Chapter Fifteen: Brahms and Betrayal

*********************************

Marriott Hotel
1:02 PM

Mulder stripped down and stepped into the shower, letting
the hot water spray over him, running down the curve of his
back to his tailbone. His ass was still aching slightly from last
night's experiences, as if he was still being penetrated--a
sensual twinge that pulled at his mind. He was hard again,
wanting more again, and he took himself fast and quickly,
coming against the tile, trying to clear himself of the crushing
feeling so he could focus again. He didn't have the luxury of
long sultry afternoons to sort through his conflicting emotions.
He had a job to do, and right now he was acutely aware of
how much he had jeopardized that position. He rinsed himself
and hurried out of the shower to dress.

The bed was still made, and on top of it were the carefully
arranged scraps of the message. It was still trying to speak to
him, Mulder felt--its random voice perhaps not all that
random. He stopped buttoning his shirt to take up a fresh
sheet of Marriott stationery. "You must hear us..." he wrote
and tore the words loose, adding them to the arrangement.
These people, or this person, wanted Joshua to stop fleeing
the messenger and try to understand what was struggling to
be communicated to him. It shouldn't take much to make the
message clear, but the final words were just not coming
forward. Hopefully, the new papers and letters they had
gathered would bring the whole conundrum into focus.

Mulder finished dressing and made to leave. On the chair near
him was the book Joshua had bought him--the embossed
image of Johannes Brahms gazed kindly back at him like a
loving patriarch. He wondered what Joshua was doing right
now, sleeping? eating? seething? He hated that their affair
had to end so abruptly. It was going to be difficult not
spending the evenings with him. Mulder put on his coat and
tugged at the latch on his door. He paused, turning to look at
the book. Impulsively, he picked it up, tucking its solid weight
under his arm as he exited the room.

###

Scully was waiting for him in the hotel's restaurant for lunch.
Lunch was her idea. He wondered if it meant anything.

"Is Joshua all right?" she asked as he joined her at her table,
setting his coat with the book hidden in it on the ledge next to
him.

All right?

"Yeah, he's fine," Mulder answered bluntly, setting his napkin
on his lap and picking up the menu. It was an accurate
assessment. The man wasn't bleeding, at least not on the
outside. The menu's words blurred; he was feeling anything
but hungry right now.

"Are *you* all right?" she asked next, gently pressing. His
chest caught. Did she know? Was it obvious? The police report
put him in Joshua's room last night--she'd read that for
certain. But then, that was his assigned post. Who's to say he
didn't pass the night sitting up in an armchair?

"Yeah, I'll be okay. I'm just not pleased with myself. I made a
very stupid error last night."

Scully eyed him carefully; she looked worried. She was
waiting for him to close the menu and elaborate. He let the
meaningless entrees skim by his view before he just set the
menu down. "I've been completely wrong about how the Thin
Man chooses his handpuppets. I made the wrong connections.
I thought we were looking for weak-minded people. Your
autopsy must have been more accurate than we both thought.
There was nothing wrong with the valet--just as there was
nothing unusual about the state of mind of Andy Parsons."

"Until he inexplicably felt the urge to point his weapon at
Joshua," Scully added.

Mulder fingered the edge of his origami napkin. "Yeah. It
doesn't figure to me at all." He looked her in the eye, his voice
like steel. "I swear to God, Scully, he was aiming to kill. And I
all but placed the gun in his hand."

Scully reached out and touched his wrist in reassurance. "You
couldn't have known Andy would be dangerous. It was Joshua
who asked him to bring the weapon, Mulder."

The waiter made his way to their table and Scully ordered the
club sandwich. Mulder did the same, too disinterested in the
meal to choose for himself.

"There's something else, Scully."

Her expression changed abruptly--it almost appeared as if
she flinched. "What?" she asked.

Mulder was, for the moment, startled. She did seem to be
avoiding something. Their working conversations always ran
like this, dancing around the more important unspoken issues
at hand. She had seen them together in Joshua's room, and
now that Sonoma was a complete bust.....It didn't take a
finely-honed investigator to make the numbers add up.
Mulder continued with the case facts.

"When I interviewed Andy Parsons in the hospital, he told me
he'd never seen or heard of anyone matching the description
of the Thin Man."

Her posture eased. "Did he have an answer as to why he
wrote, 'The soldiers are coming,' on hotel stationery?"

"He had no memory of writing the words; although he did
identify the writing as his. After some time he told me he'd
been dreaming about soldiers marching up a snow-covered
road splattered with blood."

"What do you think it means?"

"I'm not sure, but I have an afternoon visit planned to the
offices of the Ukraine Liberator."

"More translations?"

 Mulder toyed with his flatware, lining them up more evenly.
"Yes, but more importantly, I want a translation of the events
that might be making themselves known through the
peculiarities of this case."

"You're still looking for connections to the famine?" she
assessed.

"I think history might be trying to repeat itself," he said, and
took a long swallow of ice water.
 

****************************

Marina Flat
2:30 PM
 

Joshua woke in the late afternoon. He laid on his stomach in
his bed with his eyes closed, trying to keep his gathering
mind from the temptation of replaying yesterday's memories.
He didn't want to remember what it had felt like to be
completely happy. Instead, he tried to focus on the emptiness
he felt, the emotional exhaustion hollowing out his chest.
There was nothing inside him, no more anger or frustration.
He was sick of crying himself to sleep. Perhaps his lover had
been right; there was something to be said for feeling numb.

There were heeled footsteps on his hardwood floor. He
opened his eyes and rolled his head to look. The young female
agent with the polished black sidearm was strolling near his
windows. It was always a surprise to wake and see who was
occupying his space, taking possession of it as if they were an
invited guest. They weren't. In fact, he'd had quite enough of
being "entertained" by the FBI.

Joshua sat up in his bed and rubbed his hands over his eyes.
The agent glanced his way and smiled politely.

"Look," Joshua said through his hands. "No offense, but would
you mind honoring a private citizen's request to be allowed
privacy in his own home?"

She looked confusedly at him. "I can step outside if you'd
like."

"I'd like it if you just left."

"I'll have to put a call in to Agent Mulder..."

Joshua groaned. "No. Look. Please just leave. I need to be
alone. Completely alone. You can understand that, right?"

"I'll need to check in first."

Joshua threw his sheets back and stood up, wearing only a
pair of undershorts. He made his way over to his kitchen bar
to lift the wall phone off the hook. "What's the number?"

Joshua dialed 411 when he didn't get an answer from her.
"Yes. Hello, I'd like the number for the FBI San Francisco Field
Office. Thank you. Please put me through.....Hello? Good
afternoon. This is Joshua Segulyev speaking......Yes, the concert
violinist. I'm, as of 2:30 this afternoon, calling off my assigned
FBI protection.....I know you don't know what I'm talking
about, but leave a note for Agent Mulder. Tell him...tell him
I've had enough."

Joshua hung up the phone in time to see the agent on her cell,
trying to get through to someone in charge of this ridiculous
situation. Joshua stepped past her and opened his front door
wide, inviting her to leave. She was still on hold when he
closed and dead bolted the door after her.

Alone again at last.
 

**************************

The Offices of the Ukraine Liberator
424 Harrison St.
3:22 PM

Johannes Brahms sat patiently in Mulder's lap as he waited in
a musty threadbare chair at the foot of a narrow staircase
which lead up to the Liberator's main office. Mulder's
forefinger idly traced the contours of the composer's long
beard on the cover. Brahms' proud romantic themes had
become the symbolic representation of Joshua's bond to his
grandfather. Mulder wondered what it was like to be so
connected to another person that you felt inspired to honor
them through art. Joshua's landmark recording of the Brahms
Concerto would remain preserved in digital audio on the back
of a CD, or whatever media lay in the future, forever. This was
perhaps why artists were determined to struggle so much.
Brahms, Beethoven, Bach--all these men had neighbors,
servants, cousins, maybe even wives and children that time
had all forgotten. The rewards of sacrificing one's life to art
was the diamond-solid trophy of immortality. Joshua, in the
interests of preserving those awards, had made himself their
proxy, one that would never be forgotten for his services.

"Agent Mulder?"

The gruff low voice of Leo Petrovsky shook him from his
musings. Mulder slipped the book into the packed evidence
satchel he'd hauled in with him and stood to ascend and greet
the stocky man again.

"You have more translations?" the Liberator's editor asked,
returning his handshake.

"Yes, but more than just words and letters. I need someone
who understands the heart and soul of Ukraine."

Mulder followed Leo through the dim crowded office that
overlooked the busy 101 freeway overpass and its occupation
of homeless and addicts within the dark concrete columns.
Mulder passed a set of plain brown cubicles stuffed with
three or four journalists and copyeditors speaking in foreign
tongues, before he and Leo entered a private office at the
back of the rented space.

Petrovsky's office was cluttered with clippings, newspapers,
posters, binders, broken pencils and wrinkled printouts. Leo
lifted a stack of unopened mail from a chair and offered the
seat to Mulder, while he took a seat behind the long desk,
vanishing under a load of paperwork. Petrovsky laid his thick
arms on the center of the desk and cleared a space like a child
starting a snow angel. Excess clutter slipped off onto the floor
and a nearby light table in a manila avalanche.

"There, now you are welcome to my office," he said. Behind
him was an outdated ceiling-to-floor poster that read "Free
Ukraine" in large spray-stenciled block letters.

"I'm here again because I'm still working this case, that quite
frankly, has me stumped," Mulder said, laying out the new
evidence from Joshua's grandfather's home. "I'm working
with a Russian/Jewish violinist of Ukrainian origin who we
believe is cursed, or being threatened by someone who would
like him to believe he's cursed."

Leo fingered the old letter and document Mulder had set
before him. He paused at the certificate.

"You have another birth announcement," he said, reading it
aloud. "This document sanctifies and consecrates the Christian
birth and baptism of Ivan Segulyev, son of Dimitri and Irina
Segulyev, 1912, in St. Sophia's Holy Catholic Church, Chutove,
Poltava Province. May the blood of Christ protect this child."
Petrovsky pushed the document back toward Mulder. "This is
one of the men in the photo with the thresher you showed me
the other day."

"Yes, it is," Mulder admitted. "It's also my witness'
grandfather, who, to the best of my knowledge, defected to
the US during the 1933 famine. I'm hoping this new letter
will shed some light on that history," Mulder said, touching
the letter from Alexander Kosynakov. "The author of this
letter has been sending written threats to my witness for the
past eight months. His name appears on both the synagogue
birth document and the register we brought you earlier. By
his handwriting, he also appears to be the farmer who kept
the log at the start of the famine."

Leo took the letter from him and opened a drawer, producing
a pair of petite reading glasses. He perched them at the end of
his nose, making his large head seem even larger. "That is not
likely," he said simply, beginning to read the letter.

Mulder was lost. "Why do you say so? We've had the
handwriting analyzed. It's a fact."

Leo grunted. "Perhaps it is a fact to your analyst, but not to
someone who knows 1930s Ukraine. Jews were forbidden to
own land. Kosynakov could not have been a landlord, or
'Kulak' as the Soviets liked to falsely label them. The word
literally means "fist"--someone who lends money to others,
holds them in their debt. They used the scapegoat term to
accuse and send millions of successful capitalist-minded
farmers and their families off to struggle for life in Siberia.
When I read the farming log, I could tell this landowner was a
good man, responsible for a small hamlet of families. From his
first recorded harvest it seemed to me that he had been
prosperous. Individual prosperity was like a sickness to the
communist revolution..." he paused as he read the letter.

"The man who writes this... He is making a statement to his
workers, or tenant farmers of his hamlet. He is stating that he
is leaving the 'savings' in the care of his 'brother.' It is not the
real blood-term for brother that he uses, but one that means
'alike in spirit.' He says that the GPU--the secret police--will
be coming for him. They do not care anymore that his father
was a war hero. He says that the land they awarded his father
for his valor in the civil war between the Reds and the Whites
is condemning him, that he is to be made an example of. He
hopes to...this is confusing to me...he is asking that the tenants
pretend to believe in him as a false man...wait! Oh, I see. He is
disguising himself and hoping that when he reaches Kiev for
labor assignment he will be returned once he has proven he is
only a common peasant."

Leo paused and rubbed the side of his nose, thoughtfully. "He
signs it by his false name, Alexander Kosynakov."

"So this landowner..." Mulder started to say, thinking it
through, "...falsified his identity in order to fool the officials in
charge of relocating him to Siberia into letting him go?"

"It would seem so. Soviet authorities at that time had a
random criteria for crushing the peasants. One week, being
the son of a soldier could help you; the next, make you a
target. People kept birth certificates on them at all times,
trading them when being higher or lower born was to their
advantage...let me show you something," Leo said, reaching
behind him for a large book on the floor next to his computer
desk. He lifted it and set it down over the evidence with a
thud. He opened it facing Mulder, and flipped past page after
page of preserved newspaper clippings, yellowed with age.
The images that flipped by were horrible to see: men, women,
children and animals, bone-thin and dying. Piles of bodies and
mass graves flipped by as Petrovsky found the page he was
seeking. "Here," he said. "These were reports from Poltava
Province taken by Red Cross volunteers in 1934 when the
Soviet government finally allowed for relief efforts. The
statistics are sobering," he said, pointing to a box at the
bottom of the page. "Nearly two-thirds of the people living in
this province were missing, forcibly relocated, dead, or dying.
Chutove, the village your witness' grandfather came from,
was left abandoned."

"Wait..." Mulder said, leaning forward and touching the page
in front of him. At the top was a photo of Red Cross workers
feeding a line of emaciated orphaned children. One girl had a
bow in her hair that looked familiar to him. Mulder dug
through his satchel for the lock box photos and set them next
to the bound clippings on the desk. The sepia image of the
young girl found in Nanette's office, once so pretty with pearls
around her neck, was the same girl in the newspaper photo,
only older and sunken as she swallowed what the Red Cross
could deliver in the form of salvation.

"Nanette," he breathed.

"Who?"

Before he could explain, Mulder's cell rang. He answered it
quickly. It was the new agent filling in for Dillmont's shift,
calling to inform him that Joshua had kicked her out, electing
to refuse protection. Dammit, Joshua *was* more than
determined to get himself killed.

"Can you just keep an eye on him?" he asked. "Trail him; see
where he goes, if he goes anywhere. I'm in the middle of
something right now, but I'll try to talk some sense into him
later." She agreed and beeped off. Mulder sighed and slid his
phone back into his pocket.

"This girl," Mulder said, pointing to both photos. "She was the
last survivor from Chutove."

"You know her?" Leo asked, unbelieving.

"Yes. I'm certain it's her. She's a part of this case. Some of
these documents and photos were found in her home."

"If it is her, I would ask you to invite her to meet me for an
interview. I could help her and her remaining family, if she
has one...there are charities..."

Mulder remembered something. "Are you familiar with the
Recovery Foundation of Poltava Province?"

"Yes, I have heard of them. They do good work for terror-
famine survivors still living in Ukraine," Petrovsky said,
closing his book and removing it from the desk so he could
see the evidence again.

Mulder nodded his head, thoughtfully. "There's one more
translation I need from you," he said, reaching down and
lifting out a plastic evidence bag containing the charred bone
fragment. "A message from the dead."

Petrovsky took the bag in his hands gently, turning the bone
over inside the plastic so he could read it. He set his glasses
up higher on his nose. "It says, 'May he who bears my name
and all those who follow in blood be bereft of gifts or of
giving.'"

"Is it a curse?" Mulder asked.

"It could be. Many Ukraine peasants at that time still
practiced forms of pagan ritual. Did you find this wrapped
with a dead bird?"

Mulder felt elated. "Yes, we did."

Leo mulled the thought over in his mind. "I have heard of an
old pagan ceremony that passes a final wish along from the
dead to the living. As the deceased's body lies on a pyre,
certain incantations are recited. When the fire dies, a living
relative must inscribe the message on a remnant of his or her
body."

"This case I'm investigating, the witness has been attacked by
assailants who appear to be possessed by a spirit from
beyond the grave."

Leo shrugged, setting the bag and bone down. "I cannot
account for the acts of the living. It is only a tradition. It
means nothing to me. Perhaps it means something to your
witness?"

"'...he who bears my name and all those who follow in
blood...'" Mulder repeated. "It sounds like he was cursing his
own family. Why would he want to do that...unless..." The
image of Brahms flashed into his mind and Mulder reached
into the satchel for the book of composers, tapping the cover.
The pieces all began to slide into place, rapidly. The message
they had been reading, written across cell walls and
cardboard and paper, 'your name is not your own...we were
sacrificed for you...see where you came from...'

'...your name is not your own...'

Mulder glanced up at Petrovsky, whose eyes were wide with
expectation. "I need a sheet of paper and a pencil," he told the
editor. Leo rifled around his mess, producing both. Mulder
laid the paper over the book's cover art, and with the flat
edge of the pencil, took a rubbing of Brahms' long beard. "I
need your copy machine and light table," he said next, getting
to his feet.

Petrovsky set the rubbing on the copier just outside his office
door and Mulder instructed him to reduce it to 25%. Then he
made a 125% enlargement of the farm photo of the two men.
Copies in hand, Mulder assisted Petrovsky in clearing the
clutter from the light table near his desk. On the illuminated
surface, Mulder set the farm photocopy and then slid the
beard over the face of one man and then the next.

From the nose-up both men were virtually identical.

"It's what I suspected," Mulder said. "You can lose your name,
but you can't lose your faith, and Alexander Kosynakov knew
this was true."

***********************************

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
5:15 PM

The museum was getting ready to close for the evening and
Mulder had to argue with the security guard for several
minutes before he was allowed to enter and start up the
white and black tiled staircase to the exhibit halls.

The agent tailing Joshua told Mulder he was here, somewhere
among the scribbles and blotched colors of modern two-
dimensional art expression. Mulder stopped at the second
floor and stepped into the gallery, easing his way around
onlookers as they tried to catch a last glimpse of Warhol or
Dali before the 5:30 closing time.

He found his abandoned lover standing at the end of a long
viewing room, surrounded by onlookers strolling by slowly or
seated at benches. All of them were staring at a questionable
piece of artistic merit mounted on the far wall.

As if he had sensed Mulder's arrival, Joshua's gaze broke from
the painting and fell on him. The violinist's dark eyes tracked
over him once, from head to foot, and flicked away with
indifference, his attention once more focused on the painting.
Mulder found the slight to be just on the edge of insolent. He
should have known Joshua was not the type of man to be
refused--he commanded an audience by nature and wasn't
accustomed to being ignored.

Mulder squared himself and cleared the distance to stand
beside him.

"I'm surprised, Mulder. I didn't know you had an appreciation
for Klee," Joshua said with a hint of mockery in his once
welcoming voice.

It was irritating to be suddenly so ill-regarded. "I don't,"
Mulder said. "To me it's just a smudge of paint."

"It's not an image that you're supposed to see--it's more of a
feeling--an impression spoken in simple color--orange, blue,
surrounded by black. You look at it and although it might not
be clear, you get a feeling for what it's trying to say."

"That must be the artist in you, Joshua, because I can't see
anything but a waste of wallspace."

"Keep watching. It takes time to see."

"I'm afraid I don't have that kind of time right now. I need to
speak to you."

"I'm sorry, Mulder," he said, almost bored. "I'm looking at art
right now."

"The museum's closing. I'll wait for you outside."

###

5:38 PM

Joshua was the second-to-the-last person to leave the
museum before they closed and bolted the doors. The
floodlights came on, lighting the museum's lipstick-tip-shaped
skylight from within like a giant black and white seeing eye.

He nodded once to Mulder and crossed 3rd Street to head into
Yerba Buena Gardens city park. Mulder followed patiently as
Joshua kept a few paces ahead of him, stalling the inevitable.
This time, Mulder's reach for the musician's elbow made
contact and Joshua whipped around to face him, drawing his
arm away.

"Joshua," Mulder said with frustrated sympathy, "I wish you
could realize that I never intended to hurt you. I'm only
trying to do what's right to protect you."

Joshua's eyes reflected his hurt and doubt. He folded his arms
and rocked on his heels like a marathon runner anticipating
the gun. "No, Mulder, I was rather under the impression I'd
been *dumped*."

Mulder was at a loss at how to proceed. He took a deep
breath, trying to find a way to be firm, but honest. "It's not
for lack of wanting, Joshua. This is about keeping you safe.
This is about my responsibility to you. It surprises me now
little you seem to fear for your own life."

Joshua's reply was strangely defensive. "What makes you
think I'm not afraid?"

"Because you're refusing protection and wandering about the
city without a shred of defense. You refuse to wear a vest
despite all our recommendations..."

"I don't see where the FBI's recommendations have done a
hell of a lot to protect me lately. I'm strongly considering
acquiring a gun. I may be a lousy shot, but it beats living like
a walking target."

Mulder held his tongue. Joshua had a point and he knew it. If
Mulder could blame himself for incompetence, so could
Joshua--even if it was out of spite. "I'm not here to pick a
fight with you. I've made a major break in your case, if you
care to hear about it."

