She enjoyed the play, but during intermission refused to go out into the foyer, for in her condition she did not wish to change temperatures. Schneerson and Willner left, but Mossia remained in the box with her, although she was unable to converse. He told her about his escape from the Red camp in Odessa, and she listened intently, her gray eyes on him, a strange pulse beating in her throat. When the others returned, she was almost sorry. Then she remembered that Mossia was an avid smoker, and had sacrificed this pleasure to remain at her side. A deep flush spread over her cheeks, and she averted her eyes.
She could not rise the next morning. After the play, the three men had escorted her to Sirdar, an elegant establishment on the Champs-Elysées, and they had supped till midnight. She would have preferred to go to Weber, but the men had been strangely insistent on their choice of Sirdar. She was ill all Monday, and on Tuesday morning the florist delivered a dozen red roses, with a card from Mossia Zlatopolsky: “Please get well,” it said, “and remember that if you have any other poor to succor, my purse lies at your disposal.” She smiled—he had certainly found her Achilles’ heel. But she thought: Red roses—how lovely... A thrill of pleasure ran down her spine. She also thought: Perhaps I am imagining something which does not exist. Zlatopolsky is a man of generous impulse, a true Russian. Such gallantry may not mean more than gentle concern for a sick friend. Yet she did not want to believe it and was thoroughly delighted.
“Your mother is not here,” Clara stated, “and you are a guest in my house. It falls upon me to make sure of the company you keep. Who is this gentleman who pays court to my niece in such a fashion?”
“But,” Sonia replied with bewilderment, “you know him better than I! You are well acquainted with the Zlatopolsky family, and used to frequent them in Kiev.”
“That was so long ago, and people can change,” Clara retorted. “They left for Moscow, we for Paris. We lost touch. In fact, I doubt very much whether Misha and Hillel Israelovitch have even seen each other since their resettlement here after the Revolution. It was even said the boy made a disastrous marriage in the Crimea. Did you know of this?”
Sonia found that she was outraged. “Yes, I know all about it,” she replied tartly, “and the divorce is final and clear. I do not associate with married men, nor do I believe that Mossia Gillelovitch would place a decent young woman in embarrassing straits. As for disastrous marriages, Ossip’s is not one of which we Gunzburgs should boast.”
“Still, you will invite him to tea on Friday,” her aunt insisted with asperity. “Tell him to come at three, but that I need to go out at four. Then I can judge how he has turned out for myself.”
Sonia gripped her blanket, shook her head. “He will not come,” she whispered miserably. “He is a businessman, and would have to interrupt his entire afternoon. At any rate, in Paris people take tea at five.”
She wanted to weep, but all at once she determined to do as Clara had suggested. If indeed Mossia refused to come, she would know that his feelings for her were light, and not worth the trouble of postponing his business engagements. But if he accepted such a strange, disruptive, and actually rude invitation—for who in society told a guest when to leave?—there would remain few doubts as to his sentiments. She was seized with excitement, and composed the preposterous note to the young man. She asked Stepan to deliver it in person. Would he surmount her obstacles?
That afternoon Mossia sent a note back by his own messenger, agreeing to come; and that Friday, when the clock struck three, he was admitted to the home of her Aunt Clara. He bowed over Clara’s hand and told her how sorry he was not to have called upon her before, then inquired after her family. To Sonia he spoke similar pleasantries. Clara laughed at his jokes and smiled at his easy compliments, while Sonia glowed, because he had passed her test and had come to her. At four he stood up, thanked the two ladies, and departed. Clara said, “He is everything he was as a very young man, only now he has matured and is even more attractive. That large lion’s countenance fits a man of thirty so much more gracefully than it did that of a twenty-year-old. Don’t you think so, Sonia?”
But Sonia was lost in her own reverie, and did not reply. She did not know whether she found him more handsome. She simply knew that as of this afternoon she was fully, totally in love with him, with Mossia Zlatopolsky of the sea-green eyes.
