While they waited in silence, Aleksandr’s mind raced along with the pounding in his chest. He could feel the burning weight of blood collecting in his lungs. “You’ll be good to the boy,” he said to the maestro. “You can see that he listens well, and obeys. He is …” He stopped. “He is my son. You understand.” He pulled the sheet of blank paper towards him, and shakily and quickly wrote a number of scrawling lines, dotted with falling ink. “He can read, although he may not fully make sense of what this says until he is older. It’s important to me that he understands why this has happened to him. Will you make sure that he doesn’t lose the letter I give him?”
The maestro nodded, but his expression was one of impatience, and Aleksandr didn’t wish him to take the boy while feeling annoyed. “Kolya!” he called, finding sudden strength. “Come. Come here, now.”
The boy came from his room, the bulging sack in one hand and the little leather violin case in the other. He looked at his father, his eyes wide. Aleksandr realized he had frightened him by calling to him in the unfamiliar, loud voice.
“It’s all right, Kolya,” he said quietly. “It’s all right—you’ve done nothing wrong.” Kolya’s shoulders lowered and he smiled at his father. “Kolya,” Aleksandr said then, fighting the dreaded feeling in his chest, “you will go with the maestro.”
Kolya looked at him, his head tilted slightly.
“You will play your violin with the others. It’s what you want, isn’t it? You want to play your violin every day, and make wonderful harmonies.”
Kolya smiled and nodded. “Yes, Papa, I will play my violin with them today, and come home tonight and tell Mama about it.”
Aleksandr closed his eyes. His beautiful, musical Kolya. He put the folded paper into the boy’s tunic pocket. “This you must always keep. Do you understand?” He put Kolya’s hand on the pocket. “It’s very, very important. It says your name, and where you live. It tells my name, and your mother’s, and Tima’s. It also says … It’s a letter, for you to read. You don’t have to read it now. Read it when you are a bigger boy, Kolya. You mustn’t ever lose it.”
Kolya patted the paper, smiling at the rustle, and nodded at his father. “Mama is making shuba for supper today. I love chopped herring and egg.”
Aleksandr pulled the boy against his chest. He felt the child’s bones, barely covered with flesh. Then he looked into his narrow face and brushed his hair back from his forehead. “You are a good boy. Always remember that your father and mother know you are a good boy. And you are a brilliant musician. Brilliant.”
Again Kolya nodded.
“Go with the maestro now,” Aleksandr said, the cough bubbling up again. “Say goodbye to your papa.” He kissed the boy’s forehead and cheeks, not wanting to touch Kolya’s lips with his own because of his disease.
“Go now,” he urged, wanting his son to leave before the coughing began, knowing too that he was about to cry.
Ula arrived home as the tarantass was rumbling away from the house.
“Whose carriage is that?” she asked as she set down her basket. “Are you feeling any better?” But as she looked at her husband, some odd, unreadable expression on his face made her legs unexpectedly weak. She swallowed and went to him. “What is it, Sasha?”
“Ula,” he started, unable to find the right words. “Our boy, I … I thought …” He looked towards the boys’ bedroom.
She followed his gaze. “Was Tima hurt at work? Tima?” she called. When there was no answer, she hurried across the room, her boots staccato on the uncarpeted floor. “Kolyenka?” she said, looking into the tidy, empty room. She whirled round to face Aleksandr. “What’s happened? Kolya—where is he?”
Aleksandr was so pale—apart from two high, hectic spots of fever on his cheeks—that in that instant Ula knew what he would look like when he was dead.
“This is better, Ula. He will have a future—”
“Who?”
“Kolya.”
“A future?” Ula’s voice was low with confusion. “Kolya’s future is here, with us.” She cocked her head. “With me. This is his home. He can’t be anywhere but here, with me.” Her voice had risen. “What have you done?” She looked towards the open front door, blinking as she tried to make sense of what her husband was saying.
Aleksandr rubbed his eyes as if awakening from some deep, confusing dream.
