The Lost Souls of Angelkov (26 page)

He imagined their lives would continue forever as they
were now. He and Lilya would work the fields, and Lyosha would soon be old enough to be of real help. They would have their own children, but not too many who lived, he hoped, because that would prevent Lily from working, and be more mouths to feed.

A
ntonina had been the Countess Mitlovskiya for a month when she first saw Lilya. It was early October, and the day was uncharacteristically warm and humid.

Antonina, with a manservant behind her, was slowly riding down one of the roads that ran between the golden fields. The peasants were reaping wheat, and some had stopped for their midday meal of boiled potatoes and raw onions and slabs of dark bread.

Antonina noticed a young woman tilt back her head to drink, water running down her chin and onto her neck. The woman tapped a cork back into the flask with the heel of her hand, then shaded her eyes as she looked up at the figure on the horse. Nobody came down this muddy track between the fields, well off the main road, except the estate owner or his visitors.

“Lilya,” Antonina said, and Lilya dropped the flask. It bounced on the ground and lay at her feet.

She looked directly into Antonina’s face without smiling. Around her, other peasants were bowing, their skirts and tunics rustling.

“Leave us,” Antonina said, and with the same rustling the peasants backed away until it was only Antonina and Lilya, the manservant and his horse a few paces away.

Finally, Antonina smiled at Lilya, although Lilya saw that her expression was slightly uncertain.

“Why are you here, Princess Olonova?” she asked, conscious of her sweat-soaked blouse, her tattered kerchief. She attempted a smile of her own. “Do you visit the count?”

It wasn’t the smile Antonina remembered. It was awkward, as if Lilya had forgotten how to move her mouth. “No,” she said. “I’m not visiting. You’re working here?” she asked as she dismounted.

“Yes. I’ve lived on the estate for almost four years,” Lilya said, and Antonina felt a thump of distress.

“This is where my father sent you?”

Lilya nodded.

There was a moment of silence as the women just looked at each other, each lost in her own thoughts. Finally Antonina asked, “Lyosha?” She was afraid the child had died.

Lilya was glad to have something else to speak of. “He’s getting tall, and too skinny, but he’s as healthy now as any of the other boys.”

“Good. That’s very good,” Antonina said. The silence again. “How are you?” It was an inane question; she was acutely aware that Lilya didn’t look well. “It’s very warm today,” she added.

Lilya wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. “Yes. A warm day for October, princess,” she agreed with that same unnatural smile.

“Oh. Lilya, I’m no longer to be addressed as princess,” Antonina said. “I … I am Countess Mitlovskiya.”

At this, Lilya’s eyes widened. “You married the landowner?”

“Only last month,” Antonina said. Lilya was so thin, her pallor almost grey. Under her eyes the skin was smudged a deep violet, as though she hadn’t slept in a long time. Her face and the front of her blouse were soaked from her exertions.

When she first came, Lilya had seen the landowner occasionally, with his haughty wife at his side. She couldn’t imagine Antonina married to such an old man. “We knew he remarried, of course. We heard it was a young woman from another estate in Pskov. The marriage … it was your wish?”

Lilya knew she was being bold, but until Antonina made it clear she shouldn’t address her so informally, she would ask what she wanted to know.

“It was best for all involved,” Antonina said, and at that she saw something in Lilya’s face soften.

“Not a love match, then?”

It was as if the last four years fell away with Lilya’s abrupt question, and Antonina was with her friend again. She shook her head.

“And are you …” Lilya stopped, and licked her lips. “Are you pleased with your husband?”

“It is very early to speak of such things, Lilya.”

A slight line appeared between Lilya’s dark eyebrows. “I am married as well.”

“Your husband is kind to you?” Antonina asked, glancing away from her to the bent backs of her fellow labourers.

“Soso—Iosef Igorovitch—is strong and hard-working.”

“Well, I hope he’s also kind, Lilya Petrova. You deserve kindness.”

Another silence fell between them, comfortable this time, and then Lilya asked, “Do you have your own dog yet?”

At this unexpected question, Antonina felt such relief that she laughed, and Lilya herself made a strangled sound that could pass for laughter.

“I do. Her name is Tinka, and she’s still a puppy. She’s a very sweet little thing. She follows me everywhere, and demands to be held whenever I sit.”

“That’s good,” Lilya said.

Antonina looked at Lilya’s painfully thin frame. “Do you have children?”

Lilya’s face lost any animation. “No, countess. And I must return to my work—I’m slowing the others down.”

“Of course.”

Lilya picked up her scythe. It hurt Antonina, this deliberate display of wanting—needing—to return to work, when all Antonina wanted was for Lilya to talk to her.

“Goodbye, countess,” Lilya said, and bent to her work.

Every time he came to Antonina’s bedroom that first month of their marriage, Konstantin would lie beside her in the dark and kiss her hand. Then he would stroke her hair and face, and finally, after some sort of fussing with his nightshirt, he would ease himself on top of her. But it was always as it had been the first time in Pskov: he was unable to accomplish the task.