Shortly afterward, Mathilde returned to Paris, intrigued by Sonia’s continued letters about the son of Hillel Zlatopolsky. Misha sat down with her, as he had done once before, and recounted what he knew of the Zlatopolsky family from Kiev days. Mathilde was already familiar with these facts, from David’s research in his dealings with the Zionist leader. It disturbed her that Sonia might have acquired deep sentiments for someone of a Zionist background. But she knew that Sonia, unlike herself, was a true, proud Jewess, and of all her children the one least capable of any compromise. If her daughter was allowing this young man to pay her court, then he had to be a gentleman.
One morning, Hillel Zlatopolsky telephoned Mathilde in Saint-Germain, and asked if he and his son might come to tea there the next afternoon, a Saturday, after the Sabbath restrictions were over. She accepted, and said to Sonia, “Tomorrow, Mossia Gillelovitch will surely declare his intentions to us. Do you care for him, Sonitchka?”
Her daughter’s wide eyes answered her, mutely, and Mathilde thought: Please, let him be sincere; let one of my children have a chance at happiness… She remembered the tall young man and his small, elegant father. She prepared a delicate tea, almost worthy of Petrograd days.
The two gentlemen came, and Hillel sat with Mathilde, while the two young people chatted amiably about new sugar refineries which the Zlatopolskys were building in the Nord, the Oise, and the Aisne departments. Sonia was fascinated, but she was bewildered at the lack of personal detail in their conversation. The father left with his son, and Sonia’s face was gray: surely the young man had changed his mind, recalling the misery of his first marriage, and not wishing to reenter into matrimony after all. “But Hillel Israelovitch told me that he is leaving for London for ten days, and to make certain that you two are brought together,” Mathilde said. “He must know that his son feels something special for you.”
Mossia himself called upon them frequently while his father was away, inviting the two women to supper, picking Sonia up on Sundays from the Consistory and lunching with her at Noel Peters or Chez Laure. Her fellow workers said nothing, knowing that Sonia possessed a multitude of cousins and expatriate friends in Paris. To see her in the company of a young man was not unusual.
Nevertheless, people did begin to whisper. It was the first Sunday in March 1922. Mossia came to fetch Sonia from the Consistory, and brought her to the Trianon Palace in Versailles. After their luncheon he took her for a walk in the park, and they strolled past the magnificent gardens. During the meal they had shared stories of their youth: both had loved the south of Russia, both loved the countryside. He spoke now of his mother, and of his energetic sister, Shoshana Persitz, who was living in Homburg, a suburb of Frankfurt, Germany. Then he began to speak of his ideas about religion, about filial devotion, about the need for true understanding between spouses. He told her of his early youth, of his many friends, of his golden dawns in Moscow, of his sometimes reckless behavior. She listened, undisturbed. “You were wealthy and young, and you wasted no money but your own, and even then not too unwisely,” she commented. “You are not shocking me.”
“But my marriage did shock you, in Feodosia,” he said.
Her footsteps stopped abruptly. Something constricted in her stomach. “It hurt me,” she admitted, with surprise. “I did not know it then, but I do now. Elena Lvovna is flamboyant and beautiful, though not at all my type—I was jealous.”
He murmured, “But I never loved her, Sofia Davidovna. I was young, as you say, and prided myself on being a man of honor. She had been… my companion. One day, in Yalta, during the days of the Bolsheviks, my sister saw us together, and in front of Lialia erupt
ed into angry exhortations. You yourself know how thoughtless Shoshana can be! She humiliated Lialia and so, to spite Shoshana and to redress Lialia, I married her right away. It was the mistake of a child, but I wished to prove to Shoshana that I would not be bullied, that my life was my own. I saw myself as a knight in gleaming armor, saving a lady in distress. I doubt very much that Lialia ever felt distress, however, except from a desire to possess yet more gold or more jewels.”
“So,” Sonia whispered, “you did not love her. Not then, in Feodosia, when you were in jail?”
“Not ever,” he replied. “I have never loved but a single woman, Sofia Davidovna.”
She looked at him, her lips parted, and waited. But he seemed lost in thought, and began to walk again. Their footsteps synchronized, but they did not speak. She thought: How much more painful it can be at thirty-one, the worry and the waiting… But still, he did not say his piece, and she did not add any words of her own. She only stated: “Mama is expecting us for tea, in Saint-Germain.”
