METRO 2033 (29 page)

Artyom had not seen anything like it. Yes, he had half-erased memories of swiftly moving and hooting trains with bright squares of windows. The memories were from his early childhood, but they were diffuse, ephemeral, like the other thoughts about what had gone before: as soon as he tried to remember any details, to focus on something small, then the elusive image dissolved right away, and flowed like water through his fingers, and there was nothing left . . . But since he’d grown up he had only seen the train that had got stuck in the tunnel entrance at Rizhskaya, and some wagons at Kitai Gorod and Prospect Mir.

Artyom froze on the spot, captivated, looking at the train, counting the carriages that melted into the haze of the other end of the platform, near the entrance to the Red Line. There, a red calico banner hung down from the ceiling, snatched from the darkness by a distinct circle of electric light, and underneath it stood two machine gunners, in identical green uniforms and peak caps, who seemed small from far away and amusingly reminiscent of toy soldiers.

Artyom had three toy soldiers like them when he lived with his mother: one was the commander with a tiny pistol pulled out of its holster. He was yelling something, looking backwards - he was probably ordering his group to follow him into battle. The other two stood straight, holding their machine guns. The little soldiers were probably from different collections and there was no way to play with them: the commander was throwing himself into battle, and despite his valiant cries, the other two were standing in place, just like the border guards of the Red Line, and they weren’t particularly heading for battle. It was strange, he remembered these soldiers so well, and yet he couldn’t remember his mother’s face . . .

Kuznetsky Most was relatively orderly. The light here, like at
VDNKh,
came from emergency lights that were strung along the length of the ceiling on some kind of mysterious metal construction that had perhaps once illuminated the station itself. Apart from the trains, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about the station.

‘I’ve heard so often that there are so many amazingly beautiful places in the metro but from what I can see they’re almost all identical.’ Artyom shared his disappointment with Mikhail Porfirevich.

‘Come now, young man! There are such beautiful places, you wouldn’t believe! There’s Komsomolskaya on the Ring, a veritable palace!’ The old man heatedly took to persuading him. ‘There’s an enormous panel there, you know, on the ceiling. It has Lenin on it and other rubbish, it’s true . . . Oh, what am I saying.’ He stopped short and, with a whisper, said to Artyom, ‘This station is full of secret agents from the Sokolnicheskaya line, that’s to say the Red Line, sorry, I call things by their old names . . . So you have to be quiet here. The local leadership looks like it’s independent but they don’t want to quarrel with the Reds so if they ask them to hand someone over, then they can just hand you over. Not to mention the murders,’ he added very quietly, looking timidly from side to side. ‘Come on, let’s find somewhere to rest. To be honest, I’m terribly tired, and indeed you, in my opinion, are only barely managing to stay on your feet. Let’s spend the night here, and then we’ll go on.’

Artyom nodded. This day had indeed seemed to be endless and stressful, and rest was absolutely necessary.

Enviously sighing and not taking his eyes off the train, Artyom followed Mikhail Porfirevich. There was joyful laughter and conversation coming from the carriages, and they passed a man standing in the doorway. He looked tired after a day’s work and was smoking a cigarette with his neighbour, calmly discussing the events of the day. Gathered around a table, old ladies were drinking tea under a small lamp that was hanging from a wire, and children were running wild. This seemed unusual to Artyom: at
VDNKh,
the conditions were always very tense and people were ready for anything to happen. Yes, people got together in the evenings to sit quietly with friends in someone’s tent, but there was nothing like this where doors were open, in full view, and people were visiting each other so easily, children everywhere . . . This station was just too happy.

‘And what do they live on here?’ Artyom couldn’t contain himself as he caught up to the old man.

‘What? You don’t know?’ Mikhail Porfirevich said politely but he was surprised. ‘This is Kuznetsky Most! You get the best technicians in the metro here, important masters. They bring all sorts of devices to be fixed here from the Sokolnicheskaya line, even from the Ring itself. They’re flourishing, flourishing. What it would be like to live here!’ He sighed dreamily. ‘But they’re very strict about that . . .’

