But in the last few days he had started feeling better. The nausea had receded, and the consumptive cough that forced him to wash out his bloody respirator had softened a little. Maybe his body had overcome the illness on its own? Or maybe there never was any infection at all? Eh? Maybe he was simply too neurotic about his health; he’d always known he had that tendency, but he had still got so terrified . . .
The stretch of tunnel beyond Serpukhov was dark and remote, it had a bad reputation. As far as Homer was aware, they shouldn’t encounter a single soul until they reached Polis, but Polyanka, the way station between inhabited Serpukhov and residential Borovitskaya, could surprise travellers. There were numerous legends about Polyanka Station circulating in the Metro: if they could be believed, this station rarely threatened the lives of those who walked through it, but it could damage their reason.
The old man had been here several times, but never encountered anything out of the ordinary. The legends had explanations for that too, Homer knew all of them. And now he was hoping as hard as he could that this time the station would remain as dead and abandoned as it had been in better times.
About a hundred metres before Polyanka he suddenly felt strange. With the first distant glints of white electric light on the station’s marble walls, and the first echo of fractured sounds coming from it, the old man suspected something was wrong. He could clearly hear human voices . . . And there was no way that could be right. Even worse, Hunter, who in some mysterious way could sense the presence of any living creatures, remained absolutely deaf and indifferent now.
Completely absorbed in his own thoughts, he didn’t respond to the old man’s agitated glances, as if he couldn’t see the visions being revealed to Homer at that moment . . . The station was occupied? When had they done that? Homer had often wondered why, despite Polyanka’s cramped space, the inhabitants of Polis had never tried to annex and develop the empty station. There was nothing to prevent it but the superstitions – but apparently they had proved a sufficiently weighty reason for this strange way station to be left in peace.
Until, that is, someone overcame their fear of it and set up a tent town here, put in lighting . . . God, how extravagant they were with electric power here! Even before the two travellers emerged from the tunnel and started walking along beside the platform, the old man had to put his hand over his eyes to avoid being blinded: bright mercury lamps were glaring at full power up under the ceiling of the station.
Astounding . . . Not even Polis looked so clean and festive. Not a trace of dust or soot was left on the walls, and the marble slabs all gleamed, while the ceiling looked as if it had been whitewashed only yesterday. Homer couldn’t spot a single tent through the arches – perhaps they hadn’t had time to put them up yet? Or perhaps they were going to make a museum here? That would be just like the eccentric cranks who ran Polis.
The platform gradually filled up with people. They took no interest at all in the cutthroat wearing a titanium helmet who was hung all over with weapons, or the grubby old man hobbling along beside him. Looking closely at them, Homer realised that he didn’t have the strength to take another step: his legs had given out.
Everyone who came over to the edge of the platform was dressed up as if someone was shooting a film about the 2000s at Polyanka. Brand new coats and raincoats, bright-coloured down jackets, sky-blue jeans . . . Where were the old padded jackets, where was the lousy pigskin leather, where was the perpetual reddish-brown of the Metro, the graveyard of all colours? Where had all this wealth come from?
And the faces . . . They weren’t the faces of people who had lost their entire family in a single moment. They were the faces of people who had seen the sun today and who, well, basically, had started the day with a hot shower. The old man would have bet his life on that. And something else . . . Many of them seemed vaguely familiar to Homer.
More and more of these incredible people appeared, jostling at the edge of the platform, but they didn’t get down onto the tracks. Soon the entire station was filled from tunnel to tunnel with the trim, dressy crowd. And still no one looked at Homer. They looked anywhere at all – at the wall, at newspapers, at each other – surreptitiously, lugubriously or curiously, with loathing or sympathy – but not at the old man, as if he were a ghost.
Why had they gathered here? What were they waiting for?
Homer finally recovered his wits. Where was the brigadier? How would he explain the inexplicable? Why hadn’t he said anything yet?
