The Four Winds of Heaven

by Monique Raphel High

  The only problems arose in her dealings with Clara. From the onset of their relationship, Sonia had been unsure of her feelings toward this dark, somewhat brooding woman who had married her dashing uncle. There had been mental illness in Clara’s family, and during her pregnancy it had manifested itself in Clara. She was known in the Gunzburg circle as an eccentric, although she had treated Sonia perfectly during the social season in Kiev, when Kolya had proposed marriage. Now Clara seemed abstracted, quickly irritated. She had a manner of greeting people by tossing her chin upward and retracting her bust, so that some felt rebuffed. She was not affectionate, except slavishly to her son and husband. Her coldness toward Sonia was so obvious that the young woman did not know how to treat her.

  Clara had resolved to pay Sonia every three months. Once in a while she would offer her money for treats for Serge, but when payment time came, Clara fussed over every centime. Misha did not interfere; he never had with the other governesses, and Sonia would have been shocked if he had done so with her.

  With her son, Clara was possessive in the extreme. One day when the boy was ill, Sonia was sitting by his bed, reading to him. His mother entered, and Sonia, tactfully, rose and went to the window. Clara sat down in her place, but would not take up the reading. Instead, red with anger, she turned to Sonia and cried, “When I am with my son, he needs no one else. Please leave the room, at once!” From that day on, Sonia never remained present when Clara came into a room where her son was playing, resting, eating, or sleeping. She would exit quickly by a side door.

  Clara would also insist, several times during the night, upon checking on Serge. She opened his door and held a candle to his face, and one time, a frightful cry awakened Sonia. The little boy was screaming: “The devil, the devil! Go away, you horrid devil!” She ran into his room and saw her aunt in the doorway. Serge, clutching at Sonia, began to sob. “Mama awakened me,” he stammered. “I was dreaming, and I thought she was the devil, come to get me!” Sonia quieted him down with a cup of warm milk laced with honey, and she gently asked Clara to refrain from her nocturnal visits, for the child was impressionable. But her aunt replied crossly that she was nervous, and could not sleep herself until she knew that her baby was resting in peace. Sonia could think of nothing to reply. She had gone into this position with her eyes wide open; unlike Johanna de Mey, she had no intention of breaking her agreement with her employers by stepping beyond her allotted area of influence. She merely attempted to avoid her aunt whenever she could, and not to raise issues of controversy. But sometimes the woman’s coldness would pain her, like a sudden, swift dagger to the side.

  When her mother would question her, however, Sonia refrained from the mention of her humiliations. After all, a few rebuffs were nothing in contrast to what she had suffered in Stary Krym, or during Mathilde’s illness in Simferopol. But the fact was that then she had possessed solace in the presence of Mathilde, or of Ekaterina Zevina. Now there was no one to turn to. Mathilde was so frequently absent, Ossip was in the Far East, Anna in Switzerland… and Gino, where was he now? God was the only one who could have answered that question. She thought of Tania, sometimes wistfully. For all their bad moments, Tania had been a companion, someone her own age. The expatriates, such as Nina, whom she had encountered in Paris, were all occupied with families of their own. Still, Sonia refused to succumb to self-pity—it went against her nature. To complain, when she was healthy and alive, would have been base, a dent in her strong pride.

  Had she allowed herself to be sorry, she would have admitted a dreadful, tearing homesickness. But she attempted to divorce Russia from her bones and her blood, with that same determination with which she had decided, in the Crimea, that life was worth fighting for.

  What spare time she possessed, between Serge’s many activities, Sonia devoted to a cause which she could not abandon: the search for Gino. She and Mathilde had read the note appended by Afanassiev for Tcharykov, so they arranged for a small sum of money to be deposited each month at the Gilchrist Walker Bank in Gallipoli, for Master Sergeant Evgeni de Gunzburg. Mathilde wrote to the bank manager, asking him to get in touch with her son there and to notify him that his mother was sending him this amount. No news arrived in Paris from Gino, and by April the bank manager sent a disturbing message to Mathilde, telling her that no one had ever come to take out any money.

