The girl recoiled, stung, but gathered her courage again immediately.
‘You decide what to do with the knife,’ she objected.
‘I had no choice.’
‘But now you do.’ She bit on her lower slip and frowned.
‘No, I still don’t. If you know, then you must understand. If you really . . .’
‘Understand what?’
‘How important it is to get to Tula. How important it is for me . . . As quickly as possible . . .’
Sasha saw his fingers trembling and a dark patch spreading across his shoulder: she was beginning to feel afraid of this man – and even more afraid for him.
‘You have to stop,’ she told him gently.
‘Out of the question,’ he snapped. ‘It’s not important who does it. So why not me?’
‘Because you’ll destroy yourself.’ The girl touched his hand tentatively and he started, as if he had been stung.
‘I have to. Cowards decide everything here as it is. If I delay any longer, I’ll destroy the whole Metro.’
‘But what if there was another way? If there was a cure? If you didn’t have to do it any longer?’
‘How many times do I have to say it? There aren’t any cures for this fever! Do you really think that I would . . . That I would . . .’
‘What would you choose?’ asked Sasha, not letting go of him.
‘There’s nothing to choose from!’ the man with the shaved head exclaimed, shaking off her hand. ‘We’re leaving!’ he barked to the old man.
‘Why don’t you want to take me with you?’ she protested.
‘I’m afraid.’ He said it in a very low voice, almost a whisper, so that no one but Sasha could hear him.
He swung round and strode away, growling curtly to the old man that he had ten minutes before they set out.
‘Am I mistaken or is someone here a bit feverish?’ said a voice behind Sasha’s back.
‘What?’ She spun round and collided with Leonid.
‘I thought I heard you talking about a fever,’ he said with an innocent smile.
‘You misheard.’ She didn’t intend to discuss anything with him right now.
‘And I thought the rumours had been confirmed after all,’ the musician said thoughtfully, as if he were talking to himself.
‘What rumours?’ asked Sasha, frowning.
‘About the quarantine at Serpukhov. About some supposedly incurable disease. About an epidemic . . .’ He watched her intently, seizing on every movement of her lips and her eyebrows.
‘So how long were you eavesdropping?’ she asked, blushing bright red.
‘I never do it deliberately. It’s just my musical hearing.’ He shrugged and spread his hands.
‘He’s my friend,’ she explained for some reason, nodding in the direction Hunter had gone in.
‘A classy kind of friend,’ he replied enigmatically.
‘Why do you say “supposedly” incurable?’
‘Sasha!’ Homer got up off the bench, keeping a suspicious eye fixed on the musician. ‘Can I have a word? We need to discuss what to do from here on . . .’
‘Will you let me have just a second?’ said Leonid. Dismissing the old man with a polite smile, he skipped aside and beckoned for the girl to follow him.
Sasha stepped towards him uncertainly: she still had the feeling that the battle with Hunter wasn’t lost yet, that if she didn’t give up now, Hunter wouldn’t have the heart to drive her away again. That she could still help him, even though she didn’t have the slightest idea of how to do it.
‘Maybe I heard about the epidemic much sooner than you did?’ Leonid whispered to her. ‘Maybe this isn’t the first outbreak of the disease? And what if there are some magical tablets that can cure it?’ asked the musician, glancing into her eyes.
‘But he says that there is no cure . . . That they’ll all have to be . . .’ Sasha babbled.
‘Liquidated?’ said Leonid, finishing her sentence for her. ‘He . . . Is that your wonderful friend? Well, that wouldn’t surprise me. But what I’m saying is the opinion of a qualified doctor.’
‘You mean to say . . .’
‘I mean to say,’ said the musician, putting his hand on Sasha’s shoulder, leaning down to her and breathing gently into her ear, ‘that the illness can be treated. There is a cure.’
CHAPTER 15
By Twos
The old man first cleared his throat irritably, then took a long step towards them.
‘Sasha! I need to have a talk with you!’
