He was rushing through a dark tunnel with head-spinning speed, lying on a section car that was no less than two metres long. There was a light smell of burning in the air, and Artyom thought with astonishment that it must be fuelled with petrol. There were four people apart from him sitting on the section car, and there was a big, brown dog with a black undercoat. One of them was the guy who had hit Artyom across the cheeks. There was a bearded guy in a hat with ear-flaps that had a red star sewn onto it and onto his quilted jacket too. He had a long machine gun dangling down his back, one just like the ‘hoe’ that Artyom had before, but there was a bayonet-knife screwed onto its barrel. The third person was a big fellow whose face Artyom didn’t see at once but when he did, he almost jumped off the car: his skin was very dark. Artyom looked at it a bit more and calmed down. He wasn’t a dark one, his shade of skin wasn’t the same as theirs - and he had a normal, human face with slightly out-turned lips and a flattened nose like a boxer’s. The last guy had a relatively regular appearance but he had a beautiful brace face and a strong chin - which reminded him of something on a poster at Pushkinskaya. He was dressed in a beautiful leather coat, which was tied with a wide belt with two rows of holes in it and an officer’s sword belt, and from the belt hung a holster of impressive size. There was a Degtyaryov machine gun at the back of the section car and a fluttering red flag. When a beam from the lantern accidentally fell on the flag, he could see that it wasn’t really a flag but a ragged piece of material with the red and black face of a bearded man on it. All this seemed more like some kind of terrible delirium than the miraculous rescue that Hunter had made for him when he ruthlessly cut his way through Pushkinskaya.
‘He’s regained consciousness!’ the narrow-eyed man said joyfully. ‘So, hangman, what did they get you for?’
He spoke totally without accent, his pronunciation was no different than Artyom’s or Sukhoi’s. That was very strange - hearing pure Russian speech from such an unusual being. Artyom couldn’t shed the feeling that this was some kind of farce and the narrow-eyed man was only moving his lips while the bearded guy or the man in the leather coat spoke from behind him.
‘I shot one of their officers,’ he admitted reluctantly.
‘Well, good for you! You’re just the kind we like! That’s what they deserve!’ the man with the high cheek bones said enthusiastically, and the big, dark-skinned guy who was sitting at the front turned to Artyom and raised his eyebrows respectfully. Artyom thought that this guy must mispronounce words.
‘That means we didn’t create such a scene for nothing.’ He smiled broadly. He also had a flawless accent, so that Artyom was confused and now didn’t know what to think.
‘What’s your name, hero?’ the handsome man in leather asked him and Artyom introduced himself.
‘I’m comrade Rusakov. This is comrade Bonsai.’ He pointed to the narrow-eyed man. ‘This is comrade Maxim.’ The dark-skinned one grinned again. ‘And this is comrade Fyodor.’
The dog came last. Artyom wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been called ‘comrade’ too. But the dog was simply called Karatsyupa. Artyom shook their hands one by one, the strong, dry hand of comrade Rusakov, the narrow, firm palm of comrade Bonsai, Maxim’s black shovel of a hand and the fleshy hand of comrade Fyodor. He earnestly tried to remember all their names especially the hard to pronounce ‘Karatsyupa.’ But it seemed that they called each other different names anyway. They addressed the main guy as ‘comrade commissar,’ and the dark-skinned one they called Maximka or Lumumba, the narrow-eyed one was simply ‘Bonsai’ and the bearded one with the hat with ear-flaps they called ‘Uncle Fyodor.’
‘Welcome to the First International Red Fighting Brigade of the Moscow Metropolitan in the name of Ernesto Che Guevara!’ comrade Rusakov triumphantly announced.
Artyom thanked him and fell silent, looking around. The name was very long and the ending of it generally blended into something quite unclear - for a while, the red colour had had an effect on Artyom not unlike its effect on a bull and the word ‘brigade’ was associated for him with Zhenya’s stories about the gangster lawlessness somewhere near Shabolovskaya. Most of all, he was intrigued by the face trembling on the cloth in the wind and he timidly asked:
‘And who have you got there on your flag?’ At the last second he decided on the word ‘flag’ having almost said ‘rag.’
‘That, my brother, is Che Guevara,’ Bonsai explained to him.
‘Which chegavara?’ Artyom hadn’t understood, but seeing rage fill Rusakov’s eyes and the mocking smile on Maximka’s face, he figured out that he’d done something foolish.
