The Four Winds of Heaven Read Online Free PDF

he would marry her someday. Having decided on Mathilde, he never even glanced at other girls, but channeled his furious energy into his studies instead. He had never followed his older friends to the fashionable brothels of Paris, nor did he bother to learn the art of courtship. Polite, well educated, he had known how to speak to his mother’s friends, to girl cousins, to friends of friends. But he had never wanted to waste precious time making love to anyone but Mathilde, and to her he was sincere and not romantic. For, after all, did she not know of his devotion?
    His father, for whom David had always felt respect and affinity, approved of his plan, although Baron Horace had made it clear to his agnostic brother Yuri, Mathilde’s father, that religion was essential to all Horace’s clan. And so David had become engaged to Mathilde. He wanted to be married as soon as he had finished his stint in the Uhlans, and had obtained his degree from the University of Göttingen in Hesse. But Uncle Yuri had delayed the wedding by six months. It was said that he was much in debt, and perhaps he had hoped to force his brother Horace to aid him more generously with his creditors. Poor David had been so frustrated, so dreadfully hurt by the delay, that he had run off to Russia, this time to Georgia so that he could lose himself in the learning of two new dialects, Georgian and Armenian. When he had returned, the marriage took place at last. He had already loved her for thirteen years.
    In all that time, he had never wavered in his passion. It was for her that he composed his verses, and for her that he arose each morning to face the day. Unlike his brother Sasha and most of his friends, he never took a mistress, even though he saw Mathilde only during vacations. Since Ossip’s illness, the family had moved from St. Petersburg’s foul, miasmic climate. David alone remained in the capital. But his loyalty to Mathilde was total.
    He also loved Russia, her grandeur and her vastness and her untamed diversity. At Mohilna he felt complete, fulfilled. He would awaken at the first bleak streak of dawn and walk stealthily beneath his daughters’ windows, calling to them to join him. Anna and Sonia, holding up their nightshirts, would slide their window up, and taking care not to disrupt the steady sonorous snoring of their nurse, Titine, would climb onto the outer ledge of the sill and wait for Papa to help them jump down from the second story. Then, together, they would go for a nature walk, David explaining why certain plants flourished where they did, and naming all the flowers. He loved Anna with a fierce protectiveness, for she was not beautiful, and he loved her bravery and her outspoken mischief because they were full of unbridled energy, like the horses he had loved to ride in Georgia. Sonia he loved for her precise, dainty beauty that recalled Mathilde to his mind, for her steadfast application, so like his own, and for her desire to make him proud. David’s mornings alone with his daughters were sacred to all three. During the summer, his children grew to know this simple yet passionate man from whom they were separated for the remainder of the year.
    The specialist who examined Ossip yearly in Paris had declared that perhaps at the start of 1896 the boy might be strong enough for the family to return to St. Petersburg, as long as his young patient was back at Mohilna by the time the spring thaws, with their accompanying diseases, wrought their havoc upon the capital. For when the great snows thawed, St. Petersburg once again became a swamp. Anna and Ossip could each remember their native city. Sonia did not. She had been born only three months before the family had been forced to leave its spires and cupolas. But because she adored David and could sense his patriotism, her soul wanted to reach out to his city and embrace it as her own. For she was a child of deep emotions, who sought the sublime and shuddered