The Lost Souls of Angelkov (29 page)

“It’s all right, Olga,” Antonina says. “Send for Father Cyril.”

As she leaves, Olga mutters, “The Father’s prayers will surely heal the master.” Her eyes flicker to the doctor, holding a long, slender tube. “Prayers we can always rely on,” she says, giving him a pointed look.

Antonina does not apologize for the servant.

The quinine and chloride prove no use. Dr. Molov next brings out a jar of fly maggots. “It sometimes helps,” he tells Antonina. “I’ll place them in the open wound. They will consume only the dead flesh, leaving the living tissue unaffected. Perhaps this can stop the spread. But I want you to be aware that it’s the last attempt.”

Antonina looks away from the squirming white larvae. “The last attempt before what? If the maggots don’t work, what then?”

“Countess Mitlovskiya,” Dr. Molov says, “it has become gangrenous. There would be but one option left to try and save the count’s life.”

“Yes?” Antonina says, although the doctor thinks she appears rather uninterested.

“Amputation, before the infection is carried even further into the body. It will be clear, in the next day, if the maggots are effective.”

The amputation takes place two days later.

Konstantin is tossing restlessly, and the bedroom is even more foul-smelling. Dr. Molov has opened a wooden case with a number of tools: various pincers and knives, as well as a small saw with an ebony handle.

“I will put the count into a sleep with chloroform,” Dr. Molov says. “Its vapour depresses the nervous system. But it’s difficult to find the right balance. Not enough and there will be the pain. Too much can lead to … Well, as I say, it’s a delicate balance. To be safe, I need two men to hold him down, should he start to feel the amputation.”

He uncorks a tall, narrow glass bottle. Antonina is near enough to detect a slightly sweet odour. Suddenly she notices a bucket of sawdust on the floor beside the bed. Why sawdust? Is this for the amputated arm? It will be cut off just below the elbow, the doctor has told her. Antonina’s mouth is dry; it’s as if she has been eating the contents of the bucket.

The doctor says, “Pavel, stand on one side of him, and you on the other … Grisha, is it?”

Grisha is watching Antonina. “You shouldn’t be here, countess.”

“You needn’t touch him yet,” the doctor instructs the men, who have moved into position. “Just be prepared.” He lifts Konstantin’s head and passes the bottle under his nose. Konstantin turns his head away fitfully, but within a moment it seems as though the anaesthetic is exciting him. He looks
about, his eyes wide now, muttering syllables that make no sense. But in the next instant he slumps in what appears to be an insensible state.

“All right,” Dr. Molov says, rolling up his sleeves. He unwraps Konstantin’s hand, and Antonina covers her mouth and nose against the smell of the blackened, rotten-looking hand, the fingers bloated, the nails ebony and embedded deeply in the puffy flesh.

“I believe it best you go, countess,” Grisha says again, and she looks at him gratefully and leaves.

But even in her room, she hears Konstantin’s shrieks. She covers her ears with her hands and paces. Finally, all is quiet. She stands, looking out the window. There is a knock on her door. When she opens it, Grisha tells her, “You may see him.”

She goes to Konstantin’s room. His eyes are closed, but he is turning his head from side to side, as if in the grip of a nightmare. The bedclothes are drawn to his neck. Pavel and the doctor sit on either side of the bed. There is no evidence of the trauma that took place hours earlier. The window is open and a cool, fresh breeze blows in.

She looks down at Konstantin’s face, waxy and damp. She nods at the doctor, and returns to her room.

The day after the amputation, Dr. Molov tells Antonina that her husband has voluntarily taken some nourishment, and has spoken her name. He doesn’t tell her that, while delirious, Count Mitlovsky more frequently cried out for someone named Tania. The second day after the amputation, he says, “The fever is gone and the stitched area looks as well as can be expected. There is nothing more for me to do apart
from regular visits to check on the healing. The recuperation should go smoothly, but the labour will be for the count to learn to use his left hand.”

Antonina finds it difficult to visit Konstantin. He closes his eyes or stares at the window when she comes to sit beside his bed, ignoring her when she asks if he has pain or needs her to do anything. Eventually she doesn’t go to his room, but asks Pavel how the count is doing. His answer is always the same:
As well as can be expected, madam
. He tells her that the tincture of chloroform mixed with opiate the doctor left helps her husband deal with the pain.

A month after the kidnapping, Grisha comes to Antonina in the music salon, where she sits on the chair beside the piano, her hands limp in her lap. He tells her he feels that, with her permission, they might give up the daily searches. They have questioned the serfs in a radius of over two hundred versts, he tells her, but his face is a blur to Antonina, his voice coming as if from a long distance. The kidnapping has been reported to the authorities in the city of Pskov, and those authorities have also notified the correct office in St. Petersburg. Nobody has come forward to speak of the appearance of an unknown child, or to report seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary.

“There appears little else we can do,” Grisha concludes, and reaches out as if to touch her, but stops himself. The expression on her face is as if she has just received shattering news, a startled look of disbelief.

“There must be something more we can do. There
must
be, Grisha,” she repeats. “We can’t just stop looking for him. As if … as if he’s …” She can’t continue.

“I understand,” he says gently. “But the estate must continue to be run. Do you wish me—on my own—to continue to look?”

“Yes. Let the others return to their duties, but please, you continue with the search.” She turns and walks from the music salon, going to her bedroom, where she sits on the bed. Such darkness engulfs her that she thinks, for the first time, of ways to die. She can’t bear to think that her son is suffering.

There is no comfort save one: there has been no body. She will not believe her son is dead until she sees his body.

The silence of the house strangles her. The servants walk as though their feet are encased in cotton wool, and their voices never rise above a whisper. The spring—it is now May—has been exceptionally rainy. The trees are breaking into glorious colour, and yet there is a sodden, saturated feeling underfoot, and in the air. Perhaps she is drowning. Yes, she feels as if she is drowning: she can’t breathe. Antonina is glad the days are overcast; the light is of no use to her.

There are no words that make sense, no Bible passages that bring comfort. Lilya never stops praying, and tries to persuade Antonina to do the same.

“You must pray, Tosya. Come and kneel with me,” she says every day. “God will help you understand why He has chosen this path for you. He will bring you comfort.”

Antonina shakes her head. She
has
prayed. It does nothing to bring her relief, or to bring Mikhail home to her. When Father Cyril requests a visit, she refuses to see him.

Every morning, she sets out the wine-spattered Glinka music—the music from the violinist Valentin—in her
ritualistic manner on the piano’s music stand. She knows all the pieces by heart, and yet it comforts her to see the first page, with the inscription, as she plays.

When she has finished the repertoire, she walks through the house: the morning room, the dining room, the conservatory, the library, the study, the billiards room, the gunroom, the drawing room. She touches all the beautiful, meaningless things: the glass ornaments, the black silhouette portraits in frames, the spines of the books on the shelves, the petals of hothouse flowers, the marble and polished wood tabletops.

“There has been no body,” she whispers dozens of times a day. She touches the browning frond of an ornamental palm and whispers, “No body,” then the heavy glass corners of the inkwell and again the same whisper. The servants are uncomfortable around her; when she enters a room, they bow and back out.

But she has to keep repeating the two words. They are her comfort. Her son’s body has not been discovered. Therefore, there is the chance he is alive. And for this reason she will keep hoping.

Mikhail may be alive. She will not abandon the search for him.

The only way she can get through the day is with wine or vodka, but even so, her head hurts, her body hurts. It is as though her nerve endings have moved to the surface of her skin. Taking laudanum and a crushed bromide tablet with her wine or vodka before Lilya tucks her in at night affords her a few hours of numbness.