The Lost Souls of Angelkov (46 page)

U
la arrived home as the tarantass was rumbling away from the house.

“Whose carriage is that?” she asked as she set down her basket. “Are you feeling any better?” But as she looked at her husband, some odd, unreadable expression on his face made her legs unexpectedly weak. She swallowed and went to him. “What is it, Sasha?”

“Ula,” he started, unable to find the right words. “Our boy, I … I thought …” He looked towards the boys’ bedroom.

She followed his gaze. “Was Tima hurt at work? Tima?” she called. When there was no answer, she hurried across the room, her boots staccato on the uncarpeted floor. “Kolyenka?” she said, looking into the tidy, empty room. She whirled round to face Aleksandr. “What’s happened? Kolya—where is he?”

Aleksandr was so pale—apart from two high, hectic
spots of fever on his cheeks—that in that instant Ula knew what he would look like when he was dead.

“This is better, Ula. He will have a future—”

“Who?”

“Kolya.”

“A future?” Ula’s voice was low with confusion. “Kolya’s future is here, with us.” She cocked her head. “With me. This is his home. He can’t be anywhere but here, with me.” Her voice had risen. “What have you done?” She looked towards the open front door, blinking as she tried to make sense of what her husband was saying.

Aleksandr rubbed his eyes as if awakening from some deep, confusing dream.

Ula crossed the room to him in a strange sliding run, her arms out at her sides as if the room were tilting. “Tell me what you’ve done,” she insisted, so low that her voice was almost a growl. She glanced at the open door again. “What have you done, Aleksandr Danilovich?”

What
had
he done? Aleksandr was overcome with panic, the cough rumbling. He remembered the boy’s fragile body against his, the shoulder blades sharp. “His music,” he said. “His talent. The maestro can …”

In that instant, an animal howl came from Ula’s throat. Aleksandr had never heard this sound, not even when she was giving birth. She ran from the house and down the road, the howl echoing.

Only Timofey carries the secret of what happened next.

He heard his mother’s screams from the cooperage at the end of their road, and thought,
It’s happened, Papa is dead
.
Nothing else would make his mother shriek so. He ran out to see her coming towards him, her shawl trailing behind her, her skirt held high in both hands, showing so much of her legs that he was embarrassed in spite of the cold fear in his belly.

“Papa?” he called, rushing to meet her. “It’s Papa?”

She shook her head, gasping, her mouth open, her lips edged with white spittle, an odd ashy sheen to her skin. “Go!” she shouted, pushing his shoulder. “It’s Kolya. Go after him.” She was panting, trying to speak around the gasping breaths.

“What’s happened? Go where? Has he wandered off?”

She slapped him then, slapped his cheek hard, and he reached up to grab her wrist. His mother was so gentle. She never screamed, had never slapped him, or even kicked at one of the dogs they’d owned. She was unlike his friends’ mothers, who beat their sons regularly. He was so confused he didn’t know what to think.

“I told you to
go
. Run! Get a horse. Go after them,” she panted through her sobs, her body trembling violently.

“Yes, yes, I will. But you have to tell me who. Who am I going after? What’s happened to Kolya?” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Mama?”

At the last word, Ula drew a deep, shaky breath and struggled to compose herself. She wiped her lips. “I’m sorry, Tima. I’m sorry. It’s the maestro. Your papa—he let him go with that man. He
gave
him to him. He’s taking him away.”

“Gave him away?” Tima wondered if his mother had gone mad. His father couldn’t have done what she was saying.

“Music—for the music. He’s taken my baby, my Kolyenka.” She started to sob again, dropping to her knees on the road, pulling at Timofey’s callused hands. People had come out of doorways to watch them.

“Timofey Aleksandrovitch!” someone called. “Do you need help?”

Tima didn’t answer. He turned from his mother and ran down the road, the dust kicked up in a long grey plume behind him.

He had run for perhaps five minutes down the twisting road when a horse plodded up behind him. It was just an old nag, an unsaddled Mongolian pony, but the man who had called out to him had heard Ula’s pleas. He’d taken the horse from his yard and come after Timofey. He slid off and Timofey used the horse’s mane to pull himself onto her bare back.

His fingers in her mane, he urged her on with a series of kicks to her bony sides. The old mare did as well as she could, hobbling in a painful, unrhythmic trot, and within another ten minutes Timofey spotted, in a cloud of dust, the back of the musicians’ open carriage.

He kicked the horse harder, and she managed to break into a canter, and Timofey saw that he was gaining. In another few moments he would reach the carriage. He would ride alongside and call to the maestro to give his brother back. It was all a mistake—he wasn’t to take Kolya after all.

He envisioned Kolya crying. Did Kolya understand what was happening? Perhaps his little brother was smiling, thinking he was out for a carriage ride.

No. Kolya would be crying.