‘Comrade. Ernesto. Che. Guevara.’ The commissar rapped the separate syllables. ‘The great. Cuban. Revolutionary.’
Now the sounds were all more distinct though it still wasn’t intelligible to Artyom, but he decided to widen his eyes enthusiastically and say nothing. After all, these people had saved his life, and angering them right now with his ignorance would be impolite.
The tunnel’s soldered ribs flashed past fantastically quickly, and during the length of their conversation they had already managed to fly through one half-empty station and stopped in the twilight of the tunnel beyond it. Here, at the side, there was a little dead-end off-shoot where they could stop.
‘Let’s see if the fascist reptiles dare to go after us,’ said comrade Rusakov.
Now they had to whisper very quietly because comrades Rusakov and Karatsyupa were attentively listening for sounds coming from the darkness.
‘Why did you do it? I mean, rescue me?’ Artyom asked, trying to choose the right word.
‘It was a planned sortie. Some information arrived,’ explained Bonsai, smiling mysteriously.
‘About me?’ Artyom asked in the hope that he could believe Khan’s words about his special mission.
‘No, just in general.’ Bonsai made an indistinct gesture. ‘We heard they were planning some kind of atrocity. So comrade commissar decided we had to stop it. Besides, it’s our mission - to bother them constantly.’
‘They haven’t put up road blocks on this side, not even a bright torch, just a few outposts with simple fires,’ Maximka added. ‘We ran over them straight away. Sadly, we had to use the machine gun. But then, there was the smoke bomb, we had gas masks and we took you, our home-grown SS man, and went back.’
Uncle Fyodor, silent and smoking some kind of weed in a pipe, the smoke from which started to make his eyes tear up, suddenly said, ‘Yes, my young friend, it’s good that you were appropriated. Do you want a little brew?’
And picking up a half-empty bottle of some kind of murky swill from an iron box, he shook it and offered it to Artyom.
It was going to take a lot of bravery to take a sip. It went down like sandpaper but he felt as though a vice that had been clamped inside him this last twenty-four hours had relaxed.
‘So, are you Reds?’ he asked cautiously.
‘We, my brother, are communists! Revolutionaries!’ Bonsai said proudly.
‘From the Red Line?’ Artyom leaned in.
‘No, just simple communists,’ the man answered a bit hesitantly and hurried to add, ‘Comrade commissar will explain it all to you, he’s in charge of the ideology here.’
Comrade Rusakov, having returned after a few minutes, informed them, ‘All is quiet.’ His handsome masculine face radiated a sense of calm. ‘We can take a break.’
There was nothing with which to build a fire. They hung the little kettle over a camping stove and cut up some cold pork. The revolutionaries ate suspiciously well.
‘No, comrade Artyom, we aren’t from the Red Line,’ comrade Rusakov declared firmly when Bonsai related the question to him. ‘Comrade Moskvin has taken the position of Stalin, turned his back on a metro-wide revolution, officially denouncing the Interstational and cutting off support for revolutionary activities. He’s a renegade and he’s a compromiser. Us comrades, we are sticking to Trotsky’s line of thinking. You could even draw parallels between Castro and Che Guevara. That’s why he’s on our fighting banner,’ and he pointed to the sad, hanging rag with a broad gesture. ‘We have remained true to the revolutionary idea, unlike the collaborationist comrade Moskvin. Us comrades, we condemn them and their line.’
‘Aha, and who gives you fuel?’ Uncle Fyodor added, puffing on his rolled-up cigarette.
Comrade Rusakov flushed and threw a vicious look at Uncle Fyodor. Fyodor just mockingly tut-tutted and took a deeper pull on his cigarette.
Artyom understood little from the commissar’s explanation apart from the main thing: these people had little in common with the Reds who intended to string Mikhail Porfirevich’s guts up onto a stick and shoot him at the same time. This calmed him and in an effort to give a good impression, he twinkled. ‘Stalin - that’s the one in the Mausoleum, right?’
But this time, he’d gone too far. An angry spasm deformed the beautiful and brave face of comrade Rusakov, Bonsai turned away, and even Uncle Fyodor frowned.
‘No, no, it’s Lenin in the Mausoleum!’ Artyom hurried to correct himself.