“Tea?” he murmured. “Ah! Yes... Do you know, my mother and sister will be coming to Paris tomorrow, Monday. And my mother has invited you and Mathilde Yureyevna for supper.”
“Tomorrow evening?” Sonia asked.
“Yes,” he answered dreamily. Then he said, so strangely that she was jolted, “I am so happy that Lialia never gave me a child, though I do want a son above all else. I would not then have sought to divorce her.”
Sonia thought of Ossip, and wondered whether Vera would stand in his way, though she was not his child. Then she was afraid. “What if you never have sons?” she asked him. “Then your fondest dream will not have come true.”
“Not quite my fondest dream,” he replied, hesitantly. He began to laugh. “If I were to have a daughter, I would love her as dearly. Men speak oddly at times, don’t you think, Sofia Davidovna?”
“Yes and no,” she said. But she sighed: Would he forever skirt the subject uppermost on her mind, and in her heart? All this skillful parrying had given her a migraine, and made her miserable. It had been delightful to play games at nineteen, to dally with love. But she wanted him to hold her, to anchor her within his life, never to let her go. She was a woman, not a girl, and she could not stand the insecurity which, in its suspense, had once been delicious. She wanted this tall, broad man, with his thick black hair, his sensitive eyes, his rough features. He seemed to her the perfect complement to her own chiseled frailty, and the sweep of his fierce male passions were the counterpart to her firm good reason. She wanted to cry out: We need each other, you and I—open your eyes! But instead, she said, “Mama will be worried, Mossia Gillelovitch.”
Monday morning, at the Consistory, Albert Manuel brought Sonia into his office and asked her abruptly, “Well? Are you engaged yet? He is a fine young man. He and his father have acquired a vast fortune in only two years, but every sou has been earned honestly, and without speculation.”
Sonia smiled. Folding her hands in her lap, she said quietly, “I am most touched, Monsieur Manuel, to see that you have taken the time and effort to research the background of this young businessman’s family. But, to tell you the truth, had you discovered a bad strain there, or improper affairs, you could not have stopped the course of my feelings. No one can now: not even I, myself.”
That evening she and her mother went to the apartment of Hillel and Fanny Zlatopolsky. The table was set with silver and crystal, with a magnificent centerpiece of spring flowers. Fanny Aronovna had donned a simple ankle-length skirt of blue raw silk, trimmed with fur at the hem, and her daughter, the formidable Shoshana Persitz of Homburg, was in deep navy. Mathilde’s gown was her favorite mint green, a remake of an old gown that had once been Baroness Ida’s. Sonia wore a sleeveless gown with a draped skirt of beige muslin, and no adornment whatsoever. She possessed none save the diamond crab which in fact belonged to her mother. Her hair was coiffed in the old-fashioned manner which became her so well, swept up into a demure topknot. She had made this dress with the help of Clara’s maid, to save money. Fanny Aronovna admired it, and touched her arm with gentle familiarity, reminiscing about their meeting in Kiev in 1904; and Hillel beamed upon her, and placed her unquestioningly beside his son. But by the time Mathilde and Sonia were brought home to the foyer of Misha’s mansion, there still had been no mention of marriage from the Zlatopolskys.
On Tuesday morning, Misha de Gunzburg asked his niece to meet him in his study, and closed the door. “Do you have any news for me?” he asked her. When she shook her head, he added, “Yet you have dined with his mother. He is not behaving properly toward you, Sonia. He should have declared his intentions. You are seeing him tonight, and if you do not return engaged, I shall close this house to you, little one. You can go live elsewhere.” His eyes were twinkling at her, but Sonia was seized with a deep embarrassment.
She went to work and was met by Albert Manuel in the hallway. “So?” he asked, tilting his eyebrows quizzically. Sonia cast down her lids, and her manager declared teasingly: “Mademoiselle, if you are not betrothed this evening, do not bother to show yourself here tomorrow. One does not pull a young woman thus by the nose as this man does with you.” He laughed and went into his own office.
