The Lost Souls of Angelkov

by Linda Holeman

  A second of silence—time for two quick heartbeats—passed in the still room. “No, Papa. I’m not involved with any of the serfs.” This question was easier to answer. She and Lilya were no longer friends. She met her father’s eye.

  “How old are you, Antonina?” he asked.

  “You know I’m fourteen.”

  At that, he stood so abruptly that his chair clattered backwards, and Antonina jumped, dropping the icon. She had never seen her father this angry—not with her. Not even when she’d struck him when she thought that Sejza was dead.

  He came around the desk and took hold of her upper arms. “This cannot go on. I’ve let you run wildly, let you do as you wish for too long. You’re no longer a child. I married your mother when she was not quite sixteen. You will not be ready for marriage in another few years, no thanks to her.”

  “I don’t want to get married in a few years,” Antonina said.

  “That isn’t the point. The point is that you don’t know how to behave as a proper young woman. I don’t want you influenced by any of the serfs.” He hadn’t let go of her.

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because they don’t possess brains such as we do, Antonina. They can’t feel things the way we do. It’s impossible for them—they’ve been bred by the same families for centuries. They’re uneducated and illiterate. Quite simply, they’re born with a lesser intelligence and less capacity for emotion.”

  Antonina pulled back slightly. Her father’s grip hurt her arms. “That’s not true, Papa. Not true at all.”

  Her father stared at her. “And what makes you say this? You think serfs have the same abilities we do? The same abilities for mathematics and languages? That serfs could run an estate? Run a country?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re saying they’re the same as the nobility? The same as blood descendants of tsars?”

  “I … I’m just saying …”

  There was baying from the dogs in the yard, then the sound of hooves on the hard-packed snow. Antonina glanced towards the window, hoping her father would leave her to see who had arrived.

  But he ignored the noise from outside and gave her another slight shake, so that she was forced to look at him again. “Well? What are you saying, daughter?”

  Antonina thought of Lilya, with her clever face, her sudden smile. She remembered her words: the natural order of life as God has decreed it. She thought of the sadness in Lilya’s golden-brown eyes as they said goodbye, the way her thin arms had clung to her.

  “You know life as the daughter of great nobility, Antonina. You must know how to continue this life in your own home, with your husband and your children.” His mouth tightened. “You will owe your allegiance to your husband. You will have to know how to deal with the servants. You cannot befriend them. And more importantly, you cannot squander your affections with low-class lovers, cuckolding your husband. Who is he, Antonina? Who is this man?”

  “Man? Papa, what do you mean?”

  “I’m not stupid.” His voice had risen. “Do you think I don’t know the ways of women, even my own daughter? All women are slaves to their romantic notions.”

  “Papa. No. I …” Antonina’s face was hot. How could her father imagine this of her?

  “Silence, Antonina Leonidovna. Silence,” he shouted, then abruptly dropped his hands.

  Her upper arms throbbed. The next day, each would be bruised with a band of dark purple.

  Prince Olonov sat heavily behind his desk. As Antonina’s face had flushed with embarrassment at her father’s suggestion, his had become pale. He studied the book on the desk in front of him, running one finger up and down its cover.

  “I am not Mama,” Antonina said then, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Her father’s finger stopped moving.

  “I am not like her, Papa,” Antonina said, her voice stronger. “I would never behave as Mama does. Never.”

  Now Prince Olonov closed his eyes and put one hand over them. “I want to believe you, Antonina. But you have told too many lies, acted too impulsively. Although I’ve been negligent, there is still time for me to drive home to you the importance of proper behaviour. There must be some sort of punishment, or at least chastisement.” He took his hand away from his eyes and looked at her. “It’s impossible for me to allow you to carry on, keeping secrets, lying. You must conform. Your marriage and your future depend on it. You must go to your husband in a … a clean state, Antonina.”

