The Lost Souls of Angelkov (71 page)

Antonina waits for something to happen. For Grisha to come to her with Mikhail. Or even for Lilya to appear. But nobody comes. By mid-afternoon she has a terrible feeling that something has happened, something that will be unbearable.

She goes to the stable, but only Fyodor is there. He tells her that Grisha and Lilya and Lyosha all left together in the troika that morning. She walks down the winding road to Grisha’s house. It is cold and empty. She builds a small fire and sits there, looking at his books and the items on his bookshelf. After some time she wanders around, staring at the small, tidy kitchen and at his bedroom. She sits on the bed. She imagines him here, filling the space. She lies down and covers herself with his thick quilt.

An hour passes.

When the fire in the sitting room has gone out, Antonina starts back to the manor. She is adrift. At this moment she feels more alone than she can remember. They are all gone: Misha, Konstantin, Valentin, Lilya. Grisha. Even Lyosha.

She looks around her as she trudges up the snowy road, studying the beauty of the snow embracing the pines,
hearing the calls of the white-backed woodpeckers and nuthatches from their branches.

As the manor comes into view, she sees the troika and an unknown horse. She walks faster. She makes out two tall figures. Please, she pleads, let one be Grisha. Let one be Grisha. But it isn’t. Lyosha and a uniformed man stand on the veranda. She hurries. As she comes up the steps, she looks into Lyosha’s face, but can’t understand what she sees there. She glances at the other man. By his clothing, he looks to be a member of the police force. Suddenly she doesn’t care, because now she hears it.

Music. It comes from inside the house. Antonina pushes past Lyosha, who reaches towards her, his mouth moving as he speaks to her. But she can’t hear his voice. She only hears music. She pushes open the door and runs down the hall, her snowy boots sliding on the wooden floor.

She runs towards the music salon, towards the Glinka music, and her son.

SELTOCHEEVA CONVENT, CITY OF PSKOV

S
eltocheeva Convent is quiet for the holidays. The Little Sisters of Righteous Elizaveeta celebrated the birth of Christ on the eve of Christmas, but the New Year passes unnoticed.

Lilya is one of the unpaid women who earns her keep in the convent by offering services the sisters are unable to perform. The sisters clean the convent and work the gardens. They preserve and prepare food and serve it, and they do the laundry. But there is a need for delicate lace for the holy surplices, and none of the sisters have Lilya’s skill. And so she sits, every day, in a small nun’s cell with a cot and icon. She works on the tiny, intricate patterns she creates under a high window where the light streams in. As well as the room, she is also supplied with two meals a day. Although not a nun, she wears only black, a representation of repentance and simplicity. She attends the services in the chapel morning
and evening, praying reverently through the Little and Great Entrances, the Epistle and Gospel readings, the Divine Liturgy, the Anaphora, the distribution of Holy Communion, and the Dismissal. In her cell-like room, she falls to her knees every hour and prays with the ringing of the chapel bells.

She finishes her work as the final daylight fades. This is not for a surplice; it is a gift. She stands, stretching, and then runs her fingers over the finely embroidered cloth belt she has created. She smooths her hair and pinches her cheeks to bring colour to them. The last hourly bells have finished ringing, and in the hush there is a lovely sense of peace.

Lilya venerates the icon and walks down the long, narrow hallway. She raps, lightly, on the low door of Sister Ludmilla. The door opens. The young sister looks at her and smiles.

“Lilya Petrova,” she says.

Lilya smiles back. She has taken a vow of silence, even though the Little Sisters are under no such order. She holds out the belt to Sister Ludmilla. As the sister reaches for it, Lilya lets her fingers touch the nun’s.

Sister Ludmilla draws back her hand, her smile fading. “You made this for me?” She studies the belt, a symbol of the vow of chastity to be worn on feast days.

Lilya’s gaze never leaves the young woman. Sister Ludmilla’s face is thin and pale, and a pure light shines from her grey eyes. A tiny wisp of blond hair emerges from under her black
klobuk
, just at the temple. Lilya reaches up and touches it.

