Listen To The Music That Goes Along With This Chapter.

Vlad glanced in the mirror.  Gray hair!  "Ack!"

"What's wrong?" Dimitri asked as he read a book, curled up in their apartment's window seat.  Vlad looked over at the tall teenager.  Dimitri was fifteen now.  Fifteen!

"I'm getting gray hair!"

Dimitri laughed.  "You're 46.  It's expected."

"But...gray hair!"

Dimitri shrugged and returned to reading.  Vlad sank down across from him on the sofa.  "And look at you.  You're FIFTEEN!"  Dimitri rolled his eyes.

"So?"

"You were TEN when I found you."

"And now I'm fifteen now, big surprise.  It's been five years.  And we STILL haven't got any money, OR Vointsky."

"We could have HAD Vointsky," Vlad mumbled grouchily, "if it wasn't for those nasty Reds."

"They tore it down, Vlad," Dimitri said with quiet persistence.  "I'm sorry, but you know it, and I know it, and there's nothing we can do about it."

It was true.  Dimitri had a way of saying the truth as bluntly as possible, and now he was saying it.  Vlad knew he was right.  Dimitri was quietly trying to urge him to move past Vointsky, to look forward to the future. But what WAS the future?  Four more years as a postal worker in St. Petersburg?

He STILL hadn't gotten access to the files on the criminals of Imperial Russia.  He STILL hadn't found out about his parents OR Lara, and he STILL didn't know if he and Dimitri were related or not.  For years he'd wondered.  He'd kept it all inside of him, and he was tired of it.  He'd given up his dream of rebuilding Vointsky a year ago, when they'd gotten word that the Reds had burned it to make room for newer, smaller, "cookie cutter" houses.  He looked around at his surroundings.  They still lived in the same cramped apartment, the same noisy, loud, and dirty St. Petersburg, Russia.  In five years, nothing had changed.  Nothing at all.

"It's all the same!" Vlad shouted, standing up and stomping across the room.  Dimitri looked up worriedly.

"What?  What's wrong?"

"It's all the same!  St. Petersburg, this apartment, my job.  You, me, Russia!  Everything's the same!"

"You're wrong there," Dimitri said.  "St. Petersburg is now considered being called LENINGRAD.  There's a difference, especially if it goes through."  He raised his eyebrows, cynically teasing his friend, and Vlad rolled his eyes.

"I don't care about Leningrad.  They can call St. Petersburg THE TAJ MAHAL for all I care!  I'm still calling it St. Petersburg.  Nothing changes the fact that I'm sick and tired of everything being the same!"  He slumped down in a chair.  Dimitri rolled his eyes and sat up across the way from him.

"Look, Vlad, if you don't like your job, get a new one."

"Doing what, may I ask?"

"Well," Dimitri said slyly, "you could always come work for Eelia.  It makes good money..."

"No, no, NO!" Vlad said firmly.  "I will not work in a black market!"

Dimitri turned on his charming sales personality, something he'd polished to perfection in the last years.

"But just THINK, Vlad!  With TWO large incomes coming in, we'll have enough money soon to do whatever we want!"

"No, I don't think so..."

"Eelia's looking for more help.  He's going to Moscow soon to sell some stuff, and he needs two people to run the stand."

"No!"

Dimitri kept going determinedly.  "And he said that he's taking his wife and kids out of Russia soon!  He's leaving a month after I turn sixteen -- after making sure I know all the connections I need!  Think of the money we could make!  We could leave the country soon, too!"

"But..."

Dimitri gently kept pushing Vlad's inner lever.  "And just think about this.  We get some money, we get out of here, go to Paris and find Sophie!  You remember her townhouse, you just don't remember the address.  Don't you worry about Sophie now?  It's been almost six years since you've seen her!"

"Dimitri..."

"AND," he went on, "the stand isn't that big.  That's just selling vases and rugs.  But, the tickets are.  And the train station!  Remember that train station guy I told you I met?  He sells Eelia tickets for a few rubles, then Eelia turns and makes a bundle off of them," Dimitri said, his voice rising in excitement as he started to get lost in his own dreams and pride.   "And just the other day he told me how I have a good head on my shoulders for business.  He told me that THIS is the business I should get into!"

"But I don't want you in that business!" Vlad pouted, bursting Dimitri's shroud of anticipation and enthusiasm.  "You weren't meant to be a con-man!"

"What WAS I meant for then?" Dimitri snapped back.  Vlad sighed.  What they said about teenagers being rebellious was one thing, but Dimitri had gotten drawn more and more into the world of conniving and false deals.  Could he ever go back to the good heart he had inside of him?