Artyom hoped in vain that they would also be able to sleep in one of the railroad cars, on a bed. In the middle of the hall stood a row of big tents, the kind that they lived in at
VDNKh,
and the first one they came to had a stencilled inscription on it that said: HOTEL. Next to it was a whole line of fugitives, but Mikhail Porfirevich, calling one of the organizers to the side, tinkled some copper, and whispered something magical starting with ‘Konstantin Alexeyevich’ and the matter was settled.

‘We’ll go here,’ he said with an inviting gesture, and Vanechka joyfully gurgled.

They even gave them some tea there, and he didn’t have to pay anything extra for it, and the mattresses on the floor were so soft that after you’d fallen on them you really didn’t want to have to get up. Half-reclining, Artyom carefully blew on the mug of tea and attentively listened to the old man, who was telling him something with a burning look, having forgotten about his cup of tea:

‘They have power across the whole branch. And no one will tell you about that, and the Reds will never admit to it, but University is not under their control and everything beyond University too! Yes, yes, The Red Line continues to Sportivnaya. There’s a passage that starts there, you know, which was once the station Leninskye Gory, and then they changed the name but I can only remember the old one . . . But Leninskye Gory, was below a bridge actually. And you see, there was an explosion on the bridge and it collapsed into the river and the station was flooded, so there hasn’t been any communication with University from the very beginning . . .’

Artyom swallowed a little gulp of tea and felt that everything inside was sweetly freezing in place in anticipation of something mysterious, unusual, that something had started back where the broken rails hovered over a precipice on the Red Line, down in the south-west. Vanechka was gnawing on his nails, only stopping sometimes to look with satisfaction at the fruits of his labour and then starting up again. Artyom looked at him almost with sympathy and felt grateful to the boy that he was being quiet.

‘You know, we have a small circle at Barrikadnaya,’ Mikhail Porfirevich smiled embarrassedly. ‘And we get together in the evenings, sometimes people come to us from Ulitsa 1905, and now they chased all the differently thinking people, and Anton Petrovich moved to our station too . . . It’s nonsense of course, these are simple literary gatherings, but we sometimes talk about politics . . . They don’t especially like educated people at Barrikadnaya - either. So we just do it on the quiet. But Yakov Yosifovich was saying that, allegedly, University station didn’t perish. That they managed to block off the tunnel and there’re still people there now. Not just people but . . . You understand, that’s where Moscow University used to be, that’s why the station is called University. And so, allegedly, some of the professoriate were saved at University station, and some students too. There was some kind of bomb-shelter under the university, something constructed by Stalin, and I think they were connected by special tunnels to the metro. And now there’s another kind of intellectual centre there, you know . . . But that’s probably just legend. That there’s educated people in power there, and all the three stations and the shelter are governed by a rector, and each station is headed by a deacon - all elected for a specified term. There, studies aren’t at a standstill - there are still students, you know, post-grads, teachers! And culture hasn’t died out, not like it has here, and they write things and they haven’t forgotten how to conduct research . . . And Anton Petrovich even said that one of his friends, an engineer, told him in secret that they’d even found a way to go to the surface. They created a protective suit, and sometimes their scouts are sent into the metro . . . You’ll agree that it sounds improbable!’ Mikhail Porfirevich added half-questioningly, looking Artyom in the eye and Artyom noticed something sad in his eyes, a timid and tired hope, that made Artyom cough a little and answer as confidently as possible:

‘Why? It sounds completely possible! Take Polis for example. I heard the same about it . . .’

‘Yes, it’s a wonderful place Polis - but how can you get there these days? They told me that at the council the power has been taken by the military . . .’

‘Which council?’ Artyom raised his eyebrows.