She knows that under the wimple the sister’s neck will be long and white.

She would like to know it someday. She dreams of that moment.

I
LIYCHIV
P
ROSPEKT
, S
T
. P
ETERSBURG

The Novogodnaya Yolka—the New Year’s tree—is beautiful, with its bright star on the top bough. Sweets and gold-painted nuts are scattered among the branches; the cherub from Angelkov, with its wing repaired by Grisha, is tied onto a branch with a red satin ribbon.

In the St. Petersburg apartment, there isn’t room for a tall, wide tree such as they had in Angelkov, but this one is a lovely symmetrical pine with soft, sweeping branches. Lyosha cut it himself, taking Misha with him to find it in the forest on the edge of the city. They dragged it home behind Lyosha’s horse on Christmas Eve, and set it up in a bucket of stones in a corner of the sitting room. It lists slightly, but nobody mentions that.

There is a New Year’s present under the tree for Misha—a new leather music composition book—although of course he is far too old to believe that Ded Moroz and Snegurochka, the Snow Girl, have brought it. Had he believed in Father Frost and his granddaughter the year he was taken? That time is hazy to Antonina. It’s been over a year since she and Misha started their new lives.

In the autumn, Mikhail was accepted into the St. Petersburg Conservatory, founded that year by the young musician Anton Rubinstein. It’s Russia’s first school focused on teaching the arts, under the sponsorship of the Imperial Russian Music Society. Mikhail Konstantinovich Mitlovsky is one of the youngest students, and he’s alive with excitement every day as he heads to class.

The year 1862 brought another new school to St. Petersburg: the Free School of Music, founded by Mily
Alexseyevich Balakirev. Antonina Leonidovna Mitlovskiya is one of three female teachers hired to instruct talented young women unable to pay for private tuition. It is as Valentin Vladimirovitch told her: new options and opportunities are being born.

Every morning, she walks with her son to the Conservatory. Then she goes on to her own job at the Free School, where she teaches for the morning. In the afternoon, she gives private music lessons in her apartment. She makes a small sum from both her work at the Free Music School and the private tutoring, enough to pay the rent and buy what they need.

The sound on the British upright piano she bought is good, although it isn’t like the beautiful square rosewood Érard, far too large for the small sitting room. With the money Lyosha gave to her, she’s managed to ensure that she can keep the estate at least for a few years. At Angelkov the windows of the manor are boarded and what furniture remains has been covered in sheets. Antonina worries about mice gnawing the books and making nests in the body of the Érard. Someday she may want to live there again. Someday there may be a reason, but for now her life is in St. Petersburg.

Misha walks home from the Conservatory with his new friends when he’s done his classes, and in fair weather he and Antonina take Tinka and Dani to the nearby park. Dani is Misha’s dog. He is small, brown and white-spotted with long, soft ears, and he sleeps at the foot of Misha’s bed at night. Tinka is too old to walk far now, so Antonina carries her.

After the park, they have dinner and talk about the music they have heard and made that day. Misha does his homework, or practises. The apartment on Iliychiv Prospekt, two blocks from the Fontanka River, is small but warm and inviting.

“Mother,” Mikhail says—at twelve, he no longer calls her Mama—“when can we go out to the square for the fireworks?”

Antonina pictures Misha watching the display Konstantin put on every New Year at Angelkov; she still can recall the wonder on Misha’s face.

“Soon, my son. Lyosha? What time are the fireworks scheduled?”

Lyosha glances at the clock on the piano. “We should leave in fifteen minutes.”

“We will leave after the toast. If you will, fetch Anya from the kitchen. Ask her to bring the good glasses.”

Lyosha married ten months ago. Anya Fomovna is small and winsome, with chestnut hair that gleams like wood. They came with Antonina and Misha to St. Petersburg, and they live nearby. Lyosha secured a well-paying job in the military stables. Anya comes to Antonina’s apartment every morning to help out with the housework and laundry while Antonina works. On the weekends she teaches Antonina how to cook.

