It was January 1, 1913.
On New Year’s Day the gentlemen of St. Petersburg went calling upon their acquaintances. Baron David and his son put on their jackets and their pinstriped pants, and filled their pockets with pieces of ten or twenty kopeks to tip all the Swiss doormen and the maîtres d’hôtel whom they would encounter that day. In the Gunzburg apartment Mathilde, Sonia, and Johanna, clad in their finery, awaited their own callers. And Kolya Saxe, unknown in the capital, tall, dark, and extremely elegant, stood by his fiance’s side. Sonia, her gray eyes twinkling, took mischievous pleasure in introducing him to everyone as her husband-to-be. For no one had suspected an impending engagement in the Gunzburg family.
Svetlana Yakovlievna made a special present to the woman who was to become her son’s wife. She had seen the love that shone in Sonia’s face, a quality of enraptured passion that was close to idolatry. And Svetlana approved, for she herself considered her son greater than life. Ilya, her elder, was a normal man; but Kolya’s character, so upright, strong, and commanding, made him in his mother’s eyes worthy of unquestioned devotion. Consequently, she was pleased by Sonia’s attitude, and took her aside. “My dear, I had this made for you,” she said, and handed the young woman a gold locket. When Sonia opened it, she saw, finely painted in enamel, her fiance’s handsome face, laughing into her eyes. Touched, she pressed Svetlana’s hand and kissed Kolya’s portrait gratefully. Only a man’s mother could truly release him to his beloved—and Svetlana had graciously made that gesture.
Kolya’s parents had to return to Kiev on the third of January, although their son could remain two days longer. Accordingly, Sonia said to her mother, “Let us have an intimate supper for the Saxes and our immediate family tomorrow night. Even if Aunt Rosa is busy, we shall have made the gesture. You see, Kolya told me that he and Papa discussed where to hold the wedding, and it will go as you and I had anticipated, Mama. We are to be married closer to Grandmother Ida and Grandfather Yuri, who are too old to travel to Petersburg. They had thought perhaps in Belgium, to avoid the long residency requirements of France. The Saxes shall therefore not meet the Russian Gunzburgs unless we organize something now.”
“Madame Saxe is too provincial to introduce to your Uncle Sasha,” Johanna interposed.
“That is not so!” Sonia retorted at once. “And besides, she is Kolya’s mother, and will be the grandmother of my children. I am not ashamed of her—so why should you be?”
“The Saxes are fine people, Johanna,” Mathilde said. “The family stands high in Kiev society, and is related by marriage to my sister-in-law, Clara. What do you have against Svetlana Yakovlievna? Has she offended you?”
Johanna de Mey clenched her fists and unclenched them, then ran her fingers through the blond strands of hair gathered into an elaborate coiffure on top of her head. She grew quickly red, then white. “Svetlana Yakovlievna! Have you no taste, Mathilde? I am shocked at you. The woman dresses badly. I am certain that if you listened carefully, you would even detect... an accent of sorts. All she needs is the scent of pickle brine to complete the picture. How could you humiliate yourself by introducing such a person to your most intimate relations? Rosa is a snob. She would mock you.”
“Juanita means that Svetlana Yakovlievna is too obviously a Jewess,” Sonia declared. Her eyes were like hard pebbles. Her mother turned to her, her lips parted in surprise. But Sonia continued, adamantly: “She is to be my mother-in-law. I, too, am Jewish, and I do not care how provincial she looks. My great-grandmother, Rosa Dynin Gunzburg, spoke only the Yiddish dialect, and ministers of France sat on her right. She wore a red wig, and yes, she made her own pickles, too, in the magnificent house where my mother was born, on the Barrière de l’Etoile in Paris! Svetlana Yakovlievna is in good company!”
“All Petersburg will laugh at you, after Rosa describes her,” Johanna said. Her aquamarine eyes flashed. “Maxim Saxe is a gentleman, and looks the part. But his wife is not presentable to a Baroness Gunzburg. However—I need not be present. I may as well take a long trip now, and visit my mother in France. There I shall be listened to.”
“Johanna!” Mathilde cried. “You would not do this, merely on account of a family dinner?”
