.
.
"Next!"
The line shuffled forward as yet another unfortunate was admitted to the shelter for the night. Space was limited, and with each person who vanished over the threshold, the crowd grew more and more anxious.
"Next!"
About midway down the line, Vlad was among the hopefuls waiting for a place to sleep. At his side stood a young girl---or at least, what looked like a young girl.
"Why do I have to be the girl?" Dimitri hissed from under a false cascade of curls and the hood of a worn cloak.
"We've been through this. It's 'women and children first'---we're more likely to be admitted if one of us is both."
"Great---so why don't you be the 'woman' and I'll be the 'child?'"
"One of us has to do the talking. And I couldn't find a cloak that fit," Vlad admitted sheepishly. "Quiet now; we're next."
"Next!"
Vlad put on a showmanly smile.
"Name?" barked the comendant.
"Vladimir. And this is my niece, Di-"
Dimitri kicked him in the shin.
"-aphne. Daphne."
The soldier raised an eyebrow.
"She's American."
"Fine. Ages?" The comendant looked weary.
Here Vlad saw no need to lie, and Dimitri prayed it wouldn't ruin the act.
"Thirty-five and twelve," Vlad answered, looking ready to stride through the door.
"I'll allow the child," the comendant pronounced, "but you, comerade, are neither youth nor elderly, and are plenty capable of fending for yourself. Next!"
Dimitri looked at Vlad. He was obviously surprised, and a look of disappointment crossed his face. He pushed Dimitri toward the door anyway.
"What? Vlad..."
"I'll be okay, Dimitri."
"You'll freeze! I'm not going in there without you."
"Yes, you are."
"Young lady!" The officer turned to face them for the briefest second. "Dawdle much longer and I assure you, your place inside won't last."
"Go on." Vlad gave him one last nudge toward the threshold. "I'll be here to meet you in the morning." At that, Dimitri was swept into the building by the crowd, and the heavy doors were bolted shut behind them.
The shelter, one large room, was crowded by hundreds of disposessed Soviet casualties like himself; some in an even worse state of living. Babies cried, children his age and younger chased each other in zigzgas through the room, elderly folks recited prayer or poetry. There was a certain sadness in this for Dimitri, in the very fact that these people lived this way from day, to day, to day.
What a contrast, he thought. A picture played across his mind for that second---only that one, briefest, silent second. A vision of a family, of a glittering party, of security; of diamonds and gold and a thousand luxuries that had been snuffed like the flame of an errant candle. It was a world that he'd only glimpsed; one that he'd only begun to get a hold of before it had slipped through his fingers as quickly as water through a stream.
To think, in this room, that such a world had ever existed.
Dimitri walked along the rows of white, even cots until he came to an unoccupied one, where he immediately deposited his shoddy disguise. No sooner had he done that than a blonde boy about his age, face streaked with dirt, ran up to him with a badly stitched leather ball.
"Hey there! I'm Colin," the boy said with a smile. "D'ya wanna play with us?"
Dimitri looked at him. "No," he said. "Thanks. I'm just gonna go to sleep."
Hours passed, and Dimitri, tired as he was, could only stare at the ceiling. The others in the shelter had dozed off some time ago, as the noise had dropped off, piece by piece by piece. Yet there he lay.
All Dimitri could think about was Vlad, huddled under a newspaper somewhere. He suddenly began to get the idea that this depressing communal shelter was the last place he wanted to be.
Dimitri sat up and threw off the cheap, paper-thin white blanket. He really hated being a good kid. It didn't usually pay off.
Sneaking over to the frost-spread window, he lifted first one latch, then the other, and ducked quietly through the frame, slipping into the cold, star-adorned night.
Of course, being spontaneous, being twelve, he didn't think to grab the stupid cloak before he left.
He started up the street, shivering already and scanning the alleys and doorways in search of Vlad. The air was still, and the town was as silent as a mime, telling its story without saying a word.
Finally, in the back corner of the last alley he came to, he spotted the familiar shape of his friend under a pile of Sunday's St. Petersburg Times.
Vlad was still awake, and looked surprised to see Dimitri standing there. Surprised, and yet somehow not surprised at all.
He could have told him to go back, or he could have scolded him for leaving the shelter. He could have, but he saw what good it would do. And he didn't.
"Daphne?" Dimitri shook his head.
Vlad sighed. "Cover yourself up. I don't want an icicle to deal with in the morning."
Dimitri took up a space by the wall, and Vlad passed him the economics section.
As the two of them sat there, trying to lay claim to whatever sleep they could, they heard a noise, footsteps, crunching toward them through the silence. The noise eventually gave way to a shadow, and the shadow in turn gave way to Mrs. Proletsky, basket in hand, on her way home from a neighbor's. Delivering soup again, no doubt.
She laid her eyes on the two pathetic forms taking up company with the trash cans. "You are a stubborn boy," she directed at Dimitri, "and you, too," she added, nodding at Vlad.
Mrs. Proletsky sighed, and her breath formed a cloud of its own against the darkness. "Come on," she relented. "You ragamuffins aren't about to kill yourelves yet. I won't hear of it."
Dimitri looked at Vlad. Vlad looked at Dimitri. They both abandoned their newsprint cocoons and trailed behind Mrs. Proletsky through the square, three silhouettes in the night.