The Lost Souls of Angelkov (53 page)

Antonina knows sleep will be impossible that night. She drinks three glasses of vodka, which calm her enough so her teeth don’t ache from holding her jaw so tightly. She lies on her bed, but images—Misha without his warm coat, Konstantin’s dead, bluish face, Father Cyril suggesting a marker for Mikhail, the butchered horse—distress her so much that she has to sit up, staring into the darkness. She needs to think of something else.

She opens the tiny corner of thought she tries to keep locked: Grisha in the dacha.

But as she remembers she and Grisha together, something crosses her mind. She had been so distraught in Tushinsk, seeing the child in Mikhail’s
talmochka
, and as she untangles
the thoughts from that day, she thinks about the man—what was his name? Lev?—who brought the letter from Misha. Was he the man she’d seen Grisha talking to? Surely not, or Grisha would have told her.

But she also remembers seeing Grisha holding a package out to the man. What was it?

She leaves Tinka on the bed and pulls a shawl over her nightdress and opens her door. Lilya is asleep on the pallet, her mouth open and one hand flung up beside her head.

Antonina is annoyed. Tomorrow she will tell Lilya she doesn’t want her sleeping outside her door as if she’s a child who might wander in the night and get into trouble. But as she silently goes down the stairs, she asks herself if this isn’t what she’s doing. She knows she’s had too much vodka.

There are so few servants left that she has no fear of running into any of them. Two dogs—piebald harriers, once used for hunting but now simply hanging about waiting to be fed, since there is no hunting at Angelkov this fall—jump up from the veranda as she comes out the front door. She snaps her fingers once and they drop back down, their chins on their paws. Her steps uneven, she walks through the still, chilled night, past the stables and outbuildings, past the servants’ quarters, down the winding road lined with bare linden trees. Her heart lifts when she sees lights in the house with the blue shutters. She imagines Grisha sitting by the fire, reading. She just wants to ask him about the man in Tushinsk.

Is this all?

Or does she want to be in his presence because she wants to feel like a woman? She knows she wants to feel his arms around her, strong, capable arms, his voice telling her it will
be all right. That she needn’t be afraid, that her son will come back. That she won’t lose Angelkov. That he won’t leave her.

She wants to go to his bed.

Already unsteady, she trips over something on the road—a stone, a branch—and comes down hard on her knees, skinning her palms as she reaches forward to break her fall. She sits back on her heels. An owl hoots, and she shivers. At that moment Grisha’s lights go out.

She stands and slowly walks back to her own house. Her footsteps are loud on the cinder drive. Surrounded by the bare trees, in complete darkness, the manor is suddenly ominous. It no longer feels like home.

A
few afternoons later, she tries to distract herself in her bedroom by reading, but after some time she comes to the conclusion she’s already read the passage she’s attempting to concentrate on. She realizes she finished the book before Konstantin died. As she descends the staircase to go to the library to fetch another, she pauses at the landing window. It looks onto the front grounds of the estate and the long drive leading to the road. The sun is shining in a deep blue sky, and Antonina sees Grisha speaking with a man. She can only see the top of the man’s hat, black, with a brim, his shoulders in a fine black coat with a grey lamb collar, and the toes of polished black boots.

Grisha does not wear a hat, and even from this distance Antonina sees the sunlight gleaming off his hair.

As Grisha shakes his head, the other man tilts his face,
glancing at the house. Antonina steps behind the curtain, but not before she has a glimpse of the man’s features.

He walks back to his horse, its bridle held by Lyosha.

After the man has ridden away, she sends for Grisha. He stands in front of her in the study. The cold fall air has ruddied his cheeks.

“You are well, Antonina?” he asks.

“The man you were speaking to. What did he want?”

Grisha doesn’t answer for a moment. “It was the music teacher from the Bakanev estate.”

“The violinist,” she states.

“He said he was the music teacher.”

Antonina waits a beat. “What did he want?” she asks again.

Something shifts in Grisha’s face. “He came to pay a call of condolence.”

Antonina thinks of her gloved hand between Valentin’s at the funeral.

“I told him it was impossible, you weren’t receiving. I am correct in this, am I not”—he glances at Pavel passing the open door—“Countess Mitlovskiya?”

“I suppose so.”

“I asked why he thought he could simply arrive only a week after the funeral, without a social appointment or at least a calling card in advance, and expect to be received. He hasn’t the manners you are due.”

“But you sent him off without speaking to me first?”

Grisha’s eyes move from her eyes to her mouth, back to her eyes. “You wanted to see him?” When she doesn’t answer immediately, something makes him asks, “You know this man?”

Why does she feel guilty? She’s done nothing wrong. “He played at my father’s estate, a long time ago, before I was married. And then I saw him again, at the musical evening at the Bakanevs’.”

“And you recall him from all those years ago?” Grisha pictures the other man’s face. It’s manly and yet somehow—he wants to use the word pretty, although that’s not it exactly. It’s the kind of face that would appeal to some women. But far too delicate for a woman like Antonina, he thinks.

