The Four Winds of Heaven

by Monique Raphel High

  “Do you? She couldn’t keep him, and that’s the truth. A country boy, and she couldn’t hold on to him! What is there to respect?” Tania’s color was rising.

  Ossip’s blue eyes, like piercing sapphires, glimmered at her. “At least she had a marriage proposal, my love,” he replied, his words almost a whisper. Her head jerked up, her eyes widened, her lips pulled back from her small pearly teeth. He shrugged. A cynical smile played over his features. “Don’t ask for trouble, and you won’t get it,” he said amiably.

  In her haste to leave Ossip’s office, Tania nearly collided with Gino, who was opening the door, his face red with excitement. He stepped back, startled, to make way for his cousin, whom he knew to despise him. She looked, he thought, like a lioness on the rampage, and had he not possessed such tremendous news he would have been amused to learn what Ossip had done to upset Tania. Politely, he made a small bow, but she shrugged her shoulders at him and raised her eyebrows. “Russian boor,” was her only comment, and it left Gino openmouthed with bewilderment. He did not know whether to laugh or to protest.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ossip told him when she had departed, and he had closed the door upon her. “You merely exemplify all that she is angry with. Uncle Sasha told me this morning that he has given her two weeks— two weeks!—in which to make up her mind about Sioma Halperin. She is furious with Sioma, with her father, with the Tzar for making war—and with me, of course, for not being more heroic and sweeping her off her feet. All this makes her angrier than ever with Mother Russia, but don’t ask why. She finds you the epitome of what she calls ‘the Russian spirit’—hence, my chap, you’re it!”

  “I see—only of course, I don’t!” his brother replied, sitting down. Sliding a thin cigarette forward in the gold monogrammed case which he now carried everywhere in his waistcoat pocket, Ossip held it toward Gino, who somewhat shyly and clumsily extracted the long white cylinder from the pack. Bending over his desk, Ossip lit it for him, then repeated the process for himself. Finally, he sat back, expectant. The two brothers were on the best of terms, for they were of such different temperaments that they did not have to compete upon a single point.

  “So,” Ossip stated, blowing smoke in delicate rings above his head. “Do you come from a class?”

  “Better,” Gino replied. He leaned forward in his chair. “I have quit the University. No, no, let me finish, it is too important! I have just enlisted! My only fear is that the damned war will be over too soon, before my training is complete and I can accomplish something. But I’m in. I’m in!”

  Ossip’s lips parted, and he paled. Then, on a quick intake of breath, he rose and crossed the short distance between him and his brother. Gino stood up and they embraced, their arms tight around each other. “Congratulations, old chum,” Ossip stammered. “But Mama? She so hoped the war would be over before you turned twenty-one!”

  “This is not the time to be thinking of our mother,” Gino said quietly. “Tania is right: all I can think of is Russia, and her success!”

  When, five weeks later, Mathilde learned of her younger son’s enlistment in the Russian army, Gino was already training for the cavalry at the garrison of Pskov. She fell back against the cushions of her sofa, her eyes full of tears. “The Baron has failed you,” Johanna said, bringing over the sachet of smelling salts. “He should have seen to it that the boy listen to reason, and not break your heart.”

  But Sonia, thin and white, turned upon her erstwhile governess, and spoke through clenched teeth: “No, Juanita,” she said. “It was you who helped to take the manhood away from my older brother. But this time you were gone, and God protected Gino. He is in God’s hands, and no place outranks that.”

  She did not feel that this was the right time to divulge the news which she herself had received by the same post: Tania had written to announce her engagement to Solomon Moisseievitch Halperin, the same Sioma who had once filled her with revulsion. While Sonia’s heart pounded rapidly with mingled pride and concern for Gino, with pathos for her mother, and with rage toward Johanna, a strange sense of being in a dream-world was taking hold of her senses. I must be unwell, she thought, and touched her temple. There is war, my brother has enlisted—and Tania is marrying that unhealthy upstart from Kiev? To her dismay, she began to laugh, a high-pitched, uncontrolled titter. Tania, for whom Petersburg was démodé, for whom only Paris or London would do, Tania who had so mocked her when she had pledged her troth to Kolya, a mere provincial?

