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The sound of the door unlatching pulls him from sleep.
“Here, the kitchen’s just that way. We can— oh, Daniil!”
Daniil groans.
“Sorry,” Andrey says, not sounding particularly sorry. “Though shouldn’t you be awake by now? You have a lecture in—” Rustling fabric. Daniil assumes he’s checking his watch. “Looks like it’s already started.”
“Moved,” Daniil mumbles against his textbook. “He’s giving a talk somewhere on the continent… Prague, maybe.”
“Well, either way.”
He’s content to let the subject drop and drift back to unconsciousness when he hears someone ask, beneath the opening and closing of cabinets and the crinkle of paper bags being unloaded, “That’s Daniil?”
Daniil cracks his eyes open.
“Ah, yeah. Peter, meet Daniil; Daniil, meet Peter.”
Formality convinces him to lift his head from the table; the immediate sound of a page tearing convinces him to stop. He gingerly pulls the page away from his cheek with one hand and rubs his eyes with the other. For a second it almost looks as if…
The double exposure doesn’t resolve into one; there’s another Andrey standing at the kitchen counter. Daniil sits there for a moment, stupefied, before remembering himself. “Daniil Dankovsky. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
“Are you two—”
“That’s enough pleasantries for one day, don’t you think?” Andrey cuts in. He’s already looping his scarf back around his neck. “We’ve really got to go. Danko, there’s coffee on the counter for you if you want it — and Chervotkina says you still owe her a copy of your notes. Peter, ready?”
Peter spares him one last glance — and then they’re gone.
“You know,” Andrey says, a few days later, “there’s such a thing as being too prepared.”
“Is there?” Daniil mutters.
“Of course there is. Remember that opera singer? Spent the night before practicing and practicing, only to waltz on stage and realize that she’d lost her voice. That’s going to be you.”
“I highly doubt Koszorus is going to ask us to sing. Could you pass me those notecards?”
Andrey rolls his eyes, but sets his knife down and does as he’s asked. “Daniil, listen. It’s not going to be a difficult exam. Or at least, not so much that it deserves this much of your attention.”
That’s blatant enough to make him look up in exasperation. “Are you saying I should be paying attention to you instead?”
“Well, if you’d prefer,” Andrey says with a self-satisfied little smirk. “But no. I was speaking generally. Have you even been outside in the last, let’s say… 48 hours?”
He watches as Andrey replaces the lid on their jar of quince jam, a quick twist of the wrist. He hasn’t eaten yet, though it’s been hours since he’s woken up, and the sun is streaming in through the window, warm and unobstructed. There must not be a cloud in the sky. He could take a stroll through the park three blocks down and be back within the hour.
He picks up his pen instead. “This exam is worth twenty percent of our grade.”
“Not a lot, if you ask me.”
Daniil gives him a withering look. “It’s—”
“—a Capital hospital, Daniil!” Andrey exclaims. “We’re not going to the docks to meet a ship returning from the Southern Hemisphere. The children have polio, or rickets, the men have syphilis, the women have consumption. It’s not going to be a difficult exam, Danko. Not for the likes of you and me.”
Coming from anyone else, he’d write that off as flattery, but Andrey can be disconcertingly earnest at times. It’s something he’s still getting used to. He files the implicit compliment away; for now, what’s important is ensuring that he doesn’t lose a day that could be spent studying to a crippling hangover.
“Whatever it is you want to me go to tonight— you’ll have to find someone else.”
“Have it your way. I’ll just ask Peter then.”
Ah. “Speaking of Peter, how is it that…” He’s not really sure how to phrase it. You never mentioned he was your twin sounds more accusatory than he intends. It’s possible that Andrey considered it so seamless and foundational that it never occurred to him to say it out loud. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, matter can neither be created nor destroyed, Peter and I are twins. He realizes he’s been silent for a second too long. “…that I’ve never seen him around? You’d think I would have seen him in the hallways, or even on the street…”
Andrey raises an eyebrow. “Do health sciences and architecture students share the same hallways?” A pause as he sifts through the mail in search of something of interest. “He buys his pastels from a stall along the quay,” he says, eventually. “The Sunday market. Maybe you’ve seen him there?”
“Or I mistook him for you.”
“Mm,” Andrey says. He has one hand around his toast, the other flipping idly through a magazine. A light breeze ruffles at the edges of his hair. From across the table, Daniil can see an upside down advertisement for aftershave, two bottles for 50 kopeks.