Even though the maestro would argue, Timofey would threaten him. His work had defined his chest and created well-muscled arms. He knew his own strength, and envisioned pulling the man out of the tarantass and drawing back
his fist. The others were weedy young musicians. They would be afraid of him, and concerned about hurting their hands—their livelihood. It would be easy to scoop up Kolya and put him in front of him on the nag.

Tima envisioned Kolya smiling with relief the way he did the other times Tima had come to his rescue. He also imagined his mother’s face, her own relief and swooping joy when he rode up to their home with Kolya. He couldn’t envision his father’s face; Timofey didn’t know how he’d let this happen.

All this went through his head as he rode towards the back of the carriage. The dust stung his eyes and coated his lips. Even with his mouth closed, he tasted the grit of the road.

He was soon close enough to hear the jingling of the harness bells on the horses pulling the tarantass.

And then, like a small explosion with an accompanying burst of light, Tima saw something else. He saw himself on a horse—not this broken, sway-backed old creature, but a sturdy, high-spirited horse—riding away from Chita, down this same road. Without his brother to care for, to weigh him down for the rest of his life, he would be free to go when his mother no longer needed him. He would not be tied to the business—or to Kolya.

Tima would be free to live the life he wanted, fettered by nothing and no one.

As if hearing his thoughts, the horse’s gait slowed, and she made a coughing snort, shaking her head.

He kicked her again, close enough to the carriage now to think—he couldn’t be sure—that he saw the back of Kolya’s head. The head turned. Was it Kolya, calling out?
Tima. Tima, help me
.

The tarantass was coming to a fork in the road. He squinted, peering through the dust, trying to make out the jumble of bodies crowded onto the wooden seats. But the vision was clear: his brother’s face wet with tears, crying for him as he had so many times, depending on him for rescue. Needing him, today and forever.

And just like that, in a moment he would relive for the rest of his life, Timofey lifted his heels. At the signal, the horse slowed further, and then stopped. Her head drooped, a great shudder of relief going through her.

Timofey sat in the warm May sunshine on the wheezing horse until the carriage turned down the left fork in the rutted, dusty road and was gone.

He rode slowly back into Chita, returning the horse to the kindly neighbour. He entered the house alone. His mother stood for a long moment, looking at him. When he shook his head, she ran to the bedroom, wailing.

Tima kept his face tight, unable to speak, afraid that what he had done could be read on his features.

His father explained his thinking, looking for the understanding from Timofey that he couldn’t get from his wife. “You must know why I thought it best, son,” he stated weakly, taking deep, painful draws of breath and wiping his mouth. “You know Kolya, perhaps better than anyone. I did the right thing.” He stared down at the blood-soaked handkerchief in his hand.

Timofey came close to his father. “No. You didn’t do the right thing. Look what you’ve done to Mama. And Kolya … he can’t survive away from home. From us, from
me. I’ll never forgive you. Do you hear me? Never!” Then he ran outside.

Even as he ran, Tima knew he had treated Kolya far worse than his father had. His father had acted out of misguided love; Tima had failed to act out of selfishness.

Timofey knew he would never be forgiven, even if he confessed to the priest. It didn’t matter what absolution the priest might give. It didn’t matter that he could also go to the
datsan
and spin prayer wheels and tie blue prayer flags on all the branches he could. He was caught between religions, aware of both the flames of everlasting hell and the power of karma. In one religion he would suffer an eternity after his death, and in the other be reborn as a lowly dung beetle.

He knew he would never forgive himself. Yet he also knew that, given the choice a second time, he would do the same thing.

The day following the commission of his great sin, Timofey’s mother came into his bedroom as he was getting ready for work. She urged him to set out for Irkutsk instead. The maestro would be travelling for many days, stopping in villages overnight. Timofey could go to each village until he found Kolya, and bring him back. “Shut the cooperage, and go,” she said dully, her face blotchy and her eyes swollen nearly shut from a night of weeping.

“But Papa is …” He caught himself. “Mama, how can I go away when Papa is so ill?” He glanced through the doorway to the sitting room, where his father lay on the bench.

But Ula shook her head. “Don’t worry about your father.” Her voice took on a hardness that shocked Timofey. He thought he understood the depth of her anger, but to see her react so stonily was as much a surprise as her slap across his
face the day before. Had he ever really known her, or was this what grief did to people?

“There’s enough money to take from the business—you can travel all the way to Irkutsk if you must,” she said. She made no attempt to lower her voice. “You have to search until you find Kolya, and then bring him back to me.”

“What makes you so sure I will find Kolya?” Tima dared to say, a slow anger towards his mother inexplicably building. He knew it would hurt her to hear his doubt, but feeling anger took away some of the guilt. “It’s a big place, isn’t it?”

“There can only be so many maestros, and so many little boys who play the violin and are new to the city. You’ll find him,” she said with such certainty that there was nothing for Timofey to do but nod. He said,
Yes, yes I’ll go, once Papa
 … He turned away before he finished the sentence. But Ula said, even more loudly, as if making sure Aleksandr could hear, “Yes, once your father doesn’t need you, you’ll go and bring my son back.”