It was all about bread at this station, all about the most important thing of all: an atheists’ temple of the harvest. With columns faced in blackish-brown marble with sprays of red; the walls by the tracks faced in tiles, like torture chambers; and the ears of wheat just below the ceiling cast in bronze, like swords.
The crowd was standing on the platform and on the tracks; the people on the tracks were trying to clamber up onto the platform, and the people clinging onto the platform were trying not to fall onto the tracks. And as they sang their hymn of hunger with a heavy groan from the chest, they all shoved forward, towards somewhere farther ahead. The station was in semi-darkness; torch beams falling from above roamed over white and naked craniums like over the crests of waves, as if they were searching for survivors of a shipwreck in stormy water.
Artyom threw his head back and looked up.
Komsomol Station had a second level—balconies running round the whole station about four meters above the platform. And those balconies hadn’t been flooded yet. There were only Red Army men with automatic rifles standing there, with the barrels propped on the handrail for convenience. But who were they supposed to aim at? It couldn’t be everyone at once!
There were officers standing spaced out between the soldiers; they were trying to shout something through the loudspeakers, but the roar of the crowd blotted out their hoarse electrical straining.
Artyom and the others clambered up onto the platform over shoulders, over heads, over each other. He looked back again—and spotted black-wool faces in the crowd. And they spotted his black figure too.
He squatted down, sweating. All his wounds started talking to him at once: the shoulder with a hole in it, the shattered knee, the lacerated back. They said, “No more, that’s enough. Stop, stay here.”
Up ahead he caught sight of where everyone wanted to go so desperately.
At the center of the hall a broad marble stairway descended from the balconies into the people like an emergency escape chute. There used to be another two, one at each end of the hall, but they had been demolished and walled off. So the central one was the only way up—and into the connecting passage to the Circle Line. To Hansa. That was what the crowd was pushing towards.
Three lines of border guards were standing on the steps; barbed wired had been wound onto the portable barriers, and on the intermediate landing machine guns snarled in both directions from a thoughtfully installed nest. Absolutely no way up had been left here.
“MUSHROOOOOMS!” the station roared; it seemed like the whole line was roaring.
Mothers with bundles in their arms—some had silent ones, some had ones that were still squealing. Fathers with goggle-eyed children on their shoulders—hold them up higher, higher, so the dead can’t trip them up and drag them onto the floor, down to the bottom. They all wanted to get to the stairway, to the steps. They all knew that no one here would give them any mushrooms. They all needed to get to the Circle Line; there was no other road to life left.
Why had the crowd held back from rushing the thin fences—basically no more than air framed by pipes and wire? People were already pressing towards them, getting close to those barbs, eyeing them and the Red Army men hungrily. The Red Army men brandished their rifle butts at the hungry people, but the red line hadn’t been crossed yet from either side.
How had such a huge horde of people gathered at Komsomol Station? had anyone tried to stop them leaving their own stations farther along the line, and what had happened to whoever had tried? Artyom didn’t know, but they kept on arriving out of the tunnel, clambering onto the platform over other people’s shoulders, packing themselves in tighter and tighter—three people, or five, or seven to a square meter.
It had to burst any moment now; that soap-bubble membrane between the soldiers and the people. The final sand-grain-seconds before the atomic explosion were running out.
It was appallingly stuffy in here, and it was as hot as in a foundry—there was nowhere at Komsomol Station for those who had come here to get any oxygen. The people breathed rapidly and shallowly—and the station was shrouded in haze from the water they breathed out of themselves.
Artyom looked back again: Where were the black faces in the crowd? And he glimpsed them, closer now. As if they could sense where to look for him and nothing could put them off the trail.
But something was happening up under the ceiling.
All those people—thousands of them!—took each other’s example and started turning their faces upwards.
A resolute convoy was striding rapidly along the balcony, led by a surging, tank-like figure: Svinolup.
