"Metro 2033" - читать интересную книгу автора (Glukhovsky Dmitry A)

CHAPTER 9. Du Stirbst

‘To be hanged,’ the commandant concluded. There was a burst of applause which mercilessly tormented his eardrums.

Artyom raised his head with difficulty and looked from side to side. Only one of his eyes could open, the other was totally swollen – the interrogators had tortured him with all their might. He couldn’t hear very well either, it was as though sounds were making their way to him through a thick layer of cotton wool. It felt like his teeth were all still in place. But what would he need his teeth for now anyway?

Again the same light-coloured marble, the normal stuff. And this white marble was already setting his teeth on edge. Massive iron chandeliers on the ceiling, once, probably electrical fixtures. Now, there were lard candles in them, and the ceiling above them was completely black. There were only two such chandeliers burning in the whole station, one at the very end where a wide staircase stood, and the other where Artyom was standing in the middle of the hall, on the steps of a little bridge that connected to a side passage that led to another metro line.

Frequent semi-circular arches, almost completely unnoticeable columns, there was a lot of free space. What kind of station is this?

‘The execution will take place tomorrow at five o’clock in the morning at Tverskaya station,’ the fat man who was standing next to the commandant specified.

Like his superior, he was dressed not in green camouflage but in a black uniform with brilliant yellow buttons. There were black berets on both of them, but not as big or as crudely made as those on the soldiers in the tunnel.

There were lots of depictions of eagles and the three-pronged swastika, and slogans and mottos, drawn with great care in Gothic letters. Diligently trying to focus on the blurred words, Artyom read: ‘The metro is for Russians!’ ‘Swarthy people to the surface!’ ‘Death to the rat-eaters!’ There were others too, with more abstract contents: ‘March forward to the last battle for the greatness of the Russian spirit!’ ‘With fire and sword we will establish true Russian order!’ Then there was something from Hitler: ‘A healthy body means a healthy spirit!’ There was one inscription that especially made an impression on him. It was underneath a skilfully drawn portrait of a brave soldier with a powerful jaw and a strong chin, and a rather resolute-looking woman. They were depicted in profile, so that the man was shielding the woman. ‘Each man is a soldier and each woman is the mother of a soldier!’ the slogan went. All these inscriptions and pictures had somehow absorbed more of Artyom’s attention than the words of the commandant.

Right in front of him, behind a cordon, the crowd was restless. There weren’t many people here and they were all dressed rather blandly and basically, in quilted jackets and greasy overalls. There were hardly any women to be seen, and if this reflected reality, there wouldn’t be many more soldiers in the future. Artyom’s head fell to his chest – he hadn’t the strength to hold it upright anymore, and if there hadn’t been two broad-shouldered escorts in berets supporting him under the arms, he would have fallen already.

He felt faint again, and his head had begun to spin, and he couldn’t manage to say anything ironic. Artyom had the impression that they would now turn him inside out in front of all these people.

A stupid indifference about what would happen to him gradually crept up on Artyom. Now he only had an abstract interest in what was surrounding him, as though none of this was happening to him, but he was just reading a book about it. The fate of the main character interested him, of course, but if he was killed then he could just pick another book off the shelf – one with a happy ending.

At first, he had been carefully beaten at length by patient and strong people while others asked him clever and judicious questions. The room had been, predictably, covered with disturbing yellow-coloured tiles, making it easy to wipe away blood. But it was impossible to get rid of its smell.

To start off with they taught him to call the gaunt man with slick, light hair and delicate features who was leading the interrogation ‘commandant.’ Then they taught him not to ask questions but to answer them. Then they taught him to answer the questions accurately and to the point. Artyom couldn’t understand how his teeth were still in his mouth – though a few of them were seriously wobbly and his mouth had a constant taste of blood in it. At first, he tried to justify himself but it was explained to him that that wasn’t worth it. Then he tried to stay silent but he was quickly convinced that this too seemed to be the wrong thing to do. It was very painful. It is altogether a strange feeling when a strong man beats you over the head – it’s not just pain, but some kind of hurricane, which wipes all the thought from your mind and smashes your feelings to pieces. The real torture happens afterwards.

After a while, Artyom finally understood what he needed to do. It was simple – he needed to manage the expectations of the commandant the best way he could. If the commandant asked whether Artyom was sent by Kuznetsky Most, he had to just affirm that with a nod. It took less strength, and the commandant didn’t wrinkle his Slavic nose at the response and his assistants didn’t hit him. The commandant assumed that Artyom was sent with the aim of collecting military information and performing some kind of sabotage. He agreed again with a nod and then the torturer rubbed his hands together with satisfaction and Artyom had saved his second eye. But it was important not just to nod, he had to listen to exactly what the commandant had asked because if Artyom assented inattentively, the mood would worsen and one if his helpers would try, for example, to break one of Artyom’s ribs. After about an hour and a half of this unrushed conversation, Artyom couldn’t feel his body anymore, he couldn’t see very well, he could scarcely hear and he understood almost nothing. He lost consciousness a few times, but they brought him back to his senses with iced water and ammonia. He must have been a very interesting person to talk to.

In the end, they had an absolutely false idea of who he was. They saw him as an enemy spy and a saboteur, who had appeared in order to stab the Fourth Reich in the back, and having decapitated the leadership, to sow the seeds of chaos and to prepare for an invasion. The ultimate goal was the establishment of an anti-national Caucasian-Zionist regime over the whole of the metro system. Though Artyom generally understood little about politics, such a global aim seemed to him to be worthy and so he told them that was true too. And it was good that he had agreed. Because of this he still had all his teeth. After the final details of the plot were revealed, they allowed Artyom to pass out.

When he could open his eye one last time, the commandant was already reading the sentence. The final formalities had barely been settled when the date of his departure from this world was announced to the public, and they pulled a black hood over his head and face and his vision worsened dramatically. He could see nothing, and he was even more dizzy. He barely managed to stay standing for a minute and stopped struggling when a spasm seized his body and he vomited right onto his boots.

The guard took a cautious step backwards, and the public rustled indignantly. For a moment, Artyom felt ashamed, and then he felt his head swimming and his knees buckling.

A strong arm was holding up his chin, and he heard a familiar voice, which now seemed almost to come from a dream world:

‘Let’s go. Come with me Artyom! It’s all over. Get up!’ he said, but Artyom still couldn’t find the strength to get up or even to lift his head.

