The Lost Souls of Angelkov (40 page)

Antonina cannot meet Grisha’s insistent stare. Instead, she looks over his shoulder at a flock of grey-brown curlews with their slender, down-curved bills, making their way south. “So in essence, I receive nothing. I simply lose my serfs and my land.”

“Yes, madam,” Grisha says. “This is what you face. It’s been such for many months.”

“Surely Konstantin provided …” she says, and then stops. “Yakovlev will tell me what funds I will have. What about you, Grisha? You’ve always been a free man.” As she speaks, she imagines him leaving for the first time. She can’t envision Angelkov without him. She can’t imagine her life without Grisha in it.

Grisha’s face becomes hard, unreadable. “I am not a concern of yours, Countess Mitlovskiya. I have always seen to my best interests.”

Something about the way he states the last three words—
my best interests
—chills her. She looks at him, tall and straight on his horse. She realizes she knows nothing of his past. She
only knows his house with the blue shutters, the steward’s house: books neatly arranged on shelves, a fire crackling.

“You were working for the count as a cooper when I came to the estate,” she says.

“Yes.”

How much older is he than she? Seven, eight years?

“Are you from one of the nearby villages?”

“No. I came from St. Petersburg, but before that I lived in Moscow.”

“Ah, yes,” Antonina says. Something about the way Grisha is looking at her is unnerving. It’s as though he either wants her to ask him more or wants her to stop asking altogether. She realizes she’s deeply uncomfortable, although she has no idea why. She’s spent more time with Grisha over the past few months than with anyone, save Lilya. She’s never before felt uncomfortable with him.

He’s still looking at her, and Antonina grows unexpectedly flustered. She returns his look for what feels like a few seconds too long, and then looks down at her ungloved hands on the reins. A sudden gust of cool wind makes her shiver; gold and orange leaves from the larch trees that line both sides of the road blow in a frantic dance. Clouds pass over the sun, although the sky is still blue.

“Let’s continue, madam,” Grisha says, pulling slightly on the reins so that his horse faces ahead. Antonina lets out her breath, though she hadn’t realized she was holding it.

Antonina turns Dunia as well. “When the lawyer comes, he’ll make things clearer.”

She touches her horse’s flanks with her heels and Dunia walks again, her gait comforting under her. Another gust of wind picks up the edges of Antonina’s cloak, and bright
leaves rain on them, catching in their hair and clothing and in the manes of the horses.

Grisha looks at the sky. “There will be rain later. Hopefully it will hold off for a few hours.” He has one bright copper leaf on his shoulder.

Antonina feels the wind ever cooler as they approach the outskirts of Tushinsk. Still, the air is clean, crisp, and she closes her eyes and breathes deeply. She puts a hand into Dunia’s mane, feeling its soft thickness.

“Wait for me here, on the edge of the village, madam,” Grisha says. He seems oddly agitated. “I’ll only be five minutes, and return to you.” He stops, and then says, “The ruts are deep, and will be difficult for Dunia to manoeuvre.” He’s afraid that if she insists on accompanying him, Lev might not hand over the boy.

Antonina settles down to wait. Five minutes pass, then ten. She stares at the central square of bare earth, dominated by the small church and its flaking green-painted dome. Chickens roost on its wooden steps, their feathers ruffling in the wind. A gaunt middle-aged priest with a black and grey beard and long, tangled hair stands listlessly in the doorway, wearing a threadbare cassock and
valenkis
—felt boots. Unlike the higher clergy—the unmarried monks who are eligible for the highest reaches of church life, as bishops and archibishops—simple village priests are obliged to marry before they are ordained. But being one of the poorest in the village—depending on others for handouts and scratching out the most meagre of existences from a tiny garden plot behind the church—makes it difficult for
a priest to find a wife. Their only hope is a daughter of another village priest.

