Because if one considered Artyom’s acceptance of Hunter’s proposal as the first step along the way, as Sergei Andreyevich had said, then all subsequent events - including the expedition to Rizhskaya, and the fact that Bourbon approached him at Rizhskaya and that Artyom didn’t recoil from him - constituted the next step, and that Khan came to meet him, although he could have remained at Sukharevskaya . . . Yet this could be explained some other way as well; at any rate, Khan himself cited completely different reasons for his actions. Then Artyom was taken prisoner by the fascists, at Tverskaya, and should have been hanged, but circumstances so arranged themselves that the International Brigade decided to attack Tverskaya precisely on that day. Had the revolutionaries shown up a day earlier or a day later, Artyom’s death would have been unavoidable, and then his quest would be ended.
Could it actually be that the persistence with which he pursued his path influenced future events? Could it be that the determination, rage, and desperation that drove him to take every next step created, in some unknown way, a reality that wove a set of chaotic events and someone’s thoughts and actions into an ordered system, thereby turning an ordinary life into a plot, as Sergei Andreyevich had said?
At first glance, nothing of the sort could happen. But if you thought about it . . . How else did one explain the meeting with Mark, who offered Artyom the single possible way of getting into the Hansa territory? And the main thing, the very main thing, is that while he was accepting his lot, cleaning out toilets, fate, it would seem, turned away from him, but when he took the bit between his teeth, without even trying to understand his actions, the impossible happened: the guard who was supposed to stay at his post disappeared somewhere, and there wasn’t even any pursuit. So when he returned from the diverging crooked path back onto his way, acting in harmony with the narrative pattern of his life, at the stage where he was now, this could already have resulted in a serious warping of reality, repairing it in such a way that the main line of Artyom’s fate could develop further without hindrance?
Then this must mean that, should he deviate from his goal or step off his path, fate would immediately abandon him and its invisible shield, which currently safeguarded Artyom from being killed, would directly crumble into pieces, and the thread of Ariadne that he was so carefully following would break, and he would be left face-to-face with a turbulent reality that had been infuriated with his impudent intrusions into the chaotic substance of reality . . . Might it be that whoever once attempted to deceive fate and was flippant enough to continue to persevere even after dire clouds had gathered overhead couldn’t just simply step off the path? From then on his life would turn into something completely commonplace and grey, and nothing else would ever happen that was unusual, magical, or unexplainable because the plot had been be interrupted, and he’d put paid to the hero business . . .
Did this mean that Artyom not only hadn’t the right, but couldn’t deviate from his path? That was his fate? The fate in which he did not believe? And in which he did not believe because he didn’t know to interpret what had happened to him, didn’t know how to read the signs posted along his road, and continued to naively believe that the road that led to far horizons and which had been constructed just for him was a jumbled tangle of abandoned pathways that led in different directions?
It seemed that he was proceeding along his path, and that the events of his life formed a harmonious plot that held sway over human will and reason, so that his enemies were blinded while his friends saw the light and were able to help him in time. It was a plot that so controlled reality that the immutable laws of probability obediently changed their shape, like putty, in response to the growing power of an invisible hand that moved him over the chessboard of life . . . And if it were actually so, then the question ‘What’s the point of all this?’, which previously could be answered only with sullen silence and gritted teeth, went away. Now, the courage with which he professed to himself (and stubbornly maintained to others) that there was no Providence or any higher plan, that there was no law and no justice in the world, turned out to be unnecessary, because that plan could be divined . . . He did not want to resist this thought. It was too seductive to turn away from it with the same die-hard stubbornness with which he had rejected the explanations offered by religions and ideologies.
As a whole, this meant only one thing.
‘I can’t stay here any longer,’ said Artyom, and got up, feeling as if his muscles were filling with a new, buzzing strength. ‘I can’t stay here any longer,’ he repeated, listening attentively to his own voice. ‘I have to go. I must.’
No longer constantly twisting his head around and having forgotten all the fears that drove him to this small fire, he jumped onto the tracks and moved ahead, into the darkness. Artyom’s doubts released him, making room for perfect peace and the confidence that he was finally doing everything right. It was as if, having been driven off course, he nevertheless was able to recover his feet on the shining rails of his fate. The ties on which he walked now almost passed under his feet by themselves, requiring no effort on his part. In an instant, he disappeared completely into the darkness.
‘It’s a beautiful theory, isn’t it?’ said Sergei Andreyevich, inhaling.
‘One would almost think that you believe it,’ replied Yevgeny Dmitrievich cantankerously, scratching the cat behind the ear.
CHAPTER 12
Polis
Only one tunnel remained. Only one tunnel, and the goal given to him by Hunter, towards which Artyom stubbornly and recklessly went, would be reached. There were two, maybe three kilometres left to go along a dry and quiet section, and he’d be there. An echoing silence prevailed in Artyom’s head, a silence almost like that in the tunnel, but he no longer asked questions of himself. In another forty minutes, he’d be there. Forty minutes, and his trek would be over.
He wasn’t even aware that he was walking in impenetrable darkness. His legs continued to steadily mark off the ties. It was as if he had forgotten about all the dangers that threatened him, that he was unarmed, and that he had no identity papers, no flashlight, and no weapons, that he was dressed in an odd-looking set of loose overalls, and that, finally, he knew nothing about either this tunnel or the dangers that lay in wait for travellers through it.
His conviction that nothing posed a threat to him as long as he was following his path filled him. Where had the seemingly inescapable fear of the tunnels gone? What had happened to his fatigue and lack of faith?
The echo spoiled everything.
Because this tunnel was so empty, the sound of his steps carried both ahead and behind. Reflected from the walls, they rumbled and gradually receded and passed into a rustle, and then echoed shortly after, so that it seemed Artyom was not walking in the tunnel alone. After some time, this perception become so acute, that Artyom wanted to stop and listen and find out if the echo of his steps had a life of its own.
He continued to struggle with temptation for several minutes. His pace became slower and quieter, and he listened to hear if this affected the loudness of the echo. Finally, Artyom stopped completely. He stood like that in the impenetrable darkness and waited, afraid to take a deep breath, lest the sound of air entering his lungs interfered with the perception of the slightest murmurs in the distance.
Silence.
Now that he had stopped moving, his perception of the reality of space again vanished. While he was walking, it was as if he was grasping that reality by the soles of his boots. When he stopped in the middle of the ink-black darkness of the tunnel, Artyom suddenly no longer understood where he was.
And it seemed to him, when he again began to move, that the barely perceptible echo of his steps reached his ears before his own foot managed to step down onto the concrete floor.
His heart began to beat more acutely. But, in an instant, he was able to convince himself that paying attention to every rustle in the tunnels was silly and served no purpose. For some time, Artyom tried not to listen to the echo at all. Then,
when it seemed to him that the most recent of the fading echoes were drawing closer, he covered his ears and continued to move forward. But even this didn’t work for long.
Removing his palms from his ears after a couple of minutes and continuing to walk, he heard - to his horror - the echo of his steps getting louder in front of him, as if they were approaching. But all he had to do was stop and so would the sounds in front of him, after a delay of some fraction of a second.
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 th
e 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.