The Four Winds of Heaven by Monique Raphel High Read Free Book Online Page B

one-room shacks made of rough planks. Then the road ended, and was replaced by dirt. The carriage slowed, and now the children could see the village. The shacks were low and gray and sagging, huddled like cramped crates in an attic. But what struck Sonia most of all was the crowd. It seemed as though every inch of space was taken up by people—ragged people, screaming people, women with torn shawls and puling babies, bent old men with yarmulkes worn to shreds. She held her breath, shivers shaking her small frame, horror assailing her. It was as though all the tramps she had ever seen in the gutters of Paris had suddenly converged upon this miserable village.
    The coachman stopped the victoria and she felt the door being pulled open. She heard, “Baron! Baron!” as Papa descended, and then someone lifted her from her seat and into the commotion. She was being passed like a small bundle from one pair of hands to another. Finally, a strong man heaved her up on his shoulders, and she felt the stench of pickles and garlic from his breath, the sour odor of poverty around her. The coachman, she saw, had kept frail Ossip beside him, and had lifted him to his own seat. Anna was somewhere in the air, as Sonia herself was, on another man’s shoulders. Sonia was filled with wild terror. This multitude of evil-smelling, ill-clad people descending on Papa was beyond her comprehension. Then she caught sight of Anna’s face, and saw the tears in her eyes, and how Anna was bending down to hear what was being said. Surely Anna did not understand, for these people spoke a strange dialect, but Anna was nodding, and Sonia saw her stroke the top of a baby’s head. Sonia’s fear melted then. Her sister had made friends among these people. Now, to her, they appeared no more harmful than the kindly servants Anna had befriended in the kitchens of Mohilna.
    At long last she was placed on the ground, and found Papa and Anna beside her. Papa spoke to the people in their dialect, and then, to his daughters, explained that they spoke Yiddish, the only tongue that their own great-grandmother, Rosa Dynin, had ever learned to speak. He took his daughters’ hands and led them into a small shop, where he purchased some greasy cakes, then into another where he bought thread, and down the entire length of the dirt highway, not bypassing a single store. When he was finished, he stood still, and now a wailing arose around him, which he stilled with his hand. He pointed to a thin man holding onto the tails of his baronial waistcoat. At once the man began to plead, bowing to David many times. David handed him a purse, and the man released David’s coat and, still bowing, backed off into the crowd. “He needed ten rubles for his daughter’s dowry,” Papa told the girls. In the space of ten minutes, Papa had handed many purses and coins to the people surrounding him. Then, deftly, he removed from his coat pocket a sack of rock candies he had purchased only moments before, and distributed the sweets to the children. When the sack was empty, he walked back to the victoria. The coachman helped Ossip inside after his sisters, the door was closed, and the Gunzburgs turned back toward Mohilna.
    For a long time the only sound came from the hooves of the horses. Then, her throat throbbing, Sonia said, “Oh, the poor Jews! To suffer so because they are the chosen people!”
    Ossip said nothing, but his eyes, bright blue, rested with brief compassion upon his small sister. Anna cried out, “No! It is not because of that! It is because they are poor! They need money from us to live, if they can survive in those horrid houses.” She burst into nervous tears. “Jews, or Eastern Orthodox, or Catholic! What does it matter? We are rich, and they are poor, and that is why they are reduced to needing our few rubles.” Then, to her father: “How large is my dowry going to be, Papa?”
    But Sonia exclaimed in