He takes a moment to enjoy the view, and then gets back to studying.
It’s not necessary, strictly speaking, for Daniil to attend lecture. In a general sense, most professors understand and expect that their classes will thin out in the days leading up to exams; in Daniil’s case, he’s already taught himself everything these introductory courses have to offer. What he’s really hoping to learn is how to conduct himself behind a lectern. He’ll be presenting himself one day, if his ambitions come to pass, and it is Daniil’s position that there are some things for which it’s never too early to prepare.
Koszorus is older than most of Daniil’s other professors. He’s taught some of their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers too, if the stories are to be believed; the mythology of Professor Koszorus has reached such a point that some say the bricks of the University were laid around him. It’s easy to see why. His voice wavers slightly, but he’d learned all of their names by the second class, and the taps of his teaching baton against chalk diagrams are precise, if a little weak.
The mind is intact, Daniil thinks. It’s the body that’s the problem. An instinctive disgust rises within him, unremarkable for its familiarity; he brushes it aside and focuses his attention on the lecture at hand.
“—upon counterstain, the majority of the bacteria appears red. This would suggest that, in terms of treatment, classical antibiotics would be… Volchkova?”
Across the room and two tiers up, Volchkova starts. “I— Professor?”
Koszorus simply raises his eyebrows. Volchkova gets the hint. She clears her throat and says, “Yes. Of course. They would be…” She tilts her head; her friend sitting next to her whispers something in her ear. “Effective.”
The titters and barely disguised laughs are immediate, and answer enough — she’s already fixed a rictus grin to her face by the time Koszorus responds. “They would be ineffective, Miss Volchkova. Well. Why don’t we stop there for the day… Be sure to stop by the front before you leave. Those are your exam schedules.”
So that’s what those were. Daniil gathers his things and slides out from behind the desk, making his way down the rows. Three identical stacks await him. As promised, the handouts contain information on the dates and locations their exam will take place — he scans the sheet and realizes he doesn’t need to take another for Andrey, who’d waved him off when he’d reminded him of lecture that morning. They’re both in the Thursday 3pm section, in the non-infectious ward of the General Hospital.
“Which section are you in?” A classmate, whose name escapes Daniil, asks. Luckily he doesn’t seem to care whether Daniil knows; he’s only looking for the closest warm body to commiserate with. “I’ve got the worst one… 8am, if you can believe it.”
“The Monday or Wednesday?”
“Monday! What a way to start the week,” he says. “The chances I’ll even make it to the right ward are abysmal…”
“Well, if you do get there, I’d say you have the advantage. You’ll be judged less harshly — I’m sure Koszorus will take into account the fact that you had fewer days to study.”
“I’m not worried about that. The exam will be fine… so long as I make it there in time.”
“Oh?” Daniil asks, as they leave the hall. He can hear Volchkova and her friend behind them as well, snippets of her furious whispers like why would you— and it’s not funny! floating his way. He tries to tune them out. “Most of the people I’ve spoken to aren’t half as confident.”
“My family’s carriage driver has a— little sister, I believe? — who’s in some administrative position at the hospital. Patient files.” He says it so casually, like it’s nothing. “I’ve had a glance at them. And of course, the sister is a little richer for it…”
He’s still fuming by the time he makes it to the café. Daniil is no stranger to the more unorthodox ways of completing assignments, but a full-fledged exam is something else entirely. There won’t be lackeys to provide pre-vetted answers once they graduate and real lives are on the line. He can already see it: an office with a diploma on the wall and patients who won’t know that their doctor is an incompetent fraud.
He wonders how many other of his classmates hold similar advantages. More than a few, if he were to guess. It shouldn’t be such a disappointment.
The waiter returns with his order as Daniil takes the textbooks from his bag, intent on staying until it gets dark. Now that he knows the ward he’s been assigned to, he has a better idea of what he ought to focus on, though non-infectious is still maddeningly broad. He taps his pen against the table. Maybe it’ll be chronic care? Or maybe something even more specialized, like ophtha—
Someone takes a seat across from him.
“Do you mind? Most people ask before— oh.” It’s Andrey’s brother. Again he’s at a loss for words, though thankfully he’s given time to compose himself when a waiter, dressed in crisp whites and clearly well-trained, appears at their table.
Peter turns back to him once he’s gone. “I don’t mind. Do you?”
“That wasn’t really directed at…” He clears his throat. “Anyways. I apologize for the state I was in, when we first met. Extenuating circumstances.”
