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Not many things in life were ever certain; this was a given, and always had been. But some assumptions ran so deeply that they had to be overturned in order to make themselves known at all.
One of these assumptions, a truth so intrinsic it had nested like a sparrow in Peter’s heart, was that his creations would outlive him. This was, after all, the nature of architecture; you built structures that would tell a story too broad for words, that would tower over greater lives than yours, that would shield passers-by from the wind and rain for generations to come. It was one of the reasons Peter loved this art, in particular, so dearly.
If he had been a little older, perhaps he would have likened it to losing a child, watching his building burn. But he was only eighteen, now, and Andrey was tugging on his arm, and he hadn’t any room for metaphors behind the deafening shock that filled his mind.
“We have to go,” Andrey was hissing in his ear. “Come on, Peter, I didn’t buy us that much time.”
Andrey was holding both of their compact little suitcases, filled with paper and diagrams and a few clothes and all the money they had, and the two of them were standing on the street outside of the apartment in Lyon that they had inhabited for the past year. It was a beautiful city, with art and museums and vineyards and people who had seemed welcoming. Peter had liked living here, and Andrey had, too, in his own way; and the apartment, rented to them by a friend of a priest whom Andrey had somehow befriended, was just down the street from where they had been allowed to build. Down the street, where one of Peter’s dreams was burning.
It was barely finished, too. He had named it La Couronne – the crown, the wreath – but the name had not caught on. People had taken to calling it L'Entaille: the notch; the wound.
“Andrey,” he murmured. “It’s on fire. They’re burning it.” He could not tear his eyes away. The flames spiraled up like a dancer, and Peter hated himself for thinking for a moment that it was beautiful.
Andrey put down one of the suitcases and grabbed Peter’s arm. “We only have a few hours, Peter,” he said urgently. “Look, I know. I know how hard we worked for this. But- Petya, look at me.”
With a great effort, Peter turned his head. Andrey was wearing a sharp frown, and his eyes were worried and tight at the corners. Peter inhaled sharply, and smoke filled his lungs. “It’s burning, Andrey,” he said.
Andrey let his gaze flick over to the structure for a moment before looking back at Peter. “I know, but we can’t stop it now. We can build another one. Somewhere else.”
Peter shook his head slowly. “There isn’t another one,” he said sharply. “That was the only one. We can’t- I can’t just make another one.”
“Why the hell not?” Andrey’s voice spiked, and he looked around anxiously. “We can talk about this later. Benjamin said the people are out for blood, ever since that fucking cardinal came to give his little anti-art sermon. Let’s go, all right?” Andrey tugged on Peter’s arm, and Peter yanked away.
“Don’t pull on me!” he said sharply. He felt suddenly out of breath, and he could feel his chest constricting, his throat tightening, his heart pounding ever faster against his ribcage. The flames were a distant roar. Andrey pulled his hand away hastily.
“Sorry- shit, fuck, sorry, Peter. But we have to go now, okay?”
Peter could see the fire eating into the façade that he had built, the rafters he had designed, the roof that he had agonized over the shape of. There was a sharp crack, and a section of roof tiles – imported, and so painstakingly chosen – slid out of place and crashed to the ground below. Peter gave a little gasp, and fancied he could feel the fire on his own skin. His hands began to tremble.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t, I- I can’t do this again, Andrey, I can’t- I can’t do this again.” He had been so very proud of the Couronne. For the first time in his life, he had finished something and been proud; he had been proud of how steady the foundations were, how each pane of colored glass was set just so, of how he had found a way to make each beam of light dance across the stone. It was the very fantasticality of it that had been his undoing; old and unthinking men, it seemed, were not fond of miracles. Peter felt ice in his stomach, and wheezed.
Andrey, now looking almost panicked, set down the other suitcase and put his hands very gently on Peter’s shoulders.
“Breathe,” he said firmly. “You don’t have to build anything again if you don’t want to. We can- we can go-” He trailed off, and licked his lips nervously.
“Where, Andrey? Where can we go?” There was more than a note of desperation in Peter’s voice. “Back to Milan? Valencia?”
Andrey grimaced. “I’m sure they’ve forgotten us by now. Well, maybe not in Italy, but at least in Spain.”
“We’re- we’re not going back to Spain!”
“All right! So we won’t go back to Spain.” Andrey breathed out slowly, and then his eyes brightened. “Russia! We’ll go home, how about that? The Couronne got us paid, if nothing else- we can go to university, like you always wanted!”
Peter struggled to breathe, and couldn’t help but turn his face back to the building, pulled like a magnet towards the fire. The flames cast everything in an eerie, flickering orange light, glinting in his eyes. “I- I don’t-”
“Hé!”
Both twins jumped, and Andrey scrambled to move in front of Peter. There was a group of three or four men striding towards them steadily; at their forefront was the one who had shouted. They were all plainly-dressed and stony-faced, coming from the direction of the burning building. With a sick twisting in his gut, Peter realized that these were likely the ones who had set the fire to begin with. Andrey had an arm out, trying to push his brother back, and Peter stumbled.
