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In the deforested valleys of Korea, Napoleon Solo was dying. He had been separated from his platoon, all of them fighting a useless war 7,000 miles from home, and he would never see any of them again. The soldier he was with was dying too, more quickly than Napoleon, and more painfully. He was mumbling under his breath. Maybe praying. It had the intonation of a poem. His head was in Napoleon’s lap and Napoleon was holding his shoulders, feeling him shiver uncontrollably despite the summer heat.
Napoleon looked up into the empty sky beyond the few remaining trees. His ears were still ringing from the artillery fire, but he thought he could hear birds. Insects, too. Faraway thunder. A nearby river. When he looked back down at his fellow soldier, the man was already dead. His features were familiar. He was wearing a silver watch.
Napoleon shuddered, died, and woke up.
The ceiling of his motel room was cracked and water-spotted. The sheets were scratchy and the pillows thin. Nothing like his last visit to Rome. He stretched and stood up, then peeled off his cotton undershirt and wiped his face and neck with it. Also unlike his last visit, it was the middle of summer and sticky with coastal humidity. Nightmares were not uncommon, but the eyes of the dead soldier were haunting him. He paced his hotel room, touching each surface with his fingers, trying to release the knot in his stomach. Eventually he went to the interior door separating his room from the next and opened it.
Ilya Kuryakin was sprawled in his bed, face-down, with a hand under his pillow. He was not asleep.
“You are making floor creak with walking,” he said, voice groggy. “Stop.”
Napoleon could tell that Ilya was naked under the sheets, but there was nothing sexual in the realization. It was the same thing he'd felt thirteen years ago in Florence, staring up at the statue of David, grieving everything the war had taken from him. Quiet awe and simmering rage in equal measure.
“Who’s your favorite poet?” he asked, just to break the silence.
“I don’t like poetry and I don’t know any poets,” Ilya said without opening his eyes. “Go back to your own room.”
“Mine is Byron,” Napoleon lied.
“Yes, it would be,” Ilya said, still not looking at him.
“Why do you say that?” Napoleon asked, suddenly offended on his lie’s behalf.
Ilya opened one eye and fixed Napoleon with it. “A man so whorish his only legitimate daughter designed computing machines to spite him. Mary Shelley invented monsters to avoid spending time with him. You would have a lot in common to talk about, I am sure.”
Napoleon huffed through his nose, baited and defensive. “I like his poems.”
Ilya closed his eye and rolled over towards the window. “Your taste is poor. Go to bed.”
Napoleon stood in the doorway and he could tell by Ilya’s tensed muscles that the man knew he was still there. Ilya withdrew his hand from under his pillow and Napoleon expected to see a knife, but Ilya was instead clutching his precious silver watch. He held it up to the window to check the time and the sheets fell away from his shoulders, gathering at his waist. The glow of the moon cut crisp shadows along the muscles of his arms, his back. The bed was barely large enough for him. His tousled hair— Napoleon cleared his throat and looked away, suddenly overwhelmed. He wasn’t shy by any means and had seen more than his fair share of naked bodies, but couldn’t stand to look at Ilya illuminated like that. Something about it made him feel like Ilya was pointing a knife at him.
“Is almost five,” Ilya said, dragging Napoleon out of his own thoughts. “I was going to sleep another hour, but if you are going to annoy me anyways I will get up now.” He stood from his bed and Napoleon, horrified, felt his face heat up as he tried to find somewhere appropriate to look. Ilya noticed. He yanked the sheet from his bed in a single smooth motion and held it in front of himself, almost demurely, in a way that made Napoleon light-headed.
“You can look,” Ilya said. “I am not ashamed of them.” Napoleon, confused, made eye contact with him, trying to understand what he meant. Then his gaze crawled of its own accord over Ilya’s shoulders, his chest, his stomach, picking out the pink and white scars under his body hair. Some were clearly from scraps he and Napoleon had gotten into together, but others were older, much older. Not a single one was on his back. Once again Napoleon saw in his mind the image of La Pietà, which he had glimpsed through a packed crowd at the World’s Fair in ’64.
Ilya turned his face towards the window, revealing a patch of stubble he’d missed while shaving, and suddenly he was human again. A man, not a statue, and Napoleon was not Pygmalion, and he wanted Ilya to… to hit him, maybe, or kiss him, but the humid air between them was their own iron curtain. To cross it would be to change their world irrevocably.
“I don’t have a favorite poet,” Napoleon blurted out. Ilya narrowed his eyes a little, not accusing, but assessing, analyzing. Sifting through what Napoleon had said, and why, when even Napoleon himself didn’t know. After a few silent moments he took a step towards Napoleon, who in turn took a step back. Ilya stopped. Hesitated. Then said,
“Anna Akhmatova.”
The room around them was silent, but the air between buzzed with something Napoleon had never felt before and did not yet understand.
“Can I read her poems?” he asked.
“No,” said Ilya. “And even if you could, you would not understand them. They are not for people like you.” He reached out to close the door between them. “They are not for people like me, either. But someday maybe they will be. Go back to sleep, cowboy.”
The click of the door closing had a weight to it, a finality – but Napoleon noticed that Ilya did not lock it from his side. He sat down on his bed and stared out the window, not sleeping, until the sun finally rose over the ancient city around him.