This tunnel was testing Artyom and his ability to withstand fear. But he didn’t give up. He had already been through much too much to be scared by darkness and an echo.
Was it an echo?
It was getting closer. There was no doubt about that. Artyom stopped one last time when the phantom steps could be heard about twenty metres ahead of him. This was so inexplicable and weird that he couldn’t stand it. He wiped the cold perspiration from his brow and, with his voice cracking, shouted into the emptiness:
‘Is anyone there?’
The echo reverberated frighteningly close, and Artyom didn’t recognize his own voice. The rolling echoes chased each other into the depths of the tunnels, shedding syllables: ‘anyone there . . . one there . . . there. . . .’ And nobody answered. And suddenly, something incredible happened. They started to come back, repeating his question, the dropped syllables recomposing themselves in reverse order and becoming louder, as though someone about thirty paces away had repeated his question in a frightened voice.
Artyom could not endure this. Turning around, he went back, trying not to walk too fast at first, but then he ran, having completely forgotten about not encouraging his fears, and stumbling. But after a minute, he understood that the reverberating footsteps continued to be heard at a distance of twenty metres. His invisible pursuer didn’t want to let him go. Gasping, Artyom ran without understanding in what direction, and finally collided with a tunnel cross passage.
The echo immediately abated. Some time passed before he could gather up his will power, get up, and take a step forward. It was the right direction. With each passing metre, the sound of steps shuffling against the concrete became closer, moving towards him. And only the blood pounding in his ears slightly suppressed the ominous rustling. Every time Artyom stopped, his pursuer stopped in the darkness as well, for Artyom was now absolutely sure it was no echo.
This continued until the steps sounded as close as one’s outstretched arm. And then Artyom, yelling and blindly swinging his fists, sprang forward to where he reckoned the source of the steps had to be.
His fists made a swishing sound as they cut through the emptiness. Nobody tried to defend themselves against his blows. He flailed the air uselessly, yelling, jumping back, and moving his arms out from his sides in an effort to seize an enemy he could not see in the darkness. Emptiness. There was nobody there. But as soon as he caught his breath and made one more step toward Polis, he heard a heavy shuffling sound right in front of him. He again swung his arm, and again there was nothing. Artyom felt he was losing his mind. Straining his eyes until they hurt, he tried to see anything at all, and his ears tried to catch the nearby breathing of some other creature. But there simply wasn’t anybody there.
Having stood immobile for several long seconds, Artyom reflected that whatever the explanation might be for this strange phenomenon, it posed no danger to him. Acoustics, more than likely. When I get home, I’ll ask my stepfather, he said to himself, but, when he had already brought his foot up to take another step toward his goal, someone quietly whispered, directly in his ear:
‘Wait. You can’t go there now.’
‘Who’s that? Who’s here?’ yelled Artyom, breathing heavily. But nobody answered. He was again surrounded by a deep emptiness. Then, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, he hurried off in the direction of Borovitskaya. The phantom steps of his pursuer matched his pace as he moved in the opposite direction, gradually fading in the distance until they fell silent. And only then did Artyom stop. He did not and could not know what it had been. He had never heard of anything like it from any of his friends, nor had his stepfather spoken to him of it at night by the fire. But whoever it was who whispered in his ear and ordered him to stop and wait, now - when Artyom no longer feared him, when he had the time to understand what had happened and do some hard thinking about it - it sounded hypothetically convincing.
He spent the next twenty minutes sitting on the rails, swaying from side to side as if drunk, fighting the shakes and recalling the strange voice, which belonged to no human, that ordered him to wait. He moved forward only when the shivering finally began to pass, and the frightful whisper in his head had begun to merge with the quiet rush of the growing air current in the tunnel.
From that point on, he simply walked forward, trying not to think of anything, stumbling at times over cables lying on the floor, but nothing more terrible happened to him. It seemed to him that not much time had passed, although he couldn’t say how much, because the minutes all ran together in the darkness. And then he saw a light at the end of the tunnel.
