Finally, Antonina smiled at Lilya, although Lilya saw that her expression was slightly uncertain.
“Why are you here, Princess Olonova?” she asked, conscious of her sweat-soaked blouse, her tattered kerchief. She attempted a smile of her own. “Do you visit the count?”
It wasn’t the smile Antonina remembered. It was awkward, as if Lilya had forgotten how to move her mouth. “No,” she said. “I’m not visiting. You’re working here?” she asked as she dismounted.
“Yes. I’ve lived on the estate for almost four years,” Lilya said, and Antonina felt a thump of distress.
“This is where my father sent you?”
Lilya nodded.
There was a moment of silence as the women just looked at each other, each lost in her own thoughts. Finally Antonina asked, “Lyosha?” She was afraid the child had died.
Lilya was glad to have something else to speak of. “He’s getting tall, and too skinny, but he’s as healthy now as any of the other boys.”
“Good. That’s very good,” Antonina said. The silence again. “How are you?” It was an inane question; she was acutely aware that Lilya didn’t look well. “It’s very warm today,” she added.
Lilya wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. “Yes. A warm day for October, princess,” she agreed with that same unnatural smile.
“Oh. Lilya, I’m no longer to be addressed as princess,” Antonina said. “I … I am Countess Mitlovskiya.”
At this, Lilya’s eyes widened. “You married the landowner?”
“Only last month,” Antonina said. Lilya was so thin, her pallor almost grey. Under her eyes the skin was smudged a deep violet, as though she hadn’t slept in a long time. Her face and the front of her blouse were soaked from her exertions.
When she first came, Lilya had seen the landowner occasionally, with his haughty wife at his side. She couldn’t imagine Antonina married to such an old man. “We knew he remarried, of course. We heard it was a young woman from another estate in Pskov. The marriage … it was your wish?”
Lilya knew she was being bold, but until Antonina made it clear she shouldn’t address her so informally, she would ask what she wanted to know.
“It was best for all involved,” Antonina said, and at that she saw something in Lilya’s face soften.
“Not a love match, then?”
It was as if the last four years fell away with Lilya’s abrupt question, and Antonina was with her friend again. She shook her head.
“And are you …” Lilya stopped, and licked her lips. “Are you pleased with your husband?”
“It is very early to speak of such things, Lilya.”
A slight line appeared between Lilya’s dark eyebrows. “I am married as well.”
“Your husband is kind to you?” Antonina asked, glancing away from her to the bent backs of her fellow labourers.
“Soso—Iosef Igorovitch—is strong and hard-working.”
“Well, I hope he’s also kind, Lilya Petrova. You deserve kindness.”
Another silence fell between them, comfortable this time, and then Lilya asked, “Do you have your own dog yet?”
At this unexpected question, Antonina felt such relief that she laughed, and Lilya herself made a strangled sound that could pass for laughter.
“I do. Her name is Tinka, and she’s still a puppy. She’s a very sweet little thing. She follows me everywhere, and demands to be held whenever I sit.”
“That’s good,” Lilya said.
Antonina looked at Lilya’s painfully thin frame. “Do you have children?”
Lilya’s face lost any animation. “No, countess. And I must return to my work—I’m slowing the others down.”
“Of course.”
Lilya picked up her scythe. It hurt Antonina, this deliberate display of wanting—needing—to return to work, when all Antonina wanted was for Lilya to talk to her.
“Goodbye, countess,” Lilya said, and bent to her work.
Every time he came to Antonina’s bedroom that first month of their marriage, Konstantin would lie beside her in the dark and kiss her hand. Then he would stroke her hair and face, and finally, after some sort of fussing with his nightshirt, he would ease himself on top of her. But it was always as it had been the first time in Pskov: he was unable to accomplish the task.
With each of her husband’s attempts, Antonina squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath, until finally, one night, he said, “My dear angel, please. You must put on some show of tenderness.”