Leonid winked at the girl and moved away from her a little, relinquishing her to Homer with theatrical submission. But she couldn’t think about anything else any longer, and while the old man explained something to her, trying to convince her that Hunter could still be talked round, suggesting and cajoling, the girl looked over his shoulder at the musician. He didn’t return her glance, but the faint ironic smile hovering on his lips told Sasha that he saw everything and understood everything. She nodded to Homer, ready to agree with everything he said, just as long as she could be alone with the musician for another minute and hear him finish what he was saying. Just as long as she herself could believe that there was a cure.
‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ she said, running out of patience and interrupting the old man in mid-word. She slipped off and ran over to Leonid.
‘Back for a second helping?’ he said, welcoming her back.
‘You must tell me!’ she said, no longer willing to play games with him. ‘How?’
‘That’s a bit more complicated. I know the disease is curable. I know people who have beaten it. I can take you to them.’
‘But you said you knew how to fight it.’
‘You misinterpreted what I said,’ he said with a shrug. ‘How would I know? I’m just a flute-player. A wandering musician.’
‘Who are these people?’
‘If you’re interested, I can introduce you to them. We’ll have to walk a bit, though.’
‘Which station are they at?’
‘Not very far from here. You can find out everything. If you want to.’
‘I don’t trust you.’
‘But you want to trust me, don’t you?’ he remarked. ‘I don’t trust you yet either, that’s why I can’t tell you everything.’
‘Why do you want me to go with you?’ asked Sasha, narrowing her eyes.
‘Me?’ he shook his head. ‘It’s all the same to me. It’s you who wants to go. I don’t have to save anyone and I don’t know how to save them. At least, not like that.’
‘Do you promise you’ll take me to these people? Do you promise they’ll be able to help?’ she asked after hesitating for a brief moment.
‘I’ll take you,’ Leonid replied firmly.
‘What have you decided?’ the old man asked insistently, interrupting them again.
‘I’m not going with you,’ said Sasha, plucking at the strap of her overalls. ‘He says there’s a cure for the fever,’ she added, turning towards the musician.
‘He’s lying,’ Homer said uncertainly.
‘I see you know a lot more about viruses than I do,’ Leonid said respectfully. ‘Have you studied them? Or is it from personal experience? Do you also believe that exterminating everybody is the best way of combating the infection?’
‘How do you . . . ?’ the old man began, dumbfounded. ‘Did you tell him?’ he asked, looking round at Sasha.
‘Here comes your highly qualified friend,’ said the musician, prudently taking a step back as he spotted Hunter approaching. ‘Well then, the ambulance brigade is all here, I’m beginning to feel superfluous.’
‘He’s lying! He just wants to get you to . . . But even if it’s true,’ Homer whispered fervently to her, ‘you won’t have time to do anything. Hunter will be back here with reinforcements in a day’s time at the latest. If you stay with us, perhaps you’ll be able to persuade him . . . But this boy . . .’
‘I won’t be able to do anything,
’ Sasha responded gloomily. ‘Nobody’s going to stop him now, I can sense it. He has to be given a choice. To split him . . .’
‘Split him?’ Homer’s eyebrows shot up.
‘I’ll be back here in less than a day,’ she promised, stepping away.
Why did he let her go?
Why did he weaken and allow a crazy tramp to abduct his heroine, his muse, his daughter? The more closely the old man studied Leonid, the less he liked him. His big green eyes could suddenly cast surprisingly covetous glances, and obscure shadows skimmed across that angelic face when the young man thought no one was watching him.
What did she want with the musician? At best, that connoisseur of the beautiful would stick a pin through the flower of her innocence and leave it to dry in his memory – crumpled up, with all the charm of youth, which was so impossible to remember or even photograph, lost, scattered like pollen. Deceived and exploited, the girl would take flight, but it would be a long time before she could purge herself and forget, especially since this blasted wandering minstrel wanted to win her by deception.
Then why did he let her go?