It was very dark, probably because of the hood. But how would he get it off if his hands were tied at the back? Getting it off was essential – to look to see if it was indeed the person he thought it was or if he was imagining it.

‘The hood…’ Artyom managed to say, hoping the person would understand.

The black veil that had been over his eyes then disappeared and Artyom saw Hunter in front of him. He hadn’t changed at all since the time Artyom had talked with him, a while back now, a whole eternity ago, at VDNKh. How had he got here? Artyom wearily moved his head and looked around. He was on the platform of the exact same station where they had read his sentence. There were dead bodies everywhere; only a few candles in one chandelier continued to smoke. The other chandelier was blown out. Hunter was holding the same pistol in his right hand that had so amazed Artyom the last time, having seemed so huge with its long silencer screwed onto its barrel and its impressive laser sight. A ‘Stechkin.’ The hunter was looking at Artyom anxiously and attentively.

‘Is everything OK with you? Can you walk?’

‘Yes. Probably.’ Artyom summoned his courage but he was interested in something else at that moment. ‘You’re alive? Did everything work out for you?’

‘As you can see,’ Hunter smiled wearily. ‘Thanks for your help.’

‘But I didn’t complete the task.’ Artyom shook his head and it was burningly painful, and he was filled with shame.

‘You did everything you could.’ Hunter patted him soothingly on the shoulder.

‘And what’s happening at home? At VDNKh?’

‘Everything’s fine, Artyom. Everything has already passed. I was able to collapse the entrance and now the dark ones won’t be able to get into the metro anymore. We’re saved. Let’s go.’

‘And what happened here?’ Artyom looked around, noticing with horror that the whole hall was filled with corpses, and that other than his voice and Hunter’s, not another sound could be heard.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Hunter looked into his eyes firmly. ‘You shouldn’t worry about it.’ He bent over and lifted his sack from the floor. A smoking army hand machine gun was lying in it. His cartridge belt was almost spent.

The hunter moved forward and Artyom tried to keep step. Looking from side to side, he saw something that he hadn’t noticed before. Several dark figures were hanging from the little bridge where Artyom had had his sentence read.

Hunter said nothing and was taking long steps, as though he had forgotten that Artyom could barely move. As much as Artyom tried, the distance between then was increasing all the time, and Artyom was afraid that Hunter would just go off, leaving him in this horrible station, which was covered in slippery and still warm blood, and where the only inhabitants were corpses. Do I really deserve this? Artyom thought. Is my life so much more important than the lives of all these people? No, he was glad to have been rescued. But all these people – randomly scattered, like bags and rags, on the granite of the platform, side by side, on the rails, left forever in the poses that Hunter’s bullets had found them in – they all died so that he could live? Hunter had made this exchange with such ease, just as though he had sacrificed some minor chess figures to safeguard one of the most important pieces… He was just a player, and the metro was a chessboard, and all the figures were his, because he was playing the game with himself. But here was the question: Was Artyom such an important piece to the game that all these people had to perish for his preservation? Henceforth the blood that was flowing along the cold granite would probably pulse in his veins too. It was like he had drunk it, extracted it from others for his existence. Now he would never be warm again…

Artyom, with effort, ran forward a bit in order to catch up with Hunter and to ask if he would ever become warm again or would he, even at the hottest firesides, stay this cold and melancholic, like an icy winter’s night on a far-flung semi-station.

But Hunter was far in the distance. Maybe it was because Artyom didn’t manage to catch him up that Hunter descended onto the tracks and rushed into the tunnel with the agility of an animal. His movements seemed, to Artyom, like the movements of… a dog? No, a rat… Oh God.

‘Are you a rat?’ The terrible idea tore from Artyom’s mouth, and he was frightened by what he’d said.

‘No,’ came the answer. ‘You’re the rat. You’re the rat! Cowardly rat! Cowardly rat!’ Someone repeated it just above his ear, and spat fruitily.

Artyom shook his head but immediately regretted it. Now, thanks to his sharp movements, the aching blunt pain in his body had exploded. He lost control of his limbs and started to stumble forward, and then he rested his burning forehead on something cool and metallic. The surface was ribbed and it pressed on his skin unpleasantly but it cooled his inflamed flesh, and Artyom froze in that position for a time, not having the strength to make any further decisions. He caught his breath and then carefully tried to open his left eye a little bit.

He sat on the floor, his forehead against a lattice of some sort. It went up to the ceiling and filled the space on both sides of the low and narrow arch. He was facing the hall, and there were paths behind him. All the nearest arches opposite him, as far as he could see, were turned into cages too; there were a few people sitting in each of them. This station was exactly the opposite of the station where he had been sentenced to death. That one was utterly graceful, light, airy, spacious, with transparent columns, wide and high arches, despite the gloomy lighting and the inscriptions and drawings covering the walls. It was like a banquet hall compared with this one. Here everything was oppressive and scary. There was a low, rounded ceiling, like in the tunnels. It was barely twice a man’s height. And there were massive, rough columns, each of which was much wider than the arches that cut across between them. The ceiling of the arches were so close to the ground that he could have reached up and touched it were it not for the fact that his hands were tied with wire behind his back. Apart from Artyom there were another two people in the cell. One was lying on the ground with his face buried in a heap of rags, and he was groaning dully. The other had black eyes and brown hair and hadn’t shaved for some time, and he was squatting, leaning against the marble wall, watching Artyom with lively curiosity. There were two strong men in camouflage and berets patrolling the length of the cages, one of whom had a big dog on a leash, and he would scold it from time to time. They, it seemed, had woken Artyom.

It had been a dream. It had been a dream. He had dreamt it all.

They were going to hang him.

‘What time is it?’ he muttered, only slightly moving his inflamed tongue, and looking sideways at the black-eyed man.

‘Happast nine,’ the man answered willingly, pronouncing his words with the same accent that Artyom had heard at Kitai Gorod: instead of ‘o’ they said ‘a’ and instead of ‘y’ they said ‘ay’. And then he added, ‘In the evening.’

Half past nine. Two and a half hours until twelve – and five hours before… before the procedure. Seven and a half hours. And while he was thinking, counting, time was already flying past.