Hunter had stopped a little bit further on. He wasn’t even slightly interested in the station packed tight with people out of photographs that were a quarter of a century old. He was staring sombrely into empty space, as if he had run into some kind of barrier, as if there was something hanging in the air in front of him, on a level with his eyes . . . The old man moved closer to the brigadier and peeped warily under his visor.
And then Hunter struck out.
His clenched fist tore through the air, moving from left to right along a strange trajectory, as if the brigadier was trying to slash someone invisible with a non-existent knife. He very nearly caught Homer, who jumped aside, but Hunter continued his battle. He struck, then moved back, defending himself, tried to restrain someone in a steely clinch, and a second later was wheezing in a stranglehold himself. Barely managing to break free, he flung himself back into the attack. The battle was slipping away from him, his invisible opponent was getting the upper hand. It was harder and harder for Hunter to get to his feet after those silent but crushing blows; his movements became slower and slower, less and less confident.
The old man was haunted by the feeling that he had already seen something like this only very recently. But where and when? And what in hell’s name was happening to the brigadier? Homer tried calling to him, but he was possessed, and it was impossible to get him to hear.
The people on the platform took absolutely no notice of Homer; for them he didn’t exist, just as they didn’t exist for him. They were concerned about something else: they kept glancing with mounting alarm at their wristwatches, puffing out their cheeks in annoyance, talking to the people next to them and checking the red numbers on the electronic clock above the mouth of the tunnel.
Homer screwed up his eyes and looked at it with the others. It was a counter that registered the time since the last train had passed through. But its display seemed unnaturally long, with ten digits: eight digits before the blinking colon and another two – for the seconds – after it. Red dots squirmed, counting off the fleeting seconds and the final digit in the incredibly long number changed: twelve million and something.
There was a scream . . . And a sob.
The old man turned away from the mysterious clock. Hunter was lying motionless, face down on the rails. Homer dashed over to him and turned the heavy, lifeless body face up with a struggle. Yes, the brigadier was breathing, although raggedly, and he didn’t have any visible injuries, although his eyes had rolled up and back, like a dead man’s. His right hand remained clenched, and only now did the old man discover that Hunter had not been fighting this strange duel unarmed. The handle of the black knife was peeping out from his fist.
Homer slapped the brigadier hard across the cheeks and Hunter started blinking, groaning like a man with a hangover; he propped himself up on his elbows and scrutinised the old man with a blurry gaze. Then he jumped to his feet in a single bound and shook himself off.
The mirage dispersed: the people in raincoats and bright jackets disappeared without a trace, the blinding light went out and the dust of decades settled on the walls again. The station was black, empty and lifeless – exactly as Homer remembered it from his previous expeditions.
All the way to October Station neither of them said another word, the only sound came from the guards assigned to them: whispered conversations and puffing and panting when they stumbled over the sleepers. Sasha wasn’t even angry with the musician, but with herself. And he . . . But what about him? He was behaving exa
ctly as he ought to behave. Eventually she even started feeling awkward about what she’d said to Leonid – perhaps she had been too harsh with him?
But then, at October, the wind changed. It was perfectly natural. When Sasha saw this station, she simply forgot about everything else in the world. In the last few days she had been in places that she wouldn’t even have believed existed before. But the finery of October eclipsed all of them. The granite floors were covered with carpets, worn completely bald, but still retaining their original patterns. Lamps cast in the form of blazing torches and polished to a high gleam flooded the hall with an even, milky-white glow. People with glossy, gleaming faces were sitting at tables standing here and there, occupied in lazy exchanges of words and pieces of paper.
‘It’s so . . . rich here,’ Sasha said, bewildered, almost twisting her neck as she gazed around.
‘The Circle Line stations remind me of pieces of pork kebab, threaded on a skewer,’ Leonid whispered to her. ‘They just ooze fat . . . Yes, by the way! Maybe we could have a bite to eat?’
‘We haven’t got time,’ she said, shaking her head and hoping he wouldn’t hear the eager rumbling in her stomach.
