“Hansa? The Hansa outside here? The Circle Line, you mean?”
“Outside? Outside what?”
“Where are you going? Stop! You have no trousers, by the way!”
He jostled her aside and squirmed his way out of the room.
The corridor ran off, immensely long and strange-looking—as if it had been built inside a tunnel. One wall was rounded, covered in tunnel liners. But not tunnel liners like the ones in the Metro, eaten away by rust—these were clean and covered in heavenly linseed-oil paint. Everything clean and dry. Long-life lightbulbs dangling down. What sort of place was this? Not a station. There weren’t any stations like this.
A little orchestra started playing somewhere, merrily and drunkenly.
“Where are we?”
“It will seem rather strange if you set out to explore everything here with a bare backside, Artyom. I suggest you go back to the ward …”
“How do you know my name?”
“It’s written on your card.”
“On my card.”
And then he remembered. He remembered how two years ago he sat in one of the fascists’ cages, waiting to be hanged early in the morning. He simply couldn’t get to sleep. And when he did fall asleep for a few minutes, his sneaky, pitiful brain fed him a dream of escape. Hunter appeared, exterminated all Artyom’s enemies, and freed him. It was a pretty good dream; the lousy part was having to wake up.
Artyom raised his hands and looked at them again.
He wanted like hell to believe in this: the odds and the chance and the recovery. He thought he had already come to terms with death, but no. The moment he was promised another little bit of life, enticed—he fell for it.
But if it was a dream, then he didn’t need any pants.
He started walking forward, towards the voices.
At one spot the wall suddenly disappeared, to reveal a large space with a distant ceiling; here he could see how everything was built—like a tunnel, but a gigantic tunnel, so high that it could be divided into three human-size levels. And running up from the first of these levels was a broad formal stairway covered with red carpet runners. Hanging above the stairway was a globe—an incredible globe. With little square mirrors glued all over it. Some kind of lighting device shone its beam onto the globe, and the reflected glimmers scattered around, like the bright spots of laser sights. The globe rotated with staid dignity, as if it was a planet, and the flecks of light drifted across the walls.
The dashing, do-or-die music was coming from upstairs, and that was where people were laughing. The entire wall above the stairway was covered by a huge banner—vibrant red, embroidered in gold. At the center of it was a crest: The globe of the Earth in an interlaced frame, with a hammer and a sickle crossed above it. A familiar symbol to anyone who had been on the Red Line. And the jolly glimmers from the mirror globe crept across that too.
Was he with the Reds?
Why would the Reds nurse him back to health?
A dream.
“I shall be obliged to call the guards,” the lady doctor warned from somewhere behind him.
Artyom set his staff on the first step and moved up a bit closer the music. His legs were rather weak, not fully pumped up. He waited, and then conquered the next step.
What was this place?
Slowly, narrowing his eyes, he plodded upwards. An archway started moving into view; he could see a white ceiling in it, and light as bright as day.
And then it surfaced from behind the steps—a hall.
An immense hall. A round, bluish white dome, with a chandelier dangling from the ceiling like an explosion of glass. The floor was soft, covered by a single continuous carpet with incredibly bright patterns; just looking at them made him feel dizzy and sick . And there were tables and more tables, tables everywhere. Round tables, laid for a meal—the tablecloths were blotchy, but they had once been white too. Plates with leftover scraps. Carafes half-full of something ruby-red. Forks lying on the floor.
And people: scattered about.
They had clustered round some tables, abandoning others that they had eaten empty. In some places they were embracing, with their foreheads set together, like Artyom and the dying political prisoner in the tunnel, only not moved by grief, but by vodka. In other places they were conducting solemn conversations. Strangely dressed: not with bare torsos under their jackets, but shirts, even though they were crumpled. And even ties, like in photos from before the war.
As if he was invisible, Artyom set out towards them across the soft carpet, bathing his bare feet in the woolen grass. Someone looked up at him from a table with bleary surprise in his eyes, but he couldn’t look for long and slumped back into the complicated salads and half-drunk shot glasses.
