Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

‘How about letting me have a cigarette? But this is the last one, don’t give me any more, not even if I beg you. And don’t tell anyone, all right?’

Nadya, a thickset, talkative woman in a fluffy dress with holes in it and a dirty apron, brought a hot casserole of meat and vegetables, and the sentries livened up a bit. Potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes were regarded as very great delicacies here: apart from Sebastopol Station, the only places where you could feast on vegetables were one or two of the finest restaurants of the Circle or the Polis. It wasn’t just a matter of the complicated hydroponic equipment required to grow the seeds that had been saved, there was also the fact that not many stations in the Metro could afford to spend kilowatts of energy on varying their soldiers’ diet.

Even the top command’s tables were only graced with vegetables on holidays, usually the children were the only ones who were pampered like that. It had cost Istomin a serious quarrel with the chefs to get them to add boiled potatoes and a tomato to each of the portions of pork that were due on uneven dates – in order to keep up the soldiers’ morale.

The trick worked: the moment that Nadya, with typical female awkwardness, dropped the sub-machine-gun off her shoulder in order to lift the lid of the casserole, the sentries’ wrinkled faces started relaxing and smoothing out. No one wanted to spoil a supper like this with sour, tedious talk about the convoy that had disappeared and the overdue reconnaissance team.

‘I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking about Komsomol Station all day today,’ said a grey-haired old man wearing a quilted jacket with Moscow Metro shoulder badges, as he squished potatoes in his aluminium bowl. ‘If I could just get there and take a look… The mosaics they have there! To my mind, it’s the most beautiful station in Moscow.’

‘Ah, drop it, Homer, you probably used to live there, and you still love it to this day,’ retorted a fat, unshaven man in a cap with earflaps. ‘What about the stained glass at Novoslobodskaya? And those light, airy columns at Mayakovsky Station, with the frescoes on the ceiling?’

‘I like Revolution Square best,’ a sniper confessed shyly – he was a quiet, serious man, getting on in years. ‘I know it’s all stupid nonsense, but those stern-looking sailors and airmen, those border guards with their dogs. I’ve adored that station ever since I was a kid.’

‘What’s so stupid about it? There are some very nice-looking men depicted in bronze there,’ Nadya said, backing him up in as she scraped the remains off the bottom of the casserole. ‘Hey, Brigadier, look sharp, or you’ll be left with no supper!’

The tall, broad-shouldered warrior, who had been sitting apart from the others, strolled over unhurriedly to the campfire, took his serving and went back to his spot – closer to the tunnel, as far away as possible from the men.

‘Does he ever show up at the station?’ the fat man asked in a whisper, nodding in the direction of the massively broad back, half-hidden in the semi-darkness.

‘He hasn’t moved from this place for more than a week now,’ the sniper replied in an equally quiet voice. ‘Spends the night in a sleeping bag. I don’t know how his nerves can stand it. Or maybe he just enjoys the whole thing. Three days ago, when the upyrs almost did for Rinat, he went round afterwards and finished them off. By hand. Took about fifteen minutes doing it. Came back with his boots covered in blood… Delighted with himself.’

‘He’s a machine, not a man,’ a lanky machine-gunner put in.

‘I’m afraid even to sleep beside him. Have you seen what a mess his face is? I don’t even want to look in his eyes.’

‘But I only feel calm when I’m with him,’ the old man called Homer said with shrug. ‘What are you running him down for? He’s a good man, just got maimed, that’s all. It’s only the stations that need to be beautiful. And that Novoslobodskaya of yours, by the way, is just plain tawdry, bad taste. There’s no way you can look at all that coloured glass unless you’re drunk. Stained-glass rubbish!’

‘And collective farm mosaics, covering half the ceiling, aren’t in bad taste then?’

‘Where did you find any pictures like that at Komsomol Station?’

‘Why, all that damn Soviet art is about collective farm life or heroic airmen!’ said the fat man, starting to get heated.

‘Seryozha, you lay off the airmen!’ the sniper warned him.

‘Komsomol Station’s garbage, and Novoslobodskaya’s shit,’ they heard a dull, low voice say.

The fat man was so surprised, he choked on the words that were already on the tip of his tongue and gaped at the brigadier. The others immediately fell silent too, waiting to see what would come next: the brigadier almost never joined in their conversations, he even answered direct questions curtly or didn’t bother to answer at all.

He was still sitting with his back to them, with his eyes fixed on the gaping mouth of the tunnel.

‘The vaults at Komsomol are too high, and the columns are too thin, the entire platform can be raked with fire from the tracks, it’s wide open, and closing off the pedestrian passages is too tricky. And at Novoslobodskaya the walls are a mass of cracks, no matter how hard they try to plaster over them. One grenade would be enough to bring the whole station down. And there haven’t been any stained-glass panels there for ages. They’re all broken. That stuff’s too fragile.’

No one dared to object. The brigadier paused for a moment and blurted out:

‘I’m going to the station. And I’m taking Homer with me. The watch will change in an hour. Arthur’s in charge here.’

The sniper jumped to his feet and nodded, even though the brigadier couldn’t see it. The old man also got up and started bustling about, collecting his scattered bits and pieces into his knapsack, without even finishing his potatoes. The warrior walked up to the campfire, fully kitted out for an expedition, with his eternal helmet and a bulky knapsack behind his shoulders.

‘Good luck.’

Watching the two figures as they receded – the brigadier’s mighty frame and Homer’s skinny one – the sniper rubbed his hands together, as if he felt cold, and cringed.

‘It’s getting a bit chilly. Throw on a bit of coal, will you?’

The brigadier didn’t utter a single word all the way, apart from asking if it was true that Homer used to be an engine driver’s mate, and before that a simple track-walker. The old man gave him a suspicious glance, but he didn’t try to deny it, even though he had always told everyone at Sebastopol that he had risen to the rank of engine driver, and preferred not to dwell on the fact that he used to be a track-walker, believing it wasn’t really worth mentioning.

The brigadier walked into the station commandant’s office without knocking, saluting the sentries stiffly as they moved aside. Istomin and the colonel – both looking tired, dishevelled, and bewildered – got up from the desk in surprise when he entered. Homer halted timidly in the door, shifting from one foot to the other.

The brigadier pulled off his helmet and set it down on Istomin’s papers, then ran one hand over the clean-shaven back of his head. The light of the lamp revealed how terribly his face was mutilated: the left cheek was furrowed and twisted into a huge scar, as if it had been burned, the eye had been reduced to a narrow slit and a thick, purple weal squirmed its way down from his ear to the corner of his mouth. Homer thought he had grown used to this face, but looking at it now he felt the same chilly, repulsive prickling sensation as the first time.

‘I’ll go to the Circle,’ the brigadier blurted out, dispensing with any kind of greeting.