She watches men haul carts filled with firewood and sacks of root vegetables as old women sit in doorways, peeling potatoes and onions. Bony dogs lie on their sides against the fronts of izbas, while goats wander past them aimlessly, heads down as they search for something to chew. Younger women with babies carried in shawls on their backs and toddlers at their sides walk slightly bent forward into the wind. A few of the villagers glance in her direction, and in their faces Antonina sees something different than what she’s known all her life. Instead of subservience and fear, she senses resentment. Perhaps even hostility.

It’s as Grisha said. The serfs are now free, and yet how are their lives different? Antonina studies the miserable hovels with their broken roofs, the half-starved animals, the poverty and despair. What good is this new freedom?

Finally, she grows weary of waiting, and slowly rides down the narrow road that runs through Tushinsk. As Grisha warned, the ruts are deep, and Dunia stumbles more than once.

Antonina stops the horse, afraid of injuring her, and as she does, she looks down a side street, where she sees Grisha. He’s standing outside the doorway of a hut, talking to a man who is somehow familiar. Grisha is holding a small package.

She tries to place the man. Did he once work in the cattle sheds or one of the storehouses? Dunia, feeling the reins loosen, slowly begins to walk forward. Antonina notices a woman walking down the road ahead of her. Over her shoulder she’s carrying a bundle of sticks. Beside her walks a boy. She stares at their backs.

The boy is Mikhail. He wears his coat. Even from this distance, Antonina can see the blue wool script—her son’s name—along the bottom of the back of the coat. She sees his fair hair.

“Mikhail,” Antonina says in disbelief, and then she screams, her voice that of a wild woman. “Misha!” In her panic, she yanks hard on the reins. Dunia flings her head up as Antonina leans forward to see the boy more clearly. The horse’s head catches Antonina in the face, and she slides from Dunia before the horse has a chance to come to a full stop. She falls to her knees, momentarily stunned by the blow to her face. Then she shakes her head and gets up and runs towards the woman, screaming Mikhail’s name. But he doesn’t turn. Nor does the woman.

Another woman approaching them points, and when the woman turns and sees Antonina running at her, her mouth opens in a round circle of fear. She drops her sticks and grabs the boy’s hand.

Antonina stumbles, her riding boots catching in the deep ruts and oozing mud. Still, she is lighter on her feet than the other woman, or perhaps it is desperation that makes her so swift. As she chases them, screaming Misha’s name, peasants come from their huts to stare at her. Women pull their own children close against their sides, and others hide their faces with the edges of their kerchiefs.

“Stop,” Antonina shouts. “Stop! You have my son.” Still the woman runs, dragging the child, who is stumbling on bare feet, but Antonina soon draws close enough to grab the woman by the shoulder and whirl her around.

The woman—younger than Antonina—falls as she is turned, and looks up, her face a combination of confusion
and dread, as though expecting Antonina to strike her. She puts up her arm.

The boy crouches beside her.

Antonina looks at the boy, and then emits a long-drawn-out wail. Her knees weaken, but she keeps her balance. The woman gets up slowly, still looking at her with the same frightened expression.

The fair-haired boy is not Mikhail. A thick stream of mucus runs from his nostrils onto his top lip. He has a pus-filled sty in the corner of one dark, round eye.

Antonina’s cry of sorrow ends. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, then opens them, licking her lips, her mouth dry as if it is cloaked in something woolly and thick.

“The child’s coat,” Antonina finally is able to say. “Where did you get it?”

As she speaks, she realizes there is metallic-tasting fluid in her mouth—too much to swallow. She spits it out, seeing frothy scarlet, and reaches up to wipe her nose and lips with a shaking hand. When she pulls her hand away, it’s covered in blood. Dunia’s tossing head may have broken her nose, or knocked out a tooth. She knows something is wrong with her face, but she has no pain.

The peasant woman continues to stare at her, lips trembling.

Antonina shakes her by the shoulder, ever so slightly. “I asked you where you got the coat. Speak. Answer me.” She calms her voice, seeing the other woman’s fear. “You’re not in trouble. I’m Countess Mitlovskiya. I own …” She stops. She no longer owns this village, or this woman. “I … I need to know about the child’s coat.”