Once Artyom had tried to imagine: what would, what should a person feel and think in the face of death, the night before his execution? Fear? Hatred for his executioners? Regret?

But he was empty inside. His heart was thumping hard in his breast, his temples were throbbing, blood slowly accumulated in his mouth until he swallowed. The blood had the taste of rusty iron. Or was it that wet iron had the taste of fresh blood?

They would hang him. They would kill him.

He would cease to exist.

He couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t take it on board.

Everyone knows that death is unavoidable. Death was a part of daily life in the metro. But it always seemed that nothing unfortunate would happen to you, that the bullets would fly past you, the disease would skip over you. Death of old age was a slow affair so you needn’t think about it. You can’t live in constant awareness of your mortality. You had to forget about it, and though these thoughts came to you anyway, you had to drive them away, to smother them, otherwise they could take root in your consciousness and they would make your life a misery. You can’t think about the fact that you’ll die. Otherwise you might go mad. There’s only one thing that can save a man from madness and that’s uncertainty. The life of someone who has been sentenced to death is different from the life of a normal person in only one way: the one knows exactly when he will die, and the regular person is in the dark about it, and consequently it seems he can live forever, even though it’s entirely possible that he could be killed in a catastrophic event the following day. Death isn’t frightening by itself. What’s frightening is expecting it.

In seven hours.

How would they do it? Artyom couldn’t really imagine how people were hanged. They once had to execute a traitor at their station but Artyom was still little then and didn’t understand much, and anyway, they wouldn’t perform public executions at VDNKh. They would probably throw a rope around his neck… either they’d string him up to the ceiling… or there would be some sort of stool involved… No, it didn’t bear thinking about.

He was thirsty.

With effort he flicked the switch and the train of his thoughts swept onto other rails – to the officer he had shot. The first person he’d ever killed. The scene arose before his eyes again, invisible bullets going into his broad chest, and how they had left burnt black marks in which fresh blood had coagulated. He didn’t feel the slightest regret for what he’d done, and this surprised him. Once, he had reckoned that every killed person must be a heavy burden on the conscience of the person who killed them – they would appear in dreams, disturb his old age… But no. It seemed it wasn’t like that at all. There was no pity. No repentance. Only gloomy satisfaction. And Artyom understood that if the murdered person were to come to him in a nightmare, then he would only turn indifferently away from the phantom and it would then disappear without a trace. But old age… There would be no old age anymore.

Time was running out. It would probably involve a stool. When there is so little time, you have to think about something important, about the most important thing, that you never found time to think about before, leaving it all till later… About the fact that your life wasn’t lived right, and that you’d do it differently if given a second chance… No. He couldn’t have had any other life in this world, and there was nothing to try to re-do. When the border guard shot Vanechka in the head should he not have rushed for his automatic machine gun but instead have stayed standing at the side? It wouldn’t have worked – he would never have managed to chase Vanechka and Mikhail Porfirevich from his dreams. What had happened to the old man? Damn, what would it take to get a mouthful of water!

First they would lead him out of the cell… And if he was lucky then they’d lead him through the transfer passage but there’d little time for that now. And if they didn’t put that damned cover over his head, he would be able to see something, apart from the rods of the lattice in front of him and the endless rows of cages.

‘What station you from?’ said Artyom through dry lips, tearing himself away from the lattice and looking up into the eyes of his neighbour.

‘Tverskaya,’ the man responded. Then he asked: ‘Listen, brother, what are you in here for?’

‘I killed an officer,’ Artyom slowly replied. It was hard for him to speak.

‘O-oh…’ the unshaved man offered sympathetically. ‘So they’re going to hang you?’

Artyom shrugged, and turned again to lean on the lattice.

‘Sure they will,’ his neighbour assured him.

They will. And soon. Right here at the station, and they won’t be transferring him.

If only to get a drink of water… To wash this metallic taste from his mouth, to moisten his dry throat, then, maybe, he could speak to this man for a little more than a minute. There was no water in the cage, but on the other side of the space there was a fetid tin bucket. Could he ask his jailers? Maybe they give small indulgences to those who have been sentenced? If he could only have pushed his hand out through the lattice, and wave it a little… But his hands were tied behind his back, and the wire was digging into his wrists and he had lost all sensation. He tried to cry out, but only a rattle emerged, which turned into a cough from deep in his lungs.

Both guards approached the cage when they noticed his attempts to get their attention.

‘The rat has awoken,’ the one with the dog grinned.

Artyom threw his head back to see the man’s face and whispered with difficulty, ‘Drink. Water.’

‘A drink?’ The guard with the dog pretended to be surprised. ‘What do you need that for? You’re just about to be strung up and all you want is to drink! No, we won’t be getting you any water. Maybe that way you’ll die sooner.’

The matter was settled and Artyom closed his eyes wearily, but the jailers apparently wanted to chat with him some more.

‘So, you scum, you’ve finally understood who you raised your fist to?’ the other guard asked. ‘And you’re even a Russian, you rat! It’s because of those morons who will stab you in the back with your own knife, those…’ He nodded at Artyom’s neighbour in the next cage. ‘The whole metro will be full of them soon and your simple Russian won’t even be able to breathe anymore.’

The unshaved prisoner looked down. Artyom could only find the strength to shrug his shoulders.

‘And they smacked that mongrel of yours nicely too,’ the first guard added. ‘Sidorov said that the tunnel was a bloodbath. And quite right. Subhumans! They need to be destroyed. They are our… genofond!’ He remembered the difficult word. ‘They ruin things. And your old man died too,’ he concluded.

‘What?’ Artyom sobbed. He’d been afraid of that, but he’d hoped that perhaps the old man hadn’t died, that maybe he was somewhere here, in the next chamber…

‘Right. He died. They ironed him a little bit but he up and croaked,’ the guard with the dog said happily, satisfied by the fact that Artyom was finally reacting to them.

‘You will die. All your relatives will die…’ He could see Mikhail Porfirevich, without a care in the world, stopping in the middle of the tunnel, leafing through his notepad, and then repeating this last line with emotion. What was it again? ‘Der Toten Tatenrum?’ No, the poet was mistaken, there aren’t any acts of glory anymore. There isn’t anything anymore.

