The Lost Souls of Angelkov (11 page)
She feels no pain, and yet the cut has brought some hard, dark relief she can’t name. She throws the scissors to the floor and retreats to her chair.
The following day, people move about the bedroom as though it’s a hive. Konstantin is no longer the dull drone Antonina often believed him to be, but a useless queen. As in a hive, it’s as though all lives depend on that one life.
A second doctor joins Dr. Molov; Antonina doesn’t know his name and doesn’t care to learn it. The two of them bleed and cup the count. They force fluids into his body with a glass tube.
Father Cyril, the priest from the estate church, has become a permanent fixture, taking the chair in the opposite corner of the room from Antonina. And as well as Lilya, there are always too many servants. Antonina stays in her darkened corner in Konstantin’s high-backed leather chair, watching the endless movements around his bed. Tinka is in her lap.
Lilya had looked at the cut on the inside of Antonina’s arm, silently washing away the drying blood. She wrapped a strip of linen around it, brought her soup and tea with jam. She regularly bathes Antonina’s face and hands with a warm damp cloth and keeps a shawl around her shoulders, a blanket over her legs. She gently lifts Tinka from Antonina and takes her outside a few times during the day; she gives the dog food and water and brings her back.
Lilya is her maid but also her companion, her friend and Mikhail’s
nyanya
—his nanny. Since Antonina had come to Angelkov and found her again, Lilya has looked after her every desire, seeming to understand a need before it is spoken.
Antonina does not say anything now, except to ask every few hours, or perhaps every ten minutes: “Has there been another message from the Cossacks?”
Nobody answers her. After a while nobody looks in her direction when she asks her question, over and over.
T
hat night in the bedroom, Lilya asks, “Shall I get your laudanum, Tosya?”
Antonina nods.
Lilya brings the bottle and a spoon, and Antonina opens her mouth and swallows, three times.
“Now a glass of wine,” Antonina says.
“You don’t need wine with the laudanum.”
“I do,” Antonina answers.
Lilya pours her a small glass. Antonina drinks it, sitting on the edge of the bed, and then hands the glass back to her maid.
Lilya helps Antonina out of her clothes and puts a nightgown over her head, doing up its many tiny buttons. She settles Antonina under the fresh sheets and turns down the lamps so there is only the faintest glow illuminating the shadows. She opens the tall windows just enough for a cool, fresh spring breeze to billow the curtains. Antonina feels the night air on her face.
Does Mikhail smell this same breeze? Is he in a clean bed?
She looks at the journal on her bedside table. She hadn’t wanted to go to Mikhail’s room, somehow thinking that if she left it exactly as it had been, it would help him come home. But this afternoon she could no longer sit in Konstantin’s busy bedchamber with its whispers and unpleasant odours. She suddenly wanted—needed—to be close to Mikhail’s belongings.
When she opened his door, something between a moan and a sigh escaped her lips. She looked at it all—his bed and wardrobe, his bookshelf and desk, the low footstool near the fireplace where he liked to sit, his boyish collections of rocks and jars of dead insects and the pictures he’d painted—and held on to the edge of the door frame. When she was no longer dizzy, she closed the door and went to his bed. She lay down on it, burying her face in her son’s pillow. But the servants had changed the linens and all she could smell was laundry soap and starch. She got up and went to his wardrobe, pulling out tunics and jackets. She held each to her face, weeping. She carried one tunic—there was a splotch of ink on the cuff, so she knew it had somehow escaped laundering—back to the bed. She lay down again and held it against her face, breathing. Finally, in the unwashed tunic, she could smell her son.
After some time, she got up and sat in front of his desk. She ran her fingers over Mikhail’s lessons books, stopping at a journal with a soft calfskin cover. It made her think of his small leather music composition booklet, which held some fugues and nocturnes of Glinka’s she had transcribed into easier keys for him. Of course, now he could play the originals with ease, but he had kept the book, using it to write
down his own melodies. He carried it with him always, along with a little sharpened stick of charcoal, because, he had told her, he never knew when he would hear something beautiful in his head. She thought, suddenly, of how he had grabbed the booklet from the piano as he ran from the music salon. Did he still have it?
She picked up the calfskin-bound journal, running her hand over its soft cover. It was a gift given to him at a neighbouring Christmas party that year. When he showed it to Antonina, she said he should write down his thoughts on its stiff, creamy pages. She told him she had always kept a journal, and that it is a lovely thing to write what one is thinking or wondering about.
A week later, Mikhail sat at the breakfast table across from her, writing in it while she read and drank her morning tea.
When Konstantin came in, he asked, “Are those lessons, Mikhail?”
“No. I’m writing my thoughts in my journal, Papa.”
Konstantin slammed his hand on the table. Antonina’s tea sloshed into the saucer. “Men do not waste time on such things, Mikhail. This is a woman’s pastime. Put it away.”
