flower booth and cried because I was so happy. I had an umbrella but I didn’t open it, I wanted to get wet, wanted to feel the rain. I can’t recount… It was like I had been born and saw the world for the first time. And also the world was fresh and new, as if they had just cut its umbilical cord and bathed it for the first time. As if everything had become new and as if it tried to make up for all the bad things that had happened. I would now have a second life: What I couldn’t accomplish, my son would accomplish. Everything was just for us. In front of us…”
Again Homer was silent. He saw the ten story high Stalin houses, the sinking, gradually pink turning nightly fog, heard the busy noise of the Tverskaya, breathed in the sweet, polluted air, closed his eyes and put his face into the summery monsoon. When he came back to himself, small raindrops shimmered on his cheeks and eyes.
Hastily he wiped them off with his sleeve.
“You know,” said the girl, not less embarrassed, “Maybe rain is something beautiful. I don’t have memories like that. Can you spare some of them? If you want” she smiled at him “You can include me in your book. Somebody has to be in charge how everything ends”
“It is still too early” said the doctor serious.
Sasha didn’t know how she could explain this autocrat the importance of what she was asking him. She took a deep breath and readied another attack, but left it to a surly gesture of her hand and turned around.
“You are going to have to be patient. But because you are already on your feet and apparently feeling well you can go for a walk.” The doctor packed his instruments into an old plastic bag and shook Homer’s hand. “I’ll be back in an hour. The leadership of the station has ordered an especially thorough treatment in your case. After all we are in your debt.”
Homer threw a dirty military jacket over to Sasha. She stepped out, followed the doctor past the other areas of the hospital, past a row of rooms and chambers full of desks and stretchers, then two staircases upwards, through an inconspicuous low door and then into a giant long hall. Sasha froze at the doorstep, unable to go on. She had never seen something like that. It was past her imagination how many living people could live in one place.
Thousands of faces without masks! And so distinct from each another! There were humans of all ages, from the old man to the baby. Uncountable amounts men: With beards, shaven, tall, small, tired, awake, emaciated and muscular. Those who had been mutilated in battle, those with birth errors, bright beauties, and those that were unattractive on the outside, but emitted a mysterious pull. And not any less amount of women: those with big butts, red faced broads, but also thin, pale girls with unbelievable colorful dressers and interlacing necklaces.
Would they recognize that Sasha was different? Would so she could vanish into this crowd act like she was one of them or would they gang up on her and tear her to pieces like a horde of rats would do to a strange albino? At first it seemed to her that all eyes were resting on her and with every new look she felt warmer and warmer. But after fifteen minutes she was used to it: some looked at her hostile, some curious, some others too intrusive, but most weren’t interested in her. They only passed Sasha indifferently with their eyes and pushed onwards immediately without taking notice.
It seemed to her that the scattered and blurry looks were the machine oil that lubricated the gears of this hectic mechanism. If those humans took the slightest interest in another the friction would be too big and the whole spectacle would stand still in the shortest amount of time.
To go under this group you didn’t need a new disguise or a new haircut. It was enough if you didn’t look too deeply into the eyes of others, but left their eyes after a short look. Every time she did that she still shivered. This indifference would make it easy to continuously pass the interlocking inhabitants of the station without getting stuck at one place.
In the first minutes the smell of cooking had numbed her nose, but shortly after that her senses had learnt to filter out the important ones and ignore everything else. Through the sour smell of unclean bodies she smelled a luring, young, yes even pleasant aroma that went over the group like a wave. It was the perfume of a woman. The smell of grilled meat and the miasma of the trash pit mixed together. With one word: for Sasha this smell of the Pavelezkayas was the smell of life and the longer she took it in, the sweatier it became for her.
To explore this long corridor she probably would have needed a month. Everything here was so overwhelming…
There were places where you could buy jewelry that was made out of dozens of yellow and minted metal discs which she could stare at for hours. There was a giant selection of books that had more secret knowledge in them than she would ever be able to accumulate.
A shopkeeper lured passing people with a stand with the words FLOWER. He had a giant selection of feel better soon cards on which different bouquets of flowers were printed on. As a child she had once received a card like that, but how many of them were here!
She saw infants on the breasts of their mothers and older children that played with real cats.
Couples that touched each other with eyes and other that did that same with hands.
Men tried to touch her. They could have mistaken her interest for some kind of invitation or as a wish to sell something to her, but a certain tone in their words was unpleasant to her, yes even disgusted her. What did they want from her? Weren’t there enough women here? Many beauties were under them, covered in colorful dresses they looked like the open heads of the flowers on the cards.
Sasha guessed that these men made fun of her.
Was she even able to get a man curious about her? Suddenly doubts started to bite deeper that she didn’t even know she had. Maybe she understood everything wrong… But why should it be different? Something awoke painfully in her chest, under her ribs, at that certain place that she only had discovered for herself a short while ago.
To get rid of her unrest she wandered along the shops again, where all kinds of wares were, bulletproof vests, normal clothing, machines, but she was almost no longer interested in them. Her inner voice had pushed out the noisy crowd into the background and the picture that her memories painted were more plastic looking then the living humans around her.
Had she been worth his life? Would they still be able to judge him for what he had done? And before all: what sense were those stupid thoughts now? Now that she couldn’t do anything for him anymore…
Suddenly even before Sasha realized why, all doubts faded and her heart calmed down. She listened into herself and heard…. It was the faint echo of distant melody that came from where a large group of people had gathered. Music that Sasha remembered, like the first goodnight songs her mother had sung for her. But she had to be content with only her mother’s songs for years: her father hadn’t had any place for music and only sparsely ever sung, even wandering musicians and jesters hadn’t been welcome at the Avtosvodskaya.
And when the guardsmen on their campfires croaked their heavy hearted and fiery military song neither the wrongly tuned wooden guitars nor Sasha’s inner cords had swung with the melody.
But what she heard now was no boring jingling. It sounded like the soft voice of a young woman, yes of a girl but unreachable high for the human throat. It sounded uncompromised and powerful at the same time. But with what could she even compare this miracle?
The song of the unknown instrument cast a spell over the people who stood around, raised them high and carried them into to never ending place, into worlds which all who had been born in the metro had never seen and with possibilities they couldn’t have guessed. This music let the people dream and make them believe that all dreams could become reality. It awoke an incomprehensible longing and promised to fulfill it at the same time. And it gave Sasha the feeling as if she had wandered through an abandoned station for a long time when she had suddenly found a lamp and in the shine of the lamp, immediately the exit.
She was standing in front of the arms-smith. Directly in front of her was a plank of wood where different knives were screwed on, from a small pocked knife to murderous hand long daggers. Sasha watched them frozen, like the blades had cast a spell on her.
Inside of her a wild fight took place. A small tempting feeling emerged. The old man had given her a handful of bullets, just enough for the giant black knife with the jagged edge, a wide, sharp exemplar, that was better suited for her plan than anything else.
After one minute Sasha had made a decision. She hid her treasure in the chest-pocked of her overall, if possible at the place where she wanted to fight the pain. When she stepped back into the hospital, she didn’t feel the weight of her military jacket nor the pounding in her forehead.
