EPOCH OF THE ELD, AN EPOCH OF THE END.
“The old order, it is good for the old. A farmer wants his son to be afraid of beautiful women, so that he will not leave home too soon, so he tells a story about how one drowned his brother’s cousin’s friend in a lake, not because he was a pig who deserved to be drowned, but because beautiful women are bad, and also witches. And it doesn’t matter that she didn’t ask to be beautiful, or to be born in a lake, or to live forever, or to not know how men breathe until they stop doing it.”
The harshest of the old orders, situated where the sun rose reluctantly and hid in the arms of trees, watched as its frigid inhabitants burned gorgeous with gold and amber instead. If you asked any foreign man with a cigar and a lopsided smile which land and its people had stolen the sun’s golden glow and instead garbed on it, he’d say Russia. The old order in Russia had claim to titles too old and covetous to be irrelevant, with money too vast and influence to wide to ignore. It was the same order who claimed unmarried women were witches, whose people clung onto omens and potents and deja vu rather than logic, and who had weaned their people on their false promises and myths (anyone who had tried to question them was written off as insane; it was like convincing a bumblebee that his honey, glittering and viscous as it may be, was the sort of liquid sweetness that would kill him). And so Mikhail had acquiesced to this game of the old, watching as countless deliverers of the “truth” (victors write history; truth is chosen by the rich, the affluent, the powerful – the behind-the-scene- power players) twitched on their backs and spun rumors and gossamer out of the mad Dolohov man as their nights had been given new form (specifically, one in his shape) as they continued to besmirch him. The revolution of first assumptions and vilified myths always spun around his skull, splintering into fragments with the cracking and breaking of both wood and bone and pride. In there scattering came desperate and uncharacteristic instinct, setting Mikhail on his feet and out of his chair in the time between the end of the first crash and the beginning of the second. The previous night, Dmitri and Vladimir had urged him to leave his fears and look for employment in the next few days. And he did.
But even his determination did not quell the uneasiness that rose at the swelling and bustle of people poured forth in Whitewall. It was too much, too raw. Still, his face was impassive as people passed him by, noticing that they dare not touch him. Those same nuisances persisted as he sat and waited to meet with the head of the department of International Magical Cooperation. Although it was only in the early yawning days of autumn, he dressed as if in the middle of winter: a dark, fur lined scarf spilled off his shoulders and ended just above his lap. His vanity was not grand, but it had always welcomed the gifts his noble name had given him. His eyes had skirted over the articles in the Daily Prophet he had in hand, purposefully extending the thin paper so only his eyes were visible to the onlooker (which were many). He couldn’t understand what it said, instead opting to watch the moving, coruscating slideshows of images. It was a tack-on addition to his anonymity, a simple gesture to curate his nerves; he already knows each moving image by heart.
“Mr. Dolohov, you are welcome to come meet with him now.” Her tone lacked malice, but the secretary watched him pass by her with the narrowing of her eyes to imply she was not serious. Mikhail could hear the clicking of the typewriter from inside the office.
The man’s hands were raised in a way that suggested his elbows were cleaving through his arm rests. There came a greeting, stitched to his stiff mouth. Mikhail reciprocated a Hello. Hi. Good afternoon, like the textbooks. My name is Mikhail. “
Well. I am to assume you are here to seek employment under one of my sub-departments.”
“Yes, under Interrrnational Magikal Office of Law.”
His eyes looked at him without seeing him. Mikhail knew that thinking was going to be a problem for the man for the way he looked at him. Or the lack of thinking was what made him talk quickly.
“If you vill have me.” Mikhail quickly interjected.
“Vell, sirrr, I forrreigner. I know this. So I feel like, ehm.. I can.. brrring new perrrspective to vorrrk and department’s agendas.” His index finger went on to rub along the edge of his lip quickly. “I am fast learrrner. I villing to underrrgo any apprrrenticeship orrr trrraining. As what you call it.”
“I do agree that a foreigner’s presence would make a good addition to the workplace. But with no recommendations, and with few to say a good word,” his arms relaxed eased on the armchair, “my hands are tied.” The irony.
“I know zis.” He eased closer to the desk in between them. “But I know I can give zis deparrrtment what it needs and more. So I ask you to rrrekonsider.”
This man looked down on him. It was the only way it could be described – as if he was looking at an insect he was not quite certain what to do with now. He relaxed into his seat, a hand reaching downward to smoothen out his tie. “Mr. Dolohov, I cannot bend on this matter any further.”
“If you cannot bend, zen I can. I can prrromise I’d vorrrk harrrd for you even if I vould have to brrreak my vack.”
“A foreigner familiar with metaphors?”
“Image is everything? Have you heard of it?”
Mikhail tasted something similar to the bowl of clay Pandora had been mixed from – a mortal woman placed between Hephaestus’ astral palms and given bountiful gifts from many gods and goddesses alike, which was in vain, as Zeus had disposed of it with no greater concern than when you throw a rock over your shoulder. “I em avarrre of it.”