  “She can’t continue like this,” Mathilde was saying over her head, and Sonia realized that she had fallen across the bed. “The sewing, the long hours at the milk cooperative—and she doesn’t eat sufficiently…”

  Still Sonia laughed, though tears were streaming down her face. In the same town as he, in the same town: she, Tania, will be in his city, Kiev, she thought. Her heart constricted with pride for Gino, and with numbing fear. She fell into a troubled sleep, and did not know that she was being undressed and laid in bed.

  While General Pavel Rennenkampf attempted his sally against West Prussia on behalf of the Tzar, Baron David, head of the Jewish community of Petrograd, pondered the Russian Pan-Slavic feeling and determined that it had merit both for the Russian people as a nation, and for the Jews of Poland. No matter how constrained the Jews were in Russia, they could not help but fare better than under German and Austrian domination. The Baron gathered his cohorts in his study, and spoke to them of an idea. Russia was already evacuating refugees from the fighting areas. He proposed to send special trains to Poland, to bring the Jews of that country to a better environment. “Once they are here, it will be up to our community to find work and housing for them,” he declared.

  While the discussions took place, Ossip sat quietly in the background. The capital was rapidly emptying of all the men he knew, and business was slow. When David said that he would need leaders to escort the refugees on the trains, he felt his father’s pale blue eyes resting upon him, and he chewed the tip of his fountain pen. An ironic smile glittered on his face. “Yes, I shall go,” he answered. “I may as well make myself useful. Somehow, there is little glamor in being the only available bachelor remaining in town.” But his father did not laugh. He merely nodded, and addressed another aspect of the problem.

  So, while Ludendorff drove the Russian soldiers from East Prussia, Ossip took several days off from the bank. He did not relish his task, and in his heart he did not even find it necessary. The Jews were always being maligned; how would Russia, with its inherent anti-Semitism, help them? The economy was going downhill: it would be no easy job to feed these new mouths, to find work for these displaced people. But he was past caring, and certainly did not care enough to oppose his father. He flicked an ash with a measure of bitterness, and was surprised at his own emotion.

  He was lonely. He had always preferred the company of women to that of men, perhaps out of an inbred fear that men might hurt him physically. The single exception had been Volodia, whose loss he had deeply mourned. Now, during the early part of the war, Ossip frequently found himself wondering what might have impelled his stolid, reflective young friend to enlist in such a rash expedition. Volodia had never confided in him affairs of the heart: Could it be that a woman had hurt him by sending him away? His own sister, Sonia? No, thought Ossip: impossible! For while he had seen Sonia with the painting of his schoolmates, and wondered about her feelings for Volodia, surely she would have kept her feelings secret. It was inconceivable to think that Volodia would have returned such a love, to the point of risking his life… Yet, Ossip now recalled certain fleeting glimpses of his friend, which in hindsight were like a revelation. At the time they had occurred, Ossip had been too engrossed in his own problems with Natasha to notice. He remembered the summer at the Tagantsev estate, the piano sessions. His sister’s luminous gray eyes, Volodia’s soft words. No, it was all too fantastic!

  Perhaps it was Gino’s resemblance to Volodia, both physical and mental, that had drawn Ossip t
o his young brother now that he was a man. Ossip missed Gino. His good nature, his unthreatening manhood, were gone from the Gunzburg house. Ossip worried about his trusting young brother. He truly was touched by him, as few individuals touched his cynical soul. He did not feel, as Gino did, that Russia had a mission, that its citizens should accept war simply to be patriotic. In fact, he was totally opposed to violence of any kind. And Tania was right, he thought. The Germans were no worse than anyone else. This war was absurd, as were all wars and all prejudices. Gino’s problem, thought Ossip, was that he never questioned anything or anyone he loved; whereas his own problem was that he questioned altogether too much, and accepted nothing whatsoever on faith.