His voice, for the first time, bore a trace of actual sadness. He had visited Tania the evening before—as he had each week since he had begun with her, six months after the death of his first wife. Never, before this second marriage, had he experienced the difficulty he did with Antonina. Tania reminded him of his wife in age and appearance, and that was enough. He had enjoyed the physical side of his marriage with the first countess, and he felt powerful and virile with her—Irina Denisovich—and then with Tania. But this girl … something about the way she behaved with him made him feel old and powerless.
Antonina knew she had a duty towards her husband. The marriage bed, from all she understood in her novels, was the place where the act of love occurred. But she felt no love for Konstantin, and in no way could she imagine the embarrassing joining of their bodies as pleasurable. She often thought of her mother and Valentin. What did her mother feel that made her act so freely? She clearly didn’t love the young violinist, and yet that didn’t prevent her from enjoying what they did.
Antonina knew what was expected, and that it would have to happen if they were to have children—the reason he married her.
“Do you not … is there nothing I can do, Antonina?” Konstantin said in a tone of exasperation, rolling off her. But instead of leaving, he arranged two pillows against the headboard and propped himself against them, crossing his arms over his chest.
Antonina sat up and did the same, her shoulder resting against his in the darkness.
“I know you’re young, and high-spirited,” he said finally. “I don’t, for one moment, fool myself into believing you are pleased to be married to me. I’m certain you didn’t expect to find yourself here. Like this.”
He spoke the truth. There was nothing for Antonina to say.
“But Tosya,” he said, once he realized she would not dispute his words, “I want to have a child—a son and heir. It was my life’s greatest disappointment that my first wife did not bear any children. There is a chance now. Is there nothing about me you find appealing? Nothing?”
The added nothing, uttered with a hopeless air, stirred a sense of pity in her. She wasn’t attracted to him in any way. She was bored with his outright determination, pushing against her all these nights to no avail. But something—perhaps the defeat in his voice—made her feel sorry for him.
“I enjoy when you speak to me of the estate at dinner, and when your face shows that you enjoy listening to me play the piano.” She cleared her throat. “I know you didn’t mean what you said, that first day after the wedding—about me being empty. You didn’t really mean it, did you, Konstantin?” Somehow it was important, at this moment, that this man—her husband—find her intelligent.
He didn’t answer, but looked at the bedside table. “What is this book?” he asked, picking it up.
“Eugénie Grandet, by Honoré de Balzac.”
“Would you read to me? Just for a few moments,” he said, handing her the volume and then lighting the lamp. The request pleased Antonina; while reading, she was somewhere else, and safe. She opened the book where she had left off, and read aloud in French.
After ten minutes, Konstantin kissed her cheek and rose. “I was never one for reading. Figures are my strength. Have a pleasant sleep.”
“Thank you, my dear husband,” Antonina added, knowing it would please Konstantin for her to address him like this.
After he had gone, she felt a small glimmer of something that was close to pleasure.
In the fourth week of their marriage, Konstantin came in as Antonina’s maid was braiding her hair for the night. “Pin it up quickly, please,” Antonina said quietly, and the maid did so, winding the thick braids around Antonina’s head and securing them with hairpins.
Nobody but her maids had seen Antonina’s hair loose since she had been fourteen years old and stopped wearing it tied back with ribbons. It now reached to her waist, and she worried that Konstantin would think that with it down she looked too young.
He was carrying a small red box tied with a white bow. She tried to hide her disappointment that he had come to her. She was weary. She’d ridden the whole afternoon, had had her bath, and now wanted nothing more than to turn out the lamp and let her tired muscles relax. She had no energy for the same fumbling with nightclothes, the same endless pushing against her without any success, and finally, his disappointment palpable, Konstantin’s silent rising from the bed and quiet shutting of her bedroom door as he returned to his own.
He sat in a chair by the fireplace in his robe. When the maid had been dismissed, Antonina stood, and he did as well, holding out the box to her.
“What’s this?”
“I saw it when I was in Pskov yesterday, and thought of you.”