“Evening, gentlemen!” Andrey said with an easy veil of false cheer. “Out late, are we?”
The man at the front was looking past Andrey, though, to Peter. “This was your doing,” he spat, pointing. “We were doing just fine, you know, before you came along.”
The flames crackled sharply behind the speaker, and, all at once, Peter recognized him. It was the grocer, Lenoir: a middle-aged man with two daughters and a basset hound that had sometimes come to sit by Peter while he worked, always sniffing at his pockets or nosing under his arm. His youngest daughter, only seven years old, had asked him for a drawing once, and given him one in return – a wobbly sketch of a flower – but the elder one had been afraid of both twins and stayed well away. He had never spoken much with Lenoir himself; Peter did not speak much, in general. The two people accompanying the grocer did not look familiar, but Lenoir- he had known him. Andrey had bought fruit from him every week for almost a year. He supposed he would never get the chance, now, to ask what Lenoir’s dog’s name was, a thought that exacerbated the ache in Peter’s chest.
Andrey shifted more fully in front of Peter, his hand twitching towards his knife. “I can’t imagine what you mean,” he said icily. “We were just leaving; clearly, we’re no longer welcome here. Surely you don’t take issue with that.”
One of the other men cut in. “Oh, really? Find another city to blight, then, shall you?” He pointed back at the Couronne. “It takes something pretty ungodly to attract the ire of a cardinal.” He spat at Andrey's feet. “I heard what happened in there. My sister, she went inside, and she told me- I don’t know what unholy thing you made, Stamatin, but I know for damn sure it isn’t natural. Isn’t meant to be.”
“No!” Peter surprised even himself with his interjection. “That’s not- it isn’t like that, it- it’s all in the designs, don’t you see-” He felt himself turning, reaching for his suitcase, to show them the plans, the sketches, the mathematics, for surely they would understand if they simply looked at the blueprints- but before he could take a step, Andrey gave a shout of warning, Peter was crashing to the flagstones right on the point of his shoulder, and Lenoir had a hand on his throat.
It did not last more than a moment; Lenoir was a grocer, not a soldier, and the men with him were equally inexperienced, and Andrey was quick and brutal. All Peter knew was that one moment, there was a heavy hand on his windpipe, and the next, everyone was on the ground, and Lenoir was bleeding heavily from a wound in his shoulder. With a great effort, Peter suppressed the urge to cough.
“Peter, we have to go now.” Andrey pulled him upright and picked the suitcases up again, and Peter followed him away in something of a daze.
“Everyone will know what you’ve done,” Lenoir called after them. “Everyone will know- and they’ll know you’re both fucking mad, not just the quiet one!” And then it was Peter pulling Andrey instead of the other way around, because the man had daughters, and a dog, and Peter didn’t want Andrey to kill him.
The farther they got from the fire, the louder it seemed to become, until the sound of it filled Peter’s head. All the while, the frantic pounding of his heart refused to slow. It felt as though they had been moving for an hour when he finally found his voice again.
“Andrey,” he choked out, “we have to go back. The Couronne- La Couronne, we can’t leave her, we can’t let her die alone.”
Andrey stumbled to a stop, slightly out of breath. “It’s dead already, Peter,” he said, sounding tired. “It’s already gone. We can’t go back. Come on, Petya, only a mile or so farther to the train station, and then we can start making new plans. We’ll make something new. Something even better than before.”
“What if- what if I can’t?” Peter pulled on a lock his hair. “I don’t know if I have another of her in me. No, I- I don’t, I know I don’t. I don’t think I can do it.”
Andrey made a frustrated sound. “Oh, Peter, not this again. You can do it, and you will do it, because you always do, and I’ll be right there with you all the way. Maybe it’ll take a while, sure, but it’ll work out.” He patted Peter’s shoulder. “We’ll make something that lasts, Petya,” he said, his voice softening. “As long as we keep at it. We still have the blueprints, and as soon as people realize what we can do – what you can do – people will be coming from all over the world to see our buildings.”
It was an old dream, and, as Peter saw it, a doomed one. Not that he would ever say so. It was one thing when his cynicism stopped only himself in his tracks, but this dream was a shared one, and Peter would rather swallow glass than knowingly hurt his brother in such a way.
Then again, maybe swallowing glass wouldn’t actually be so bad. Perhaps he would try it, someday.
“Peter?” Andrey was looking at him anxiously, and Peter realized he had just been standing silently, staring at nothing.
“Right.” Peter nodded slowly. “…Russia, then?”
Andrey cracked a smile, small but genuine. “Russia. Home.”
They would try again, and again. Something, eventually, would have to turn out all right.
Many years later, in a little town on the Russian steppe, a great, towering spiral fell as heavily as if it had come from heaven itself. Peter stood and watched it fall, let the crash of it deafen him so that he would not have to hear anything else. Dankovsky must have mentioned it, at some point, that sometimes scar tissue went numb; this, Peter thought, must have been what had happened to him. For he watched the last remaining spire of his heart shatter, and felt nothing.