Since he’d been on night patrol and slept that day, Artyom was again going to have to work the night shift - this time at the tea-factory.
Decades of life underground, in the darkness interspersed with patches of dull-red light, makes you lose a true sense of day and night. At night, the station’s lighting was a little weaker (as it was on the trains of long ago so that people could sleep) but the lights never went out completely except in the case of an accident. Though it had become aggravated by years of living in darkness, human vision was nonetheless comparable with the eyesight of the other creatures that lived in the tunnels and abandoned passages.
The division of ‘day’ and ‘night’ had probably come about by force of habit, rather than by necessity. ‘Night’ made sense because the majority of inhabitants at the station were more comfortable with the idea of everyone sleeping at the same time, letting the cattle rest, turning down the lights and imposing restrictions on noise. The inhabitants of the station could find out the time by the two station clocks, placed over the entrance to the tunnels on either side. These clocks were considered to be as important as strategic objects like the arms store, the water filters and the electric generator. They were always looked after, and the smallest problems with them were immediately dealt with, and any delinquents attempting to take them down were dealt with very strictly, sometimes sent into exile from the station.
Here there was a criminal code, by which the VDNKh judged criminals in swift trials, and it was always being applied to extraordinary situations which were resolved and then new rules were established. Any actions against strategic objects brought about the most severe punishments. For smoking and the setting of fires on platforms, as well as the careless handling of weapons and explosives, you would be immediately expelled from the station and your property confiscated.
These draconian measures can be explained by the fact that several stations had already been burnt to nothing. Fire spread instantly through the small tent cities, devouring everything, and the wild screams of awful pain would echo in the ears of the neighbouring stations for months afterwards. Charred bodies stuck to the melted plastic and canvas, and sets of teeth, cracked from the inconceivable heat of the flames, gnashed in the light of the lanterns held by frightened traders who had accidentally come upon this traveller’s hell.
In order to avoid the repetition of such a grim fate in the rest of the stations, the careless setting of fires became a serious criminal offence. Theft, sabotage and the deliberate avoidance of labour were also punished with exile. But, considering that almost everyone was always visible to each other and that there were only two hundred or so people at the station, these kinds of crimes were rare and usually perpetrated by strangers.
Labour was compulsory, and everyone, young and old, had to fulfil a daily quota. The pig farm, the mushroom plantation, the tea-factory, the meat-packing plant, the fire and engineer services, the weapon shop - every inhabitant worked in one or two of these places. Men were also required to go on military duty in one of the tunnels once every forty-eight hours. And when some kind of conflict arose, or some new danger appeared from the depths of the metro, the patrols were strengthened and they put a reserve force on the pathways, at the ready.
Life was so meticulously arranged here, and VDNKh had established such a reputation for it that there were many wishing to live there. But it was very rare for outsiders to be taken into the settlement.
There was a few more hours until his night shift at the tea-factory and Artyom, not knowing what to do with himself, trudged over to see his friend Zhenya, the same one with whom he undertook the headspinning adventure to the surface. Zhenya was his age, but unlike Artyom, he lived with his own real family: his father, mother, and younger sister. There were only a handful of incidents where a whole family had been saved, and Artyom secretly envied his friend. Of course, he loved his stepfather very much and respected him even now that the man’s nerves had got the better of him. But nonetheless, he knew that Sukhoi wasn’t his father, and wasn’t his kin altogether - and he never called him ‘Dad’.’
At the beginning Sukhoi asked Artyom to call him ‘Uncle Sasha’ but later regretted it. Years had gone by and the old tunnel wolf hadn’t managed to start a family of his own, he didn’t even have a woman who would wait for him to return from expeditions. His heart would beat harder when he saw a mother and child, and he dreamed about the possibility that one day he wouldn’t have to go out into the darkness, disappearing from the life of the station for days and weeks, and maybe forever. And then, he hoped that he would find a woman who would be prepared to be his wife, and to bear him children, which, when they learnt to speak would not call him ‘Uncle Sasha’ but ‘Father.’