"To go to University..."

"University!?  HA!"  Dimitri stood up and walked moodily across the room to the kitchen.  He pulled out a glass and fixed himself some water.  "I couldn't get into University even if I wanted too."

"But you're smart..."

"What does that have to do with it?" he asked.  "Education doesn't matter here!  Not in this new Russia.  This new RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERATED SOCIALIST REPUBLIC."  He emphasized each word in the name.

Vlad paled.  "But if you tried out for it in a few more years, I know you could get into..."

Dimitri slammed the glass down on the counter.  "I don't care!  What job could I get, huh?  Nothing!  Look at you, an aristocrat.  A count!  What job do you have?  You work at a Post Office.  Look at Mr. Kassian from down the hall.  He went to University.  He was a lawyer!  What's he doing now?  Gardening in the Udelney Park!"  He walked back around and stood in front of Vlad.  "But look at Eelia.  Never stepped foot inside a school in his life.  Can write his name, a few countries, and a few names of cities, and that's IT.  Just enough so that he can forge those papers.  And look at him.  He's leaving for Paris.  Paris!"

Vlad stood up calmly.  He still towered over the boy.  "I am your guardian here.  Whatever I say goes.  And I say that you are to STOP this business immediatly.  You are too smart to continue this, and I don't care WHAT Eelia says about the 'smarter you are you, farther you go'!  You are too GOOD for this, Dimitri!"

"What?" Dimitri cried.  "You aren't my father.  You aren't my parents. You aren't even related to me!"

"How do you know that?" Vlad retorted.  "For all you know I could be your -- your uncle!"

"I'm glad you aren't!" Dimitri shouted back.  "I never want to see my family again!"

Vlad felt like he'd been slapped in the face.  "What?"

"You heard me," Dimitri said through gritted teeth.  "They left me.  I've been waiting for seven years.  Seven long years of my life I've been watching that door.  I've been scanning the streets, looking for a face I recognized, any face.  I haven't found one yet.  I don't care anymore.  My mother could come walking in that door right now and I'd -- I'd run away!"

"You...you don't want to know about your family?" Vlad stared at him in disbelief.  How could he push away the memory of Lara?

"No!  I don't care about them anymore."  Dimitri stalked into the living room.  "They left me, I'd leave them!  Tit for tat, or whatever!  I've wasted six years of my life hoping, praying that I'd see them again.  Well not anymore!  I'm tired of being little Dimitri Leongard, tired of trying to do everything I could to satisfy everyone else.  I'm going to satisfy myself now, and only myself."

"Dimitri," Vlad said calmly, seeing the boy pushing himself farther and farther from his inner feelings and beliefs, getting caught up in his own ideal of what was the way to go through life, "listen to what you're saying.  Your family means so much to you, I know.  Think about me, I don't have any family..."

"And the luck you have at not having one!" he spat out.  Vlad's calm fuse erupted into a rare showering of anger.

"You DO have a family, Dimitri.  You do!"

"No I don't.  I'm an orphan.  I'm alone in the world.  And I always will be!  My family can go -- jump off a bridge, for all I care!"

Anger burned inside of Vlad.  How could he say this?  He knew nothing about being alone in the world, nothing at all!

"Get out of my sight!" Vlad shouted, his monsterous voice filling the whole flat like a great lion's roar.  His whole face was beet red, his hands trembling.  He was gentle natured, but THIS was too much!

Dimitri looked up at him in shock.  Vlad yelling was as bad as being hit by someone -- if not worse.

Vlad gasped in horror as he took a few deep breaths to calm himself.  What had he done?

Dimitri narrowed his eyes and turned on his heels.  He grabbed his coat and stalked out of the apartment, slamming the door after him.

Vlad watched, not knowing what to do.  Should he go after him?  Apologize, then tell him about their relation, or at least what he THOUGHT was their relation?

No.  No, that wouldn't do at all.  He couldn't tell him, not now, not EVER.  He had heard Dimitri clearly.  He never wanted to see his family again.  He had been betrayed by them.  And, Vlad realized, he had betrayed Dimitri too.  Instead of just telling him when he was 11 those years ago, he'd hadn't.  He'd kept it inside until he was sure.  And now, it would have to stay inside.  Forever.

He had gotten a little glimpse into the pain that was hardening in Dimitri's heart.  His way of shielding himself was to be completely cut-off from everything, to only think about which scheme to pull next to get some money.  By pushing away from everything else and immersing himself in the hope of leaving Russia with enough money to insure comfort for the rest of his life, he was trying to leave behind the pain inside him -- and didn't realize how the only way to truly be freed from it was to come to terms with it.

