“Wait! Artyom! Artyom!”
Letyaga caught up with Artyom at Lubyanka Square. And handed him his own gas mask.
“Take it. I don’t need it to get there.”
Artyom didn’t argue. He spat in the mask’s eyes and put it on. He droned to Letyaga, “Thanks. There’s no way can I croak ahead of time now.”
He dragged himself lamely downhill from Lubyanka. Past the BolshoI Theater, with its coach-and-four that had plunged over the cliff, past the tearless fountains, past the hotels for guests from the next world, past the dogs’ streets, the mute parliament and the Kremlin pretending to be dead, with its extinguished stars and walls to keep out no one; somewhere here.
He stopped. It was dark.
How had he done it? Where had he been standing?
Blood was oozing out of Artyom’s twice-shot shoulder as if he had no end of it inside him, and he was beginning to feel bad without it. Weak. But he kept on searching. And trying to remember. He shuffled in one direction for a while, then in the other.
The feeble moon wasn’t much use. It couldn’t see black on black, and it didn’t give Artyom any help. He went down on all fours and crawled, fumbling at the rough asphalt with his hands. He fished out a shoe once, and another time a door handle that had been dropped in the middle of the roadway.
Lyokha and Letyaga walked up.
“What are you looking for?”
“The answer,” Artyom joked, and laughed hoarsely into his own rubber ears.
And then it turned up.
It winked to Artyom in the moonlight from a slight parting in the curtains of cloud.
Lying there on the grayish black asphalt was a grayish black revolver. Svinolup’s execution Nagant. Artyom picked it up. A heavy, blunt, baleful weapon. Exactly what Artyom needed right now. What he had come here for. It turned out that nothing in this business could be understood without it.
This blued-finished gun was the very one he needed to stick down Bessolov’s throat. He could breathe through it for a while—and explain to Artyom why people had to stay in the Metro.
“Is that all?” Lyokha asked him.
“No, there’s more!” Artyom looked at him. “Now we go to the brothel!”
CHAPTER 19
— WHAT TO WRITE —
He was carried to Trubnaya Station.
Letyaga carried him piggyback-style. He carried him over the surface, since he was afraid to go down into the Metro.
Artyom was already coughing up rust-brown phlegm. While he was swinging his legs on Letyaga’s back, he kept trying to persuade them to let him walk on his own. But as soon as he stood on his feet, he fell to his knees. The mechanism was running down. The key in his back had almost stopped turning.
But when they arrived at TsvetnoI Boulevard, some spring in his chest clicked and decided to carry on whirring for a while. Artyom waved away the red fog in front of his eyes and straightened up. He sensed that he wouldn’t have time to do much. He had to do just one thing, but an important one. He fumbled for the handle of the Nagant. Like that? The Nagant agreed.
“Take me to Sasha. Do you hear, Lyokha? Remember where?”
“Aha. You want a beautifuw death! Want to snuff it on a chick? Nah, first wet’s go patch up the howes.”
“Oh, sure. If it was just the holes.”
Something strange was going on at TsvetnoI Station.
It was jam-packed with fascist fugitives. Lost, pitiful, battered. The fascists’ railway uniforms had gotten soaked, and now they were drying out, shrinking and getting too small for them, as if they had been made for children’s games or theatricals, but grownups had pulled them on and started doing everything in earnest. Their faces were scratched and smeared with mud; their steel-tipped low boots had dried out and cracked.
“What’s this? What happened?” Lyokha asked some whores he knew.
“The Reich got flooded out. Pushkin collapsed. The Tajiks made the extension crooked. It collapsed, and then the stations next door. It all flooded.”
“The Tajiks’ crooked work …”Artyom said with a crooked smile. “It’s all the Tajiks’ fault. What bad bastards.”
“Everybody scattered. From Tver they went to Mayakovsky, and the people from Chekhov came here.”
“And what about the war?”
“We don’t know. Nobody knows anything.”
You had it coming, thought Artyom. Maybe the Lord really does listen and takes complaints. Someone, maybe that woman in the barrow, managed to snitch to God before her head was smashed in with a reinforcement bar. The Lord counted up the sinners and the righteous in the Reich on his abacus of bone, and decreed that the Reich should be closed and sealed. But why did he ever open those premises?