Joshua pouted indignantly as he thought it over, staring at the
cascading fountain wall behind them. Presently, curiosity won
over anger and he nodded for Mulder to proceed.

"I found out that in 1986 Nanette sent a package containing a
Ukrainian pagan curse to your grandfather. Scully and I found
it in his trunk, inscribed on a human jawbone along with a
letter. He had kept it there in your old home, hidden."

Joshua seemed quite disturbed by this. "What did the curse
say?"

"That any family bearing the Segulyev name would be
cursed--that you would be bereft of 'gifts or of giving.'"

The vestiges of anger fled Joshua's demeanor and he relaxed
his enforced arrogance. It seemed he did still feel the need to
be protected. "Then why was my father cursed?"

"I don't think the bad luck so much fell on him as it did your
mother."

Joshua looked like he was trying to make it all add up. "She
said she wasn't in control of her life. Papa was. I suppose it
made sense that his farm was never successful. It ruined him
and in turn, ruined her." He eyes narrowed and he looked to
Mulder. "Why Nanette? How do you know it was her who sent
the curse?"

"Because according to pagan tradition, a living relative of the
deceased must pass their message on to the living, completing
the workings of the ritual. It has to be her, Joshua; she lived
with this man, the Thin Man, on his farm with her mother and
aunt. He was her uncle by marriage. After the famine, when
help arrived, he must have been returned from forced labor
in Siberia. When he saw everyone was dead and gone, he felt
the need to curse the only member of his extended family
who'd escaped."

"Nanette?" Joshua asked, confounded.

"No, she survived by sheer will. I saw a photo of her, a child
clinging to life. She survived. It was your grandfather who
escaped, along with your infant mother."

"But...who was my grandfather to this man? A brother?"

"No, I think he was a close friend who helped work the land
with him, a serf."

Joshua blinked a few times, thinking. "I hate myself for
admitting this, but I've felt for a long time that Nanette hasn't
been completely honest with me. In the field office she told
me she had arrived in America 'filled with bitterness' toward
my grandfather. I suppose she was jealous he had made it
away from that godawful place."

"I think Nanette has held the key to this mystery for a very
long time. We should both go talk to her."

Joshua looked uneasy. "I wish we could. She's left town."

"What?"

Joshua looked saddened. "I went over to her home this
afternoon. She's gone--cleared out. I guess she's been more
guilty for what's happened to me than she's let on. If she's the
one responsible for activating this curse, then I can
understand why the letters upset her so much. She didn't
bargain that they'd come after me...my God...all this did begin
just after my father's death, didn't it?"

Mulder nodded his solemn agreement. "That would seem to
be the pattern--the sins of one generation passing to the
next."

Joshua shrugged. "I don't follow. Whose sins? My father's?"

Mulder shook his head slowly, wondering if now was the best
time. He needed Joshua's trust if he was going to be able to
help him understand. "There's something else, Joshua. And I
don't know how you're going to take it."

"What?" he asked quietly.

"I believe Nanette was trying to stop the curse herself. She
was paying back an old debt with your mortgage money,
trying to appease the spirits of the dead, only it didn't work."

"She said something to me about paying 'them' back. I didn't
understand what she meant. What debt?"

"There was a letter with the curse from a man who traded
identities with your grandfather in order to try and fool the
Soviet officers who came to take him off to Siberia. Only his
ruse failed on both accounts."

"What do you mean?"

"Where the Thin Man gained a new identity, so did your
grandfather--one that he used to escape and has kept himself
hidden behind even in death, until now."

"I don't follow..."

"Your grandfather's birth name was Alexander Kosynakov, a
poor Jewish serf who worked for Nanette's uncle, who in turn
was born to land-owning Catholic parents under the name
Ivan Segulyev. Some point after your grandfather became
Ivan, he stole the $60,000 village treasury and bribed his
way to freedom, leaving his countrymen to die of starvation
in their homeland. The money was intended to bargain for
food and he took it under his false identity in order to save
himself and your mother."

Joshua stood with his mouth slightly open, trying to gather in
what Mulder had just told him. He didn't speak for several
long moments, and Mulder wondered if it bore repeating.

"How, in God's name, did you manage to draw that
conclusion?" Joshua finally said with some effort.

"It's all in the evidence. I can show you piece for piece how it
all fits together. The switched identity had me thrown for a
while, but the handwriting has remained constant. The Thin
Man, Ivan Segulyev, is cursing the man who stole his name,
his daughter who was named Segulyev from birth, and
finally, you, the grandson who chose to keep his grandfather's
name. 'Your name is not your own...' the writings have said,
'see what you will not see.' You are not the grandson of a
Russian immigrant. By Alexander's birth record you are, on
your Mother's side, Ukrainian."
 
Joshua held up his hand as if to halt him. "I want you to stop
and think for a minute about what it is you're trying to say to
me."

Mulder squinted into the late afternoon sun. "I believe,
Joshua, that your grandfather betrayed his countrymen. It's
these spirits--this man Ivan, who died in 1933 of starvation,
who wants you to understand what I'm saying, to accept it.
'See what you will not see.' I'm sorry, but they want you to
understand your grandfather wasn't all what he seemed."

When Joshua spoke his voice was controlled and cold. "That
man, Ivan or Alexander, or whatever his name was, I don't
care...my grandfather did everything for me--*everything*.
He took care of me; he loved me; he gave me music; he taught
me what is sacred in this world; and he saved my hands,
Mulder, so I could be a violinist. I owe him my life and I
wasn't here for him when he lost his. I will *never* forgive
myself for that. Not ever. Don't stand there as my friend and
tell me I need to see him for who he was because I *did.* He
was a man of God, and you and the rest of the world living or
dead can go to hell for saying otherwise."

"I'm only trying to help you."

"Are you?" he asked bitterly, his voice continuing to rise in
anger. "So far all you've done for me is to try to lay the blame
on everyone I've ever loved."

"That's not true, Joshua."

"Yes you have! Elise, Nana, my grandfather--where does it
end? You've run down the short list of people who have ever
cared for me. I won't flatter myself into thinking you'll blame
yourself next." Joshua turned his back on him and began to
walk briskly away.

Mulder called after him to stop.

Joshua spun around once, his dark eyes reflecting betrayal.
"Just follow your own advice, Mulder, and leave me the hell
alone."

Helpless to prevent him from leaving, Mulder watched Joshua
cross the park and disappear into the public traffic of Mission
Street.

************************

Marina Flat
7:04 PM

When Joshua reentered his apartment it was dark. He'd been
out walking in the city evening, wandering like he had
wandered that late afternoon from Davies Hall not over a
week ago. He was punishing himself again, or maybe in
reality, trolling for danger. All he knew was that he wanted
free of the stagnation he was feeling, as if his legs were
trapped in ice. He was threatened and yet no one could
protect him; he had become as deeply moved by love as he
had ever known in his life, and yet he was shut off from the
object of his desire. He had faced him today knowing he no
longer belonged to him, and most likely never did. Joshua felt
older, used up--while all along his career was fading. Soon, no
one would remember who he was or what he had wanted to
accomplish in life. All he had ever wanted was to feel loved,
and the only person to ever make him feel that way was now
outrageously accused of being the origin for the threats on his
life.

Joshua crossed the darkness to the violin. It was waiting,
lying in repose on the back of the piano. He lifted the slight
instrument and it nestled close as he pulled the bow over the
strings. At once, music filled the vacuum in his soul and
coated over the newly cut wounds. What he chose to play was
sad, yet moving--a Brahms' sonata in major--a happier key,
yet written with such solitude, it moved deeper for its
attempt at joy. Often, in a long minor passage, a composer will
turn to major for a few bars to carry the emotions farther. An
idea occurred to Joshua and he switched over to play the
Mendelssohn cadenza. It was in E-minor, but adding an
augmentation to major, here, right here, changed the meaning.

Joshua paused, setting the violin down, thinking. He had a
performance tomorrow night and the next, the last two shows
at Davies, and then he'd be on to Southern California. He
wanted to advance himself in some way, to leave this city
with a gift its citizens would all remember. Joshua went to his
shelving and opened a bottom drawer, fishing around for
ledger paper. He found an old unused pad and took up a fist
full of sharpened pencils. He clicked on the halogen light,
casting an eerie glow over the piano's sleek black  coat. He sat
at the bench and flipped open the key cover, playing the first
several bars of the cadenza. The piano came more slowly to
him, but it allowed his mind to grab any note easily, finger by
finger. He struck an F-major chord and after a few
exploratory notes, paused for a pencil and scribbled the
phrase across the ledger lines on the blank music paper,
filling it with notes, with life.
 

****************************************

*********************************

Chapter Sixteen: Lies

*********************************

Marriott Hotel
8:45 PM

It was forty-five minutes past his watch. Only tonight, Mulder
wasn't watching anything, not even TV. Alone in his hotel
room for the first decent hour in a week, Mulder lay back on
the bedcovers, staring at the ceiling. The carefully arranged
message phrases were stacked neatly on the bedside table
near him next to an unopened pack of sunflower seeds. He'd
lost his taste for this case, the search--even the seeds failed to
interest him. The zest he once held for his job was
languishing. The revival he had felt the last few days and
nights was all but snuffed out. Depression and a sense of
aimlessness covered him like a thin stale hotel blanket. He
felt cold again, yet didn't have the interest to get up and
shower. Instead, he let his eyes trace the hairline cracks in
the ceiling. He'd order in dinner, but the thought of sucking
down tepid noodles was nauseating to him.

He missed Joshua, terribly--more than he had thought
possible. His whole body hurt with missing him. He'd close his
eyes, but the inviting image of Joshua lying back naked
before him would materialize in his mind's eye. He missed
everything about him: the smell of his hair and skin, the color
of his dark blue eyes when they were regarding him
thoughtfully, the way he sometimes snored softly if he was
sleeping on his back. Mulder missed his laugh, his
conversation, his incredible back massages, and God help him,
he even missed his cock--the way the head grew taut and
reddish when aroused. He missed the sounds Joshua made
when he kissed him, but most of all, he missed the sound of
the violin. The company of music followed Joshua everywhere
he went, welcoming those who were close to him. Mulder
tried to remember how peaceful it had felt listening to Joshua
sitting at the end of the bed after they'd made love, playing
the violin into the darkness of the flat.

The silence was getting to him, but he knew he'd have to
admit defeat, reassimilate into his previous existence, by
turning on the TV--so he picked up the old book Joshua had
given him and opened the cover, turning the pages lovingly
with his fingers.

There was a knock at his hotel room door. He set the book
down with a sigh. "Yeah?"

"Mulder, it's me. Can I come in?"

"Scully...I'm resting...Can you...?"

"It's urgent, Mulder; I need to talk to you."

Reluctantly, he opened the nightstand and slid the book in
next to the Gideon Bible. Shutting the drawer, he rose,
shuffled to the door, opened it, and immediately turned to
flop down on the bed on his back. He left her to close the door
after her. "What is it?"

Scully came and sat next to him on the bed, setting her hand
on the bedspread near his thigh. She had an unreadable
expression on her face as she looked down at him. "I need you
to explain something to me," she said and produced a blurry
black and white photograph from her pocket.

Mulder felt his stomach twist as he took it from her. It was a
police surveillance camera still of Joshua's front entry. It was
a photo of him pressing Joshua up against the stucco wall,
kissing him.

"Shit..." was all he could think to say and turned the image
over, laying his hand over it against his stomach. He couldn't
look at her; the image hurt more than one way. "How long
have you had this?"

"A few days, since Monday afternoon when the two of you
went to Sonoma." Her voice wasn't angry, but it was cool,
distant, as if she had been rehearsing this encounter. Two
days...

Mulder swallowed, dryly, and looked up at her. "What do you
want to know?"

Her lips trembled for a second and then stilled as she pressed
them together, determined not to let him see how this had
affected her.

"Are you sleeping with him?"

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Since..." Mulder had to stop to clear his throat. "Since his
birthday, last Friday...but I ended it. After Sonoma, I ended
it."

She nodded, crossing her arms and shifting, taking a breath as
if the worst was now over. "You know, Mulder, I took your
advice the other day. On my 'day off' I went to the zoo to look
at all the 'cool stuff' and I was standing there watching the
chimpanzees swinging upside-down from ropes and old tires
and I realized something. I realized I had been going about
this case all wrong. Maybe it's the years we've spent together
that have made me doubt myself, but I knew suddenly why
this case was eluding us so badly. We weren't looking at it the
right way--we were avoiding the most obvious and blatant
solution, and it almost sickened me how easily all the facts
and evidence just came together. But I still doubted myself
and I probably wouldn't have followed through on my
suspicions...until I got a call from the Hall of Justice and Lt.
Jarvis pulled me into his office. He told me they'd set up a
video still camera in front of Joshua's flat after the night he
was stabbed by Harris. He said there were photos you and I
probably wanted to keep just between the two of us and that,
since I was your friend, I might want to tell you to watch
yourself. I can't tell you how nice he was about it. It surprised
me, and I took the photos and thanked him...I actually
thanked him for being discreet. He said, well, this is San
Francisco...and I..."

She stopped herself, holding her hand over her mouth. It
seemed she knew she was babbling and if she wasn't careful,
about to cry. "I knew it, Mulder. I saw it happening right
before my eyes, but I wouldn't believe it...dammit, Mulder,
how could you?"

Mulder felt his body gearing up to do the weeping for her. He
shut his eyes. "I'm sorry, Scully. I made a mistake. I've hurt
you, and I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you..."

She brushed her hair back from her cheek and stifled a dry
sob in a hard swallow. She held her head down, trying to
collect herself. "There's more, Mulder. If you're ready to hear
it."

Mulder blinked and nodded faintly for her to continue.

"Once I had the evidence of your affair, I decided to pursue
my assumptions privately, to take this investigation in a
whole new direction, alone. I went back to the beginning, to
Philadelphia and Alice Schmidt. Alice had many aliases
between 1996 and 1998, but one of them was Mary Baker.
Mary Baker spent most of this year living at Faraday Halfway
House on Hampshire Lane in Philadelphia, the same street
Joshua lived on during the first half of this year--they were
practically next door neighbors.

"I looked into Harris next. According to his arrest record,
Harris has been a vagrant living within two to three blocks of
Davies Symphony Hall for the past ten years. Twice, he was
arrested for assault near the stage door and parking garage.
Then I found that the valet, Thomas Philmaker, had been
parking cars for the War Memorial Opera House and Davies
Symphony Hall for nearly five years. According to subsequent
interviews conducted by the SFPD with his co-workers, I
learned that the night of the crash, Thomas was the valet who
parked Elizabeth Allen's car--occupied by both Elizabeth and
Joshua when they arrived together for the performance. And
I think we both know how long Andy Parsons has been
working for Joshua as his driver and occasional body guard..."

She paused a moment, waiting for his reaction. "I understand
where you're heading with this, Scully, but all of that is
circumstantial. Joshua's lived in these cities off and on for
years."

She lowered her eyes and tugged at a piece of bed cover,
gaining stamina. "There's more..."

Mulder set both hands on his chest, feeling his heartbeat
quickening.

"We both know Joshua voluntarily admitted himself to a
therapeutic center in Vermont after his grandfather's death
two years ago. Yesterday, I managed to get his former analyst
on the phone. She was reluctant to divulge specific
information, but the center he attended wasn't an official
licensed program, either. She was able to tell me that during
his stay at Appassionata, Joshua's personality profile showed
a strong leaning toward pathological misdirection
commensurate with his childhood neglect. He lied a great deal
about his past and present situations to her. When he was
admitted, he told the general staff that he was a painter from
New Jersey who had suffered a bout of deep depression. It
wasn't until a month after he'd left the program that she'd
learned who he really was through newspaper clippings."

Mulder opened his palms, in a shrug. "But he could have told
them those things for any reason. Maybe he didn't want
people to know who he really was--to protect his reputation."

"Possibly, but if Joshua's been trying to protect his reputation,
then why did he grant a private interview the day after the
Philly bomb incident with Nick Stabler, staff writer for the
Philadelphia Inquirer--the man who wrote Joshua's curse
story?"

"What?"

"I called Stabler yesterday and he played back part of the
taped interview for me. Joshua told us a reporter had
overheard him mentioning the curse in general conversation.
I heard the tape, Mulder; he told the man point blank he
thought he was cursed."

Mulder felt doubt like a sickness beginning to take over him.
"But what about the Thin Man and the handwriting?"

"Has anyone other than Joshua ever provided a confirmed
sighting of this man? Harris reacted to the sketch, certainly,
but I think a man with his level of mental degradation would
have reacted to a photograph of Barney."

"But he said...Harris said he'd seen the Thin Man..."

"He said those words right after you spoke them, Mulder. He
was parroting you."

"But Alice...?"

"Alice sees pink elephants on a regular basis. The valet is
dead so we can't ask him, but Joshua's driver--you
interviewed him--you told me he claimed he'd never seen a
thin man."

Mulder shook his head faintly, recalling how Joshua had
woken him in the night, pointing into the dark, asking him,
"Can you see him? Can you see him?" All Mulder had seen
was an open door.

"But why would Joshua run himself in front of a car, Scully?"

"Because he planned it that way. He'd seen the valet earlier
when he'd parked the car. They could have had a plan, an
exact time for him to exit the rear door, knowing full well that
you would follow him. You saw him get up during the
performance, didn't you? How convenient that the two of you
were seated so far apart, yet within full visual contact of one
another."

"He coerced a man to drive himself into a wall? That's suicide,
Scully."

"Maybe the crash was an accident? A plan gone horribly
wrong? Maybe Joshua has skills in hypnotic suggestion? I
checked into his college records. Joshua took several courses
in abnormal psychology and altered states of consciousness at
the San Francisco State extension. Two of those courses dealt
with hypnosis, in great detail."

"Which would explain the handwriting..." Mulder said weakly,
still not wanting to believe it. "But Scully," he said in
argument, "what's his motive? Why would he manipulate
people to attack him, or pretend to attack him, over and over?
What would be the point? He hates the publicity this case has
given him. He asked me to lie for him to the SFPD, to tell them
*I* was following the Thin Man out of the opera to keep
himself out of the crash investigation."

Scully leaned forward slightly, trying to clarify the issue. "He
asked you to lie so there would be an official state and
Federal record of an officer of the law confirming the
existence of this specter he *invented* from an illustration in
a Russian book of fables."

That one hit hard. Very hard. Mulder struggled to a seated
position, shaking his head numbly while she continued.

"Joshua announced his motive the first night we met him,
Mulder. He told us his fear--his fear of being forgotten as a
violinist now that he was turning thirty. And despite what
Joshua has said, I think we both know that in the
entertainment industry, there's no such thing as bad press."

"But...?" Mulder found he had no reasonable rebuttal to give.
He just stared at her in shock as she continued.

"So far all that this so-called 'bad press' has cost Joshua is a
few Gala cancellations that were quickly resold. Don't forget,
he managed to land himself a new world tour contract last
week from an orchestra association that had previously
passed him up.

"We've been played, Mulder. Both of us. You and I. He's been
leading us blindly down the fine edge of Occam's Razor. Look
at the preponderance of the evidence--the simplest
explanation is usually the correct one. There is no phantom
killer, Mulder--as much as you want to believe it--only a sad
and confused man, desperately trying to save his fame."

Mulder crossed his legs under him and lowered his head into
his hands, trying to think. It was all making too much sense
and the working of it was making him feel sick and
lightheaded. "This can't be right, Scully. I *know* Joshua. He's
not responsible."

"You'll ignore all the evidence against him because you say
you know him? How long have you known him, Mulder? A
week? Ten days? Are you saying you can know everything
about a man just because you've fucked him?"

He looked up at her, feeling a flash of defensiveness. "Scully..."

"I'm sorry, Mulder. I'm sorry I have to tell you like this.
People are not always what they seem. You and I should
understand that by now."

"What about the money, Scully, and the famine, and Joshua's
grandfather and Nanette...?"

"A complex and tragic history story, but ultimately just a
fancy wrapping to fold around a simple lie. I think it's not
hard to imagine Nanette's been a conspirator in this plot from
the start. Joshua took me to her home, and led me to her
office. He wanted us to find those papers--they both did.
Nanette didn't forge the letter to his accountant releasing the
mortgage money. Her writing exam proved she's not capable
of forgery. Joshua must have sent the letter himself."

"Why would Joshua steal his own money?"

"To throw authorities off. Hypnosis may work on some, but
money works on everyone and Joshua has nearly three
million dollars of it."

Mulder looked into her eyes, pleading with her to stop before
he was forced to believe it. "But he's been so good to me,
Scully. You don't know; he's made me trust him. Why would
he go to the trouble to do that if he was only planning on
using me in a plot for his own gain?"

Scully reached out and placed her hand on his knee, trying to
calm him. "I think that you were the one thing Joshua didn't
expect--a bona fide paranormal investigator--the only man in
the FBI with the skills and background necessary to see any
holes in his plan, to find the faults in his self-executed fable.
He seduced you, Mulder. He knew how to get to you."