The stern wrinkles on comrade Rusakov’s high forehead smoothed out, and he said severely, ‘You still need lots of work, comrade Artyom!’
Artyom really didn’t want comrade Rusakov to work on him, but he restrained himself and said nothing in reply. He really understood little about politics, but it had started to interest him, and therefore, he waited until the storm had passed and ventured:
‘So why are you against the fascists? I mean, I’m also against them but you guys are revolutionaries after all . . .’
‘Those reptiles! Because of Spain, because of Ernst Telmann and the Second World War!’ comrade Rusakov spat through his clenched teeth and though Artyom didn’t understand a word of it, he didn’t want to make a show of his ignorance yet again.
Once they poured boiling water into the mugs, they all became more lively. Bonsai took to exhausting Uncle Fyodor with foolish questions, obviously trying to tease him, and Maximka, having sat down closer to comrade Rusakov, asked quietly, ‘So tell me, comrade commissar, what does marxism/leninism say about headless mutants? It has bothered me for a long time. I want to be ideologically strong, and I’m drawing a blank on this one.’ His dazzling white teeth sparkled in a guilty smile.
‘Well, you see, comrade Maxim,’ the commissar replied after a delay, ‘this, my brother, is not a simple matter,’ and he started thinking hard.
Artyom was also interested in how the mutants were seen from a political point of view and, indeed, he was interested to learn if they existed at all. But comrade Rusakov was silent and Artyom’s thoughts slid back down the track that he hadn’t managed to get out of in the last few days. He needed to get to Polis. He was saved by a miracle, he’d been given one more chance, perhaps his last. His whole body hurt, he had a hard time breathing, deep breaths would set him off coughing, and he couldn’t open one eye. He wanted to stay with these people very much! He felt much more calm and confident with them, and the darkness of the unfamiliar tunnel was not condensing around him and oppressing him. The rustlings and scratchings that flew up from the black bowels didn’t frighten him, didn’t put him on his guard, and he hoped that this respite would last forever. It was sweet to relive his rescue again and again. Even though death had been chomping its iron teeth just above his head, barely brushing against him, the sticky, body-paralysing fear that had seized him before his execution, had already evaporated. The last remnants, hidden under his heart and in his stomach, had been burnt out by the poisonous home-brew of the bearded comrade Fyodor. Fyodor himself, and the friendly Bonsai, and the serious leather-clad commissar, and the enormous Maxim-Lumumba - it was so easy with them, in a way that he had never experienced since he’d left
VDNKh
a hundred years before. None of his belongings were in his possession anymore. The wonderful new machine gun, the five magazines of cartridges, the passport, the food, the tea, two flashlights - they were all lost. Left with the fascists. All he had was a jacket, some trousers, and a twisted cartridge case in his pocket. The executioner had said, ‘Maybe it will come in useful.’ So what now? To stay here, with the fighters of the Interstational, the brigadiers of . . . of . . . well, it’s not important. To live their life and forget his own . . . No. Never. He mustn’t stop for a minute, mustn’t rest. He had no right. This wasn’t his life anymore, his fate belonged to others from the moment he agreed to Hunter’s proposition. It was too late now. He had to go. There was no other option.
He sat there quietly for a long time, thinking about nothing in particular. But the gloomy determination was ripening within him with every second, in his emaciated muscles, in his stretched and aching veins. He was like a soft toy from which all the sawdust has been drawn and it has become a shapeless rag that someone has cruelly hung on a metal skeleton. He wasn’t himself anymore. He had been scattered together with the sawdust which was picked up by a tunnel draught, broken up into particles, and now, someone new had taken up residence inside his skin, someone who didn’t want to hear the desperate entreaties of his bleeding and exhausted body, someone who crushed underfoot the desire to surrender, to stay still, to have a rest, to give up before the endeavour had a chance to assume a complete and realized form. This other person had taken the decision on the level of instinct, and he bypassed consciousness in which there now reigned silence and emptiness. The usual continuous flow of internal dialogue was cut off.
It was like a meandering spring inside Artyom had been made straight. He got up to his feet with wooden and awkward movements and the commissar looked at him in surprise, and Maxim even lowered his hand to his machine gun.
‘Comrade commissar, could I . . . speak with you?’ Artyom asked in a toneless voice.
Then, Bonsai turned around anxiously, disengaging from the unfortunate Uncle Fyodor.