It was eerily reminiscent of the service that a priest and his assistants, who were invited in from somewhere, had once held at Exhibition during the Dark Ones’ time. The armed escorts were carrying something; stopping beside each of the snipers at the balustrade, Svinolup conferred some of it on them.
Artyom’s faltering heart sank like a stone as he realized what they were being blessed with up there: the very cartridges that he and Letyaga had brought an hour earlier. So there it was, the cure for famine.
“There’s your aid!” Artyom grabbed Letyaga by the shoulder and jabbed his finger upwards. “Up there! That’s yours!”
When he’d gone round all the marksmen, pepping up each one, Svinolup walked down to the sandbag nest on the landing between the stories: His retinue started feeding the machine gun crews with cartridges. The major whispered something in the ears of the crews’ commanding officers and slapped them on the shoulder.
The people down below were in turbulent mood, but sensing what was going on up above, they started falling dumb: The choir turned ragged and lost its nerve.
Svinolup addressed the people in a booming voice.
“Comrades!” he trumpeted. “In the name of the leadership of the Red Line I request you to respect the laws of our state, including the law on the freedom of assembly. Please disperse.”
“Mushrooms!” someone shouted.
“Mushroooooms!” the crowd yelled in support.
“Let us gooooo!” a woman’s voice squealed above the roar of the crowd. “Let us go, you monster! Let us out!”
Svinolup nodded. As if in agreement.
“We have no right! To allow you! Into the territory! Of another! State! I! Demand! That you! Disperse!”
“We’re starving! My little daughter died! Save us! Let us out! I can barely stand! My belly hurts! But you’re so fat, you guzzler. Let us go! Let us out!” the crowd said in a babble of voices.
“To Hansa! And food!”
They won’t let these people into Hansa, Artyom thought dully and slowly in the sultry heat. They’ll never let these people into Hansa. Hansa knows everything: About the jammers. About the cartridges. About the Reich. About living space. About the Reds. About the famine. They won’t let these people in.
“This is an act of provocation! And those who call for it are provocateurs!” Svinolup rapped out after running a slow, meticulous gaze over the crowd; everyone there seemed to be remembering his face, so they could get even afterwards. “And we won’t! Waste words! On provocateurs!”
“We’re dying! All of us! We’re exhausted! Have pity! Lord, deliver us! Rescue us! Don’t let it happen! Don’t let us perish. Just a crumb! Some broth! Not for me, for the child! You scum! Let us go!” The crowd stopped talking normally and started groaning again with its chest made of clay. “MUSHROOOOOMS!”
The people at the back moved closer to the footbridge, the stairway, and Svinolup—and they squeezed the people at the front. The people at the front breathed out together to make space for themselves, and that exhalation set the station, this shrine of the harvest, trembling. The people wanted to go up the steps, to the inner sanctum, as if bread or wine had been made ready for them there. But there was nothing in there. Only a sacrificial altar—and a knife.
Now it would all happen. Now everything would be hot and slippery.
Svinolup couldn’t talk t
hem out of this. And he wasn’t even trying.
They had to be saved. Stopped from … Gotten out of here.
Why did they all have to die here? They could carry on living.
He had to do it.
Artyom was being swayed together with the others—towards the barbed wire and back again. The swaying made him feel sick. He only had a little drop of the beggarly air left. And he used that drop to say it: first in a whisper, then in a loud voice.
“There’s nothing for you there … Don’t go to Hansa! Nobody there wants you! Do you hear me? All you people! Don’t go! Please! Don’t!”
Not many people heard Artyom, but Svinolup heard—he was standing quite near.
“You see! There’s no one waiting for you there!” he said languidly, supporting Artyom for form’s sake. “Your place is here!”
“But where, then? Where to? Where can we go?” The people close by became agitated, and the agitation started rippling out in circles from Artyom.
They don’t know anything, do they? Artyom remembered.