Mulder shook his head, lowering his voice to a miserable
whisper. "It wasn't like that...it was..."

"What did he tell you, Mulder? That he believed in aliens?
That he saw ghosts? That he was cursed? haunted? I know
you, Mulder. I know how easily you fall for that."

"What are you saying, Scully?"

Scully reached for the photo, holding it up for him to face. He
flinched, not wanting to look at it, not wanting to remember
how good, how alive, he had felt that night. "Joshua is a
private citizen. SFPD must seek permission to post
surveillance on private property. Joshua knew about the
camera, Mulder. Did he stop you deliberately within its
range? What did he do--lose his keys?"

Mulder heard a moan come up from the base of his gut.
"Shit...shit, shit, shit..." he was on his feet, pacing the room as
it swam in a furious blur before his eyes. He was feeling all
the ugliness of the world from America to Ukraine thundering
into his right arm as he punched his fist through the
wallpapered drywall near the bed.

"Fuck!"

"Mulder!" She was on her feet, pulling him away from the
wall and back over to the bed. "Sit down. Jesus, you're
bleeding. Let me get a towel."

She brought a dry towel from the bathroom and carefully
wrapped his torn hand in it. He hissed and muttered
obscenities under his breath as she bound the wound with ice
from the nearby bucket. "This is going to swell..."

The pain radiating from his knuckles was somewhat calming.
It was helping him to focus not on the mess with Joshua, but
rather on the steadfastness of Scully, his friend and partner,
the only one he could really trust. He was feeling the tears
coming now, the tears of shame. He didn't give a shit--there
was nothing to hide from her.

"I've been an idiot, Scully. A first-class, gold-medal-winning
asshole," he said.

She looked up into his eyes, wiping a tear from the side of his
nose with the type of forgiving expression a mother reserves
for her awkward child. "I won't argue with that," she said
with a faint smile.

"You're right about me, Scully; I'm a sap. I fall for anyone who
will look me in the eye and tell me they believe in all kinds of
shit I've been chasing for ten years--Joshua, Diana, they're
both the same. They see that weakness in me and they use it
to get me to doubt you and I fall for it every single goddamn
time."

Her sad smile grew as she held his bleeding fist. "Keep going,
Mulder; you're on a roll."

"I've been angry with you, Scully. Frustrated, fed-up. And it's
not because you haven't been a loyal partner; it's because
after all these years, and everything we've been through
together and seen, you still don't believe in any of it. And for
some reason I can't seem to get my head out of my ass long
enough to realize that doesn't matter, because like you said,
you believe in me," he said earnestly, leaning closer to her,
right into her familiar light-blue eyes. "You've always
believed in me, from the start, and when all the fires and
abductions and betrayals have torn the rest of my life apart,
when everything has been laid to waste, I find you there,
standing with me, ready to move on."

He must be doing well, he felt, because he could almost see
the heavy wall that had been building between them these
past months crumbling around them. Despite everything he
had just been through in the last ten minutes and the
throbbing in his hand, he felt relieved, better than he had in
months. She was smiling at him again, her sincere gaze of
acceptance beginning to blur with tears of her own.

"I think I'd like to accept your apology now, Mulder, and get
your fist to a doctor before you become too decrepit to be my
partner. We have a case to solve."
 

************************

Marina Flat
8:35 AM
Wednesday
 

Joshua was seated at the piano scribbling onto a music sheet
when Mulder entered. He didn't look up or acknowledge him.
He played a few notes, frowned, and reached up to the flat
top of the piano to begin erasing.

A blurry black and white photograph was slipped over the
sheet, catching eraser debris like flypaper. It was a shot of
them at night, kissing just inside the front entry. He sighed
and looked up. "What's this?"

"Why don't you tell me?" Mulder's voice was like lead. He had
a pissy look about him that made Joshua want to slap him.

"Nice shot; can I keep it?" he said, pushing it aside to blow the
eraser dust off his page. Mulder's hand came down to push
the photo firmly back toward him.

"I'm not here to play games with you. I want answers." God,
his tone could be so cold. Joshua should have known it took a
steely heart to survive like Mulder had for so long. He'd have
some sympathy if he wasn't in just about the worst mood of
his life right now. The cadenza was going nowhere. He'd spent
most of the night working on it and now the morning was
growing old. Joshua could see the knuckles on Mulder's right
hand were bandaged. What had he been up to, punching
walls?

"So they got a shot of us. Big deal. It's not illegal to kiss a man
in California, thank God."

"You knew you were being surveilled, and you didn't bother
to tell me?"

Joshua set the eraser down and looked past Mulder to the far
end of his flat, bright with morning sunlight. "I have exactly
nine hours to finish this cadenza. Would you mind if we took
up this spat at a later date?"

"Yes, I would mind. I need an explanation. Were you trying to
entrap me?"

"What?" Joshua pushed back from the piano and stood up, not
really trying very hard to hold in his rising fury. The man had
no right to accuse him of entrapment.

"You *were* informed. You gave permission."

Joshua shook his head, exasperated. "I suppose I did. I don't
know; I was rehearsing. I didn't think..."

Mulder had his hand set on his hip, perhaps unintentionally
displaying his holster. He nodded his head with no little
malice. "You didn't think...This is my *job,* Joshua. You are a
protected witness."

"Ah, fuck!" Joshua kicked the piano bench over in one
brusque move, slamming it onto the hardwood floor. He
turned away a few paces, then circled to face Mulder again.
"That's a very convenient way to look at it."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

Joshua began to pace back and forth, keeping the piano
between them. He shook his head again and again. "No, no, no
I tell myself. Don't do this to yourself, Joshua. Leave the
straight ones alone before they come back to beat the shit out
of you."

Mulder's stance seemed to ease a bit. His voice was not so icy.
"Is that why you think I'm here?"

Joshua laughed coldly. "Of course it is. You got off; your dick
settled down and now you're thinking with your bigger head
again. Time to go slap the violinist around for corrupting you."

Mulder looked away from him, distressed. No, Joshua had to
admit to himself, maybe that wasn't why he was here, not
consciously anyway.

Joshua took a breath, forcing himself to calm a notch. "So
who's seen this?"

Mulder still didn't look at him; his voice sounded defeated.
"The police surveillance officer, Lt. Jarvis...my partner."

Joshua looked hard at him. Mulder knew very well he
wouldn't lose his job over this. It wasn't very convenient, and
he should have perhaps thought to tell him, but from what he
knew of Mulder's case history, he'd done much worse.

"This is about your partner, isn't it?"

Mulder reacted like he'd been slapped. "No."

"Why don't you do us both the courtesy of being honest for a
change?"

Mulder just stared at him, tightly, while his mind tried to grip
what truths or lies were being spoken between them. Finally,
his shaking hand came up to wipe across his lower lip. It
seemed guilt had won after all. Guilt and shame. "Joshua..."

"You were the biggest mistake I've ever made. Get the fuck
out of my home," Joshua said in anger, pointing to his front
door. "I don't ever want to see you or hear you say my name
again!"

Mulder looked down, lowering his head. He looked like he
might either fall over or run. God, this man was a mess.

A silence hung between them for several moments while the
traffic continued to breeze by a few stories below.

"I'm sorry," the agent whispered. He took one last glance at
Joshua and the black and white photo, before he turned and
walked from the room.

Joshua waited until he heard the door latch before sweeping
his arm over the back of the piano with a muffled shout,
sending his unfinished composition fluttering across the floor
with one glossy, blurred, 4X5 image.

*************************************

*********************************

Chapter Seventeen: Cadenza

*********************************

Davies Symphony Hall
7:58 PM
 

Joshua stood backstage, his violin tucked under his arm,
watching the orchestra members slowly wandering out to
take their seats on the stage. Normally, he spent his final
minutes in his private room, gathering his thoughts. But today
his thoughts had been enemies that he longed to escape.
There was a reason he usually let others manage his life--
there wasn't enough room in his mind to accommodate the
pursuit of both life and art. When Joshua's life turned to shit,
he turned to music. He'd spent most of the last 15 hours
immersed in it, sleeping little, perfecting his surprise cadenza
tonight. His thumb flicked the end of the bow, anxious to
begin.

Someone touched his shoulder and he looked up. Michael
Tilson Thomas, music director and conductor of the San
Francisco Symphony, had paused to wish him good concert. He
asked if Joshua was feeling well as he usually didn't see him
in the wing. The conductor was concerned about his all-but-
forgotten stab wound. Joshua stretched his arm, showing him
it was in fine working order. It seemed like years ago when
Joshua had shared that ridiculous violin-playing joke with
Mulder in SF General.

"I'm having a hard week is all," Joshua said, assuring him he
was more than ready to go on. The conductor smiled and
moved away to the edge of the stage to pause before his
entrance.

'A hard week' was an understatement Joshua didn't want to
elaborate on twenty minutes before a performance. He'd been
refusing himself the agony of reliving any of the experiences
he'd been through recently. Still, the angry words he'd
exchanged with Mulder that morning would find a way to
come back to haunt him, he was certain. He could feel the
stress building from the effort he was exerting to ignore their
exchange. If he could just hold off the emotional
repercussions for 26 more hours, he'd have a seven-hour
private bus ride to Los Angeles to sort it all out. He'd always
had disastrous relationships with men. Why he even bothered
to try again with Mulder was beyond him. No, that wasn't
true. Loving Mulder had not been a choice; it had been an
inevitable truth. The truth that no one would ever make him
feel like that again was a crushing blow to his heart. It would
have been better not to know it, then to spend the rest of his
life trying to forget.

The orchestra began the overture and Joshua turned his
consciousness over to the seduction of music, which no one,
man or woman, could ever take from him. Music had been his
companion from birth.

###
 

8:00 PM

Mulder followed his partner up the curved, carpeted hallway
that ran behind Davies' dress circle entrances. Joshua may
have called off his personal guard, but Davies Hall Security
wasn't about to take any chances with a "cursed" performer.
Once again they had requested FBI assistance in keeping
order during Joshua's last two remaining performances. After
tomorrow night, Joshua would be leaving town and his woes
would pass on to a new performing arts jurisdiction. Both
Davies and Dillmont were looking forward to that day.

Agent Dillmont had been forced into front-row orchestra duty
tonight. Mulder didn't feel he could stay focused sitting right
under Joshua again, watching him play. The overture had
begun and Mulder stopped at one of the partially-curtained
entrances to peer over the many silhouetted heads at the
stage. The symphony was hard to listen to now that he had
grown so close to it in the past week. Classical music was a
powerful art form to learn to disassociate oneself from.
Mulder wondered if he'd start experiencing bouts of sudden
depression in elevators now.

He felt tired, not himself, like the walls around him were
closing in, suffocating him. He'd slept fitfully last night, his
head filled with bad dreams. He'd dreamt he was at the opera
again, standing watching the performance. Only this time
when Don Giovanni threw back his hood to laugh, he didn't
have the rouged cherub's face of a plump tenor; he had the
face of a Russian violinist.

Scully moved close, brushing his arm. She looked concerned.

"I'm fine," he said before she could ask. She squeezed his arm
and gave him a supportive smile, heading back up the hall to
cover the rest of the entrances. Her reaction to his affair was
a tremendous relief to him--the fact she didn't resent him, a
revelation. She'd been a real friend to him the last 12 hours,
taking care of him at the hospital last night while his knuckles
were bandaged, holding ice on his hand. It helped to ease the
pain of feeling betrayed.

The evidence against Joshua was overwhelming, yet somehow
Mulder was still having a very difficult time accepting it. He'd
taken off before dawn this morning to do his own
investigating. Everything Scully had gathered on Joshua was
accurate and well-supported. She wasn't operating under any
assumptions. Why then had he felt the need to confront
Joshua at his home? What had he hoped to gain by that? All it
had served was to hurt him even more, to have the full flame
of Joshua's anger thrown at him. His words had been painful
to the extreme. *I don't ever want to see you or hear you say
my name again...*

On stage the orchestra was ending the Mozart. Joshua would
be introduced soon. Mulder moved from the entry, taking
refuge in the long hallway, making sure all was clear. Of
course it was clear; the Thin Man didn't exist. It was all a lie.

###

8:15

Joshua stepped out onto the stage taking his position at front
stage right, lifting the violin to his shoulder as the welcoming
applause receded. He was in his element now, a performer
upon his stage. His world was set right again as he turned
temporarily to lock eyes with the conductor. Joshua gave a
faint nod. MTT took up the baton and the Mendelssohn began.

###

The first dotted quarter note cut into Mulder like a finely
honed blade. This concerto that he had heard Joshua play in
his apartment on so many occasions brought it all back to
him--Berkeley, the Marina flat, Sonoma--the memories of all
these places were infused into the sound of Joshua's
instrument.

Several hours ago, Mulder had taken a cab to Land's End to
get his head together before tonight's performance. He jogged
along the cliffs in the cool sea-scented afternoon to the Sutro
Ruins. He hadn't meant to wind up there, sweating and out of
breath, but the fresh air blowing in off the surf gave him
courage and he made his way down the steep windswept
hillside to sit on the edge of the ruined walls to think.

His legs dangling over the surf, Mulder had tried to piece it all
together. Where had he gone wrong? How could he have been
so blind? Why would someone like Joshua go to such lengths
to make a fool out of him? It just didn't add up. Whenever he
tried to set his mind to match the evidence, his heart refused
to listen.

He sat out there on the water for a long time, throwing loose
chunks of concrete into the sea. This was where it had begun.
This was where they had stood under the heavy moon and
Joshua had reached out to kiss him, tasting of champagne. The
offer had seemed innocent enough; how could it have turned
so ugly? Perhaps he had spent too many years separated
from intimacy to know when someone was being honest with
him.

It would all be easier to take if Joshua hadn't been so good to
him--if Mulder could look back and see echoes of dishonesty.
But Joshua had been a friend to him, someone who had
welcomed him, accepted him, appreciated him, listened to
him, touched him, and moreover, made him feel alive for the
first time in years. The sex, regardless of its orientation, had
been surprisingly satisfying and restorative. How could
Mulder deny the depth of passion he had experienced in
Sonoma? Joshua's patience and tenderness while making love
to him; Joshua's face bathed in peacefulness, sleeping warmly
against him in the night--these were not the actions of a vain
and vindictive man. Being loved by Joshua had been one of
the truest experiences Mulder had ever known. His heart was
heavy with its absence, and his mind, simply confused.

###

The first movement, the allegro molto appassionato, was
working its way toward the cadenza. Joshua felt comfortable,
in the moment. He knew as his solo approached he would fall
effortlessly into his written composition. He was pleased with
it--he felt it would work nicely, give the critics something to
scribble about tomorrow. At all costs he was determined to
make progress tonight, put the recent past behind him if by
no other means than sheer will. If he couldn't control his life,
he could at least control the music. It was coming up fast; the
time was now.

A hushed consensus of approval from the orchestra members
was his first indication that his cadenza was making a
statement as he began to play it out. The musicians knew how
this was supposed to go, but they weren't nearly expecting
the switch to major. Joshua played into the emotions of the
simple two-note line, and perhaps it was the use of key, or
merely the untrained experience of playing off the page, but
those memories he had been trying so hard to suppress all
day came through in a rush, filling him with unexpected
longing for someone who he wasn't even sure was listening
tonight. He slowed the major passage down. The melody was
changing in his heart and his fingers followed it willingly--
back to Sonoma, to the colors of the valley, the sunlight--even
the tragedy of rain inhabited the soul of his violin. Joshua was
speaking in his own improvisational language of love, desire
and loss. He recalled sitting at the end of the bed in his home
while Mulder slept, captured by the instinct to play what was
in his heart--a lullaby. He closed his eyes and followed it,
being led by the honesty of music, rather than by the practice
of it.

###

Mulder was still hidden in the dim hall when he heard the
start of the cadenza. There was no way to escape the sound of
the violin. Fifteen inches of stained driftwood never had such
power as when it was worked by Joshua's hands. Joshua was
changing the cadenza and Mulder came to stand next to Scully
again, peeking through the partially opened curtain at the
stage. Mulder remembered what the newspaper reviewer had
said about the art of classical improvisation. Joshua had been
writing a cadenza when Mulder visited him that morning. At
the time he had been too filled with suspicious anger to fully
comprehend Joshua's unkempt appearance. It was strange to
find the musician unshaven and rumpled. Mulder hadn't
realized he intended the new piece to be played tonight.
There was no end to Joshua's ability to amaze him.

At a distance, Joshua looked elegant and poised, his bow
pulling over the strings, working them in a slow cadence. His
solo was sad and beautiful, filled with an unmistakable
longing that made Mulder's throat tighten. In a moment the
melody altered, turned itself around into something Mulder
had only heard once before, and the pain of recognition forced
him to turn away.

Scully followed him into the hallway as he sank heavily
against the railing, throwing his head back against the
carpeted wall with a miserable thud. His hands came up over
his eyes as he fought to keep it together. He shouldn't have
come tonight--he was much too close to this case.

She took his hands, gently, lowering them from his face. He
blinked, looking away, fighting to keep back the onset of
tears. Her eyes registered his pain and she rubbed his hand.
"Oh, Mulder," she said sadly. "You're really hurting, aren't
you?"

He closed his eyes and tossed his head back, giving it another
dull thump, trying to regain some control. He wanted to
explain to her why this was so hard. "I asked him if he would
play this again for me, Scully. It's a Ukrainian lullaby his
grandfather taught him. It meant a great deal to him and to
me. He's made it a part of his cadenza."

Her lips moved, trying to find words of comfort. "I'm so sorry,
Mulder. He's not going to let you go that easily, is he? You
need to be careful. You can't let him get to you like this."

"I know," he said, biting his lip painfully. "It's difficult. I
didn't tell you; I went to see him today."

She looked worried, but not disapproving.

"I asked him to explain himself, but he floored me by
accusing me of coming by to hurt him...to punish him for
making me want to be with a man. It isn't true, Scully. I
would never do that to him. Not even if he was..." Mulder
sighed. He couldn't even say it yet. *...if he was guilty.*

She still held his hand, reassuringly. "Trust me, Mulder. It will
be okay. We just need to be patient. We need to keep an eye
on him."

Mulder nodded, feeling some control return. She had to be
right. He was much too close to Joshua to see him clearly. He
had to trust her to protect him like she had countless times
before. He squeezed her hand and wiped the back of his arm
over his eyes as the cadenza concluded and the original tempo
took over again.

###

Immersed in the melody of the bassoon guiding them into the
second movement, Joshua felt the relief wash over him that
he had let his heart open to release its withheld sorrow for
the audience. It wasn't a secret he needed to keep in
anymore--it was a gift. This was the suffering that drove the
human impulse to create. The knowledge of loss--a tragedy as
old as time--certainly as old as the concerto he played or the
violin he played on, shaped by hand, hundreds of years ago.
He closed his eyes, leaving the stage and the orchestra behind,
lost in the instrument's clear voice. The andante wove itself
around him, protecting him. Inside that musical cocoon, he
could find the caring that was otherwise so elusive to him.

"Joshua..."

The single note of a rasping voice entered his mind. It was his
name again, spoken with coldness, bitterness and revenge.
He'd been hearing it these last weeks over and over like a
sick taunting game.

*Not now. Not here,* his mind hissed as his slow trill matched
the gentle pluck of the cellos. No one was allowed into this
perfect space that belonged to him alone.

"Joshua..." it whispered again, sounding closer. Joshua refused
to acknowledge it; only the soft pulse of the Andante was real,
the rest was all a bad dream.

"You do not listen..." it spat under the suspended fifth,
hanging on the phrase as Joshua's violin completed the
progression, descending into resolution. It was closer--it was
coming closer.

Fear broke the spell and Joshua's eyes shot open just as the
orchestra held the final note of the movement, his bow
drawing so slowly over the E, sustain, sustain...and quiet.

The Thin Man was on the stage, under the same golden lights,
walking toward him across the polished floor in his filthy felt
coat. He was walking without footfalls in front of thousands
who all sat unknowing, releasing a cough or fidgeting briefly
in the pause between the second and third movements. They
couldn't see the specter closing in on Joshua any more than
Joshua could look beyond the brilliant curtain of lights to see
the faces of the audience he knew were seated before him.

Joshua's instrument hung loosely at his side, the bow dangling
from his forefinger. He was resting his arm, as was his habit
for the few seconds' rest he received in the Mendelssohn
before starting the final Allegro. His heart was pounding in
his chest. He could hear each thump, growing louder as the
man approached. Fear crawled into his nerves, sending a
signal to his brain to at all costs, run! Get free!

But he couldn't. His performer's instinct was at the helm.
Joshua took the violin up in his left hand and his chin felt for
the warmed wood of the Stradivarius as the Thin Man
methodically cleared the distance, moving slow and steady,
coming for him.

Joshua breathed, the air sounding harsh and rough in his
lungs. He turned his head to the left to look at the conductor
who was holding out the baton, awaiting Joshua's cue to begin.
He was about to make the small affirmative move to signal
the director's arm to fall. Downbeat was imminent; the pause
had been long enough, too long.

