“There are people who have never seen their own reflection in their entire life and because of that they think that they are someone entirely different. And if the stand in front of their reflection they often can’t believe who is standing in front of them.”
“And how am I seeing?”
“You tell me.” He crossed his arm in front of his chest. “Myself. Well… A girl” To be sure she turned the mirror from one cheek to the other.
“A young women.” Corrected Homer. “And a very unkempt one.”
She turned from one side to the other a few times, blinked at homer as if she wanted to ask something, thought about it again, went silent for a moment and gathered all her courage and said: “Am I ugly?”
The old man cleared his throat. He had to keep himself from laughing. “Hard to say. Under all that dirt you can’t really tell.”
Sasha raised her eye brows. “What’s the problem? Don’t men have a feeling for if a woman is beautiful or not? Do you always have to show and explain?”
“Seems like it. And women often use that to deceive us.” Homer had to laugh. “Makeup can work wonders on a female face. But in your case it is not about repairing a portrait but to free it. When you can only see the foot of an antic statue you can’t really tell how it looks like.”
Then he added: “Even though there is a great chance that it is beautiful.”
“What does antic mean?” Asked Sasha unsure.
“Old.” Homer was having his fun.
“I am only seventeen!”
“We are going to know. After the excavation.”
The old man leaned back to his table, opened the notebook at the last page he had written on and started to read through his notes again. Suddenly his face darkened.
If anybody digs us up one day… The girl, himself and all others. What if in thousands of years archeologists would explore the ruins of Moscow from which not even the name was known and suddenly found the entrance to this underground labyrinth? Probably they would think it was a gigantic mass grave. Nobody would believe that in thesee dark catacombs humans could have lived. They would come to the decision that this highly advanced culture had become only a few in its last days and that they had buried their leaders with all of their possessions, weapons, servants and concubines.
His book had a mere eighty free pages. If that would be enough to house both worlds in it: The one on the surface and the one in the metro?
“Can’t you hear me?” The girl shook his arm.
“What? Sorry, I was sunken in thoughts.” He wiped his forehead.
“Are antic statues really beautiful? I mean what the people found beautiful back then can it still be today?”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “Yes.”
“And tomorrow as well?”
“Possible. When somebody is still left to judge them.”
Sasha went silent and thought about something.
Homer didn’t try to carry the conversation forward but he sunk back into his own thoughts.
After some time she asked surprised: “So that means without humans there is no beauty?”
“Probably not.” He answered a bit confused. “When nobody can see it… Animals aren’t able…”
“But if animals distinct themselves from humans because they don’t know the difference between beauty and ugliness can humans even exist without beauty?”
The old man shook his head. “Of course, certainly. There are many that don’t need it”
Now the girl took a strange thing out of her pocket: A small quadratic piece of plastic with a drawing on it.
Shy and at the same time proud, like she was showing her a biggest treasure and held it into Homers direction.
“What’s that?”
“You tell me.” A smart smile hushed over her face.
“Well.” He took the small quadratic piece of plastic carefully out of her hand, read the print and gave it back to the girl. “That’s the packaging of a teabag. With a picture on it.”
“A beautiful picture.” She corrected him. “If not for this, I would’ve become an animal…”
Homer looked at her. He felt how his eyes filled with tears and breathing got harder for him. Sentimental idiot!
He cursed himself. He cleared his throat and sighed.
“Have you never been on the surface, in the city? I mean except this one time?”
“No, and?” Sasha put the packaging back into her pocket. “Do you want to tell me that out there it isn’t like on this picture? That there is nothing like this anymore? I now that already. I know how the city looks like, the houses, the bridge and the river. Destroyed and empty”
“Not at all.” Answered Homer. “I have never seen anything more beautiful. You act like you wanted to judge the entire metro by the one platform you’ve seen. How am I supposed to describe it? Building higher than the mountains, big streets flowing like the river on the mountain. A sky that never got dark and shining fog… A very, ambitious, short-lived city, just like every one of its millions of former inhabitants. Crazy and chaotic. Influenced by trying to combine what can’t be combined. Build without any plan. But so alive!”
His hands became fists, like he was angry at the world.
“You can’t understand that. You should’ve seen it with your own eyes…” At that moment he was convinced that she just had to go to the surface so that she could see everything like himself. He never realized that she had never seen the city in its living condition.
Homer hadn’t talked to anybody and they had lead them through the barricade to Hanza and the whole neighboring stations, to the offices where the bath was. Under guard, like if they were lead to the henchman’s block.
The only thing that the two
The rooms were dirty and run-down, but bright and roomy. The ring station made a more crouched, edgy impression, but it was always lit and polished. They must have caravans and merchants coming through. At this time nothing was going on, who didn’t work seemed to favor the masses of the neighboring station and not the strictness of the ring.
In the dressing room Sasha was alone. The walls were covered with yellow tiles and on the ground were hexagonal and broken tiles. There were also painted iron cabinets for shoes and clothes, a light bulb on a cable, two benches covered in scratched, artificial leather… She couldn’t stop looking around.
She took an unbelievable white towel and a heavy, quadratic piece of grey soap. Then she locked the shower from the inside.
The small quadratic towel, the a little bit disgusting smell of the soap, all that was part of a distant past for Sasha when she had been the loved and protected daughter of the commander. She had already forgotten that all those things still existed.
Hastily she took off her clothes which were covered in dirt and jumped under the rusty pipe of the self made shower.
With a bit of effort she turned the valve and almost burned her hand, the water was hot! She pressed herself against the wall so that she could move out of the way of the water and turned the other one. Finally when the she had found the right mixture she stopped dancing around… And stepped into the water.
The water washed away the dust, ash, machine oil and blood, her own and the blood of other people, tiredness, sorrow, guilt and doubts down the drain. It took some time until the water which was running down the drain got clear again.
Was that enough so that the old man wouldn’t make fun of her anymore?
Sasha looked at her clean feet as if they weren’t her own, and then she looked at the unusual white hands. Was that enough so that men would recognize her beauty?