“I could not bear to have you be the laughing stock of Petersburg, my dear,” the Dutchwoman declared. Her pupils contracted, and her eyelids narrowed. She turned her face and regarded Sonia pointedly.
“It really does not matter,” Mathilde sighed. She said to her daughter, “After you are married, when everyone knows our distinguished Kolya, your mother- and father-in-law will surely come for a visit to the capital. We shall entertain them properly at that time. Right now, your Papa is not well, and the excitement of such a celebration might be unwise. Kolya will understand. He knows of David’s condition.”
“The only conditions I feel restricted by are those imposed upon us by Juanita,” Sonia declared. Her face was very red, and she was breathing rapidly, hoarsely. For a moment she remained where she had been standing, a diminutive figure of barely controlled anger; then she turned and exited, her skirts swishing noisily. Mathilde sank upon the sofa, and fanned herself with the back of her hand. But Johanna de Mey arched her back like a proud cat observing a dismembered canary.
When Mathilde gently explained to Svetlana and Maxim Saxe that it would be impossible to organize even a small family dinner in a single day, and that her husband, Baron David, had not been well, the Kiev couple nodded, and Svetlana Yakovlievna murmured, “But of course, Mathilde Yureyevna. Do not concern yourself on our account. We have met you, and David Goratsievitch, and Ossip. That was the point of our coming.” But Sonia saw the proud rearing of Kolya’s dark head, the flash in his eyes. She felt the tension inside him as he came to his mother and took her hand, stroking it. It was evident to the young woman that all three Saxes knew that her mother had not told the truth, and that they were somewhat stunned by the slight. Sonia was more embarrassed than she had ever been, and for the first time in her entire life her great admiration for Mathilde was rattled. She quickly concentrated her fury upon Johanna, who was its cause. It was unbearable to blame Mama.
On the fourth of January, Kolya fell ill with the grippe and was confined to his bed. His parents had departed the previous day without meeting Sasha, Rosa, and Tania, and now Kolya was forced to put off his leaving. Taking Ossip with her as chaperone, Sonia spent as much time as possible by her fiancé’s bedside, reading to him, caressing his long, strong fingers, mopping his fevered brow. But on the third day the fever abated, and Kolya could no longer hold off his return. On the platform at the train station, while Mathilde and David stood at a discreet distance, he enveloped her tiny form in his arms, and kissed her lips. “I shall write you each day,” he promised, and she melted into his eyes, her body flowing like honey, magnetized by his look of passion. Anxiety seized her, and she held his lapels with a kind of frenzy. “I shall be back soon,” he reassured her, guessing her thoughts. “For the Carnival, in February—remember, sweetest?”
She nodded, but her eyes were full of inexplicable tears. Her father had decided that, since Kolya could get away from the sugar works for a few days then, the formal engagement festivities would be held at the time of the Carnival. Then, in April, the young couple would meet in Brussels and be married.
After Passover, weddings were forbidden for forty-nine days until the feast of Shabuoth, the Pentecost. Russians did not like to marry in May, for the saying went that those who did would quarrel ceaselessly thereafter. But on the fifteenth and the thirty-third days of the religious hiatus, weddings were permitted, and so David had selected April twenty-third as the date when his daughter would become Kolya’s wife. The Belgian authorities required only that one of the parties have resided there for six weeks, rather than the six months demanded by French law, and so Sonia and Mathilde planned to leave St. Petersburg during the first week of March. Now Sonia clung to her fiancé, tremulous, and whispered, “You are everything to me. My life, my love. I
have never known such happiness as now, basking in your love. Promise me never to leave me again!”
“You are mad to think that I would ever want to,” he replied. “We shall travel together, and I shall carry you everywhere upon my arm like my most prized possession. No, Sonitchka, I shall never be apart from you after our wedding. It is I who would not bear it.” He detached himself from her and took a long velvet box from his coat pocket. He opened it himself, removing from it a long chain of gold. Her mouth opened in wonder, and he smiled. From the chain hung a small plaque of solid gold, and from that two smaller chains of unequal lengths. Each of these was weighted by an emerald in the shape of a tear, surrounded by diamond chips. Kolya placed the necklace around Sonia’s throat, and clasped it at the back. “Think of these as my tears, each day that I am separated from you,” he murmured. She turned, and her gray eyes held him, more expressive than any words.
