They lived their lives as if not married to each other, or, more specifically, as if unmarried and free.
When Antonina’s mother came to the country estate for a few summer weeks now and then, the huge house came alive with company. Princess Olonova arranged dances and musical evenings and dinners for thirty or forty friends. She even carelessly entertained her various lovers at the estate. She had had the walls and doors of her bedchamber covered in layers of felt under the wallpaper, so that any illicit sounds would not be heard by the house serfs. She never worried about her husband coming to her room; that hadn’t occurred since she first learned she was carrying the baby who was to be Antonina.
Her husband was more discreet, and enjoyed a different kind of game. Unlike his wife, who usually picked men of her own class for her trysts—although she wasn’t averse to a quick rendezvous with anyone young and good-looking, no matter his station—the prince definitely preferred women of the lower class. But he was above using his own house serfs for his pleasure. As a young man in his father’s home, he had seen it too many times. His father had used and discarded his female house serfs at will. As little more than a boy, the prince observed that it was a game for the old man: when a fresh-faced girl working in the fields caught his eye on one of his rounds to see the progression of the spring planting or the autumn reaping, she would be summoned, given a household uniform and thrust into life in the estate house. Within weeks, she fully understood the rules of the manor—and her role there.
The young prince had seen that these girls never stayed long. Some were sent back to the village because they simply couldn’t adapt to moving from life in a hovel and field to the routines of a household serf, trying to learn to serve dishes with never-before-seen foods or launder and iron expensive silks and linens or dust precious porcelain and polish heavy family silver. Some were let go simply because they proved too difficult to deal with, weeping for their mothers and disappointing the old prince in his heavy-handed attempts at seduction.
If one did respond as he wished, and settled into the life of the manor, she was dismissed, too, as soon as she showed the earliest signs of pregnancy. She would be sent back to her village to live in shame, spoiled and unmarriageable, with an eventual illegitimate offspring.
The younger Prince Olonov simply didn’t want to deal with such messy and time-consuming pursuits. No—for him, the serf actresses were the perfect solution.
Like many landowners of large, wealthy estates, Prince Olonov had his own serf orchestra and serf acting troupe, which he used for his own entertainment and also hired out to other landowners who didn’t have the means to possess their own orchestras. He had a theatre for performances on the property. While serf orchestras were only male, the acting troupes were both male and female. The men and women who rehearsed their music or lines for the stage lived in quarters on the estate, and relationships between them were forbidden. They were not allowed a family life.
While the serf actors and actresses—mostly selected on the basis of their pleasing appearance—were usually trained when they were young adults, the serf musicians were picked at a much younger age. Sometimes a landowner would recruit his own serfs, or send maestros to scour the countryside for boys gifted with musical abilities. Those chosen were bought and taken from their families and given formal musical instruction. All those in the serf theatres and orchestras knew that if they embarrassed their owners by forgetting their lines or performing off-key in front of a crowd of guests, there could be disaster. Depending on the personality, mood and whim of his master, a serf would either be harshly punished with severe lashings or, even worse, be demoted to a low job on the estate or sent to a miserable village izba and work in the fields. It was a terrible fate for a trained musician to have his instrument torn from him, knowing he would never again make the music that had been his life. Within a day, the hands that had controlled a cello or violin to such a delicate crescendo that women wept would know only the handle of a shovel or axe or plough or scythe.
The actress who failed to meet expectations would forfeit fine costumes and life on the stage before an appreciative audience. If dismissed, she might spend the rest of her days chopping beets and potatoes in a humid kitchen, or, like her male counterpart, be relegated to punishing physical work in the fields.
Many of the actresses were worldly, having lived in Moscow or St. Petersburg for their dramatic and vocal training, where they experienced a less supervised and slightly bohemian existence. They knew how to entertain a man, and were knowledgeable not only about the lure of sex but also about how to keep themselves from the family way. Should one of them whisper to Prince Olonov of an accident—entirely her fault, of course, she would add—all he had to do was hand her a wad of rubles and she would deal with the nuisance herself.
The prince carried on his dalliances at his summer dacha a few versts from the manor, which he kept heated through the winter. It was charming and beautifully decorated, although it lacked the grandness and elegance of the manor home. He treated his women with a certain respect, buying them pretty clothing and baubles and arranging elaborate private meals with the most costly of wines. He romanced them, flattered their beauty, their talent. He felt a surge of pride as he watched his woman of the moment perform on the stage in his theatre at the end of the larch allée, glancing at the audience to enjoy their reactions. Some of his mistresses he kept for over a year, developing genuine feelings for them.
But eventually he would grow bored, his eye turning to another, more recently purchased member of the troupe. He would gently but firmly inform his current lover that her time with him was over. In most cases the woman agreed, knowing there was no point in protesting. The occasional one who refused to cooperate—to rid herself of a child or leave behind the lovely pleasures of the dacha—disappeared quickly. She would be spoken of only in whispers, as if the mere mention of the rebellious woman’s name might bring on a similar fate.