Old age and feebleness were getting ever closer, and there was less and less time remaining, and he needed to hurry, but all the same it would be hard to pull off. Task followed task and he couldn’t find anyone to take over his work, no one to trust with his connections and his professional secrets, in order to finally start doing some non-manual work at the station. He had already long considered doing work that was a bit more peaceful, and he even knew that he could fall back on a supervisory role at the station thanks to his authority, his stellar record and his friendly relations with the administration. But for now, there was no one capable of replacing him, not even on the horizon, so he entertained himself with thoughts of a happy future and he lived for today, postponing his final return and continuing to spend his sweat and blood for the sake of the granite of other stations and the concrete of far-off tunnels.
Artyom knew that his stepfather, despite showing fatherly love towards him, didn’t think of him as his successor in professional matters and mostly thought of Artyom as a nitwit, and completely undeserving of such responsibility. He didn’t take Artyom on long expeditions, ignoring the fact that Artyom had grown up and could no longer be persuaded that he was still too young and that zombies would drag him off or rats would eat him. He didn’t understand expressing a lack of confidence in Artyom had pushed the boy into desperate escapades for which Sukhoi had to punish him afterwards. He had probably wanted not to subject Artyom to the senseless mortal danger of wandering the metro but allow the boy to live the way Sukhoi wanted to live himself: in peace and safety, working and raising children, not wasting his youth unnecessarily. But in wanting such a life for Artyom, he was forgetting to strive for such a life himself, and had passed through fire and water, had succeeded in surviving hundreds of adventures and was satisfied with them. And the wisdom acquired with years wasn’t speaking to him anymore, all that spoke to him were the years themselves and the fatigue they brought. Artyom had energy boiling inside him. He had only just started living, and the prospect of drudging through the vegetative existence of crumbling and drying mushrooms, and changing diapers, and never going beyond the five-hundredth metre seemed absolutely inconceivable. The desire to get away from the station grew in him every day, as he understood more and more clearly what life his stepfather was moulding for him. A career as a tea-factory worker and the role of a father with many children was less appealing than anything on earth.
He was drawn to adventure, wanted to be carried along like tumbleweed in the tunnel draughts, and to follow these draughts into uncertainty, to meet his fate - and that’s what Hunter probably saw in him, asking him to take part in a venture of such enormous risk. This Hunter fellow had a subtle sense of smell when it came to people, and after an hour of conversation he understood that he could propose the plan to Artyom. Even if Artyom didn’t ever get to the designated place, at least there was the prospect of leaving the station, in accordance with his orders in the event that something should happen to Hunter at the Botanical Gardens.
And the hunter wasn’t mistaken in his choice.
Luckily, Zhenya was at home and now Artyom could pass the evening discussing the latest gossip and having conversations about the future over strong tea.
‘Great!’ his friend exclaim
ed in response to Artyom’s greeting. ‘You’re also on night duty at the factory today? They put me there too. I’m so sick of it that I wanted to ask the boss to switch me. But if they put you with me then that’s fine, I can handle it. You were on patrol today, right? Well, tell me! I heard that you had a state of emergency there. What happened?’
Artyom cast a sidelong look at Zhenya’s younger sister with great emphasis as she had become so interested in the conversation that she had stopped stuffing mushroom waste into the ragdoll that her mother had sewn for her, and was watching them with bated breath and round eyes from the corner of the tent.
‘Listen, little one!’ Zhenya said strictly, having understood what Artyom meant. ‘You, now, go on, get out of here with your little thing and go and play at the neighbours’. I think Katya invited you over. We have to be nice to the neighbours. So, go on, and take your dollies with you.’
The little girl squeaked indignantly and started to gather her things with a gloomy look on her face, meanwhile making suggestions to her doll, who was blankly looking up at the ceiling with her semi-erased eyes. ‘You think you’re so important! I know everything anyway! You’re going to talk about your mushrooms!’ she said contemptuously as she left.
