The Lost Souls of Angelkov (30 page)

Antonina warily follows Dr. Molov to Konstantin’s bedroom.

“Although he is not yet himself, countess, this will be my last visit. He does not need my talents any longer, and he is on the mend, but he appears to be unaware of what has transpired these last weeks.” The doctor’s eyebrows rise slightly. “He has been speaking of the November Uprising of 1830 against the Poles. He believes he was injured while fighting. Was he ever in the Tsar’s army, countess?”

“No.”

“Well, his body has undergone a great trauma. I’m sure his clarity will return. For now, it’s best not to upset him with any truths or distressing news.”

Antonina is strangely afraid of entering Konstantin’s room; she hasn’t seen her husband for the last week. To her great surprise, when she finally goes in, he is sitting up, his hair combed, his face shaved. He is dreadfully thin, and has become an old, old man. Whatever is left of his right arm is bound.

“Ah, Antonina,” Konstantin says.

She sits beside the bed. She can’t bear to look at the bandaged stump.

“I trust you have kept well,” her husband says, and she tries to smile at this normal statement. But then he says, “It’s good to be home. Bring in my boy. I’d like him to see that his papa has come home from the front.”

Antonina looks at Dr. Molov. Pavel is holding the doctor’s coat, and the doctor has one arm into a sleeve.

“Kostya, our Misha …” Again she looks at the doctor, and he shakes his head. “He is busy with his studies. He will come to see you later.”

“Fine,” Konstantin says. “After dinner, then,” he adds, and closes his eyes.

Antonina follows the doctor out of the room and down the stairs.

“And you, countess? Are you sleeping?”

“A bit.”

“You must try to keep up your strength. Your husband will need you more than ever now.”

Antonina feels he is lecturing her. “I would like more laudanum.”

He hesitates, then takes a bottle from his bag. “Use it sparingly.”

Even though the site of the amputation heals, Konstantin continues to feel pain and itching in his missing arm. He complains endlessly, petulantly, demanding that he be given his tincture of chloroform.

Pavel complies. When the count had finished the first bottle and Pavel told him there was no more, he grew so agitated, shouting and struggling, that it took Pavel over an hour to calm him. Konstantin ordered him to procure more of the solution, giving him rubles from the small safe in his bedroom and telling him the name of a man in Pskov who would provide whatever he wanted.

One afternoon, as Antonina sits beside his bed and she feels he is lucid enough at last, she speaks of Mikhail. “You remember, don’t you, Kostya, what happened to our son? That he was kidnapped?” Her voice is low in the bedchamber Konstantin doesn’t want to leave.

“I remember.” He is lost, staring at the fire. “He is dead, our son.”

“No! No, Kostya, he’s not dead.”

“He’s dead. How long has it been since he was taken?”

Antonina swallows. “Six weeks.”

Konstantin turns to her, his pupils dilated. “You believe he’s still alive? The Cossacks got their money. They killed him and left Pskov. It’s over. Everything is over. Pavel!” he shouts, and the man appears with the bottle.

“He’s not dead, Konstantin,” Antonina whispers.

“Have a headstone carved for him, and place it in the cemetery behind the Church of the Redeemer,” Konstantin orders. “Place it next to that of my Irina.”

“Stop talking like this! Stop it. I won’t hear of it.” Antonina runs out of his room. She slams her own bedroom door and locks it, as if it can keep Konstantin’s words out.

She sits on the bed, looking at her bottle of laudanum on the dressing table. She needs it to sleep at night, but it sometimes gives her horrid, panicked dreams. Over and over Antonina is running through thickets, searching, sharp thorns cutting her skin. When she wakes in the morning, it’s difficult to think clearly, her eyes gritty and head throbbing. Her throat is dry until at least noon.

She gets up and takes a number of spoonfuls of the laudanum. After a few moments it puts her into a dreamy and unfocused state, but it makes her thirsty. She drinks from the decanter of wine on her dressing table. It’s thick and warm on her tongue. She drinks earlier and earlier in the day now, not because it makes her feel any better, but to stop her hands from shaking and to take away the nausea she often feels if it’s been too long since her last drink. Lilya tells her the nausea is from not eating, but Antonina has trouble swallowing food.

She sits on her bed, the wine decanter in her hand in the middle of that dark afternoon, the May rain pelting against
the windows. Neither the laudanum, the wine nor the rain can wash away Konstantin’s words. All she wants is to not think. She crushes some of the horrid white tablets of bromide and swallows them with another full glass of wine, and also takes a few more spoonfuls of laudanum.

She lies on her back at the edge of the bed, desperate for peace. Then she feels it, warm wings sweeping over her. Such a soft, feathery release—and she is relieved. Finally it will come, the old, untroubled sleep. The sleep she knew when her son lay in his bed in his room so near to hers. She welcomes it, inviting the wings to take her away.

But in the next moment, she has an odd, troubling sensation, and it’s difficult to breathe. A bird, huge and frightening, is sitting on her chest. She can’t—won’t—open her eyes, afraid she will see an actual sharp beak. She tells herself it’s a dream, a nightmare, and tries to move, but can’t. She hears short, quick panting, as though the bird is leaning closer to her face.

Or perhaps it’s her own breathing.

She knows that thoughts of the bird and its beak are irrational. It’s the pills, the laudanum, the wine. A slow, bubbling sensation, perhaps a dulled panic, rises as she tries to think about how many pills she crushed, how much laudanum she swallowed. What if she dies?

