Danielle Steel: Zoya

“The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii!”

“Oh my God …” He pulled her into the other room with him to listen to the news, as the announcer explained in staccato tones what had happened. They all stood rooted to where they stood, as Matthew tugged at Zoya's skirt and tried to get her attention, but she only picked him up and held him close. All she could think of was that Nicholas was twenty years old. She didn't want him to die as her brother had with the Preobrajensky. “Simon … what will happen now?” But she instinctively knew as they listened. Simon's predictions had finally come true. They were going to war. President Roosevelt announced it, with a voice filled with deep regret, but not as great as Zoya's. Simon enlisted in the army the following morning. He was forty-five years old, and Zoya begged him not to go, but he looked at her sadly when he came home.

“I have to, Zoya. I couldn't live with myself if I just sat here on my ass and did nothing to defend my country.” And it wasn't just for his country, it was for the Jews in Europe that he did it. All over the world, the cause of freedom was being destroyed, he couldn't sit back quietly and let it happen.

“Please …” Zoya begged, “Please, Simon …” She was overcome with grief, “I couldn't live without you.” She had lived through that before, losing the people she loved, and she knew she couldn't survive it again … not Simon, so gentle and so dear, and so loving. “I love you too much. Don't go. Please …” She was gripped with fear but he couldn't be dissuaded. “Zoya, I have to.” They lay side by side in their bed that night, and he touched her gently with the big hands that held his son so lovingly, the same hands that touched her now and held her close to him as she cried, terrified of losing the man she loved so dearly. “Nothing's going to happen.”

“You don't know that. We need you too much for you to go. Think of Matthew.” She would have said anything to make him stay, but even that didn't persuade him.

“I am thinking of him. The world won't be worth living in when he grows up, if the rest of us don't stand up now, and fight for decency and what's right.” He was still aching over what had happened in Poland two years before. But now that his own country had been attacked, there was clearly no choice. And even Zoya's passionate lovemaking that night and renewed pleas didn't sway him. As much as he loved her, he knew he had to go. His love for Zoya was equaled only by his sense of duty to his country, no matter what it cost him.

He was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, to train, and three months later he came home for two days, before leaving for San Francisco. Zoya wanted to go back to Mrs. Whitman's little place in Connecticut to be alone with him, but Simon felt he should spend his last days at home with the children. Nicholas came home from Princeton to see him off, and the two men solemnly shook hands at Grand Central Station.

“Take care of your mother for me,” Simon spoke quietly in the din around him, always gentle, always calm. Even Sasha was crying. Matthew was crying too, although he didn't understand what was happening. He only knew that his daddy was going somewhere and his mother and sister were crying, and his big brother looked unhappy too.

Nicholas hugged the man who had been a father to him for the past five years, and there were tears in his eyes as Simon spoke to him. “Take care, son.”

“I want to go too.” He said it so low that his mother didn't hear him.

“Not yet,” Simon answered. “Try to finish school. They may draft you anyway.” But he didn't want to be drafted, he wanted to go to England and fly planes. He had been thinking about it for months, and by March he couldn't stand it any longer. Simon was in the Pacific by then, and Nicholas told them the day after Sasha's seventeenth birthday. Zoya didn't want to hear it, she raged at him and she cried.

“Isn't it enough that your father's gone, Nicholas?” She had come to refer to Simon as that and Nicholas didn't object. He loved him as a father.

“Mama, I have to. Can't you understand?”

“No, I can't. As long as they don't draft you, why can't you stay where you are? Simon wants you to finish school, he told you that himself.” She tried desperately to reason with him, but she could always sense that he wouldn't be swayed as she sat with him in the living room and cried. She already missed Simon desperately and the prospect of having Nicholas go too was more than she could cope with.

“I can go back to Princeton after the war.” But for years, he had thought that he was wasting his time. He enjoyed Princeton very much, but he wanted to enter the real world, to work as Simon did, and now to fight as he was doing in the Pacific. He wrote to them whenever he could, telling them as much as he was allowed to of what was going on around him. But Zoya wished now more than ever that he were at home to talk Nicholas into going back to school. After two days of arguments, she knew she had lost. And three weeks later, he was gone, to England to train. She sat in the apartment, alone, thinking bitterly of all she had lost and feared she might lose again … a father, a brother, a country in the end, and now her husband and son were gone. Sasha was out, and she sat staring into space. She didn't even hear the doorbell ring. It rang again and again, and she thought of not answering it at all, and then slowly she got up. There was no one she wanted to see. She just wanted the two of them to come home, before anything happened to them. She knew that if anything did happen, she couldn't bear it.

“Yes?” She had come home from the store an hour before, and even that didn't keep her mind full enough these days. Nothing did. She was constantly obsessed with thoughts of Simon, and now she would have Nicholas to worry about too, flying bombing raids over Europe.

The boy in uniform stood nervously outside. He had come to hate the job in the past few months. And he stared at Zoya now, wishing they had sent someone else. She looked like a nice woman, with her red hair intricately tied in a knot, and her smile as she looked at him, not understanding what was coming.

“Telegram for you, ma'am,” and then with the sad eyes of a child, he muttered, “I'm sorry,” as he handed it to her and turned away. He didn't want to see her eyes when she opened it and read the news. The black border said it all as she caught her breath and gasped, her hands shaking uncontrollably as she tore it open, and the elevator returned to rescue him. He was already gone as she read the words … Regret to inform you that your husband, Simon Ishmael Hirsch, was killed yesterday … the rest was a blur as she sank to her knees in the hall, sobbing his name … and suddenly remembering Nicolai as he bled to death on the marble floor of the Fontanka Palace….

She lay there and sobbed for what seemed like hours, longing for his gentle touch again, for the sight of him, the smell of the cologne he used … the fresh smell of the soap he used to shave … anything … anything … he would never come home again. Simon was gone, like the others.

CHAPTER

45

When Sasha came home, she found her mother sitting in the dark. When she heard why, for once in her life she did the right thing. She called Axelle, who came to sit with her and make plans for a memorial service. The next day Countess Zoya was closed, its doors draped with black crepe. And Axelle stayed at the apartment with Zoya, as she sat woodenly, unable to think coherently, or do more than nod, as Axelle planned the memorial service for her. Zoya seemed unable to make any of the necessary decisions which was so unlike her.

Her final act of courage had been in going to see Simon's parents on Houston Street the night before, his mother had screamed and wailed in her husband's arms, and finally Zoya departed quietly, stumbling as she left, clutching Sasha's arm. She was blinded by grief and pain and the loss of the man she had loved more than any other.