The Lost Souls of Angelkov (61 page)

He tries to put his arms around her; she moves away from him.

“Antonina,” Valentin says, almost a whisper.

Holding the journal against her with one hand, she puts the other to her face, warm from the fire. She thinks of Grisha. She has known Grisha for more than a third of her life. She respects and understands him, his honesty and integrity, his strength of character. She knows so little about Valentin, even though he has recently told her more about his life than Grisha has of his. “All that consumes me is the thought of my son, Valentin.”

“I can help you. If you open yourself to me, Antonina, and let me love you, you will see your darkness lift. I promise you.”

Antonina turns away from him. She caresses the soft leather of Mikhail’s journal, then lifts it to her mouth and kisses it. “There was word from him once, that he was alive. But that was months ago. I believe that he still lives, Valentin. I would know if he were no longer on this earth. Until I see him …” She faces him again.

They stand in silence, the distance Antonina had put between them still there.

Valentin has tried. She will not weaken. But there will be another woman, one who won’t be as immovable as Countess Mitlovskiya. “I believe it’s time for me to leave you, Antonina,” he says.

They go to the veranda together. Antonina holds the dogs to keep them silent.

“Again, I’m sorry for what’s happened to you because of me,” Antonina says. “Will you leave for St. Petersburg soon?”

“Yes. There’s no reason for me to stay. Is there?”

“Thank you, Valentin Vladimirovitch,” is her reply.

“What do you thank me for?”

“For your friendship.” At last she steps closer and allows him to hold her, but only for a moment.

It is too late, and will lead to nothing, he knows. He drops his arms, walks down the steps and mounts his horse. Just before he blends into the shadows of the trees on the drive, he turns and waves to her.

Lilya watches from the dark landing window.

The next morning, Lilya arrives with Antonina’s breakfast. Antonina is already reading before the fire in her dressing gown. Her hair is tangled.

Antonina’s lacy, delicate chemise is tossed carelessly on the bedcovers. Lilya imagines Kropotkin removing it in the music salon the previous evening. “There’s a problem in the kitchen, Tosya. Raisa has found mouse droppings in the flour. She’s very upset. The flour must last us through the winter.”

Antonina puts down her book. “What’s usually done when this happens?”

“Traps can be set. Or we can put a barn cat in the pantry at night.”

“Well, can’t it be seen to, then?”

“Raisa wishes to speak to you about it. She doesn’t want to bring in a cat unless you approve,” Lilya sees Antonina hasn’t fastened the top buttons of her dressing gown, and that she wears no nightgown underneath. She has never known Antonina to be so dishevelled.

Antonina sighs, rising. “All right.”

Lilya reaches to button Antonina’s dressing gown. Her fingers graze Antonina’s breast, and Antonina pushes her hand away and does up the buttons herself.

Once she’s gone, Lilya picks up Antonina’s chemise. She brings it to her face and breathes its scent. Thinking of Kropotkin’s hands on it, she crumples it into a ball, holding it tightly with both hands.

She brings the fabric to her face again and smells it a second time. Then she bites at it with her sharp eye teeth. When she’s created a small tear in the silk, she slowly rips it in half. She throws both pieces into the fire. The soft lace smokes for a moment and then catches, the flames leaping as they feed on it.

Lilya pushes the burning fabric about with the poker until there’s no evidence of what she’s done, then replaces the poker and sets out Antonina’s breakfast. The cup rattles in its saucer.

Half an hour later, Lilya arrives at Grisha’s house unannounced, and pounds on his door.

“He was with her, Grisha.
With her
. In the music salon. She snuck him into the house. I heard them, heard what they did.”

Grisha is too shocked to speak, but fights for control in front of Lilya. He thinks of Valentin’s face as he said:
Have you never felt anything for a woman?
Then he regains enough control to quietly ask, “And why do you feel it necessary to tell me this, Lilya?”

“It did no good to have him dismissed from the Bakanevs’. Do you really think he’ll leave her alone, now that he’s had a taste of her? He’s ruining her reputation, and she’s too blind to care. Next he’ll be putting his boots under her bed. I
heard
them, Grisha,” she repeats. “What will you do to stop him?” she demands, and by the colour in her face, the barely
disguised fury, Grisha understands, with a start, what he hasn’t before.

The woman isn’t worried about Antonina losing Angelkov to Kropotkin. She’s jealous, jealous in the same way he is. She wants Antonina as he does. How long has it been like this? How has he not seen it?

He feels weak at the thought of the musician making love to Antonina. “It isn’t in our control to stop the countess from bringing whomever she wishes into her home,” he says calmly, not wanting her to see how deeply he’s affected. “It is still her home, Lilya. Don’t forget that.”

Lilya stares at him. “Fine. If I have to, I will stop him myself.”

He turns away from Lilya’s glare. “And just what do you propose to do?”

When she doesn’t answer, he looks over his shoulder at her. She has an odd smile on her face, something that gives him a jolt of understanding even deeper than the one from a moment ago.
Something’s not right with her. Surely she’s ill in some way
.

