“I never met a man from your country, even your language.”, James remarked, inspiring a sense of awareness in the dull man. “Well, whenever I travel… they… in secret, they call us a strange people.”
The daylight poured the white ground, brightening everything around them. The frost of the night before glistened the snow of the preceding months, reflecting all the sky’s luminance. The glow pierced their morning eyes and so they diverted their gaze to the empty, grey and worn station. They sat on a lone, caved bench as they listened to the ice melting. In a desperate attempt to fill the air, James asked, “When will it get here? I trusted your reading of seven sharp, but it is already seven-oh-five!”
“I said seven.”
“Fine?”, James begrudges.
“…”
“Maybe we should call the station, ask them if there is any issues”, James protrudes worryingly.
“You are… an impatient man. The world doesn’t work on your clock.”
“Well, this city should. What are you paying for when you buy a ticket?”
James sighs, turning to decrypt the snow floor. However, his sight is overwhelmed and shuts them out, shedding a tear in disgrace. He rests his eyes upon simpler fixtures, the nesting couple under the enormous roof truss, the spotted concrete walls, the row of faded red flags. Looking about, the station exhumed a presence, but nothing could be felt at all. He sat still, fidgeting his legs in the chill of the light breeze. He was being watched, mockingly and confusedly.
“What… are you doing?”
James looks at him with a dire shame, “I have never done this before.”
“Hmm… I can tell.”
“How do you say it in your language? Chelovek bez zaga… zagadok ?”, attempting to reconcile any bad faith.
“Yes, indeed.”
A train reveals itself from the great taiga woods and simmers, sliding gently on the horizon. James bursts into a joyous gasp, snapping at the man beside him with anticipation.
“Yes… It is time.”
The men rip up their suitcases. James whipped at his extra luggage and jumped to the platform. His friend walked after him.
In what must have been another hour, the train crawled to their station, forever raising the silence of dawn to its song of sirens and crashes, now flogging the clear clouds and murking the white fields. The front cab approached with vigour and velocity, its metal husk powering through the hollow hall. They stood by as the distant sound of mechanical soup become an imminent, warring clash of harsh steel and iron, filling the station. The smoke stack well-endowed and trucks muddied in thick oil, it was an imposing image flashing passed them in a predatory blur. The concrete dimmed, the truss plump fled in fear, and the flags waved as in the golden era.
James had to reaffirm his footing, swept by a gust breathed by the beast. The carriages, as he would call them in his country, behind the locomotive were much less impressive. It was red and yellow cars of rust and shattered windows. The peeling paint made a disgusting pattern fit for coal and produce, but certainly illegitimate for passengers, to James’s mind at least. The fifth car then laid before them. A shadow crept beneath the glass and between the grey curtains.
“Moskva?”, said the man emerging from a shrieking door. James was frozen into silence. His friend remarked some words that returned the man to his shell: October City, Mirny. The door slammed unceremoniously, James befuddled.
The train’s engine, running the entire time, budged the bogies back to motion. Its roar sprang shallow. The sound emptied of its significance. Whimpering to the hills, the pigeons came back to their stead. The smoke was breezed away and the flags fell down in the same way it has fallen before. The country was not like the heavens all were seeking.
“Fine… I will make the call.”
“There are no mysteries, my friend”
“…”