The Lost Souls of Angelkov (47 page)

Aleksandr Danilovich Kasakov died three days after Timofey watched the carriage carrying Kolya rumble away.

Those three silent days were filled with grief: Timofey left for the shop early and stayed as long as possible. He didn’t wish to be in the house, with his father’s endless choking and bloody retching and his mother’s quiet, steady weeping.

The last words he had spoken to his father haunted him.

The house was eerily quiet without Aleksandr’s coughing.

His body lay in the open, rough-hewn coffin supported by chairs in the sitting room and surrounded by flickering candles. His stiff hands had been placed on his chest and curled around one candle that illuminated his face. Timofey sat on a bench. He tensed for a cough from the casket.

Some of Aleksandr’s friends had come by earlier in the day, but Ula didn’t welcome them, didn’t offer them tea or a chair. They stood in the small, low-ceilinged room for a few moments, in awkward silence, and left.

When they were alone again, Ula had gone into her bedroom, choosing not to sit with Timofey, not to cry and pray and mourn for her husband’s soul in the Russian way, nor chant and burn incense in the Buddhist way. Timofey remembered the death of his grandfather, and how his mother had told him not to be sad, although it was all right if he must cry. Temujin’s death, she told him, was simply another turning of the Wheel of Life, and it was important to remain calm and think good thoughts. “Temujin is going through a change,” she’d said, “preparing for his rebirth. My father was always a good man, and will be reborn into a positive form.” For three days there were Buddhist monks and visitors to their home, and texts chanted in unison, with ringing bells and beating drums and horns sounding at various intervals. There were burning oil lamps and incense in front of an image of Buddha that sat beside Temujin’s body until it was removed for the cremation at the
datsan
. Many of Temujin’s friends came quietly to pay their respects. Everything felt graceful and slow, almost dreamlike.

In contrast, the funerals he had attended with his father at the Decembrist Orthodox church took on a showy and
chaotic frenzy, pleading for God to have mercy on the sin-riddled souls of the dead. To Timofey the Orthodox rituals created a certain hopelessness about death, which was a necessary consequence of human life, due to original sin—unlike the Buddhists, who believed that death was necessary to achieve everlasting life.

To see his mother refuse to treat his dead father respectfully in either religion upset Timofey. He was unable to understand the depth of Ula’s anger. Even with his death, she couldn’t forgive what Aleksandr had done, couldn’t mourn him. He realized, as he sat through the long, dark night, that it was because she was already in mourning for Kolya.

In the wavering light of the candles, Timofey grieved alone for his father, looking at Aleksandr’s waxy profile and thinking of all the time he had spent with him, learning to read and write in two languages, discussing world history and politics and life outside Chita, as well as learning his trade. He thought of the times his father had patted his back and smiled proudly at him, and felt true sadness.

He cried then, on his knees beside the coffin, kissing his crucifix. But even as he wept, he knew he cried partly for himself.

He recognized the selfishness of his act, and knew that what he would do next was as bad, or worse.

The day after the funeral—Aleksandr was buried with the Russian rites, in the cemetery behind the timbered, green-domed Decembrist church—Ula told Tima he had to go to Irkutsk. “Your father is dead. There’s no reason to linger. The longer Kolya is away from me, the harder it is on him.”

“You want me to leave right now? Shouldn’t I stay for the nine-day ceremony marking Papa’s death? It doesn’t feel right to—” Timofey said, but Ula shook her head impatiently.

“You must go.” At that her face crumpled, and Timofey realized she hadn’t cried during Aleksandr’s funeral, standing as if deep in thought, looking at the budding trees behind the church. “It’s only Kolya who can make me feel better, only my baby. He must be here, with me. He’s all that I want, and need.” She turned away from him then, and something cold settled in Timofey’s chest.

“All right,” he said to her back, his voice unemotional. “I’ll go as soon as I’ve finished the last order, in two or three days.” He would have to lock up the cooperage. Antip, ten years older than Timofey and adept at the physical work, couldn’t read. He amiably took his orders from the younger man, but had absolutely no ambition. “I’ll buy a horse and go.”

