Part 16 (1/2)

The third day of their stay at the station arrived. Time here did not pa.s.s according to the usual twenty-four-hour day; it crawled along like a slug, in the seconds of an unending nightmare. Artyom had already grown accustomed to the idea that n.o.body would ever approach him and talk to him again, and that the fate of a pariah was in store for him. It was as though he were no longer human and had turned into an inconceivably monstrous being, whom people saw not just as something ugly and repulsive, but also somehow perceptibly related to themselves - and that scared them and repulsed them even more, as if they might catch this monstrousness from him, as if he were a leper.

First he worked out an escape plan. Then came a resounding void of despair. After that a dull stupor took over, in which his intellect was disconnected from his life; he turned inward, drew in the threads of feeling and sensation, and went into a coc.o.o.n somewhere in a remote corner of consciousness. Artyom continued to work mechanically, his motions as precise as those of an automaton - all he had to do was dig, dump, roll, and dig again, roll again, drain, and go back the other way, faster, to start digging again. His dreams lost any meaning, and in them, just as in his waking hours, he endlessly ran, dug, pushed, pushed, dug, and ran.

On the evening of the fifth day, Artyom, pus.h.i.+ng the wheelbarrow, tripped over a shovel that had been left on the floor; the wheelbarrow overturned, the contents spilled, and then he fell down into it himself. When he arose slowly from the floor, an idea suddenly popped into his head, and instead of running for a bucket and cloth, he slowly and deliberately headed for the entrance to the tunnel. He himself could feel that he was now so loathsome, so repulsive, that his aura would have to drive anyone away. And just at the moment, due to an improbable confluence of circ.u.mstances, the security guard who was invariably hanging around at the end of his route, was, for some reason, not there. Without giving a moment's thought to whether someone might be chasing him, Artyom started off across the ties. Blinded, but hardly stumbling, he walked faster and faster, until breaking into a run; but his reason had not returned to the job of directing his body; it was still holed up, cowering in its corner.

Behind him he heard no shouts, no footsteps of pursuers; only the trolley clattered by, loaded with cargo and lighting its way with a dim lantern. Artyom simply pressed himself against the wall, letting it go past. The people on board either did not notice him or did not consider it necessary to pay him any attention; their gazes pa.s.sed over him without lingering, and they didn't say a word.

Suddenly he was seized with a feeling of his own invulnerability, conferred on him by his fall. Covered with stinking sludge, it was as if he had become invisible; this gave him strength, and consciousness gradually began to return. He had done it! Who knew how? Against all good sense, despite everything, he had managed to escape from the accursed station, and n.o.body was even following him! It was strange, it was amazing, but it seemed to him that, if he were only to try right now to comprehend what had happened, to dissect the miracle with the cold scalpel of rationality, then the magic would dissipate immediately, and the beam of the searchlight from a patrol trolley would quickly strike him in the back.

Light shone at the end of the tunnel. He slackened his pace, and after a minute he was at Dobryninskaya.

The border guard there satisfied himself with the simple question, 'Did they call for a sanitary technician?' and quickly let him through, waving away the air around himself with one hand while holding the other over his mouth. Artyom had to keep moving, to get out of Hansa territory fast, before the security guards finally gathered their wits, before he could hear behind him the tramp of iron-rimmed jackboots; before warning shots thundered out into the air, and then . . . Faster.

Not looking at anyone, keeping his eyes to the floor, his skin crawling with the disgust those around him felt for him, a vacuum forming around him so that he did not have to elbow his way through the dense crowd, Artyom strode to the border post. And now what was he going to say? More questions, more demands to present his pa.s.sport. How could he reply?

Artyom's head hung so low that his chin touched his chest, and he saw absolutely nothing around him, so that the only things he remembered about the whole station were the dark, neatly arranged granite slabs of the floor. He kept walking, frozen with antic.i.p.ation of the moment when he would hear the peremptory order to stand still. Hansa's border was closer and closer. Now . . . Right now . . .

'What kind of rubbish is this?' a gasping voice resounded in his ear. There it was.

'I . . . it . . . I got lost. I'm not from here . . .' muttered Artyom, tongue-tied from nervousness or maybe just getting into his role.

'Well get the h.e.l.l out of here, do you hear, you ugly mug?!' The voice sounded very persuasive, almost hypnotic, making him want to obey right away.

'Sure I . . . I would . . .' mumbled Artyom, afraid, not knowing how to get out of this one.

'Begging is strictly forbidden on Hansa territory!' the voice said sternly, and this time it was from a greater distance.

'Of course, right away . . . I have little children . . .' Artyom finally realized what b.u.t.ton to press, and became more animated.