And what about Homer?
“Do you know if an old man escaped? From Chekhov Station?” Artyom asked, pestering the railway workers. “Homer?”
They shrank away from him.
They took him to the woman doctor: Among the bites from the barbed wire she found a bleeding sore that the radiation had made in his skin, like an awl. Not long left, she said. An urgent transfusion was needed, but the doctor for social diseases didn’t have anything to transfuse or anything to do it with. She winkled out the bullet, cursing Artyom; poured fermented garbage into the holes; covered his back with a crumpled rag so that his flogged skin could ooze into that. And she gave him some painkillers long past their sell-by date. That improved things a bit. So that was where Savelii had gotten them from.
“Now what do we do?” asked Letyaga. “We have to find you a decent doctor. Not this Cunt Ivanovna here. I’ll squirt some red stuff back into you. With interest.”
“Nah. I’m going to the whores,” Artyom said the moment his wounds felt the soothing breath of the painkillers. “We’ll settle up later.”
“And me.” Lyokha winked. “I need a transfusion too.”
“If I was you, Tyomich, I think I’d pray instead.” Letyaga shook his head.
“Let’s do this without the soppy stuff,” Artyom replied.
“Here, take some bullets.”
Artyom took them.
“Will you go and hand yourself in?” He glanced into Letyaga’s crooked eyes.
“Nah. The old man doesn’t forgive deserters.”
“What if you hand me in?”
“Then your Anka will scorn me to death,” Letyaga told him. “I’m not sure which is worse. Okay. I’ve got a little darling of my own here. Down that way. If you get knackered, come over.”
“Shall I show you the way?” Lyokha asked.
“No need. I’ve remembered.”
He really had remembered.
They parted.
As Artyom hobbled away, hiding in the crowd, he looked round again: had they really parted? He didn’t want to ask anyone for help with this important job. TsvetnoI Station was swarming with riffraff. Which of them here was an agent for the Reds, for the Order, or for Hansa? They were listening, searching for him. They had to be searching.
His right hand was in his pocket. He didn’t loosen his grip on the revolver.
But Sasha’s place was empty.
There was no one inside, and the little door was locked.
He suddenly felt worried: What if Bessolov had taken her away? Or what if something even worse had happened to her?
Diagonally opposite there was a dismal little tavern with a few seats squeezed into it. Partitioned off with straw rain from ceiling to floor. Artyom could position himself here so that he could see Sasha’s establishment through the jets of straw, but no one walking by could recognize him immediately.
Artyom looked at the closed door. He wanted to think about Sasha, but he kept thinking about Anya. Well, well, Vladivostok. Why hadn’t she mentioned Vladivostok before? It might have been easier for him to live with her if he’d known about Vladivostok.
Beside him two wet fascists were huddled together, muttering. They kept glancing round at Artyom suspiciously. He strained hard, trying
to feel hate for them, but just couldn’t: He was completely burnt out after Komsomol Station. To reassure them he ordered some vodka to go with the painkillers. He couldn’t even look at food; the very thought of it set his head spinning.
“Dietmar …” He caught the rustle of that name through the deliberately mangled words.
He hesitated, then made up his mind.
“Do you know Dietmar?” he asked the pair.
“Who are you?”
“There was a man working for him. Ilya Stepanovich. He was supposed to write a book. And he had another man with him. Called himself Homer. A comrade of mine.”
“Who are you, I asked.”
“I carried out an assignment for Dietmar,” Artyom confessed in a whisper. “At Teatralnaya.”
“An agent?” The fascist moved and sat right up close.
“Saboteur.”
“Dietmar died heroically …”
“I’m aware of that.”
“All his network has moved over to me,” the man declared. “You’ll be working for me now. I’m Dietrich.”
That made Artyom want to laugh. He used to observe Dietrich from somewhere above the clouds. From up there a lot of things could seem funny. But not everything.
“Listen, man.” Artyom wiped his lips with the back of his hand and showed Dietrich the watery blood. “Let me die in peace.”