‘Oh, come on,’ said the musician, holding out his hand to her. ‘There’s a little place here. Nothing you’ve ever eaten before even comes close . . . Lads, do you fancy a bit of lunch?’ he asked, including the guards in the suggestion. ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll get there in a couple of hours. I didn’t mention pork kebabs by accident. The food they make here . . .’
He started talking about meat in terms that were almost poetry, and Sasha wavered and gave in. If it was only two hours to their destination, a half-hour lunch wouldn’t make any difference. They still had almost a whole day in reserve, and who knew when they would next have a chance for a bite to eat?
The kebabs lived up to the poetry too. But things didn’t stop there: Leonid ordered a bottle of homebrew as well. Sasha couldn’t resist and she gulped down a little glass out of curiosity, the musician and the guards drank the rest.
Later, she came to her senses, jumped up on her limp-feeling legs and told Leonid to get up in a strict voice – all the stricter, because the heady homebrew had made her drowsy, and while they were dining, she had delayed for almost too long before shaking his fingers off her knees. Light, sensitive fingers. Impudent. He had immediately raised his hands in the air – ‘I surrender’ – but her skin had remembered his touch. Why had she driven him away so quickly, Sasha wondered, punishing herself with a pinch. Now she would have to erase this bitter-sweet lunch scene from her memory, shake it up with some meaningless nonsense and sprinkle words over it.
‘The people here are strange,’ she said to Leonid.
‘How?’ he asked, draining his glass in one and finally getting up from the table.
‘There’s something missing in their eyes.’
‘Hunger,’ the musician said categorically.
‘No, not only that . . . It’s as if they don’t want anything else.’
‘That’s because they don’t want anything else,’ Leonid snorted. ‘They’re well fed. Queen Hansa feeds them. And what’s wrong with their eyes? Perfectly normal languid, apathetic eyes . . .’
‘When I lived with my father,’ she said seriously, ‘what we left today would have lasted us for three days . . . Maybe we should have taken it and given it to someone?’
‘It’s okay, they’ll feed it to the dogs,’ answered the musician. ‘They don’t keep any beggars here.’
‘But it could have been given to the nearby stations! Where there are hungry . . .’
‘Hansa doesn’t go in for charity,’ put in one of the guards, the one who was called Kostya. ‘Let them shift for themselves. We can do without taking on any idlers!’
‘Are you a native Circle man yourself?’ Leonid enquired.
‘I’ve always lived here! As long as I can remember!’
‘Then you may not believe it, but people who weren’t born on the Circle have to eat sometimes too,’ the musician told him.
‘Let them eat each other! Or maybe it would be better to take everything away from us and divide it up, like the Reds say?’ the soldier asked aggressively.
‘Well, if everything carries on in the same way . . .’ Leonid began.
‘Then what? You keep your mouth shut, spindle-legs, you’ve already said enough to get yourself deported!’
‘I arranged to get deported earlier,’ the musician responded phlegmatically. ‘That’s what we’re doing now.’
‘But I could turn you in to the right people! As a Red spy!’ said the guard, getting heated.
‘And I could turn you in for drinking on duty . . .’
‘Why you . . . It was you that got us . . . And you . . .’
‘No! We’re sorry . . . He didn’t mean to say that.’ Sasha intervened, clutching the musician’s sleeve and pulling him away from Kostya, who had started breathing heavily.
She almost dragged Leonid to the tracks, then looked at the station clock and gasped. Their lunch and the arguments at the station had lasted almost two hours. She had set out to compete against Hunter’s speed, and he definitely wouldn’t have stopped for a second . . . The musician laughed drunkenly behind her back.
All the way to Culture Park the guards hissed baleful comments. Every now and then, following his natural impulse, Leonid attempted to answer them, and Sasha had to hold him back or persuade him not to. The alcohol continued swirling round in his brain, making him bolder and more insolent; the girl had to dodge constantly to keep out of reach of his wandering hands.