He grabbed his coat and walked outside into the streets.  Dimitri wasn't anywhere in sight.  He pulled his coat tighter and searched the road for any sign of him.
~*~
Dimitri glanced at the clock on the Petrograd Bank Tower.  6:30 already.  He'd been gone for almost 3 hours.  Hmm, not bad.  He knew it was time to go back to the flat, but he WAS surprised.  He'd in all honesty thought that Vlad would come after him.  Maybe he had and just didn't know where to look.  Dimitri liked to keep his whereabouts a secret to most people, and he had his own private hide-a-way: the Auguste de Montferrand statue in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral.

Dimitri wasn't a particularily religious child, but there was something almost reassuring about the Cathedral and the statue in front of it.  Was it that the statue of Montferrand, almost garish and gaudy, holding a small model of his catherdral in his hand, meant so much to him?  Deep inside, that statue represented determination to Dimitri -- despite political odds, Montferrand had built his dream church, and always knew that it would be nothing less than it was: a magnificent monument in lapis lazuli, malachite, and gold.  220 lbs of pure gold!  If Montferrand could rise above opposition, Dimitri knew he could too.

Or maybe it was the sense of warmth in memory that the Cathedral gave him.

He vaguely remembered a House of Worship of some type.  He'd been young, but it still popped itself into his mind now and then from the deep recesses of his memory.  He was holding his mother's hand, and someone else's, someone who loved him very much.  Someone who liked to play and tossed Dimitri up and down into the air on sunny days and brought him little toys when he was sad.  Who danced with his mother playfully while a baby Dimitri giggled and laughed.  Dimitri knew that this had to be his father Mikhail.  He KNEW it was.  But he couldn't see his face.  His hands, his suit, his shoes, all came back to his memory -- but not his face.  The only thing Dimitri knew was that Lara had always told him Mikhail looked just like himself.  He stopped and looked in the window of a Store.  Who stared back?  Not his father.  Who stared back was a street-smart kid of 15, tall, a little clumsy, with a messy mop of brown hair and large brown eyes that knew too much about the situation around him.  He wondered if all teenagers around the world were as "wise" as the ones in St. Pete were, who understood the fine line between morals and survival, and what had to be done to avoid being brought down into the ocean of despair all around them.  He doubted it.

He turned away and walked faster.  He didn't know the things he wanted to know about his family OR himself.  And he never would, would he?  He pulled his hat down lower and blinked his eyes to stop any stray tears that might try to fall.  He wasn't a crier.  The last time he'd cried was when he was 11 -- a kid!  Well he wasn't a kid anymore.  And he wasn't going to cry.

But he wished he could remember something...anything!  If only he could remember, then he knew he'd realize where his life went wrong, where he'd lost the path...

No.  Memories were useless and futile.  A waste of time.  He walked on, daring his mind to think of them again.  It didn't.

He kept his head low, his eyes downcast.  Once he thought he saw Vlad, but when he had raced ahead to see, the figure was already gone.  He shrugged and kept walking, always walking.  Beating a tune into his mind that repeated itself, blocking out everything around him and, most importantly, himself.

Despite his earlier ultamatium, his mind drifted back to that church he remembered.  He had walked in, his parents on either side of him.  People were talking in a strange language he didn't know.  His mother seemed confused too, but his father just guided them safely into a pew.  There were lots of candles and many, many people.  A man stood up front talking in that foreign tongue.

"What's he saying, Mama?" he whispered.

"Shh, Mitri." She held his hand tighter.  Dimitri leaned his head against her shoulder and closed his eyes tiredly.  The people's prayers laid themselves in his young ears, and he started to drift off to sleep.  He opened his eyes once and looked ahead.  Over the man's head was a large emblem.  Dimitri liked it.  It was like a star.  No, it was a star.  A six-pointed star.  It shimmered nicely in the candlelight.  He smiled again and closed his eyes, this time the star imprinted in his mind.

Dimitri snapped out of his daydream.  What was that?  He had never once remembered ANY of that -- why did he now?  Was it just possible that his over-active imagination had made a memory that had never happened?

And in an instant, Dimitri knew that the only link he had back to his parents was the star.

He also knew he had a choice.  He could either forget the star, symbolically cutting himself off from the past, or he could try and find the riddle behind it.

He pushed the decision out of his mind.  The easiest way to handle this was to not.
~*~
Vlad was sitting in the large blue faded armchair twisting his hands anxiously when Dimitri walked in.  The young boy followed his guardian's gaze and saw that he was looking at a clock on the wall.  He looked back at Vlad, who was smiling softly at him.