“Radiation sickness?” Dietrich got the picture and moved away. “You’re that stalker, are you? The one he recruited?”
Under the table Artyom cautiously pulled the revolver closer, so that the firing hammer wouldn’t snag on his pocket.
“Did you know Homer?”
“Weren’t you killed back there at Teatralnaya?”
“As you can see.”
Apparently Dietmar had allocated him to the living space without any superfluous consultation.
“All right. If you’re one of our veterans …”
“Don’t yell. There are ears all around here.”
“They’re here. They got out. They’re drinking nearby. Both of them. They’re in my charge too. Shall I show you the way?”
“Please do.”
Homer was alive. Glory be. He had to find him. Can you wait a little bit, Sasha?
Artyom had a week or thereabouts left. And Homer wasn’t going anywhere. He needed to make his confession to Homer at least, for his notebook. He could write it all down for himself. About the pylons, about the pits, about the mushrooms and about the cartridges. Let him write down everything about the goddamned whorish Order. And the most important thing, the most sacred thing—that the world was still there.
He wanted a story, and here was a real story.
The old man turned out to be sitting only twenty meters away. He and Ilya Stepanovich were drinking morosely, without clinking glasses.
But when he saw Artyom, he lit up.
Homer was disheveled—the fine gray hairs round his bald patch were sticking out, and in the lamplight they looked like a golden halo. He’d recovered. He was holding a chicken—the same one, Olezhka’s. No one had wrung its neck; no one had stuck it in the soup; it had even fattened up well on fascist feed and it was sleek and glossy, the little pest.
Artyom walked up the steps to the old man and embraced him. How long was it since they’d seen each other? A year?
“You’re alive.”
“And you’re alive.”
“How are you, granddad?”
“How am I? Well now. Ilya and I started … working.” Homer looked at Artyom’s guide. “Hello.”
“And how’s it going?” Artyom asked Ilya Stepanovich.
“Good,” Ilya Stepanovich replied to Dietrich. “We’re writing. It’s going well.”
“That’s great,” said Artyom. “Come on, granddad, why don’t we take a stroll? Thank you, Genosse.” He nodded to Dietrich. “I won’t forget it.”
Dietrich ought to have followed Artyom, of course, to eavesdrop. But behind the straw rain the mushrooms were getting cold and the rotgut was getting warm. And there didn’t seem to be any Reich any more.
“Don’t set foot outside the station!” Dietrich commanded strictly. “Until further instructions.”
They shuffled through the little rooms: Women like beads threaded on the corridor. How could they find a more secluded corner here?
“The writing’s going okay?” Artyom asked Homer in the meantime.
“Not so great.”
“What’s up?”
“Ilya’s wife hanged herself. Narine. He’s drinking.”
“When? When did it happen?”
“Well, we worked for a couple of days, and … But the Führer insisted. He came himself every day, read it and asked questions. I had to work for both of us, basically. But then, Ilya has promised to make me a coauthor. My name on the cover and all the rest of it. Flattering, eh?”
“Oho. “ Artyom looked at Homer. “And what’s he like, the Führer?”
“Well … Just himself … In everyday life … ordinary.”
“Ordinary,” said Artyom. “Well, well. A most ordinary man. And no doubt he’s some kind of VasiliI Petrovich too.”
“Yevgeny Petrovich,” Homer corrected him.
“Almost right,” Artyom chuckled. “Have you got to the freaks yet? In the textbook?”
“We didn’t have time,” Homer answered, looking past him. “And now who knows if we ever will. Everyone’s scattered. The Reich’s finished. The Führer’s disappeared.”
The chicken spread its wings, as if for flight. But Homer, already familiar with chicken habits, held it away from him at arm’s length. It huddled up and crapped on the floor.
“Is she laying at least?” Artyom enquired.
“No. She’s on strike.” The old man smiled mirthlessly. “Although I stuffed her full of eggshells. Damned if I know what’s wrong.”
They walked on, talking, past battered fascists and inspired whores, through other people’s oohs and aahs, under the whistling of the horsewhip, conforming to the rhythm of other people’s depraved love.