‘You, Lenka, are still too small to discuss mushrooms. The milk on your lips hasn’t even dried yet!’ Artyom put her in her place.
‘What’s milk?’ the girl asked, puzzled, touching her lips.
But neither of them bothered to explain and the question hung in the air.
When she left, Zhenya fastened the flaps of the tent and asked, ‘Well, what happened? Go on, spill it! I’ve heard quite a lot about it already. One guy says that a huge rat crawled out of the tunnel. Another guy says that you scared off a spy for the dark ones and that you even wounded him. Who should I believe?’
‘Don’t believe anyone!’ Artyom advised. ‘They’re all lying. It was a dog. A little puppy. Andrei the marine picked it up. He said that it was a German Shepherd.’ Artyom smiled.
‘Yeah but I heard from Andrei that it was a rat!’ Zhenya said, perplexed. ‘Did he lie on purpose or what?’
‘You don’t know? That’s his favourite catchphrase - the one about the rats the size of pigs. He’s a comedian, you see,’ Artyom responded. ‘So what’s new with you? What have you heard from the boys?’
Zhenya’s friends were traders, delivering teas and pork to the market at Prospect Mir. They brought back multivitamins, cloth, all sorts of junk, sometimes they even got hold of oil; sometimes they’d bring dirt-stained books, often with pages missing, which had mysteriously ended up at Prospect Mir, having travelled through half the metro system, passing from one trunk to the next, from one pocket to the next, from one merchant to another, before finally finding their rightful owners.
At VDNKh, they were proud of the fact that, despite their distance from the centre and the main trade routes, the settlers there were able not just to survive conditions that worsened every day, but to maintain, at least within the station, human culture, which was quickly dying out underground.
The administration of the station had strived to give this issue as much attention as possible. It was mandatory to teach children to read, and the station even had its own small library, to which all the books that they managed to acquire at markets were added. The problem was that the traders didn’t really choose the books, they just brought what they were given and they collected it as though it was scrap paper.
But the attitude of the people at the station towards books was such that they wouldn’t rip even one page out of the silliest pulp fiction. People revered books as though they were relics, as a final reminder of the wonderful world that had sunk into oblivion. Adults, who held sacred every second of a memoir they read, transferred this love of books to their children, who had nothing to remember of the other world and only knew the endlessly intersecting and gloomy tunnels, corridors and passages.
In the metro there were just a few places where the written word was idolized like this, and the inhabitants of VDNKh considered themselves to be one of the last strongholds of culture, the northern-most post of civilization on the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskoi line. Artyom also read books and Zhenya did too. Zhenya awaited the return of his friends from the market and when they arrived he would rush up to them to ask if they’d brought anything new. And so, books almost always got into Zhenya’s hands first, and then they went to the library.
Artyom’s stepfather brought him books from his expeditions and they had almost a whole bookshelf of books in their tent. The books lay on the shelf, yellowing and sometimes a little gnawed by mould and rats, sometimes sprinkled with brown specks of blood. They had things that no one else had, at the station and perhaps in the whole metro system: Marquez, Kafka, Borges, Vian, and some Russian classics.
‘The guys didn’t bring anything this time,’ said Zhenya. ‘Lekha says that there will be a load of books coming soon from a guy in Polis. He promised to bring a couple here.’
‘I’m not talking about books!’ Artyom waved Zhenya away. ‘But what have you heard? What’s the situation?’
‘The situation? Nothing it seems. There are all sorts of rumours, of course, but that’s no different than usual - you know yourself that the traders can’t survive without their gossip and stories. They’d wither straight away if you didn’t feed them a few rumours. But whether you should believe their rubbish is another question. It looks as though all’s quiet. If you compare it with the times when the Hansa was at war with the Reds, that is. But wait!’ He remembered something. ‘On Prospect Mir they have forbidden the sale of weed. Now, if they find any weed on a trader, they will confiscate it all and will chuck him out of the station and put it on his record too. If they find any on you a second time, Lekha says that they won’t let you into Hansa for a few years. And that’s death to a trader.’