They believe there isn’t anything apart from the Metro, apart from Moscow. They’re all lied to, told that the world was burnt out, that they’re alone, they’re being held in these tunnels, under the ground. Nobody even explains anything to them about our enemies; they’ve just been locked up here underground, in the darkness …
“Go up on the surface! You should go up! The world is still intact up there! We’re not the only ones who survived! Do you hear me? We’re not alone! Moscow isn’t alone! There are other cities! I’ve heard them myself! On the radio! You can leave this place and go anywhere! Wherever you want! Live wherever you want! Everything’s wide open! The whole Earth is wide open!”
People started looking round, trying to find him. And Artyom realized that this was the moment, right now, when he had to tell them. Tell them so that they would know and could decide for themselves. Someone lent their arms to support him; someone lent him their back; and he started climbing up them—to stand on other people’s shoulders, so that he could be heard.
“You’ve been deceived! They’re all still up there! Petersburg! Ekaterinburg! Vladivostok! It’s still there, all of it. We’re the only ones down here! In the pig shit! We slurp it down, we breathe it! The sun’s up there! But we guzzle pills instead! They keep us here … In the darkness! In this stifling air. They keep us here! They shoot us! They hang us! And we … strangle and butcher each other! But what for? For someone else’s ideas? For these stations? For these tunnels? For mushrooms?
“MUSHROOOOOOMS!” the crowd echoed.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Letyaga wheezed up at him. “You’ve blowing our cover! Now they’ll all start creeping out of here!”
Artyom embraced the people with his inflamed eyes—so dry and hot. How could he explain to them? How could he get through to all of them?
The black balaclavas surfaced like little buoys. Miller’s errand boys. Now they’d drag him down—off the other people’s shoulders. But he mustn’t hide now. Now he absolutely had to say everything that he hadn’t told them before, through the jammers.
Svinolup stood there without saying anything, waiting to see if this half-dead specimen could persuade the others to move away from the stairway. The marksmen waited for his command.
“We’re dying here! We grow tumors! Goiters! Everything we have is stolen! Food … We steal it from our children … Clothes … We steal them from the dead … We beat each other to pulp … In the tunnels! The Reds … The Browns … It’s all pointless! All of it! Brothers! Pointless! We eat our own kind! In the darkness! We don’t know anything! Everyone lies to us! Everyone! What for? To achieve what?”
“But where can we go?” they shouted to him.
“Up to the surface! You can leave! You can escape! There’s a way out! Behind you! In the tunnel! A hatch! Go back! Freedom is there! There! Climb up and out! And go wherever you like! Yourselves! Live for yourselves!”
“He wants to turn us away from Hansa!” someone yelled in spite.
He saw the black pupils of gun barrels. One, two. Staring at him. But he hadn’t told the people everything yet. He started hurrying.
“You’ll be killed for nothing here! You’ll be killed, and no one will even know! There’s a whole world out there! And we’re here … Shut in under a lid. We’ll all croak, every last one of us, and no one will ever know! It’s all pointless! Leave! Don’t do this! Go back!”
“Where will we get mushrooms from?”
“Stooge!” they shouted. “He’s a stooge! Don’t listen to him, people!”
“Wait!” Artyom waved his hand, and just at that moment someone spat lead at him out of the crowd.
The movement of his wave diverted the bullet from his heart. It hit him in the shoulder—the left one again. It jolted Artyom, put him off track, toppled him backwards into the crowd. And the moment he stopped speaking, the crowd immediately forgot everything.
“Mushroooooms!” someone howled in a shrill voice.
“MUSHROOOOOMS!” the people groaned.
Letyaga managed to drag Artyom out, steady him on his feet, and shield him with his own body—just a second before the crowd moved.
“The last time!” Svinolup barked, but the back rows couldn’t hear him and couldn’t see him.
Out of the corner of his eyes, through the polythene sheet, Artyom saw Svinolup slap a machine gunner on the shoulder and then run up the steps, to the balcony and away, out of the station. He had to get back to work, deal with important business; it wasn’t permissible for him to be killed. He left, and it all started without him.
