She will never see Valentin again. She wraps her arms around herself, hearing him say that Mikhail would be playing his music somewhere. In her heart she knows this is unlikely, but allows herself the comfort of that vision: Misha at the piano. It’s a better image than the one of him in a peasant’s hut. She can’t bear to think of her son cold and hungry. Hurt.
She doesn’t want to stay in the house with these thoughts, so she puts on her cloak and walks out into the garden. But the snow switches back to rain, dissolving the delicate lacing of white. She becomes damp and chilled. Valentin said he’d given a letter for her to Grisha. Why didn’t Grisha deliver it to her?
When Grisha opens the door to her knock, expecting Lilya again, he steps back, surprised.
“Grisha? Valentin Vladimirovitch told me he gave you a letter for me. I’ve come for it,” she says.
Grisha’s face is dark in the odd light of this third day of November. He studies Antonina, looking for anything about her that is different now that she’s been with the musician. A slow-beating anger simmers as he thinks of them together, but Antonina can’t know that he knows, that Lilya has been to see him. He needs Lilya to get to Soso. And to Mikhail.
“Countess,” he says, and the word hovers oddly, like a presence, between them. He won’t call her Antonina. “I’m sorry. I was involved in matters off the estate yesterday and the letter slipped my mind.”
It’s an outright lie. He didn’t want to give it to her. He didn’t want to face her. He’s so tired of lying about Mikhail, about what he feels for her.
“May I come in?” she asks.
“Yes, please. Come in.”
In the small sitting room, the curtains are open, letting in the soft daylight, and a fire of fir cones gives off a woodsy odour. The settee, covered in soft brown wool, is pulled close to the fire. A few lamps are lit, adding to the warm feeling of the room. There are many books, and a sense of comfort, of home.
“The letter …” Grisha says, looking around. “I put it somewhere.”
Antonina picks up a book lying open, face down, on the settee. “Guiraud: Les Deux Princes. You read French, then?”
“My father taught me.”
“How is it your father spoke French?”
Grisha is not about to disclose his past at this moment. He suddenly thinks that if he comes close enough, he will smell Kropotkin on her—and all at once he’s furious with her. She’s like a bitch in heat, spreading her scent, driving everyone within sniffing distance insane. Restraining himself, he says, “I’ve had that book since I was a young man. I carried it with me here, to Angelkov.”
“Timofey Aleksandrovitch Kasakov,” she reads from the flyleaf. It’s Grisha’s handwriting. Timofey. Tima: the name he’d asked her to call him the night in the dacha. Call me Tima, he’d whispered.
She looks up from the book. “Tima,” she says, and he knows, by her eyes, what she’s thinking.
He’s trembling, although Grisha is not a man to tremble. He wants to go to her, wants to hold her so badly that he finds it hard to breathe.
“That’s the name you were once called?”
He’s so raw. He knows what she’s done with Kropotkin, what Lilya told him they had done in the last twelve hours. In that moment Grisha feels there will be no future and can be no consequences. He wants to say something meaningful, something that will make her understand it’s him she should be with—him, not Kropotkin.
He says, instead, “Yes, that was the name I was given.”
“You changed it to Grigori Sergeyevich Naryshkin.”
“Yes,” he says firmly.
She lets a moment pass, and then puts the book back on the settee. In spite of Grisha’s curtness, it appears she doesn’t want to leave. She picks up the svirel, putting her fingers on its six holes as Valentin had done, looking at the name Tima carved on one side. “Do you play?”
“No. It was a gift.” Her questions turn the knife sharply in his gut. She must know what she’s doing, talking to him as if nothing has changed. But everything has changed. Is she punishing him?
She puts the flute back. “Do you know something odd? Kropotkin told me that when he hears music, he sees colour. The sound a cello makes is red. The piano green, the piccolo yellow … He named what he saw when he heard each instrument. He made me think of Misha when he told me about it. Misha learned to play the piano as easily as he learned to say the letters of the alphabet or count his numbers.” Remembering Misha learning to play makes her smile. “I sometimes thought—” Her smile falls away as she looks at Grisha. “What is it?”
