The Lost Souls of Angelkov (41 page)

Antonina watches numbly as Grisha hurries back to the couple, who are still standing in the middle of the mud road making hand gestures to each other. When Grisha speaks to them, they appear cowed, stepping back. Grisha has his back to her and she can’t see his face. The young man says nothing at first, and then begins speaking, putting his arm around his wife’s shoulders protectively.

The villager’s reaction isn’t odd to her. Of course the peasants are fearful of men like Grisha, men who have held a high position.

When Grisha walks back to her, he rubs his hands together as if to clean them of the mud of the village. His face is dark.

He mounts his horse and they slowly make their way back onto the main road. Grisha holds Dunia’s reins, and they walk at a slow pace. Antonina clutches Mikhail’s coat against her chest with one hand and keeps the sodden handkerchief to her nose with the other.

Grisha glances at her frequently.

Only a verst from the village, there is a low growl of thunder. A few drops are soon followed by a downpour of cold autumn rain.

“Madam,” Grisha says, riding close to Antonina as she puts up the hood of her cloak. Because of the noise of the rain, he has to lean close to her. His leg touches hers. “I know a place, a dacha close by. Would you prefer to wait out the rain there, or do you wish to ride home?”

“The dacha,” Antonina says, shivering. She is as exhausted as if she’s just completed an arduous task.

I
n the dacha’s small stable, Grisha helps her dismount, and Mikhail’s coat falls to the dusty floor. She cries out. Grisha snatches it up, brushing off the straw, and gives it back to her. She buries her face in the
talmochka
, and a great sob comes from her throat.

As she cries, he hesitantly raises his hands to her shoulders. With her face still in the coat, Antonina leans against his chest. He puts his arms around her then, so lightly Antonina barely feels them at first.

Apart from Lilya’s soothing caresses as she bathes her or works on her hair or helps her fall asleep, Antonina has not been touched for a long time. For her to lay her cheek against the rough wool of Grisha’s tunic and hear the thudding of a human heart creates in her such a sense of comfort that she finds it difficult to pull herself away.

They stand like this in the stable with dust motes flying
about them, the smell of manure and damp straw heavy in the air. The horses’ hooves shift on the wooden floor under the scant cover of old hay. There are quiet whinnies and snickers, the slap of a tail. Rain drums on the wooden roof.

Antonina at last realizes she has remained too long in Grisha’s arms, and steps away. She wipes her eyes with her knuckles, sucking in her breath as her fingers brush her bruised nose. This starts a new trickle of blood, and she holds Grisha’s handkerchief to her face again on the way to the dacha. Through the trees she sees the glint of water: a small lake.

Grisha steps in front of her to open the door. He ushers Antonina to a small settee near the fireplace, and then kneels and works with kindling and a flint. Within moments the kindling catches and flames leap up the darkened brick cavity. He sits back on his heels and adds small logs to the fire, then shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it onto a nearby rocking chair.

“Soon the dacha will be warm, madam,” Grisha says, looking over his shoulder at her. “I’ll start the stove as well, and heat water for you to clean your face.” He goes into another room, and Antonina hears the splashing of water.

Leaving Mikhail’s coat on the settee, Antonina goes down the short hall, where she finds a small, rudimentary lavatory. The wooden dacha is pleasant, well maintained and decorated in a simple but charming country manner, and is the summer home of …? Does it belong to the Bakanevs? It’s far into the countryside, reachable only by a narrow, almost indiscernible path through the trees, or from the lake.

Looking at herself in the wavy mirror on the wall of the lavatory, she pulls away the handkerchief, wincing. She doesn’t recognize herself: there’s something wild-looking
about her, something that frightens her. The steady throbbing in her nose is making her whole body ache. Her bodice is bloodstained.

Grisha is once more kneeling in front of the fireplace when she returns to the sitting room. “Is the pain great, madam?” he asks, looking up at her.

“Is there anything to drink, Grisha?”

Grisha rises and goes back to the kitchen, returning with a half-full bottle of vodka and a glass. Antonina wonders dully how he knows this place.

“I’m sorry there’s no wine or claret, only this vodka, but it’s good quality. Not from Angelkov,” he says with the ghost of a smile, “but still fine. The water is heating,” he adds.

Antonina sits on the settee again, dropping the crumpled, bloody handkerchief beside her, picking up the coat and laying it over her lap. She strokes it, stops, then pulls at a slightly torn inner seam.

Grisha pours the small glass half full. As he does, Antonina utters a cry. “Look! Look,” she says, holding up two small squares of the transposed notes to Glinka’s music, with writing on the back. They were hidden between the lining and the wool.

As with the note Lev brought, Mikhail has written with charcoal.

The charcoal on the second note is so smeared that Antonina has trouble making out the words.

She is weeping. “He was alive in the summer, Grisha, but why was his coat …” She can’t finish the sentence.

Grisha says nothing.