“Let us goooooo!” the crowd told the machine gunners.
Letyaga dragged Artyom against the people’s movement—farther away from the barriers, farther away from the gun barrels, pulling away with all his bearish strength, but the current dragged them back, to impale them on the barbed wire and the bullets that were almost ripe.
“Fi-ire!”
A machine gun thundered, fanning the humming bursts out, and mowed down the first row. Mowed it down with Artyom’s bullets.
“Have mercy!” someone squealed. “Lord, have mercy!”
“Have mercy on us, Lord!” groaned someone else, a woman.
“We’ll die here! Have mercy!”
“Up there! Go! up! Onto the surface! You don’t have to die! Go up to freedom!” Artyom shouted to them, but he was drowned in the call that had spread instantly, like electricity—“Have mercy!”
And with that lamentation all the thousands upon thousands advanced against the barriers, against the machine gun.
“Have mercy, Looooord!”
They hadn’t been taught how, so each of them spoke those three words to their own music. The sinister chorus was weird and unearthly. They tried to tug their trapped arms up to cross themselves, but they couldn’t get them out from down there. And they moved forward with no arms, stepping on those who had been mown down, not learning anything from them.
“Have meeeercy!” Lyokha howled, clutching at his own Christ.
Those at the front fell, and the second row became soft shields for the third. Artyom, Letyaga, Lyokha, and SaveliI wanted to go back, away from the machine guns, but the crowd wanted to go forward anyway, because it couldn’t see anything for itself there behind.
Artyom was armless himself, and there was absolutely no way he could stop the crowd now.
The automatic rifles up above began howling down onto the heads and people started going limp here and there, but in the crush they couldn’t fall anymore and remained standing on their feet, even after they had died. No one here was afraid of death. Maybe they even wanted to be slaughtered, in order to do something at last with lives that they were sick and tired of, and be at peace. They simply chanted “Have Mercy!” and carried on walking towards the stairway that led upwards—as they understood “up”—and towards the bullets.
While the magazine of the machine gun was being changed—mere
seconds—a hundred hands grabbed the barrier and dismembered it. A moment later they had gouged out the machine gunner’s eyes, torn the commanding officer of the detail to pieces and strangled all the others, and then they started creeping upwards, the living and the dead together, like lava out of a volcano. They didn’t even take the drowned men’s weapons; they had no time for that.
The gunmen flew down from the stairway and the balustrade, in silent consent. Artyom was walking back, towards the tunnel, towards the hatchway, but even so he went up the stairs to the balconies with everyone else: He was carried towards the connecting passage to Hansa.
The Red Army men over whom the people hadn’t flooded yet started retreating, already begging the crowd for forgiveness, but they shouted too quietly, so they were killed anyway. SaveliI slipped away and sank, and he never surfaced again. And hundreds out of those thousands, or perhaps even thousands of those thousands, also disappeared.
Someone tugged on Artyom’s sleeve.
He looked back and saw a woman. Gaunt, with bluish-gray skin.
“Young man! Young man! I can’t do it! They’ll crush my son!” she shouted to him. “They’ll crush him! Hold him! Lift him up! They’ll crush him! I can’t do it!”
He looked down and saw a boy about six years old, with light blond hair and a smear of bloody snot under his nose. And he managed to jerk the boy up to himself just in time.
“Okay! Where do I take him? Who are you? What’s your name?”
“Kolya.”
“And mine’s Artyom.”
At first Kolya put his arms round Artyom’s neck, so that he wouldn’t slip off, but he was being crushed—he managed to change his grip and scramble up onto Artyom’s neck. Kolya’s mother took hold of his hand. She held it for a while—then let go. Artyom twitched fretfully: Where was she? She was standing there, caught in the vise-grip of the crowd. She couldn’t fall, but her head was dangling down, shot through.