Page 41 of Last Violent Call
Marshall was eavesdropping on the grouchy man next door.
He hadn’t intended to. He had only wandered out into the passageway to find the provodnitsa, hoping to have some tea, but she was nowhere to be seen, so he had ambled down to the samovar himself for boiling water.
Then he heard the muffled argument.
“… you can’t… ridiculous!”
Marshall paused, hands wrapped around his thermos. There was clearly someone else in the compartment with the man, but their voice was too quiet to be heard, and the train itself was always humming with the noise of its journey. On occasion, the whole carriage felt like it was bouncing on its tracks, hitting certain sections of the rail that were built in a peculiar way.
“They’ve been arguing for quite some time.”
Marshall’s grip tightened on his thermos, startled by the voice behind him, but he managed not to jump before he turned around. A short, middle-aged man had poked his head out from the compartment on the left. If Marshall could hear the occasional snippets from his compartment on the right, surely the same would be wafting in the other direction.
“Do you know who he is?” Marshall asked.
The man paused, then nodded. “Danila Andreyevich Popov. He introduced himself when we almost collided on the way to the toilet.Seemed to be in a terrible rush.”
What rush could there possibly be aboard a moving train? It had been late afternoon when they set off. Now that they were a few hours into their journey, night was rapidly falling, directing passengers toward the dining carriage as stomachs started to growl and body clocks started to adjust to their own schedules. From Moscow to Vladivostok they would be passing eight different time zones. Soon it would become impossible to follow one watch.
“And the other party?”
The man shook his head. Where Marshall thought the stranger had been making an expression of surprise earlier while remarking on the ongoing argument, he was now realizing that the man had permanently large eyes, pulled wide and expressive no matter the topic.
“I had a peek earlier when the door was open: this is a solo compartment. Only a visitor, not a roommate.” At that, there was a grumble from within his room, a voice asking him to keep it down, and the man peered inside, nose wrinkling. “Wish I could afford a solo compartment too. I am Stepan Maximovich Ivanov. You are?”
“Just Marshall,” Marshall replied nicely. Ever since their move to Moscow, it had been amusing for him to make up different patronymics each time he met someone new, since he hardly cared to adopt his real father’s name into his own by Russian custom. But this train ride was going to be seven days long, and he didn’t want to lose track of the names he was giving to his fellow passengers, nor did he have the commitment to pick a favorite false one. Besides, when they exchanged vows, Benedikt had refused to let him change his Korean last name, saying that he was going to take it too and he wouldn’t accept anything else. If Marshall came up with a proper Russian alias, he would make Benedikt upset.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the man—Stepan—said. “Doexcuse me now, I must shut up for my traveling companion.” He slid his compartment door closed, and Marshall proceeded back into his own room, inhaling the steam that was drifting from his thermos full of boiling water.
When Marshall returned, Benedikt was sitting on the lower bunk, bent over his sketchbook. He had a smudge of pencil on his chin, smeared in a half circle, as if he had pressed a finger there in thought without realizing there was graphite all over his hand. It made a typical sight: whenever Benedikt lost himself in his art, the world would cease to exist around him. Marshall might be able to get an answer out of him if he was asking what he wanted for dinner, but as much as Marshall loved chatter, he never wanted to keep pushing for conversation if Benedikt was concentrating hard. Marshall preferred watching him instead—watching his mouth purse in thought as he measured dimensions, watching small wrinkles appear at the side of his eyes while he narrowed his gaze to study what he had already put down.
The only time that Marshall had interrupted Benedikt without remorse had been two years ago, for his quiet, unplanned,“Will you marry me?”They had been sitting in the living room, tending to separate tasks. Early evening, the purple sunset outside bleeding its shadows along the carpet. A warming April, the window left open a crack to offset the district heating.
“What?” Benedikt had asked suddenly, seeming to doubt whether he had heard correctly.
“I know there’s no one here to attend a wedding,” Marshall went on, “and it would be a bad idea to get legal papers in the event that we are endangered. Nonetheless, even if we officiate it ourselves in a garden somewhere, I wanted to ask. Will you marry me?”
Benedikt had stared at him for what felt like eons. He remained unspeaking for long enough that Marshall twitched, a layer of sweat prickling at his neck. The pipes in the house started to splutter, andMarshall, too, added, “It’s okay if you don’t want—”
Then Benedikt lunged over, shaking him by the shoulders to interrupt. “Yes. Of course. Of course it’s a yes. You just took me by surprise.” He paused, touching a finger to Marshall’s forehead and looking delighted to find a sheen of cold sweat. “Mars.”
Marshall swatted at his hand. “Stop that. I’m just warm.”
“Now you know how I felt the first time I said I loved you.”
“Oh, absolutely not. Youyelledat me, Ben.”
“Fondly!”
Marshall couldn’t resist laughing then. He couldn’t resist wrapping his arms around Benedikt as tightly as he could, because it was unimaginable that they had ended up here, unimaginable that they had been removed from so much, yet the thing he’d wanted most had been granted. Through their youth, he would have been glad to have Benedikt by his side forever and ever as his best friend; he would have been content to keep his feelings to himself if Benedikt had never returned them, gratified just to ache from a distance. But he didn’t have to.He didn’t have to.
“I needed to be the one to ask,” he had murmured into Benedikt’s neck, still clutching onto their embrace. “Who knows whether you might have waited another ten years like the first time.”
Benedikt looked up now in the train compartment, his lashes blinking golden even in the terrible lighting.
“What?” he asked suddenly, a perfect echo to Marshall’s memory.
Marshall set down the thermos and walked closer, coming to a stop beside Benedikt and propping one arm on the wooden structure of the top bunk. The beds were made with the lower bunk jutting a bit farther out, so that Benedikt wouldn’t hit his head while he sat there, his face tilted up to look at Marshall looming over him.