“Thank you,” Antonina said, taking it from him and untying the bow. Inside was a music box of lovely polished cherry with an inlay of mother-of-pearl on the lid. She turned the tiny brass key and it played a little Mozart sonata. It reminded her of the serf orchestra; they had played the same sonata at her party over six months earlier. She thought of Valentin’s hands around her mother’s naked waist, and felt a soft warmth, low in her abdomen.
She set the music box, still tinkling, on a table. “How pretty. And how thoughtful, Konstantin.”
He nodded, turning down the lamp on the dressing table. The only light came from the fire and a candle beside the bed.
Antonina looked at him quizzically.
“Let us dance,” he said.
“Here, in my bedchamber?” Antonina smiled. “So late at night?”
He didn’t answer but stood in position, his arms extended, and Antonina went into the circle of his embrace.
He led her about the room to the music, easily sidestepping the furniture. The fire cast wavering shadows on the walls. “I remember the first time I saw you dance,” he said. “It was at a party at your parents’ estate. You were probably thirteen or fourteen. You were a fetching child.”
Antonina looked at him. He was only a few inches taller than she—not an imposing height, but he held himself proudly.
“I noticed you a number of times after that, as you grew older. How lightly you moved, and yet warily, as though you might at any moment dash away from your partner.”
Antonina laughed at his description. “Depending on whom I was dancing with, indeed I may have been imagining myself a wild animal from the dark continent of Africa, trying to escape my captor.” They took another turn about the room. “I have a book on Africa, Konstantin, with drawings of the most amazing animals and strange, dark-skinned people. I would like to venture there someday. Do you suppose we could ever go all the way to Africa?”
“Africa? You’re a funny girl.”
The smile left her mouth. “Please don’t call me a girl. I’m your wife. A woman.”
“You’re right,” he said, letting go of her so she could wind the music box again. “You are an accomplished and clever woman.”
There. The apology Antonina had wanted for almost a full month. Again he took her in his arms. In the dim glow, the lines around his eyes and mouth were softened, and suddenly Antonina saw what he would have looked like as a young man. It pleased her, and she kissed his lips, a small, light kiss. “Thank you, Kostya,” she said, and at the use of his diminutive he lowered his head and kissed her back with passion.
Antonina kept her eyes closed, pretending it was Valentin who held her, who was pressing his lips against hers. She saw the violinist’s face as he stared over her mother’s shoulder at her from the bed.
She imagined herself sitting atop him as she had seen her mother do, and kissed Konstantin back. Encouraged, he moved his lips to her cheek and then her neck, pressing against her. Still she didn’t open her eyes, imagining Konstantin to be the young and handsome Valentin Vladimirovitch.
“You see, my angel?” he said, his lips against her neck. “It’s not so difficult.” Gently, he directed her to the bed. When the back of her thighs touched the mattress, Konstantin easily lifted her and laid her down.
“Yes, husband,” she whispered back, keeping her eyes closed, hearing Konstantin wind the music box again. Yes, Valya, she thought.
With her eyes closed, she imagined it was Valentin who now touched her breasts through the thin nightdress, and her nipples rose. She imagined his delicate hands and strong yet slender body, and it was Valya who lifted her nightgown and positioned himself over her as she wrapped her arms around his back and held him closer.
And at last Konstantin was able to move into her, very slowly.
“I don’t wish to hurt you,” he whispered.
“It’s all right,” she said, willing him to remain silent.
There was a brief, searing pain; Antonina tightened her lips so as not to cry out. Soon the pain dulled to a discomfort, as endlessly Konstantin continued his rhythm, his breathing growing heavier and heavier. And then he began to move faster, his breath rasping in his throat. Finally he stilled, then shuddered, letting out a muffled groan. After this he lay so heavy on top of her that for one brief moment she wondered if he had died. But then he stirred and lifted himself off her, getting out of bed.
With a slight intake of breath, she cautiously pulled the bedcovers over her and drew up her knees. She was sore, and longed for a hot bath.