Then he remembered how Mikhail Porfirevich had missed his old apartment, and especially his old bed. Then his thoughts started thickening, and were flowing more and more slowly, and then they stopped altogether. He rested his forehead against the lattice again and, with a dulled mind, he started looking at the jailer’s sleeve. A three-pronged swastika. Strange symbol. Looks either like a star or like a crippled spider.

‘Why only three?’ he asked. ‘Why three?’

He had to tip his head towards the man’s armband so the security guards would understand what he meant.

‘Well, how many do you need?’ the one with the dog answered indignantly. ‘There are three stations, you fool! It’s a symbol of unity. And, just you wait, when we get to Polis, we’ll add a fourth…’

‘What are you talking about?’ the other guard interrupted. ‘It’s an ancient symbol, a primordial Slavic sign! It’s called a solstice. It belonged to the Fritzs and then we took it over. Stations – you pot-head. ’

‘But there’s no more sun anymore…’ Artyom squeezed out the words, feeling as though there was a muddy veil over his eyes, and his sense of hearing was disappearing into the haze.

‘That’s it, he’s gone mad,’ the guard with the dog announced with gratification. ‘Let’s go, Senya, and find someone else for a chat.’

Artyom didn’t know how much time had passed while he sat there deprived of his thoughts and his vision. He occasionally regained consciousness and understood vague images. But everything was saturated with the taste and smell of blood. However, he was glad that his body had taken pity on his mind and killed all thought, and so released his sense of reason was from melancholy.

‘Hey, brother!’ His neighbour shook his shoulder. ‘Don’t sleep. You’ve been sleeping for a long time! It’s almost four o’clock!’

Artyom tried to surface from the chasm of his unconsciousness but it was difficult, as though lead weights had been attached to his feet. Reality came to him slowly, like the indistinct outlines on film that has been placed in developing solution.

‘What time is it?’ he croaked.

‘Ten to four,’ the black-eyed man said.

Ten to four… They’d probably come for him in about forty minutes. And in an hour and ten minutes… An hour and nine minutes. An hour and eight minutes. Seven minutes.

‘What’s your name?’ his neighbour asked.

‘Artyom.’

‘I’m Ruslan. My brother was called Ahmed, and they shoot him straight away. But I don’t know what they do with me. My name is Russian – maybe they don’t want mistake.’ The black-eyed man was happy that he finally managed to start a conversation.

‘Where are you from?’

None of this was of interest to Artyom, but the chatting of his unshaven neighbour helped him to fill his head. It didn’t matter what it was filling it with. He didn’t want to think about VDNKh. He didn’t want to think about the mission that he had been charged with. He didn’t want to think about what was happening in the metro. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to!

‘I’m from Kievskaya. You know it? We call it sunny Kiev…’ Ruslan smiled, showing a row of white teeth. ‘There are lots of my people there… I have a wife, children – three children. The oldest one has six fingers on his hands!’ he added proudly.

… Something to drink. Just a mouthful. Even if it’s tepid. he wouldn’t mind tepid water. Unfiltered even. Any water. A mouthful. And to be forgotten about again, until the escorts come to get him. He wanted an empty mind again, and not to be bothered. He wanted his head to stop spinning, to stop itching, to stop his thoughts from telling him that he’d made a mistake. He didn’t have the right to do what he did. He should have gone off. Turned his back. Covered his ears. Carried on. Made it from Pushkinskaya to Chekhovskaya. And from there it was just one transfer. So easy. Just one transfer and it would all have been done, his task completed. He would be alive.

Something to drink. His hands had become so numb that he didn’t feel them.

It’s so much easier for people to die when they believe in something! For those who believe that death isn’t the end of everything. For those in whose eyes the world is separated into black and white – who know exactly what they need to do and why, who hold the torch of an idea, of beliefs, in their hands, and everything they see is illuminated by it. Those who have nothing to doubt and nothing to regret. They must have an easy time of dying. They die with a smile on their face.

‘We had fruit big like this before! And the beautiful flowers! I give them to the girl for no money and she give me the smile…’ The words reached Artyom but couldn’t distract him anymore.

Steps could be heard from the depths of the hall. Several people were approaching and Artyom’s heart tightened and turned into a small nervous lump. Were they coming for him? So soon! He thought forty minutes would have lasted longer… Or had his devilish neighbour told him that more time was left because he had wanted to give him some hope? No, it couldn’t be…

Three pairs of boots stopped at his cage. Two of them were in spotted military trousers, one in black trousers. The lock made a grinding sound and Artyom only just managed not to fall over as the cage door he was leaning on opened.

‘Pick him up,’ someone said…

He was grabbed under the arms and he soared towards the ceiling.

‘Break a leg!’ Ruslan wished him, as a parting gesture.

There were two machine gunners, but not those that he’d talked to. However, these were just as anonymous looking. A third guy with a bristling moustache and watery blue eyes was wearing a black uniform and a small beret. ‘Follow me,’ he ordered and they dragged Artyom to the other end of the platform. He tried to walk himself. He didn’t want them to drag him like he was a helpless doll… If he had to leave this life, he wanted to do it with pride. But his legs wouldn’t obey him, they buckled, and he could only clumsily place them on the floor, hampering the forward motion so that the man in the black uniform looked at him severely.

The cages didn’t continue to the end of the hall. The row was interrupted in the middle where the escalators to the next level down were situated. There, in the depths, torches were burning and ominous crimson light reflected on the ceilings. There were cries of pain coming from below. Artyom suddenly had a thought about the underworld and he felt a certain relief when they had led him past the escalators. From the last cage, someone yelled to him, ‘Farewell my friend!’ But Artyom didn’t pay him any attention. He could only see a glass of water looming before his eyes.

On the opposite wall there was a guards observation post, a roughly knocked-together table with two chairs and there was a sign with that symbol which said no entry for black people. He couldn’t see any gallows anywhere and, for a moment, Artyom had the crazy hope that they had only wanted to scare him and that they weren’t really leading him to his hanging but they were taking him to the end of the station so that he could be let go without the others seeing it.

The man with the moustache, who was walking ahead, turned at the last archway, towards the pathways, and Artyom began to believe in his rescue fantasy even more strongly…

There was a small platform on wheels standing on the rails, and it was arranged in such a manner that its floor was level with the station floor. There was a thickset man in a spotted uniform, checking a loop of rope that was hanging from a hook screwed into the ceiling. The only difference between him and the others was that his rolled up sleeves showed powerful forearms, and he had a knitted hat pulled over his head with holes cut into it for his eyes.