A small shrug. “I’ve seen worse from my brother, and from myself.”
“I see…”
Peter seems more interested in the flow of activity across the café — the way men lean back to read their newspapers and women link arms with their friends when they get up to leave, the skillful steps of the waitstaff through the crowd — than he is in continuing that train of thought, so Daniil leaves him to it. He’s not the type to find silence so uncomfortable that he’d rather fill it with pointless small talk. He suspects that Peter isn’t either.
It’s some time before Peter speaks again.
“Andrey tells me you plan to eradicate death.”
Daniil pauses. Looks at him. There’s no derision that he can see, in either Peter’s face or tone, so he says, “Yes.”
“Death is a formidable foe,” Peter says, musingly. “How do you plan to go about it?”
“Study it,” Daniil responds. He’s thought this over hundreds of times. “Truly study death, so that we can understand it, and then we can fight it. Think about it. What other phenomenon do we mythologize to such an extent? Its secrets can be peeled back just like any other.”
“You make it sound so straightforward. A toast to you, then,” Peter says, lifting his coffee slightly off its saucer. It’s all but dregs now. “To peeled secrets, that they tell us something interesting.”
Daniil does not return the gesture. “I’m aware that I might face setbacks.”
The cup is set back down with a soft clink. If Peter is offended, he doesn’t show it. “Yes, I think so too. They are crucial, after all… a true achievement can’t be born without one. Listen. What will you do, if it turns out that the achievement and the setback are one and the same?”
“If— I’m sorry?”
“If death’s defeat is mankind’s setback. What I mean is the possibility that death might teach more than it erases. Like the Greeks used to argue. As the soul is immortal – as it has been reborn, time and again, and has seen both the things of this world and those of the underworld – there is—”
“—nothing it has not learned. Yes, I’m familiar. But that can’t be true. There’s always something we have yet to learn.” He looks out the café’s tall windows, where, past the busy pedestrians and nearly obscured by trees, he can make out the tops of the University’s laboratories. “And I’d wager that we have more to learn here, in this world, than we would in Asphodel.”
A single, slow nod from Peter. “So you agree that souls are immortal… that they’re capable of retaining memories.”
“I do. I have to. Without our thoughts and memories we would be just meat, one brain indistinguishable from the next. There must be something there that can withstand the test of time.”
Peter falls silent.
It occurs to Daniil that he may have come across as too rude, or overbearing. “Well,” he prompts, “and you? You seem relatively convinced of a soul’s ability to preserve information, yourself.”
“Yes. I think there’s something simple — or rather, beautiful — about the idea.”
That’s not a word he’d expected to hear. “Beautiful?”
“Think of a melody you’ve heard at some point in the past… all it takes is the first set of notes for you to remember the rest, though the scale here would be measured not in months or years, but entire lifetimes. Why can’t everything else be the same way?” Peter asks. His gaze is directed towards the table, fingertips rubbing at the whorls of the wood, but his tone is calm, quiet but insistent. “The idea that we already know everything we wish to know. We only need to be reminded of those— first few notes, and then everything will come rushing back…”
Daniil frowns. “I can’t accept that. There’d be no originality of thought, then, no true effort.”
“No. You’d still be…” Peter pauses. “You’d still be taking those individual strains of music and weaving them into something new, your own symphony… Ugh. I’m not explaining this well at all…”
“No, Peter, it’s— I understand completely. Thank you.” And he does. “It’s one thing to have the paint, but to actually create a work of art is another thing altogether…”
Peter’s smile is a small thing.
They end up promising to meet after exams, and in the meantime, Daniil throws himself into his books. He studies until he’s reciting symptom triads in his sleep. By Thursday morning, he’s out of cocaine.
Most of his classmates have already arrived by the time Daniil steps into the hospital’s staffing office and pulls on one of the many white physician’s coats that hang along the wall. The anxiety is palpable. He spots Andrey, who’d left before him to turn in an assignment, near the front of the group, but isn’t able to make his way towards him before the clock chimes 3.
“Well then,” Koszorus says, with a cough. “Follow me.”
The General Hospital is a relatively recent addition to the city, and had been designed with the belief that patient outcomes could be improved if the environment itself, along with the doctors and nurses, supported their healing. In other words, windows and skylights feature prominently, along with ample space between beds. Even the metal bed frames had been painted a pleasing cream.