Joshua's fear made his eyes track once more toward the
lights. The Thin Man stood directly in front of him. He was
raising his pole-like arms, reaching out to Joshua, the cracked
smile of death breaking across his sunken face. In the lights
he was horrible to see, a walking corpse. "You don't exist,"
Joshua said without breath. His bone-thin hands, cold as
icicles, reached out to Joshua, cupping his head, pressing over
his ears. Inches from his nose, the death's head spoke.

"Tishena," it said.

Rome took flame as Joshua's chin dropped, cueing the
conductor to begin.
 

******************************

Mulder crossed the hall to look back at the stage. The third
movement was underway, the orchestra frolicking along after
Joshua's violin. Except it didn't sound like Joshua's violin; it
sounded...different.

Scully caught his concerned expression. "What is it, Mulder?"

"Something's wrong. Something's not right," Mulder mumbled,
squinting at the brightly-lit stage and its soloist. Scully stood
beside him, peering around the curtain.

"I don't understand. What are you seeing?"

"It's not what I'm seeing; it's what I'm hearing. That's not how
Joshua plays this. Something's wrong. He's moved; he's
standing differently."

Mulder watched Scully as she observed the scene. "He's just
watching the conductor. I don't understand. I know this piece,
Mulder. It sounds fine to me."

Mulder reached into his pocket for his phone. "I'm alerting
security. Joshua's seen something, or...I don't know, but I
swear, Scully, I've heard him practice this piece over and
over. It's just not how he plays it."

His partner kept her eyes on the stage while Mulder called
the Davies Hall security chief. They were sending extra men
backstage and toward the lower orchestra to check for
suspicious activity.

Mulder hung up his phone and leaned toward Scully. "Keep
this post covered; I'm heading backstage."

###

Mulder broke into a jog once he reached the maintenance
passage. Whether Joshua's life was a lie or not, he knew
nothing would keep the truth from his performance. The facts
Scully had laid out were hard to deny, but Mulder's gut
instinct was all but screaming at him to listen to the situation
with a less-trained ear.

He cut through the dressing rooms and opened the backstage
door, flashing his badge at the techies who rushed forward to
halt him. He stopped, standing to the side in the darkness of
the wing, catching his breath as Joshua and the San Francisco
Symphony finished the last seventeen bars of the concerto.

The audience broke into applause and Joshua bowed,
somewhat haltingly. His body language was communicating a
restrained panic that became more apparent as he exited the
stage and walked briskly past everyone in the shadows
toward his private room, keeping his eyes to the ground. He
didn't see Mulder and the agent called after him, squeezing
past the backstage security and technical crew jamming the
hall. Mulder caught up just in time to see Joshua's private
door slam and hear the bolt slide and lock. Mulder knocked
on the door.

"Joshua? Are you all right? Can you open the door?"

There was no reply, just the sound of rapid movements
coming from within. Mulder put his ear to the door. He could
hear the quick pace of Joshua's breathing as the stage crew
and even the symphony's conductor all gathered around,
concerned. Joshua had missed his curtain call.

Mulder pounded and called out to him to no avail. Finally, he
turned to the music director. "I think he saw something in the
audience. His performance was off, wasn't it?"

The conductor nodded. "He was technically accurate, but it
wasn't the Joshua I know. He hesitated before beginning the
last movement."

Mulder agreed with a grim nod, jiggling the knob. "Can
someone get a key for this door?"

A key was located, but before the stagehand could untangle
his string of keys, Joshua burst out of his room, hastily attired
in his casual clothes. He looked wildly at the crowd
assembled, and made a dash, violin case in hand, for the stage
door.

*The Thin Man has him,* was Mulder's concerned thought as
he kept close on Joshua's heels, calling to him. Joshua rushed
out the stage door and into the backseat of his waiting car,
held open by his driver. Joshua slid in, slamming the door
shut and locking it, shouting at his driver to "Go! Go!"

Mulder caught the driver by the arm as he made to circle to
the front to do as he was asked. "Wait a minute," the agent
said, holding open his badge. "Let me find out what's going on
with him. I think he's just spooked."

The driver looked at Mulder's ID and unlocked the back door
so Mulder could enter. In the dark interior, Mulder could see
Joshua sitting in the far corner, hunched over, his hands
around the back of his head. His eyes were closed as if he was
in pain.

"Joshua?"

The musician was making a strange moaning sound as his
hands shifted to cover his ears.

"What's going on, Joshua? What's wrong?"

When he failed to reply, Mulder moved across the seat
toward him  and touched his shoulder. Joshua jumped
violently at the contact and looked up in surprise at Mulder.
He was shaking all over and his eyes reflected the dark
echoes of terror.

Mulder touched his hair, trying to calm him. "It's okay,
Joshua. I'm here. What's going on?"

Joshua's eyes narrowed and he shook his head like he didn't
understand. Mulder repeated himself and Joshua still failed to
comprehend.

"I..." he finally began to say, his fingers coming up to touch
the curve of his ear.

"What?"

"I...can't hear you."
 

******************************
*********************************

Chapter Eighteen: Tishena

*********************************
 

Weightlessness. In a world without senses, the child floated.
His small body had slipped through the ice and he had sunk
into the murky pond like a sodden leaf. His toes didn't quite
reach the muddy bottom, his head was not quite breaking the
surface. He was submerged, the heavy waters rocking him up
and down, up and down. Surrounded by fluid in a cold womb,
Joshua wanted to sleep, drift with numbness into oblivion.
Senselessness could be realized were it not for the thuds
shuddering from above. Men were searching for him, crossing
the ice, calling out, testing the brittle surface with long poles.
They came closer to his frozen head, striking the silver film.

A sudden current rippled through the water and he started,
air retching from his lungs like a sickness. He wanted to
breathe, his chest pleading for relief. His head tipped skyward
and his eyes opened. A rowboat cracked the surface as it
glided overhead and stilled. A man leaned over the side,
peering into the water. His blurred mouth was moving as if he
were shouting for someone. The man's hand reached down,
breaking into the icy silence of the water, reaching for him.

###

Davies Medical Center ER
1:45 AM

Joshua jerked and opened his eyes.

"It's okay," Mulder said, laying his hand on Joshua's head,
stroking the edge of his ear with his thumb. Joshua had been
dozing on the gurney. Mulder hated to wake him, but hated
even more to watch him struggle with his dreams. He stood
next to him trying to communicate comfort even though he
knew Joshua couldn't hear the words. He stroked the side of
his face. It made sense to try and ground him with touch.

Joshua's eyes tracked over the room, skittish and afraid. He
was still having difficulty orienting himself in the white
rooms of the ER.

"Spinning..." he said with difficulty, halting on the start of his
words. It would take some time for Joshua to learn how to
speak comfortably without the use of his ears. The room was
still moving to him, an inner ear imbalance somehow related
to his sudden auditory failure. He looked pale to Mulder,
closed off and frightened. Joshua had barely said three words
to him since they left Davies.

Mulder reached for the erasable noteboard and pen the nurse
had provided lying near Joshua's bed.  /How are you feeling?/
he wrote.

Joshua frowned, motioning for the pen board. /What's wrong
with me?/ he wrote sloppily, still lying on his side, too out of
it to sit up. Two hours ago he'd been administered a dose of
Meclizine to calm the vertigo and himself. He had become
nearly hysterical at one point during the course of exams the
emergency neurologist and ENT ordered on him. They'd
feared an aneurysm. Joshua didn't take well to being strapped
down for the MRI. It didn't matter; the images of his brain
had come back normal. Two hours had passed now and they
still failed to find any answers.

/We don't know yet. You seem to be in no danger./ Mulder
replied in writing.

Joshua read the words and pushed the pad away.

Mulder took it up again, wiping the slate clean with his hand.
/They'll send for an audiologist tomorrow./ Joshua read it, but
did not respond. He closed his eyes, pressing his head into the
pillow. "I want to go home," he whispered.

###

Marina Flat
2:34 AM

Mulder assisted Joshua in readying for bed. He helped him
change out of his clothes, moving the covers back for him to
lie down. The Meclizine was starting to wear off, but the
majority of Joshua's despondency was attributed to
disorientation and ultimately, shock.

Mulder sat next to Joshua on the bed as he got comfortable,
settling on his stomach. Mulder placed his hand on the man's
back, rubbing gently until he felt him relax.

/Try to sleep. Scully and I will watch you./ Mulder wrote on
the pad. He reached over Joshua's head to shut off the lamp
and draw the blanket up over his shoulders. It was only after
Joshua had closed his eyes and seemed to drift off that
Mulder got up to face Scully, who'd been watching them from
the center of the room.

She looked uncomfortable. Mulder didn't care how it
appeared to her right now. Joshua needed a friend.

"I don't think requesting a specialist is going to make any
difference tomorrow," she said in a hushed voice.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because the ENT ran Joshua through all the standard
examinations tonight and concluded that there was no
apparent physical cause for his condition--no injury,
infections or tumors."

"That's because the cause isn't physical," Mulder said firmly.

Scully sighed. "Mulder..."

"Why are you whispering, Scully?"

Scully looked obstinately at him--her impatience with him
was quite visible. She gestured for him to move with her to
the far end of the flat. Mulder followed with trepidation for
her coming argument. She turned to him once they'd reached
the kitchen bar. "I'm whispering because I'm not 100 percent
certain he's deaf. His MRI indicated his auditory nerves are
functioning normally."

"I don't care about the tests. It's obvious to me he can't hear."

"According to Joshua he was struck deaf by the so called Thin
Man--who no less than a thousand people failed to witness--
just before the final movement of the concerto.  After which,
Joshua went on to finish the performance flawlessly. "

"So? He's a good violinist."

"Or a very good actor. And if you elect to believe his story at
face value, you've allowed yourself to be more influenced
than I thought."

"But it's like Beethoven...he's like Beethoven," Mulder insisted.

"What?"

"One of the first conversations I ever had with Joshua...he told
me about Beethoven conducting the premiere performance of
the Ninth Symphony while he was stone deaf...he followed the
bows of the first violins."

"That might be fine for waving a stick, Mulder, but Beethoven
wasn't playing an intuitive instrument. The violin...its
fingering is relative to the pitch of the orchestra. Joshua may
be a virtuoso, but I don't believe he could possibly have
pulled off a concerto finale in this condition; if it is a
condition."

"You're saying he's making this all up?"

"Yes...No. I don't know. He may believe that he's not hearing.
In cases of psychogenic hypacusis the perception of deafness
can be brought on by extreme stress, but I'd hate to find
ourselves in a compromised position with him. I think we
need to operate as if he can hear us."

Mulder stood staring at her. "You really believe he'd lie about
something like this?"

Scully opened her palms in frustration. "Of course he would.
He's been lying to us all week. It's very convenient that he's
already fed you a history lesson to back up this whole
scenario."

Mulder pursed his lips and shook his head. "You can't
convince me of that, Scully."

"Mulder!" she exclaimed, although her voice was still hushed.
"How much more corroborating evidence do you need?"

"I don't buy it, Scully. Everything you've shown me so far on
him is purely circumstantial," Mulder replied, beginning to
lose his grip on the enforced reasoning in his voice.

Scully's mouth parted as she stared back up at him, blinking
in amazement. "I can't believe I'm hearing this. You're
denying everything we've proven. You're clinging to invisible
suspects and fantasies. What will it take to make you see him
for who he really is?"

"What will it take for you to see that he might actually care
for me?" Mulder said abruptly. He stopped, shocked that he
had just said those words to her.

"What are you saying to me, Mulder?" she said, unsteadily.
"That you're in love with him?"

Mulder struggled to provide a response, but found he
couldn't. His lack of reply stunned them both as they stood in
the far corner of Joshua's dark flat caught in a surrealistic
limbo.

A small object hit the floor and both agents flinched. Out of
the darkness, an erasable marking pen rolled freely toward
them across Joshua's wooden floor. They looked beyond it to
find Joshua standing in the center of his flat holding a sign.

/Get out!/ it read.
 

************************

3:42 AM

Sleepless, Joshua sat at the end of his bed for over an hour,
staring across the bare floor to the back of the piano. The
instrument's long back was a cold, remote black. In its center,
like an island, sat the Stradivarius case staying afloat in a
frozen ink sea. Joshua felt himself rise and reach out for the
thick weave of the case. He unzipped and unlatched it in two
simple movements. Inside, the violin lay patiently, waiting for
him to wake it like a sleeping fairy maiden. He took her in his
hands, familiar, and tucked her under his chin. He smelled the
ancient wood, colored an even mahogany in the dim light
from the street--its aged imperfections smoothed by paucity
of light as if it were reborn into the night.

His fingers moved to first position, his wrist dipped to take up
the bow, twisting the peg taut. Bow met string as his arm
moved instinctively. The open 'A' rang out, and for a single
moment of relief, Joshua could swear he had heard it clear
like the ring of a church bell. But when the vibrations under
his chin stilled, the perfect 440 'A' rang on in his head until
he silenced it. The violin would still give to him, but he had no
capacity to accept its gift, only the memories of thousands of
hours of solitude lost with the failing of his ears.

Lovingly, he lay the Stradivarius back in the case along with
the bow, loosening the strings for long storage. He closed the
lid and slipped the locks into place. He slowly walked away
from the piano around the bench to look out the window. The
Bay was smooth and calm like polished onyx. In his mind he
saw the frozen pond beyond the farm--a soft blue-gray
sheet--and tried to remember the serenity he had found
under those dormant branches. The border collie looked up
from where she had fallen asleep at his feet, the eyes of trust
and love. Another winter from then his grandfather would
come and save him, raise him to greatness; but the dog had
remained behind. He never knew what had become of her.

With a sob, Joshua gripped the piano bench, lifting it over his
head and cast it into the cold thin pane of the window,
smashing it into a billion brilliant pieces that flew apart in
perfect silence--tishena.
 

************************

3:55 AM

Mulder found him sitting on the floor at the side of his bed,
bleeding from the hands in a glinting sea of broken glass. He
was in the dark, shivering in the cold wind that flew in from
the ocean blowing his home apart. Trinkets and papers had
fallen from the shelves and lamps had tipped over and
broken in the gusts. Joshua was cold, unresponsive. His eyes
were open, but his face was streaked in blood from where he
had tried to cover his eyes.

Mulder helped him up and held him against his shoulder,
covering him with his coat. He walked him slowly out to the
car where he'd been waiting, parked on the street out of sight,
until he heard the crash of the piano bench escaping the
fourth floor and splintering into kindling on the sidewalk
below. Scully had gone back to the hotel.

Joshua sat still in the passenger's seat as they drove to the ER.
His torn hands were lying limp in his lap, wrapped in lime-
green dish towels that Mulder had found in a Sonoma
shopping bag. By the time they reached the medical center
again, Joshua's shivering had stopped and he stared bleakly at
his wrapped hands. Mulder turned off the car and was about
to open the driver's door when Joshua finally spoke to him.

"Why has God abandoned me?" he asked in a voice wavering
from being used without the guidance of his ears. "I've never
played with more honesty before in my life."

Mulder shook his head and mouthed, "He hasn't."

"But you have," he said, lowering his head in despair.

###

Davies Medical Center
5:30 AM

Mulder sat, despondent, counting the number of blue-gray
floor tiles in the hospital hallway. He felt there was something
he should be doing, someone he should be talking to,
arresting, shaking up and down for answers, but there was no
one left to ask. The mystery of Joshua's curse had been
revealed. There was nothing to do but wait and hope. Joshua
was a musician who couldn't hear--that was a cold hard fact--
Mulder didn't care what the reasons were anymore.

He also couldn't care that Lt. Jarvis chose this early peak of
the morning to make an appearance. The misplaced rogue
gunman of the West strode up the hallway toward Mulder's
slouched form, taking the seat next to him.

"Mornin', Agent Mulder," he said, tipping an invisible hat.

"Why are you here?" Mulder asked tiredly.

"I'm doing you a favor," he said.

"Somehow I doubt that."

"I don't know if I'd be so quick to judge. I'm having my men
keep those nosy reporters out of this hallway," he said with a
nod toward the main parking lot. "Seems your boy put on
quite a show last night."

"I don't find that amusing," Mulder said darkly, shifting as if
to stand.

"That's not humor you're gettin' from me, son," Lt. Jarvis said,
stalling him. "Just the truth."

Mulder wanted to end this conversation before it got started.
"I've had enough of the truth this week."

"Now just settle yourself down and listen here for a minute. I
didn't come here to get you all in a froth. I'm here to do my
dutiful follow-up on a disturbance call from the boy's
neighbors. Somebody's upset they've got shattered glass and
bench legs in their rosebushes."

Mulder sighed. "Joshua's understandably upset. I shouldn't
have let him be alone. He's very vulnerable right now and
unpredictable. You can't blame him for that, after what he's
been through."

Jarvis rubbed his mustache, agreeing. "Well, I'm not here to
arrest him, anyway. I'm here to talk to you. I know a little
something about you--and I don't mean your fondness for
violin-playin' fellas. I did a little checking up on you and I
know about the kind of work you do. It's a far cry from
throwing bums in the can, but if you'll give me your ear a
minute, you might learn something from an old street cop."

Mulder sat back in his chair, wary. "I'm listening."

"I've spent over thirty years dragging junkies and drunks and
just plain crazy folk off the streets and into the lockup so
they'll stop bothering the regular folk. We clean 'em up, feed
'em, give 'em a warm place to sleep before the law says we
gotta turn 'em loose again. It doesn't do much good; they just
come right back. Each time they're just the same or maybe
even a little worse off. Do you know why they keep coming
back?"

Mulder shook his head vaguely. He'd been up all night and
didn't feel like conjuring the energy to launch into a social
commentary.

"They keep coming back because they can't face their demons.
A man who overcomes addiction is a man who's faced himself
and his troubles head-on. Locking these fellas up only gives
them a place to hide one more day. I don't pretend to know
your business, but I do know you've been bending over
backwards to protect that boy in there and it ain't doin' a
heap of good for him."

"I'm doing my job," Mulder insisted.

"Yep, and I do mine. But I know you were feeding me a tall
tale that night at the opera and your friend in there wasn't
doing very well to hide himself in your coat. I interviewed
the second valet; he saw what really went on, but I kept it out
of my final report because I trusted you knew what you were
about."

Mulder looked at the floor. That fabrication had caused him
more trouble than Lt. Jarvis could guess.

"I've seen plenty of demon-haunted men, but I ain't ever
seen anything like what's after that poor boy. It's not the kind
of thing I'm familiar with, but I know you are, so I'm more
than willing to keep back from your case. What I'm saying is,
maybe protecting him is only making his demons get
meaner."

Mulder looked over at the older man. Lt. Jarvis was regarding
him with patience and support. Perhaps he wasn't half the
pompous ass Mulder had taken him for. He'd been good about
the photos, after all. "Thank you for respecting my business,"
Mulder said civilly.

Lt. Jarvis stood up and placed a big hand on Mulder's
shoulder. "Just do me a favor and keep the boy from throwing
the rest of the piano out the window, okay?"

"I will."

###

Mulder stood at the foot of Joshua's bed, watching him sleep.
He was lying on his side, breathing in shallow gulps of air.
Even in sleep his adrenaline-charged body refused to let him
relax. He seemed so fragile to him right now, like glass, ready
to shatter under the slightest tremble. How could he even
begin to leave Joshua alone to stake his own battle?

Joshua's eyes opened and he looked to Mulder.

Mulder took up the message board and wrote across the pad.
/I don't know how to free the boy from the barn./

Joshua flexed his hands; they were partially bandaged, but
useful. He held out for the pen and wrote in blocky letters.
/Find a key./

###

Mulder was wandering back from the coffee vendor, nursing
his third cup of brown swill, when he saw Joshua's mother in
the hallway, opening her son's door and slipping inside his
room.

That was odd, he thought. How did she know? The morning
papers had yet to be delivered. He didn't have much time to
wonder before his eyes caught a shadowy form in a long felt
coat turning to flee at the far end of the long hall.

"Hey!" he yelled, dropping the nearly emptied cup and
running for the end of the hall. "Stop, Federal Agent!"

He reached the corner in time to see the stairwell door
clicking shut. He ran for it and took off down the cold cement
steps, pulling his weapon. The gray-headed figure was a few
flights down, moving slowly. It wasn't long before he gained
the distance and the figure held up his hands as Mulder
pinned him against the wall. The "figure" barely came up to
his shoulder. He turned him around.

"Nanette."

"I'm sorry," she gasped out of breath. "Don't hurt me."

Mulder let her go and holstered his weapon. "Why did you
run from me? And why the hell are you wearing this coat? I
could have shot you!"

She held her hands up in fear. "Don't shoot me! Don't shoot
me!"

"I'm not," he insisted. "But you could tell me why you're
sneaking around in here."

"I brought someone to see Joshua."

"Who?"

"The only one who doesn't know him as a musician."

"His mother," Mulder realized. "Did you go in to see him? He's
been missing you."

