The Lost Souls of Angelkov (16 page)

T
he mid-October Sunday was overcast and gloomy, the air chilled. Within ten minutes of Antonina and Lilya meeting, the rain started. Lilya cringed with each boom of thunder and jagged flash of lightning.

“I must go,” she said, picking up Sezja and holding him against her. The dog trembled, whining, and Lilya glanced nervously at the sky.

“Come,” Antonina said, holding out her hand. “Come with me. I’ll take you back to the village.” They ran, hand in hand, to her horse. Semyon pulled a heavy cape from his saddlebag and dismounted, settling it around Antonina’s shoulders. She helped Lilya up, and climbed in front of her. There wasn’t really enough space for two girls in the saddle, but they were both slight, and Lilya was pressed against Antonina’s back.

“Hold tightly,” Antonina said, and Lilya wrapped her arms around Antonina’s waist, the puppy between them.
Antonina urged the horse into a quick trot. They were at the edge of the village within ten minutes.

“Please, Antonina Leonidovna, let me down here,” Lilya shouted above the downpour. She had stopped calling Antonina “princess” long ago, and sometimes even called her Tosya.

“No, no, I will take you directly to your house,” Antonina said. “Which one is it?”

“Please. Here is best,” Lilya said, but Antonina wouldn’t listen. Finally Lilya pointed down the muddy, deserted road. It was dark and wet and miserable. All the wooden doors were closed and the windows shuttered against the storm. When they stopped in front of a small hovel, Kesha and Semyon behind them, the door opened. A man and a woman looked out while rain poured onto them off the slanted roof. A little boy, his scrawny legs dirty and bare beneath a short, tattered tunic, hid behind his mother, clutching her skirt. He coughed in a phlegmy way, his mouth open. He was perhaps two or three—Antonina couldn’t tell, he was so thin. The mother pushed him farther behind her and the child was hidden from view, the choking wet cough the only indication he was still there.

The man and woman stared with consternation, their mouths open. Then they bowed from the waist, rain bouncing off their backs. The child coughed, over and over.

“Kesha,” Antonina called. “Come and help her down.”

As the man dismounted and held his arms up to Lilya to help her off the horse, Antonina saw the woman in the doorway, still bent, cross herself and then kiss her fingers.

“Are these your parents?” Antonina asked, although she knew that the man dressed in the leather tunic of a blacksmith,
his great arms and thick hands stained black, was surely Lilya’s father.

“Yes, princess,” Lilya said, reverting to the old title as she stood beside the horse. She then bowed as she hadn’t in a long time. “My father Petya—Pyotr Ivanovich—and my mother, Leepa Stanislavova.”

Lilya’s father spoke to his boots. “My deepest apologies, Princess Olonova. Whatever my daughter has done, she will never again repeat. She will be beaten for her misbehaviour.”

The rain was lessening now. Antonina frowned. “Look at me, Petya,” Antonina said. The man straightened. His mouth was still slightly open, and Antonina saw from the way his lower lip caved in that he had no bottom teeth. “She has done nothing wrong.” She glanced at Lilya.

The girl’s eyes were unnaturally wide, her expression somehow pleading, as if she wished Antonina to understand something. Her hand around Sezja’s muzzle so he couldn’t bark, she stood beside her father. But now he narrowed his eyes, looking at his wife, who was still bent over, and then at Lilya. He spoke so low that Antonina couldn’t hear what he said. Lilya shook her head, also speaking rapidly in the same indiscernible murmur. The father responded with a slight rise in tone, as though arguing. Lilya finally looked up at Antonina.

“My father says that you must take Sezja.”

Her father hissed something and Lilya dropped her gaze to the mud again.

“What? Why would I take him?”

“I told him that Sezja was almost swept away in the stream.” Looking down, Lilya was speaking louder and more slowly than usual. “That you had your men grab him
and save him. That you worried about Sezja—that’s why you brought us home.” Although Antonina couldn’t see Lilya’s face, she knew from the odd, stiff voice that Lilya was begging Antonina not to correct her.

