“I want to help you,” the man said. “You’re better than the gypsies who stole you.”
“I know,” said Yuri. He thought of his mother. “Some people are better than others. Much better.”
“Exactly.”
Bolt now, he thought. And he tried it, but once again the man tackled him and held him tight. Yuri was strong for ten and this was an old man. But it was no good.
“Give up just for a moment, Yuri,” said the man. “Give up long enough for us to go to the bank and open the deposit box. Then we can decide what to do.”
And Yuri was soon crying, and letting the man lead him out of the hotel and into the waiting car, a fine German sedan. The bank was vaguely familiar to Yuri, but the people inside it were perfect strangers. Yuri watched in keen amazement as the white-haired Englishman explained everything, and soon the deposit box was opened, and Yuri was presented with the contents-several passports, the Japanese watch of his father, a thick envelope of lire and American dollars, and a packet of letters, one of which at least was addressed to his mother at a Rome address.
Yuri found himself powerfully excited to see these things, to touch them, to be close again in his mind to the moment when he and his mother had come here and she had placed everything in the box. After the bank men put all these articles into brown envelopes for him, he held these envelopes to his chest.
The Englishman led him back out and into the car, and within minutes they were making another stop. It was a small office, where the Englishman greeted a person familiar to him. Yuri saw a camera on a tripod. The man gestured for Yuri to stand in front of it.
“For what?” he asked sharply. He was still holding the brown envelopes. He stared angrily at the white-haired man and his friendly companion, who laughed now at Yuri as if Yuri were cute.
“For another passport,” said the Englishman in Italian. “None of those you have is exactly right.”
“This is no passport office,” said Yuri contemptuously.
“We arrange our own passports,” said the man. “We like it better that way. What name do you want to have? Or will you leave this to me? I would like you to cooperate, and then you can come to Amsterdam with me and see if you like it.”
“No,” said Yuri. He remembered Andrew saying no doctors. “No police,” said Yuri. “No orphanages, no convents, no authorities. No!” He rattled off several other terms he knew for such persons in Italian and Romanian and Russian. It all meant the same thing. “No jail!” he said.
“No, none of that,” said the man patiently. “You can come with me to our house in Amsterdam, and go and come as you like. This is a safe place, our house in Amsterdam. You will have a room of your own.”
A safe place. A room of his own.
“But who are you?” asked Yuri.
“Our name is the Talamasca,” the man said. “We are scholars, students if you please. We accumulate records; we are responsible for bearing witness to things. That is, we feel we are responsible. It’s what we do. I’ll explain all to you on the plane.”
“Mind readers,” said Yuri.
“Yes,” said the man. “And outcasts, and lonely ones, and ones sometimes who have no one else. And people who are better sometimes than others, much better sometimes. Like you. My name is Aaron Lightner. I wish you would come with me.
In the Motherhouse in Amsterdam, Yuri made certain that he could escape any time he wanted. He checked and re-checked the many unlocked doors. The room was small, immaculate, with a window over the canal and the cobblestoned quais. He loved it. He missed the bright light of Italy. This was a dimmer place, northern, like Paris, but that was all right. Inside were warm fires, and soft couches and chairs for dozing; firm beds, and lots of good food. The streets of Amsterdam pleased him, because the many old houses of the 1600s were built right against each other, making long stretches of solid and beautiful facades. He liked the steep gables of the houses. He liked the elm trees. He liked the clean-smelling clothing he was given, and he came to even like the cold.
People with cheerful faces came and went from the Motherhouse. There was steady day-to-day talk of the Elders, though who these people were, Yuri didn’t know.
“You want to ride a bike, Yuri?” asked Aaron. Yuri tried it. Taking his cue from the other riders young and old, he rode the bike like a demon through the streets.
Still Yuri wouldn’t talk. Then, after constant prodding, he told the story of the maharaja.
“No. Tell me what really happened,” asked Aaron.
“Why should I tell you anything?” Yuri demanded. “I don’t know why I came here with you.” It had been a year since he had spoken real truth about himself to anyone. He had not even told Andrew the real truth. Why tell this man? And suddenly, denying that he had any need of telling the truth, or confiding, or explaining, he began to do both. He told all about his mother, about the gypsies, about everything…He talked and talked. The night wore on and became the morning, and still Aaron Lightner sat across from him at the table listening, and Yuri talked and talked and talked.
And when he finished he knew Aaron Lightner and Aaron Lightner knew him. It was decided that Yuri would not leave the Talamasca, at least not right then.
For six years, Yuri went to school in Amsterdam.
He lived in the Talamasca house, spent most of his time on his studies, and worked after school and on weekends for Aaron Lightner, entering records into the computer, looking up obscure references in the library, sometimes merely running errands-deliver this to the post office, pick up this important box.
He came to realize that the Elders were in fact all around him, rank and file members of the Order, but nobody knew who they were. It worked like this. Once you became an Elder, you didn’t tell anybody that you were. And it was forbidden to ask a person, “Are you an Elder?” or, “Do you know whether or not Aaron is an Elder?” It was forbidden to speculate on such matters in one’s mind.
The Elders knew who the Elders were. The Elders communicated with everyone via the computers and the fax machines in the Motherhouse. Indeed, any member, even an unofficial member like Yuri, could talk to the Elders whenever he chose. In the dead of night, he could boot up his computer, write a long letter to the Elders, and sometime later that very morning an answer would come to him through the computer printer, flowing out page after page.
This meant of course that there were many Elders, and that some of them were always “on call.” The Elders had no real personality as far as Yuri could detect, no real voice in their communications, except that they were kindly and attentive and they knew everything, and often they revealed that they knew all about Yuri, maybe even about things of which he himself was unsure.
It fascinated Yuri, this silent communication with the Elders. He began to ask them about many things. They never failed to answer.
In the morning, when Yuri went down to breakfast in the refectory, he looked around him and wondered who was an Elder, who here in this room had answered his letter this very night. Of course, his communication might have gone to Rome, for all he knew. Indeed, Elders were everywhere in every Motherhouse, and all you knew was that they were the old ones, the experienced ones, the ones who really ran the Order, though the Superior General, appointed by them, and answerable only to them, was the official head.
When Aaron relocated to London, it was a sad day for Yuri, because the house in Amsterdam had been his only permanent home. But he would not be separated from Aaron, and so they left the Amsterdam Motherhouse together, and went to live in the big house outside London which was also beautiful and warm and safe.