He returned to Kiev with the mission of finding a suitable apartment for his bride and himself. She had told him that she trusted his taste, and insisted only upon a Louis XVI salon and an Empire dining room. He had promised to send her detailed accounts of what he had found, and what he was proposing to purchase. She would hire a cook and a chambermaid in Kiev, but Mathilde would give her Stepan and would find another maître d’hôtel for the Gunzburg household in St. Petersburg. It was a family tradition for the Gunzburg daughters to be married in gowns made to order from Worth’s in Paris, and Sonia would purchase her trousseau in Brussels, renowned for its fine laces and linens. And so, matters were set.
Kolya liked for a woman to be perfumed, but Sonia had never been able to bear more than the most diluted of cologne waters. A tremendous disgust took hold of her upon smelling the heady scent of perfume, and nausea soon followed. But for Kolya she wished to overcome this aversion, and so, during the weeks before the Carnival, she carried a small vial of perfume from lilies of the valley in her hand at all times, and every so often she uncorked it and inhaled its odor. Her repugnance did not decrease. She panicked, thinking herself condemned to a lifetime of perfume, for the idea of depriving Kolya of his pleasure did not occur to her. She must please him, and endurance of the hated odor would be bound to arrive.
During their separation, Sonia received a letter from Kolya every day. The missives, for the most part, were passionate and tender: he missed her each minute of each day. Sometimes the notes were short, containing but one sentence: “My beloved, I am so busy that I have not a second to myself, but I do not want the mail to leave without taking with it my daily kiss to you.” She saved each piece of his handwriting, kissing the paper which bore its imprint. And her eyes glowed, and filled with tears of unbearable joy.
She did not feel that she deserved the exhilaration which touched her every nerve ending. So that was how Ossip had felt about Natasha! She had never allowed her emotions full rein before, not even in the privacy of her thoughts. With a pang of quick pain she thought: Volodia, I did love you. But I never felt this way with you, as though each moment were a new adventure. Then guilt would cloud her spirits, momentarily eclipsing her joy. Volodia had died, and if he had not loved her he would still be alive. Yet had he not died, would she have had the opportunity to meet Kolya? Selfish enthusiasm would seize her soul, and the guilt would subside. She was young, and the world was hers!
Then came the Carnival. In St. Petersburg there was no procession of chariots or of lights, no celebrations in the streets. Long ago it had been the custom to hold costume balls during these eight days, but now, during the entire winter season, such dances were given at the drop of a hat. However, this was the last opportunity for the fashionable to give balls of any kind before the end of the brilliant social season, for next would come the seven weeks of Lent, during which the Christian Orthodox did not dance, then Easter, and then preparations for the summer holidays. But the Carnival of St. Petersburg was characterized by three things: the blinys, the verbys, and the veikis, and Sonia wanted Kolya to enjoy each of these.
The blinys were small, thin pancakes of buckwheat and wheat, which were eaten before each meal, with melted butter atop them, and with sour cream inside. They were only made during Carnival week. The verbys were pussywillows, the first vegetation after winter’s barrenness. Their name was given to the small fair which took place on the Boulevard de la Garde a Cheval. Stands were set up alongside it, and artisans sold their wares: bowls, spoons, pitchers of varnished wood adorned with red or black or gold designs, paper flowers, simple toys, porcelain knickknacks, linen tablecloths and doilies, and, of course, branches of the proverbial verbys, with which the ladies garnished their salons. The entire city, rich and poor, converged upon the verbys fair, and the children were allowed to purchase what they pleased. Tatiana had once, as a little girl, been reprimanded by Rosa, and had declared in retaliation that she would find herself a new mother at the verbys fair. “For one finds everything there,” she had announced triumphantly.
The veikis were small sleighs drawn by a single horse, a tiny long-haired pony, and led by a small, bearded man. They came from Finland and were allowed to drive throughout the city for the duration of Carnival week. The coverlet of the sleigh was richly embroidered and the pony was bedecked with brightly colored ribbons. The only problem was that the drivers did not know much Russian, nor the streets of the city. And so, at each corner, local gentlemen would have to tap them on the shoulder and, amid much laughter, attempt to redirect them toward their destination. The city coachmen were enraged by the veikis, which stole all their usual customers. But the young people immensely enjoyed the colorful chaos they caused.