With each of her husband’s attempts, Antonina squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath, until finally, one night, he said, “My dear angel, please. You must put on some show of tenderness.”

His voice, for the first time, bore a trace of actual sadness. He had visited Tania the evening before—as he had each week since he had begun with her, six months after the death of his first wife. Never, before this second marriage, had he experienced the difficulty he did with Antonina. Tania reminded him of his wife in age and appearance, and that was enough. He had enjoyed the physical side of his marriage with the first countess, and he felt powerful and virile with her—Irina Denisovich—and then with Tania. But this girl … something about the way she behaved with him made him feel old and powerless.

Antonina knew she had a duty towards her husband. The marriage bed, from all she understood in her novels, was the place where the act of love occurred. But she felt no love for Konstantin, and in no way could she imagine the embarrassing joining of their bodies as pleasurable. She often thought of her mother and Valentin. What did her mother feel that made her act so freely? She clearly didn’t love the young violinist, and yet that didn’t prevent her from enjoying what they did.

Antonina knew what was expected, and that it would have to happen if they were to have children—the reason he married her.

“Do you not … is there nothing I can do, Antonina?” Konstantin said in a tone of exasperation, rolling off her. But instead of leaving, he arranged two pillows against the headboard and propped himself against them, crossing his arms over his chest.

Antonina sat up and did the same, her shoulder resting against his in the darkness.

“I know you’re young, and high-spirited,” he said finally. “I don’t, for one moment, fool myself into believing you are pleased to be married to me. I’m certain you didn’t expect to find yourself here. Like this.”

He spoke the truth. There was nothing for Antonina to say.

“But Tosya,” he said, once he realized she would not dispute his words, “I want to have a child—a son and heir. It was my life’s greatest disappointment that my first wife did not bear any children. There is a chance now. Is there nothing about me you find appealing? Nothing?”

The added
nothing
, uttered with a hopeless air, stirred a sense of pity in her. She wasn’t attracted to him in any way. She was bored with his outright determination, pushing against her all these nights to no avail. But something—perhaps the defeat in his voice—made her feel sorry for him.

“I enjoy when you speak to me of the estate at dinner, and when your face shows that you enjoy listening to me play the piano.” She cleared her throat. “I know you didn’t mean what you said, that first day after the wedding—about me being empty. You didn’t really mean it, did you, Konstantin?” Somehow it was important, at this moment, that this man—her husband—find her intelligent.

He didn’t answer, but looked at the bedside table. “What is this book?” he asked, picking it up.

“
Eugénie Grandet
, by Honoré de Balzac.”

“Would you read to me? Just for a few moments,” he said, handing her the volume and then lighting the lamp. The request pleased Antonina; while reading, she was somewhere else,
and safe. She opened the book where she had left off, and read aloud in French.

After ten minutes, Konstantin kissed her cheek and rose. “I was never one for reading. Figures are my strength. Have a pleasant sleep.”

“Thank you, my dear husband,” Antonina added, knowing it would please Konstantin for her to address him like this.

After he had gone, she felt a small glimmer of something that was close to pleasure.

In the fourth week of their marriage, Konstantin came in as Antonina’s maid was braiding her hair for the night. “Pin it up quickly, please,” Antonina said quietly, and the maid did so, winding the thick braids around Antonina’s head and securing them with hairpins.

Nobody but her maids had seen Antonina’s hair loose since she had been fourteen years old and stopped wearing it tied back with ribbons. It now reached to her waist, and she worried that Konstantin would think that with it down she looked too young.

He was carrying a small red box tied with a white bow. She tried to hide her disappointment that he had come to her. She was weary. She’d ridden the whole afternoon, had had her bath, and now wanted nothing more than to turn out the lamp and let her tired muscles relax. She had no energy for the same fumbling with nightclothes, the same endless pushing against her without any success, and finally, his disappointment palpable, Konstantin’s silent rising from the bed and quiet shutting of her bedroom door as he returned to his own.

He sat in a chair by the fireplace in his robe. When the maid had been dismissed, Antonina stood, and he did as well, holding out the box to her.

“What’s this?”

“I saw it when I was in Pskov yesterday, and thought of you.”

“Thank you,” Antonina said, taking it from him and untying the bow. Inside was a music box of lovely polished cherry with an inlay of mother-of-pearl on the lid. She turned the tiny brass key and it played a little Mozart sonata. It reminded her of the serf orchestra; they had played the same sonata at her party over six months earlier. She thought of Valentin’s hands around her mother’s naked waist, and felt a soft warmth, low in her abdomen.

She set the music box, still tinkling, on a table. “How pretty. And how thoughtful, Konstantin.”

He nodded, turning down the lamp on the dressing table. The only light came from the fire and a candle beside the bed.