He’s gripping the mantle, his knuckles white, his complexion blanching.
“You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine.”
“Have you ever heard of such a thing? Of music creating colour in someone’s vision?”
Grisha makes a sound as if he’s clearing his throat, or perhaps his breath is caught there. “What colour does he see when he plays his violin?” he asks, surprising her.
Her mouth is lovely, and as the muted light falls across her in streams, Grisha grows strangely weak in her presence. It’s deeply confusing, the two elements coming together. As he’s filled with desire for her, she’s fitting in the final piece of something he hasn’t allowed himself to believe.
He knows the colour before she says it.
“He sees gold when he plays. Certain tones make the gold shimmer, he said, like the sun through autumn leaves.” She looks quizzically at Grisha. “Are you really quite well, Grisha? You appear … Perhaps you’re falling ill?”
“No,” he says, and straightens his shoulders. “I have work. The accounts …”
Antonina doesn’t see any sign of the account books. “The letter, then, Grisha. Do you have the letter for me?”
“Yes,” Grisha says in a vague way, as though he’s suddenly very weary, or deeply distracted. He looks around, shaking his head ever so slightly, then pulls the letter from beside a small painting on his mantle and hands it to her. “Here it is. Good day,” he tells her, making it clear it’s time for her to leave.
Once she’s gone, he sits, heavily, on the settee. He stares at the svirel. And then he rises, slowly, and goes to his desk and opens it. He takes paper, a pen and a bottle of ink. He stares at the paper for a moment, and then writes: Dear Valentin Vladimirovitch Kropotkin.
He stops, as if unsure of what he’s about to say. It takes him a long time to compose three simple lines.
Antonina reads what Valentin had written to her two days earlier. His words tell her how much he had enjoyed her company. He would come to see her one more time, the following evening, but after that he would write to her from wherever he settled. That perhaps, whether in St. Petersburg or Moscow, she could one day come and hear him play again. “When you have your son back,” she reads, “I would like to meet him. Please bring him with you.”
Mikhail. Is this why I wanted to be with you, Valentin—because you remind me so much of him?
It’s late in the afternoon when Antonina goes to the kitchen. She tells Raisa that she will ask Lyosha to bring in a barn cat for the mice. Raisa has asked if they should throw out the flour, and Antonina asked if there was any alternative. “We could sift it, madam, to get rid of the droppings. But it will take some time.”
“I’ll help,” Antonina tells her. It feels wrong to sit, waiting to be served, when she sees how much Raisa and the others have to do.
Raisa tells her, as they work together, that Lyosha has ridden out to hunt rabbits. If he has luck, they will have rabbit stew the next day, Raisa says, smiling.
Neither Antonina nor Raisa know that Lyosha has already returned with two large hares and dropped them outside the servants’ quarters. Lilya is there now, skinning and gutting them.
Lyosha’s rifle is leaning against the front of the house. He’s in the stables rubbing down his horse.
Antonina is in the pantry, taking another sack of flour from a shelf, when she hears the dogs
barking. She assumes it’s Lyosha returning. She takes the flour into the kitchen and begins sifting again.
Lilya looks up from the skinned carcass as the rider gallops past the servants’ quarters, down the road towards Grisha’s house.
It’s Valentin.
She throws down the rabbit, her hands bloody, and grabs the rifle from where it leans against the door frame.
The two men are inside Grisha’s house. Valentin clutches the letter from Grisha. Please come to my home when you get this. We must talk. I remember you.
Grisha is holding the svirel. “What does this flute mean to you, Kropotkin?” he asks, handing it to him.
Valentin stuffs the letter into his pocket and runs his fingers over the carved name. “I played it when I left the letter for the countess with you,” he says.
“But does it mean anything? From another time?”
“Another time? I don’t know what you’re asking. What are you saying, Naryshkin?”
Grisha swallows, gently taking the svirel from Valentin’s hand. “I carried this with me when I left home. When I left Chita.”
“I don’t know Chita.”
“It’s in Siberia, far east of Irkutsk.”
Valentin’s face shows nothing.
