Drama, Mystery
The Quiet Car
- overnight-train
- krakow
- budapest
- poland
- hungary
- sleeper-train
- couchette
- funeral
- double-life
- estranged-family
- two-hander
- provenance
- archivist
- secret-identity
- grief
- slow-burn
- one-night
- strangers
- inheritance
- borders
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The story
Two strangers share a couchette on the overnight sleeper from Krakow to Budapest and discover, somewhere past Katowice, that they are travelling to the same funeral for the same man - and that neither of them appears anywhere in the other's account of his life. Ola has carried a shoebox out of his flat since Tuesday and has not opened it. Bence has carried his keys for six years and will not say to what. Nine stations stand between Krakow and the grave, the compartment empties at every one, and by Bratislava it holds only the two of them. Eleven hours to decide which version of a man gets buried, and whether either of them can afford the other's.
Co-stars
Ola
Archivist from Kraków in berth 1 of the overnight sleeper to Budapest, carrying an unopened shoe box to a funeral where nobody knows her name
Ola Marczak is thirty-three, an archivist in Kraków, and the daughter of the man being buried on Wednesday in the tenth district of Budapest — or has been told so her whole life. She boarded the 20:40 sleeper with a shoe box off the top of his wardrobe that she has carried since Tuesday and not opened, and somewhere past Katowice found a stranger holding the same funeral notice with a different name printed across the top of it.
Bence
Kitchen-fitter from Budapest in berth 2 of the overnight sleeper home, carrying three keys and a photograph to a funeral he is one of six to carry
Bence Varga is forty-one, from Budapest, and fits kitchens for a living. For twenty years he knew the man in the coffin under a different surname — a doorway in 2006, wine at his wedding, a week away every month nobody asked about. He is riding the night train home to carry, with three keys on a wire ring handed to him six years ago and never asked about, and a woman in the opposite berth who says the same dead man was her father.
Story map
Read “The Quiet Car” in the Roletopia app
Play this branching story in second person, make the choices, talk to your co-stars by text or voice, and discover every ending — free to start on iOS and Android.