They crowd around the first bed in the ward. An old woman lies in it — late-70s, Daniil thinks. Her expression is one of displeasure.
“So I suppose it’s my turn now, is it? You lot have been in and out of this place all week. How is anyone to get any rest around here with all the noise you make?”
Koszorus lifts the woman’s medical chart from its hook. “Practical experience is crucial, ma’am. Oleksyak, step forward.”
“Professor.”
“This patient was admitted last Thursday the 19th, for a fractured femur following a fall. Relatives noted a recent onset of walking difficulties and impaired balance. You may begin.”
Oleksyak appears to steel himself, then approaches the bed. “No visible injuries to the cranium, or to the neck,” he announces. He pulls his pocketwatch from his waistcoat and takes her by the wrist; against his steady grip, the slight tremor running through her fingers becomes glaringly obvious. “Pulse slightly elevated. Madam, before your fall, did you experience any pain behind the eyes? Any difficulty moving your limbs?”
“No, no— what pain?” the old woman bites out. “The pain came after I hit the ground.”
Oleksyak looks unconvinced. “Could you smile for me?”
She acquiesces, a little spitefully. Not a stroke, then, but she has other problems: the inside of her mouth is rotted through from a lifetime on calomel. Daniil grimaces.
“Partial facial paralysis is absent.” Oleksyak thinks it over, and then changes tack. “Why did you fall? Do you remember?”
“It’s this good for nothing eye,” she snaps. Frustrated, but not at him. “It’s useless, blurry one day and blind the next… I’d pluck it out of my own head if I could…”
Daniil instinctively leans forward. Oleksyak must have caught it too, because he asks, “Just the one? Which, your right?”
The old woman grinds what’s left of her teeth, but nods. To Koszorus, Oleksyak says, “Patient presents with optic neuritis, oculus dexter,” before drawing a matchbox from his pocket and striking one against its side. “Please hold still.”
“Do not come near me with a lit match, you insolent boy, are you insane?”
“I won’t hurt you, all I need is to check your pupils—”
“Get that thing away from me!”
“Ma’am, I—”
“Nurse!”
Oleksyak turns towards the professor, clearly desperate for guidance. Around them, their classmates continue to look on — some with amusement, others, like Daniil, simply hoping that their own assessment will run smoother. Koszorus doesn’t look up from where he’s taking notes.
“Not all patients will be co-operative, Oleksyak. Find another way.”
Oleksyak closes his eyes. “Alright,” he says, after a moment. “Could you bend your neck forward for me, ma’am?”
“No,” she says, quickly. “Why? I won’t—”
“Does it hurt when you do?”
She purses her lips tightly together. “…Yes.”
“Can you describe it?”
“It’s… it feels like a shock going through my back and into my arms. An electrical current.”
It’d bruised her pride to admit it, not that Oleksyak notices. He’s already looking at Koszorus for confirmation. “Lhermitte’s sign,” he says. “She has disseminated sclerosis.”
“Well done. My apologies for the intrusion, madam. Let’s move on. Volchkova?”
“Yes, professor…”
Volchkova correctly diagnoses her patient, much to her relief, and then it’s Andrey’s turn to lean down in his white physician’s coat and speak to the man in the bed. He’s surprisingly serious about it. Bone cancer for Andrey’s man, and then hyperthyroidism, two stroke victims… Koszorus calls them up one by one, in no pattern that Daniil can discern, until finally it’s Daniil who’s asked to step forward.
Like one of the stroke victims, Daniil’s patient is unconscious. Koszorus flips a page on the man’s chart, and then says, “It seems his condition was critical when he was brought in. They’ve already operated… Well. Patient arrived three days ago in a state of delirium. Recorded temperature of 40.3°C, heart rate of 85/50. Patient’s children reported that he had experienced abdominal pain shortly before onset of subsequent symptoms. Begin.”
“The abdominal pain — was it localized to the right lower quadrant?”
“No.”
“Which was it?”
“Right upper.” Damn. Not appendicitis. Daniil moves closer, straining to catch any hints of the man’s illness that may be lingering upon his face, but comes up short. Fever and abdominal pain — that could be anything. Fuck. What is he missing?
“Was he given antibiotics?”
“Yes.”
“And when was he operated on?”
Koszorus checks his chart. “12 hours after admittance.”
Strange timing. Not urgent enough to be operated on immediately, but a relatively fast interval to be recommended for invasive surgery. Daniil realizes that something must have happened in the meantime. Something that would’ve narrowed down the diagnosis.
