The Lost Souls of Angelkov (20 page)

The men were dressed in the usual belted tunics and full trousers and felt boots worn by the peasantry. Antonina’s gaze kept returning to a violinist, the youngest member of the troupe. He appeared to be about her age. He had a narrow, sensitive face and curling, dark blond hair. She couldn’t see the colour of his eyes across the grand expanse of the room, but his eyebrows slanted downwards at the outside edges, giving him a slightly melancholy expression.

Antonina moved closer, keeping to the wall; the room was bustling with servants setting up chairs and arranging ribbons and candles and hothouse flowers. She leaned against one of the smooth round pillars that rose to the soaring ceiling. Now she could see that the violinist’s eyes were dark blue. He had delicate hands with long, tapering fingers, and a wide mouth. As well, he had a puffy, burgundy bruise on his left cheekbone—new, still swollen.

He lowered his bow and turned a page of the score. Antonina looked away in case he glanced up and saw her staring at him. She studied the elaborate cornice above one
of the windows. When she looked back, he was playing again. His eyes were closed, his face radiant, the shadows of his lashes on his cheeks. What was he thinking of?

The first night of the celebration, after dinner and before the orchestra played, Antonina looked out a tall window at the end of the drawing room. Although a crush of guests circulated around her, she stood alone. In the dark glass she could see her reflection and the wavering shapes of others against the candlelight that filled the room behind her. The air was stifling, the fireplaces at either end of the long hall roaring, and the odours of the guests’ heavy perfumes and pomades, underlaid by perspiration, were thick. There were too many voices, too much laughter as the guests drank fine champagne while they waited to dance.

She had a headache just behind her eyes, brought on by the heat, the noise and tension, and the imported champagne. She had drunk a great deal of it, but found it overly sweet. She preferred the clean, smooth taste of vodka. She leaned her forehead against the cool pane, closing her eyes. Where was Lilya living now? In another dank, cold peasant hut, like the izba in Kazhra, or worse? She thought of the little boy, Lilya’s brother, with his bare bottom and knobby knees and filthy feet, holding on to his mother’s skirt. The wet depth of his cough. Was he still alive? Had Lilya managed to care for him as well as carry out whatever job she had been assigned?

She didn’t want to think of that terrible time, over three years earlier. Instead, she focused on the orchestra; soon they would assemble and tune their instruments. She envisioned the young violinist with the bruised cheek.

She opened her eyes, startled, as a hand gripped her shoulder. In the glass she saw one of her mother’s friends, Prince Khrutsky. Her mother had introduced Antonina to him earlier than evening.

“All alone, princess?” he asked, needlessly. “This isn’t proper, the special girl alone on the first night of her own party. Do you wish to come into the ballroom and dance when the music begins? I can tell you’re light on your feet.” He smiled at her.

Without facing him, she returned his smile with a very small, polite movement of her lips. He came even closer and very subtly pressed his knee against the back of her thigh. She moved, just enough to turn and face him without having to touch his body. Prince Khrutsky looked even older than her father: hairs protruding from his nostrils and ears, spotted hands, his left eye aimed slightly to one side so she couldn’t be sure if it was actually looking at her.

“Well? Will you save me a dance, mademoiselle?” he said. His breath was fishy and dark with the stink of caviar.

She shook her head. “No, thank you, Prince Khrutsky. I don’t think I’ll dance tonight. A bit of a headache. I’m off to my room soon.”

“Abandoning your own fete? That’s impossible. Come now, a glass of champagne will clear it away, my dear. Come, have a glass. You’re all grown up now—time for champagne.” He laughed as he spoke, and Antonina saw one fish egg, no bigger than a poppy seed, caught between his greying front tooth and eye tooth. Time for champagne, he had said, as though she were a child, unused to drinking. Did he not realize how repulsive he was to her? His hand, still on her shoulder, was hot and heavy. She moved again, dipping
her knees and turning her shoulder just enough to extract herself from his grip.