He left her pensive. All this teasing was probably harmless, but she was no child of seventeen, who could be kept waiting. In their banter, Monsieur Manuel and her uncle had made her decision for her: this evening she would clinch her own destiny, once and for all, and put a stop to this emotional seesaw. She had no father to intercede on her behalf, and she was too mature to ask her uncle to do so, and too proud.
She was to sup with Mossia Zlatopolsky at Noel Peters, and then they were to see a play together, The Chained Man. Very well, she thought, I shall see whether or not this particular man feels bound or free—the title is appropriate. She clothed herself very carefully in a narrow gown of utmost simplicity, a pearl-pink shade which matched the faint tint on her cheeks. Unlike the ladies of her day, she never wore rouge, and now she appeared particularly fresh and youthful and delicate, like a long-stemmed tea rose. The gown had been her New Year’s gift from Clara and Misha, and she had never worn it, reserving it for a special occasion. When she met Mossia Zlatopolsky at the door, she was pleased to see the obvious admiration in his blue-green eyes.
He selected a small, intimate table, and ordered the supper: oysters on the half shell, potage Dubarry, duckling in wine, and a bottle of fine Bordeaux for himself, as Sonia did not enjoy alcohol. A string quartet was playing in a corner of the room.
Mossia ate in silence. Suddenly, her spoon midway between the soup plate and her mouth, Sonia regarded him and spoke, her voice clear above the beating of her heart in her throat. “Do you know,” she asked, “that you are placing me in a compromising situation?”
“I?” he cried, his eyes widening.
“Yes,” she continued mercilessly, “you compromise my reputation. Since the first time that you have taken me out, alone or with my mother, there have been many occasions for you to speak. Yet you are silent, and now my friends have begun to ask why we are not engaged.” Her gray eyes fastened on his large face, which had paled. “I need to know,” she declared, leaning toward him, “whether the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ as to our future together.”
“But,” he asked in a low voice, “are you not afraid, after what I told you about my past, about my marriage?”
“No,” she replied.
Her eyes, large and candid, remained upon his face, unabashed. He opened his mouth, shook his head, shrugged his massive shoulders—and looked at her with such unsuppressed ecstasy that Sonia could no longer doubt his feelings. “By God, of course it’s ‘yes’!” he exclaimed, taking her small hand and kissing it.
Sonia’s lips parted and the blood rushed to her cheeks. She uttered a small cry of delighted laughter but she could not speak. The brilliant room seemed to whirl around her. Mossia motioned toward the waiter, who came at once. “Champagne!” he cried. “Champagne
to toast my bride-to-be!” When the silver bucket was presented, Mossia said, “Forget the rest of the supper. Who can think of food?” But Sonia was still speechless with this magnificent joy that shook within her.
Then they became aware that the violinist had stopped by their table. After an elaborate bow, he began to play a gypsy song. Mossia laughed. “Do you know what this tune is?” he asked. “It’s called ‘Have Pity, Have Pity, My Darling.’ How do you think he guessed at my sentiments?”
But Sonia raised his large fingers to her dainty lips. She was very moved. “My own darling, there is nothing in you to pity,” she murmured. “Tell me, Mossia—was I really so frightening to you?”
“Perhaps more than you can imagine,” he replied. “But my mind was made up from the first. When Schneerson, Willner, and I took you to supper at Sirdar, after seeing The Blue Bird, I had an ulterior motive for taking you to that particular restaurant. After Lialia, my mother did not trust my taste, and remembered you only as a girl of fourteen in Kiev. She knew that I had decided to marry you, and since Yosif Persitz, my brother-in-law, was in Paris on business, she asked that he look you over and report back to her, in Nice. You had never met him, for he always lived in Moscow, but he came to Sirdar by prearrangement and watched us. He found you utterly charming, perfect for me. And it seems that Papa has been in love with you since our first meeting, and rued my wayward ignorance of you when you visited Kiev in 1912. But how was I to know that another would declare himself right away, so quickly? It was the wrong moment for us. I was too callow, you would not even have noticed me. But I loved you truly when you first came to plead for Fuchs in your modest little blue suit.”
The Four Winds of Heaven Page 67