She also tolerated so many other things. The endless alarming parts from newspapers with titles like “The arms race goes on”, “Americans test anti-rocket system”, “Our rocket shield grows”, “Farewell to peace” and “The time for patience is over” that covered all of the walls like wallpaper; him staying all night hovering over a stack of notebooks, a gnawed on pen in his hand – using electrical light instead of candles, no option with all the newspaper around; his jesting nickname, that he carried with pride, but that evoked a joking smile by everyone else who said it.
She tolerated so much, but not everything. Nor his juvenile eagerness, that brought him into the middle of a storm every time only to see what it was like there – and that with almost 60 years! Nor the ease with what he accepts all the orders from above, without thinking about the last expedition that had almost cost his life.
If he had died … he didn’t want to think about it.
When Homer left for guard’s duty once a week she never stayed in the house. She fled with her troubled thoughts to the neighbors or went to work even if she didn’t had to – it didn’t matter where, everywhere was fine if it distracted her from thinking that her husband had already died, laying on the ground, dead and cold. She thought that his typical male composure regarding death was stupid, egoistic, yes even criminal.
Fate had wanted it that she had already returned from work to change her clothes. She had put her arms through the sleeves of her patched jacket when he entered. Her dark, slightly grayed hair – she hadn’t even turned 50 – was tousled and you could see fear in her brown eyes. “Kolya … did something happen? I thought you had guard duty till late in the night?”
His courage to start his argumentation dissolved immediately. Of course this time others were responsible, he could have said that they forced him, with clean consciences.
But now he hesitated. Maybe he should calm her down first and mention it later – casually – during dinner?
“I am asking just one thing from you: Don’t lie to me.”
She warned him, after she had seen his wandering eyes.
“Lena.” He started. “I have to tell you something …”
“Did somebody …“She asked the most important, most feared question right away. Did somebody die, but she didn’t speak it out loud, like if she feared that her words would make it happen.
“No! No …” Homer shook his head and added: “The freed me from guard duty. They are sending me to the Serpuchovskaya. Don’t think it will be dangerous”
“But …” Yelena didn’t know what to say. “But that is … Did they already return, the …”
“It is all nonsense.” He interrupted her hastily. “There is nothing”. The conversation turned into an unexpected direction. Instead dealing with curses that he is trying to play a hero and wait for a good moment of reconciliation, he now had to face a far harder test.
Yelena turned away, stepped to the table, put the salt from the table somewhere else and smoothed a wrinkle in the tablecloth. “I had a dream …” She stopped and cleared her throat.
“You always have one”
“A bad one” she said stubbornly. Then she started crying.
“What? What am I … It’s an order.” He stuttered and stroked over her fingers. He realized that his tirades weren’t worth a cent now.
“The one-eyed should go by himself!” She called out angrily and moved her hand away. “Oh that devil with his beret! He can only boss around others … What does he have to lose? He is married to his rifle! What does he know?”
When you made a women cry, the only thing left is to hold her in your arms. Homer was ashamed of himself, he was really sorry. But it was too easy to give in now, to swear that he won’t follow that order, to calm her down and dry her tears – and to remember this missed chance forever. Maybe the last chance in his long life.
So he remained silent.
It was time to gather the officers and give them further instructions. But the colonel was still sitting in his office. The cigarette smoke didn’t even bother him anymore but it still tempted him.
While the commander of the station moved his finger along the line of the Sevastopolskaya on his map of the Metro and was whispering to himself sunken in thoughts, Denis Michailovitsch tried to understand what was behind Hunters mysterious return to the Sevastopolskaya. Why did he decide to settle down here and why did he wear his helmet in public almost all the time? That all meant that Istomin was right:
Hunter was hiding from something and he had chosen the southern guard post as his hiding place. There he replaced a complete brigade and had become irreplaceable. Whoever demanded his return, whatever price had been placed on his head, nor Istomin or the colonel would have given him up.
His hiding place was brilliant. There were no strangers at the Sevastopolskaya and compared to other caravans that traveled to the “big Metro” everyone passing through this station kept their tongue behind their teeth. In this small Sparta that desperately held on to their small piece of earth on the end of the world it was the most important thing to be reliable and relentless in battle. Here secrets still meant something.
But why did Hunter give all this up again? Why did he travel to Hanza out of his free will and risked being recognized? He had volunteered for this operation; Istomin wouldn’t have dared to think about appointing it to him. It probably wasn’t the fate of the lost recon unit that interested the brigadier. He didn’t fight for the Sevastopolskaya because he loved the station so much, but because of his own reasons that were only known to him.
Maybe he had to fulfill an assignment? That would explain a lot of things: His sudden appearance, his secrecy, the stamina with which he held the guard post and of course his decision to leave for the Serpuchovskaya immediately.
But then why did he forbid him to inform the others?
Who could have sent him expect them?
No, that was impossible. He was one of the Order. A man who dozens, if not hundreds of people – including Denis Michailovitsch – owed their lives to wouldn’t be able to commit treason.