“This is no metaphor. This is real.” His tone was that of a calm parent scolding their child who had thrown food from a high table. However, this one felt too condescending. “We feed the homeless, clothe the poor, protect the vulnerable…you seem comprehensible enough to understand me, I think.” He had sighed, though it sounded more like the breathy noise before a gregarious laugh pushed out of someone’s mouth in one burst and set a whole crowd laughing afterwards. “The Ministry is an apologist, a provider, a promise to do better. It publicly calls for absolution, and we condemn just as easily. We are set apart from the rest because we have public support on our side. The Daily Prophet,” he motioned to the newspaper in Mikhail’s hand. “The Ministry keeps it that way.”
He had sworn to himself he’d make a change, for his brothers, for his wife, for them. He had sworn to this man that he would break his back and bones if necessary to try to fit into a one-size-fits-all commodity that he outgrew ever since he was seventeen. But he had sat black itching at his temples. More time wasted, eating away at his tired skin; there’s a hunch in his shoulders he didn’t have before, bent with a weight he could not put a finger on. (Grief? Shame? Ignominy?) “I.. don’t know vhat else to say. I apprrreciate yourrr honesty, sirrr. I zink I vill leave you zen.”
“Yes, yes.” He skipped over the words rather urgently. “You know where the door is. It is quite large.”
Mikhail took ahold of his belongings and set towards the door in a disillusioned gait until he heard a “wait!”
“Perhaps I could redirect you to Level 4? Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures? The Beast Division is always looking for new subjects to study.” Perhaps it was his self consciousness that he could not curb, but something in the sweet-intentioned proposition seemed… more of an insult? Mikhail had flinched. The flinch could be found in the tightening of his jaw and the minute picking up and pulling away from the doorway. His face had settled, without any lines and creases. His lips fell flat. “Nyet. Zank you.” Was all he said before he had walked out, feeling gut sink no higher than the ground, where he left a trail of chaffing Russian sand from the winding channels of his soles.
Mikhail tasted concrete and dead coffee in the English air that smelled of isolation and moss. Mikhail, with broad shoulders big enough for people to be lost in its plains (in the heart of it all, he too is lost within those plains, right in the center where the maze lies). As tall and forthright as his body seemed, he could not withstand the weight of even a corner of the world - and he had come to London in the name of love, the most foolish and admirable cause of all. He blinked, and open changes to closed. He blinked, and green changes to red. He blinked, and the world changed again. He blinked, and someone collides with him. He mumbled apologies as though he had burnt their skin where he had brushed it. They touched for no longer than the sharp breath they’d taken, no longer than the moment they took to flinch from him. They had imploded. But Mikhail had greater concerns than vulgarity.
He walks alone. Alone, on a street corner. Alone. Mikhail had once heard a proverb that read: “you are born alone, and so you will die alone.” I’m not sure I like feeling alone, he thought. I’m not sure I like feeling too much. Too much, too much, too much. The world has changed again. And again, and again, and again.
He stood on the a street corner, daring the rain to swallow him whole. But it doesn’t - it reminds him of just how empty and bottomless he is (like tectonic plates – rigged and unfathomable). There were small seedling raindrops pitter-pattering on the gall stones of his rib cage. He thinks of how lost he is as he realizes he doesn’t know the name of the street Dmitri’s house is on. He had never even known the name of home. There’s one copper kopek in his right pocket, but he knows it is not enough to buy himself a familiar face. Perhaps that is why his soul was blue – the world had beaten it to that shade.
The next few days had passed with a lack of success, arising in Mikhail no great excitement but a vast rising temperature of frustration.
He had took to the morning, to the afternoon, to the evening, to the weekend, wishing the time away like shredded newspaper between his fingers on a windy day. He took took to the stolen cup of coffee with sugar crystallized at the bottom, the five minutes alone, in the quiet, in the rain, away, away, away. Away from the now; from the overbearing of a present that crippled him. He was a faulty, makeshift hourglass, with sand chaffing the roughened container. He felt himself being shaken by the hands of a greedy child with a new toy, feeling himself turn from ice to water, slipping though fingers who had almost had a chance to grasp. Something that had almost been dropped.
Like a rare, glittering proposition with a lack of follow-through. (Read: a foreigners relocation to London).
There was something nefarious about the toll London had taken on Vladimir as well. Mikhail had watched him settle down on the opposite end of the table from him, a sudden arrival without explanation – strewn curses talking about the the unwelcoming place he had been kicked out of (willingly left, in a kinder light) raised most prominently like dark bruises along the center of Mikhail, proof that this city held no taste for them and had tried to chew them up before spitting them out.
But this evening, Vladimir’s lips split into a new kind of smile (their parents had always insisted they have three; one for the masses, one for family, and one for their enemies). The warmth of it was like Prometheus when he had stolen fire for the humans – a call for defrost and awakening. (Vladimir spoke, Mikhail thought. But together – they had always worked). He had pulled his brother aside with hanging seriousness that punctured the atmosphere, a placated stance taken in gesture of familiarity. His mouth held a promise to do better. Mikhail, you must listen and tell no one. Something out of nothing.
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