'What children? Are you nuts?!' The invisible border guard flew into a rage. 'Popov, Lomako, come here! Get this sc.u.mbag out of here!'

Neither Popov nor Lomako wanted to soil their hands by touching Artyom, so they just shoved him in the back with the barrels of their automatics. Their superior's angry curses flew after them. To Artyom, this sounded like heavenly music.

Serpukhovskaya station! He had left the Hansa behind!

Finally he looked up, but what he saw in the eyes of the people surrounding him made him look back at the floor. This was not tidy Hansan territory; he was once again in the midst of the dirty, poverty-stricken bedlam that reigned throughout the rest of the metro. But even here, Artyom was too loathsome. The miraculous armour that had saved him along the way, making him invisible, forcing people to turn away from the fugitive and not to notice him, to let him through all the outposts and checkpoints, had now turned back into a stinking, s.h.i.+tty scab.

Evidently it was already past noon.

Now that the initial exultation had worn off, that strange strength, as if borrowed from someone else, which had forced him to keep walking across the stretch from Paveletskaya to Dobryninskaya, abruptly disappeared and left him alone with himself - hungry, deathly tired, without a penny to his name, giving off an unbearable stench, still showing traces of the blows of the week before.

The paupers next to whom he had sat down along the wall, decided that they could no longer abide such company, crawled away from him, cursing, in various directions, and he was left completely alone. Hugging his shoulders so as not to feel so cold, he closed his eyes and sat there for a long while, thinking about absolutely nothing, until sleep overcame him.

Artyom was walking along an unfinished tunnel. It was longer than all those he had traversed throughout his whole life, rolled into one. The tunnel twisted and turned, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending, but was never straight for more than ten paces. But it just went on and on, and walking became harder and harder; his feet, blistered and b.l.o.o.d.y, were hurting, his back ached, each new step called forth an echo of pain throughout his body; but as long as hope remained that the exit was not far away, maybe just around that next corner, Artyom found the strength to keep going. But then suddenly the simple, but terrifying thought occurred to him: what if the tunnel had no exit? If both the entrance and exit were closed, if someone invisible and omnipotent had shut him off - left him thras.h.i.+ng around, like a rat unsuccessfully trying to reach the experimenter's finger, in this maze without exit, so that he would keep dragging himself along until he gave out, until he collapsed - and doing this for no reason, just for fun? A rat in a maze. A squirrel in a wheel. But then, he thought, if continuing along the road does not lead to the exit, will refusing any senseless forward motion perhaps bestow liberation? He sat down on a railway tie, not because he was tired, but because he was at the end of his rope. The walls around him disappeared, and he thought: in order to achieve the goal, to complete the journey, all I have to do is to stop walking. Then this thought faded away and disappeared.

When he woke up, he was seized by overwhelming anxiety, and at first could not imagine what had caused it. Only later did he begin to recall bits of the dream, to piece together a mosaic from these fragments, but the fragments just would not hold together; they crumbled; there was not enough glue to hold them together. That glue was some idea that had come to him during his dream; it was pivotal, a vision from the heart, and very important to him. Without it, all that was left was a pile of ragged underwear; but with it - a wonderful picture, full of miraculous import, opening up limitless horizons. But he couldn't remember the idea. Artyom gnawed on his fists, seized his dirty head with his dirty hands, his lips whispered something incomprehensible, and pa.s.sers-by looked at him with fear and aversion. But the idea just didn't want to return. Then slowly, carefully, as if trying to use a strand of hair to pull out something stuck in a swamp, he started to reconstruct the idea out of the fragments of memory. And - what a miracle! - deftly grabbing hold of one of the images, he suddenly recognized it, in the same primordial form that it had first announced itself in his dream.

To finish the journey, he only needed to stop walking.

But now, in the bright light of waking consciousness, the thought seemed to him ba.n.a.l, pitiful, unworthy of attention. To finish the journey, he needed to stop walking? Well, of course. If you stop walking, then your journey is over. What could be simpler? But is that really the way out? And could that really be the conclusion of the journey?

It often happens that an idea that appears in a dream to be a stroke of genius, turns out to be a meaningless jumble of words when one wakes up . . .

'O, my beloved brother! Filth on your body and in your soul.' The voice was right next to him.

That was as unexpected as the return of the idea, and the bitter taste of that disillusionment instantly vanished. He didn't even think the voice was addressing him, since he had already become so accustomed to the idea that people fled in all directions even before he could utter a word.

'We welcome all the orphaned and wretched,' the voice continued; it sounded so soft, so rea.s.suring, so tender, that Artyom, no longer restraining himself, cast a sideways glance to the left, and then gloomily glanced to the right, afraid to discover that the person speaking was actually addressing somebody else.

