. “Perhaps our country is besieged by demons and madmen,” he stated, “but it is still our country, and I shall never abandon it.”
Mathilde said nothing more. But several nights later, a new crisis occurred to further jolt the household. David’s old friend, Alexei Alexandrovitch Lopukhin, came to call, ashen-faced and disheveled. For several years Lopukhin had been retired from politics. Now his older daughter had been mysteriously kidnapped during a visit to London. David did not hesitate: over Mathilde’s fearful protests, he packed his bag and accompanied his friend to the British capital. They suspected that Evzo Azev, an agent provocateur against whom Lopukhin had worked during the revolution of 1905, might somehow have engineered the kidnapping. But once in London, they found the girl with her sister and governess at the hotel: she had been brought back, with as little explanation as when she had been taken. Mathilde said, “I wish that you had kept out of this matter, David. You are a Jew, and I am afraid of reprisals.”
He was moved by the concern in her wide blue eyes, and he touched his finger to her lips. “I know, my love. But in the matter of daughters, I owed Alexei a debt.” He did not elaborate, and Mathilde remained perplexed by his comment.
That December, Mathilde gave David a lavish formal dinner and ball as a silver anniversary present. Sonia played th
e piano, and noted poets, scholars, and diplomats were in attendance. Mathilde wore a simple gown of blue velvet, and her kokoshnik, the jeweled tiara her husband had had made for her to commemorate the Tzar’s coronation in 1896. Johanna de Mey watched the couple as they prepared to initiate the dancing, and Mathilde’s smile chilled her. It was not that she melted into her husband’s arms, for Mathilde had never done that; but the way she listened to his whispered words, her head tilted to the side, suggested quiet contentment. She was forty-three years of age and still beautiful. The Dutchwoman clasped her hands together and thought: Let me not lose her. Let me not upset the delicate balance by some foolish act…
When the evening was over, Johanna de Mey tiptoed to the master bedroom, and listened at the door. She heard only the rustle of David’s pen upon the page of his diary. Then she moved to Mathilde’s boudoir and hesitated, her heart pounding. She smelled Mathilde’s scent, felt rather than heard the soft silk of her nightclothes brushing against the vanity. She tapped quickly, and turned the handle. The door swung open. Mathilde, combing her masses of raven hair, faced the intruder. She shook her head and extended her hands: “Come,” she murmured quietly.
“You did not go to the Baron?” Johanna asked.
Mathilde’s eyes fastened upon the Dutchwoman. Slowly, she made a gesture of infinite weariness. Then she smiled, and her features came alive like those of a small child awakened to a new sensation. Johanna shut the door behind her, and sighed with inward relief. Her lips tilted upward at the corners.
In 1909, Ossip returned from Japan, healthy and anxious to see his loving family. He had learned a good deal about the coal industry, under the tutelage of his employer, Moise Mess, and had mastered the Japanese language. Sonia felt as though her life had stopped that spring two years past when Ossip had left, and that her hopes and dreams, which had lingered on, ghostlike, after his departure, had been banished by Volodia’s death that September. Now, at nineteen, she greeted her twenty-two-year-old brother with enormous relief, as though by his return he had given her life again. But she refused to share her personal grief with him, and kept it locked within her. He was perceptive enough, now that love no longer blinded him, to see that she had suffered deeply, that her laughter was perfunctory where once it had been spontaneous, full of joy and life. But he did not intrude. Not even Ossip could intrude with Sonia.
She, for her part, noticed that the brief surge of vitality that had characterized her brother during his love affair with Natasha, had been drained out of him. He was the old Ossip, her friend and ally, the one who had watched others live and never dared to live himself. Natalia had transformed him, with her power to bring courage, daring, and drama to her brother. Sonia had found Ossip foolish then, histrionic, and disloyal to their father. Now she was sorry, for the young man who returned from the Orient had lost his zest for life. What is it that love does? she thought with bitterness. It had turned her sister into a recluse, her brother into his former passive self—and she herself would never again trust her own impulses toward a man. For if she had said yes to Volodia, he would not have died. But what would their future have been?
Soon after his return, Ossip began attending classes at the Faculty of Far Eastern Studies, and because he had already learned to speak Japanese, he was also able, in the afternoons, to take a part-time position at his grandfather’s bank, the Maison Gunzburg, which was managed by his Uncle Sasha. Sasha had always cast a favorable eye upon his oldest nephew, and now that Ossip had returned with some knowledge of business, Sasha was anxious to introduce him to the family enterprise.
In the evenings, Ossip found himself attending endless soirees, for he had returned to discover himself topping the list of eligible young bachelors of the capital, and was therefore deluged with invitations. He would escort his sister and almost always his eighteen-year-old cousin Tania, as Sasha and Rosa would not hear of Sonia’s attendance at any ball or dinner to which their own daughter had not been invited.