  Extremely uneasy, Misha de Gunzburg asked his friend, Baron Felleisen, to telegraph the military authorities in Gallipoli. Sonia showed Afanassiev’s note to the Baron, and shortly afterward Felleisen managed to discover that Gino had never disembarked at Gallipoli. Now Sonia and Mathilde became frantic, and Sonia wrote directly to General Kutepov, under whom her brother had served. She received a reply, not from the general, but from Boris Afanassiev, who explained to her that Gino, ill with pneumonia, had been transferred in the Bosporus harbor to another ship, the Cossack transport Dobrovòletz, bound for the island of Lemnos. Gino was to have been sent to the French Hospital there.

  At once Sonia composed another letter, this time for the Chief of Staff of the French Hospital at Lemnos. But this man responded with confusion. So many sick men had been treated there during those chaotic days that he could find no record of Gino’s presence. Sonia’s heart contracted with fear. But she would not put a halt to her efforts. Gino was a survivor. She would not give up the thin thread that was bound to lead her to her brother.

  Then, just before fall, Clara said to Sonia at the dinner table, “I went to my dentist today, Davenport. He has a new assistant, a pretty young Russian refugee, who was most interested in me when she learned my name. It seems that she knows you, my dear. Her name is Natalia Kurdukova—Princess Kurdukova. She gave me this address, begging me to ask you to come to see her. She said—and this truly amazed me—that she had something to tell you about Gino!”

  The address was 37, rue de Rome. Amazed and apprehensive, Sonia excused herself and took the underground metro to the rue de Rome. She rang the doorbell at the stated apartment and was admitted by Natasha herself, a thinner Natasha with a slight pink tint beneath her blue eyes, a Natasha whose clothing was modest but trim, although not a single jewel adorned her. Sonia felt her customary sense of unease approach, then strangely recede. In its place a warmth pervaded her at the sight of the attractive dark-haired woman. She entered, and Natasha touched her shoulder. “I did not know you were in Paris,” Sonia said, her voice low and guarded. Now she remembered Lizette, and momentarily balked.

  She was standing in a pleasant living room that looked somewhat empty but for two magnificent candelabra. Natasha said, motioning toward them, “I did not arrive with much, but I have had to sell most of it—all my bibelots, the trinkets that make one’s house a home. I am holding on to these for as long as I can last.” She smiled. “But it is an old story, one you have surely heard before. How are you, Sofia Davidovna? Is your mother well?”

  “Mama is in Lausanne with my sister Anna,” Sonia replied. “And you, Natalia Nicolaievna? My aunt says you are working for her dentist.”

  “I was most lucky to find this position. I had some nurse’s training, and Monsieur Davenport needed help with his files and his correspondence too. We are not destitute, but Lara is at the Lycée Racine and there is rent to pay and her expenses. My… husband recently passed away, and after the funeral expenses Lara and I took in a boarder. If we had not, we should have been obliged to move into one room together. This is better, but the other would not have been so bad. We are very close, she and I, and her presence is always a comfort.”

  Sonia accepted a cup of tea, and thought that Natasha had never appeared so beautiful, so striking, as now, in her pale mauve dress which was somewhat too large for her shoulders. It was an inexpensive dress, Sonia decided, noticing its cut. Sonia’s own sewing expertise indicated details to her that would have escaped most women. She herself was dressed in one of her aunt’s discarded suits, which she had retailored. She knew that the color, cerise, was completely wrong for her comple
xion and eye color. Suddenly she felt comfortable, a sister to this woman whose own life had entwined with hers in such convoluted ways.

  Now Lara entered the room bearing a platter of butter cookies. She was eleven now, taller than when Sonia had seen her in Sevastopol, and with a hint of budding breasts. She would resemble her mother one day, Sonia thought. And then, almost wistfully, she mused: She could have been Ossip’s own child… Sonia took a cookie from the platter and spoke to the girl, admiring her elegant fingers, so like Natasha’s, and Lara laughed, her head thrown back. Emotion caught at Sonia’s throat: the gesture brought back the summer in the Tambov in all its poignancy, the long walks with Volodia, Natasha’s kiss, all that which could never be.

  Natasha had bent toward her, her face earnest and somewhat somber. “If I had known you were in Paris, I should have come to you earlier,” she said. “I asked your aunt about Evgeni Davidovitch, and she explained that no one had heard of his whereabouts since his arrival in Lemnos. Sofia Davidovna, I can confirm that he was there. I was a nurse at the French Hospital, and I saw your brother. He was very ill, with pleurisy.”

