The Lost Souls of Angelkov (51 page)

Antonina sighs, her shoulders falling. “I’m sorry I didn’t summon you. I know I said I would, but after the doctor’s
visit …” She swallows and her top lip moves, a tiny, almost imperceptible tremble. “I thought it best to deal with Yakovlev on my own. The problems are my husband’s doing, and now my responsibility. What I learned was highly disturbing. I would like to speak with you about the estate, frankly, as before.”

His jaw tightens. Antonina sees the firmness of his chin, and she remembers the way he looked down at her in the rumpled bed, the smooth curve of his cheekbone. She knows what his hair feels like. The muscles in his arms. His breath in her ear.

He knows the contours and hidden places of her body, the texture of her skin.

She feels heat in her face, and has to look away.

“I am honoured that you would ask my opinion,” Grisha says, bowing. He acts as though nothing happened between them less than forty-eight hours earlier. “What is it you would like to discuss?”

Antonina again runs her hand over her forehead, as though a strand of hair bothers her. She doesn’t want to tell him that she doesn’t know what to do. She takes a deep breath. “We don’t have anything left to run the estate, Grisha. The count is deeply in debt. I have to figure out a way to …” She panics.
A way to live
. “I need your help, Grisha.” She comes close to him then, and despite all her resolutions, she leans her head against his chest. He puts his arms around her.

She looks up at him, fighting the panic about losing the estate. About wanting him so much. Vodka will help. “Have a drink with me.”

He goes to the cabinet and pours them each a glass of vodka. He comes back to her and hands her a glass, then steps back.

“How will I find money to pay the government and to continue to run the estate?” Antonina asks after a sip. “Without servants, how will I …” She stops, not wanting to sound helpless. “A place as vast as Angelkov will fall to ruin quickly without care. What will we do, Grisha?”

“We?” Grisha echoes. “This is
your
estate.”

Antonina straightens her shoulders. “Yes. You’re right.”

Grisha waits for her to continue, studying the painting behind her head.

“Will you be like so many of the others, then, Grisha? Will you leave me as well?” Her chest rises and falls as she waits for his answer. She knows what she wants—what she needs—to hear.

Grisha steps closer to her once more. “Do you wish me to stay and help you run the estate? To continue as I always have?”

Antonina swallows. She draws a deep breath and straightens her shoulders. “Yes. I would like you to stay. But … but I can’t pay you. I have nothing left. Would you agree to stay, even in this situation? It means you will continue to live in your house as always, eat whatever we can raise on the estate, from the gardens and animals. Surely we can sustain ourselves for a while in that regard—now that so many servants have left and we no longer have as many to feed. The storehouses …” She stops. “Are the storehouses well stocked?”

Grisha drinks. “They’ve been looted. There’s little left in the storehouses or the distillery.”

“What? Why wasn’t I informed? Was there no one guarding them?”

“Yes. But the guards, like so many men, were weak. After the count was injured, they took what they could, over many
nights, sack by sack, bag by bag, to sell. They were eventually caught and punished. But most of the goods are gone.”

“How did I not know?”

“Some days, madam … no, many days, you refused to see me, or anyone. Lilya reported to me that you …” He stops.

What has Lilya told him? Does he know of the days she slept away, aided by the bottles in her wardrobe? She drains her glass and holds it out for more.

He ignores it. “To be honest, madam, I didn’t insist on reporting all of this to you because I felt you had too much to worry about. For a while I thought the count might recover. But then, when I saw his mind was affected, I made the decision to talk to you about it when I felt you were stronger.” Finally he takes her glass, but he sets it and his on the cabinet. “Come. We need fresh air.” Holding her arm, he leads her to the tall French doors. He flings them open and puts his hand on the small of her back, directing her out onto the wide veranda as if he is the master of the estate.

It’s she who has initiated the confusion between them, by what she allowed to happen at the dacha—partially out of sadness and loneliness and, of course, the vodka. The simple, understandable role of mistress and servant will no longer work. Grisha is a free man, and can leave her at any time.

“I will stay, Antonina,” Grisha says. They are both aware of his use of her name. They stand at the railing, looking at the land spread before them. The railing needs care; the paint is peeling. “And I accept that you do not have the means to pay me a salary. In return, I will accept a few versts of land.”

He should be compensated, of course. “Yes, yes, take the versts—two or three?—that you wish.”

“We shall say six,” Grisha tells her. “There’s a good tract close to your boundary with Prince Bakanev’s estate.” He pauses. “It will help secure my future.”

She feels a surge of disappointment, and then tries to understand her reaction. Isn’t his future here? She has never thought of him in any other life but in the house with the blue shutters. And yet … he now has every right to his own home. To land, and a house he can build to his liking. To a wife, she thinks then. Children. “Oh,” is all she can say.

Grisha smiles, but it isn’t exactly a smile; it is more of a reaction, a showing of teeth. “It won’t be for some time, Antonina. You—and Angelkov—are my concern for now. But I’m simply thinking of my future,” he says, as if needing to stress this a second time. “As we all must. It’s a new Russia.”

Antonina is tense, and her mouth trembles. It’s as if he’s read her thoughts.

“We’ll walk,” Grisha states, in that same confident tone. He doesn’t touch her as they go down the steps and across the yard.

Antonina shivers; the early evening is cool. “Yes. It is a new era, Grisha. Grigori …” She stops. “What is your patronymic?” In a flash she recalls his desire that she call him Tima. This isn’t the time to ask why. No, she corrects herself, there will never be another such time. She will never know, and she can’t allow herself to wonder about it.

“Sergeyevich.”