He raised his hand to summon a servant with a tray of Baccarat champagne glasses.

“Thank you, prince, really, but I believe I’ll go.” As he reached to take two glasses from the tray, she slipped away and hurried across the room.

The prince followed. She heard him calling:
Princess Antonina Leonidovna. Mademoiselle, please. Don’t run from me. I only wish to enjoy your company. We don’t have to dance if it is not your desire. Mademoiselle!

Glancing over her shoulder again, she saw Prince Khrutsky bearing down on her. She turned a corner and ran to her father’s study. She slipped behind a painted screen of Oriental vines and flowers and pushed, firmly, on a panel in the wall. It opened soundlessly. She stepped in and swung it closed behind her. Immediately she was in darkness. She put her hand out and slightly up to the right, and yes, they were still there: the candle and flint. It had been a long time since she had used this passageway.

Her brother Dimitri had first shown her the hidden stairways in the huge manor when she was five or six, and Antonina had been delighted and curious to explore. The doors were nearly impossible to discern even when you knew where to look. She spent endless hours moving about these secret places as a child, popping out and frightening the servants. This one, in the study, led to her mother’s bedroom. Although Antonina was told they’d been built for safety reasons, should there be some threat to the family, she couldn’t imagine this ever happening. After all, the house was full of faithful servants and the whole estate guarded with more trusted serfs and fierce dogs.

She struck the flint and lit the candle. The space smelled stale, and was strung with cobwebs. Under her slippers, old scatterings of mouse droppings crunched with tiny popping sounds. She sat on the second step of the narrow, steep flight of wooden stairs, careless of her satin skirt. She put her arms on her knees and rested her forehead on them. The champagne had left a sour taste in her mouth. She waited, listening to the far-off, muted voices and laughter, thinking that in another few minutes she would blow out the candle and step back into her father’s study. Prince Khrutsky would have found someone else to flirt with. She would slip out of the study and run up the graceful curve of the centre staircase to her bedroom without being seen.

She had survived the meal, and been toasted and congratulated and kissed by her family and her friends and her parents’ friends. Once the dancing began, no one would notice her absence.

She heard her father’s voice, slightly muffled, by the door. “Khrutsky,” he said. “Not enjoying the champagne?”

“I was looking for your lovely daughter, Leonid Stepanovich. I thought I saw her scamper in here—I wanted to extend my good wishes to her on this special occasion. I’ve been studying your sword collection. Very impressive, old friend.”

Antonina sat up to listen, their words clear through the thin panel.

“She’s like a shadow, that girl,” her father said, “always slipping about. Here—I recently had this Madeira shipped in. Join me, won’t you?”

She heard the clink of glass against glass, and next smelled the rich odour of cigars. How annoying: she was truly
trapped now. It would be impossible to emerge without embarrassing herself and angering her father.

The candle was only a stub; it would last another five minutes at most. Antonina didn’t want to remain in the dusty, dark place. She thought about her bedroom, and the copy of Goncharov’s
A Common Story
waiting for her. She had only the last few chapters to finish, and wanted so badly to take off her layers of clothing: the silk chemise covered by the tightly laced corset that pressed painfully against her ribs to mould her waist, the layers of petticoats and the heavy satin gown of deep green, which her mother insisted brought out the colour of her eyes. The thought of putting on her cotton nightdress and curling up under her heavy wool coverlet to finish the novel was unbearably tempting. She had another of these tedious social evenings to deal with tomorrow. Apart from the music, which she loved, it was simply too much rich food and drink, the same overly loud laughter, the same conversations.

Her father and Prince Khrutsky were now on to uninteresting talk of land and crop production. She wondered how long she would have to wait for them to finish their drinks and their cigars and leave.

Of course!
Antonina rose and carefully started up the stairs that led to her mother’s bedroom. From there, she could simply hurry through the maze of upstairs hallways to her own room. Instinctively stepping over the fourth step, which she remembered made a dry and alarming creak, Antonina climbed. When she was almost at the top, the candle sputtered, diminished but still alive.