“My little brother gave this to me,” Grisha says. “He carved my name into it, and gave it to me for my name day. He was barely eight, and already played the violin as if he had learned in the heavens.” Grisha’s face is pale. “He saw gold when he played his violin. He was taken away, to become a musician.”
Valentin’s chest is rising and falling. “I don’t remember my childhood.”
“Nothing?”
“Bells.” He swallows. “Church bells. And other sounds. Gongs, I think.”
“Tibetan gongs.”
Valentin wipes his forehead with his hand. “A glass of water, Naryshkin.”
“You remember the gongs from the temple we attended with our mother.”
“Our mother?”
“Yes, Kolya.”
Valentin sits down, staring up at Grisha.
Grisha nods. “Kolya. You were Kolya. I was Tima. I am Tima. Your brother, Tima.”
Valentin’s mouth is open as he stares at Grisha. His breathing is erratic, and his face flushes. “You’re … wait. Wait,” he says, standing, putting out both his hands as if wanting to stop time.
The door is thrown open with such force that it hits the wall. It’s Lilya with Lyosha’s rifle. She aims it at Valentin.
Valentin looks from her to Grisha, and back to Lilya, confusion on his face. Grisha sees what is happening, but before he can react, an explosion rips through the room.
Valentin, his chest blown open, flies backwards. He hits the settee and then the floor.
Antonina hears the muffled report of a rifle. She glances at the window. It’s dusk. Surely Lyosha isn’t still hunting, she thinks. It’s far too dark to be assured of a kill.
When Lyosha arrives at Grisha’s house, panting from running down the road at the sound of the shot, Grisha is on his knees, holding the musician in his arms. He is pressing a blood-soaked blanket over the man’s chest. Lilya is slumped against the open door as if thrown there. Her eyes are wide with shock. The rifle, sticky with rabbit blood, is beside her on the floor. She is crossing herself compulsively, whispering prayers as she stares at the injured man.
Lyosha puts his hands to his head. There’s so much blood. It looks like … it seems as if Lilya shot the musician. And Grisha … why is he holding the other man so closely, as if they’re lovers? He’s murmuring, pressing the dying man’s head against his chest, his own face contorted in something frightening to behold.
Lilya is shaking violently, and as Lyosha looks at her, she whispers to him, “I heard an owl hooting last night. I knew something terrible would happen today.” She says this as if she’s telling him a secret. And then she continues crossing herself and muttering frantic prayers: Forgive me, God in Heaven forgive me, forgive me Heavenly Father, forgive me.
Lyosha drops to his knees. His hands are still on his head. Holy Mother of God. He has never seen a man dying like this. The musician is choking, a bubbling sound bursting from his throat. The blanket is saturated with crimson. Grisha is covered in it.
“You came,” he hears the musician gasp. “You came, Tima.”
Grisha tries to speak. He can’t. He tries again. “Yes, Kolya, I came for you.” His voice is hoarse, the words slow, fractured.
“As I dreamed you would. I knew you would come for me.” The bubbling grows louder. Valentin coughs up a mouthful of blood and his lips move in what could be a smile.
After a long silence, Grisha looks up at Lilya and Lyosha. “He’s dead,” he says, slowly making the sign of the cross over the other man three times. His eyes are wet.
Lyosha has never seen Grisha sign the cross before. He looks at his sister, then back at Grisha. “Did you … do you know him so well, then, Grisha?” Lyosha asks, his voice sounding as though his throat has been burned. His hands shake violently.
“No,” Grisha tells him. “I don’t know him at all. But I could have.”
Grisha looks down at the body of the brother he had abandoned on the road outside Chita.
He remembers his one day in Irkutsk, and how he wouldn’t stay any longer in case he actually did spot Kolya. How he got drunk and took his first woman. How all he wanted was to start his life with no responsibilities, no ties to a little boy who would only hold him back.
How easy it had been for him to betray that boy. He had betrayed him once, and now he is responsible for his death.
“Lilya,” Lyosha breathes, finally getting to his feet. “Lilya, what have you done?” He lifts the rifle.