Over the next two days, Timofey worked tirelessly to finish the order. The rhythm and monotony of the movement—the rasp of adze on wood—calmed him, and allowed him to devise his plan.

It was easier than he thought. He told Antip the cooperage would be closed for an indefinite period, and gave him an extra week’s salary, apologizing for putting the man out of work. Then he drew up a paper making sure his mother would receive the proceeds from the eventual sale of the business. He had it witnessed and signed by his father’s faithful friend Georgi, the only remaining exile in Chita. The rest of the Decembrists had died; many were older than
Aleksandr, and all had been physically weakened by their brutal penal service.

“This is to protect my mother,” Timofey told Georgi, “if something should happen to me.”

Georgi shook his head. “A strong young man like you will be running the cooperage for many years longer than your mother will be on this earth.”

Timofey nodded, but asked the man to keep the paper for him.

With cash from the business, he bought Felya, a fine young Don horse, and a pair of new boots. His mother made him as much food as could be packed into the woven saddlebags, and handed him two warm Mongolian blankets, spun from yak wool.

He took his father’s crucifix and books, and a prayer wheel. He also took the small
svirel
Kolya had given him on his last name day. Kolya had clumsily carved Tima’s name into it, and proudly presented it to his big brother at the family celebration.

“You’ll find him, and come right back,” Ula said as Timofey stood beside his horse. It was morning, and the bells were ringing for late Mass.

Timofey couldn’t meet her eye. He ran his hands over Felya’s high honey-coloured withers, the sun gilding them.

“How many days will it take you to get there?” his mother asked.

“Many. It will depend on the weather and the roads.” Tima wanted to ride away from his mother’s sad yet hopeful face as quickly as possible.

“It’s June now. That’s a good thing,” she called to him as he mounted. She hadn’t embraced him.

He pulled on Felya’s reins, turning him towards the open road. “Goodbye,
Mamasha
. Blessings upon you with both hands,” he said. He suddenly remembered how she used to sing to him when she tucked him into bed as a child, her smile as she set his favourite dishes in front of him, her gentle touch.

“I will watch for your return with your brother,” she said. “I know I can trust you. You are a good son, Timofey Aleksandrovitch. A good man.” She added her own blessing in Buryat, and Timofey kicked his heels and rode out of Chita.

G
risha tried to forget his mother’s final words to him. He knows, as he and Antonina ride back to Angelkov from the dacha, that his mother was wrong. He was not a good son, and he is not a good man.

Antonina’s smell is on his skin. When Antonina allowed herself to stop being a countess and simply be a woman, he lost the tight control he’d maintained for most of his life. Watching her sleeping, he felt a desire to protect her, to take away the pain.

The pain of a betrayal that is his own doing.

And in spite of the way she had spoken to him before she turned and walked from the dacha an hour earlier, his feelings for her haven’t changed. As they ride side by side in silence save for the sucking of the horses’ hooves in the mud, the cawing of crows, he wants her to smile at him the way she did in the candlelight in the dacha.

Seeing her now, clutching Mikhail’s coat—all she has of him—he remembers her ten years younger, in the flogging yard holding her baby with such fierce protectiveness.

Grisha knows she trusts him implicitly. It pains him to think back to the previous day in Tushinsk. He had hoped—prayed—that he would go to the door Lev had described, hand Lev the stack of rubles, and Mikhail would come out of the hut. But that wasn’t what happened. Lev didn’t have the boy. He said the Mitlovsky brat was waiting for Grisha in another village, farther down the road. He would take the money Grisha had brought and give him instructions on how to find the boy. Go with me now, Grisha had said, take me to him, but Lev shook his head. Grisha was furious, arguing with Lev as he held the rubles, telling him it was another ruse. He would keep the rubles until he knew with certainty the boy was alive. Give me proof, then take me to him, and once I have him, you will get your money. And as he stood arguing, he heard the countess’s screams. He shoved the money back into his tunic and ran to find her face covered in blood, and her pointing at the village child in Mikhail’s
talmochka
.