The old woman lowered her mussed gray head. "I can not see
him. Poor darling; not like this. Not after what I've done."

"What did you do?"

She shook her head sadly like she couldn't answer him.

"Goddammit, Nanette! Joshua's been struck deaf. Don't you
think now might be a good time to confess? I don't give a crap
about your past or whatever rituals you participated in sixty
years ago. I'm not even remotely interested in arresting you
for illegal immigration, forgery or otherwise. All I care about
is helping Joshua and I need answers from you, now!"

She looked up at him with reddened gray eyes. "It all started
so long ago; I never knew the evil we did would become so
deadly. Joshua's grandpapa thought he'd be safe if he only
stayed out of Ukraine. He forbade Joshua to ever tour near
there. But it's grown so powerful. It's crossed continents and
generations. Every day it becomes stronger," she hissed.

"Explain it to me, so I can help you stop it."

"You cannot stop it. It is immortal. But...I will try so you can
understand. It began with the birth of a child..."

###

Joshua stared at his bound hands, wrapped in white gauze.
They seemed such a simple sacrifice. He'd cut them off at the
wrists if it meant the restoration of his ears. He kept hoping
he would wake up to the sound of his own breathing and let
this nightmare end. Instead he was encased in a glass box,
invisible and impenetrable. He was separated from the one
thing that defined his very life. He didn't know the measure
of himself without music. Music was the length and breadth
of him. It dictated his ambitions, his friends, his passions.
Without it, there was nothing. He became invisible. He ceased
to exist. He remembered his birthday party--the gold
balloons, the laughter, the indulgences. The world was his that
day. Fortune had smiled on him briefly, her fickle favor now
all but forgotten.

He didn't have the mind to protest when his mother entered,
looking lost and afraid for him. She came to his bedside, but
unlike the others, she didn't try to speak. So many lips had
been mocking him with their ability to make sound. Hers
were still, but her eyes said everything--they spoke of love,
unconditional, as she took his bound hand and held it
between her own.

"I can't play, mama. I have to leave the stage...I'm nobody
now."

Her sad eyes looked deeply into his. They were dark blue like
his own. "You are my son," they said as she reached for him,
cradling his head in her arms, holding him tightly to her
breast.

Joshua surrendered to her embrace. For the first time he
allowed himself to be a child for her. Since this whole tragedy
began, he allowed himself to weep.

###

He was resting now, exhausted from the tears and wails he
didn't hold back--he couldn't hear himself to be ashamed by
it. His mother sat next to his bed, her hand over his, silently
willing him to sleep.

His mind was quieting, giving up the struggle to strain for
sound. His thoughts hushed and his consciousness abated. In
that stillness he could begin to hear it--faint simple tones,
string for string--a Bach partita, the foundation of music. The
violin sang him to sleep.

*********************************

Chapter Nineteen: Gifts

*********************************

Marina Flat
6:12 PM

The day was growing late when Joshua was allowed back into
his ravaged apartment. The clean-up crew left a message at
the hospital telling him it was safe to reenter as long as he
kept away from the missing window, now covered by thick
plastic sheets. He walked slowly across the bare wooden floor
trying to understand where his things had been placed. His
belongings had been gathered and stacked at the far end of
the flat. His bed had been cleared of glass-dusted sheets,
leaving only the bared mattress. The shards and broken
lamps and frames had been swept up and thrown away. His
mother had come by for the Stradi hours ago and was sitting
with it right now over at the St. Francis hotel where she'd
arranged for a room for him. Joshua's driver was waiting
outside in the car while he stopped to get some clothes and
personal items for the next few nights. He couldn't see much
farther beyond that.

Joshua opened his closet and stepped inside, pushing pants
and shirts along the racks with his bandaged hands. His
fingers were going to be fine. Only one of the cuts had
required stitches. Even so, there would be more scars. He
longed to shower and change into a fresh set of clothes, but he
just couldn't seem to coordinate his mind and body to the
task. He'd wait until he reached the hotel, he thought numbly,
tossing a few pairs of slacks and shirts over his shoulder.

His balance was much better. The medication was working
even if it left him a little groggy. He welcomed the dullness, it
kept him from thinking too much. It kept him moving along
to the next hour. He'd sat through another grueling round of
exams at a specialized clinic earlier that afternoon with an
audiologist. They closed him in a soundproof booth while they
held tuning forks against his skull. He could feel the
vibrations through to his teeth--but his ears, nothing. Nothing
was getting through. He hadn't expected it to. He'd have to
fend for himself now, without the benefit of sound to help
him find his way. He didn't know how long he'd want to
journey like this. The thought of being permanently deaf was
overwhelming, a pain unlike anything he'd ever known. He
could hardly fathom the passage of time. How did he come
from the minor tragedy of losing a pair of pants to this? Every
new day seemed to deal him another blow. Today, Mulder
had failed to visit him even once and Joshua had no sensible
way of contacting him. He hadn't seen him since the early
morning, hours before his mother arrived at the hospital. She
was all he had now.

Joshua nearly jumped out of his skin when he exited his
closet to find Scully standing in the center of the room,
speaking to him. She looked angry. She was waving a sheet of
paper at him.

"What?" he asked when he'd recovered himself. Dammit,
didn't she remember he was stone deaf? She kept on
speaking, growing more heated. He set his clothes down over
the plastic-covered couch and walked past her to the end of
his flat to rummage through his misplaced belongings for a
pen. He was reaching down into a stacked drawer when he
felt dust floating into his eyes. He blinked and looked up. A
half-inch bullet hole had materialized in the wall just past his
shoulder.

He spun around. Scully had her gun on him.

"Oh, shit!" he exclaimed and dove for the safety of the kitchen
bar, scrambling on his belly toward the cabinets, hoping to
find an object to protect himself with. He couldn't hear if she
was coming up on him so he kept whipping his head around
as he ripped open drawers and cabinets. He threw out
pristine bowls and spoons he didn't even know he owned
until he found a large knife.

Something white skittered toward him and he rolled left,
hoping to miss it, all the while shouting for help. When he
righted himself he saw it was the pen board. On it was a
message.

/I'm not trying to shoot you. I thought you were going for a
gun./

Joshua got up slowly onto his legs, still bent behind the
counter. "Show me your hands!" he hollered at her. Presently,
he saw her arms rise into the air beyond the bar. He stood up.
She had a shocked expression on her face, but her weapon
was holstered. "What the fuck are you doing?"

She nodded for the pad and Joshua handed it to her
cautiously, keeping the knife in his bandaged right hand.

She wrote quickly and held up the board. /You can't hear me,
can you?/

"No!" he shouted in disbelief. "You didn't believe me?"

She took the board, wiped and wrote, /Not until you didn't
hear the shot. I'm sorry./

Joshua winced and gripped his side where he had fallen
wrong, trying to catch his breath while she erased and wrote
more.

/Mulder told me you were going to buy a gun./

"I should have. Shit, I thought you were coming after me."

/I'm here about Mulder. He's missing./

"Missing? How?"

/Something's wrong. He hasn't come back./

"Come back from where? Where did he go?"

/I thought he was with you until I searched his hotel room./
She paused, erased, and wrote, /I found something very
disturbing./

She set the message board down and retrieved the paper
she'd been waving at him along with several other sheets and
torn pieces of what looked like Marriott stationery. She set
them out on the counter one by one for Joshua to read,
pressing them flat.

What began as Mulder's study notes of the message from the
cell wall had increased over time to include several new
phrases neither of them had ever seen before. Joshua read
the first of the scraps. They were smaller, torn away pieces. It
looked like they had been deliberately separated from the
larger sheets.

"You must hear us."

"You do not listen."

"You never play for us."

"We try to silence you, yet you still play."

"We are tired of waiting to be heard."

"It will end soon."

"You will come to us."

The torn-out phrases where written in the Thin Man's hand.

The rest of the writings, the bulk of them, were even more
disturbing. They were ramblings scrawled across sheet after
sheet of paper in a straight, strong hand.

"Mulder wrote these?" Joshua asked, wishing he was wrong.

Scully nodded gravely.

The ramblings, like the ramblings of the homeless suspects,
were angry gut-deep words of hatred and fear.

"...what have you done to ME? I came here to help you. I
BELIEVED you. I was doing my JOB. You used me. I tried to
help you. You got into my dreams. What kind of shit are you
trying to PULL? You thought you could just SUCK me off? ALL
that BULLSHIT at the opera. I came there to END it. You made
me watch you with that BITCH. You knew it would turn me
on. You were SEDUCING me. You don't care about anyone. You
USED me. You MADE me want to kiss you. You knew I hadn't
BEEN with anyone. What the fuck was I thinking? You and
your GODDAMNED violin. DON GIOVANNI. You used me. You
knew how to get to me. You pretended to RESPECT me. You
pretended to LIKE me. No one respects me. No one GETS me.
You played me like you play that piece of WOOD. YOU let them
get a photo of us. I NEVER let anyone in, not ANYONE. What
did you MAKE me do? You are a protected witness! This is my
JOB! WHAT did you make me do? You are a protected witness!
I let you FUCK me, you sick little fag. I LET YOU FUCK ME! I..."

Joshua pushed the paper away from him, letting the knife
drop from his hand. He couldn't stand to read any more of it.
"That's not him," Joshua choked, brushing his shaking hand
over his mouth. "It wasn't like that." He looked across the
counter at Scully, feeling the hot prick of tears. "You didn't
think...? You didn't believe this, did you?"

Scully regarded Joshua with contrition. /I always believe too
late./

"But what do you believe now?"

/I believe Mulder may try to kill you./

Joshua looked away, wiping his eyes. No, that was impossible.
Mulder would never hurt him. He wasn't like other men.
Joshua hadn't meant to say those things to him. He was hurt
and angry, but he never really believed Mulder could have
those phobic notions. The writings were a lie, a perversion of
the truth--they had to be. Scully tugged at his sleeve, pushing
the note board his way again.

/In his room I found a book on composers. It was sitting in
the middle of this mess./

"The book..." Joshua said slowly, "was my gift to him."

Joshua saw Scully mouth the word "gift" a few times, as if that
word meant something to her. She wiped the board and
wrote, /Your family curse--it said something about the giving
of gifts./

"We'd be bereft of gifts or of giving."

/Did you give Andy a gift?/

Joshua felt a shiver run through him. He looked down at the
assortment of wrapped packages still tossed carelessly near
the foot of the bar. "Yes. Some wine in Sonoma, right before..."

Scully held up her finger a moment for him to hold that
thought. She wrote, /Did you tip the valet at the opera?/

"Yes..."

/And Harris, you gave him money?/

Joshua was beginning to understand the connection. "Yes, a
few quarters. Sometimes I drop spare change on street
people. I don't have change very often. I rarely buy
anything...I charge it and Nanette pays the bills...My God, it's
the money, isn't it? The gifts. The missing money Mulder
believed my grandfather stole from his people. Is that what's
causing this?"

/I think so./

"What do we do?"

/#1 Don't give me ANYTHING./

/#2 We find Mulder before he finds you./
 

*********************************

SF Field Office
7:12 PM

Joshua sat in the evidence room staring at the clock. He was
under FBI protection again while they waited for some sign or
sound from Mulder. Scully had alerted all agents and SFPD
officers in the area to contact her if he was spotted anywhere
in the city.

Joshua watched the clock click to the next minute. It was
nearing downbeat at Davies. In just 45 minutes, another
violinist would be taking the stage in his place. By some twist
of irony, his replacement was the same violinist Joshua had
covered for last week in Berkeley. Joshua had never missed a
concert before in his life. He ached to be on that stage. Deaf or
not--the instinct to perform was overwhelming. He felt like
an animal with his leg caught in a trap, struggling to get free.
All his attempts to keep his misfortunes a secret from the
public had now awarded him an entertainment section front-
page story. "Violin Virtuoso Struck Deaf by Mysterious
Illness," it read in bold black type for everyone to pity.

On the table in front of him lay the evidence bags containing
the scraps of his case. All these random pieces of paper
written in different hands, in different languages, had done
little to save him. All it had done was seduce the one person
who'd been most dedicated to understanding its mystery.

Joshua picked up a letter and held it in his hand. Angry words
were scrawled across the dirty page. Someone they never
even identified was speaking of hurt and damage brought
upon them by his music. Sooner or later everyone who was
close to him became corrupted, lost or dead. Joshua could see
a wake of ruined lives washing out behind him year for year.
Everything he dreamed of for himself as a child had come
true--the violin, the money, the adoration and recognition.
Over half the world had applauded for Joshua Segulyev, the
little frozen boy brought into the light and cherished by a
multitude of people he never took it into his heart to play for.
The Thin Man's words spoke the truth--he only played for
himself. It was no small wonder he was cursed by such a
powerful destructive force. Greatness draws its fire from
somewhere, leaving a rotting smoldering waste.

*You do not listen,* they'd said.

He'd been too late for his grandfather and Elise. He didn't
listen to the tremble in their voices as they started to fade
from existence, vanishing in their efforts to give themselves
to an insatiable recipient. Mulder at least had the presence of
a possessed mind to write it down when the violin no longer
held the ability to deafen him.

"You'll need to know, my love," Joshua spoke in silence.
"Whatever happens between us, I forgive you."

The door opened and Scully rushed in carrying a bullet-proof
vest. She pointed to it and to Joshua as she hung it over the
chair next to him.

Scully reached for the pen board and wrote quickly. /We
don't have much time. Dillmont's spotted Mulder at Davies./

"Mulder would never harm me," Joshua said, eyeing the vest.

Scully looked concerned. /Mulder will attack you in a manner
he's accustomed to. He'll be armed./

"I don't want to believe it," he said weakly.

/He has a strong mind, but he's also a very good shot. You
need to be prepared./

"He's been influenced to come after you before. He told me.
What did you do?"

/I had to think faster than him./

"That's fast, isn't it?"

/Very./

"What did you do to stop him?"

/I pulled the fire alarm./

Another agent came to the door, calling for her attention.
Scully pointed to the vest and hurried out of the room,
indicating that Joshua follow her as soon as possible.

Joshua sat in the chair and stared at the nylon-covered black
armor. This curse was of his own making, a burden he needed
to take ownership of before it crushed its next victim.

**********************************

Davies Symphony Hall
Security Monitoring Room
7:42 PM

The security room was a swirling mess of FBI agents and
Davies Hall security. Joshua stood in the center of their
muddled confusion, tossed about like a lost twig of driftwood.
Without sound, he could only guess at what they knew. Agent
Dillmont was leaning over the seated surveillance tech,
pointing at the monitors and arguing with Agent Scully. The
security chief seemed to be having issues with her as well,
taking more than one moment to point in Joshua's general
direction. They were evidently questioning the sanity of
allowing a walking bull's-eye inside the Hall's doors,
especially since Mulder had slipped through their radar.

Eventually she broke away from the men and reached for
Joshua's ever-present pen board. It had managed to take up
residence under his arm where the abandoned Stradi once
belonged.

/I believe Mulder doesn't realize you're not performing
tonight./

Joshua shook his head. "How?"

/You finished the concerto last night. In "their" minds, you
may still perform to spite them./

"You can't allow the concerto to be performed tonight," Joshua
said, looking to the security chief.

/They know that. They're devising a plan to evacuate the
hall./

Joshua felt some relief at knowing that and eased back from
the main bustle. Scully had plans to use him as a lure--safely,
she'd assured him. Joshua wasn't sure if he agreed with her
plan. He wasn't here to follow her commands; he was here to
find a solution. Joshua's eyes tracked to the surveillance
screens, flipping between black and white live video shots of
the Hall. Quite unexpectedly, he saw something that made all
too much sense to him. A camera at the high interior of the
performance hall showed the hanging plastic sound deflection
shields, and more importantly, the microphones. Every
performance this week had been set up for a recording by
EMI. Tonight, mic five was swinging far too low and out of
sync with the others.

Joshua felt his heart begin to race. He knew where Mulder
was. He looked up at the mass of people around him. All he
needed was a chance to get away.

****************

7:58 PM

Joshua ran down the third floor maintenance access hallway.
He couldn't hear if anyone was following him, but he
suspected Scully was not fooled by the sudden clang of the
fire alarm. The ensuing panic was now set for automatic and
Davies security had over two thousand people to assist in
evacuation.

Joshua slid to a stop against the last door in the long hallway,
shoving it open with his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye,
he saw the corridor's opposite door begin to open. She was
harder to shake than he thought.

He tugged the door shut behind him, fighting the hydraulics,
and was dismayed to find it wouldn't lock no matter how
hard he pounded on the bar. He left it and took off for the
long stairway ahead, the one that ran straight up into the
rafters--a stairway he had climbed many times before. He
charged up the steps in twos, reaching the gate as the air
rushed in and out of his lungs. He forced himself to calm
enough to manipulate the trick release on the lock that kept
the gate solidly secured. He snapped it open with effort and
passed briskly through, turning to slam the gate firmly
behind him. Below, a shaft of hallway light broke over the
distant base of the stairs.

Joshua climbed the remainder of the distance. He was at the
sound room door now, but he had no way of knowing what
activity lay inside. He took fate into his willing hands and
jerked the door open, entering its dim interior.

He almost stepped on the head of the technician lying
unconscious on the floor in front of him. The side of his
forehead was bleeding from the tight blow of a pistol grip.
The disabled man was handcuffed securely to the base of the
control board, his arm extending upwards, twisted away from
his fallen body. Ahead, Mulder stood with his back to Joshua,
his gun aimed at the windows down toward the empty stage,
oblivious to the chaos that reigned in the aisles and hallways
beyond. His concentration was reserved for one target alone,
and that target was standing behind him.

"Mulder..." Joshua called to him and the agent slowly turned
around. His sharp green eyes gathered Joshua into their focus.
Mulder's face was calm, but cold, intent. He raised his weapon
slowly, taking a step forward. His lips moved tightly as he
began to speak to no one who could hear.

"You know I can't hear you..." Joshua said, trembling, trying
not to look into his eyes--the caged anger in them was
terrible to see. Joshua didn't need to read lips to understand
the words; he had read them in Mulder's own written hand.
The agent came closer, holding his arm out straight. He stared
down the sight of his gun at Joshua, aiming to kill, as all
agents are trained to kill. *Deadly force is an unfortunate, but
necessary option.*

Joshua held up his hand in a meager defense, unconsciously
taking steps back until he staggered against the body on the
floor behind him. He fell to a crouch, regaining his balance.
Mulder's aim lowered accordingly.

"You were right, Mulder--all along you were right. You
thought no one would believe you, not even me. I've been
deaf for a very long time. It started with my grandfather...but
it ends..." the words were hard on him and he choked them
out, "...it ends with me." He came onto his knees, reaching up
in supplication, reaching out for the gun with an opened hand
like Mulder had reached for the Stradivarius, with reverence
and fear.

"Mulder..." he pleaded, his fingertips just brushing the muzzle
of the gun. "I won't curse the prince for freeing me."

The gun fired, a red and white flash. Joshua fell back hard
against the sponge tile wall. A ringing sang in his ears
accompanied by a crushing pain in his chest. He slid down the
wall and slumped over on his back, crumpled over the body
beneath him. He couldn't move; his eyes were burning as they
began to lose focus. Mulder stood over him, the gun still in his
hand, its muzzle exhaling smoke as the room grew colder and
brighter and a head began to form, rising out of Mulder's
shoulder, gray and ghastly. The Thin Man emerged, stepping
out of the agent's body like it was made of water. Mulder
gasped and his eyes flew wide once the specter broke free.
The gun dropped from his hand as if it had burned him. He
lunged forward toward Joshua, bending over him, shouting
his name.

"Joshua...! No! God! No!"

*I can hear you...* Joshua thought and in one fluid move,
stood up. He didn't understand how he was able to move past
Mulder, who was on the floor scrambling for something.

"Joshua..."

It wasn't Mulder's voice now; the voice was coming from
behind him as the room brightened even more and the
carpeted floor began to whiten with snow. Trees materialized
and a cold wind blew up from behind. Joshua was standing
alone on a country winter road lined with conifers. The
scattered tracks of horseshoes and carts carved in the white
blanket were splattered with the red stain of blood. He could
hear men's voices and the crunch of heavy boots, moving
closer. Joshua turned behind him to look up the road. A mass
of marching men were just clearing the crest of the hill. They
were dressed in tan uniforms, a red star centered on each cap.

*The soldiers are coming,* he thought, and ran for the cover
of the trees.

*****************************
*************************************

Chapter Twenty: The Lost Kingdom

*************************************
 

It was cold in the woods as Joshua ran deeper. He was in the
country somewhere, hearing the wild birds rustling in the
treetops. From the road he thought he had seen smoke rising
from a man-made fire. He ran toward the smell of burning
wood and manure until he came to a small hamlet of
thatched-roof sod farmhouses with old-fashioned iron plows,
scythes and wheelbarrows near their perimeter. At the edge
of a clearing stood a small farm home, a fire burning from its
chimney. From inside came the wails of an infant.