Lilya is staring at the body.
“Lilya?” Lyosha says again. She’s still crossing herself and whispering prayers. She clasps her hands, raising them in front of her. Lyosha wants to shout at her, strike her, but it’s all too frightening, too confusing. It is so quiet in Grisha’s house now, with Grisha holding the dead musician, looking at him in such a stricken way. “What happened? Why did you do this?” She doesn’t answer. Lyosha looks at Grisha again. “Why has Lilya done this terrible thing?”
“I must go to church. I must ask for forgiveness.” Lilya speaks aloud for the first time. “I … I didn’t mean … I don’t know what I was doing. I didn’t even think it was loaded. How would I know? Why would you leave it loaded, Lyosha? I didn’t mean to kill him. I wanted only to drive him away. To make him understand he could never come back to her. I must beg forgiveness. Will God forgive me, Lyosha?” She is crying now.
Grisha gently lays Valentin down. “Lyosha, take Lilya to the servants’ quarters. Then come back and help me.”
Lyosha is so pale. “Help you? But what about Lilya? Will she go to prison? I shouldn’t have left the cartridge in the rifle. I never do that. I … I was tired. I got back and …”
“I’m not going to prison.” Lilya’s voice is unexpectedly loud, firm. She turns her head from Valentin’s body, glaring at Grisha. “Bad things happen, but it’s not always because one is bad.”
Grisha stares at her.
“I only meant to frighten him away so that he’d never come back. But … but now …” Lilya’s voice loses its strength, and she weeps. Almost immediately she gathers herself again. “Don’t tell me you aren’t glad,” she says to Grisha. “I saved you the trouble, didn’t I?”
Grisha wishes Lilya would be quiet. He’s trying to stay calm, to think logically, but he can’t. He wants to be alone with his dead brother.
“We’ll bury him in the woods,” Lilya continues. “Because how will we explain a man with a bullet in his chest? No one will miss him. He’s been dismissed by the Bakanevs, his career ruined. It would make sense that he moved on to another province, where no one would know of his disgrace.” Her words are stumbling, spittle flying from her lips. “And you can’t tell what I’ve done, Grisha. If you do, I’ll tell Antonin
a you killed him. Do you think she would suspect me? Do you think she doesn’t know how you felt about him? That you hated him as much as I did?” She finally looks back at the body. “I’ll tell her you did it,” she says again.
“Lilya,” Lyosha says. “Lilya, stop.”
She ignores him. “Besides, if I’m arrested for his murder, you won’t find Soso.”
At that, Grisha steps up to her and puts his hands around her throat in one quick movement. He just wants her to stop her incessant chattering.
Lyosha grips the rifle. “Grisha, what are you doing?”
Grisha’s hands are loose, loose enough for Lilya to speak. “Kill me then,” she says. “Kill me and you won’t find the boy. Kill me and you kill Mikhail Konstantinovich.”
Grisha holds his hands up, away from her throat, and steps back.
“My God. My God,” Lyosha repeats. “Tell me what you’re talking about, sister. What in the name of God is going on?”
Grisha puts his hand to his temple. “Take her out of here.”
Something in Grisha’s voice frightens Lyosha more than if he’d shouted.
“Don’t let her go to the countess,” Grisha says, and Lyosha takes Lilya’s arm. “And come back later to help me.”
That night, Lyosha and Grisha dig a grave in the cemetery behind the Church of the Redeemer. Grisha has chosen a spot hidden by a thick stand of fir, where the newly turned earth won’t likely be noticed. The ground is hard, although not yet frozen.
“Why did she do it, Grisha?” Lyosha asks, heaving clumps of hard soil out of the way. The area is lit by two lamps sitting on the ground. He glances at the wrapped shroud in the back of the cart. “And why are we burying him? Shouldn’t we tell someone? At least Father Cyril.”
Grisha stops digging. The harsh light from the lamps makes the bones of his face stand out. His mouth is grim. “Do you want your sister imprisoned, Lyosha? Sent to one of the women’s camps in Siberia, to die after years of hard labour?”
The Lost Souls of Angelkov Page 39