They both stayed for just a moment looking at one another.  No words were exchanged, no feelings betrayed, except for just a simple look.  Dimitri pursed his lips slightly and turned away.  He picked up the glass he'd set down almost four hours before.

"I saw that oranges were on sale at Kroni's," he said as he went about re-fixing his water.  Vlad raised his eyebrows.

"Really?  We'll have to pick up some."

Silence again.  Everything in the room was so tense, so thick.  Dimitri kept his head high and stiff and Vlad remained in the chair.  Dimitri wondered if he should say something about the argument -- hey, wait!  Why should he?  HE wasn't the one who forbid someone to do something they needed too!  He wasn't the one who tried to stall plans to leave Russia!  No, HE wouldn't apologize.

He stalked back over to the windowseat and flounced down with an over-exaggerated fall.  He took a long sip of water then placed it down on the table beside him.

Vlad watched him the whole time.  His nephew.  If only he knew for sure if it was his beloved Lara's son.  He had Mikhail's features for sure, but it was his eyes.  Those eyes that held that same spark of Lara's.  That same defiant flash of personality.  He rested his chin in his hand and watched Dimitri stiffly pick up the book again and continue reading from where he'd left off.

Anger blurred Dimitri's eyes.  Why wasn't Vlad speaking?  Why wasn't he apologizing?  He made himself concentrate on the words.  "We are sorry not to be able to disguise the fact that, on this single sentence, Jean Valjean was a galley slave, almost everybody abandoning him."  What had Victor Hugo meant by THAT?  A galley slave?  Abandoned?  Just a moment ago in "Les Miserables", Dimitri had read that Valjean was the mayor of a town.  How had this sudden turn of events happened?  What had caused this sudden twist?

Life was like that, wasn't it?  Full of twists and turns.  Dimitri looked out the window at the people walking down the roads.  They still walked back and forth, back and forth.  He remembered staring out this same window at these same people only a few years ago.  Twists and turns, twists and turns everywhere.

He looked back over at Vlad.  Vlad was watching him still, in a type of daze, only fatherly love in his eyes.  Not anger, not madness, not even sadness.

Twists and turns.

"I'm sorry."

The words were out of Dimitri's mouth before he even realized he'd said them.  Vlad didn't answer...verbally.  But there was forgiveness in Vlad's eyes, and understanding now.

They stayed in silence for a minute more, then Dimitri looked away again and back out the window.  Down the street, across the road, two blocks to the left, the black market lay.  And just past that, St. Isaac's Cathedral.  And past that, the palace.  But what lay past that?

Beyond...beyond this gray city, beyond these filthy roads, lay salvation, a wonderful chance to start life over again.  He could already taste freedom.  It wasn't freedom just from St. Petersburg.  Surely it would be freedom from this pain inside his heart, the shame he felt deep inside at his occupation that he never let surface.  He'd be free from all of this, wouldn't he?  Was he just being naive and not realizing that what he wanted was not money, wasn't status, but love?

Whatever it was he wanted, it was out there, if he could just find it.  He wouldn't let anything block his way.

"I'm going back, Vlad.  You need to know that."

Vlad nodded.  He couldn't stop him.  He couldn't stop this boy from becoming a man and making his own decisions.

 "I can't close the acorn once the oak begins to grow."

Dimitri laughed a little, letting himself take some comfort in the warmth Vlad was exuding to him.  He never let himself get near enough to anyone to love them, but Vlad came very close sometimes.

"So...when is Eelia leaving again?" Vlad asked.

Dimitri's eyes brightened.  Twists and turns again.  "Two months."

Vlad sighed.  He felt his own rigid morals crushing under the weight of his nephew's eager look.  But even more important, he'd had an idea to prove his relations to Dimitri shortly after the fight, an idea that only being in the most corrupt part of St. Petersburg could help him with, unfortunately.

"Perhaps I'll take a part time job there...the post office is certain to let me go soon.  They're downsizing."

Dimitri's skin jumped.  "Perfect!"  He looked out the window again to just beyond the walls of the last house in the city.  He was going to get out of here.  He was going beyond.  And soon.

No more was said, but the plans of fate were interweaving themselves into one giant puzzle again, for just down the street, a young girl made a quiet vow to herself as she looked out the window of the damp orphanage.

She traced a delicate snowflake on the window pane.  How complicated life was with...twists and turns, almost.  Like a giant web, trying to catch all but only the most stable on their feet.

"I'm going to get out of here," she whispered.  "I'm going beyond.  And soon.  I swear soon."

© 1999 - 2000 AnyaMuse@aol.com
© 1999 - 2000 AnyaCI@aol.com