A ragged orchestra was blaring away on a little stage at the far end of the hall, and a potbellied, bandy-legged character was cavorting impetuously between the musicians to cack-handed applause from the nearest table.
“Artyom?”
He stopped, spotted.
“Sit down. Don’t be shy. Well, you’re not shy anyway; I can see that.”
A man was looking at him and smiling. Dark hair in damp streaks across his forehead, swollen bags under his eyes with a tipsy glint in them, an unbuttoned shirt. With a balding hog, bright red in the face and hiccupping, sitting beside him.
“Alexei … Felixovich?”
“Oh! You remember me too?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Well here you are: You’ve found me! Artyom—this is Gennady Nikitich, Gennady Nikitich—Artyom.”
“Plistomityou!” the hog snorted.
At this point it occurred to Artyom that he should cover his private parts. He suddenly started suspecting that this might not be a dream after all. The raving lunacy on all sides was beyond endurance, but in a dream it wasn’t possible to think about the fact that you were asleep and you had to wake up soon—that would wake you up immediately, wouldn’t it?
Artyom sat down with his bare backside on a velvet chair and covered himself with a napkin. How could he interrogate Bessolov in this situation? Where was his Nagant? What could he threaten Bessolov with to make him tell the truth? A table knife?
“How did I end up here?”
He asked in order to avoid confessing about the dream.
“Your friend persuaded me. Our mutual friend.”
“What? Sasha?”
“Sasha. She implored me exceedingly tearfully. And, you know, I’m soft-hearted by nature. Then I remembered you and how funny you are. We had quite a ball that time … My foster brother, you might say. So my heart faltered. I did pick you up off your knees, after all. Do you remember anything? I think you’d overdone it with the worms. You were a bit woozy. But you coped well with all the assignments.”
“Howtitlating!”
Artyom crept a bit farther under the tablecloth. He suddenly felt very naked—shamefully, idiotically naked. Sasha had asked this ghoul to save him? They were nursing Artyom because Sasha had persuaded him?
“I don’t want this. I don’t need your charity handouts!”
“Ah, there you go again! You fought stoutly that time too! Under the influence of the worm. You were going to introduce global justice. Especially when we chatted about Miller. You used up two of my cigarettes getting rid of that tattoo. Don’t you remember anything at all?”
“Where are we? Where am I? Right now?”
“We … We’re in a bunker. No, not your heroic bunker, don’t make those eyes at me. You know, there are lots of these bunkers under Moscow … We picked one that’s fairly decent, refurbished to Euro-standard. The others are not so great. Some are flooded, and some you can’t get into at all, the doors are so rusty.”
“Zactklyso!”
The lady doctor walked up, and she had the guards with her; smartly dressed, in tunics, as if they’d come straight from a parade. They prepared to impose order on Artyom.
“Oh come on, are you going to take him away
from me immediately?” Bessolov was upset. “Let me talk to the man for a while. He probably has loads of questions.”
The lady doctor agreed and went away.
“Sasha got me in here?”
Naked and helpless. had she saved him?
“Why, yes. The boy got a bad dose of radiation, she said. And he got it because all on his own, alone, he guessed all of your terrible secrets. He wanted very badly to go back up on the surface, and this is where it got him. He even captured the radio station in Balashikha. Cut out the jammers! Appealed to the people! A hero! An admirable young man!”
“She told you? You?”
Had she betrayed him? Given him away?
“It wasn’t only her. My own sources too. I must confess, I underestimated you that first time. You were pretty far gone, of course. That’s what I like: a little chat with one of the common people. Tell him just a little bit about how things really are and get a sniff at the smoke that starts rising from his brains. Many people here haven’t been in the Metro for years, but I’m curious. And then, my job means I have to associate with people.”
“Remarkblman!” the boar exclaimed.
“Are we in Moscow?’