Out of cowardice. Because Homer was not just afraid of arguing with Hunter, he was even afraid of asking him the questions that were really worrying him. Because Sasha was in love and her audacity and folly could be forgiven. Would the brigadier have shown him the same indulgence? To himself the old man still called him the brigadier – partly out of habit, but partly because it made Homer feel calmer: there was nothing terrible happening, nothing unusual, he was still the same brigadier of the northern watch from Sebastopol . . . But he wasn’t. The man striding shoulder to shoulder with Homer now was not the same old unsociable soldier of fortune. The old man was beginning to understand: his travelling companion was being transformed before his very eyes . . . Something terrible was happening to him, and it would have been stupid to deny it, it was pointless trying to persuade himself.
Hunter had taken Homer with him again – this time was it to show him the bloody denouement of the whole drama? Now he was prepared to exterminate not only the whole of Tula, but also the sectarians cooped up in the tunnels and Serpukhov Station too, including all its inhabitants and the soldiers sent there from the Hansa garrison – simply on the suspicion that one of them might have become infected. The same fate could be in store for Sebastopol.
He no longer needed reasons for killing, he was just looking for pretexts.
Homer could only summon up enough strength to trudge after Hunter as if he was mesmerised, contemplating and documenting all the brigadier’s crimes like some nightmarish dream. Justifying himself by the fact that they were committed in order to save people, trying to convince himself that this was the lesser of two evils. To Homer, the relentless brigadier seemed like an incarnation of Moloch, and he had never tried to get the better of fate.
But Sasha didn’t seem to acknowledge fate at all. And if, in the depths of his heart, the old man had already accepted that Tula and Serpukhov would be turned into Sodom and Gomorrah, the girl was still clutching at the tiniest hope. Homer had stopped trying to convince himself that any pills or vaccine or serum would turn up before Hunter stopped the epidemic with fire and lead. Sasha was prepared to keep searching for the cure right to the end.
Homer wasn’t a soldier or a doctor, and above all, he was too old to believe in miracles. But there was still a particle of his soul that passionately desired miracles and dreamed of salvation. He had torn that particle out of himself and let it go with Sasha.
He had simply offloaded onto the girl what he wouldn’t have dared to do himself.
And in his resignation he had discovered peace for himself. In twenty-four hours it would all be over. And after that the old man would desert from his post, find himself a monastic cell and finish writing his book. Now he knew what it would be about.
About how a nimble-witted beast found a magical fallen star, a heavenly spark, swallowed it and became a man. About how, after stealing fire from the gods, man hadn’t been able to control it and had burnt the world to a cinder. About how, as a punishment, exactly one hundred centuries later, that human spark was taken away from him, but after losing it, he didn’t become a beast again – he turned into something far more terrible that didn’t even have a name.
The head of the sentry squad tipped the handful of cartridges into his pocket and sealed his deal with the musician with a firm handshake.
‘For a symbolic additional payment I could put you on a tram,’ he said.
‘I prefer romantic walks,’ Leonid replied.
‘Well, look at it this way. I can’t let the two of you walk through our tunnels on your own,’ said the sentry, trying to reason with him. ‘You’ll have to go with a guard anyway. Your girl hasn’t got any documents . . . And you could get to where you’re going express, in a flash, and there you are, all alone with her,’ he whispered loudly.
‘We don’t need to be all alone!’ Sasha declared adamantly.
‘We’ll consider it a guard of honour. As if we’re the Prince and Princes of Monaco out promenading,’ said the musician, bowing to the girl.
‘What princess?’ Sasha asked, overcome by curiosity.
‘The Princess of Monaco. There was a principality of that name once. Right on the Côte d’Azur – the Azure Coast . . .’
‘Listen,’ the sentry interrupted. ‘If you want to walk, come on, get ready will you? A cartridge clip’s all very fine, but the lads have got to get back to base before evening. Hey, Kostya!’ he called to a soldier. ‘See these two to Kiev, tell the patrols it’s a deportation. Put them out onto the radial station and get straight back. All correct?’ he asked, turning to Leonid.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Leonid with a humorous salute.