‘What? Polis is governed by a council of the most authoritative people. And there, you know, authoritative people are either librarians or servicemen. But I don’t really know about Biblioteka Lenina exactly, so there’s no point in talking about it, but the other entrance to Polis is located right behind the Ministry of Defence, as far as I remember, or, in any case it was somewhere nearby, and some of the generals were able to evacuate to it at the time. At the very beginning, the military men took power, and this junta ruled Polis for a sufficiently long time. But the people didn’t really like them ruling, there was disorder - of the blood-spilling kind - but that was a long time ago, a long time before the war with the Reds. Then they came to a compromise and this council was founded. And it happened that within it there were two factions - the librarians and the servicemen. It was a strange combination, of course. You know, the military had probably not met many live librarians in their lives. And here they were, together. And between these factions there was an eternal fight, of course: one would take control, then the other. When the war started with the Reds, defence was more important than culture and the scales tipped to the generals. Then peaceful times began and again the librarians gained influence. And it’s like a pendulum, there. Now I hear that the military people have a stronger position, and they’re imposing discipline there, you know, curfews and all those other joys of life.’ Mikhail Porfirevich quietly smiled. ‘Going through there isn’t any easier than getting to the Emerald City . . . That’s what we call University among ourselves, and the stations surrounding it, for a joke . . . You have to go either through the Red Line or through the Hansa but you can’t just go there, as you yourself understand. Before, before the fascists, you could go through Pushkinskaya to Chekhovskaya and then it’s just one transfer to Borovitskaya. It’s not a good transfer of course, but when I was younger, I made my way through it.’

Artyom asked what was so bad about the transfer he mentioned, and the old man reluctantly answered:

‘You understand, right there in the middle of the tunnel there’s a burnt-out train. I haven’t been there in ages so I don’t know how it is now but before you could see charred human remains sitting in its seats . . . It was just terrible. I don’t know how this happened, and I asked some friends but no one has been able to say exactly. And it’s very hard to get through this train, because the tunnel has started to collapse and dirt has filled in all the spaces around the train. In the train itself, in the carriages, I mean, various bad things are going on and it would be difficult to explain them. I’m an atheist in general, you know, and I don’t believe in all that mystical nonsense . . . and now I don’t believe in anything anymore.’

These words led Artyom to the gloomy memories of the noise in the tunnel on his line, and he couldn’t restrain himself and he told the old man what had happened to his group, and then what happened with Bourbon and, after hesitating a little, he tried to repeat the explanation that Khan had given him.

‘What? What are you talking about? That’s utter rubbish!’ Mikhail Porfirevich brushed him off, sternly knitting his brows. ‘I’ve already heard about such things. You remember I was telling you about Yakov Iosefovich? Well, he’s a physicist and he explained to me that these disruptions to the psyche occur when people are subjected to the lowest frequencies of sound. They are essentially inaudible. If I’m not mistaken it’s around seven hertz, but then my mind is like a sieve . . . And this sound can come about by itself, as a result of natural processes, for example, from tectonic shifts and things like that. I wasn’t listening very attentively as he told me about it . . . But that it has something to do with souls of the dead? In the pipes? Please . . .’

This old man was interesting. Artyom heard things from him that he had never heard from anyone else. The man saw the metro from a different angle, an old-fashioned one, an amusing one, and everything, apparently, pulled his soul to the surface of the earth. He was clearly very uncomfortable here, as though these were his first days underground. And Artyom, thinking of the argument between Sukhoi and Hunter, asked him:

‘And what do you think . . . ? We . . . people, I mean . . . Will we ever return to the surface? Will we survive and go back?’

And he immediately regretted asking it, because it was as though the question had cut into the old man’s very veins, and he became soft straight away, and said, quietly, with a lifeless voice:

‘I don’t think so. I don’t think so.’

‘But after all, there were other metro systems, in Petersburg, in Minsk, and in Novgorod.’ Artyom listed the names he had learnt by heart. They had always been empty shells of words.

‘Ah! What a beautiful city - Petersburg!’ Mikhail Porfirevich didn’t answer him but sadly sighed. ‘You know, Isaak’s . . . Or Admiralteistvo, the spire there . . . What grace, what grace! And evenings on Nevsky Prospect - people, noise, crowds, laughter, children with ice cream, pretty girls . . . Music playing . . . In summer especially. It’s rarely good weather in the summer there but when it happens . . . the sun, the sky is clear, azure . . . And then, you know, it’s just easy to breathe again . . .’