While Antonina grew up in the care of those hired to look after her physical needs and those hired to train her mind, she was intrigued by her older brothers, Viktor, Marik and Dimitri. She did what she could to keep up with them. While young, she was often as unkempt as they were, her boots muddied and her hair loosened from its ribbons and hanging down her back in an impossible tangle. The nannies despaired, and at their master’s request tried to tame her. They buttoned her into fancy dresses and laced her feet into soft silk or satin slippers. They brushed and curled her hair, trying, as the prince ordered, to impart some femininity to his only daughter.
But Antonina didn’t make it easy for the women attempting to teach her the role of daughter of a prince. She attended daily prayers at the church on the estate, and spent three hours every Sunday listening to the intonations of Father Vasiliy. But none of this helped. She showed no signs of the good and gentle spirit expected of a well-born young lady. She liked spending time in the kitchen with the old cook, or following the head housekeeper, with her ring of keys, up and down the many stairs. From them she learned peasant songs.
Antonina’s brothers treated her as though she were a puppy, playing with her when they found her engaging, pushing her away as she grew older and more demanding and perhaps less winsome. They cheered her on when she demonstrated stoicism in the face of both pain and distress, praising her for not crying when she fell from the tree they had encouraged her to climb. When they swam in the icy lake at the edge of the estate, they instructed Antonina to take a deep breath and then held her under the water until she saw bright bursts of colour. She quickly learned that they would only let her rise, choking and gasping, when she stopped struggling and went limp. They nodded approvingly when the rifle they taught her to shoot left painful dark bruises on her shoulder.
When she was twelve, they encouraged her to drink vodka with them, laughing uproariously at her first signs of inebriation. But she would not be laughed at, and practised drinking the strong, clear alcohol on her own. There were so many variet
ies, from caraway seed and dill to cherry and sage and pear. There were bottles of it in her father’s study, in the dining room, the library, the sitting room—everywhere throughout the manor. It was easy to help herself to a glassful—or two or three—on afternoons or evenings when she was bored or restless. She learned not to taste it as she let it run down her throat, and by age fourteen she was able to control her behaviour while matching her brothers shot for shot. They showed first surprise and then respect for their sister.
Although her parents paid her little heed, caught up in their own affairs and desires, she took this as a normal state. She had her brothers, and until she met Lilya she hadn’t felt any particular need for a friend her own age. The serfs working the land thought her slightly mad, dressed as a boy, galloping at full speed down dusty roads in summer with her guards behind her, or picking her way through the deep, muddy ruts caused by soft spring rain or hard, driving autumn torrents.
Although she was fond of many of the house serfs, the peasants outside the estate were part of the landscape to Antonina. Bent over in the fields or under bundles on the roads, they were mostly nameless and faceless.
Meeting Lilya changed that.
That second Sunday, Lilya did bring the new puppy, a little spotted male with a small white star at the base of his spine. Lilya had named him Sezja.
At first, Lilya was stiff and uncomfortable, but she thawed slightly as Antonina laughed delightedly at Sezja’s antics.
When Lilya told Antonina she must return home, Antonina told her to come back the next Sunday. Lilya had to obey the princess. The third visit went more comfortably for Lilya, and by the fourth Sunday, Lilya looked forward to her weekly escape from the tedium of her village Sundays.
After that, she was often waiting when Antonina arrived.
Through the long, warm spring and hot summer of 1845, Antonina learned about the true lives of the serfs through her clandestine friendship with Lilya. At first, when she asked Lilya what she did in the fields and how she spent her winters when there was no outside work, Lilya answered slowly and carefully, afraid of saying the wrong thing. She wondered if the princess was trying to trick her, to find out if she and her family were not working hard enough. But as she grew to realize that Antonina was genuinely interested, she lost her suspicion. More than that, she started to enjoy Antonina’s reactions to her stories. Eventually Lilya grew to savour telling the princess about her life, feeling a small burst of pleasure each time she saw the princess’s mouth open in disbelief.
“Well,” Lilya said, settling more comfortably on the fallen log they usually sat on, “this story is about my mother having a baby in the field.”
“The little brother—Lyosha—you talk about?”
“No, no. This was only last fall, during harvest. It was a girl. But she died.”
Antonina studied her, but Lilya’s expression hadn’t changed. Whether she was telling how she and her mother had to take turns tying Lyosha on their backs as they worked—the days he was too sick to walk beside them and they couldn’t leave him lying in one spot in case he was cut by a swinging scythe—or how many poisoned rats she’d picked up and thrown out of her father’s blacksmith shop the night before, her face always looked the same. Now she’d just told Antonina about a dead baby sister, and she didn’t look sad at all.
“But … why did your mother have her in the field?”
“When she told my father her pains had started, he said she couldn’t stay home. We had the obrok coming—pay to your father—and if she didn’t work, we would be further behind.”
Antonina swallowed. She wanted to ask Lilya what obrok was. Why did Lilya’s parents have to pay her father? It didn’t make sense—they worked for him.