Joshua walked around the back of the house, looking for a
door. At the back step sat a young girl, unnaturally thin,
shivering in a felt coat much too large for her small frame.
She was poking at the snow with the end of a tree branch. She
heard him approach and lifted her sallow face to smile up at
him.

"Hello," she said in a strange language Joshua knew he
shouldn't be able to understand and yet he could.

"Hello, little one," he answered in the same tongue. "Why are
you out in the cold?"

"We can't go inside," she said as the infant continued to cry.
"The baby just came."

"What baby?"

"You want to see?" she asked, getting up. Joshua followed her
to the side of the home where they could peek through the
crumbling sod brickwork. A large fire was burning from a
stove inside. There was a cot against the far wall. A woman
and a man stood over it, drawing a blanket over the face of
someone who lay limp on the bloodied straw mattress. There
were two older children in the room, a girl and a boy. The girl
was holding the newborn. All of them were thin and drawn;
they moved slowly.

"Who are they?" Joshua asked the girl, who was standing on
tip-toe next to him.

"My mama and Auntie and cousin Joseph and Tatiana and a
friend of Uncle's."

Joshua watched as Tatiana handed the baby over to the young
man--the 'friend.' He looked stunned and sorrowful. Joshua
couldn't hear all that they were saying over the child, but the
woman was motioning the man to leave, quickly. In another
moment he did, shoving his shoulder against the back door.
He exited and started off across the clearing.

"Where's he taking the child?" he asked the girl.

She looked up at him, sad. "Mama told him to take the child
and leave it in the snow."

"Why?!"

"So it wouldn't cry for milk."

"Why isn't there any milk?"

"The soldiers don't want us to have any. They took away all
the goats. Mama says they sl..slaughtered them." She smiled,
proud at the new word she'd learned.

Joshua looked toward the clearing. The man had almost made
it into the trees beyond. Joshua ran after him. He wasn't going
to let him kill the child.

###

"Wait! Stop!"

Joshua cried out to the shuffling form ahead of him. Although
the man had a generous headstart, it wasn't difficult to catch
him. Joshua slowed when he was a few paces behind him. The
child was quiet now as the young man approached an
abandoned storage hut in the woods and sat down heavily on
the front stoop.

Joshua came and stood in front of him. "Listen. I don't know
who you are, but you don't have to harm this child. I can
help..."

The young man didn't acknowledge him. He sat with the baby
in his arms, wrapped in a brightly colored jumpsuit, his little
finger to its eagerly sucking mouth. He was beginning to
weep. Joshua reached out to him.

"He can't see you," the little girl said, running toward them.
Joshua stilled his hand just shy of the man's shoulder.

"Why not?" he questioned, although it did appear to be true.
"You can see me," he reasoned.

She ran up beside him, panting. "That's because...you saved
me."

Joshua stared at her, confused.

"Don't worry about the baby. He won't hurt her."

Joshua looked down with pity at the young man, wracked
with misery. "How do you know?"

"He was in love with Auntie. I saw them kissing after Uncle
was sent away."

The little girl took his hand, leading Joshua away from the
young man, back into the woods.

"I don't understand...you say I saved you?"

The little girl raised her arms so Joshua would pick her up. He
did and the lithe thing wrapped her thin arms and legs about
him, pressing her small face to his cheek. "I told you, my
darling," she said in his ear. "When you played for me, you
saved me."

**********************

"Grandpapa!" Joshua yelled into the white powdered sky.
Snow was falling from the late afternoon sky, muffling the
carriage of his voice. The girl wasn't with him anymore--he
was alone and desperately trying to find his way back to the
deserted hut.

He wandered for what seemed like hours until he heard a
noise not far off in the snow. He followed it and came upon a
narrow path. A man was on it, up ahead, hauling a
wheelbarrow with a few blankets in it and what looked like a
metal milk can.

Joshua followed him until they reached the familiar hut. He
watched the man lift and carry the blankets and can inside.
He left the door slightly ajar, and Joshua slipped through it
entering the small space. The inside was lit by dull sunlight
seeping through seams in the wooden walls. He saw the man
reach down into a lidless chest and lift the little baby girl up
into his arms, bouncing her on his hip. She began to cry and
he set her back down while he filled a small bottle with a
yellowish-toned milk. He sat on the floor cross-legged,
gathering her into his lap as he fed her. She cooed and sucked
heartily on the thick nipple.

Joshua moved into their private space, sitting on the rough
wood floor just across from him. He listened to him speak to
the baby in a voice he hadn't heard in over two long years.

"Drink up, little one. We have a long journey to take today. I
have found the rest of the money Ivan collected for us. It will
buy us a way to Poland. The soldiers believe me. They think I
am him. They think I am the son of a Red Army Civil War
hero. I think I will need to keep this beard longer than the
winter."

The baby reached out with her stubby fingers for the short
growth of dark hair that already clung to the young man's
chin. He was almost a child himself, not much older than
Joshua was when he left for tour.

"I do not know if what I am doing is right, Mirriam. But I
know your mama would be so happy to see you if she had
lived." The young man's voice caught at the mention of her,
Anna Segulyev, wife of Ivan Segulyev, who would return
from a Siberian prison one day soon to find his family gone
and his marriage betrayed. This was were it all began, with a
heart-broken young man who would do anything to keep the
one thing in life that truly belonged to him.

Joshua sat still and watched his grandfather tenderly feeding
his infant mother. He didn't care that he couldn't touch or
speak to him. It meant everything for him just to see him
again, alone and unguarded. Joshua knew there wasn't
anything he couldn't forgive him for. All the love he had for
Anna and their child--to take the lives of an entire village
into his hands to save her, only to have her become lost to
him with her eventual marriage to Joshua's father, to the cold
hands of a stranger--this was his curse.

Grandpapa moved the nipple from the baby's smiling mouth
and she gurgled up at him. How Joshua longed to have been
the owner of that smile--to know such caring from his very
first days. He would have known a childhood without dreams
of ice and snow and twisted hands. He would have known the
soft caress of this man's beard the first year it began to grow.
He knew he didn't belong here, this all happened long ago, but
he wouldn't leave this room, not now, not for anything.

"Why didn't you tell me, Grandpapa?" Joshua lamented,
speaking to himself as he watched his guardian bend to kiss
the baby's soft head. "Why didn't you tell me you were ill? I
would have cared for you. I wanted to take care of you. I
wanted to thank you, but you didn't let me."

A ringing hit Joshua's ears and he winced, covering them,
feeling a crushing pain in his chest. Beyond the ringing were
voices, echoing and distant. He thought he should know them,
understand them. He slumped to the cold floor, twisting in
pain. He wasn't going to leave. Not this time. He wasn't...
 

"Give us some room. Let us in."

  "We have a shooting."

"Victim looks to be approximately 30 years of age."

  "Can you cut this off him?"

"Step back, please."

  "Is he breathing?"

"Where's the weapon?"

  "What the hell is he doing here?"

"Sir, will you step back?"

  "Is he? Is he wearing a vest?"

"Cuff him. Get him outta here."

  "Wait. Not yet. I'll hold him."

"I need to see..."

 "Someone, please. Can you tell me? Is he wearing a
vest?"
 

*************************

Joshua was lying on a cot on a hard, stiff mattress. He could
smell something awful burning; a fetid steam was floating
into the low room. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, throwing a
filthy blanket off of him.

The girl was back, standing in the doorway. She had a small
blackbird at the end of a long string tied to her wrist. The
bird kept trying to take flight, leaping into the air to fight at
the end of the restraint. It chirped and fluttered back to the
floor, heaving.

"What happened to you?" Joshua asked, sickened by the girl's
emaciated limbs and sunken face. She had looked thin before,
but was now a mass of matted hair and pale bones. Her
clothes were worn and there were open sores on her legs.

"You need to wake up. You're supposed to be with us."

"Where?"

"Come," she said, and began to walk from the room. The bird
flew to the end of the string, shadowing her stiff frame as she
shuffled down the hall.

Joshua followed. In the next room saw what he had smelled.
On a stove was a large pot, bubbling the last remnants of a
hastily eaten meal. On the floor were stripped branches,
chewed leaves, and the rotting corpse of a cat, riddled with
larvae. Its fur and tail were the only parts that didn't make it
into the pot.

He looked away, covering his nose, and hurried with her out
the open back door. Winter had faded and spring was upon
this once frozen land. Ahead, the clearing was now covered in
fresh grasses and wildflowers. He followed her across the
grass and into the woods at the other side, to the deserted
end of the village. He could smell a fire burning as dusk began
to fall. The girl was leading him toward a large granary shed,
a barn.

The girl stopped at the tall sliding door and indicated he go in.
Joshua looked through the narrow opening. He could see the
red lick of flames reflecting within. "I don't want to go in
there," he said, standing still.

"Ivan is waiting. You must go in. He'll be angry if you don't."

"What's in there?"

"Salvation," the girl replied, taking his hand in her cold
skeletonized fingers. The bird gave up the fight and came to
light on her shoulder as they entered together.

###

Joshua stood quietly in the barn's dark interior watching the
assemblage entering through the slit in the opened door. The
arrivals were mostly famine-ravaged women, barely alive,
moving slowly. There were very few men and only one child
who was now approaching the body that lay in final repose
atop a wood and straw-leaden pyre built onto the low empty
storage loft. Some people had been carried here, others
wheeled in on carts. Some lay on the floor unmoving; a few he
was certain were dead.

He waited with them, listening to their mumbled chants, not
understanding why he needed to be here. He kept his eye on
the door. A slim shaft of fading twilight was still penetrating
the dark barn, lit deep red by a fire burning in a pit next to
the funeral bed.

The girl untied the bird from her wrist and re-anchored it to
the foot of the pyre. She said a few words Joshua couldn't
hear which the assembly repeated in weak, dull voices. She
reached down with a white bone hand and lifted a burning
branch from the fire, holding it to the straw.

The pyre was alight and the girl stepped away.

The flame flicked over the shrouded body in a whipping
blanket of orange, yellow and red swirls, quickly growing hot
and fierce. A wave of flame leapt from the pyre to the floor
below, lighting a collapsed bale of hay. The rotting straw
combusted, blowing flickers of hot sparks across the floor to
the dry, cracked wood of the structure. A long support beam
lit and flame licked up its length to the ceiling.

"Hey!" Joshua yelled, although no one could hear him over the
sudden roar of the growing fire, which was now spreading
across the roof beams. He looked to the gaunt faces around
him. They took no notice of the danger. Their sunken eyes
regarded the flickering wisps with indifference. A few
stepped forward, toward the flames, stepping into them,
letting their tattered clothes catch fire and begin to consume
them. The human torches slumped to the floor one by one as
they burned. There was no weeping or screams.

This wasn't right, Joshua thought, feeling panic welling in him.
They had all come here to die, but *he* wasn't supposed to
end here. He ran for the door to find it slid shut and locked
with chain. He pounded on it, struggling against the rising
cloud of choking smoke and heat. This had to be a dream, a
nightmare from his childhood, exchanging ice for fire. He
pounded on the door with his hands. His Grandpapa would be
coming soon to let him free, to take him away from this.

"Grandpapa!" he cried, slamming his shoulder into the door. It
groaned, but wouldn't budge. No one would be coming to save
him this time. He coughed as the smoke seared his lungs and
sweat ran down his neck. His grandfather was in Poland by
now, bribing his way to America. He was left behind. They'd
all been left behind.

Instinctively, Joshua turned away from the barred door and
ran through the smoke and burning bodies to the back of the
structure. The girl was there on the ground, crawling through
a broken board near the far corner. She was almost through.

"Nana!" Joshua cried out, falling to his hands and knees to
crawl after her. She turned to him once she'd freed herself of
the barn. He pushed his head and right arm through. He could
see the woods beyond fading into darkness, but he couldn't
get out this time. He was too big.

"Nana! Don't leave me in here! Help me!"

The girl got to her unsteady feet and backed slowly away. "I
can't help you. I'm the only one who survives," she said
sorrowfully, and walked away into the gloom, dragging the
corpse of the dead bird on its string behind her.

"Nana!"

Behind him, Joshua heard the roof of the barn crack,
beginning to fall in upon itself. He pulled his head back in,
scraping his shoulder against the ragged wood. He sat on the
dirty floor holding his shirt sleeve over his nose, trying to
block the nauseating stench of burning human hair and flesh,
witnessing the incarnation of death before him. Bodies were
still falling to the floor, one over the other, engulfed in flame,
their white eyes melting in the unforgiving heat. Joshua
looked to the origin of the inferno and saw a familiar form
taking shape. The Thin Man rose from his corpse on the pyre
and sat up, immune to the destruction he had created. He
stepped down, cutting through the laps of red and orange. He
neared the first body, dead on the floor, its hair still alight. He
reached out to it with a bony hand. The woman's spirit lifted
and took his hand, stepping into his body. He reached for
another and it did the same, becoming absorbed by him. He
collected their souls one by one, gathering up the dead as
their emaciated bodies peeled and flickered and crumbled
into black charred bones.

When the dead had all gone into him, the Thin Man began to
walk toward Joshua, who was huddled against the only wall
of the barn yet to catch fire. Joshua's eyes were burning with
smoke and his lungs were begging for relief. The fire was
moving closer as was the Thin Man's hand, reaching for him.

"I'm not dead yet," Joshua choked, refusing to accept his
invitation.

The walking corpse heard him and stilled. "You foolish boy.
Your death was never my design."

"You killed them," Joshua said with anger to the haunting
spirit, addressing him as if he were addressing the living.
"You killed them all. You made them sacrifice themselves for
your vengeance."

"Is this what you see?" the dead man leered. "Look again."

Joshua could still see in the glowing carnage the memory of
watching those women and men walk knowingly into flame.

"You believe the fire is worse than the madness?"

"My grandfather had no hand in this. He was afraid for his
child. He did not set out to destroy you."

The specter stepped closer, looming over Joshua. His voice,
which Joshua could never identify, now resounded with the
vocal patterns of nearly forty people. "You think this is about
revenge. You think this is about spite--one man to another.
You are wrong."

"Then what is it you want from me?"

"To remember where you came from," the Thin Man
whispered, smiling that cracked-lipped smile of white teeth.
"To remember what became of us." The roof above them
broke with a loud crack and fell in. Joshua dove to the wall,
covering his head as they were buried in splintering wood
and smoke.

**********************

There was a crushing pain in his chest. Joshua was covered in
debris, pinned to his back by smoldering ashen wood. He was
alive, but trapped. His lungs were restricted; he could barely
draw air. He lay in silence for hours, listening to the pop and
hiss of the rubble as it cooled.

At one point he heard footsteps and raised his head to look
through the tangle of boards. He could just barely make out
the form of a girl, picking over the fallen mess with the end of
a long stick. His head fell back, exhausted. He struggled to
catch his breath and tried to lift his head again, shifting
slightly. He saw her raise a rock over her head and throw it to
the ground, cracking something underneath. He tried to cry
out to her, but his lungs wouldn't fill. She reached down and
picked something up. She held it up to the light of the pale
moon. In silhouette he saw her walk away from the dying
bonfire with a piece of human bone.

**********************

Time passed and Joshua idly wondered why he wouldn't die.
His lungs screamed to him with each shallow breath. His arms
and legs were pinned, immobile. His chest was crushed by a
large beam. The pain and cold had reached a point of
intensity where it no longer registered. He was tired and
wanted to sleep.

"Tell me. Is he wearing a vest?"

   "Yes. He is. It didn't go through."

"His ribs may be broken. Is he moving air?"

I'm here, Joshua thought. Come find me. They left me here to
die.

  "Take him away."

"Just a minute; he's coming around."

  "Keep him back, ma'am."

Above him in the moonlight, Joshua could see the shadowed
forms of men, rushing around over the debris, searching for
him. One was calling his name.

"I'm here," he whispered. The man stopped and came over to
where he was trapped, extending his hand, reaching for
Joshua in the chaos of the fallen barn. Joshua struggled and
slipped free his arm, reaching for the strong, elegant hand--
designed both to kill and to save.

********************
 
 

Marina Flat
1:33 PM
Sunday (three days later)

The Bay breeze blew against the plastic covering over the
open wall, rattling it like a flag. The view was translucent,
distorted and strange. Joshua turned away from the fluttering
window and back to the small trunk sitting open on the back
of the piano. Slowly, he continued to place small items in it:
books, picture frames, and other personal effects from his
disarrayed and dismantled shelves. He breathed carefully; his
chest was still incredibly sore from the bruised ribs that had
stopped Mulder's bullet in a mitt of Kevlar. The rest of the
ache he felt had nothing to do with his injuries.

He packed one newspaper-wrapped item at a time, trying to
regain some momentum for his exodus from San Francisco
tomorrow morning. He was already two days late starting his
rehearsal week with the Pacific Symphony in Los Angeles.

The front bell rang.

"Come in!" Joshua called out, biting against the sharp pain the
deep breath had cost him. *Must remember not to yell,* he
told himself, carefully nestling a small black and white photo
and duck within the rest of the objects in the trunk.

Agent Scully opened the door and slipped in, securing the bolt
behind her. "You should keep this locked," she said, coming
over to Joshua.

"Why? What could I possibly have to fear?"

Scully paused to look over his ravaged apartment as if seeing
it for the first time; perhaps she was. "You're leaving
tomorrow?" Scully asked, eyeing his mincing movements.

Joshua forced a little smile as he set an alarm clock in the
trunk. "It's not much worse than the stabbing. I'm used to
rehearsing with a handicap nowadays."

"But, your condition, I thought..."

"Pacific Symphony ticket sales have doubled since the latest
chapter in my sordid life hit the LA Times. They've added an
extra night. Everyone wants to come see the 'cursed' violinist."

Scully stopped a few feet shy of the piano. She seemed like a
lost bird caught in the center of his wind-blown home. She
looked like she didn't know where to stand.

"Did Mulder send you?" he asked, hopeful.

"No, Joshua. I've come on my own behalf. I just...wanted to see
if I could talk to you."

Joshua stopped his idle packing when he heard the gravity in
her voice. He gave her his full attention. "I'm sorry," he said,
moving away from the trunk to clear a pile of shirts and
hangers from his couch. "Please sit down."

She took a seat at the edge of the cushions, clasping her hands
in her lap. Joshua took the chair opposite her. "What is it? Is
Mulder all right?"

She nodded. "Yes, he's fine. Well, not completely fine--he's
still in custody, but otherwise on the mend."

"I've been worried. They won't let me speak to him," Joshua
said dejectedly.

"That's why I'm here. To tell you I've been in touch with
Washington. I've secured authority to have him released
within the hour. And also..." she took a moment to find her
next words, "...to apologize to you."

"Apologize? Why?"

"I made a mistake. I'm hoping that I can set things right
again."

"What mistake?" Joshua asked quietly. Scully might have
been a slight woman in stature, but her resolve was
something any man would be plainly foolish to stand in the
way of. He couldn't imagine what it was she'd felt she'd done
wrong.

"I misjudged you, Joshua. And what's worse...I misjudged
Mulder. My misjudgment has led the both of you to this and
I'm here with the hope that I can correct it."

"Scully, I don't know what it is you think you've done, but
Mulder and I...we made our own mistakes. I just want him to
know before I leave...I want him to know that I forgive him."

"He knows that, Joshua. What he can't do is forgive
himself...I've never seen him like this. He blames himself--for
me, for you, for everything."

"I wish he'd let me reassure him."

"You've been a good friend," she said steadily, although there
was a tremor to her upper lip. She licked it still and
continued. "A better friend than I've been recently. I thought
I was protecting him, but now I see I've protected him too
much. I keep him safe from everything, even happiness. He
cares for you, Joshua. And I tried to keep that from him."

"I don't understand."

"I led him to distrust his own instincts about you. I look too
hard at the facts; I miss the truth. Mulder isn't an easy man to
love, but I failed to realize that it's far from impossible."

Joshua now understood what she was apologizing for. She was
sorry for planting the seed of doubt about him in Mulder. She
didn't realize that he was guilty of the exact same crime.

"I gave you no reason to trust me, Scully. You did the right
thing. You were looking out for him. I would have done the
same."

She met his words with a slight smile. "Thank you, Joshua,"
she said, letting her tension recede. It seemed she had come
here to be forgiven, by him of all people.

"You're welcome," he answered.

She looked off again, her fingers tapping nervously in her lap.
"Can I ask you something?" she said, earnestly.

"Sure."

"Has Mulder told you why we've stayed partners for so long?"
She asked this as if she didn't know the answer herself. It
both surprised and saddened Joshua that after all these years
she didn't know.

"He doesn't tell me about you. He never let me in there."

She started to say something, but instead raised her fingers to
catch the sudden tears that were forming in the corners of
her eyes. "I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting that."

"Why?"

"Because, I've been afraid."

"What were you afraid of?"

She gave up and let the tears fall from her eyes, dropping in
her lap. "Ever since I saw you standing together in your old
bedroom...I was afraid I had lost him."

"You saw us?"