‘Is everything ready?’ the man in the black uniform said and the executioner nodded at him.

‘I don’t like this construction,’ he said. ‘Why couldn’t we use the good old stool? Then it’s – pow!’ He punched his fist into his other palm. ‘Break his neck! But with this thing… While he’s choking, he’ll squirm like a worm on a hook. And when they choke, there’s so much to clean up afterwards! There’s like guts everywhere…’

‘Enough!’ the man in the black uniform said. Then he took the executioner aside and furiously hissed something at him.

As soon as their superior had stepped away, the soldiers quickly went back to their interrupted conversation.

‘So?’ the one on the left impatiently asked the one on the right.

‘OK, so,’ the one on the right whispered loudly, ‘I pushed her up against the column and shoved my hand under her skirt and she turned all soft and said to me…’ But he didn’t manage to finish because his superior had returned.

‘Never mind the fact that he’s Russian – he transgressed!… The traitor, the turncoat, degenerate, and traitors should be painfully punished!’ He was encouraging the executioner.

They untied his hands, and took off his jacket and jumper so that Artyom stood there only wearing his dirty undershirt. Then they tore the cartridge case that Hunter had given him off the string around his neck. ‘A talisman?’ the executioner inquired. ‘I’ll put it in your pocket, it might still come in handy.’

His voice was far from evil, and it was curiously soothing.

Then they pulled his hands together behind his back and pushed Artyom onto the scaffold. The soldiers remained on the platform since they weren’t needed. He couldn’t escape anyway since it required all the strength Artyom had just to stand there while the executioner fitted the loop over his head. To stand up, not fall and make no noise. Something to drink. That’s all that he could think about. Water. Water!

‘Water…’ he croaked.

‘Water?’ The executioner threw up his hands in disappointment. ‘Where am I going to get you any water now? It’s not possible, my dear, we’re already way behind schedule – now just be patient, not long now…’

He jumped off onto the path with a thud and spat on his hands before taking up the rope attached to the scaffold. The soldiers were lined up and their commander had assumed a significant and even solemn look.

‘As an enemy spy, who has viciously betrayed his people,’ he began.

In Artyom’s head there was a dance of thought fragments and images that said wait, it’s too early, I haven’t yet managed to do what I had to do, and then Hunter’s strict face appeared before his eyes and disappeared immediately in the crimson twilight of the station, then Sukhoi’s tender gaze appeared and vanished too. Mikhail Porfirevich… ‘You will die’… the dark ones… they can’t… Wait! And over all this, interrupting his memories, the words, his desires, shrouding them in a stuffy dense haze, hung a great thirst. Something to drink…

‘… degenerate, who discredits his own nation…’ the voice continued to burble.

Suddenly there were shouts in the tunnel and a burst of machine gun fire, and then a loud bang and everything went quiet. The soldiers grabbed their machine guns. Their superior in black turned nervously and quickly said, ‘Punishment by death. Go ahead!’ And he gave the signal.

The executioner grunted and pulled the rope, planting his feet on the cross-ties. The boards slipped away from Artyom’s feet, though he tried to keep touching them, so that he could stay on the scaffold, but they moved further off and it was getting harder and harder to stand. The rope was dragging him back, towards death, and he didn’t want it, he didn’t want to die…

Then the floor slipped out from under him and the loop tightened from the weight of his body. It squeezed his neck, cut into his windpipe, and a rattle issued from his throat. His sight lost its sharpness, and everything was twisted inside him. His body was begging for air, but he couldn’t inhale, no matter what he tried, and his body started to coil, convulsively, and there was an awful tickling feeling in his stomach. The station clouded with a poisonous yellow smoke and gunshots roared nearby, and then he lost consciousness.

‘Hey, hangman! Come on, come on now. Don’t pretend. We’ve felt your pulse so you can’t feign death.’ And he was hit across the cheeks, bringing him round.

‘I refuse to do mouth-to-mouth on him again!’ the other person said.

This time Artyom was absolutely sure that it was a dream, the last seconds of unconsciousness before the end. Death was so close, and the moment her iron fist closed around his neck was as indisputable as the moment the floor fell away from underneath him and he hung over the rails.

‘That’s enough blinking, you’ll be fine!’ the first voice insisted. ‘We got you out of the loop so you could enjoy life again and you’re rolling all over the floor on your face!’

Someone shook him hard. Artyom shyly opened an eye and then closed it, having decided that he was probably in the process of dying prematurely and that the afterlife had already begun. A being was leaning over him and it looked a bit like a person but it was so unusual looking that it reminded Artyom of Khan’s calculations about where souls go when they are separated from their transitory bodies. The skin of the being was a matte-yellow, which you could even see in the light of a lantern nearby, and instead of eyes, he had narrow slits, as though a sculptor who was sculpting a person out of a tree had almost finished the face, but had only made an outline of the eyes, and he forgot to chip open the eyes so it could look out onto the world. The face was round with high cheek bones and Artyom had never seen anything like it.

‘No, this is not working,’ someone declared resolutely from above and they sprayed water in his face.

Artyom swallowed it convulsively and stretched out his hands for the bottle. At first he just held onto the neck of the bottle and only after that did he get up and look around.

He was rushing through a dark tunnel with head-spinning speed, lying on a section car that was no less than two metres long. There was a light smell of burning in the air, and Artyom thought with astonishment that it must be fuelled with petrol. There were four people apart from him sitting on the section car, and there was a big, brown dog with a black undercoat. One of them was the guy who had hit Artyom across the cheeks. There was a bearded guy in a hat with ear-flaps that had a red star sewn onto it and onto his quilted jacket too. He had a long machine gun dangling down his back, one just like the ‘hoe’ that Artyom had before, but there was a bayonet-knife screwed onto its barrel. The third person was a big fellow whose face Artyom didn’t see at once but when he did, he almost jumped off the car: his skin was very dark. Artyom looked at it a bit more and calmed down. He wasn’t a dark one, his shade of skin wasn’t the same as theirs – and he had a normal, human face with slightly out-turned lips and a flattened nose like a boxer’s. The last guy had a relatively regular appearance but he had a beautiful brace face and a strong chin – which reminded him of something on a poster at Pushkinskaya. He was dressed in a beautiful leather coat, which was tied with a wide belt with two rows of holes in it and an officer’s sword belt, and from the belt hung a holster of impressive size. There was a Degtyaryov machine gun at the back of the section car and a fluttering red flag. When a beam from the lantern accidentally fell on the flag, he could see that it wasn’t really a flag but a ragged piece of material with the red and black face of a bearded man on it. All this seemed more like some kind of terrible delirium than the miraculous rescue that Hunter had made for him when he ruthlessly cut his way through Pushkinskaya.