“Of course we are.”
“A bunker? Why … Does it look so strange? Why are the banners Soviet? It … I don’t understand. Is the Red Line really controlled by Hansa? Or is it really Hansa that’s controlled by the Red Line?”
“What difference does it make?”
“What?” Artyom frowned: The white hall was slipping away sideways and upwards.
“Well, is there any difference between the Red Line and Hansa?” Bessolov smiled like quicksand. “And just you try finding ten differences between the Reds and the fascists.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s all right. And I’m willing to explain. Why don’t we take a little stroll here? Without trousers, of course, it will be rather … Hey! Waiter!”
A fidgety waiter with a bow tie, gray hair, and a mustache came scurrying over. Bessolov ordered him to take off his trousers and shirt to dress his guest. Artyom demanded his own clothes, but he was told everything had been burned. Then he agreed to take the black-and-white outfit, except for the bow tie. The waiter stood to attention, with his little gray-haired stomach trembling. The lady doctor disconnected the angels’ blood and sealed off the puncture hole in his arm with a plaster.
AlexeI Felixovich got up and wiped his lips with a napkin; he cast off from the table.
“Mosimpressd,” the boar told Artyom in farewell.
They set off, exchanging greetings, through the well-liquored, drowsy guests at the feast: Kondrat Vladimirich, Ivan Ivanich, AndreI Oganesovich, and all the rest of them.
“Who are they? Who are these people?”
“Splendid people!” Bessolov assured him. “The very best!”
They reached the stairway.
“So.” AlexeI Felixovich gestured round the space. “There was a question. Why the Soviet symbolism? We reply. Previously, before everything happened, this was the premises of the Moscow Cold War Museum. A private museum. But! It was located in a genuine government bunker from the time of that same cold war. A former so-called SF! That is—a State Facility. Somehow it was privatized, God knows how, during the turbulent nineties, it doesn’t matter. Flooded, filthy, and abandoned. Because at that time it seemed to us that these bunkers would never be needed by anyone again. And then the new owners decorated it according to their own nostalgic taste: all these banners, red stars, hammers and sickles and so on and so forth. Basically hinting at the USSR, but Nepman-style. They refurbished the place superbly, for which we are very grateful. They took it with a wooden plough and left it with an atom bomb, so to speak. They collected a curious exhibition of historical artifacts and started showing foreign tourists round. But when World War Three happened, they were quickly reminded what SF stood for, and who was the real owner here, and who was just a temporary placeholder. Because anyone who has been here, naturally, doesn’t want to go to the genuine SFs. It’s all rather dingy there, without any of this pizzazz. Private hands are private hands, after all. And the style is majestic; it’s breathtaking. You look at that banner—and you remember how our great power used to threaten the whole world. So we didn’t change anything here. It’s stylish, and patriotic and snug.”
The glimmers from the mirror globe tickled the red banner and gamboled on the crest.
“But the Red Line … They drive people against machine guns! … Under these flags … Right now, at Komsomol Station! Yesterday! A week ago! A child was shot … In my arms … Not mine … But …”
“Well, what of it, pray tell? That’s nothing to do with us.”
“It was you who forced Miller to give them the cartridges, wasn’t it? Hansa! There, at Komsomol, to Moskvin!” Artyom had finally woken up.
“In the first place, we are not Hansa. In the second place, we didn’t force anyone. The cartridges are ours. And the Order is merely an armored delivery service. Moskvin was entitled to compensation for the actions of the Reich. And what they do with the cartridges is a matter of their ethics. But on the other hand, we stopped the war. Which, moreover, began not because of the way the system is set up in general, but as a result of cretinous initiatives at the middle-management level. The same, as it happens, as that time with your heroic bunker. Do you really want a civil war?”
“At Komsomol Station they used those cartridges to make mincemeat of all those people! Live people! Why are you trying to frighten me with war? People there are starving; they’re ready to storm machine guns. Can you imagine that? What that’s like?”