  “And?” Sonia asked. But she closed her eyes, afraid of the outcome.

  “I do not know,” Natasha said sadly. “Larissa and I departed for France the very day after I found him at the hospital. I was never able to learn what had become of him, and he was unconscious when I was with him. But it seemed as though I knew him, although he was a child and only saw me once, ever so briefly, in Petrograd. I spoke to him—but naturally, my words did not reach him. I spoke mainly for my own benefit, actually… This is no help, is it?” she added softly. The room was quiet around the two women and the girl, echoing Natasha’s tone of gentle appeal.

  Sonia wiped her gray eyes quickly, raised them to the face of her hostess. “Yes,” she asserted, “you have helped me. You are a good and generous person, Natalia Nicolaievna. I am sorry that we were never the friends we should have been.”

  “Perhaps,” Natasha replied, “it is not too late yet?”

  Sonia did not reply. She pressed the hand that Natasha had laid upon her arm, and rose. More than anything, she needed to be alone. Lizette gnawed at her memory, and her voice crept into Sonia’s consciousness and scratched at its surface like pointed chalk upon a blackboard. Larissa followed both women to the door, and Sonia kissed her lightly on the forehead. Then she was in the darkness of Paris, enveloped in a chill dankness under a gaslight. She was confused. Nothing seemed under her control. She wondered whether Clara had informed Natasha of Ossip’s marriage, and was supremely grateful that the child’s presence had prevented any awkward questions.

  Sonia had heard in the Russian community that Baroness Wrangel, wife of the Commander in Chief of the White Army, was in Paris at the Hotel Marceau, and she wrote a letter to her, outlining the puzzlement of the Gunzburg family and seeking an interview. Baroness Wrangel promptly answered, inviting Sonia to call upon her during the week. Sonia brought with her all the papers pertaining to her brother, and was received in the Baroness’s private salon. She found there a most gracious, sympathetic woman, who informed Sonia that she was about to join her husband in the Orient and would personally attempt to clear up the mystery. Sonia departed with a small weight removed from her shoulders: the sincerity and diligence of Baroness Wrangel reassured her. But there was apprehension, too. Mysteries had their veil of comfort: knowing could bring with it certainties which were better left undiscovered.

  Several weeks later, Baroness Wrangel returned, and wrote to Sonia, asking her to tea. She told Sonia that she had gone through innumerable lists of disembarked Russian soldiers at Lemnos with the help of a capable colonel. Gino’s name, in spite of Natasha’s confirmation, had not appeared on any of them. But she explained that the Russians, during that time, had been taking the island over from the British, and that for some ten days confusion had prevailed and files had been misplaced. Camps had had to be set up, the evacuated men housed and fed. If Gino’s name had not come up later, when order had been restored, it had to mean that in the meantime he had passed away. Baroness Wrangel could not look at Sonia as she said, “You must face reality, Sofia Davidovna. The colonel saw no other answer. I am truly sorry, my dear.”

  Sonia was too stunned to react. In a way, she had expected this news, but now it seemed impossible, a violation of her brother’s spirit. Of course he was still alive! She thanked the Baroness, and left the hotel. Then she wrote a letter to the grave keeper of the cemetery in Lemnos, and sadly awaited his reply. She felt as though someone had hammered her forehead with a blunt instrument, and she could not touch food for three days. A dizzy pain slashed through her right temple.

  When the answer arrived from the cemetery keeper, it relieved her misery. There was no tomb in Lemnos bearing Gino’s name. Sonia thought: Then there is no proof that he is dead, and we can still hope. There was nothing more to be done, and she wished for no actual confirmation. She could more readily face a veiled truth than stark reality, in spite of the Baroness’s words. But she was moved that so important a lady had gone through such pains to secure information for her, a total stranger. Exile and defeat had brought many together.