‘He’s regained consciousness!’ the narrow-eyed man said joyfully. ‘So, hangman, what did they get you for?’

He spoke totally without accent, his pronunciation was no different than Artyom’s or Sukhoi’s. That was very strange – hearing pure Russian speech from such an unusual being. Artyom couldn’t shed the feeling that this was some kind of farce and the narrow-eyed man was only moving his lips while the bearded guy or the man in the leather coat spoke from behind him.

‘I shot one of their officers,’ he admitted reluctantly.

‘Well, good for you! You’re just the kind we like! That’s what they deserve!’ the man with the high cheek bones said enthusiastically, and the big, dark-skinned guy who was sitting at the front turned to Artyom and raised his eyebrows respectfully. Artyom thought that this guy must mispronounce words.

‘That means we didn’t create such a scene for nothing.’ He smiled broadly. He also had a flawless accent, so that Artyom was confused and now didn’t know what to think.

‘What’s your name, hero?’ the handsome man in leather asked him and Artyom introduced himself.

‘I’m comrade Rusakov. This is comrade Bonsai.’ He pointed to the narrow-eyed man. ‘This is comrade Maxim.’ The dark-skinned one grinned again. ‘And this is comrade Fyodor.’

The dog came last. Artyom wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been called ‘comrade’ too. But the dog was simply called Karatsyupa. Artyom shook their hands one by one, the strong, dry hand of comrade Rusakov, the narrow, firm palm of comrade Bonsai, Maxim’s black shovel of a hand and the fleshy hand of comrade Fyodor. He earnestly tried to remember all their names especially the hard to pronounce ‘Karatsyupa.’ But it seemed that they called each other different names anyway. They addressed the main guy as ‘comrade commissar,’ and the dark-skinned one they called Maximka or Lumumba, the narrow-eyed one was simply ‘Bonsai’ and the bearded one with the hat with ear-flaps they called ‘Uncle Fyodor.’

‘Welcome to the First International Red Fighting Brigade of the Moscow Metropolitan in the name of Ernesto Che Guevara!’ comrade Rusakov triumphantly announced.

Artyom thanked him and fell silent, looking around. The name was very long and the ending of it generally blended into something quite unclear – for a while, the red colour had had an effect on Artyom not unlike its effect on a bull and the word ‘brigade’ was associated for him with Zhenya’s stories about the gangster lawlessness somewhere near Shabolovskaya. Most of all, he was intrigued by the face trembling on the cloth in the wind and he timidly asked:

‘And who have you got there on your flag?’ At the last second he decided on the word ‘flag’ having almost said ‘rag.’

‘That, my brother, is Che Guevara,’ Bonsai explained to him.

‘Which chegavara?’ Artyom hadn’t understood, but seeing rage fill Rusakov’s eyes and the mocking smile on Maximka’s face, he figured out that he’d done something foolish.

‘Comrade. Ernesto. Che. Guevara.’ The commissar rapped the separate syllables. ‘The great. Cuban. Revolutionary.’

Now the sounds were all more distinct though it still wasn’t intelligible to Artyom, but he decided to widen his eyes enthusiastically and say nothing. After all, these people had saved his life, and angering them right now with his ignorance would be impolite.

The tunnel’s soldered ribs flashed past fantastically quickly, and during the length of their conversation they had already managed to fly through one half-empty station and stopped in the twilight of the tunnel beyond it. Here, at the side, there was a little dead-end off-shoot where they could stop.

‘Let’s see if the fascist reptiles dare to go after us,’ said comrade Rusakov.

Now they had to whisper very quietly because comrades Rusakov and Karatsyupa were attentively listening for sounds coming from the darkness.

‘Why did you do it? I mean, rescue me?’ Artyom asked, trying to choose the right word.

‘It was a planned sortie. Some information arrived,’ explained Bonsai, smiling mysteriously.

‘About me?’ Artyom asked in the hope that he could believe Khan’s words about his special mission.

‘No, just in general.’ Bonsai made an indistinct gesture. ‘We heard they were planning some kind of atrocity. So comrade commissar decided we had to stop it. Besides, it’s our mission – to bother them constantly.’

‘They haven’t put up road blocks on this side, not even a bright torch, just a few outposts with simple fires,’ Maximka added. ‘We ran over them straight away. Sadly, we had to use the machine gun. But then, there was the smoke bomb, we had gas masks and we took you, our home-grown SS man, and went back.’

Uncle Fyodor, silent and smoking some kind of weed in a pipe, the smoke from which started to make his eyes tear up, suddenly said, ‘Yes, my young friend, it’s good that you were appropriated. Do you want a little brew?’

And picking up a half-empty bottle of some kind of murky swill from an iron box, he shook it and offered it to Artyom.

It was going to take a lot of bravery to take a sip. It went down like sandpaper but he felt as though a vice that had been clamped inside him this last twenty-four hours had relaxed.

‘So, are you Reds?’ he asked cautiously.

‘We, my brother, are communists! Revolutionaries!’ Bonsai said proudly.

‘From the Red Line?’ Artyom leaned in.

‘No, just simple communists,’ the man answered a bit hesitantly and hurried to add, ‘Comrade commissar will explain it all to you, he’s in charge of the ideology here.’

Comrade Rusakov, having returned after a few minutes, informed them, ‘All is quiet.’ His handsome masculine face radiated a sense of calm. ‘We can take a break.’

There was nothing with which to build a fire. They hung the little kettle over a camping stove and cut up some cold pork. The revolutionaries ate suspiciously well.