She presses the heels of her hands against her eyelids. What’s he wearing now, in the cold autumn? “Why did the child have my Misha’s coat?” she asks, lowering her hands, still crying as she reaches for the glass Grisha holds.

Grisha knows why. He knows from questioning the villager only an hour earlier. But he can’t tell Antonina. He watches her drink the vodka in one swallow.

“More,” she says, and as he’s refilling the glass, she looks up at him. “Drink with me, Grisha.”

He hesitates for only a moment, then says, “As you wish, countess. Excuse me while I bring another glass.”

Antonina puts down Misha’s notes and her glass and removes her damp cloak. She picks up her full glass again and waits for Grisha to return, her other hand on the smeared pages beside her. The fire is bright, magnified and dancing through the vodka in her glass, orange and scarlet and yellow.

Grisha comes back and pours himself a drink, then stands before the fire.

“To Misha,” Antonina says, raising her glass, and at that Grisha hesitates. Then he steps forward and touches his glass to hers. The skin of her neck and wrists is pale against the deep purple wool of her frock.

“To Mikhail Konstantinovich,” he says, waiting for Antonina to drink before putting the glass to his own lips.

As with the first glass, she swallows the vodka in one long, smooth gulp. He shouldn’t be surprised; he knows the countess likes her drink. Still, he didn’t imagine she would drink like a man.

“Another,” Antonina says, and Grisha fills her glass again.

“The water will be warm by now,” he says, excusing himself. When he returns, he carries a sloshing tin basin and a soft, clean flannel. Her glass is empty. “I’ll put this in the lavatory for you,” he tells her.

A deep weariness fills Antonina. She shakes her head, the movement setting off the pain again. “I want to stay here.”

Grisha sets the basin on the floor and wets the cloth. He squeezes out the excess water and folds it into a neat square, then holds it out to her.

Clutching her empty glass, she turns her face to him.

Grisha sits beside her on the settee and presses the warm, damp cloth under her nose and on her lips. She takes a sudden deep breath.

“It hurts. Give me another drink,” she says, sounding like she might have sounded, Grisha thinks, when she was a girl. He knows the power of pure, high-quality vodka. He does as she says.

She swallows half of the next glass and then faces him again, her eyes closed. Grisha continues gently to swab at the dried blood. This time she doesn’t flinch.

“May I touch your nose, madam?” he asks.

Antonina nods, and as Grisha’s fingertips press lightly on the bridge, she gasps and pushes his hand away. She finishes the vodka and drops the empty glass to the rug at her feet.

“It’s broken, as I suspected,” he says.

Antonina says, in that same young and unfamiliar voice, “Why don’t you drink more with me, Grisha?”

The vodka has calmed her. The dacha is warm, the rain still coming down, although it’s no longer the persistent drumming. Grisha knows that if they stay any longer, it will be difficult to see the path through the woods on what will be a moonless evening.

“We should leave soon, madam, to avoid riding in the dark.”

Antonina leans forward, resting her head against his shoulder. “I don’t want to go. I’m so tired.”

Grisha looks at her hands, limp in her lap. Her hair is a soft mass against him. He can smell something sweet, but whether it comes from her hair or her dress or her skin, he doesn’t know.

They remain like this, the room dark except for the fire. Logs fall with a thud and crackle. He must add more wood or soon it will go out. “Madam,” he says quietly, and she makes a small sound. “I’ll stoke the fire, and light a lamp.”

As he gently pulls away from her, she picks up the bottle and drinks what is left.

When he turns back to her, she’s lying down, one hand holding the empty bottle and the other pillowed under her cheek. He lights the lamp on the round table in one corner. The rain is still soft and steady against the windowpanes. He goes back to the settee and looks down at Antonina, then carefully eases the bottle from her grasp and sets it on the floor. Her nose is swollen and darkening, but she looks serene, her eyes closed and her breathing even. Mikhail’s coat has fallen to the floor; he picks it up and sets it on the arm of the settee.

He takes a thick blanket from the back of the rocking chair and lays it over her. A strand of pale hair has fallen across her face, and he wonders what would happen if he brushed it back. He wonders what her hair feels like.

She unexpectedly opens her eyes and looks up at him, not startled to see him so close. She’s a different woman here in the dacha. She isn’t the woman who gives him orders in the wood-panelled study, who dismisses him abruptly when she’s finished with him. In the firelight, he doesn’t know her, except to recognize how lovely she is.

“Come nearer,” she says, and he kneels beside the settee. She puts her hand into his hair, pushing it back from his temple. “Your hair is so black, as are your eyes. Why, Grisha?”

He doesn’t move. “My mother was a Buryat.”

“A Buryat?” Antonina blinks. She knows of the Buryats, a race with Asian features who live in the far southeast corner of Siberia, near Mongolia. “How is it your mother was a Buryat, Grisha?”

He doesn’t answer, and she drops her hand.

She looks at him for a long time. “I’m lonely, Grisha,” she says.