  He turned to look out the window so he didn’t have to face her. “It should be your mother’s job to discuss these things with you.” He cleared his throat. “Russia is changing. We must fight to keep it as it is, to make sure our culture remains intact. Some, especially those who have travelled abroad extensively, have begun suggesting political experiments. They have spoken of the issue of serfdom, and its evils. But serfdom isn’t evil—it is necessary.”

  His voice had fallen on the last sentence. “Where would we be without the serfs, and them without us, Antonina? Where would we all be without this established order? Would the serfs be happier without our direction, without our support? No. They’re like children, and we—the noble landowners—are their fathers. We treat them well when they follow the rules and punish them when they don’t. They must understand the importance of the system, just as you must understand.”

  He looked back at her. “The serfs have no ability to run their own lives independently, let alone a country. It’s us, Antonina Leonidovna, men like me, and the future wives—you, daughter—who will keep the country pure. You defiling yourself with a serf can only lead to a downfall.”

  “Defiling? Papa …” She looked down. “I didn’t … I haven’t done anything wrong, Papa.” Then the memory of Lilya’s lips rushed back.

  There was silence. Antonina didn’t know which of them was more embarrassed. She studied the pattern of the deep red and purple rug. The dropped icon glittered beside her right foot.

  Prince Olonov sighed, long and deep. “I want to believe you, Antonina. But you’ve lied to me too many times. You must speak the name of the serf you’ve been seeing.”

  Antonina looked up. “I have told you the truth, Papa. There is no man.”

  Her father stared at her for so long that Antonina had to concentrate to not look away.

  Prince Olonov at last nodded. “You’re stubborn. Perhaps you imagine you actually have some true feeling for him. You’ll eventually tell me.”

  “How can I, when there is no such man?”

  Her father tilted his head. “If you wish to play it like this, you leave me no alternative. We’ll flush him out. You’re living in your fairy stories. You imagine it’s love, and you will be loyal to him. You’ll see. A serf doesn’t have the capacity for loyalty, or real love. A serf will speak in order to save his own skin. I’ve seen it too many times. With the touch of the knout on their backs, they all sing.”

  Antonina thought of Lilya’s bruised jaw and neck. Something small and cold wormed through her intestines. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I’m saying, Antonina. We’ll start here, on the estate. Next we’ll move to Kazhra—it’s the closest village. We’ll question every soul, ask what people have seen. Someone always sees something. There are no real secrets. Someone can always be persuaded with either rubles or a threat. You may imagine it will be a difficult task to find this man, Antonina. Trust me—it won’t.”

  Antonina swallowed. “You cannot, Papa. Please.”

  “You will speak his name. Otherwise, many of the serfs will suffer. Then we’ll see if this young man is as wonderful as you imagine him to be. You’ll be disappointed. This I can swear to you.”

  “You won’t do this, Papa. I know you won’t. You aren’t a cruel man.”

  At this, Prince Olonov stared so long and hard at her that Antonina could no longer stand it. She put her face into her hands.

  “You’re right, Antonina,” her father said after a moment. Even t
hough his tone was different, his voice softer, something about this change made Antonina even more fearful.

  She raised her face, clenching her hands in front of her now.

  “I wanted to see if you could be honest and forthright with me. But you can’t. It’s so simple. All I have to do is ask Semyon and Kesha. They know that if they don’t speak the truth about what they know—where they’ve gone with you, and whom you spend your time with—they’ll not only have to fear losing their positions, they may lose their lives. They’ll give me the answers I need.”

  Antonina was hot, too hot, and her father’s face floated, a strange, pale rectangle apart from the darkness of his beard, threaded with white.

  “You can’t hide anything from me, Tosya,” he said.

  She felt for the chair behind her, and sat in it. “All right, Papa. All right—I will tell you everything. But it’s not a man. It’s a girl. Just a peasant girl, that’s all. Surely you don’t feel the same about me talking to a peasant girl. There was no harm in that. It’s as I told you, there was never—has never been—a man.”

  “A girl?” her father repeated, and Antonina tried to smile.