The woman’s eyes shift to somewhere behind Antonina, and a look of relief comes over her face.

“Please. I beg of you, my lady,” a deep voice calls, and Antonina turns to see a young man, axe in hand, running towards them. His face is flushed and he’s panting. “My wife—and our son—they’re deaf and mute. She doesn’t know what you’re saying.”

Antonina blinks. “The boy’s coat,” she says, looking from him to the child. “I … I need to know where he got it.”

The young man is silent for a moment, his chest rising and falling. “She didn’t steal it, my lady. We receive many items from the church charity baskets.”

Antonina can’t answer.

“Countess Mitlovskiya,” Grisha says, suddenly beside her. “Countess, you’re hurt.”

Antonina turns from the young man and looks at Grisha, and her whole face throbs with an unbearable pain, as if she has just at this moment been injured. She shudders, putting out her hand to steady herself on Grisha’s arm, closing her eyes against the sudden white heat that wraps around her, blinding her.

“A seat,” Grisha says loudly, his other arm around her, holding her up. “Bring the countess a bench, for God’s sake.”

Antonina momentarily sags against him, then is lowered onto a hard bench. Someone holds a cloth over her nose; she smells soap and leather.

A cock crows, a dog barks, and Antonina opens her eyes. It’s Grisha who holds his handkerchief to her face. She reaches up to keep it in place, her fingers over his. He removes his hand.

The peasants gather around her in a wide circle, keeping a respectful distance. As soon as she looks at them, they all bow from the waist.

The young mother has pulled her boy against her; he’s between her and the father. She’s protecting him. Antonina understands. The boy’s legs are long and thin. His mother wipes his nose with her fingers. He can’t be more than six or seven; the coat is far too big for him. Her husband tugs on the woman’s sleeve, and at his gesture she bows, nudging the boy to bow as well.

“The
talmochka
 … it’s my son’s,” Antonina says, moving the handkerchief out of the way to speak, although only Grisha is looking at her. To the bowed heads, she says, “That’s his name, along the bottom on the back. Mikhail.” As Antonina says his name to these strangers, she swallows, and has to draw a deep breath. “He was stolen, taken by Cossacks. He was wearing that coat at the time. Please. You,” she says, and all the peasants but the mother and child raise their heads to see to whom she’s referring. She’s looking at the young husband.

He looks from her to his son, resting his hand on the child’s head. At that movement a tiny convulsion goes through Antonina. She knows the man is relieved his child hasn’t been stolen. Perhaps, at this moment, he’s glad that he’s a simple peasant, unable to pay ransom, his child safe from marauding Cossacks.

He touches his wife’s sleeve again, and she raises her head. He makes a series of finger motions, and her face softens. She looks at Antonina, holding her gaze for a moment, then nods. She gently draws the boy’s arms from the coat and steps forward and hands it to Antonina.

She takes it, pressing her bloodied nose against it, trying to smell her son. But it smells only of grease and smoke. It’s filthy, and now it’s smeared with her blood.

“Thank you,” she says, her voice unsteady, watching the mother wrap her child in her shawl against the cool wind. “My steward,” she says, waving weakly in Grisha’s direction, “will make sure your child receives another coat.” Antonina looks at Grisha, and he nods.

“Come, countess,” he says, holding out his arm. “We must have your injuries seen to.”

Antonina stands but has to cling to him for support. All the peasants move farther back. “Thank you,” she says to the young man, “for my son’s coat.” She clutches it against her chest. “And tell your wife I’m sorry I frightened her.”

“We understand, my lady,” he says.

“Thank you,” Antonina says again, even more weakly, and then allows Grisha to lead her back to Dunia. His horse waits there as well, its head down. The peasants slowly disperse as she steps into Grisha’s joined hands, swinging her leg over the horse’s back. The saddle creaks as she settles into it.

“One moment, madam,” Grisha says. “I will get the peasant’s name so I can send the new coat to him.”