  David’s librarian and private secretary, Alexei Fliederbaum, who had served the Baron in the Uhlans at Lomzha, had a son, Dmitri, known to all as Mitya, and whom David had sent to the Conservatory of Music. Sometimes this amusing young man accompanied Ossip on the convoy trains. They would sit together on the way to Poland, smoking elongated cigarettes and speaking of the arts. Ossip found Mitya cultured and agreeable, although his emulation of Ossip was obvious. It seemed ludicrous that these two calm young men in their fitted coats discussed literature and opera on their way to gather hundreds of ill-clad, frightened refugees in a blighted, warring territory. But Ossip had few people with whom to speak, and although Mitya was not of his class, Ossip accepted him in an easy manner.

  It was not so when Mitya’s older brother, Shura, accompanied him. Shura was an embittered, sour-faced man, for whom the world was a place of evil. Ossip kept his distance from him, and Shura stared down his long, thin nose at this young master with his dandified airs.

  Because he was unhampered by pity or anything more than a vague compassion, Ossip’s feelings hardly came into play during the organization of the refugees, and so he managed his job quite well and with expediency. He was a gentleman, and treated his charges with quiet if sometimes urgent courtesy. He was like a conscientious shepherd with a flock that he intended to deliver promptly and without mishap, but which did not trouble his state of mind. What would happen to these people afterward was not part of his concern.

  One rainy morning his train arrived in Poland, and after he had organized the mob awaiting him at the station into compartments, he sighed and ordered coffee from an attendant. He watched as Shura herded the men and women roughly into their boxcars, and saw how some old men, bedraggled and tired, could hardly lift their battered luggage. Suddenly he felt a tug at his sleeve, and when he looked down he was startled to find a small girl, her impish face circled with black hair, her cheeks pale with hunger. “Please,” she said in Yiddish, “would you buy me a sweet? I am very hungry.”

  “But where are your parents?” he asked.

  She pointed to the train with her head. “In there. Mama is going to have a baby when we get to Petrograd.”

  “Let’s hope not till then, please God,” Ossip murmured. “But you?” he asked again of the little girl. “Why are you begging?”

  “Mama doesn’t feel well, and Papa has no kopecks to spare. You look like someone who might have money— lots of money, even!”

  “Such as maybe a whole ruble?” he said, and squatted beside her. His face broke into a smile. He fished for his wallet, and removed a bill. “There now, it isn’t polite to beg things of strangers, so perhaps we’d better introduce ourselves.” He motioned for the attendant who had brought him coffee, and ordered a sweet roll with butter on it. He gave the man his bill and turned back to the small girl. “My name is Ossip,” he announced.

  “I’m Verotchka. Pleased to meet you.” She bobbed a quick curtsy. He took her small hand and brought it elaborately to his lips, kissing it. She began to giggle. The attendant returned with change, a napkin, and the roll. Ossip handed it to the girl, who sank her small white teeth into it with moans of pleasure. Butter dripped down her chin. Ossip dabbed at it with the napkin.

  All at once he heard a rough male voice, and Shura was standing above them, his hands upon his hips. “For God’s sake!” he cried with ill-concealed annoyance.

  Ossip rose. Placing one hand on Verotchka’s head, he regarded the other man coldly. “You don’t believe in God, my friend,” he stated with infinite contempt. Then he shoved the coins into the small girl’s coat pocket. “Keep these for another roll, little swallow,” he murmured gently, and he pushed her ahead of him onto the train.

  As he stared at the dismal countryside, Ossip experienced a strange emotion as he thought of Verotchka. Some day, he said to himself, I shall have a daughter. But I should like for her to be a child already, and not a mere baby, so that I may know her as a person… Then he shook his head with scorn.

  In November, Gino wrote his brother to invite him to visit him in Pskov, where he was in military training, and so Ossip packed a bag and was careful to include his new camera, so that he might snap pictures of Gino for his mother and sister. He found Gino sporting a mustache, which made him look dashing, as did his khaki uniform. Together, they walked around the city, talking. Gino was full of stories about garrison life, but more than anything, he wanted to fight. He had become, he said with naive pride as he tapped his rifle, quite an expert marksman.

  As they talked, Ossip snapped photographs of Gino near a fountain, in front of a store, on a busy street. After a while, a policeman came up to them and stopped Ossip. “This is a military zone, sir,” he explained. “Did you realize that you are not permitted to take pictures of public buildings or bridges?”

