Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

‘That’s his… I brought it for him…’ Sasha said and hesitated. ‘If not for him… those creatures would have torn me to pieces.’

‘The doctor will tear me to pieces if he finds out,’ the orderly snarled. ‘Come on, get out of here!’

But Sasha lingered for another moment, turning back to Hunter, who was sunk deep in his curative coma, and finished what she was saying anyway.

‘Thank you. You saved me.’

She strode out of the ward and suddenly heard a quiet, cracked voice say:

‘I only wanted to kill it… The monster…’

The door slammed in her face and the key scraped in the lock.

No, that wasn’t what the knife was intended for, Homer realised immediately. It was enough just to hear the way the girl called the brigadier’s name as he floundered in the quagmire of his delirium – insistently, tenderly, plaintively. On the very point of intervening, the old man halted in confusion and pulled back: he didn’t need to save anyone here. The only way he could help was by making himself scarce as quickly as possible, in order not to frighten Sasha off.

Who could say, perhaps she was right? After all, at Nagornaya, Hunter had completely forgotten about his companions, abandoning them to be torn apart by the phantom giants. But in this battle… Could the girl really mean something to the brigadier after all?

Lost in thought, Homer wandered off along the corridor to his own ward. An orderly tramping in the opposite direction shouldered him aside, but the old man didn’t even notice. It was time to give Sasha the little trifle he had bought for her at the market, Homer told himself. It looked as if it might come in useful soon.

He took the little package out of the desk drawer and twirled it in his hands. The girl came bursting into the room a few minutes later – tense, distressed and angry. She clambered onto her bed, pulled her legs up and stared into the corner. Homer waited to see if the storm would break or pass over. Sasha didn’t say anything, she just started biting her nails. The time had come for decisive action.

‘I’ve got a present for you,’ the old man said, getting up from the desk and putting the package on the blanket beside the girl.

‘What for?’ she asked clattering her claws without peeping out of her shell.

‘What do people generally give each other presents for?’

‘To repay them,’ Sasha replied confidently. ‘For something good they’ve done for them, or something they’re going to ask for later.’

‘Then let’s just say I’m repaying you for the good things you’ve already done for me,’ Homer said with a smile. ‘I don’t have anything else to ask you for.’

‘I haven’t done anything for you,’ the girl objected.

‘What about my book? I’ve already put you in it. I have to repay you, I don’t want to be in debt. Come on now, open it,’ he said, allowing a faint note of humorous irritation into his voice.

‘I don’t like being in debt either,’ said Sasha, tearing open the wrapping. ‘What’s this? Oh!’

She was holding a red plastic disc, a flat little box that opened into two halves. It had once been a cheap powder compact, only now the two compartments, for powder and rouge, had been empty for a long time. But on the other hand, the little mirror on the inside of the lid was still in perfect condition.

‘I can see better in this than in a puddle,’ said Sasha gaping at the compact with funny, wide-open, eyes as she studied her own reflection. ‘What did you give me it for?’

‘Sometimes it can be useful to see yourself from the outside,’ Homer chuckled. ‘It helps to understand a lot of things about yourself.’

‘And what do I need to understand about myself?’ she asked warily.

‘There are people who’ve never seen their own reflection and all their lives they think they’re someone different. It can often be hard to see clearly from the inside, and there’s no one in here to give them a hint… So until they stumble across a mirror by accident, they’ll carry on making the same mistake. And even when they do look at a reflection, they often can’t believe that it’s themselves they’re seeing.’

‘And who do I see in the mirror?’ she asked insistently.

‘You tell me,’ he said, crossing his arms.

‘Myself… Well… a girl.’ Just to make sure, she presented first one cheek and then the other to the little mirror.

‘A young woman,’ Homer corrected her. ‘And a rather scruffy one.’

She twisted and turned for a little bit longer, then flashed her eyes at Homer, intending to ask him something, but changed her mind and said nothing, then finally screwed up her courage after all and blurted out something that made the old man gag.

‘Am I ugly?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ he said, struggling to prevent the corners of his lips from spreading into a smile. ‘I can’t see under all the dirt.’

‘So that’s what’s wrong?’ Sasha’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You mean men can’t sense a woman’s beauty? You need to have everything shown to you and explained?’

‘That’s probably right. And it’s often used to deceive us,’ Homer laughed. ‘Painting can work genuine miracles with a woman’s face. But in your case we’re not talking about restoring the portrait, it’s more like an archaeological excavation. It’s hard to judge how beautiful an antique statue is from a foot sticking up out of the ground. Although it almost certainly is very beautiful,’ he added condescendingly.

‘What does “antique” mean?’ asked Sasha, suspecting a trick.

‘Ancient,’ said Homer, carrying on with his joke.

‘I’m only seventeen!’ she protested.

‘They’ll discover that later. When they dig you up.’

The old man sat back down at the desk with an imperturbable air, opened the exercise book at the last full page and started reading his notes, gradually turning more and more sombre.

If they dug her up. The girl, and him, and everyone else. There was a time when he used to amuse himself with thoughts like that: what if, in thousands of years’ time, archaeologists studying the ruins of old Moscow, when even its name had been forgotten, were to come across one of the entrances to the underground labyrinth? They’d probably think they’d found a gigantic mass burial site – it was unlikely to occur to anyone that people could actually have lived in these dark catacombs. A culture that was once highly developed had obviously degenerated in the twilight of its existence, they would decide: these people buried their leaders in vaults, together with all their possessions, weapons, servants and concubines.

He still had eighty-something pages left in his exercise book. Would that be enough to fit both worlds into – the one lying on the surface and the one in the Metro?

‘Can’t you hear what I’m saying?’ said the girl, shaking his arm.

‘What? Sorry, I was lost in thought.’ He rubbed his forehead.

‘Are ancient statues really beautiful? I mean, is what people used to think was beautiful before still beautiful today?’

‘Yes,’ the old man said with shrug.

‘And will it still be tomorrow?’

‘Probably. If there’s anyone here to appreciate it.’

Sasha started pondering and fell silent. Homer slipped back into the rut of his own grim reflections and didn’t try to force the conversation.

‘You mean beauty doesn’t exist without people?’ Sasha asked eventually, puzzled.

‘Probably not,’ he replied absentmindedly. ‘If there’s no one to see it… After all, animals aren’t capable, are they?’

‘And if animals are different from people because they can’t see the difference between what’s beautiful and what’s ugly,’ Sasha pondered, ‘does that mean people can’t exist without beauty either?’