Borovitskaya.
Polis.
Then and there, a rude cry was heard from the station, followed by the sound of shots, and Artyom, springing back, hid in a depression in the wall. From a distance, he heard the lingering cries of the wounded, followed by foul language, and then there was the sound of another burst of automatic fire, amplified by the tunnel.
Wait . . .
Artyom ventured to emerge from his hiding place only a full fifteen minutes after everything had quietened down. Raising his arms, he walked slowly toward the light.
This actually was an entry onto the platform. There was no watch on duty at Borovitskaya, apparently relying on the inviolability of Polis. An access point made of concrete blocks stood five metres short of the point where the circular arches of the tunnel ended. A prone body lay next to it in a pool of blood.
When Artyom emerged into the field of view of border guards wearing green uniforms and service caps, they ordered him to come closer and stand facing the wall. Seeing the body on the ground, he obeyed immediately.
He was quickly searched, asked for his passport, had his arms twisted behind his back, and finally led to the station. Light. The very same. They told the truth. They always told the truth; legends didn’t lie. The light was so bright, Artyom had to squint so as not to be blinded. But the light entered his pupils even through his eyelids, blinding him until it hurt, and only when the border guards blindfolded him did his eyes stop stinging. Returning to the life lived by previous generations of people turned out to be more painful than Artyom could imagine.
The rag was removed from his eyes only at the guard shack, which looked like all others, a small office with walls of cracked tile. It was dark here. Only a candle flickered in an aluminium bowl that lay on an ochre-coloured wooden table. The guard commander was a heavy-set, unshaven man in a green military shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He was wearing a tie on an elastic band. Collecting some of the liquid wax on his finger and observing how it cooled, he watched Artyom for a long time before asking:
‘Where are you from? Where’s your passport? What’s with your eye?’
Artyom decided it didn’t make sense to be devious, so he told the truth, that the passport had been left with the fascists, and that his eye had also almost remained there. The commander received this information with unexpected benevolence.
‘Yeah, we know. That tunnel opposite comes out precisely at Checkhovskaya. We’ve got a whole fortress built there. There’s no fighting for now, but some good folks tell us to keep our ears open. Like they say, si vis pacem, para bellum,’ and he gave Artyom a wink.
Artyom didn’t understand the last part of what had been said, but preferred not to ask about it. His attention was attracted by the tattoo at the crook of the commander’s elbow. It depicted a radiation-deformed bird with two heads, spread wings, and hooked talons. It dimly reminded him of something, but of what, he had no idea. Later, when the commander turned to one of the soldiers, Artyom saw that the same image, smaller, had been tattooed on the commander’s left temple.
‘And why’d you come here?’ continued the commander.
‘I’m looking for someone . . . His name is Melnik. It’s probably a nickname. I have an important message for him.’
The expression on the face of the commander changed immediately. The idly benevolent smile left his lips, and his eyes sparkled with surprise in the light of the candle.
‘You can deliver it to me.’
Artyom shook his head and, apologizing, started to explain that there was no way he could do that, that it was hush-hush, you understand, and that he had been strictly ordered to say nothing to anyone except this very same Melnik.
The commander studied him one more time and signalled one of the soldiers, who handed him a black plastic telephone handset, together with a neatly coiled, rubber-coated telephone cord of the required length. After dialling a number, the border guard spoke into the receiver:
‘This is post Bor-South. Ivashov. Get me Colonel Melnik.’
While he waited for an answer, Artyom managed to notice that both of the other soldiers in the room also had the bird tattoo on their temples.
‘Who should I say is asking?’ asked the commander of Artyom, pressing the side of the handset to his chest.
‘Say it’s from Hunter. An urgent message.’
The commander nodded and exchanged another couple of phrases with whoever was at the other end of the connection, then concluded the call.
‘Be at Arbatskaya tomorrow morning at nine, at the station manager’s office. You’re free until then.’ He signalled the soldier standing in the doorway, who immediately moved aside, and then turned to Artyom and added, ‘Wait a second . . . It would seem you are an honorary first-time guest of ours. So here, hang on to these, but don’t forget to give them back!’ He offered Artyom a pair of dark glasses in a shabby metal frame.