  “Oh, I am well aware of that,” Ossip replied. “My brother here has already informed me. I have taken no illegal photographs, I can assure you.”

  “Nevertheless, I shall have to confiscate your camera,” the policeman stated. Ossip shrugged and handed over his apparatus, but he was annoyed. What if it were not returned? It was an expensive new model.

  But he was able to reach Petrograd with news of Gino for his father, and wrote his mother and sister a long letter describing how impressed he had been with his brother, the young soldier. Soon after, Ossip received a package from Pskov, in which he found not only his undamaged camera, but also his film, fully developed for him. “We deeply apologize for your inconvenience,” wrote the Chief of Police. Ossip mailed the choicest photographs to his mother and his sister.

  Almost at once after Ossip’s pleasant visit, Gino was commissioned as lieutenant in a cavalry regiment of the Guard, and was sent to the Baltic provinces. The weary Russian troops had lost the fight for Silesia and Poznan. Now new forces were being sent out, of which Gino was a part, as he had so ardently wished.

  Gino found that he quite enjoyed military life on the front. The other officers with whom he bivouacked were pleasant enough, and although he was younger than most, they accepted him. He was tall, strong, and on his right hand he wore a massive gold ring with the Gunzburg crest. He had inherited this ring from his Grandfather Yuri, and his mother had received it in a package from her mother in Stuttgart, and had mailed it to him shortly before his departure for Pskov. He wore the ring unselfconsciously, and thought nothing of it. He was a soldier as were all the men, and his title was immaterial.

  One morning before the New Year a letter came for him. He had been resting in his tent, reading, when another lieutenant, Tomasov, entered, holding the letter. “Baron Evgeni de Gunzburg,” he declaimed. “I did not know you had a title, Gino.”

  “It is not important,” smiled the young man, accepting his missive. “It’s from my sister, Sonia, in Geneva,” he said. “I wonder how my mother is.”

  “It is amusing, that,” Tomasov commented, raising his eyebrows. “You must be a rare bird. I have never before encountered Jewish nobility.”

  “The Rothschilds started it all long before us,” Gino replied mildly. He tore open his envelope and began to read.

  But Tomasov would not be deterred. “Seriously,” he continued, “I am amazed that they gave you a commission. I understood that that was no longer a practice.”

/>   “My religious convictions will not be called upon when it is time to shoot the Hun,” Gino replied somewhat testily.

  “No, of course not,” the other said.

  But near them sat a captain whose surly disposition was well known. “Nevertheless, Tomasov has a point,” he inserted. “How bizarre that none of us noticed how unusual the presence of our fine young Yid here is—”

  Gino flushed brightly, and stood up. “It is not necessary to be insulting,” he declared. “I was hiding nothing. Anyone who cared to find out would have learned my religion. Tomasov did, not long ago. And as for my title, there is no need to parade it here in the army—our ranks suffice.”

  “Indeed,” the captain said, and turned away.

  Gino found that he could not resume his reading of Sonia’s letter. His heart was beating fiercely and his temples were wet. But he calmed himself with silent exhortation.

  A week later, he was called to his colonel’s tent, and there he was stripped of his lieutenant’s insignia. To his unspoken query, evident in his brown eyes liquid with humiliation, the colonel shook his head sadly, and sighed. “We knew of your religion when you enlisted, and we chose not to make an issue of it, hoping that you would have sufficient sense to be discreet. Now we have no choice but to demote you. We need good officers, and for me that was more important than your religious beliefs. But the regulations are clear: no Jew can hold a commission in the Tzar’s army. If you had said nothing, you would have offended no one. You would have made an excellent officer.”

  “My father was,” Gino said.

  “Ah, yes, but that was long ago. That was when the army was composed of gentlemen. This one is composed of ruffians in the garb of gentlemen, my dear Gunzburg. Anyway—good luck to you in your new unit.”

  Red with anger and frustration, his eyes smarting, Gino exited from the colonel’s tent a simple soldier. But they don’t have me yet! he thought with fierceness. I am a Russian, and my country needs me. I shall show them, when the time comes for battle. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, wishing that he could cry as he had as a child. His heart, he thought, would not break, for valor was necessary to save his country.