‘No, comrade Artyom, we aren’t from the Red Line,’ comrade Rusakov declared firmly when Bonsai related the question to him. ‘Comrade Moskvin has taken the position of Stalin, turned his back on a metro-wide revolution, officially denouncing the Interstational and cutting off support for revolutionary activities. He’s a renegade and he’s a compromiser. Us comrades, we are sticking to Trotsky’s line of thinking. You could even draw parallels between Castro and Che Guevara. That’s why he’s on our fighting banner,’ and he pointed to the sad, hanging rag with a broad gesture. ‘We have remained true to the revolutionary idea, unlike the collaborationist comrade Moskvin. Us comrades, we condemn them and their line.’

‘Aha, and who gives you fuel?’ Uncle Fyodor added, puffing on his rolled-up cigarette.

Comrade Rusakov flushed and threw a vicious look at Uncle Fyodor. Fyodor just mockingly tut-tutted and took a deeper pull on his cigarette.

Artyom understood little from the commissar’s explanation apart from the main thing: these people had little in common with the Reds who intended to string Mikhail Porfirevich’s guts up onto a stick and shoot him at the same time. This calmed him and in an effort to give a good impression, he twinkled. ‘Stalin – that’s the one in the Mausoleum, right?’

But this time, he’d gone too far. An angry spasm deformed the beautiful and brave face of comrade Rusakov, Bonsai turned away, and even Uncle Fyodor frowned.

‘No, no, it’s Lenin in the Mausoleum!’ Artyom hurried to correct himself.

The stern wrinkles on comrade Rusakov’s high forehead smoothed out, and he said severely, ‘You still need lots of work, comrade Artyom!’

Artyom really didn’t want comrade Rusakov to work on him, but he restrained himself and said nothing in reply. He really understood little about politics, but it had started to interest him, and therefore, he waited until the storm had passed and ventured:

‘So why are you against the fascists? I mean, I’m also against them but you guys are revolutionaries after all…’

‘Those reptiles! Because of Spain, because of Ernst Telmann and the Second World War!’ comrade Rusakov spat through his clenched teeth and though Artyom didn’t understand a word of it, he didn’t want to make a show of his ignorance yet again.

Once they poured boiling water into the mugs, they all became more lively. Bonsai took to exhausting Uncle Fyodor with foolish questions, obviously trying to tease him, and Maximka, having sat down closer to comrade Rusakov, asked quietly, ‘So tell me, comrade commissar, what does marxism/leninism say about headless mutants? It has bothered me for a long time. I want to be ideologically strong, and I’m drawing a blank on this one.’ His dazzling white teeth sparkled in a guilty smile.

‘Well, you see, comrade Maxim,’ the commissar replied after a delay, ‘this, my brother, is not a simple matter,’ and he started thinking hard.

Artyom was also interested in how the mutants were seen from a political point of view and, indeed, he was interested to learn if they existed at all. But comrade Rusakov was silent and Artyom’s thoughts slid back down the track that he hadn’t managed to get out of in the last few days. He needed to get to Polis. He was saved by a miracle, he’d been given one more chance, perhaps his last. His whole body hurt, he had a hard time breathing, deep breaths would set him off coughing, and he couldn’t open one eye. He wanted to stay with these people very much! He felt much more calm and confident with them, and the darkness of the unfamiliar tunnel was not condensing around him and oppressing him. The rustlings and scratchings that flew up from the black bowels didn’t frighten him, didn’t put him on his guard, and he hoped that this respite would last forever. It was sweet to relive his rescue again and again. Even though death had been chomping its iron teeth just above his head, barely brushing against him, the sticky, body-paralysing fear that had seized him before his execution, had already evaporated. The last remnants, hidden under his heart and in his stomach, had been burnt out by the poisonous home-brew of the bearded comrade Fyodor. Fyodor himself, and the friendly Bonsai, and the serious leather-clad commissar, and the enormous Maxim-Lumumba – it was so easy with them, in a way that he had never experienced since he’d left VDNKh a hundred years before. None of his belongings were in his possession anymore. The wonderful new machine gun, the five magazines of cartridges, the passport, the food, the tea, two flashlights – they were all lost. Left with the fascists. All he had was a jacket, some trousers, and a twisted cartridge case in his pocket. The executioner had said, ‘Maybe it will come in useful.’ So what now? To stay here, with the fighters of the Interstational, the brigadiers of… of… well, it’s not important. To live their life and forget his own… No. Never. He mustn’t stop for a minute, mustn’t rest. He had no right. This wasn’t his life anymore, his fate belonged to others from the moment he agreed to Hunter’s proposition. It was too late now. He had to go. There was no other option.

He sat there quietly for a long time, thinking about nothing in particular. But the gloomy determination was ripening within him with every second, in his emaciated muscles, in his stretched and aching veins. He was like a soft toy from which all the sawdust has been drawn and it has become a shapeless rag that someone has cruelly hung on a metal skeleton. He wasn’t himself anymore. He had been scattered together with the sawdust which was picked up by a tunnel draught, broken up into particles, and now, someone new had taken up residence inside his skin, someone who didn’t want to hear the desperate entreaties of his bleeding and exhausted body, someone who crushed underfoot the desire to surrender, to stay still, to have a rest, to give up before the endeavour had a chance to assume a complete and realized form. This other person had taken the decision on the level of instinct, and he bypassed consciousness in which there now reigned silence and emptiness. The usual continuous flow of internal dialogue was cut off.

It was like a meandering spring inside Artyom had been made straight. He got up to his feet with wooden and awkward movements and the commissar looked at him in surprise, and Maxim even lowered his hand to his machine gun.

‘Comrade commissar, could I… speak with you?’ Artyom asked in a toneless voice.

Then, Bonsai turned around anxiously, disengaging from the unfortunate Uncle Fyodor.

‘Say it straight, comrade Artyom, I don’t have any secrets from my fighters,’ the commissar cautiously responded.

‘You see… I am very grateful to you all for saving me. But I have nothing with which to repay you. I would really like to remain with you. But I can’t. I have to go on. I… have to.’

The commissar said nothing in reply.

‘Well, where are you going?’ Uncle Fyodor interjected unexpectedly.

Artyom pressed his lips together and looked at the floor. An awkward silence hung in the air. It seemed to him that they were now looking at him tensely and suspiciously, trying to guess at his intentions. Was he a spy? Was he a traitor? Why was he being so secretive?

‘Well, if you don’t want to say, then don’t,’ Uncle Fyodor said in a conciliatory tone.