“Did he… did the patient develop any additional symptoms following his admittance?”
“Yes, in fact.” He thinks he sees a quirk of Koszorus’ lips, there and gone again. “The patient developed jaundice.”
It’s obvious what the answer is, now that he has the missing piece. Fever, right upper abdominal pain, jaundice. “Charcot’s triad,” Daniil says. “Inflammation of the bile duct system.”
“Very well done, Dankovsky. Excellent.”
Daniil steps back into his crowd of classmates, relieved. He’s passed his exam and with flying colors. Someone slaps his back in congratulations, and when he turns to see who it is, he ends up catching Andrey’s eye instead.
Andrey winks at him and mouths, Told you so.
“I’ve been thinking,” Daniil starts, as they ascend the stairs, “about our last conversation. Do you like music, Peter?”
“I do. Very much. One day I’d like to build a structure to house it.”
“Would you really? Well, you’ll have the opportunity… the Capital is always in need of another concert hall.”
Their conversation lapses into comfortable silence, a tide pulling back from the shore. The university chapel they’re in is technically closed to the public, though renovations have been ongoing for years now and the keys to it aren’t necessarily hard to come by. Peter had simply asked for his. In all honesty, Daniil is a little jealous — the health sciences department isn’t half as cavalier about granting access to its laboratories.
He and Peter are making their way up the scaffolding that circles the west end interior and spirals towards the ceiling frescoes. If he looks down, he can see planks of wood stacked into haphazard piles all across the church floor. It’s somewhat fascinating. He’s never been inside a church that was anything short of pristine, much less one with its pews ripped out.
Daniil loses track of how many more flights it takes, but they get to the uppermost platform eventually, its surface littered with small brushes, empty cans of linseed oil, and crumpled sheets of tarpaulin. There’s just enough space of the both of them. When they sit, it’s thankfully far from the edge.
“This is nice,” Daniil says, once they’ve settled in. “Quite the journey, but worth it. I’m glad you suggested it.”
Peter makes a little noise of acknowledgment. Then: “Earlier, you sounded surprised. Why?”
Daniil casts his mind back to their conversation on the stairs. “Oh. Well, I would’ve expected an architect to prefer… the more substantial things. Architecture is the most lasting of the arts, while I’d consider music the most ephemeral. It lives only in the instant it is created and then in the memory of the audience and its performers. As arts, they’re perfectly opposed.”
“No,” Peter says. “They’re not. Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music.” He’s looking out across the expanse. Directly across from them is the chapel organ, gleaming metal pipes arranged in a distinctly modernist symmetry. “No two arts are more aligned.”
“Tell me about your concert hall, then.” The conversation reminds him of the ones he would have with Andrey on the quad, back when the weather was warmer — a little slower, certainly, but no less interesting for it. He likes talking to Peter. “You must have ideas.”
“It wouldn’t be a concert hall.”
“No?”
“I’d like to create a music box… Not the ones you can find on dressers, with their unsightly cranks, but a true one. I want to be able to capture the essence of a performance. Design the acoustics so that there’s no degradation…”
“In other words, an auditory version of a perpetual motion machine?”
“Yes,” Peter replies. “Or an exceptionally well-cut gem. Facets that can reflect sound as well as light… so that one can simply close the door and have the music echo without end.”
“That’s beautiful, Peter.” Daniil wraps his coat tighter around himself; it’s a little drafty, this high up. “I wonder if you could build it so the temperature regulates itself as well. Sound travels further when—”
Peter kisses him.
He tastes like the raspberry tarts they’d shared on the walk over, so early that the streetlamps were still on and the baker had seemed mildly startled by the ringing of the entrance bell. He’s warm. When he pulls back, his gaze is searching.
Daniil clears his throat, softly. “You can do that again. I mean, if you’d like to. I wouldn’t objec—”
Peter leans in again, and this time Daniil lifts a hand to his jaw. Daniil can’t help but smile. The angle’s better like this, and Peter is languid against him, exploratory and unconcerned on an early spring morning.
They stay there for a little while, Peter’s hand covered with Daniil’s own, as the sounds of a waking city drift up to meet them and the floorboards of the church are painted gradually in the reds and blues of stained-glass light. He looks between them and blinks. It’s a fleeting illusion, a trompe l’oeil, but for a second the sun plays across their hands so searingly that Daniil can’t make out where he ends and Peter begins.