  “Yes. Just a girl. You were right—it was her puppy, and she gave me the icon. I haven’t seen her for a long while.”

  “Who is this girl?”

  Antonina shook her head. The movement hurt. “It doesn’t matter. I told you, we haven’t seen each other for some time. I just wanted …” She stopped. She knew she couldn’t try to explain to her father how she and Lilya had become friends, or why.

  “It matters.”

  “Why?”

  Her father rose. “I’ve explained it all. And I’m tired of this nonsense. I’m going to summon Semyon and Kesha.”

  “All right, Papa,” Antonina said, jumping up. The sudden movement gave her a jolting pain in her temple. “Her name is Lilya Petrova Nevskaya. She’s the daughter of the blacksmith in Kazhra. Now that you know … that’s all you want, isn’t it? For me to tell you her name? To speak the truth?”

  When the prince didn’t answer, Antonina stepped closer to him. She looked up into his face. “You won’t punish her, though, Papa. It’s not her fault. It’s mine. I told her she must meet with me, and talk to me. She didn’t want to. She truly didn’t want to. It’s not her fault. You must not punish her,” she repeated. “Promise me you won’t punish her, or her family, for what I wanted. What I did.”

  She stared at her father, willing him to nod, to say, Yes, yes, daughter, I understand now. I give you my pledge no harm will come to the girl or her family.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll promise no such thing.”

  That night, her father’s last words—I’ll promise no such thing—repeated over and over in Antonina’s head, increasing the ache that wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t sleep for worrying what might happen to Lilya. She lay in the dark, staring at the black square of the window.

  When morning finally came, she went downstairs to the breakfast room. Her father was at the table, reading a newspaper and eating egg pie and cold roast beef.

  Antonina sat across from him. “Good morning, Papochka,” she said carefully.

  He glanced at her. “Good morning.” He picked up a small gold bell from beside his plate and rang it. Immediately the door opened and two uniformed servants in white gloves entered. One brought in a tray with a silver covered dish and set it in front of Antonina, removing the lid with a flourish. The other servant poured her a cup of tea from the samovar.

  “Thank you,” Antonina murmured, looking at the pie and meat. Her stomach churned.

  “Eat, Tosya,” her father urged her. “Eat while the pie is hot.”

  Antonina picked up her fork and put it into the egg-filled pastry, staring at it. Then she looked at her father. “Papa.”

  “Hmmm?” He was still reading.

  “Papa,” she said again, louder, and this time her father put down the newspaper and looked across the table at her, a small, easy smile on his face. “What of Lilya?”

  “Lilya?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard the name from her lips the afternoon before. “Oh, the daughter of the blacksmith. They’ve been dealt with.”

  “Dealt with?” Antonina echoed.

  “Yes. The blacksmith I had whipped. To punish the wife, I sent the girl and the other one away.”

  Antonina swallowed. “Sent them away?” she whispered.

  “Yes. The girl and the filthy child.” He spoke casually. “I wouldn’t have bothered with the boy, but at the last minute I felt sorry for the girl. Actually, I rather admired her. She accepted it well—did not make a fuss when she understood what was to happen to her. As a reward, I let her brother go with her.” He looked at Antonina, his eyebrows raised. “I am not as hard-hearted as you might think me, daughter.”

  Antonina tried to speak, but her mouth was too dry. She lifted her teacup. Her hand shook, and scalding drops of tea fell on the back of her other hand. She needed two hands to set the cup back on the table. “Papa, Lyosha, the little boy … he’s barely four years old. He’s sickly. He needs his mother to care for him.”

  Her father concentrated on cutting his beef. “That’s not my concern. The punishment fit the crime.”

  Crime, Antonina thought. “Where did you send them?”

  “That’s not information you need, Antonina. You have learned a lesson: your actions have consequences.”