Kolya arrived. Because the Gunzburgs had friends of all religions, they had not wished to celebrate Sonia’s engagement at a time when their Christian Orthodox friends would be unable to partake of festive meals, because of the Lenten restrictions. Mathilde had planned three dinners.
The first evening was the official supper for the family and their most aristocratic acquaintances. The following evening she had organized a less formal dinner for the Gunzburg lawyers and doctor, and their children: they were less wealthy, and their daughters would have felt uncomfortable among Petersburg high society. Then, on the last evening, Sonia’s intimate friends would come, and she counted upon having a truly good time among them.
But from the moment of his arrival, Sonia noticed that Kolya appeared preoccupied. His black eyes did not dance, he did not burst into effusive laughter. When her own gray eyes sought his face, he would turn aside. Sometimes, when people spoke to him, he seemed abstracted, even dazed. Finally Sonia took him aside, a nameless anxiety rising in her throat, and she asked, “What has happened, Kolya, my darling? What is so wrong that you have not told me?”
“It is only my work,” he replied, and tenderness softened his features. He took her hand and caressed it. But he did not raise it passionately to his lips, as he had once done. She trembled, and bit her lip. “It is nothing important,” he reassured her.
He brought with him another gift, from the jeweler Marshak: a purse of gold mail, with a clasp composed of square sapphires. She admired it, and wore it the first evening for the formal dinner, but her heart was heavy and she was pale, smiling perfunctorily when her parents’ friends congratulated her and Kolya. He stood by her side, elegant and stately, but stiff. She thought: Before, we were separated by half a continent, yet we were one. Now that we are together, it is as though we were more apart than ever… And that night, when she fell into bed, she sobbed into her pillow, overwhelmed by a sensation of dread.
Sonia began receiving wedding gifts. The first was several yards of lace, handmade centuries ago. There was also a small handkerchief of finest batiste, embroidered as if by fairy hands. Last came a lace fan with trimmings of enamel and studded gold. She held them up for Kolya, and he marveled at the handiwork. But if she had expected founts of enthusiasm, she was sadly disappointed.
The last evening, after supper, the young people rolled back the carpet of the sitting
room. Someone went to the piano, and dancing began, gaily, informally. But Sonia thought: Kolya is not happy. Only my friends rejoice. What is bothering him? Why won’t he share it with me? But as even Ossip failed to comment upon Kolya’s mood, she thought: No one but I has seen his misery. Could it be that I see shadows where there are none? Yet when he held her in his arms, she felt none of the urgent pressure of his passion, and inside, she froze. She went to bed and did not sleep at all. A raging headache kept her awake throughout the night.
The following day Kolya left for Kiev. At the station, she took his hand, and said, “Only a few more weeks, and I shall leave for Brussels. And then I shall be your bride. Will you count the days with me?”
“Of course,” he replied. But his eyes did not lock with hers, and his voice lacked the emotion that had characterized their last good-bye. She pressed his hand. A flicker of pain passed over his features, and she stood back, perplexed. “I detest farewells,” he murmured, and looked away.
“It is au revoir and not adieu,” she said gently. “Won’t you kiss me, Kolya?”
He held her finally in his arms, and his lips felt hers, like velvet roses. But something was missing from this kiss, and she left her fiancé with a hole where her heart had been. She could not see for the tears that blinded her, and her mother chided her, saying, “He is not going to be gone for long, and you are a goose to carry on so.” Sonia merely nodded, mutely, for she could not explain her misgivings.
He wrote to her, as before. But now the letters were newsy, not loving. She was shocked. Where were the love words, the gentle names that he had made up in her honor? Where was the breathless anticipation? She stored these letters with the rest, but she could not eat, for doubt gnawed at her stomach. Her mother thought that she was experiencing girlish jitters at the idea of marriage, and the wedding night. Mathilde’s heart contracted in silent sympathy. She did not know that before the Carnival her daughter had looked forward to her first night with Kolya. Now she did not think about it at all. She could not concentrate on anything but the pit inside her stomach, the fear.
The Four Winds of Heaven Page 36