But there was n.o.body else nearby. The person was talking to him. Then he slowly raised his head and met the eyes of a rather short, smiling man wearing a loose-fitting robe, with dark blond hair and rosy cheeks, who was reaching out his hand in friends.h.i.+p. It was vital for Artyom to reciprocate, so, not daring to smile, he too extended his hand.

'Why isn't he recoiling from me like everybody else?' thought Artyom. 'He's even ready to shake my hand. Why did he come up to me on his own, when everyone around was trying to get as far away from me as possible?'

'I will help you, my brother!' the rosy-cheeked fellow continued. 'The brothers and I will give you shelter and restore your spiritual strength.'

Artyom just nodded, but his new companion found that sufficient.

'So allow me to take you to the Watchtower, O my beloved brother,' he intoned and, firmly taking Artyom by the hand, drew him along.

Artyom did not remember much, and certainly didn't remember the road, but only understood that he was being led from the station into a tunnel, but which of the four, he did not know. His new acquaintance introduced himself as Brother Timothy. On the road, and at the grey, mundane Serpukhovskaya station, and in the dark tunnel, he never stopped talking: 'Rejoice, O beloved brother of mine, that you met me on your way, for your life is about to undergo a momentous change. The cheerless gloom of your aimless wandering is at an end, because you will attain that which you seek.'

Artyom did not understand very well what the man had in mind, because for him personally, his wanderings were far from over; but the rosy-cheeked and gentle Timothy spoke so smoothly and tenderly that he just wanted to keep on listening, to communicate with him in the same language, grateful for not rejecting him, when the whole world rejected him.

'Do you believe in the one true G.o.d, O Brother Artyom?' Timothy inquired, as if by the way, looking Artyom attentively in the eyes. Artyom could only shake his head in an indefinite way and mumble something unintelligible, which could be interpreted as desired: either as agreement or rejection.

'That's good, that's wonderful, Brother Artyom,' Timothy exclaimed. 'Only belief in the truth will save you from the torments of eternal h.e.l.l and grant you expiation of your sins. Because,' he a.s.sumed a stern and triumphal expression, 'the kingdom of the G.o.d of our Jehovah is coming, and the holy biblical prophecies will be fulfilled. Do you study the Bible, O brother?'

Artyom mumbled again, and the rosy-cheeked fellow this time looked at him with some misgivings.

'When we get to the Watchtower, your own eyes will convince you that you must study the Holy Book, given to us from on high, and that great blessings will come to those who have turned to the path of Truth. The Bible, a precious gift of the G.o.d of our Jehovah, can only be compared to a letter from a loving father to his young son,' Brother Timothy added, for good measure. 'Do you know who wrote the Bible?' he asked Artyom a bit sternly.

CHAPTER 11.

I Don't Believe It

Artyom decided that there was no sense in pretending any more, and honestly shook his head.

'At the Watchtower, they will lead you to this, and to much more, and your eyes will be opened to many things,' proclaimed Brother Timothy. 'Do you know what Jesus Christ, the Son of G.o.d, said to his disciples at Laodicea?' Seeing Artyom avert his eyes, he shook his head in mild reproach. 'Jesus said, ”I counsel you to buy from me salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see.” But Jesus was not talking about physical illness,' stressed Brother Timothy, raising his index finger, and his voice s.h.i.+fted to an exalted, intriguing intonation that promised to the inquiring mind an astonis.h.i.+ng sequel.

Artyom was quick to express lively interest.

'Jesus was talking about spiritual blindness which had to be healed,' said Timothy, in explanation of the riddle. 'Like you and thousands of other lost souls who are wandering blindly in the dark. But belief in the true G.o.d of our Jehovah is that salve for the eyes which opens your eyelids wide, so that you can see the world as it really is; because you can see physically, but spiritually you are blind.'

Artyom thought that eye ointment would have done him good four days ago. Since he didn't reply, Brother Timothy decided that this complex idea required some further interpretation, and was quiet for a while, to allow what Artyom had heard to sink in.

But after five minutes, a light flickered up ahead, and Brother Timothy interrupted his reflections to report the joyous news: 'Do you see the light in the distance? That is the Watchtower. We're here!' There was no tower at all, and Artyom felt slightly disappointed. It was a regular train standing in a tunnel, whose headlights shone softly in the darkness, illuminating fifteen metres in front of it. When Brother Timothy and Artyom arrived at the train, a chubby man came down from the engineer's cab to meet them, wearing the same type of robe as Brother Timothy; he embraced Rosy-Cheeks and also called him 'my beloved brother,' from which Artyom deduced that this was more a figure of speech than a declaration of love.