But was this Hunter that had appeared out of the void the same? If he worked for somebody did he receive a signal?
Did that mean that the disappearance of the recon unit was no accident but a well planned operation? And what part did the brigadier play in all of this?
The colonel shook his head strongly, as if he wanted to shake away his suspicions that hung on him like blood eels, getting bigger and bigger. Why would he think this about a man that saved his live? Hunter had served the station without making any mistakes and he had never given him the slightest reason for doubts. Thus Denis Michailovitsch forbade himself to think about the brigadier as a deserter, spy or something else.
He had made his decision. “Another tea and then I’ll go to the boys.” He said overly energetic and snapped his fingers.
Istomin rose from his Metro plan and smiled tired. He wanted to dial the number for the adjutant when the telephone ringed. Both were startled and looked at each other. They hadn’t heard that sound for a week. If the officer on duty wanted something he knocked on the door and there was no one else in the station that was able to call the foreman directly.
“Istomin here.” He answered carefully.
“Vladimir Ivanowitsch! The Tulskaya is on the phone.” He heard the hastily voice of the adjutant. “But the connection is very bad … Probably our men … But the connection …”
“Connect me already!” Istomin screamed into the receiver and hammered his fist on the table with such force that the telephone ringed in pain.
The adjutant turned silent immediately. Istomin could hear a ringing sound, then static and then he heard a distant, almost unrecognizable voice.
Yelena had turned her face towards the wall, to hide her tears. What could she still do to hold him back? Why did he always reach for the first possibility to leave the station?
His miserably excuses. “Orders from above.” And.
“Desertion.” She had heard them a hundred times. What wouldn’t she have given, wouldn’t have tried to get rid of his nonsense in these 15 years? But once again it drew him to the tunnels, as if he thought to find something other than darkness, emptiness and doom in it. What was he searching for?
Homer knew exactly what she was thinking, as if she had spoken it out loud. He felt miserably, but it was too late to retreat. He opened his mouth to say something excusing, something warm but he remained silent, with every single one of his words he would just have added oil to the flame.
Over Yelena’s head Moscow cried. A carefully framed color-picture of the Tverskaya Uliza, shining through the translucent midsummer rain, cut out of a shiny almanac was hanging on the wall. A long time ago, when he was able to move through the Metro freely all of his fortune was made up by his clothes and this one picture. Others carried crumpled, torn out pages from man oriented magazines in their pockets.
But for Homer that wasn’t a replacement. But this picture reminded him of something unspeakable beautiful … something that has been lost forever.
Helplessly he whispered: “Forgive me.” Stepped out into the hallway, closed the door carefully behind him and sat himself in front of his apartment. The door of the neighboring apartment was open and two sickly pale children played on the doorstep – a boy and a girl. When they saw Homer they stopped. The patched up teddy bear that the children had argued about just one second ago fell to the ground.
“Uncle Kolya, uncle Kolya! Tell us a story! You promised to tell us one when you returned!”
Homer couldn’t hold back a smile. He forgot the argument with Yelena immediately. “About what?”
“Headless mutants!” Screamed the boy excited.
“No! I don’t want mutants!” Said the girl shocked.
“They are so terrible, they scare me!”
Homer sighed: “What story do you want, Tanyuscha?”
But the boy answered before her: “Than about the fascists! Or the partisans!”
“I want the story about the Emerald city!” said Tanya and smiled.
“But I told it yesterday. Maybe about the war of Hanza against the Reds?”
“About the Emerald city, about the Emerald city!”
Both yelled.
“Ok.” Agreed Homer. “Somewhere, behind the end of the Sokolnitscheskaya line, behind the seven abandoned stations, the three destroyed bridges and a thousand times a thousand doorways, there lies a mysterious, secret city. It is magical so humans can’t enter. Wizards live there and only they can leave through their portals and enter the city through them again. On top of it, on the surface there is a castle with towers where once the wizards lived. The name of the castle was …”
“Virsity!” Yelled the small boy and looked at his sister triumphal.
“University.” Homer nodded his head.”When the war began and the atomic bombs were dropped on the earth, the wizards retreated into the castle and laid a spell on the entrance so that the bad humans, who had started the war wouldn’t be able to reach them. And then they lived …”
Homer cleared his throat and stopped.
Yelena was leaning at the doorway, she had listened.
He hadn’t seen her when she stepped onto the hallway.
“I’ll pack your things.” She said huskily. Homer walked over to her and took her hand. She clumsily laid his arms around him, it was embarrassing for her in front of the children and asked silently: “You’ll come back soon?
Nothing is going to happen to you, right?”
For the thousandth time in his long life he realized how much women longed for promises – it didn’t matter if he could fulfill them or not. “Everything is going to be alright”
“You are so old and you still kiss like you two just married.” Said the girl, made a grimace and the boy yelled after them cocky: “Daddy says that nothing about the story is true. That there is no emerald city”
“Maybe.” Homer shrugged his shoulders. “It is a fairy tale. What would we do without fairy tales?”