Tatiana Alexandrovna de Gunzburg, at eighteen, had completed her studies at the French girls’ school, the Ecole Lebourdet-Caprenier, and had spent a final year in a gymnasium in order to pass her baccalaureate examinations. She was by no means stupid, but her desire to play far exceeded any desire to learn. She had attended this exclusive institution in order to possess yet another desirable attribute with which to catch a husband. She spoke perfect French and Russian, and also her mother’s language, German; and she was familiar with the Hermitage Museum and the Museum of Alexander III, for it was considered detrimental to a young lady’s personality to appear ignorant of certain works of art. But museums bored her. She had stopped reading serious literature, and had ceased attending lectures with the advent of her diploma. She now awakened after ten, took a leisurely walk before luncheon, and in the afternoon she went visiting or received her friends in her mother’s house. Evenings were spent at the theater, at dinners and balls; or there would be a reception in her home.
For Sonia, life was different. She had studied without fanfare under the coaching of Johanna, and she still practiced the piano at least two hours a day. Early in 1909 Sonia and Nina Tobias asked a young English girl, Miss Maxwell, to come to them twice a week, and they would take turns reading aloud from books while Miss Maxwell corrected their pronunciation. The evenings would end with a three-way conversation in English. In the fall, Baron David arranged for his daughter and her friends to take some philosophy courses. Nina, who was a rather serious person, was always present. The two girls also attended many lectures: they heard an avant-garde poet recite his works, a professor of Greek speak of his travels, and an explorer recount his adventures on the North Pole. Since on Saturday night there was always a ball or a reception, Sonia made a point of going to the matinee rehearsal of the symphony, which was open to the public; symphony nights coincided with dances, and she wished to miss no concerts or recitals. There was no chance of encountering Tania at any of these events, except when Ossip was known to be accompanying his sister.
Tania was a constant irritant to Sonia, but she amused Ossip. Nina Tobias, quiet and reserved, danced with her gold-flecked eyes upon him, her soft-voiced questions probing his work, his interests, his stay in Japan. He liked her a great deal, and thought that during the two years of his absence she had acquired a calm grace somewhat like his mother’s. But she was not regal, as Mathilde was. She was like a soft flower in bloom, a soft but sturdy flower, a pansy or a poppy. She was well read, and Ossip enjoyed her conversation. But it was Tania who made him laugh.
Tania had heard whispers about a dark, forbidden love affair in Ossip’s past. She had guessed, quite accurately, that the young man must have been seduced by verve, by exuberance, by total sensuousness. She did not think that to conquer Ossip it was necessary to understand him. She saw the slender, sensitive man, and did not guess how terror gripped at his insides in the face of risk, of involvement; she knew only that life had long withheld its pleasures from him, and that he had stood enviously on the sidelines. Life, to Ossip, was the forbidden fruit, desired as well as shunned in fear. Natasha had conquered his fear and shown him that together they might bite harmlessly into the apple. But since losing Natasha his fear had returned with even greater strength. Tania’s small efforts at bringing him laughter caught him off guard, for they were truly harmless. He was amused rather than delighted, when only delight might have caused him to risk his regained security.
There was an easy carelessness about Ossip now, as though nothing were important anymore. He laughed with Tania and went off with his male friends to the Aquarium, the nightclub where the privileged youth of Petersburg spent their rubles on the gypsies who entertained them. Sonia had never set foot inside the club. It was considered off-limits to unmarried girls; even married women went there only accompanied by their husbands. Ossip craved the fun, the mindless gaiety, and sometimes ended the evening with a feverish gypsy upon his lap, and a bottle of Dom Perignon on the table. But he seldom finished the champagn
e, for halfway through he would grow bored and restless. Not much captured his attention these days.
“I do not know what to make of your brother,” Nina once said to Sonia. “He spends time with me, sometimes his eyes sparkle when we discuss a play, or a new ballet. But then, the next time I see him, he treats me like a stranger. What am I to believe?”
“You must give him time,” Sonia replied. More and more frequently, when Nina went into society, a young man of their acquaintance, Zenia Abelson, was proffering his attentions upon her; but Sonia was not concerned, for she knew that Nina’s feelings were for Ossip. She grew anxious over her brother’s shiftlessness, however, over his lack of perseverance in anything but his University work. Even his job went well solely because of his good mind, not because he relished what he was accomplishing in the service of his grandfather and uncle. He continued to work only because there was no reason to stop.
Sasha and Rosa frequently invited him and Sonia to supper. For Sonia these evenings were an unpleasant chore. Rosa usually ignored her. But she fussed over Ossip, and he permitted it, not bothering to discourage her. She would serve him his favorite foods, all the time drawing attention to Tania and her charms. Ossip would smile. His cousin had grown into a superb young lioness with a golden mane, an apricot complexion, and blue eyes rimmed with black lashes. Her figure was round and pleasant, though she was petite, like her cousin Sonia. And she dressed in the latest Paris fashions, in warm colors to match the tones of her skin and hair. “If she were less egotistical, Tania might fool a man into believing he was in the presence of a sensualist,” Ossip told his mother with amusement. “She bites into an apple with such relish, and her bosom palpitates with excitement. But it is not life that moves her: it is only the prospect of grabbing something from it for her selfish pleasure—preferably a husband.”
The Four Winds of Heaven Page 31