Not until tomorrow? Artyom was overcome by burning disappointment and resentment. This was why he came here, risking his own life and that of others? This was why he pressed on, forcing himself to move his feet, even when he had no strength left at all? And wasn’t this an urgent business, to report everything he knew to this so-and-so Melnik, who it turned out couldn’t even find a spare minute for him?
Or was it that Artyom was simply late, and Melnik already knew everything? Or maybe Melnik already knows something that Artyom himself hasn’t a clue about? Maybe he’s so late that his entire mission no longer matters?
‘Not until tomorrow?’ he burst out.
‘The Colonel’s on a mission today. He’ll be back early in the morning,’ explained Ivashov. ‘Get going, and you’ll get some rest besides,’ he said, and saw Artyom out of the guard shack.
Having calmed down, but still nursing a grievance, Artyom put on the glasses and thought they looked good. And they hid the shiner under his eye. The lenses were scratched and, moreover, they distorted objects in the distance, but when he went out onto the platform after having thanked the border guards, he understood that he could not manage without them. The light from the mercury lamps was too bright for him. Besides, it wasn’t just Artyom who couldn’t open his eyes here; many at the station hid their eyes behind dark glasses. They’re probably also strangers, he thought.
It was strange for him to see a fully illuminated metro station. There were absolutely no shadows here. At
VDNKh,
as well as at all the other stations and substations where he had been up to now, there were few light sources, and they could not illuminate the entire space of what could be seen and they only shed light on parts of it. There always remained places where not a single beam penetrated. Every person cast several shadows: one from a candle, withered and emaciated; a second, from the emergency light; and a third, black and sharply defined, from an electric lantern. They mixed and covered each other and the shadows of others, sometimes coursing for several metres along the floor, startling you, deceiving you, and forcing you to guess and assume. Yet in Polis, every last shadow was eradicated in the ruthless glow of the daylight lamps
Artyom froze in his tracks, looking at Borovitskaya with delight. It remained in surprisingly good condition. Not a trace of soot was evident on the marble walls or white ceiling, and the station was tidy. A woman in light-blue overalls laboured over a time-blackened bronze panel at the end of the station, industriously scraping the bas-relief with a sponge and cleaning solution.
The living accommodation here was arranged in the arches. Only two arches were left open at each end to access the tracks; the rest, bricked in from both sides, had been turned into real apartments. There was a doorway in each, and some even had wooden doors and glazed windows. The sound of music carried from one of them. Mats lay in front of several doors, so that those entering could wipe their feet. This was the first time Artyom has seen anything of the kind. These quarters looked so cosy, so calm, that he felt a tightening in his chest, and a picture from his childhood suddenly appeared before his eyes. But what was most surprising was the chain of bookshelves that stretched along both walls the length of the entire station. They occupied the space between ‘apartments,’ and this gave the entire station a kind of marvellous, strange look, reminding Artyom of descriptions he’d read of medieval libraries in a book by Borges.
The escalators were at the far end of the hall, where the passage to the Arbatskaya station was located. The pressure doors remained open, but a small post was located at the passage. Then again, the guards let anyone who wanted to pass unhindered in both directions, without even checking documents.
At the opposite end of the platform, on the other hand, next to the bronze bas-relief, there was a real military camp. Several green military tents were set up there, with markings drawn on them like the ones tattooed on the temples of the border guards. In the same place was a cart with some unknown weapon mounted on it, revealed by the long barrel with flared muzzle sticking out from under a cover. Nearby, two soldiers in dark-green uniforms, helmets, and body armour were on duty. The camp encircled a passage stairway that ascended over the tracks. Flashing arrows indicated this was an ‘Exit to the city,’ whereupon the established precautions became clear to Artyom. A second stairway led to the same place and was completely blocked off by a wall of huge cement blocks.