  Antonina imagined the hovel in Kazhra, the mother screaming as Lyosha, coughing and wailing, was torn from her arms, the father perhaps unconscious from the lashing. Sezja barking without cease. And Lilya? At this, Antonina covered her face with her hands. Lilya would know this happened to her family because of Antonina. That Antonina had revealed her name.

  “So,” Prince Olonov said, looking at her across the table, “we will speak no further of this unfortunate situation. Pass the pepper, please, Tosya.”

  When Antonina didn’t move, he asked her for the pepper a second time. She stared across the table at him. “I know now what kind of man you are,” she said. “You spoke, only yesterday, of acting as a father to the serfs, saying that they are like your children. Would you treat your own child so? Would you treat me in a way to bring such unhappiness into my life only to make a point? Why would you?”

  Her father’s face had grown darker, his lips thinner. Antonina knew she was driving him to fury, yet she couldn’t stop herself. Her head pounded; she had to shout to hear herself over the heavy drumming.

  “You only make their suffering worse. You are a tyrant.”

  Was she screaming? He rose and came around the table. Antonina stood. Her father stepped towards her, raising his open hand.

  Antonina closed her mouth, willing herself not to shut her eyes or draw back. She wanted him to hit her; she wanted to understand what the servants understood. To know what Lilya had felt from her father. She counted the beats—the thud in her head matching the pulse of the blood in her veins—her father’s face undergoing a series of expressions in that tiny and yet somehow unending period. After five beats, he made his hand into a fist and lowered it.

  “What would you like to do, Antonina? Will you go and live in a peasant hut? Yes? This would make you happy? Then go. Go and live with the serfs. See how long you last, sleeping with the pigs to stay warm, your head jumping with lice, your flesh crawling with fleas.”

  Antonina flinched, deflated. Of course, he was right. She had no power to change anything.

  “You have no idea of anything, you foolish girl.” He turned and walked away, his shoulders slumped, both hands hanging loosely at his sides in defeat. At the doorway, he said, “Go to your room. Stay there until tomorrow. You will not be brought your meals.”

  Antonina didn’t respond.

  “Do you understand the position you put me in, Tosya? I cannot allow your disrespect.”

  Antonina could not speak as she watched him go. She thought of Lilya, and dropped to her knees, praying that the girl could find a
way in her heart to forgive Antonina for what she had done to her family and her life.

  MARCH 1849

  Antonina’s name day was March 14, not exactly winter and yet not spring in the Pskov region; each day the weather changed, unsure of its season. To celebrate Antonina’s name day the year she would turn eighteen, her mother came to the country estate to put on a fete.

  Arranging parties was Galina Maximova’s forte. In the autumn she had orchestrated two bals blancs to introduce Antonina into St. Petersburg society. Antonina, dressed in white, had danced with a number of eligible men. The balls resulted in two marriage proposals, but neither suited her father because the men weren’t influential or wealthy enough. And Antonina had been relieved. There had been one man, a slender, dark-haired young soldier from a good family whom Antonina found interesting and thought she might like to speak to further. She reported her interest to her mother, and the princess invited the soldier to a small tea. But the soldier sent a note of apology, saying he was previously engaged. He hadn’t tried to set another date. Princess Olonova told her daughter this meant he wasn’t interested in pursuing anything further with her. Antonina had been nothing more than slightly annoyed with the soldier for his insult.

  She had last seen her mother in St. Petersburg two and a half months earlier, when she and her father had gone to the city for Christmas and New Year’s, as Princess Galina Maximova hadn’t wanted the cold isolation of the country estate during the holiday festivities.

  Antonina’s brothers had all left the manor. The oldest, Viktor, had joined the army, and Marik was married with a young child and lived on a smaller estate on a far corner of their father’s land. The youngest, Dimitri, had moved to St. Petersburg to live with his mother. The princess complained that Dimi was only interested in gambling and frequenting the drinking establishments around the city. Antonina had seen, over the holidays in St. Petersburg, how Dimitri never rose until mid-afternoon, and was pale yet dark around the eyes, his face slightly puffy from the vodka and late hours.