“So when she couldn’t stop the baby from coming and there was no time to get one of the other women, she had to hold on to my shoulders and push it out. It fell onto the ground. But it was already dead—it was blue. I used the edge of my scythe to cut it free from my mother.”
Antonina hadn’t blinked.
“And after that, the blood wouldn’t stop coming, and my mother couldn’t walk, so I had to run and get my father to bring a cart to take her home. He was very angry. He missed hours of work, and she couldn’t work for another two days. Then she worked slowly for a week. He beat her, but it didn’t make her work any faster.”
“He beat her?” Antonina echoed. “Because she had a baby and couldn’t work?”
Lilya shrugged, picking up Sezja and rubbing his head with her knuckles. “He always beats her. And me. Not Lyosha yet. Lyosha he just slaps a little.”
They sat in silence, Lilya enjoying the shock on Antonina’s face.
Antonina was imagining a tiny blue baby lying dead on the ground between rows of waving blue flax with the blue sky overhead. Everything was blue. It was a horribly sad picture, and yet somehow, in Antonina’s mind, the blueness rendered it unreal. She felt as she did when she read a beautiful passage in a novel. She took Sezja from Lilya and buried her face in his side, not wanting Lilya to keep looking at her.
Each Sunday, after hearing Lilya’s stories, Antonina prayed her thanks to the Holy Mother for all the gifts bestowed upon her. She knelt in the corner of her bedroom filled with candles and her collection of icons blessed by Father Vasiliy, and was thankful.
On a sultry, overcast July day a few months after she met Lilya, Antonina made her first kill. It was a red deer, deep in the Olonov birch forest, and Antonina’s shot had been clean, hitting the doe in the chest. The animal dropped to her knees gracefully, her head still lifted in surprise, but by the time Antonina rode close and dismounted, the doe lay on her side. Antonina knelt beside her as she drew her last breaths, took off her gloves and stroked the soft head, seeing the deer’s eyes film, her tongue, slightly protruding, stiffen.
“A marvellous killing, little sister,” Viktor said, and she looked up at him, proud. “Strange,” he then said, and Antonina frowned.
“What’s strange, Vitya?”
He was studying the doe’s swollen belly. “It’s far too late for that—most of the young were born long ago.”
Antonina put her hand on the rise of it, and in that instant felt the smallest of movements. Her mouth opened as she looked up at her brother.
He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “It doesn’t matter. They’ll both be dead in another moment. Come now, we will let the others dress it and bring it home. Tonight at dinner we will raise our glasses in a toast to you, our Artemis, our little hunter.” He smiled fondly.
But something had happened to Antonina in the moment she felt the dying thing in its mother’s womb. She thought so little about her own mother, apart from occasionally studying her as she stood in a receiving line in the grand entry, and wondering if she really looked as Princess Olonova had looked when much younger—as her father had once told her. Feeling that small, feeble movement within the doe, Antonina thought of Lilya, cradling dead Romka. She thought of the blue baby dropping onto the flax field. She thought of her own mother putting her hand on her distended belly, with her moving inside. And Antonina was filled with sadness unlike any she’d ever known. She had killed a mother deer and her baby, and for the first time she missed her own mother, who was in her bedroom in St. Petersburg, spooning a generous dollop of the finest caviar into the mouth of a handsome young lieutenant.
That evening at dinner, Antonina stared down at the succulent loin of pork on her plate. What of the tiny fawn? Did it hang on a hook beside its gutted mother? Would it be prepared for a future meal? A wave of nausea swept through her. Without picking up her knife and fork, she asked to be excused from the table, saying she was unable to eat. But her father scolded her, telling her she must stay until he and her brothers and their guests were done. At the far end of the table sat an elderly baron and baroness who were visiting for the week. They were both hard of hearing and napped much of the day, showing up for meals and eating with surprising gusto.
Usually Anto
nina obeyed her father. But this time she said in a loud voice, “I’m not feeling well. It’s my woman’s time, Papa.”
It was shocking to speak so before not only her father and brothers but also the baron and baroness. And it was a lie. Her time had not come; it would not for another few months. Antonina tensed, waiting for her father to reprimand her for acting in such an indelicate manner.
But her father didn’t berate her. Instead, he looked uncomfortable, glancing at her brothers as if for explanation. But they all lowered their heads, cutting and chewing with great energy, as if they had never before eaten pork loin. As if they had never considered that their little sister was a female.
The baron and baroness didn’t appear to have heard the small drama playing out at the other end of the table. Both continued their meal, smiling in a vague manner.
“Papochka?” Antonina said. “May I go to my room?” She stood and put her hand to one side of her abdomen for further effect, mimicking the younger house serfs when they begged the housekeeper to lighten their workloads on particular days of the month.
Her father glanced at her, scrubbing his moustache with his napkin. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said, his eyes darting about the table as if looking for the salt cellar or the butter dish.
Antonina lay on her bed in the darkening bedroom, thinking about the doe, and about her mother.
The Lost Souls of Angelkov Page 9