"No, Joshua, that's just the problem. I refused to see you--the
two of you and what it might mean. I refused for days and
when I got the photo, all I could think was that you must
have *done* something to him. You must have been
manipulating him because *no one* belongs to Mulder...no
one..." she repeated quietly, looking down. "You've seen a side
of him I've never known."

Joshua finally began to understand the nature of the sworn
protective relationship these two had shared for so long.
"Maybe I've seen him, Scully, but I understand enough about
him to realize he doesn't belong to me. From that first night at
dinner, I saw how you moved together as one person. I was
foolish to think I could have a place in that."

Scully made an attempt to smile as she came to realize their
common predicament. "We both love him, Joshua. The
problem is, neither one of us knows what to do about it."

They caught each other's eyes for a long time--both of them
offering a flag of surrender in a battle that was never fought.
The battlefield had just slipped through their fingers.

*************************************

Marriott Hotel
5:46 PM

Joshua stood outside Mulder's hotel room door, fingering the
card key Scully had given him. Mulder had been released a
little over two hours ago from Federal custody and returned
to his room to rest. Joshua pressed his ear to the door. It was
quiet on the other side. He knocked.

There was no answer.

Joshua took the card and slid it into the slot, waiting for the
light to turn green and the door to unlatch. He opened it and
went in.

Mulder was sitting in a chair facing the window. The curtains
were only half-open and the sheer inner drapes were still
sealed, only letting a diffusion of daylight in. His eyes were
open, staring at nothing in the veiled view. Joshua closed the
door slowly behind him and stepped in quietly as if someone
were sleeping. Mulder's hair was still damp from the shower.
He'd managed to slip into a pair of jeans and nothing more.
His bare arms lay heavily on each armrest. Next to him on the
table sat *The Lives of the Great Composers,* opened to the
chapter of Beethoven.

Joshua stopped in front of Mulder's outstretched legs, waiting
to see if he'd respond. Scully was right; he'd never seen a man
sunk so low in self-loathing before. Mulder's stubbled face
looked drawn and haggard; it appeared his 48 hours in Jarvis'
slammer had been sleepless ones.

"That's a good story," Joshua said, nodding toward the book
like he was starting up a conversation with a man in the park.
"An inspiring tale of human tragedy and endurance. It would
be my favorite bedtime story if it weren't true."

Mulder's head turned toward the book. He picked it up and
brought it into his lap, closing it. He ran his hand over the
leather cover once and held it out to Joshua. He wouldn't look
at him. "Take it," he said in a scratchy whisper.

Joshua fought the sorrow he felt rising in his throat. "I won't
take it back," he answered him. "It was freely given."

Mulder's fatigued arm shook and he brought the book back
into his lap, clutching it in his hands. His face twisted in pain.
"You shouldn't be here, Joshua. You shouldn't be anywhere
near me."

"I don't fear you, Mulder. I never did."

Mulder lowered his head. "You should have."

"Mulder, look at me."

Mulder's head stayed low, his lips moving as if in prayer. If
he wouldn't look up, then Joshua decided he would move
down. He kneeled on the floor in front of him, next to the arm
of the chair, finding his eyes.

"I refuse to fear you. The danger is gone now. Their message
has been heard. I understand what they want from me and I
plan to rectify it."

Mulder refused to reply, but his eyes couldn't help betray a
flicker of curiosity as they stared at the floor.

"When I was out, I went back there, to Chutove. I saw many
terrible and wonderful things. They showed me how they
lived and how they died. They had been forgotten, and they
wanted me to know, to see where I had come from. Unlike my
grandfather and father, I am the first descendant in a position
to draw public attention to an abominable tragedy the world
has ignored. I intend to use that ability wisely. I've
rescheduled my tour. The Vienna Philharmonic is thrilled I
will be joining them in all their travels. I'm also sponsoring
them to extend their tour to one more city.

"I'm going back there, Mulder, to my homeland. I'm hosting a
benefit concert in Poltava Province. I'm very much looking
forward to it, actually. I think my grandfather would be
proud of me." He paused, searching Mulder's face. The man's
mouth twitched at something approaching a smile. It looked
as if he might be coming around a little.

"I gave my whole life credit to a man who took from so many
people," Joshua continued. "They say it takes an entire village
to raise a child...I suppose they're right. I needed to
understand how I came to be, and they needed to understand
who I was. I have a tremendous gift, but I've always kept it
to myself. That was my sin--my vanity in thinking I had been
the only one to earn it. You helped me see that. I asked you to
find a key and you were that key...you were all along. It just
took time to see," Joshua said with hopefulness. Mulder's
beautiful, haunted eyes finally braved to look at him.

"I *shot* you, Joshua."

"You were being used."

"No...I was being used *effectively.* I was being pulled by my
weaknesses and instincts. The things I said..." he broke off,
swallowing hard. "I said things to you no one deserves to
hear..."

"Those weren't your words."

Mulder raised his head, his teeth clenching together. "But they
*were.* Those words were in-me," he said, accenting the last
syllables with a rough poke at his own chest. "In-me. They
found a place buried so deep in my subconscious I didn't even
know it was there. Those words came out of me, Joshua. I'm
deeply ashamed by them. I can't deny what I wrote or said."

"I don't think you should deny it," Joshua said, accepting his
confession in stride. "I think we lose sight of the truth when
we become deaf to what our conscience is trying to say. I
refused to listen to the suggestion that my grandfather might
not have always been the man I knew. That was my mistake.
Maybe you should accept that voice inside you, understand it,
forgive it, and move beyond. In the end they're just words,
Mulder. Nothing more. They mean nothing to me."

Joshua set his hand on the top of Mulder's bare foot. When he
didn't protest, he took a brave scoot forward, laying his head
on the agent's knee. Joshua thought Mulder might push him
away, but instead felt his hand come to rest on the back of his
head.

"I miss you," Joshua whispered. "Come back to me."

He heard Mulder sigh and felt his fingers begin to move
through his hair. "No, Joshua," he said heavily. "It wasn't
meant to be. I should have been stronger. I should have
remembered that anyone who has ever been close to me has
been put in mortal danger. You asked me once why Scully and
I had never made love. It's because we know if we lose sight
of each other for even a moment, one of us will wind up dead.
I can't live without her, and she...I can only hope she's made
this choice for the same reasons. I've already asked Scully to
make this sacrifice with me; I can't ask another. You have a
life, Joshua. One that will be better once we've gone our
separate ways."

Joshua raised his head to look up at his lover, to plead with
him.

"You keep people alive..." he continued, his exhausted face
expressing all the awe and respect he held for Joshua and his
art. "...I destroy them. Sooner or later I destroy even the
people who mean the most to me. I've already fired a gun at
my own head to try and save her from me. I can only hope
I'll remember to check if it's loaded next time."

"No, Mulder." Joshua shook his head, knowing the darkness
that had always haunted Mulder found its counterweight in
himself. "Don't say that to me and expect me to walk away.
You have a place in this world, as obscure as it may seem to
most. You were created for a reason. I've come to understand
the sacrifice involved in bringing an exceptional person to be.
You and I are the same man. We both make choices that keep
us separated from the rest of the world. We found each other
here--you can't tell me that wasn't meant to be."

"I don't have a choice, Joshua. This life chose me."

"We all make choices in how we live, Mulder. You can make a
different choice--leave all this." He smiled and took his hand
wistfully, holding it to his lips. "Come with me, overseas. I'll
show you Vienna, Paris, Cairo, Moscow..."

"I've been to Russia," Mulder said with a small grin. "I didn't
much care for it."

Joshua answered him with a silent laugh. "I knew you would
refuse me. But I couldn't help asking all the same. It's a
fantasy I can't seem to let go of."

Mulder gently fingered a swirl of dark hair over Joshua's ear.
"It's nice to be asked."

Joshua moved up onto his knees to kiss Mulder, softly, just to
the side of his mouth. He didn't get the same polite decline
this time as he had on the ruins. Mulder's eyes were
searching his; his mouth loosened, wanting, but he was afraid
of what damage would be done. Tears came into his eyes.
There was something Mulder needed to say and it pained him
to hold it back.

"Tell me," Joshua said.

"I have to give you up...and it's killing me inside," he said
bravely, his misery falling into a sorrowful grin. Joshua came
up and took the man into his arms, holding him tightly,
pressing his lips to his cheek, reaching for that comfort they
had both been aching for these last several days. Mulder's
arms were warm and strong around him; he  felt the
dampness from his eyes as Mulder lowered his face to his
shoulder.

"Don't give me up...don't ever give me up," Joshua whispered
to him as they rocked gently against one another in the pale
light of the shaded window, at home on the lonely side of the
glass.

###

Slowly, deliberately, Joshua stood and took Mulder into his
arms--holding his complete focus on him, kissing his face, his
eyes, his mouth, breathing with him, wanting to make him
feel alive, loved, cherished and desired. This was the sexual
nature of men Joshua had sought to show him. He led Mulder
to the bed, undressing him, kissing him deeply, laying him
down beneath him, patiently coaxing him back to the isolated
serenity they had found together in Sonoma. As they kissed,
Joshua could feel Mulder beginning to accept, reaching for
him with his mouth and arms. Mulder's touches were
hesitant, yet pleading--like the empty arms of a neglected
child, trembling with the need to be held. All those human
comforts Mulder had adapted himself to deny were here for
him--it didn't matter what form the giver took.

Lying together unclothed, limbs entwined, allowing each other
to touch openly and find healing, was all that occupied the
four corners of the room as early evening traveled into night.
A journey had been made--from fantasy to the awakening of
a new passion, the power of physical touch made their bond
stronger. It wasn't a sin that each perhaps still held a kernel
of doubt. The crumbling foundation forbidding this union was
forged in antiquity.

During the slow movements of their embrace, Joshua could
hear Mulder whispering, a phrase over and over. He bent his
head to catch it. "I can be gentle," he breathed, as his lips
touched each tender bump of Joshua's ribs. "I can be gentle."

Joshua sighed when he entered his lover, holding his rough
face to his own, asking him to open his eyes, kissing him
softly, stroking his arm and chest and leg, reassuring him in
any way he could that he was good; he was just. Mulder
deserved to be touched; he deserved to be desired; he
deserved to be forgiven; and he deserved to allow himself to
love. Joshua's arms held on strong, weathering the powerful
motions building between them; and although he remained
quiet, Mulder allowed himself to succumb during those final
releasing moments--his head falling back limp on the pillow,
his face relaxing in peace. Joshua thought maybe there was a
chance his message had been heard.

The intensity of pleasure is fleeting, even when it might
never be had again. But Joshua found the real reward of their
final coupling in the long, still embrace that followed. The
battered witness gathered his protector into his arms and
held him close against his chest, willing him to sleep, stroking
his fingers through his hair. They held each other, wrapped in
blankets, and slept soundly without incident until dawn.

The hardest thing Joshua ever had to do in his life was to slip
his arm out from under his lover's head and dress in the quiet
of morning before the stars had failed. For once he was the
one to leave Mulder asleep and alone in his bed, warmed by
their passing. He kissed him softly on the cheek and opened
the curtains so the soon-to-be-rising sun would wake him. He
said good-bye silently as he slipped out into the hall to face
the long lonely ride to Los Angeles.
 
 

**************************************************
Prologue--four months later
**************************************************

FBI Headquarters
6:05 AM
Monday

Mulder sat in his familiar chair behind his too-neat desk,
staring at a small unopened package addressed to him. It was
early on the morning of his first day back from suspended
leave. Although Skinner had barked the term "ass in a sling"
at him more than usual during the last four months, his shaky
career path was reinstated (after extensive disciplinary
review) thanks in a major part to the supportive first-hand
accounts provided under oath by Scully and Lt. Jarvis
regarding his conduct in San Francisco. Joshua's verbose
written statement vouching for his character was an X-File in
itself, now currently filed under 'transferable demon
possession' somewhere in the bottomless drawers behind him.
Mulder once again made FBI history in being the first agent
"absolved" for shooting a protected witness in the chest at
close range. Skinner hadn't said, but Mulder knew the AD was
somewhat aware it had been a crime of misdirected passion.

Scully had spent these months holding down the fort,
sneaking over to his apartment most evenings with notes and
photographs of the latest paranormal case she herself was
heading with a long-missed enthusiasm. For what it was
worth, his affair had managed to bring them closer. It
managed to reestablish the kind of bonding between two
people that needed no clear definition to exist any more than
his lingering memories of Joshua.

It had been difficult over these long empty days that he'd
spent alone at home, or on long walks around DC, trying to
sort through all the many things that had been said and done
during his weeks in San Francisco. It was hard, that was all he
knew--another loss to bear in a long line of losses Mulder had
experienced throughout his life. Waking that last bright
morning to a cold and empty bed smelling of his lover was
more painful to him than he could have imagined. The
loneliness he carried with him now eclipsed the shame of his
crime. Mulder found himself avoiding elevators and hanging
up whenever he was put on hold. This was the way it had to
be.

Mulder reached into his coat pocket for the postcards he'd
brought in with him and stood up to pin them to his
wallboard one by one. The first had arrived a week after his
return to DC. It came by way of Scully from its sudden
appearance in his FBI office mail. It was a postcard of
Sleeping Beauty's castle lit up at night sent the day of Joshua's
Disneyland Hotel performance in LA. The violinist's message
was short and friendly, discreet. It was an attempt to sustain
contact that Joshua chose to continue week to week, sending
him cards from places Mulder had never been to: Stockholm,
Prague, Lisbon, Rome. Mulder hung them now on his wall. A
growing collection of mini snapshots and foreign stamps, the
postcards were his way of following Joshua's travels as he
made his way over the world. The short lines sounded happy,
but there was a sadness that had been emerging as time
passed and the cards began to arrive less frequently than the
first. Mulder had yet to send a reply.

Satisfied with his thumbtacked arrangement, Mulder sat
down to open the parcel on his desk. It had been shipped a
few days ago care of the Vienna Philharmonic, which was now
winding its way into Russia. Inside was a letter and a flat
object wrapped in bubble wrap. Mulder began with the letter.
 
 

Mulder,

As I write this I am sitting at a small child's desk in the
upstairs room of a farm house that has stood near the edge of
the Poltava Valley for over a hundred years. Outside my
window I can see the branches of the cherry trees beginning
to bud across the orchard. It is not yet spring, and still very
cold here on the steppes. I light a fire and pile as many
blankets as they can spare on my bed at night to keep warm.
Ukraine isn't like anyplace on earth I've ever seen. Her people
are quiet and proud and ultimately generous and forgiving. I
hadn't expected to be welcomed into their very homes, but I
feel incredibly blessed to accept the invitations. The child who
used to sleep in this room has grown and moved away, and
his parents were seeking a new 'son' to adopt for the time
being. I have learned many things here, such as the true
definition of 'cold shower,' and how many different Ukrainian
words there are to describe boiled potatoes. So far my hosts
have not complained about the violin and I have not
complained about the chickens who sleep clucking in the
rafters overhead.

I have been here for nearly two weeks, overseeing the final
progress of the grand opening of a makeshift concert hall near
the Chutove village center. When my request was received
four months ago (I cannot believe how much time has passed
since I left the States!) the largest unused structure was
selected--an old granary barn--and architects and structural
engineers from Kiev assembled to conceive and build it. I
wish you could see it--it has a steadfast and rustic charm like
the farmers who still work the surrounding lands. The
acoustics could be more ideal, but my money would only go so
far. Scully might be amused to hear that I ended up
auctioning several collectibles of mine including the once-
seized Louis XIV harpsichord to a private collector in Morocco
to finance this project--not to mention the cost of securing
accommodations for 65 Philharmonic members (not all of
them welcomed the idea of sleeping in drafty farm houses!).
My accountant in New York has threatened to have done with
me if I don't come to my senses soon. News of my efforts
have gladly drawn stories to the world's papers, and
donations to the Recovery Foundation of Poltava Province
have been arriving by the thousands.

Tomorrow night I will play the Sibelius violin concerto for
600 Chutove villagers and their neighbors and friends. It is a
sad and triumphant piece, filled with strife and longing. I
chose it because it reminded me of what I know these people
suffered and yet they are still here--thriving and
independent. My interpretation comes from my experiences
in San Francisco, the images I saw in my dreams, and my
need to try and right that unforgivable wrong. But, just to
cover my bases, I've boned-up on my Ukrainian-traditional
Christmas Carols. All that robust fiddle-playing my
grandfather used to joke about--he was closer to
understanding his past than I imagined. The farmwife whose
care I am under, Olga, has taught me the name of the lullaby I
can now play accurately from memory. It is called "Blessed
are They Who Protect the Sleep of the Innocent."

The Chutove concert is for my people, but I also feel it is for
you. When I play the Adagio di molto I feel Sibelius is
speaking about a passion long left behind. I play for them and
I play for you, but I also play for myself--perhaps I always
will. Perhaps it isn't a sin to let the violin bespeak the
contents of my heart. Perhaps it is simple human honesty that
marks a virtuoso. In case I am wrong, I have also scheduled
the Tchaikovsky for the following night. The audience will
love it--it is familiar to them, and although it means little to
me, I understand now that I can make music beyond my own
experience.

I have been hesitant to write you, to open my heart when I
have received no words from you. I try to believe it is the
difficulty in tracking my progress that keeps you silent. But
logic intervenes and tells me you have your own reasons and
I will need to learn to accept them. But not today. Today I am
happy to be where I am at this small desk writing by
lamplight and happy to be able to hear the sadness and
yearning in the sound of my violin.

Nanette writes to me from France. She is enjoying her
retirement, reacquainting herself with her own country. She
is very happy for me and plans to come to my performance
when we reach Paris. I miss her and know we will have a lot
to talk about.

I feel I have traveled far, but gained little distance from San
Francisco. Inside this box is my final gift to you. Take it--it
was always meant to be yours.

--J
 
 

The bubble wrap contained a compact disc recording from
EMI Classics-- "Mendelssohn/Bruch Violin Concerti." It was a
compilation of both Joshua's Mendelssohn and an earlier 1998
recording he'd made of the Max Bruch Concerto. Mulder read
the label on the back.
 

Felix Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64
 I--Allegro molto appassionato/Cadenza/Presto
 II--Andante
 III--Allegretto non troppo/Allegro molto vivace

JOSHUA SEGULYEV, violin
THE SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS, conductor

(Cadenza mvt I : Joshua Segulyev)

Joshua's impromptu cadenza, his gift to him, was
immortalized in 78 minutes of digital audio for all eternity.
Mulder opened the case; a message was handwritten on the
inner sleeve.
 

"Once upon a time there were two princes. Each was given a
magical map that led them on their own separate quest. They
were both gone for years, so long, that when they returned
triumphant there was no one left who could remember them
and they had aged beyond recognition. It is on the ruined
walls of that lost kingdom where we will meet again, my
friend, and we will know one another by name."
 
 

Mulder sat quietly for several long moments, staring at the
message and at the silver disc. The CD player Scully had
brought into the office was still sitting atop the desk.

*I think we lose sight of the truth when we become deaf to
what our conscience is trying to say.*

He didn't need to make that same mistake, he decided. He
popped the disc out of its case and slid it into the player. The
Mendelssohn began and Mulder, listened.
 

*********************************
End
(roll credits)
Author's Notes Follow.
Tell me how you feel at: Terma99@aol.com
 

Listening to Cadenza

The writing of this fic has been conducted under the
influence of the following masterworks of classical music. A
classical oboist myself, I've had a life-long love affair with
this music and the San Francisco Symphony and bringing it
together with my first passion, writing, has made Cadenza a
very special work of fiction for me. I've included the key
movements of each piece that inspired certain scenes and
were playing quite loudly on my stereo while I composed the
scenes or daydreamed about character development, etc. So
here we go in order of appearance in Cadenza.

1. Brahms Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Minor
 (Itzhak Perlman, violin)

Joshua's "signature" piece. He played this concerto (there is
a total of three movements) in Philadelphia the night the
bombs were discovered. He also won a Grammy for his 1988
recording of the Concerto with the New York Philharmonic
which earned him his three year world tour. Scully is playing
the solo cadenza section when the story opens. He also plays
a part of it for Mulder when he explains how he associated
Brahms with his grandfather.
 

2. Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor
 (Christian Ferras, violin)

The Mendelssohn is the concerto Joshua's rehearsing with
the San Francisco Symphony throughout the story. It's also
my most favorite violin concertos, it shows off the
instrument so very well.

Joshua's playing the third movement during the ruckus in his
apartment and the softer second movement during Mulder
and Scully's "day at Davies" make-shift office scene where
the photos go flying. He'll be playing the whole darn thing
during the premiere gala. The violinist in this recording,
Ferras, is my favorite virtuoso. I'd like to think this is Joshua
himself playing on this recording and the following Bruch.
 

3. Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor
 (Christian Ferras, violin)

The Bruch concerto is so filled with passion and suffering,
struggle, and joy, I based most of Joshua's personality on this
piece, especially the first movement. I listened to this while
writing the frozen barn scene and Joshua's first encounter
with the Thin Man and any time he remembers his past. The
first movement is the story of his life. The second movement
*might* be about love, but I'll let you decide. It also might
contain something that sounds like a lullaby.