She tries to open her heavy eyelids, no longer afraid of a phantom bird but of death. What if she dies, and tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week, Misha is returned to Angelkov? Would he be told that his mother was so weak she took her own life? She can’t bear to imagine him thinking this of her: to be motherless because of her pathetic frailty and self-pity. She struggles even harder to move,
fighting off the heaviness of her limbs with all the will she can summon. It’s as though she’s submerged in thick sand, wet and heavy. Small sounds burst from her throat. She finally opens her eyes and rolls off the edge of the bed. She feels herself falling slowly, gracefully, through warm water, and the temptation to stay there, floating, makes her close her eyes again. She fights the stupor and somehow—does it take a minute, or ten?—is on her hands and knees. She pushes her fingers down her throat and retches until she throws up the wine and pills and laudanum in what looks like a bloody swill on her pale carpet; there’s nothing solid there.

She collapses, trembling, curled on her side on the floor. She sees herself in the tilted cheval glass near the wardrobe. Her lips are stained burgundy. She tries to lick them, but her tongue is too dry.

There is a tapping on Antonina’s locked door, and she hears Lilya’s quiet voice:
Madam? Madam?
Her voice grows louder.
Countess Mitlovskiya. Please. Open the door
.

Antonina hears running footsteps, then silence. Within moments the footsteps return, and there is a jangling of keys and the lock turning.

“Tosya,” Lilya breathes as she closes the door behind her. She stares at Antonina’s mouth and the red pool on the carpet. She moans and crosses herself.

She brings a damp towel and kneels beside Antonina, gently wiping her chin, but the stain has dried there. Lilya’s nostrils widen. “It’s just the wine?” she says, sniffing, then makes another sign of the cross over Antonina. “Thank God. I thought it was blood.”

“I don’t know what to do, Lilya,” Antonina says faintly. “I can’t stand it. The pain.”

“Let me help you up,” Lilya says, and tucks her hands under Antonina’s arms and brings her to her feet.

Once up, Antonina lays her head heavily against Lilya’s shoulder. Lilya strokes her back; it’s damp. “You are ill, my darling,” she says. “You must sleep.” She kisses Antonina’s hair. “Come, I will put you to bed. Shall we change your gown?”

Antonina shakes her head.

Lilya helps her into the bed, pulling up the bedclothes.

“I need water,” Antonina whispers, pushing the blankets away. Lilya rushes to bring her a glass from the pitcher. She holds the glass to Antonina’s red lips. When Antonina has drunk her fill, Lilya sets down the glass and sits on the bed, using her thumb to gently wipe at the stain on Antonina’s mouth. She rubs her thumb back and forth, slower and slower, until Antonina feebly pushes her hand away.

Lilya says, “You must pray, Ninochka. Pray. It’s what I do all day. I never stop praying that God will allow our child to be returned to us.”

Antonina blinks. “You mean my child.”

“Yes, of course, Tosya. But I miss him too. Every day my arms long to hold him. I want to hear his voice, and his music.”

Antonina finds some comfort in sharing this. “You believe that Mikhail is alive? That God has watched over him all this time, and kept him safe? That I will one day see him again?” Her tongue is still awkward, each word a struggle.

She expects—wants and needs—Lilya to say
yes, yes, of course God will return him safely to your arms
. If anyone will believe this, it’s Lilya. She’s become more and more religious since moving into her new position in the big house. She abstains from all meats and milk and eggs for the five
weeks of St. Peter’s Fast in May and June. She also fasts for a fortnight of the Assumption in August, for six weeks leading to Christmas Eve and then for the duration of the Great Fast, the seven weeks of Lent. In non-fast times, she abstains on every Wednesday, the day of Judas’s treachery, and on every Friday, the day of the Saviour’s death. She asks Antonina to take her along when she goes into the city of Pskov, rich with tiny, picturesque churches from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as monasteries and convents dating back to the twelfth century. Lilya spends hours on her knees in the Troitsky Sobor—the Trinity Cathedral—and Antonina sees it’s difficult for Lilya to leave when she comes to fetch her. For a full day after her prayers at Troitsky or any of the city’s other cathedrals, Lilya’s face has a look of rapture. Antonina has never forgotten Lilya’s childhood wish to be a nun.

But to her surprise, Lilya’s face colours, and she swallows before she answers. “It is what we
must
believe, Tosya. We must never stop believing that the right thing will be done.”

It is a rather odd thing for Lilya to say, Antonina thinks, although her head is throbbing now.
The right thing
.

“My poor Ninochka,” Lilya says, “my poor girl.” She leans over and covers Antonina’s cheeks with kisses, kisses her forehead and her eyes.

Antonina pulls away. “I want to sleep now,” she says, and rolls onto her side, her back to Lilya.

“I will stay with you until you fall asleep,” Lilya says. “Perhaps I will sleep here, in your room, from now on. I will have a pallet brought in.”

“No,” Antonina murmurs. “You must stay with your husband in the servants’ quarters.”

There is a moment of silence. “Soso is no longer on the estate, Tosya,” Lilya says. She tries not to let her relief at her husband leaving come through in her voice. “He left shortly after the serfs were emancipated, to look for something different.”

Antonina is so tired. “Will you go to him soon? Will you leave the estate as well, to join him?” Her voice is just above a whisper.

Lilya draws in a breath. How could Antonina think she would ever leave her? “My place is here, with you.” And she tries again to embrace Antonina.

“No, Lilya. I want to be alone. Leave me, please.”

Lilya’s face conveys a mixture of confusion and hurt that Antonina can’t see. “But Tosya, I only want to—”

“Lilya”—Antonina’s voice is stronger—“I said no, didn’t I?”

“As you wish, madam,” Lilya says stiffly. She takes the laudanum, the sleeping tablets and what’s left of the wine and leaves, shutting the door with a firm click.