Ula crossed the room to him in a strange sliding run, her arms out at her sides as if the room were tilting. “Tell me what you’ve done,” she insisted, so low that her voice was almost a growl. She glanced at the open door again. “What have you done, Aleksandr Danilovich?”
What had he done? Aleksandr was overcome with panic, the cough rumbling. He remembered the boy’s fragile body against his, the shoulder blades sharp. “His music,” he said. “His talent. The maestro can …”
In that instant, an animal howl came from Ula’s throat. Aleksandr had never heard this sound, not even when she was giving birth. She ran from the house and down the road, the howl echoing.
Only Timofey carries the secret of what happened next.
He heard his mother’s screams from the cooperage at the end of their road, and thought, It’s happened, Papa is dead. Nothing else would make his mother shriek so. He ran out to see her coming towards him, her shawl trailing behind her, her skirt held high in both hands, showing so much of her legs that he was embarrassed in spite of the cold fear in his belly.
“Papa?” he called, rushing to meet her. “It’s Papa?”
She shook her head, gasping, her mouth open, her lips edged with white spittle, an odd ashy sheen to her skin. “Go!” she shouted, pushing his shoulder. “It’s Kolya. Go after him.” She was panting, trying to speak around the gasping breaths.
“What’s happened? Go where? Has he wandered off?”
She slapped him then, slapped his cheek hard, and he reached up to grab her wrist. His mother was so gentle. She never screamed, had never slapped him, or even kicked at one of the dogs they’d owned. She was unlike his friends’ mothers, who beat their sons regularly. He was so confused he didn’t know what to think.
“I told you to go. Run! Get a horse. Go after them,” she panted through her sobs, her body trembling violently.
“Yes, yes, I will. But you have to tell me who. Who am I going after? What’s happened to Kolya?” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Mama?”
At the last word, Ula drew a deep, shaky breath and struggled to compose herself. She wiped her lips. “I’m sorry, Tima. I’m sorry. It’s the maestro. Your papa—he let him go with that man. He gave him to him. He’s taking him away.”
“Gave him away?” Tima wondered if his mother had gone mad. His father couldn’t have done what she was saying.
“Music—for the music. He’s taken my baby, my Kolyenka.” She started to sob again, dropping to her knees on the road, pulling at Timofey’s callused hands. People had come out of doorways to watch them.
“Timofey Aleksandrovitch!” someone called. “Do you need help?”
Tima didn’t answer. He turned from his mother and ran down the road, the dust kicked up in a long grey plume behind him.
He had run for perhaps five minutes down the twisting road when a horse plodded up behind him. It was just an old nag, an unsaddled Mongolian pony, but the man who had called out to him had heard Ula’s pleas. He’d taken the horse from his yard and come after Timofey. He slid off and Timofey used the horse’s mane to pull himself onto her bare back.
His fingers in her mane, he urged her on with a series of kicks to her bony sides. The old mare did as well as she could, hobbling in a painful, unrhythmic trot, and within another ten minutes Timofey spotted, in a cloud of dust, the back of the musicians’ open carriage.
He kicked the horse harder, and she managed to break into a canter, and Timofey saw that he was gaining. In another few moments he would reach the carriage. He would ride alongside and call to the maestro to give his brother back. It was all a mistake—h
e wasn’t to take Kolya after all.
He envisioned Kolya crying. Did Kolya understand what was happening? Perhaps his little brother was smiling, thinking he was out for a carriage ride.
No. Kolya would be crying.
Even though the maestro would argue, Timofey would threaten him. His work had defined his chest and created well-muscled arms. He knew his own strength, and envisioned pulling the man out of the tarantass and drawing back his fist. The others were weedy young musicians. They would be afraid of him, and concerned about hurting their hands—their livelihood. It would be easy to scoop up Kolya and put him in front of him on the nag.
Tima envisioned Kolya smiling with relief the way he did the other times Tima had come to his rescue. He also imagined his mother’s face, her own relief and swooping joy when he rode up to their home with Kolya. He couldn’t envision his father’s face; Timofey didn’t know how he’d let this happen.