Konstantin still stood beside the bed. The candle had burned low, and she watched as he smoothed his nightshirt and patted his hair and beard. “Thank you, my dear,” he said. “You are all right?”
“Yes, I am well,” she answered, and at this he smiled.
“Good,” he said. “Yes, it was a successful night.”
She nodded. The silence became awkward.
“I shall retire to my room, then, shall I?” There was something—perhaps reluctance—in his voice. Did he think he would stay here with her? Sleep in her bed? She wouldn’t be able to sleep with him beside her. She had never slept with anyone, and couldn’t imagine it.
“Yes, of course,” she said, “you must find comfort in your own bed, husband.”
He immediately performed a small bow from the waist, as if he had just brought her back to her chair after a lively mazurka. “À demain,” he said, with the hint of a smile.
To please him, Antonina replied, “Oui, mon cher. À demain.”
Once the door closed, she rose and stripped off her soiled gown and tossed it over the back of a chair. She poured water from her pitcher into the washbowl. Then she slowly and carefully washed herself with the cool water, thinking about what had just transpired. She put on a fresh gown and spread a towel from the washstand on the sheet, covering the disturbing, pinkish wetness left there. She hated to think of the maid seeing it and her stained nightgown the next morning.
Was this what was called love in the novels?
Surely it wouldn’t be the same with her violinist.
As she climbed back into bed, the candle guttered with a slight hiss.
The next morning, Konstantin appeared very pleased with himself, laughing heartily at the smallest things and treating Antonina with casual affection. He came to her bedroom three more times in the next week, and each time he thanked her, telling her he was pleased at their success.
The fourth night, as he moved on top of her, Antonina pushed at him and he rolled to his side. “Have I hurt you, my dear?” he asked.
“No,” she whispered, and pressing on his shoulder until he lay on his back, she put one leg over to straddle him.
Konstantin sat up so quic
kly that Antonina fell to the side. “What are you doing?” His voice was shocked.
“I thought it might be …” Antonina stopped, propping herself on an elbow to look at her husband. It might be what? Each time Konstantin had come to her, she had managed to open herself to him by imagining she was with Valentin. This night she had wanted to pretend it was Valentin in the position she had seen him in with her mother.
But Konstantin sat up, shaking his head, his forehead wrinkled and the lines around his mouth deep. “You disappoint me. No, it’s more than that—you disgust me. What kind of respectful wife would act in such a common manner? Such behaviour is sordid.”
Antonina reached up to make sure her hair hadn’t loosened. “I didn’t know it was wrong. I thought it might please you.”
“And how, I ask you, would you even think of such a thing? In all my years with my first wife, Irina—a good and dignified woman—she took her wifely duties with quiet acceptance.” He shook his head again, thinking of Tania, who, although common, still behaved with modesty. His voice rose. “Now I wonder at your innocence. Perhaps this is why your father was so anxious to have you married.”
Heat surged up Antonina’s chest, to her neck and into her face. “You know perfectly well I was pure when I married you, Konstantin Nikolevich. I cannot believe you could think such thoughts about me, when all I wanted was to give pleasure to you.”
“And who instructed you on the ways to please a man? Could it have been your mother? Everyone knows of her reputation.”
Antonina’s mouth went dry. “Get out,” she said, low and hard. How had Konstantin guessed the truth? “Leave me alone.”
“It would be my pleasure,” he said, and slammed the door as he left.
Konstantin ignored Antonina for days after that night. He used Grisha’s house to bed Tania more than usual, infuriating Grisha while pleasing Tania with the extra rubles she earned.
But then Antonina realized she was pregnant with the child who would be Misha.
Antonina didn’t see Lilya again until she was in the early stages of her pregnancy. In December, the empty fields covered in snow, Antonina rode through one of the villages. She came towards a group of women walking down the main street, carrying woven baskets of kindling on their backs, and recognized Lilya.
The Lost Souls of Angelkov Page 17
