Life was so meticulously arranged here, and VDNKh had established such a reputation for it that there were many wishing to live there. But it was very rare for outsiders to be taken into the settlement.
There was a few more hours until his night shift at the tea-factory and Artyom, not knowing what to do with himself, trudged over to see his friend Zhenya, the same one with whom he undertook the headspinning adventure to the surface. Zhenya was his age, but unlike Artyom, he lived with his own real family: his father, mother, and younger sister. There were only a handful of incidents where a whole family had been saved, and Artyom secretly envied his friend. Of course, he loved his stepfather very much and respected him even now that the man’s nerves had got the better of him. But nonetheless, he knew that Sukhoi wasn’t his father, and wasn’t his kin altogether – and he never called him ‘Dad’.’
At the beginning Sukhoi asked Artyom to call him ‘Uncle Sasha’ but later regretted it. Years had gone by and the old tunnel wolf hadn’t managed to start a family of his own, he didn’t even have a woman who would wait for him to return from expeditions. His heart would beat harder when he saw a mother and child, and he dreamed about the possibility that one day he wouldn’t have to go out into the darkness, disappearing from the life of the station for days and weeks, and maybe forever. And then, he hoped that he would find a woman who would be prepared to be his wife, and to bear him children, which, when they learnt to speak would not call him ‘Uncle Sasha’ but ‘Father.’
Old age and feebleness were getting ever closer, and there was less and less time remaining, and he needed to hurry, but all the same it would be hard to pull off. Task followed task and he couldn’t find anyone to take over his work, no one to trust with his connections and his professional secrets, in order to finally start doing some non-manual work at the station. He had already long considered doing work that was a bit more peaceful, and he even knew that he could fall back on a supervisory role at the station thanks to his authority, his stellar record and his friendly relations with the administration. But for now, there was no one capable of replacing him, not even on the horizon, so he entertained himself with thoughts of a happy future and he lived for today, postponing his final return and continuing to spend his sweat and blood for the sake of the granite of other stations and the concrete of far-off tunnels.
Artyom knew that his stepfather, despite showing fatherly love towards him, didn’t think of him as his successor in professional matters and mostly thought of Artyom as a nitwit, and completely undeserving of such responsibility. He didn’t take Artyom on long expeditions, ignoring the fact that Artyom had grown up and could no longer be persuaded that he was still too young and that zombies would drag him off or rats would eat him. He didn’t understand expressing a lack of confidence in Artyom had pushed the boy into desperate escapades for which Sukhoi had to punish him afterwards. He had probably wanted not to subject Artyom to the senseless mortal danger of wandering the metro but allow the boy to live the way Sukhoi wanted to live himself: in peace and safety, working and raising children, not wasting his youth unnecessarily. But in wanting such a life for Artyom, he was forgetting to strive for such a life himself, and had passed through fire and water, had succeeded in surviving hundreds of adventures and was satisfied with them. And the wisdom acquired with years wasn’t speaking to him anymore, all that spoke to him were the years themselves and the fatigue they brought. Artyom had energy boiling inside him. He had only just started living, and the prospect of drudging through the vegetative existence of crumbling and drying mushrooms, and changing diapers, and never going beyond the five-hundredth metre seemed absolutely inconceivable. The desire to get away from the station grew in him every day, as he understood more and more clearly what life his stepfather was moulding for him. A career as a tea-factory worker and the role of a father with many children was less appealing than anything on earth.
He was drawn to adventure, wanted to be carried along like tumbleweed in the tunnel draughts, and to follow these draughts into uncertainty, to meet his fate – and that’s what Hunter probably saw in him, asking him to take part in a venture of such enormous risk. This Hunter fellow had a subtle sense of smell when it came to people, and after an hour of conversation he understood that he could propose the plan to Artyom. Even if Artyom didn’t ever get to the designated place, at least there was the prospect of leaving the station, in accordance with his orders in the event that something should happen to Hunter at the Botanical Gardens.
And the hunter wasn’t mistaken in his choice.
Luckily, Zhenya was at home and now Artyom could pass the evening discussing the latest gossip and having conversations about the future over strong tea.
‘Great!’ his friend exclaimed in response to Artyom’s greeting. ‘You’re also on night duty at the factory today? They put me there too. I’m so sick of it that I wanted to ask the boss to switch me. But if they put you with me then that’s fine, I can handle it. You were on patrol today, right? Well, tell me! I heard that you had a state of emergency there. What happened?’
Artyom cast a sidelong look at Zhenya’s younger sister with great emphasis as she had become so interested in the conversation that she had stopped stuffing mushroom waste into the ragdoll that her mother had sewn for her, and was watching them with bated breath and round eyes from the corner of the tent.
‘Listen, little one!’ Zhenya said strictly, having understood what Artyom meant. ‘You, now, go on, get out of here with your little thing and go and play at the neighbours’. I think Katya invited you over. We have to be nice to the neighbours. So, go on, and take your dollies with you.’
The little girl squeaked indignantly and started to gather her things with a gloomy look on her face, meanwhile making suggestions to her doll, who was blankly looking up at the ceiling with her semi-erased eyes. ‘You think you’re so important! I know everything anyway! You’re going to talk about your mushrooms!’ she said contemptuously as she left.
‘You, Lenka, are still too small to discuss mushrooms. The milk on your lips hasn’t even dried yet!’ Artyom put her in her place.
‘What’s milk?’ the girl asked, puzzled, touching her lips.
But neither of them bothered to explain and the question hung in the air.
When she left, Zhenya fastened the flaps of the tent and asked, ‘Well, what happened? Go on, spill it! I’ve heard quite a lot about it already. One guy says that a huge rat crawled out of the tunnel. Another guy says that you scared off a spy for the dark ones and that you even wounded him. Who should I believe?’
‘Don’t believe anyone!’ Artyom advised. ‘They’re all lying. It was a dog. A little puppy. Andrei the marine picked it up. He said that it was a German Shepherd.’ Artyom smiled.
‘Yeah but I heard from Andrei that it was a rat!’ Zhenya said, perplexed. ‘Did he lie on purpose or what?’
‘You don’t know? That’s his favourite catchphrase – the one about the rats the size of pigs. He’s a comedian, you see,’ Artyom responded. ‘So what’s new with you? What have you heard from the boys?’
Zhenya’s friends were traders, delivering teas and pork to the market at Prospect Mir. They brought back multivitamins, cloth, all sorts of junk, sometimes they even got hold of oil; sometimes they’d bring dirt-stained books, often with pages missing, which had mysteriously ended up at Prospect Mir, having travelled through half the metro system, passing from one trunk to the next, from one pocket to the next, from one merchant to another, before finally finding their rightful owners.