All this went through his head as he rode towards the back of the carriage. The dust stung his eyes and coated his lips. Even with his mouth closed, he tasted the grit of the road.
He was soon close enough to hear the jingling of the harness bells on the horses pulling the tarantass.
And then, like a small explosion with an accompanying burst of light, Tima saw something else. He saw himself on a horse—not this broken, sway-backed old creature, but a sturdy, high-spirited horse—riding away from Chita, down this same road. Without his brother to care for, to weigh him down for the rest of his life, he would be free to go when his mother no longer needed him. He would not be tied to the business—or to Kolya.
Tima would be free to live the life he wanted, fettered by nothing and no one.
As if hearing his thoughts, the horse’s gait slowed, and she made a coughing snort, shaking her head.
He kicked her again, close enough to the carriage now to think—he couldn’t be sure—that he saw the back of Kolya’s head. The head turned. Was it Kolya, calling out? Tima. Tima, help me.
The tarantass was coming to a fork in the road. He squinted, peering through the dust, trying to make out the jumble of bodies crowded onto the wooden seats. But the vision was clear: his brother’s face wet with tears, crying for him as he had so many times, depending on him for rescue. Needing him, today and forever.
And just like that, in a moment he would relive for the rest of his life, Timofey lifted his heels. At the signal, the horse slowed further, and then stopped. Her head drooped, a great shudder of relief going through her.
Timofey sat in the warm May sunshine on the wheezing horse until the carriage turned down the left fork in the rutted, dusty road and was gone.
He rode slowly back into Chita, returning the horse to the kindly neighbour. He entered the house alone. His mother stood for a long moment, looking at him. When he shook his head, she ran to the bedroom, wailing.
Tima kept his face tight, unable to speak, afraid that what he had done could be read on his features.
His father explained his thinking, looking for the understanding from Timofey that he couldn’t get from his wife. “You must know why I thought it best, son,” he stated weakly, taking deep, painful draws of breath and wiping his mouth. “You know Kolya, perhaps better than anyone. I did the right thing.” He stared down at the blood-soaked handkerchief in his hand.
Timofey came close to his father. “No. You didn’t do the right thing. Look what you’ve done to Mama. And Kolya … he can’t survive away from home. From us, from me. I’ll never forgive you. Do you hear me? Never!” Then he ran outside.
Even as he ran, Tima knew he had treated Kolya far worse than his father had. His father had acted out of misguided love; Tima had failed to act out of selfishness.
Timofey knew he would never be forgiven, even if he confessed to the priest. It didn’t matter what absolution the priest might give. It didn’t matter that he could also go to the datsan and spin prayer wheels and tie blue prayer flags on all the branches he could. He was caught between religions, aware of both the flames of everlasting hell and the power of karma. In one religion he would suffer an eternity after his death, and in the other be reborn as a lowly dung beetle.
He knew he would never forgive himself. Yet he also knew that, given the choice a second time, he would do the same thing.
The day following the commission of his great sin, Timofey’s mother came into his bedroom as he was getting ready for work. She urged him to set out for Irkutsk instead. The maestro would be travelling for many days, stopping in villages overnight. Timofey could go to each village until he found Kolya, and bring him back. “Shut the cooperage, and go,” she said dully, her face blotchy and her eyes swollen nearly shut from a night of weeping.
“But Papa is …” He caught himself. “Mama, how can I go away when Papa is so ill?” He glanced through the doorway to the sitting room, where his father lay on the bench.
But Ula shook her head. “Don’t worry about your father.” Her voice took on a hardness that shocked Timofey. He thought he understood the depth of her anger, but to see her react so stonily was as much a surprise as her slap across his face the day before. Had he ever really known her, or was this what grief did to people?
“There’s enough money to take from the business—you can travel all the way to Irkutsk if you must,” she said. She made no attempt to lower her voice. “You have to search until you find Kolya, and then bring him back to me.”