‘Don’t you like me at all then?’ he asked, offended. ‘Not your type, is that it? You don’t like them like me, you want muscles . . . and sca-a-a-ars. Why did you come with me?’
‘Because you made me a promise!’ She pushed Leonid away. ‘Not so that . . .’
‘I’m not like tha-at!’ he sighed sadly. ‘Always the same old story. If I’d known you were such a prig . . .’
‘How can you? There are people there . . . Live people . . . They’ll all die if we don’t get there in time!’
‘What can do about it? I can hardly move my legs. D’you know how heavy they are? Here, feel . . . And the people . . . They’ll die anyway. Tomorrow or in ten days’ time. And me, and you. So what?’
‘So you lied? You lied! Homer told me . . . He warned me . . . Where are we going?’
‘No, I didn’t lie! D’you want me to swear I didn’t lie? You’ll see for yourself! You’ll apologise to me. And then I hope you feel ashamed and you tell me: Leonid ! I’m so ash-amed . . .’ He wrinkled up his nose.
‘Where are we going?’
‘We’ll follow the yel-low brick road. Follow the yellow brick, yellow brick, yellow brick . . .’ the musician sang, conducting with his forefinger; then he dropped the case with his flute in it, swore, leaned down to pick it up and almost tumbled over.
‘Hey, you drunks! Will you even get to Kiev?’ one of the guards called to them.
‘Thanks for your concern!’ said the musician, bowing to him. ‘We’ll get there on the yellow brick road . . . and Dorothy will find her way home.’
Homer had never believed in the legend of Polyanka, and now it had decided to teach him a lesson.
Some called it the Station of Fate and venerated it as an oracle.
Some believed that a pilgrimage here at a critical turning point in life could part the curtains concealing the future a crack and provide a hint or a key, predicting and predetermining the path that remained ahead.
Some . . . But all sober-minded people knew that discharges of poisonous gases occurred at the station, and they inflamed the imagination, inducing hallucinations.
To hell with the sceptics!
What could his vision mean? The old man felt as if he was just one step away from the answer, but then his thoughts got tangled up and floundered. And he saw Hunter again, slicing the air with his black blade. Homer would have given a lot to kno
w what vision had appeared to the brigadier, who he was fighting with, what duel it was that had ended in his defeat, if not his death . . .
‘What are you thinking about?’
The old man was so surprised, he felt a taut spasm twist his bowels. Hunter had never spoken to him without a compelling reason before. Barked orders, the resentful growling of stingy replies . . . How could you expect a soulful heart-to-heart with someone who had no heart or soul?
‘Oh, nothing really,’ Homer stammered.
‘You’re thinking. I can hear it,’ Hunter said in a flat voice. ‘About me. Are you afraid?’
‘Not right now,’ the old man lied.
‘Don’t be afraid. I won’t touch you. You . . . remind me.’
‘Of whom?’ Homer asked warily after half a minute’s silence.
‘Of something about me. I’d forgotten there was something like that in me, but you remind me,’ said Hunter, looking ahead, into the darkness, as he dragged the heavy words out of himself one by one and set them out.
‘So that’s what you brought me along for?’ asked Homer, simultaneously disappointed and intrigued – he’d been expecting something . . .
‘It’s important for me to keep it in my mind. Very important,’ the brigadier responded. ‘And it’s important for everyone else that I . . . Otherwise there could be . . . What’s already happened.’
‘Have you got problems with your memory?’ The old man felt as if he was creeping through a mine field. ‘Did something happen to you?’
‘I remember everything perfectly well!’ the brigadier replied sharply. ‘It’s only myself that I forget. And I’m afraid of forgetting myself completely. You’ll remind me, all right?’
‘All right,’ said Homer and nodded, although Hunter couldn’t see him just at that moment.
‘It all used to make sense,’ the brigadier said with a struggle. ‘Everything I did. Defending the Metro, defending people. People. The task was very clear – neutralise any threat. Annihilate it. That was the point, it was!’
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