‘Come again!’ said the sentry, giving him a wink.
How incredibly different Hansa territory really was from all the rest of the Metro! All the way along the stretch of tunnel from Pavelets to October, Sasha hadn’t seen a single place that was completely dark. Every fifty steps there were light bulbs hanging from the wire that crept along the wall, and every one of them gave enough light to reach the next one. Even the reserve and secret tunnels branching off from the main line were well lit, and there was nothing frightening about them any longer.
If it had been up to Sasha, she would have gone dashing on ahead, done anything to save the precious minutes, but Leonid persuaded her there was no need to hurry. He flatly refused to say where they would go on to after Kiev Station and strolled along at a leisurely pace with a bored air: she supposed the musician had quite often been in stretches of the tunnels that were barred to ordinary inhabitants of the Metro.
‘I’m glad that your friend has his own approach to everything,’ he said.
‘What do you mean by that?’ Sasha asked with a frown.
‘If he dreamed as strongly as you do of saving the civilian population, we would have had to take him with us. But this way we’ve split up into pairs and everyone gets to do what he wants to do. He gets to kill, you get to cure . . .’
‘He doesn’t want to kill anyone!’ she said in a shrill voice that was much too loud.
‘Oh, right, it’s just his job, that’s all . . .’ He sighed. ‘And who am I to judge him?’
‘And what are you going to do?’ asked Sasha, not attempting to conceal her scorn. ‘Play your flute?’
‘I’m just going to be with you,’ Leonid said with a smile. ‘What else do I need for happiness?’
‘You’re just saying that,’ said Sasha, shaking her head. ‘You don’t even know me at all. How can I make you happy?’
‘There are ways. Just to look at a beautiful girl is enough to improve my mood. And then . . .’
‘Do you think you know about beauty?’ she asked, squinting sideways at him.
‘It’s the only thing I do know anything about,’ he said with a solemn nod.
‘So what’s so special about me?’ she asked and the wrinkles on her forehea
d smoothed out at last.
‘It’s the way you just glow!’
His voice sounded serious, but an instant later the musician dropped back a step and ran his eyes over her.
‘It’s just a pity you like such crude clothes,’ he added.
‘What’s wrong with them?’ she asked, also dropping back, in order to detach his ticklish gaze from her back.
‘They don’t let the light through. And I’m like a moth . . . I always fly towards the flame,’ he said, fluttering his hands with a deliberately foolish air.
‘Are you afraid of the dark?’ she asked, accepting the game.
‘Loneliness!’ Leonid put on a mask of sadness and folded his arms.
That was his mistake. As he tuned the strings, he misjudged the resistance, and the finest one, the most delicate, which might have started to sing in just another moment, twanged and snapped.
The light tunnel draught, which had blown away Sasha’s serious thoughts and made her juggle with the musician’s playful hints, instantly died away. She sobered up and rebuked herself for giving way to him. Surely it wasn’t for this that she had abandoned Hunter and left the old man behind?
‘As if you even knew what that is,’ Sasha snapped and turned away.
Serpukhov Station, pale-grey from fear, was dissolving into the darkness. Soldiers in army gas masks had cut it off from the tunnels at both sides and blocked the connecting passage to the Circle Line, and the station was buzzing like a disturbed beehive in anticipation of disaster. Hunter and Homer were led through the hall with an armed escort, like high-ranking officers, and every inhabitant of Serpukhov tried to look into their eyes, to see if they knew what was really happening and if their fate had been decided. Homer stared fixedly at the floor – he didn’t want to remember those faces.
The brigadier hadn’t informed Homer where he intended to go next, but the old man could guess. Ahead of them lay Polis. Four Metro stations, linked together by passages, a genuine city with thousands of inhabitants. The unofficial capital of the Metro, which was fractured into dozens of warring feudal principalities. A bulwark of science and refuge of culture. A holy sanctuary that no one dared to invade or attack. No one, that is, apart from Homer, the half-crazy messenger of the plague.
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