  Some days later a bizarre letter came to Misha de Gunzburg from a friend in Leipzig. There was a man in that city claiming to be Baron Evgeni Davidovitch de Gunzburg, of Petrograd. He spoke French, Russian, and German fluently and was tall, with dark brown eyes and hair. Sonia’s heart leapt with incredible hope, but her uncle said, “Read the rest, Sonia. This man claims to possess degrees in law and economics from the University of Petrograd, says that the Reds had seized him and sent him to Cheliabinsk, from which he escaped and came to Leipzig. He is forty-two, has lost all trace of his wife and child, has had no news of his mother and brother. He is without funds and wishes help in finding his family.” Misha sent a telegram to his friend, asking him to obtain the signature and a photograph of this Gino. But the man disappeared before Misha’s friend was able to prove that he was not the young Baron. The friend had already given him two hundred marks, which Mathilde insisted on reimbursing him.

  When this story was revealed, the Gunzburgs’ lawyer, Henri Sliosberg, who had been a great friend of both Baron Horace and Baron David, announced that another pseudo-Gino had appeared in Berlin, demanding money of the attorney. Sliosberg, who had known Gino since infancy, had sent the impostor packing, and had not told the family of this occurrence in order to spare them added pain; but now Mathilde, Sonia, and their relatives needed to know, in order not to waste their hopes in vain pursuits. It seemed that Natasha Kurdukova had been the last person known to have seen the real Gino before his probable demise. What other explanation was there?

  None of the Gunzburgs acknowledged the death of the young soldier. They did not mourn him, or don dark clothing. Anna painted a large portrait of her brother, from a photograph of him in uniform right after he had been granted the Cross of Saint George. The face, flesh tinted, seemed as real as the deep brown eyes with their glow of mahogany, as the rippling brown hair and the khaki uniform. Mathilde kept this memento in her room in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and when she traveled to Switzerland the painting went with her. But in Sonia’s heart the small dark head of a baby in a cradle trimmed with Brussels lace remained uppermost when she thought of Gino. She would not brook defeat, nor yield him to eternity. Somewhere, she repeated to herself at night with passionate verve, he lives. To deny this would be an affront to Gino himself, the simplest, the best, the most courageous of the Gunzburgs.

  While this drama was unfolding, leaf by curling leaf, Sonia’s own existence had taken a turn that caused her great anxiety. True, it came about largely through her own doing, but Sonia had always placed duty above self-interest. She was very fond of young Serge, and noticed, early on in 1921, that he was frequently pale, grew quickly tired, and caught cold more than was the norm for boys of his age. She spoke to her Aunt Clara, and suggested that she consider placing her son in a Swiss boarding school, whe
re the pure mountain air would strengthen his unsturdy health. During the summer, while visiting her mother and sister and grandmother in Lausanne, Sonia found the ideal school in nearby Rolle. Clara went there, approved of its setup, and decided that Serge could begin in the fall.

  With her pupil gone, however, Sonia’s job would disappear, and now she went to everyone with whom she was acquainted, asking whether they knew of any position for which she might apply. But Misha and her other relatives placed boundaries around her search. As a secretary in an office, she might be subject to rudeness and improprieties from men; and she should not respond to newspaper advertisements, for there had been incidents of white slavery, young girls being kidnapped and sent to Brazil. Certain offers to become governess to other children came her way, but Sonia was advised to refuse, because of reputations of miserliness or eccentricity on the part of the ladies, or of lechery on the part of the gentlemen. Sonia did not know what to do, and by summer she had grown frantic.

  At that point, however, Mathilde’s first cousin, Louise Halphen, whose daughter Germaine had married Baron Edouard de Rothschild, suggested that Sonia submit an application to the Hebrew Consistory, which was situated in the very building which housed the great Paris Synagogue, and which was, in effect, the synagogue’s administrative annex. Sonia went for her interview with Albert Manuel, Secretary General of the Consistory, and at once admitted the negative aspects of her suitability. She had never worked in an office, had only performed volunteer work as a patroness. Monsieur Manuel smiled: “You shall learn,” he reassured her.

  So, in the fall, she began her new employment, a bit apprehensively. She would be the lowliest employee there, earning a salary of five thousand francs per year. That came to less than four hundred twenty francs per month. Where to find a cheap room? But her Uncle Misha came to her rescue. She could remain in the room she had been occupying as Serge’s governess, eating breakfast and supper with the family as before. Her measly salary would then stretch much farther, and to Sonia, who had been economizing since the harvest of 1917, it then loomed as a veritable fortune.