‘Come on! What - they’ve just forbidden it? What are they thinking?’
‘They say that they decided that it’s a drug since it affects the way you see things. And that your brain starts to corrode if you take it too often. They’re, like, doing it for health reasons.’
‘They should take care of their own health! Why are they worrying about ours all of a sudden?’
‘You know what?’ Zhenya said in a low voice. ‘Lekha says that they’re putting out all sorts of misinfo about things that are bad for your health.’
‘What misinfo?’ Artyom asked, surprised.
‘Misinformation. Here, listen. Lekha once went along the line, past Prospect Mir. He made it to Sukharevskaya. He was doing some dark business - wouldn’t even say what it was. And there he met an interesting old guy. A magician.’
‘Who?’ Artyom couldn’t hold back and burst out laughing. ‘A magician? At Sukharevskaya? Come on, he’s having you on, your Lekha! And what, the magician gave him a magic wand? Or a stick that turns into a flower?’
‘You’re an idiot.’ Zhenya was offended. ‘You think you know it all? Just because you haven’t met a magician doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Do you believe in the mutants at Filevki?’
‘Who needs to believe? They’re there, and that’s pretty clear. My stepfather told me about them. But I’ve never heard anything about magicians.’
‘Even though I have a lot of respect for Sukhoi, I don’t think he knows everything in the whole world either. And maybe he wanted just to scare you. Basically, if you don’t want to hear about it then screw you.’
‘OK, OK, Zhenya, go ahead. It’s interesting anyway. Even if it sounds like . . .’
Artyom grinned.
‘OK. They were spending the night by the fire. No one, you know, lives permanently at Sukharevskaya. So the traders from other stations stop there because the Hansa authorities see them off from Prospect Mir after lights-out. And, well, the whole crowd hangs around there, various charlatans and thieves - they all stick to the traders. And various wanderers rest there too, before heading south. So, in the tunnels beyond Sukharevskaya,
some kind of ruckus begins. Nobody lives there - not rats, not mutants, and the people that try to pass through those tunnels mostly disappear. Just disappear without a trace. Beyond Sukharevskaya, the next station is Turgenevskaya. It’s next to the Red Line: there was a passage to Chistye Prudi there, but the Reds have named it Kirov again. Some communist was called that they say . . . People were too afraid to live near that station. They walled up the passage. And now Turgenevskaya is there, empty. Abandoned. So the tunnel there - from Sukharevskaya to the nearest human settlement is a long way. And it’s there that people disappear. If people go one by one, then they almost certainly don’t make it through. But if they go in a caravan of more than ten people, then they get through. And it’s nothing, they say, just a normal tunnel, clean, quiet, empty, and there aren’t any side passages, and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to disappear to . . . Not a soul, not a sound, not a beast to be seen . . . And then, the next day, someone will hear about it, that it’s clean and easy, and they’ll spit on the superstition and go into the tunnel alone - and then, peek-a-boo. Now you see him, now you don’t.’
‘You were saying something about a magician,’ Artyom quietly reminded him.
‘I’m getting to the magician. Wait a minute,’ Zhenya said. ‘So, here you have it, people are afraid to go alone through this tunnel to the south. And they look for companions at Sukharevskaya so they can go through together. And if there’s not a market day then there aren’t many people and sometimes they have to wait days and weeks until there’re enough people to set off. So: the more people, the safer. Lekha says that you sometimes meet really interesting people there. There are plenty of wastrels there too, and you have to know how to differentiate between them. But sometimes you’re lucky. So, Lekha meets this magician there. It’s not what you think, not some Hottabych that comes out of a lamp . . .’
‘Hottabych was a djinn, not a magician.’ Artyom carefully corrected him, but Zhenya ignored his comment and continued:
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