Bessolov stopped talking and remained silent until they got down the steps.
“But what can be done? We’re trying to find a cure for the mushroom rot. We’re trying pesticides. But there are certain natural processes. The ecology of the Metro, so to speak. I suggest we should consider it the self-regulation of the population.”
“But you stuff your belly here!”
“You could get that impression,” Bessolov agreed.” But it’s stupid to think that the bigwigs at Polis, or Moskvin or Miller, don’t stuff their bellies. This is a matter of rendering to Caesar. There aren’t enough tinned goods in the state reserves for everyone. That’s the way the world’s made. If I go out of here and feed an unfortunate, hungry little girl with scraps from my plate, that won’t change anything. My scraps aren’t Jesus’s fishes. But even so, I do go out and I feed a hungry little girl. And nothing changes.”
“Because your Hansa is no better than the Reich!”
“And I tell you that, in essence, Hansa is the Reich.”
“What?”
“Catch up with me.”
Artyom hobbled after him.
From the staircase with the banner they turned to the right. A bright red star shone above their heads. A sign glowed crimson: BUNKER 42. There was enough electricity for all this. All this was important. They walked along the corridor and came to an empty bar. The counter was illuminated by a Kalashnikov rifle woven out of neon tubes; there was no barman, and the opened bottles proffered themselves. Bessolov pulled over something with a label that wasn’t Russian, tugged out the spongy cork with his teeth, and put his lips to the bottle. He offered Artyom some, but Artyom declined fastidiously.
“And so, the Cold War Museum!” said Bessolov, turning into a narrow passage: sheets of steel attached with square rivets.
They walked into the museum space: an old map on the wall, lit up from below; an immense crimson shadow across half the world signed USSR; gray little European states huddled up against each other; and everything dotted with the stamped silhouettes of missiles and wide-winged planes. A pale mannequin standing in the corner, dressed in an old uniform; a stupid, summer uniform. Guarding a huge, fat bomb painted in gray linseed-oil paint.
“Here we have an amusing little exhibit. A model of the first atomic bomb, developed and produced in the Soviet Union …�
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The bomb had a glass cap set in its nose, as if to allow people to glance into hell. But of course there was nothing in there: just some kind of device with indicators.
But Artyom wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at the huge map of Europe.
“It’s all you, isn’t it? The jammers are yours. I was looking for you, just for that reason. What’s it all needed for? What are we all doing stuck here? In the Metro? If the whole world survived …”
“Did it really survive?” Bessolov raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Well, all right, all right. It survived. I got you there!”
“All those missiles and planes on the map. That’s all old stuff, right? It even still says the USSR, not Russia! How old is this map, a hundred years? There aren’t any enemies after all, right? Those enemies that Miller is afraid of. The ones these jammers are there for. The war ended! Back then! Right?”
“It’s all very subjective, Artyom. Perhaps for some it’s still going on.”
“They’re not planning—the West—to do anything to us! Right? Go and pull the wool over Miller’s eyes with that one!”
“Everyone believes what’s most convenient for him.”
“Then what’s it for? The jammers—what did you put them up for? Why kill people coming from other cities? To make it look like the whole world was bombed to pieces! What for? To make it look like we’re alone! Then why are we stuck here in the Metro?”
“Because,” said AlexeI Felixovich, shedding all his playfulness like a viper shedding its skin, “outside the Metro we will no longer be a people. We will stop being a great nation.”
“What?”
“I’ll try to explain that too. And you stop yelling and try to listen. And by the way, we didn’t put up the jammers. They’re old, from Soviet times. What quality! In the nineties they were simply rented out to businessmen, to broadcast music. Temporarily.”
The old waiter’s outfit hung loose and baggy on Artyom. Somewhere behind him a security guard harrumphed to indicate his presence. AlexeI Felixovich took a handkerchief with initials in the corner out of his breast pocket and ran it over the bomb, wiping off the dust.
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