‘To Polis.’ Artyom couldn’t resist telling them. He couldn’t risk losing the trust for the sake of some silly conspiracy theory.

‘You have some kind of business there?’ Uncle Fyodor enquired with an innocent look.

Artyom nodded silently.

‘Is it urgent?’ The man continued to probe.

‘Well, look, we’re not going to hold you back. If you don’t want to talk about your business then fine. But we can’t just leave you here in the middle of the tunnel! Right guys?’ He turned to the others.

Bonsai resolutely nodded, Maximka took his hands from the barrel of his gun and also confirmed the sentiment. Then comrade Rusakov stepped in.

‘Are you prepared, comrade Artyom, in front of the fighters of this brigade, who have saved your life, to swear that you are not planning any harm to the revolutionary cause?’ he asked severely.

‘I swear it,’ Artyom answered readily. He had no intentions of harming the revolution. There were more important things to consider.

Comrade Rusakov looked him in the eye, long and hard, and finally gave his verdict:

‘Comrade fighters! Personally I believe comrade Artyom. I ask you to vote for helping him to reach Polis.’

Uncle Fyodor was the first to raise his hand, and Artyom thought that it was probably him who had lifted him out of the noose. Then Maxim voted, and Bonsai just nodded.

‘You see, comrade Artyom, not far from here, there is a passage that is unknown to the wider masses. It joins the Zamoskvoretskaya branch and the Red Line,’ said the commander. ‘We can set you on your way…’

He didn’t manage to finish his sentence because Karatsyupa who had been lying quietly by his feet until then jumped up suddenly and started to bark deafeningly. Comrade Rusakov whipped his pistol out of its holster with a lightning fast movement. Artyom didn’t have the time to see what everyone else did: Bonsai had already pulled the cord, starting the engine. Maxim took up his position at the rear and Uncle Fyodor took a bottle with a match sticking out of its top from the box that had held his home-brew.

The tunnel at that point dived downwards, so visibility was very bad but the dog continued to strain, and Artyom felt anxious.

‘Give me a machine gun too,’ he asked in a whisper.

Not far away a powerful flashlight flashed and went out. Then they heard someone barking out orders. Heavy boots trudged along the cross-ties, and someone stumbled quietly and then everything fell silent. Karatsyupa, whose muzzle had been clamped shut by the commissar, struggled free and started to bark again.

‘It’s not starting,’ Bonsai mumbled, slightly defeated. ‘We have to push it!’

Artyom was first to climb off the section car and behind him leapt Uncle Fyodor and then Maxim. With effort they wedged the soles of their feet against the cross-ties, and got the large object moving forward. It was shifting too slowly and when they had finally awoken the engine, which started off by making coughing sounds, boots were thundering very near to them.

‘Fire!’ came the order from the darkness and the narrow space of the tunnel filled with sound. At least four cartridges roared past them, and bullets beat randomly around them, ricocheting, spitting sparks, and hitting pipes and making them ring out.

Artyom thought that they had no way out, but Maxim, straightening out to his full height, held his machine gun in his hands and maintained fire for a long time. The automatic weapons went silent. Then the section car moved a bit more easily and they had to start running after it to jump up onto its platform.

‘They’re retreating! Push ahead!’ was the cry from behind, and the automatic machine guns rattled away behind them with redoubled strength but most of the bullets hit the walls and ceiling of the tunnel.

Swiftly setting the stub of the bottle on fire, Uncle Fyodor wrapped it in some rags and threw it onto the path. A minute later there was a bright flash and the same clap of noise that Artyom heard when he was standing with the noose around his neck rang out.

‘And again! More smoke!’ Comrade Rusakov ordered.

A motorized section car is simply a miracle, Artyom thought as their persecutors fell far behind, trying to fight their way through the curtain of smoke. The vehicle was moving easily forward and, scaring away the staring bystanders, it swooped through Novukuznetskay station where comrade Rusakov flatly refused to stop. They were carried through so quickly that Artyom had barely any time to make out the station at all. There wasn’t anything particularly special about it, apart from the meagre lighting. There was a fair number of people there but Bonsai whispered to him that the station was not good at all and its inhabitants were also a bit strange, and the last time that they tried to stop there they had seriously regretted it and only just managed to drag themselves out.

‘Sorry, comrade, but we won’t be able to help you like we thought,’ comrade Rusakov said to Artyom in a more familiar tone than usual. ‘Now we won’t be able to return here for a while. We’re going to our reserve base at Avtozavodskaya. If you want you can join the brigade.’

Artyom had to steel himself again and refuse the offer but it was easier this time. He was seized by a cheerful sort of desperation. The whole world was against him, everything was going awry. However, the obstacles that the tunnels put in the way of his mission had awoken in Artyom a rage, and this obstinate rage re-lit his weakening vision with a rebellious fire, devouring in him any fear, sense of danger, reason and force.

‘No,’ he said firmly and calmly. ‘I have to go.’

‘In that case, we’ll go together until Paveletskaya and then we’ll part ways,’ said the commissar who had remained silent until this point. ‘It’s a shame, comrade Artyom. We need fighters.’

Near Novokuznetskaya, the tunnel forked and the section car took the left-hand path. When Artyom asked what went on down the right-hand path they explained that that way was barred to them: a few hundred metres into it there was an advance post of the Hansa, a veritable fortress. This unremarkable tunnel, it seemed, led directly to the three Ring stations: Oktyabrskaya, Dobrynskaya and Paveletskaya. The Hansa didn’t intend to destroy this little inter-tunnel passage and its very important transport link but it was only used by Hansa secret agents. If someone else tried to approach the advance post, they would be destroyed immediately without even being given the chance to explain themselves.

After travelling a while along this passage, they came upon Paveletskaya. Artyom thought how right his friend at VDNKh had been when he had told him that in the old days you could cross the whole metro system within an hour – and he hadn’t believed it at the time. Ah, if only he had a section car like theirs…

But anyway, a section car wouldn’t really have helped since there were lots of places that you couldn’t just pass through like a breeze. No, there was no point in dreaming about it, in this new world there wouldn’t be anything like it anymore – in this world each step required an improbable effort and searing pain. The old days were long gone. That magical, wonderful world was long dead. It didn’t exist anymore. And there was no point in whining about it for the rest of your life. You had to spit on its grave and never look back.