“What makes you so sure I will find Kolya?” Tima dared to say, a slow anger towards his mother inexplicably building. He knew it would hurt her to hear his doubt, but feeling anger took away some of the guilt. “It’s a big place, isn’t it?”
“There can only be so many maestros, and so many little boys who play the violin and are new to the city. You’ll find him,” she said with such certainty that there was nothing for Timofey to do but nod. He said, Yes, yes I’ll go, once Papa … He turned away before he finished the sentence. But Ula said, even more loudly, as if making sure Aleksandr could hear, “Yes, once your father doesn’t need you, you’ll go and bring my son back.”
Aleksandr Danilovich Kasakov died three days after Timofey watched the carriage carrying Kolya rumble away.
Those three silent days were filled with grief: Timofey left for the shop early and stayed as long as possible. He didn’t wish to be in the house, with his father’s endless choking and bloody retching and his mother’s quiet, steady weeping.
The last words he had spoken to his father haunted him.
The house was eerily quiet without Aleksandr’s coughing.
His body lay in the open, rough-hewn coffin supported by chairs in the sitting room and surrounded by flickering candles. His stiff hands had been placed on his chest and curled around one candle that illuminated his face. Timofey sat on a bench. He tensed for a cough from the casket.
Some of Aleksandr’s friends had come by earlier in the day, but Ula didn’t welcome them, didn’t offer them tea or a chair. They stood in the small, low-ceilinged room for a few moments, in awkward silence, and left.
When they were alone again, Ula had gone into her bedroom, choosing not to sit with Timofey, not to cry and pray and mourn for her husband’s soul in the Russian way, nor chant and burn incense in the Buddhist way. Timofey remembered the death of his grandfather, and how his mother had told him not to be sad, although it was all right if he must cry. Temujin’s death, she told him, was simply another turning of the Wheel of Life, and it was important to remain calm and think good thoughts. “Temujin is going through a change,” she’d said, “preparing for his rebirth. My father was always a good man, and will be reborn into a positive form.” For three days there were Buddhist monks and visitors to their home, and texts chanted in unison, with ringing bells and beating drums and horns sounding at various intervals. There were burning oil lamps and incense in front of an image of Buddha that sat beside Temujin’s body until it was removed for the cremation at the datsan. Many of Temujin’s friends came quietly to p
ay their respects. Everything felt graceful and slow, almost dreamlike.
In contrast, the funerals he had attended with his father at the Decembrist Orthodox church took on a showy and chaotic frenzy, pleading for God to have mercy on the sin-riddled souls of the dead. To Timofey the Orthodox rituals created a certain hopelessness about death, which was a necessary consequence of human life, due to original sin—unlike the Buddhists, who believed that death was necessary to achieve everlasting life.
To see his mother refuse to treat his dead father respectfully in either religion upset Timofey. He was unable to understand the depth of Ula’s anger. Even with his death, she couldn’t forgive what Aleksandr had done, couldn’t mourn him. He realized, as he sat through the long, dark night, that it was because she was already in mourning for Kolya.
In the wavering light of the candles, Timofey grieved alone for his father, looking at Aleksandr’s waxy profile and thinking of all the time he had spent with him, learning to read and write in two languages, discussing world history and politics and life outside Chita, as well as learning his trade. He thought of the times his father had patted his back and smiled proudly at him, and felt true sadness.
He cried then, on his knees beside the coffin, kissing his crucifix. But even as he wept, he knew he cried partly for himself.
He recognized the selfishness of his act, and knew that what he would do next was as bad, or worse.
The day after the funeral—Aleksandr was buried with the Russian rites, in the cemetery behind the timbered, green-domed Decembrist church—Ula told Tima he had to go to Irkutsk. “Your father is dead. There’s no reason to linger. The longer Kolya is away from me, the harder it is on him.”
“You want me to leave right now? Shouldn’t I stay for the nine-day ceremony marking Papa’s death? It doesn’t feel right to—” Timofey said, but Ula shook her head impatiently.
The Lost Souls of Angelkov Page 29