“Yes, it’s a new era, Grigori Sergeyevich,” she repeats. If she is going to depend on him so completely, she should respectfully call him by his given name and patronymic, instead of the short form used for all servants. It’s a new era, indeed.

As the stable comes into view, Antonina’s mouth fills with saliva as she tries not to let the image of the gutted horse fill her mind, picturing the bloodied board with the inverted letter
h
. She thinks of Mikhail.

“I am shaken by what happened to Felya. Could it be that whoever did this also played a role in Mikhail’s kidnapping?”

How to answer her? “The country is full of dangerous people now.”

“Do you believe I’m in danger here, in my own home?” Antonina prods.

“I am at your service, Countess Mitlovskiya,” he says, reverting to her title as he stops and turns to face her. “With me, you are safe. No harm will come to you,” he says, and his face softens, as when they had looked at each other in bed.

Antonina finds it difficult to breathe, having him so close, looking at her that way.
With me, you are safe
. Is that what she had felt in the dacha? Is that why she weakened—because, for the first time in so long, she felt safe?

“Thank you,” she says, making the sign of the cross in the air in front of him. It’s an automatic gesture, the usual blessing of a landowner, even though the rules of the game are now different. But as she does this, she knows she wants to touch her fingers to his forehead, and move them across his wind-darkened skin to his temple, and down his cheekbone to his mouth.

She drops her hand to her side, and Grisha bows his head. “You are cold. I will take you back to the manor.”

He leaves her on the veranda steps. She notices that one of the long shutters over the front windows hangs crookedly, a hinge missing.

A
t daybreak, Pavel stands outside Antonina’s room. When she doesn’t respond to his quiet knock, he opens the door hesitantly. “Countess Mitlovskiya,” he calls. “Please. You must come to the count’s room.”

“Yes,” she answers groggily, and sits up. When she goes into the hall, Lilya is there, rising from a pallet on the floor beside her door. Antonina had told her to leave last night, when she came in from being with Grisha and wanted to be alone with her thoughts. She assumed the woman had returned to her own room in the servants’ quarters.

In Konstantin’s room, she immediately sees that he has worsened. His skin is clammy, his lips and nail beds blue. He struggles to breathe. Pavel must have sent for Father Cyril; he sits on a low chair beside the bed praying over him, his incantations no more than the buzz of a fly to Antonina, his long black robes and tall mitre appearing outlandish.

At one point, Father Cyril rises and speaks quietly to Olga, who nods, weeping. Antonina watches her set up a small table covered with a white cloth. On it Father Cyril puts a crucifix, two candles, a bottle and a small wrapped packet. Olga weeps more loudly, covering her face with her shawl and rocking back and forth.

The priest is ready for extreme unction should Konstantin ask to be anointed, to speak his confession. All here is in preparation for her husband’s death.

The dark, early morning sky lets little light into the bedroom. Antonina looks at the priest’s profile in his tall hat, and then at Konstantin.

His crackling breathing is terrible to hear.

“Shall I send for the doctor, madam?” Pavel asks, and she shakes her head.

“There is nothing to be done. He predicted this.”

Pavel crosses himself.

Antonina stands beside the priest. His prayers grow in intensity as he swings his censer of incense in wide arcs over the bed. Konstantin is motionless but for the rise and fall of his chest. Only the priest’s voice and Konstantin’s laboured breathing break the silence of the room as the count slowly suffocates.

She will not grieve for him when he dies. There has never been love. Her husband has never really been a husband. But she knows this is God’s punishment for her wanton behaviour with Grisha. He is punishing her, leaving her a widow. This forces her to think what she hasn’t allowed before: if Mikhail is already dead, Konstantin will be reunited with him in heaven.

And he doesn’t deserve to see his son again so quickly.

Studying his face at this last thought, rage rises in her. At first it’s only a flicker, but then it crescendoes to a hard beat until her own breathing grows louder, heavier. She puts her hands to her chest, fighting for composure.

“Leave us for a moment, please, Father Cyril,” she says when she has controlled her visible agitation. “I wish to spend a few moments alone with my husband.” Olga and Pavel immediately bow and go out the door.

The priest sets the smoking censer on the floor at the side of the bed and steps into the hall.

Antonina drops to her knees, her face only inches from her husband’s.

“Konstantin,” she hisses, mindful of the open door, the edge of the priest’s robe. Konstantin’s eyes remain closed. “Konstantin. Can you not speak one more word to me? Is this how you wish it to be, then?” She’s so full of bitterness that she chokes on the heavy, smoky incense, and as her coughing gives way to weeping, Konstantin’s eyes open.

Antonina sees that they are clear for the first time in weeks. She draws a quavering breath. “Konstantin?” she says, but his gaze moves from her to the doorway. He blinks heavily, and the priest, who also turned at the sound of Antonina’s cry, returns and leans over her husband. He treads on the edge of Antonina’s skirt so that it pulls tight at her waist.

He has his ear to her husband’s mouth. The priest’s long, wiry grey beard obliterates her view of Konstantin’s lips, but she hears something, little more than the slightest sighing whisper. The priest turns back to her. “He asks for Tania.”

Antonina says nothing, her back teeth aching as she clenches her jaw and shakes her head.

The priest again lowers his head to hear Konstantin’s whisper, then nods and turns to the table, blessing the candles and lighting them, uncorking the bottle of holy water, and at that Antonina feels such fury—even stronger than the wave she experienced moments earlier—that her hands curl into fists at her sides.

Konstantin has found his voice. He has asked, with his last words, to see Tania. He has requested extreme unction and Communion from Father Cyril. He will confess his sins, and in this way will go to his death absolved of all guilt. He will go to meet the Saviour clean and whole.

He has chosen not to say goodbye to her.