“You’ll see, Grigori Sergeyevich. If he returns, you’ll see how I stop him.”

Later that morning, as an icy, slanted rain falls, Antonina looks out her bedroom window at the garden below.

Almost all of the plants are dead, the leaves blackened and drooping, the soggy mounds of the flower beds like graves. The only survivors are a few beaten-down chrysanthemums with their tattered rust and dull gold blossoms, heavy with moisture. There are spots of brightness from the rosehips on their thorny stems: hard, brilliant garnets against the skeletal remains of the rose bushes.

And as Antonina surveys the sad remains of past beauty, the rain turns into the first snow. It falls onto the garden, slowly covering everything with a strange silvery glow. Antonina feels a sense of relief. She would rather it all be covered with pristine white than see it in such a state of ugliness.

She will never see Valentin again. She wraps her arms around herself, hearing him say that Mikhail would be playing his music somewhere. In her heart she knows this is unlikely, but allows herself the comfort of that vision: Misha at the piano. It’s a better image than the one of him in a peasant’s hut. She can’t bear to think of her son cold and hungry. Hurt.

She doesn’t want to stay in the house with these thoughts, so she puts on her cloak and walks out into the garden. But the snow switches back to rain, dissolving the delicate lacing of white. She becomes damp and chilled. Valentin said he’d given a letter for her to Grisha. Why didn’t Grisha deliver it to her?

When Grisha opens the door to her knock, expecting Lilya again, he steps back, surprised.

“Grisha? Valentin Vladimirovitch told me he gave you a letter for me. I’ve come for it,” she says.

Grisha’s face is dark in the odd light of this third day of November. He studies Antonina, looking for anything about her that is different now that she’s been with the musician. A slow-beating anger simmers as he thinks of them together, but Antonina can’t know that he knows, that Lilya has been to see him. He needs Lilya to get to Soso. And to Mikhail.

“Countess,” he says, and the word hovers oddly, like a presence, between them. He won’t call her Antonina. “I’m sorry. I was involved in matters off the estate yesterday and the letter slipped my mind.”

It’s an outright lie. He didn’t want to give it to her. He didn’t want to face her. He’s so tired of lying about Mikhail, about what he feels for her.

“May I come in?” she asks.

“Yes, please. Come in.”

In the small sitting room, the curtains are open, letting in the soft daylight, and a fire of fir cones gives off a woodsy odour. The settee, covered in soft brown wool, is pulled close to the fire. A few lamps are lit, adding to the warm feeling of the room. There are many books, and a sense of comfort, of home.

“The letter …” Grisha says, looking around. “I put it somewhere.”

Antonina picks up a book lying open, face down, on the settee. “Guiraud:
Les Deux Princes
. You read French, then?”

“My father taught me.”

“How is it your father spoke French?”

Grisha is not about to disclose his past at this moment. He suddenly thinks that if he comes close enough, he will smell Kropotkin on her—and all at once he’s furious with her. She’s like a bitch in heat, spreading her scent, driving everyone within sniffing distance insane. Restraining himself, he says, “I’ve had that book since I was a young man. I carried it with me here, to Angelkov.”

“Timofey Aleksandrovitch Kasakov,” she reads from the flyleaf. It’s Grisha’s handwriting. Timofey. Tima: the name he’d asked her to call him the night in the dacha.
Call me Tima
, he’d whispered.

She looks up from the book. “Tima,” she says, and he knows, by her eyes, what she’s thinking.

He’s trembling, although Grisha is not a man to tremble.
He wants to go to her, wants to hold her so badly that he finds it hard to breathe.

“That’s the name you were once called?”

He’s so raw. He knows what she’s done with Kropotkin, what Lilya told him they had done in the last twelve hours. In that moment Grisha feels there will be no future and can be no consequences. He wants to say something meaningful, something that will make her understand it’s him she should be with—him, not Kropotkin.

He says, instead, “Yes, that was the name I was given.”

“You changed it to Grigori Sergeyevich Naryshkin.”

“Yes,” he says firmly.

She lets a moment pass, and then puts the book back on the settee. In spite of Grisha’s curtness, it appears she doesn’t want to leave. She picks up the
svirel
, putting her fingers on its six holes as Valentin had done, looking at the name Tima carved on one side. “Do you play?”

“No. It was a gift.” Her questions turn the knife sharply in his gut. She must know what she’s doing, talking to him as if nothing has changed. But everything has changed. Is she punishing him?

She puts the flute back. “Do you know something odd? Kropotkin told me that when he hears music, he sees colour. The sound a cello makes is red. The piano green, the piccolo yellow … He named what he saw when he heard each instrument. He made me think of Misha when he told me about it. Misha learned to play the piano as easily as he learned to say the letters of the alphabet or count his numbers.” Remembering Misha learning to play makes her smile. “I sometimes thought—” Her smile falls away as she looks at Grisha. “What is it?”

He’s gripping the mantle, his knuckles white, his complexion blanching.