Antonina didn’t understand why Lilya had fabricated this lie and yet knew it was somehow important that she go along with it. “Oh. Oh, yes. It was simply a fortunate situation, us coming by just as little Sezja slipped on the muddy bank. I’m only happy my men saved him from certain death.”

Pyotr Ivanovich brusquely grabbed the puppy from Lilya. It yelped. He held it by its throat, swinging it up to Antonina, his head still down, although Lilya now looked up. Antonina saw the back of his thick neck, the line of grime just under the collar of his tunic. “You must take it, princess. Our daughter says you like the dog, so you must have it.”

Antonina opened her mouth in protest, but at the sight of Lilya’s face, so pale and troubled, she nodded, taking Sezja. “Thank you,” she said, then stopped. She had been about to say “Lilya Petrova” but now realized it would not go well for Lilya should her father realize she knew anything more about her.

Without another word, she turned her horse and left the village, Sezja held tight against her. On the ride home she thought of Lilya’s face, so ashen, and the little boy’s bony legs, the knees too large.

That night, Antonina slept with Sezja in her bed. She had brought him up to her room under her cape, and fed him a big plate of rich beef covered in gravy, taken from the kitchen after dinner. Twice in the evening she set the puppy outside
on her balcony and watched him run in circles, sniffing busily before squatting to relieve himself near one of the posts. The second time, he looked through the balcony railings, stiffening, then let out a long series of sharp little barks. “Shh, shh, Sezja,” Antonina said, grabbing him up and holding his muzzle as Lilya had done. She crouched down with him, seeing Borya, the head stable serf, leading a horse across the yard. “You will have to learn not to bark at everyone here. You will have to learn to be a good and quiet little dog,” she whispered against his warm ear.

Antonina fell asleep with the puppy in her arms, but at some point she became aware of him moving restlessly and whimpering. She sleepily stroked him and murmured to him, falling asleep again. In the morning she saw that during the night the little thing had been sick, leaving a slimy mess of barely chewed beef at the foot of her silk bedcover.

The puppy cried louder now, circling the edge of the high bed, unable or afraid to jump down, and Antonina picked him up and hurried him out to the balcony again. As the puppy quivered, obviously in pain, crouching in a piteous way as he tried to rid himself of the rich food, Antonina realized she had made him ill with the abundance of beef and gravy.

“My poor Sezja,” she murmured, stroking the dog’s head and back when he had finally finished and lay, head on his paws, staring in what Antonina thought was a mournful way through the balcony railings.

The dog looked up at her, and she felt a jolt of remorse. Did he miss Lilya, and his meals of dry bread crusts, perhaps his nest of straw near the stove?

“Are you sad, little boy?” she asked, picking him up and holding him against her. He struggled to free himself, and
she set him down. He went back to look between the railings, and this made Antonina feel worse. She knew she had been unkind to take him from Lilya, and from his home, but what choice did she have? Lilya had made it clear.

After the maid had helped her dress and had done her hair and taken the ruined bedcover away as Antonina instructed, she took Sezja down to the drawing room, where her father sat reading in front of the fire.

“Look, Papa,” she said, cradling Sezja, holding his muzzle.

Without lifting his eyes from his book, the prince said, in a distracted manner, “What is it, Tosya?”

“I have a puppy. Look,” she said, pressing her lips onto the dog’s head. He squirmed.

Her father looked up, removing his eyeglass. “What? What is this? Where has it come from?”

“I … I found him in the woods. He was all alone, Papochka, and hungry. I brought him home. I want to keep him.”

Her father rose, coming closer and looking at the dog. “No,” he said.

“Papa. Why not? I’ll look after him. I’ll feed him, and make sure he doesn’t cause any trouble. We already have dogs. What’s one more?” She looked at the three borzois. They were quiet yet alert at the scent of the puppy, their long noses lifted from their equally long and delicate front paws. Three pairs of eyes were fixed on what Antonina held.