Little Nusha returned to her parents in one of the local
mirs
with the gift of a bag of rubles. Antonina secured Pavel a job at the Bakanevs’; she gave him permission to take anything he wished that had belonged to Konstantin.

Fyodor and Raisa look after Angelkov. They live in the house with blue shutters. Olga went with them; she was too old to start a new life. She died only last month, and Antonina went back to Angelkov to attend the funeral and see the old woman buried behind the Church of the Redeemer. While there, she supervised the erection of stone markers for both Konstantin’s and Valentin’s graves, and she alone stood by the violinist’s grave for his prayers.

She knows everything that happened in those last, terrible months at Angelkov. She glances at the desk where Grisha’s letter sits in the top drawer: the letter, written in his firm hand, on the back of her notes to Glinka. The two pages were delivered to Angelkov a week after Misha came back to her. The letter tells her everything. She knows it by heart, she has read it that often.

She is working on forgiveness, and finds it is easier to forgive when looking ahead instead of back.

Now the four of them—Antonina, Mikhail, Lyosha and Anya—raise their glasses and toast the New Year. The wine is cheap but glows, ruby, in the crystal glasses Antonina brought with her to St. Petersburg.

“Za vashe zdorov’e!”
Lyosha says. Antonina echoes, “To your health,” and the four of them clink their glasses. Misha grimaces at the taste, but looks proud to be given wine on this special occasion. God knows, Antonina thinks, he has been through enough to be thought of as a young man now.

On this special night, she thinks of her parents and brothers, of Konstantin and Valentin—poor Valentin—of all those who tried to care for her in their own ways. She thinks of Lilya.

Lyosha tried three times to visit his sister in Seltocheeva, but was turned away. Lilya Petrovna, he was told, has devoted her life to God, and has permanently left the outside world. Lyosha has accepted that he will never see her again.

After the toast, Antonina sets down her glass, the wine untouched. She has kept the promise she made to God and to herself in the dacha.

As they dress warmly to go to the square for the fireworks, Antonina notices with a start that Lyosha is putting
on a quilted coat that Grisha wore in the stables. She runs her hand over the sleeve and smiles at Lyosha.

On the way out, she kisses the icon and crosses herself.
To faith
, she thinks, and then follows Lyosha and Anya and Misha out into the cold January air, closing the door firmly to keep in the warmth.

Z
ERENTUY
K
ATORGA
, S
IBERIA

The men in Hut 83 are finished their labour for the day, and have been given a ration of potato vodka to celebrate the New Year. Thirty-two men are crammed into the wooden shack. There is a narrow corridor between the sixteen stacked cots, with the door at one end and an open bucket for a toilet at the other. Tonight the hut is even more raucous and malodorous than usual.

“And what are your plans for 1863?” the new man—his name is Bogdan—asks. Then he smiles, a grimace, really, at his own attempt at a joke. “Plans,” he repeats with a rude snort.

Grisha rolls the tin cup with the two inches of potato vodka between his palms. “The only thing possible,” he says, looking into the other man’s red-rimmed eyes.

Bogdan was among the most recent shipment of prisoners brought to Zerentuy. He is a Sybiraks—a Pole. He was assigned the bunk over Grisha’s. The man who had formerly slept above Grisha died three days before Bogdan arrived, coughing up blood and wasting to a thin layer of flesh over bone. A few others, noticing the unnatural quiet from the top bunk, had stealthily made away with the dead man’s blanket and clothes and boots before morning, when the guards were alerted and hauled the body away.

Grisha had been the first to know that the man, an elderly cellist who had once played for the Tsar, was dead. He’d liked and respected him, and so instead of taking what the dead cellist no longer had use for, he’d made the sign of the cross on the man’s forehead, covering the cold, waxen face with the blanket before the others crept up to take it away. He didn’t hold it against them; he’d done the same.