4. Schubert String Quartet No. 14 "Death and the Maiden"
 II: Andanto con moto

A eulogy for Elise. Joshua plays the lead violin part in front of
the window for the portion of the quartet's slow, quiet
second movement I've included here. Is does sound less
lonely with the cello and viola.
 

5. Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D Minor
 I: Allergro ma non troppo

Beethoven at his best, it is almost a sin to put only one
movement of this greatest of symphonies on a tape, but hey,
I don't have room for 78 minutes--that takes a whole CD. But
you'd know that if you were paying attention during Mulder's
first classical appreciation lesson. Listen, and remember
Ludwig was completely deaf when he wrote this. If that isn't
enough to make you feel insignificant, ask yourself why you
don't own the complete symphonic works of Beethoven
already in a five CD boxed set. Shame! Get the Karajan
version, now!
 

6. JS Bach Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C Minor
 II: Adagio
 (Issac Stern, violin)

This is the piece that takes Mulder by surprise in a Berkeley
church. In Cadenza, I have Joshua playing alongside my
favorite oboist in the whole darn world, William Bennet, SF
Symphony principal oboist. I first heard him play at Davies
when I was 15 years old. I was a clarinet player at the time. I
changed to oboe that very day. Oboe is a beast of an
instrument to tame--it's finicky and temperamental, but
when it sings, it can cut into you like no other sound in the
orchestra. I have a tempestuous love/hate relationship with
my beloved Fox 400 grenadilla oboe. I've experienced the
greatest personal highs (nailing the solo in the Tchaik 4
onstage at the Hoffman with the Diablo Valley Philharmonic)
and personal lows (managing to cut my upper lip open and
splitting my reed in half during rehearsal of Mozart's
Marriage of Figaro Overture and missing the whole damn
solo) with this baby.

But back to Bach, I play along with my tape to this piece
quite a bit. It's beyond lovely. But get the C Minor version,
it's just plain better--Mulder will agree with me.

7. Beethoven, Concerto for Piano, Violin, Cello
 and Orchestra in C major. "Triple Concerto"
This concerto is a hoot! It's a splendid example of
Beethoven's happier works. It's festive and requires the solo
skills of three virtuosos. I thought it would be the perfect
piece for Joshua and his "merry trio" to perform that
blustery Christmas night in New York during an endless
Beethoven festival. I've been to one of these at Davies. Don't
get me wrong, I ADORE Beethoven, but my ass was numb by
the time they finished the Sixth Symphony.

8. Vivaldi Concerto in D for Guitar

I don't know where I got this weird little tape, I think
someone left it at my house or something. It's one of those
99¢ things you see for sale in a big bargain barrels at drug
stores. It is a collection of Vivaldi Concertos transcribed for
various instruments. Some of its kinda weird, and the
labeling is all wrong, but right in the middle of the second
side is this guitar piece that is so...sexy...I decided that this is
what you hear during the softer love scenes in Cadenza, off
in the corner playing on Joshua's stereo. It's also the piece
Mulder pops in the stereo while Joshua's restringing the
Strad. It's a passion theme for them, cautious, yet leaden
with meaning. Try it while reading the Sonoma section--goes
well with wine.

9. Mozart, Don Giovanni, Act II, Commendatore scene

This is right out of the Amadeus soundtrack. (The best film
ever made IMO, but then I'm biased.) Those of you who have
seen the film can relate to this powerful trio between Don
Giovanni, the statue and his sniveling sidekick, Leporello just
before the commendatore casts them down into hell.
Mulder's rather confusing night at the opera watching over
Joshua went well with the strong male voices in this aria. The
whole opera is dark and angry and eerie. Don Giovanni is
also theorized to embody Mozart's struggle to deal with his
overbearing father's death. See a connection there?

Turn the volume up on this number while reading the section
where Joshua follows the thin man through the musty
backstage prop rooms of the War Memorial Opera House and
tell me you don't get all creeped out.

10. Rachmaninov, Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini
 (Philippe Entremont, piano)
 
Easily my favorite piano piece ever, Sergei Rachmaninov
almost made me cast Joshua as a pianist--just so I could
listen to hours of Rach piano concertos. Well, I'm listening to
them anyway! I think most true musicians can play a little
piano. Joshua can play some of the easier variations in this
piece. Rachmaninov took a theme by an Italian violinist and
turned it into one of the greatest works of piano music ever
written. I almost feel sorry for Paganini--even if he was long
gone dead at the time this was composed in the 1930s. I also
included this piece because it's so Russian and practically all
the composers listed so far were German! Don't get me
wrong, I adore Tchaikovsky, but his violin concerto just
didn't say "Joshua" to me.

The Rhapsody is a music composition form known as "theme
and variation." You take a simple theme and then rewrite it
over and over in a series of musical variations. Listen to a
first few minutes to get the basic tune and hear where Sergei
takes it. You may recognize some of the variations just like a
familiar line from Shakespeare you never knew was from
Shakespeare--that's how well-known this piece is. Some of
the chillier parts of this piece make me think of Joshua's
Grandfather struggling to flee the Ukraine in the dead of
winter with his infant daughter in his arms.

11. Prokofiev, Symphonic Suite, Op. 60, "Lieutenant Kijé"
 "Romance"--Second Movement

Joshua describes the "sound" of this piece best in these
words of his grandfather: "It sounds like emptiness and
wholeness--everything and nothing at all. I would listen to its
grand pause--'tishena,' my grandfather called it. 'Listen,
Sasha,' he would say to me when it was quiet. 'The sound of
silence is the most beautiful chord of all.'"

Prokofiev's "Romance" is one of the most delicate, chilling
and innocent pieces of music I've ever heard. Its theme is
familiar, we've all heard it at some point, but can't quite
place it. It begins with a sad, slow cello, straining through the
notes along with the strum of the harp. I see Joshua waking
before dawn and sneaking out the back of the barn with his
dog to listen to the morning. Its child-like theme is so honest
it will break your heart faster than any piece on this list.
Tishena, is Russian for 'silence;' it also means 'peace.' As you
read, you'll see how this theme carries through the story.

12. Schumann, Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 121
 (Christian Ferras, violin)

I'm not a huge Schumann fan, but this piece, which is part of
the Christian Ferras Double CD along with his recordings of
the Brahms, Beethoven and Sibelius concertos, is a stand-out
piece for violin and piano. Joshua plays this piece at
Zellerbach in Berkeley for Nana the first time she meets him
(as recalled in chapter 11)with that "beautiful" young man
who was to become is first lover later that night. The sonata
has a technical accuracy and grace that I felt would be fitting
of a young man coming into his stride as a virtuoso. The
piano gets equal billing in this piece, symbolic of their final
'coming together.'

13. Vivaldi, The Four Seasons
 Autumn--Adagio molto
 Summer--Allegro non molto
 Spring--Largo
 Winter--Allegro non molto, Largo & Allegro

Vivaldi's Four Seasons is probably *the* most well-known
work for solo violin and chamber orchestra. It was also
composed the year Joshua's Stradi was made, 1726. There is
a performing group called Philharmonia Baroque that is
formed from musicians playing on strictly historical
instruments. I knew I wanted to tell a lot of flashback history
for Joshua in chapter 12 and selections from the Four
Seasons made for the perfect musical fit.

Autumn's adagio molto is filled with quiet tension, which I
felt was perfect for the moments when the agents' car pulls
up in front of Joshua's old home and he looks out the
window at it, recalling how it looked when he was a teen.

Summer's Allegro non molto is the piece Joshua chooses to
play for his grandfather to warm his heart in early November.
It's vibrant and gleeful, and a wonderfully showy piece for
the violin, flirtatious.

Spring's Largo has a lonely, isolated sound to it. I figured
Joshua's little fingers would be healing by his first spring in
Philadelphia with his grandfather. The sound of this
movement was a perfect match to the struggle of a little boy
trying to find his way back to his art with scarred hands.

Winter's final three movements are some of the most
stunning repertoire in baroque literature. The violin solo
really breaks free in these chilling final pieces and so does
Joshua's state of mind upon receiving heartbreaking news
(chapter 12). Thank you, Vivaldi, for the inspiration.

14. ARIA: "Ebben? Ne andro lontano" from Catalani's opera
'La Wally'
  (Eva Marton, soprano)

My Italian sucks, so I have no idea what this aria means word
for word, but it does say "Sonoma" to me. I knew I wanted an
aria to go with my vineyard romance in chapter 14 and this
one fit the bill. I wanted a female voice that could carry over
fine wines and rolling hills. "Ebben? Ne andro lontano" is
filled with passion and freedom and beauty, yet within the
course of the aria one hears an eerie undertone that
eventually takes over the happier melody, culminating in
disaster. A perfect fit for the course of this chapter-- you can
all but hear those starlings taking flight right up into the first
fall of rain.

15. J. S. Bach: Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin
 (various)

When Joshua hears the violin singing him to sleep, it comes
to him as a solo work from Bach. Just about any of the
hundreds of unaccompanied Bach violin recordings out there
will do. If you visit the classical music section of most stores
you'll find a wide variety of violin soloists of all ages
performing alone, the very foundation of music theory, Bach
sonatas and partitas.

16. Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem ("A German Requiem")

Probably the most famous of Brahms' work, his soulful and
powerful requiem is the musical inspiration I drew from for
the final mystical sections of Joshua's journey. The first
movement "Blessed are They," is what I heard when Joshua
finds himself on the country road and enters the woods,
meeting the little girl at the back of her ruined home. The
horror of the fire is the roar of flame I heard sung from the
male chorus in the second movement of this piece "Denn
alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras." I don't remember what that
means in English [bad Sharon, no biscuit], but it's very
creepy. I used those dark sections to color my thoughts
during most of chapter 19 as well--"The caged anger in his
eyes was terrible to see." Once again I found myself reaching
to the Germans for themes to fit a Russian tragedy. Can I help
it if Russian classical music is just too darn upbeat? Yeah,
Stravinski would have probably worked, but I'm a sucker for
the Romantics.

17. Jean Sibelius: Concerto for Violin in D minor (op. 47)
 (Christian Ferras, violin)

A post-Romantic Finnish composer, Sibelius' exceptional 20th
century work is among the most challenging and sublime
works composed for violin. It is my favorite concerto so I
saved it for last. If Cadenza has a main theme, the Sibelius is
it. The work is haunting, strange, powerful, delicate and filled
with strife, longing and love. When I first heard it, I thought I
was seeing 1930s Chutove as well as a secluded rustic room
overlooking the Napa Valley vineyards. Of all the pieces I
listened to while writing this novel, the Sibelius brought me
the most inspiration and its haunting voice opened up the
world of Cadenza to me. You'll find a part of its meaning in
almost every scene--but the second movement goes
especially well with the last few scenes of chapter 20.
 

I would strongly urge any of you to try and find a few of
these pieces, especially the Mendelssohn, Bruch and Sibelius
violin concertos. Half of what made Cadenza work for my
beta readers (they tell me) was having some, if not all, of the
music. Classical bargain CDs can be found for $2 to $9 at
most large bookstores and Tower Records. All of these pieces
mentioned in this novel are very popular and easy to find.
Some people have written to tell me they found some of
these pieces at their library or even in MPEG form online.
Give it a shot, you may discover a whole new art as Mulder
did!

--Terma99

Cadenza by Terma99

Author's Final Notes

Warning: These notes contain vague spoilers for the plot of
Cadenza.

Cadenza can be found at:
www.geocities.com/hotsprings/8334/fic.html

Me:
First, let me apologize for not getting these notes together
when I first posted Cadenza last week. I had intended to post
it along with the last batch, but a sudden illness knocked me
flat for seven days and this is the first chance I've had to get
to it. There were many people I wanted to thank and credit
for helping with and influencing this fic novel.

Two Princes:
For a very long time I've wanted to write a story about a
classical musician, and the Mulder/other/slash genre seemed
the perfect place for it. I started to envision Mulder's lover as
a world-class soloist, someone who was never in one spot for
very long, just like our Special Agent. At first I thought of a
pianist....all that Rachmaninov...but then I decided there was
something so innocently sexual about a man playing a violin--
a delicate and powerful instrument. I had recently written a
story on the Contra Costa Chamber Orchestra and attended
their performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. I fell
in love with the violinist on the stage that night and the
memory of him carried over into the creation of my violinist
(who is also a combination of Evgeny Kissin and this Russian
tubist I knew in High School, and also, I'll admit to borrowing
some essence of Johnny Depp.) Joshua is all and none of
these people; he is his own person and has his own face, but
if you're wondering, I used an image of Depp from Sleepy
Hollow on my cover art for Cadenza.

Getting to know Joshua was an amazing experience. He first
came to me as a very guarded young man who was a bit too
used to the finer things in life. As we got to know one
another I realized most of that was an act on his part to
protect himself from strangers. As we spoke together he
began to tell me about his childhood, his mother, his father
and grandfather...and I knew I couldn't blame him for
wanting to feel safe.

Amazingly, I broke from my usual pattern of writing all out
of order and wrote most of Cadenza one chapter at a time,
*in order* so Michelle (my whip master and editor) could get
something new to read every two weeks or so and not lose
any of the plot. I'm glad I forced myself to write this way
because I think it helped me develop Joshua at a sensible
pace and allow him to get to know Mulder gradually as well. I
wanted this one to simmer.

Musical Influences:
I've been delighted by all the emails I've received from
musicians world-wide who have been drawn to this story
during its WIP stage and now in its completed form. I never
knew there were so many students, performers and lovers of
classical music in this fandom. I've been deeply moved by
their comments and expressions of appreciation and love for
this music art form. And if nothing else, I'm so very pleased
I've been able to stimulate curiosity and interest in classical
music through this novel. Many have written me to tell me
they got so excited about music they just bought their first
symphony tickets, or went out and bought their first set of
classical CDs, or pulled out their old recordings of Beethoven
and Handel that they hadn't listened to since they were
children. I thank everyone who has written to me for giving
the classics a second chance.

I'd also like to thank all my friends and fellow musicians who
helped me research this story. In particular, I'd like to thank
my immensely musically gifted brother, Steven, whose piano
virtuosity, composition genius (music theory and history),
instrumental knowledge (violin, piano) and years and years
of dedicated conservatory and private music study has
inspired much of Joshua's life and career. I also thank his
lovely fiance Masha, a Russian piano virtuoso in her own
right, for the Russian translations and history. Thanks to my
high school buddy, Robert, bassoonist extraordinaire, for his
knowledge of professional "gigs" and first hand experience
performing with most professional and semi-professional
orchestras in the Bay Area, and also for all the bad musician
jokes he told me while we played together in the Jesus Christ
Superstar pit orchestra.

As for my own love of music--I began on the clarinet at age
nine, switched to oboe at age 16 and have been an active
classical performer ever since with community and semi-
professional orchestras, bands, and chamber groups. In
addition to oboe, my chief instrument, I also play the cello,
flute and violin. I studied music history, performance and a
little theory in college winding up a few units shy of a music
minor. Over the last year I have had the amazing opportunity
to write for the performing arts (classical music, theatre and
dance) for various magazines, newspapers and programs in
the SF Bay Area--a job that happily gets me two free tickets to
everything. My cumulative experiences as a listener and
performer strongly influenced the music performances in
Cadenza, right down to the backstage mulled wine and
flashing reindeer antlers.

Truth:
Some aspects of Cadenza are fictionalized. Joshua's
schooling is based on my brother's experiences as a San
Francisco Conservatory student and his vast knowledge of
music composition, conducting and performance. The
Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and its professors and
program are fiction. Joshua's touring habits are also
fictionalized as most soloists represent themselves and
usually don't play more than one or two concerts a year with
any given orchestra. I needed him to be in SF for a longer-
than-usual period of time for the casefile, so I stretched it.
Joshua's personal life and habits are fictional, but based on
real life soloists I have performed with, grown up with, and
interviewed.

I borrowed and scrambled various popular Russian fairytales
for the fable of the questing prince--all of which I read about
in a book illustrating the Tales of Baba Yaga. The 10,000 year
old man is called Kashkay? The Deathless. I'm forgetting the
spelling, but his chained image stuck with me when I created
the Thin Man. The Lives of the Great Composers is a real
book, with Brahms on the cover, but I changed its author and
contents to fit Cadenza. I loved that book, especially the
story of Beethoven, but someone borrowed it and never
returned it to me.

The locations described in San Francisco and Napa and
Sonoma are real. However, some of the winery names are
changed to sound more interesting. The palace built into the
grassy hill does exist, but it's called Claire-something
vineyard. Not a very flashy name. It sits above the
surrounding Sonoma hills and it truly breathtaking. Auberge
du Soleil is a resort in Napa; it's about a lush as resorts get in
California.

Most of the professional musicians mentioned in Cadenza are
real people who I have had the joy of listening to live. William
Bennet *is* my favorite oboist; I was happy to include him on
the Bach. Nigel Kennedy did recently bring back the art of the
improvisational cadenza, and you really haven't seen
someone conduct a symphony orchestra until you've
witnessed San Francisco's phenomenal Michael Tilson
Thomas (MTT).

Erotic Influences:
Since I'm sadly not a man, I had to look for outside
influences and information to gain a hopefully somewhat
accurate understanding of sexuality between men.
Thankfully, I work in San Francisco and was strongly
influenced by SF homoerotic art and literature and yes, even
a little porn...okay a lot of porn <g>. Among the books I
read, The Hite Report on Male Sexuality was VERY informative
and candid and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to
understand the sexual male better.

I was the most inspired by San Francisco's American
Conservatory Theatre's (A.C.T.) homoerotic production of
Marlowe's Edward II, directed by the brilliant Mark Lamos.
This play didn't leave much to the imagination (graphic sex,
nudity and violence between men) and I was completely
bowled over by the amazing performance of Malcom Gets in
the title role of the ineffectual, yet sincere king who lost his
rule and died a horrific medieval death (red hot poker up the
ass) all for the love of another man. I tried to drag anyone
who would listen to go see this daring production and despite
a PR nightmare for A.C.T., the play was an enormous success.
I would like to thank the cast and crew and producers of this
play for their genius and uncompromising vision. It was
something to see.

The Terror-Famine:
A few weeks before I began to think about writing Cadenza I
came upon a book at Barnes and Noble, Our Century. I was
flipping through the pages, 1930-40, and as I expected saw
those horrific pictures of piles of bone-thin bodies in mass
graves. I assumed I was looking at concentration camp
photos. I wasn't. I was looking at photos of Stalin's attempt
to eliminate the Ukrainian/Peasant population in an effort to
enforce collectivization. I read about the man-made famine
and the incredible death toll, nine million, and the
subsequent Soviet cover-up and wondered, "Why the heck
have I never even heard of this?" Maybe it's because I didn't
get much of a chance to study world history in college
(history was in the same core as my major--English--so I had
to take statistics and chemistry instead, blech) but those
haunting images stayed with me. I looked up websites on
Ukraine and the famine and found a wealth of information.
At the library I found a book written in the '80s, *Soviet
Collectivization and the Terror-Famine*, by Robert Conquest
covering the Revolution years and politics leading up to the
1933-34 famine. It wasn't the most pleasant book to read,
my stomach lurched at most of the details, particularly the
fate of the children, but it gave me a clear picture of how
people lived and died during those terrible years. Famine
references and depictions in Cadenza are taken directly from
this information--with the exception of the last scene in the
barn. Pagan practices were common among peasants back
then, but the scene I describe and the workings of the spell
are fiction.

In Honor of Cathleen Faye:
Cadenza would have never happened if it weren't for a
certain powerful, cutting edge, one-of-a-kind,
groundbreaking fic novel that hit the lists about a year ago.
Wind River by the remarkable Cathleen Faye hit me harder
than any work of fanfiction ever has before or since. Wind
River is a Mulder/Other romance that literally opened the
door to slash for me. I'd never read fic before in this
category. I took a look at Wind River after being pestered for
weeks and weeks by my friend Michelle who was just as
affected by it. I opened it up and was immediately swept
away. When I finished it I realized my entire understanding of
human erotic experience had been greatly expanded. I wrote
her one of the longest feedback messages of my life (a few of
them in fact) praising her to the highest and groveling at her
feet. I believe I even told her she owned my soul. I told her I
never thought I could write anything close to this type of love
story between two men, but she encouraged me and gave me
some tips and sooner or later I began to imagine my own
M/O romance. I was, and still am, heavily influenced by this
remarkable story. If you haven't had the chance to read it,
please do so. I can't recommend it enough.

The Giving of Gifts:
Cadenza is a gift, a labor of seven months of love and a
unique chance to develop a new character and work with a
20 chapter plot. I learned a tremendous lot from it and don't
regret a minute spent alone ignoring the rest of my life
(husband, job, friends) in order to write it. A writer writes,
and I'm completely addicted to it. I hope you will be as
addicted to reading it. And yes, it's completely okay to hate
it, too.

-Terma99