“Did you not consider asking me if I would receive him?” she asks again. “Is it not my choice whom I see, even if they appear in an unconventional manner?”

Grisha feels scolded. “I was simply protecting you, Antonina,” he says, holding back sudden anger. “It’s not as though you generally welcome visitors, even those you know. I assumed you wouldn’t wish to be called upon by a near stranger.”

Antonina is oddly flustered. She shakes her head, her lips tight. “The point is, you can’t make decisions for me.”

“I can’t?” Grisha says, his voice cold, and Antonina swallows. “Isn’t that what you’ve asked me to do with the estate? Make decisions?”

“Well, yes, with the estate,” she answers, emphasizing the last word. “Not with my personal life.”

The air is heavy, as though loud, harsh words have been exchanged, though neither voice has been raised.

“As you wish,” Grisha finally says, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a small square. “Here’s his calling card. Should you wish to receive him, you may send word to him.”

“Thank you,” Antonina says, taking the card by the very tip of one corner, so that there is no chance her fingers will
touch Grisha’s. She is afraid of what will happen should she come in contact with him, afraid of what she might do. The small square vibrates, just a little, as they both hold the card for those few seconds. Are her fingers trembling, or his? He lets go of the card, and she tucks it under her belt. “Thank you,” she says again. “I’ll look at my calendar.” They both know this is a ridiculous statement. What would Antonina have on her calendar? “And if I wish to have him call, I’ll decide on a day, and pass it on to you.”

Grisha hasn’t moved.

“That’s all, Grigori Sergeyevich,” Antonina says. She fights not to thank him again, simply to prolong the conversation, and moves to the desk as if searching for something in a small pile of papers. “Oh. No, wait.” She turns back to him, remembering. “The peasant in Tushinsk. The one you were talking to.”

Grisha nods. “I sent a coat for the child, as well as a basket of new clothing as a reward.”

“Not him. The man in the doorway I saw you with just moments before I saw the child in Misha’s coat.”

Grisha waits.

“Who was he? Did he work for me at one time?”

Grisha’s face is immobile. “Yes,” he finally says.

“I thought he was familiar.” So it wasn’t Lev. “Have you made any further discoveries about what happened with Felya?” She wants to ask him if he has any suspicions, if he thinks it could have been Soso. If he is worried about further threats at Angelkov.

“No,” Grisha says, his face expressionless.

As the silence stretches, she again looks at papers on the desk, glad she hadn’t knocked on Grisha’s door a few nights
earlier, glad she came to her senses before she embarrassed herself. I am not like my mother, she thinks, the picture of Galina Maximova and the violinist—Valentin—once more vivid in her mind.

What she did with Grisha was a mistake. Everyone is allowed one mistake.

When she finally looks up and sees she is alone, there is a moment of disappointment. She sits, heavily, in Konstantin’s chair behind the desk. But the air is chilled, the fire dying. She shivers in the room filled with the memory of her husband. She rises to go to her bedroom. Lilya always keeps a fire lit for her. She looks down at the card in her hand, and reads the name, written in curling cursive.

Three days later, Valentin Vladimirovitch Kropotkin is ushered into the library. Antonina is waiting. The moment he arrives, she’s sorry she invited him to call. What was she hoping for? What will she say to him? Will the ghost of her mother stand in the corner, smirking?

Antonina told herself, when she sent the note to the Bakanevs’, that she was instigating this social call to distract herself from her ongoing grief over Mikhail, from her new widowhood, from her worries about Angelkov. She knows this is partly true. She also doesn’t want the complicated thoughts of Grisha.

It’s Grisha who greets Valentin in the yard, speaking to him as they walk towards the front door.

“I hope you’re aware of the grief that has been visited upon Angelkov, apart from the count’s death,” he says, glancing at Valentin. He’s taller than the musician by a few inches.

“I heard about the kidnapping of the Mitlovsky child at the funeral.”

“It’s been six months of hell for the countess. She is not herself. And now her husband’s death, so recent …” He glances at the musician again. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Kropotkin?”

“Have you appointed yourself the countess’s bodyguard?” Valentin doesn’t have to explain himself. He’s a free man now. He realized when he came to Angelkov to try to see the countess the first time that Naryshkin was the man he had seen helping Countess Mitlovskiya into the barouche after the musical evening. “I am here to offer my sympathies.” He looks at Grisha. “And you, Naryshkin?”

“What?”

“Why are you here?”

Grisha stops, forcing Valentin to stop as well. “You know I’m the steward. I help her run the estate, as I helped her late husband.”

“I see,” Valentin says.

To Grisha, the two words sound condescending, perhaps even suggestive, or insulting. He watches as Kropotkin puts his hands together and squeezes, as if releasing some tension in his fingers. They’re long and delicate. Something about the unexpected movement reminds Grisha of Mikhail.

It’s because they’re both musicians, Grisha tells himself.