The connection was truly bad. A vaguely familiar voice fought against the terrible static: It seemed it was one of the recon team that they had sent to the Serpuchovskaya on the railcar.
“At the Tulskaya … We can …Tulskaya.” He tried to give their position.
“Understood, you are at the Tulskaya”, Istomin yelled into the receiver. “What happened? Why haven’t you returned?”
“Tulskaya … Here … You can’t … Everything but …”
Again and again parts of his sentence were swallowed by the static.
“What can’t we do? Repeat, what can’t we do?”
“Don’t storm the station! Everything but storming the station!” It sounded out of the telephone clearly for once.
“Why?” Asked Istomin “What by the devil is going on?”
But the voice was no longer to be heard. The static became louder and louder, than the line went dead. Istomin didn’t want to believe it at first and kept the telephone in his hand.
“What is going on there?” He whispered.
Afterlife (Chapter 3)
That look that the guards on the northern post gave him, Homer would never forget it, as long as he lived. A look filled with admiration and melancholy, like for a fallen hero.
He could hear the salute shots of the honor regiment in the background. Like a farewell forever.
The living didn’t get those looks. Homer felt like he climbed the shaky ladder of a small cabin of a plane, unable to land, which the Japanese engineers had upgraded to a machine from hell. The emperor’s flag with the red stripes flattered in the salty wind, on the summery airfield mechanics ran around, motors roared and a thick general with wet eyes, filled with the envy of the samurai raised his hand in a military salute …
“Why are you so excited?” Asked Achmed the dreaming elderly grimly. He on the other hand wasn’t in a rush to find out what had happened at the Sevastopolskaya.
His wife was standing near the train track, his oldest son on one hand, a screaming bundle in the other, holding it carefully.
“It is like a sudden banzai attack: You stand up and run directly at the machine guns.” Homer tried to explain.
“Courage out of distress. In front of us lies a deadly fire …”
“No wonder why you call it a suicide-attack.” Growled Achmed and looked back to the tiny bright light at the end of the tunnel. “The right thing for somebody as crazy as you. A normal human doesn’t run straight into a machinegun. Those heroics don’t bring anyone very far”
The old one didn’t answer immediately. “Well, that’s the thing. When you feel that your time is over you are starting to think: What remains when I am gone? What have I accomplished?”
“Hm. I don’t know about you, but I have my children.
They won’t forget me.” After a short pause he added:
“At least not my oldest.”
Homer wanted to reply upset but Achmed’s last sentence took the wind out of his sails. Of course it was easier for him to risk his old and childless hide. That boy on the other hand had his entire life in front of him and didn’t need to think about achieving his immortality yet.
They had passed the last lamp; a glass can with a weak light bulb and a grid out of steel around it, full of burned flies and winged roaches. The chitin-mass moved almost unnoticeably: Some insects were still alive, trying to crawl out of a pit – like wounded death candidates trying to crawl out of a mass grave.
For a second Homer got stuck at the trembling, reaching, weakly-yellowish light, looking like it swelled out of graveyard’s lamp. Then he took a deep breath and dove into the deep-black darkness that reached from the Sevastopolskaja to the Tulskaya – if the station still existed.
It seemed like the sad woman and her children had grown together with the granite plate. They weren’t the only ones: A little bit next to them a one-eyed man with shoulders like a wrestler looked after the group that was vanishi
ng into the darkness. Behind him a thin old man in a military jacket was silently talking with the adjutant.
“No we can only wait.” Said Istomin, while he crushed the self-made cigarette.
“You can wait.” Answered the colonel edgy. “I’ll do what I have to do”
“It was Andrey. The leading officer of the railcar that we sent.” Vladimir Ivanovitsch could hear the voice out of the receiver once again – he couldn’t get it out of his head.
“And?” The colonel raised his brow. “Maybe he talked under torture. There are specialists that new certain methods.”
“Unlikely. You didn’t hear his voice. There is something different going on. Something unexplainable. A surprise attack won’t matter …”
“I can explain it to you.” Assured Denis Michailovitsch.
“At the Tulskaya there are bandits. They overpowered the station, killed some of our guys and took the others hostage. They didn’t cut the power of course, they need power as well and they didn’t want to make Hanza nervous.
They probably just turned off the telephone. How else would you explain that the telephone works some times and then it doesn’t?”
“But his voice was so …” Mumbled Istomin as if he didn’t even listen to the colonel.
“Well how?” Exploded the colonel. The adjutant carefully took a few steps back. “When I drive a nail under your fingernail then you’ll scream differently! And with pliers I could turn a bass into a soprano for life!” He knew what he had to do, he had made his choice. Now after he had defeated his doubts he was on a new high and his fingers twitched to his sword. Istomin can complain as much as he wants.
Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) Page 4