Mikhail very slowly set his pen on the table.
“Close that book, I said.”
“I’m waiting for the ink to dry.”
“Don’t let me see you with it again,” Konstantin threatened, then left without eating breakfast.
Once the front door slammed, Mikhail picked up his pen and dipped it into the ink.
Antonina drank her tea.
She opened the leather journal and drew in a deep breath.
His handwriting. His words. His thoughts. She closed the book and put her hand over her eyes. Eventually she rose, leaving the journal on the desk, and went to her room, separated from Mikhail’s by a large linen storage closet. She took the vodka from her wardrobe and a glass from her washstand and carried them back to his room.
She filled the glass and took a drink, and then another, and finally read the first entry, dated January 8, 1861.
My friend Oxana Alexandrovna gave this book to me for Christmas. Mama has said that I should use it to write what I am thinking about
.
Mama told me I must not be shy, and to write about the things that make me happy and things that I do not like. She said that it is private, and no one need ever read it
.
Antonina stopped and took another drink. She touched the uneven lines and splashes of ink.
Mama told me it would be good practice for me to write in French, but I don’t want to. I still make too many mistakes in my French. Monsieur Thibault tells me this every day
.
I don’t like writing out my lessons for him. I always get ink on my fingers and on the pages, and he shakes his head and looks sad. And then when it is time for Monsieur Lermontov to hear my practising, he makes loud, angry noises with his tongue, and says my hands on the keys do not look like those of a careful boy
.
Starting today I will try to be more careful
.
Antonina finished her vodka and poured another glass. She has not seen the tutors since the day Mikhail was taken. Are they still in their rooms in the servants’ quarters, waiting for Mikhail to return, waiting to be summoned to resume their work with him?
There are pages torn from the journal. The next entry was three weeks later.
I have been practising, but I am not any neater. Monsieur Lermontov will be very cross when he arrives later today. When he is like this I have a bad feeling in my stomach, like when I eat too many of Raisa’s poppy seed rolls, and then I do not play as well. He sometimes tells Papa when my practising doesn’t go well, and knowing Papa is displeased makes my stomach feel worse
.
But if Papa isn’t home and he tells Mama, she nods at him but then makes funny faces at me when he’s not looking. Mama never gets angry with me
.
Antonina pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve and held it to her eyes for a long moment. Then she took another drink and continued reading. The next entry was at the end of February.
I like my room, but it is very big and sometimes noises come from the fireplace. Last year I told Lilya I was too old for her to sleep on her cot at the foot of my bed anymore, but some nights I wish she was still here like before. When I was very small and had bad dreams she would carry me to Mama’s bed and I would stay the night with her. But if Papa came in from his room in the morning and saw me
there he would grow cross with Mama and tell her I was not a baby and that I must sleep in my own bed. Papa calls me a little soldier and says soldiers do not sleep with their mothers, and they do not cry
.
I try not to cry because I know it makes Papa cross. But I don’t want to be a soldier. Mama told me her brother Viktor Leonidovich was a soldier and he died. I don’t want to die like Uncle Viktor
.
When I was a very little boy and Papa went to the city, I always slept with Mama and Tinka. Sometimes Lilya would stay with us too, sleeping on Mama’s settee, and in the morning when I woke up and saw Mama and Lilya talking and laughing I always felt happy. Mama doesn’t call me a soldier. She calls me her petite souris
.
March 14
I have five friends: Andrei Yakovavich and Stepan Yakovavich (they are brothers) and Oxana Alexandrovna and Yuliana Philipova. There is also Ivan Abramovich. I don’t like him as much because he is mean sometimes but he is blind in one eye and Mama says maybe that makes him sad and maybe that’s why he is mean so I must be kind to him anyway. All my friends live on other estates and we only get to play together sometimes
.
At home I like playing with Lyosha. He is much older than me but he is nice. He is Lilya’s brother. He shows me how to tie special knots in ropes, and he tells me stories about the horses. He works in the stables with Fyodor, and sometimes, after I have done my practising and finished my lessons, Mama allows him to take me to the stables. Lyosha shows me how to hold my hand flat with a carrot on it and
let Dunia eat the carrot. Dunia’s lips are soft and whiskery and tickle my hand
.
I try to remember not to speak French with Lyosha. Mama told me it was not polite, because the servants don’t speak French and if we do that in front of them it might make them feel left out. It is all right if we’re alone, Mama says. But Papa speaks French when the servants are with us
.
Once, when Mama and Papa took me with them to visit Prince Usolotsev, his boys ran away from me and hid and didn’t play with me. Mama found me and hugged me and said she was sorry I was left out. She said she knew how sad that felt, because sometimes she feels left out too. I don’t know who makes her feel left out. I won’t ever speak French to Lyosha because I don’t want him to feel sad like I did. Or like Mama
.