“My wolfhounds are trained hunting dogs. They have a purpose. They’re treated well because they earn it. We have the guard dogs in the yard. They too know their place, and what they’re expected to do. But that dog has no purpose.”

Antonina looked at the borzois again. There were always three of them; if one fell ill or was killed in a hunting expedition, her father would have it replaced as soon as possible. The dogs were carefully bred, with a powerful instinct to chase a moving object. Although they hunted any small game, they were particularly adept at running down a wolf. The three of them, Antonina knew, could catch a wolf and hold it by its neck until her father or brothers or any of their guests arrived to kill it for themselves.

Antonina had always been warned that the borzois didn’t understand simple amusements such as fetching thrown objects or rough play. They were aloof and gracious, silent, and also sensitive, nervous around too much activity. They didn’t understand children, with their unexpected movements and noise, her father had explained. Should she approach them suddenly, they might snap at her. Now, even though she was no longer a spontaneous child who might invoke anxiety in the dogs, she had nothing to do with them. They were her father’s dogs. She knew their names, and that was all.

“Your village cur is an ill-bred
laika
. All he’ll ever know is how to bark and how to pull a load. He has no pedigree. Do you know that these dogs—my dogs—cannot be purchased?”

Sezja pulled his muzzle free and gave a short yap. All three borzois instantly rose, glancing at their master for permission. Sezja barked again, struggling, and Antonina set him down. The borzois tensed, looking from their master back to the
laika
.

“Down,” he said, and they dropped to the ground as one, but remained poised as they watched the puppy.

“They’re bred by the Tsar,” her father went on, as Sezja sniffed around his boots. “His dogs are given as gifts to those landowners who have shown themselves worthy, with great tracts of land and an abundance of souls and all taxes paid on time.
Aiii!
” he suddenly shouted, kicking the puppy away. Sezja had grabbed the toe of his leather riding boot between his tiny, sharp teeth. “Look—already he’s showing predictable behaviour.” He pointed the boot with its row of tiny teeth marks towards Antonina as she knelt, holding Sezja. “None of my dogs have ever been guilty of such behaviour.”

“I never ask anything of you, Papa,” Antonina said. “Please?” She let go of Sezja again and stood, looking at her father with her chin down and her eyes tilted up at him. She had used this tactic before, although not since she was much younger.

Her father gazed at her wearily, then nodded. “Fine. But you must keep him in the stables.”

Antonina frowned. “He’s still a baby. He’s too young, Papa. He’ll be lonely all by himself. And he might be stepped on by a horse. Please, Papochka. Please, let me keep him with me until he’s older,” Antonina begged.

Sezja scampered towards the larger of the male wolfhounds, yapping. The older dog growled a warning, and at the low rumble Sezja threw himself onto his back, whimpering.

“Do you see?” the prince asked Antonina. “He’s a grovelling serf dog, this little
laika
. He has no fight, no spirit. He’s not meant to be an estate dog.”

Antonina hurried to pick him up, and Sezja let out a series of yips, as if complaining to her. “I’ll keep him away from your dogs, truly, Papa.”

But the prince wouldn’t relent. “No. The barking will annoy everyone. He’s an outside animal. Take him to Borya at the stables. You can visit him when you like. That’s the end of the matter, Antonina.”

He sat down again, picking up his book, his wolfhounds unmoving but ever watchful. From outside came the sound of the wind in the trees nearest the house.

Antonina knew her father would not change his mind. She took Sezja to Borya, who looked disgruntled when Antonina told him he must look out for the puppy.

“Please clean out the empty stall in the corner, and put in fresh straw for him to sleep in,” she told him. “Also one of the horse blankets. I’ll come to feed him and play with him every day, Borya. All I ask is that you make sure you keep the stall door closed so he can’t get out and under the feet of the horses, or into the yard. And keep him away from the guard dogs.”

Borya nodded, and Antonina waited while he forked out the soiled straw and threw in a fresh, fragrant bale. Then she spent time fashioning a little bed for the puppy in a warm, dry corner of the stall in the high-ceilinged stable.