Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

The silence behind the steel wall was as impassive as if it were just a fake, concealing nothing but thousands of tons of stony earth.

‘They won’t open up for you.’

Sasha swung round abruptly. The musician was standing about ten steps away from her, in an awkwardly twisted pose, dishevelled and sad.

‘Then you try! Maybe they’ve forgiven you?’ said Sasha, giving him a puzzled glance. ‘What have you come here for?’

‘There isn’t anyone to forgive me. It’s empty.’

‘But you said…’

‘I lied. This isn’t the entrance to the Emerald City.’

‘Then where is it?’

‘I don’t know. No one knows.’ He shrugged.

‘But why did they let you through everywhere? You’re an observer, aren’t you? You… On the Circle, and with the Reds… You’re trying to fool me now, right? You blurted out the truth about the City and now you regret it!’ She tried to look into his eyes, searching pathetically for confirmation of her own assumptions.

‘I used to dream of getting into the City,’ said Leonid, gazing stubbornly at the ground. ‘I searched for it for years and years. I collected rumours and read old books. I must have come to this spot a hundred times, probably. I found this bell. And I rang it for days on end. But all for nothing.’

‘Why did you lie to me?’ she asked, walking straight towards him. Her right hand assumed a life of its own and slid towards her knife. ‘What did I do to you? Why did you do this?’

‘I wanted to steal you from them,’ said the musician. Spotting the weapon, he seemed bewildered and instead of running, sat down on the rails. ‘I thought that if I was left alone with you…’

‘But why did you come back?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ he said, looking up at her submissively. ‘I suppose I realised I’d crossed some kind of line. After I sent you here… After I was left on my own, I started thinking… No one’s born with a black soul. At first it’s transparent, and it darkens gradually, spot by spot, every time you forgive yourself for something wrong and find a justification for it, every time you tell yourself it’s only a game. But then the moment comes when there’s more black than white. Not many can sense that moment, it’s not obvious from the inside. But I suddenly realised that I was crossing that boundary, right here and now, and afterwards I would be different. Forever. And I came to confess. Because you don’t deserve this.’

‘But why is everyone so afraid of you? Why are they all so spineless with you?’

‘It’s not me,’ Leonid sighed. ‘It’s my dad.’

‘What?’

‘Does the name Moskvin mean anything to you?’

‘No,’ said Sasha, shaking her head.

‘Then you’re probably the only person in the Metro who doesn’t know it,’ the musician said with a mirthless chuckle. ‘Anyway, my dad’s a big boss. The boss of the entire Red Line. He fixed me up with a diplomatic passport. So they let me through. It’s an uncommon name, no one takes any risks. Unless they simply don’t know.’

‘Then what do you…?’ Sasha backed away, gazing at him suspiciously. ‘Observe? Is that what you were sent out for?’

‘They just got rid of me. My dad realised he could never make a man of me, and he gave it up as a bad job. So I just disgrace his name on the quiet,’ said Leonid, pulling a wry face.

‘Did you have a quarrel with him?’ asked the girl, screwing up her eyes.

‘How could anyone quarrel with Comrade Moskvin? He’s a living monument! I was excommunicated and cursed. You see, even as a kid I was a holy fool. I was always attracted to beautiful pictures, and the piano, and books. My mother spoiled me, she wanted a little girl. When my father realised what was going on, he tried to cultivate a love of firearms and Party intrigues in me. But it was too late. My mother got me addicted to playing the flute, my father tried to break me of the habit with the strap. He banished the professor who was teaching me and replaced him with a political commissar. But it was all a waste of time. I was already rotten. I didn’t like the Red Line. I thought it was too grey. I wanted a bright life. I wanted to study music and paint pictures. Dear Papa once sent me to chip off a mosaic, so I would realise that beauty is perishable. And I chipped it off, so that I wouldn’t be beaten. But while I was smashing it, I memorised every last detail, and now I could make one exactly like it myself. And ever since then I’ve hated my father.’

‘You mustn’t talk about him like that!’ Sasha exclaimed indignantly.

‘I can,’ the musician said with a smile. ‘Other people get shot for doing it. And as for the Emerald City… My professor told me about it, in a whisper, when I was little. And I decided that when I grew up I was definitely going to find the way in. That there must be a place in the world where what I lived for had some meaning. Where everyone lived for it. Where I wouldn’t be a petty little pervert, or a parasitical prince, or a hereditary Dracula, but an equal among equals.’

‘And you didn’t find it,’ said Sasha, putting her knife away. Sifting through the unfamiliar words, she had understood the most important thing. ‘Because it doesn’t exist.’

Leonid shrugged. He got up, walked over to the button and pressed it.

‘It probably doesn’t matter if anyone there really can hear me or not. It probably doesn’t matter if there really is any such place in the world. What matters is that I think there’s a place like that somewhere. And that someone hears me. Only I just don’t deserve to have the door opened for me yet.’

‘And is that really enough for you?’ asked Sasha.

‘It’s always been enough for the whole human race, it will do for me too,’ the musician said with a shrug.

The old man ran out onto the platform after the brigadier and gazed around in confusion: Hunter was nowhere to be seen. Miller trundled out of the cell block, as ashen-faced and desolate as if he had given his soul to the brigadier along with the mysterious token.

Why had Hunter fled and where to? Why had he abandoned Homer? It would be better not to ask Miller: Homer ought to get as far away from that man as possible, before he remembered that the old man even existed. Homer walked away unhurriedly, pretending that he was trying to catch up with the brigadier and expecting to be called from behind at any moment. But Miller didn’t seem interested in him any longer.

Hunter had told the old man that he needed him in order not to forget his former self… Was he lying? Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to lose control, go berserk here in Polis and get into a fight that he might lose and so never get to Tula? His instincts and his killing skills were superhuman, but even he wouldn’t try to storm an entire station all on his own. If that was it, then the old man had played his role by accompanying him to Polis, and now he had been kicked off the stage.

After all, the final outcome of the whole story depended on him too. And he had done his best to bring about the precise denouement planned by the brigadier – or whoever it was that spoke for him. What was this token? A pass? A badge of authority? A black spot? An advance indulgence for all the sins that Hunter was so eager to take on his soul? Whatever it was, by extorting the token from Miller, together with his consent, the brigadier had finally given himself a free hand. He wasn’t planning to make his confession to anyone. Make his confession! Why, the thing that had taken control inside him, the terrible thing that occasionally came out to look in the mirror, couldn’t even talk properly.

What would happen at Tula when Hunter stormed it? Would drowning an entire station – or two or three stations – in blood be enough to quench his thirst? Or would the thing he was carrying inside him simply run riot after sacrifices like that?