The Lost Souls of Angelkov by Linda Holeman Page B

Antonina’s abilities, she progressed quickly in her insular music career, and derived great daily pleasure from her hours at the piano. She happily learned the thundering chords of Bach, which reminded her of the darkly scented world she knew from church. She loved the complicated trilling of Beethoven andthe lighter crescendos and diminuendos of Schubert, which made her think of the sounds of the forest. But her favourite composer was Mikhail Glinka, his music redolent with delicate nuance for her.
    A Russian aristocrat who studied in Milan and Berlin, the young Glinka had produced the first Russian operas in the years following Antonina’s birth. She loved the village sounds of his music, especially those with the falling fourths that Glinka referred to as the soul of Russian music. By the time she was twelve, Antonina had memorized a number of his mazurkas and polonaises as well as the longer, more haunting fugues and nocturnes that became, to her, tiny epiphanies of private emotion.
    Although her father occasionally sat, smiling, and listened to her play, her mother never entered the music salon unless she was hostessing one of her own soirees.

    Antonina’s mother preferred city life. She occasionally stayed with her husband and children at the country estate during the pleasant summer months, but she chose not to leave her St. Petersburg social circle when winter covered the countryside in snow.
    Princess Olonova had given her husband children because it was her duty, nothing more, and she had left their care and rearing to wet nurses and nannies. She found the three boys rowdy and annoying, and often smelling unpleasantly of the fields and stables. She would occasionally hold Antonina and stroke her hair as though she were a doll or a charming pet when she was a baby, but as the girl grew older, she lost interest in her as well.
    Galina Olonova was known for her beauty. She was also flighty and fickle. She cared only about the latest gossip, what she wore and the next fete. All of the princess’s concentration was directed towards herself and her own pursuits: shopping, having a new wardrobe designed and sewn for each season, the planning of elaborate, week-long parties and the various forms of entertainment these celebrations demanded, and the endless stream of company that arrived and sometimes stayed for months at a time in the grand St. Petersburg house with its views of the Neva River. She also spent considerable time on her romantic dalliances. She took lovers. Her husband knew but turned a blind eye, for he had his own affairs.
    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 womenof 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