The Lost Souls of Angelkov Read Online Free PDF Page B

She is willing her son to be sitting in front of his father. But he is not there.
    She stares at her husband, her arms limp at her sides.
    “Did a ransom note come?” Konstantin asks.
    Antonina shakes her head.
    Konstantin looks much older than he did yesterday. When he removes his hat, the shape of his skull, under his sweat-drenched hair, is too apparent in the dying light. He’s sixty-one to her twenty-nine. He dismounts with difficulty, relying on his one good hand. Lyosha leads his horse away.
    “Konstantin? Now what?” Antonina asks, but he doesn’t answer immediately.
    Finally he looks at her. “Tomorrow we begin again. That’s all we can do—search, while we wait for word about our son.”
    She follows him into the house, where the servants have lit the lamps. There is the smell of beef, and the long, polished table in the grand dining room is set for two. Antonina walks past the dining room and up the curving staircase to her bedroom. Konstantin sits at the table and waits to be served, staring at the setting for Antonina, then at the spot where their son would have sat.

    She doesn’t sleep, once again keeping vigil with a bottle of vodka, and she is shaky when, the next morning, Lilya comes to help her get dressed. Antonina’s thick, pale hair falls to her waist, but even her husband has never seen it completely undone. Normally it takes Lilya at least half an hour to brush through it and secure it into its fashionable style with the delicate combs Antonina favours. It’s beautiful hair, Lilya always thinks, the weight of it in her hands a marvel. She loves to wash it as her mistress lies back in the large porcelain bath. Sometimes, alone in Antonina’s room, Lilya tries to create the same style with her own dark hair.But hers is too fine and the combs slide about, unable to find a hold. It doesn’t matter. She could never appear with her hair in anything other than the usual, her braids wound round her head.
    “Do it up quickly, Lilya,” Antonina tells the woman. “I’m going out with them again. I don’t want to waste any time.” She sighs heavily as the brush slides from her scalp to the end of her hair with long, even strokes.
    Lilya meets Antonina’s eye in the mirror. “All the servants are praying for Mikhail’s safe return,” she says. “Even my husband says the Cossacks wouldn’t hurt a child, especially not a child like our Mikhail.”
    There is a moment of silence before Antonina says, “And what does your Soso know of Cossacks and their ways, Lilya? What does he know of my child, of children at all?”
    The brush stops, and Lilya takes a breath as if she is about to defend her husband, but says, “Let us believe, then, that God will care for His lamb.” She lifts the brush again, but Antonina reaches up and grabs it.
    “I will believe in men like Grisha and your brother Lyosha. If anyone can find Mikhail, they will. They will find him and return him, unharmed, to me. This is who I will believe in, Lilya. Not your crude husband. Not my weak husband. Not God.”
    Lilya’s lips tighten. “Still, you should see to the count. Pavel says he’s not well at all.”
    Antonina stares at the mother-of-pearl tray holding her combs.
    “Tosya? Did you hear what I said?”
    Antonina looks at Lilya in the oval mirror again. They’re the same age, although Lilya looks much older. She has streaksof grey in her dark hair, and the small lines radiating from the corners of her eyes are visible even when she isn’t smiling.
    “Finish then, please, Lilya.”
    When Lilya is done, Antonina goes down the long, wide hall to her husband’s bedroom. When she enters, she finds Pavel standing over Konstantin, a damp cloth in his hand. Another wet cloth is draped on Konstantin’s forehead.
    “Kostya?” she says. He’s holding the bandaged hand against his chest with his left hand. As well as the old and new blood, there’s ugly yellow matter on the bandage. She leans over him but immediately