In near darkness but for the smallest glimmer, Antonina put out her hand and her fingertips made contact with wood. She pushed gently on the door, disguised as a wallpapered
panel in her mother’s room, hoping one of the servants hadn’t moved a dressing table or heavy chair in front of it since she last used it so long ago. But it swung open easily, silently.

Bending over so as not to hit her head on the lintel, Antonina stepped into the long room. As she straightened, she heard a sound.

She stopped, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light. There was a dull glow from the fireplace, where a hard log of oak softly crackled. She was across from the foot of the bed, and saw a tangle of bed linen. At first she could only make out a bare back, long and white. In the next instant she knew it was her mother by the red blossom in her thick, fair hair. It was still pinned up, although some of it fell from its combs to hang below her shoulder blades.

Holding her breath, Antonina straightened, her eyes never leaving her mother’s back.

Galina Maximova Olonova moved in a slow, easy rhythm as if on her favourite horse, her spine undulating slightly with each forward and then backward motion. Antonina stood, transfixed not as much by the damp, pearly sheen of her mother’s naked back, the dying fire throwing shadows onto it, as by the sight of the hands around her mother’s waist. The fingers were long and smooth, the nails short and clean. They held her mother loosely—not in the grip of possession or passion, but with confidence.

Antonina stood frozen, still holding the candle.

She pressed her lips together and watched as her mother rode faster and faster, beginning now, with each movement, to emit a small cry. There was no sound from the owner of the hands, nor was there, from what Antonina could tell, any movement on his part. It was her mother who was the
flame, bringing the heat and desire, her mother who at one point held on to the man’s hands, wrapping her own around them fiercely, forcing them to hold her more tightly. In the next moment she let go of the hands and cupped her own breasts, throwing back her head so that the loose strands of hair cascaded to the middle of her back.

It appeared, to Antonina, that her mother might indeed have been alone, except for those disembodied hands.

Then her mother gave a long, trilling cry, and after a few seconds of stillness she folded forward. And it was then, over her mother’s form, her hair a light mass on the man’s chest, that Antonina was able to see his face. He was partially propped on a silk-covered pillow. She looked at him, and he looked back at her.

It was the violinist from the serf orchestra, the young one with the bruised cheekbone. He stared at her as her mother lay on him, making small, pleased sounds now.

She knew her face was illuminated by the tiny flame of the candle. She was aware of the sleek, silken warmth of wax dripping onto her hand. The candle burned itself out, a tiny stab of pain in the warm tallow melting into the web of skin between Antonina’s thumb and index finger. She became aware of an odour: not just the familiar strong scent of her mother’s eau de cologne, but also of sweat, and something musky. The smell of sex, Antonina instinctively knew.

The young man didn’t make a sound, nor move. He didn’t look away from Antonina’s steady gaze. His face, so expressive as he played, held none of that joy and passion. Now it showed nothing—no pleasure, no shame.

“My pretty boy, I feel you—still firm and ready. You have boundless energy, it appears.” The princess gave a low,
throaty laugh. “Even after our stolen hour this afternoon, you’re nevertheless more than capable. How delightful you are, as I sensed you would be.” She stroked his shoulder. “Come, Valya, tell me how beautiful I am, and how you have never before had a princess as a lover. I have more to offer than the silly village girls who must throw themselves at you. Tell me how much more I am. Tell me, Valya.”

The man hadn’t taken his eyes from Antonina’s, staring at her over her mother’s shoulder. The princess reached out with one hand to cup his chin and turn his gaze to hers. She then fell to one side, pulling the violinist with her so that they were face to face. “Tell me what I want to hear before you have to go,” she said, and Antonina saw one slack breast drop as her mother raised her arm to push away the hair stuck to her face. “How tiresome that you are needed downstairs.”