“Well then. You won’t have to stifle your conscience,” Artyom said, feeling the urge rising through his weariness: Tell the whole story. “Now you can write your own book. Like you wanted to do.”
“My own book that no one will print.”
“That depends on what you write in it.”
“And what will I write?”
Artyom got the feeling that someone was tailing them. He looked back once, then again. The man seemed to have dissolved in the haze. Maybe he wasn’t following Artyom, but just going about his own jolly business. Or maybe he’d dropped back to avoid catching anyone’s eye.
One hand on the Nagant.
“Did you find your Sasha?” Artyom asked Homer.
“My Sasha? No. You …”
“She’s here, granddad, She was here yesterday. I talked to her. About you.”
“Do you know? Do you know where she is?”
“Yes.”
“Is she all right? Where are we going? Shall we go to her, rather than… And what … Does she do … here?”
“What do women do here, granddad? She works.”
“Nah, come on! Sasha? I don’t believe it.”
“Well, now.”
“It’s not true!”
“And tell me … About Hunter—is that true? That he became a hopeless drunk? I wasn’t aware that you knew each other.”
“Hunter? You know him too? Where from?”
“He was the one who sent me on my crusade. Back then. Against the Dark Ones. To get the missiles. Didn’t I tell you about it? And didn’t he tell you? Was that the reason he drank? Because of the Dark Ones? Or what was it?”
“Hunter? I don’t know, he … We didn’t talk much. Not enough.”
“You were writing that book about him, weren’t you? Your own story in the notebook. So how come?”
“I don’t know. You know, he … He’s not a genuine hero. I wanted to make him into a
hero. So that people would read it and be inspired.”
“So that’s why you made him a teetotaler?”
“How do you … ?”
“I told you: Sasha told me all this. Don’t you believe me, then?”
“I have to see her. To take a look. I want to make certain.”
“A bit later. Be patient. It’s important. Ah, seems like there’s no one here … Come in. Wait, I’ll just check everything …”
“And that about Hunter … Yes! Well, who would want to read about an alcoholic? To follow him? Do you understand? It has to be a myth. Beautiful. People are sitting in the dark, in doom and gloom. They need light. Without light they’ll degenerate completely.”
“I understand. And now you listen.”
Artyom leaned down to the old man and whispered feverishly into his hairy ear.
“People are sitting in the dark because the light is being hidden from them. The West wasn’t annihilated, granddad. And not all of Russia was. There are other survivors. Almost the whole world survived. I don’t know what kind of life they have out there, but … Vladivostok, your Polar Dawns, Paris, America.”
“What?”
“They’re hiding them all from us. Using jammers. They’re spaced out around Moscow. Radio stations that suppress the signals from other cities.”
“What?”
“It’s Hansa. And my Order knows about it. It serves Hansa. And it bumps off everyone who reaches here from the outside. Finds them and terminates them. And everyone who tries to contact the outside world from here too. That’s why no one even knows. And I think the Red Line built wind towers for Hansa. There are wind generators standing out there, in Balashikha, to supply the jammers with power. And a ditch dug with an excavator—a huge, great pit, crammed with corpses, and dogs eat them, dogs with five legs. The builders and the outsiders all together. And Hansa gives the Reds cartridges for that. Or maybe not for that, maybe just to support them. Twenty thousand cartridges, can you imagine that? And Reds are firing those cartridges at the mushroom riots. Firing into the crowd. People even walk straight at the machine guns, asking for mushrooms, and they mow them down, just mow them down … The people don’t want to know anything. You tell them, ‘You can get away from here, out of the Metro! There’s life out there, up on the surface! Leave this place!’ And they still keep plodding on towards Hansa, walking into the bullets … That’s why it’s important for you to write all this down. In the notebook. Yes, and another thing. They lie to everyone and claim that we have to be hidden in here because there are enemies all around us; they say the war’s still going on, but that’s all lies. I’m certain it’s all lies. But what it’s all for—I’ll find that out, if I get out of here. But meanwhile, you write it. All right? Write, so the people will know. It’s important.”
METRO 2035. English language edition.: The finale of the Metro 2033 trilogy. (METRO by Dmitry Glukhovsky) Page 44