Страница 34 из 136
Artyom stared at Khan and could not avert his gaze from the man’s face for the duration of his monologue. Indistinct shadows skittered across Khan’s face and his eyes were flaring with some internal fire… Towards the end of the story, Artyom was almost sure that Khan was mad, that the voices in the pipes had whispered something to him too. And though Khan had saved him from death, and shown him such hospitality, the thought of staying with him for any length of time was uncomfortable and unpleasant. He needed to think about how to move on, through the most evil of all the tu
‘So, you’ll have to forgive me for my little lie,’ Khan added after a short pause. ‘Your friend’s soul didn’t go up to the creator, it won’t reincarnate and come back in a new form. It joined the other unhappy ones, in the pipes.’
These words reminded Artyom that he had pla
But to take it over was somehow frightening and superstitions of all kinds climbed into Artyom’s head and he decided to open it only slightly and to peek into it without touching or moving anything.
‘You don’t need to be afraid of it,’ Khan said to Artyom unexpectedly as though he could feel his trepidation. ‘The thing is now yours.’
‘I think what you did is called looting,’ Artyom said quietly.
‘You don’t need to be afraid of retribution, he won’t reincarnate,’ said Khan, not replying to what Artyom said but to what was flitting about in Artyom’s head. ‘I think that when they get taken into the pipes, the dead lose themselves and they become part of a whole, their will is dissolved into the will of the rest of them, and reason dries up. There’s no more individual. But if you’re afraid of the living and not the dead… Well, then drag this bag into the middle of the station and empty its contents onto the floor. Then no one will accuse you of thieving, and your conscience can be clean. But you tried to save the guy and he would be grateful to you for that. Consider that this bag is his repayment to you for what you did.’
He was speaking so authoritatively and with such conviction that Artyom gained the courage to put his hand into the pack and he started to take things out of it and lay them on the tarpaulin to see them in the light of the fire. There were four extra cartridges for Bourbon’s gun, in addition to the two that he had taken out when he gave the gun to Artyom. It was surprising that the trader had such an impressive arsenal. Artyom carefully wrapped up five of the cartridges he found in their cloth and put them into his rucksack and he put one in the Kalashnikov. The weapon was in excellent condition: thoroughly oiled and looked after. The lock moved smoothly, giving off a dull click when pushed and the safety catch was a bit stiff. All this indicated that the gun was practically new. The handle fitted comfortably into his hand and its shank was well polished. The weapon gave off a feeling of reliability and encouraged calmness and confidence. Artyom immediately decided that if he were to take any one thing from Bourbon it would be this gun.
The 7.62 cartridges that Bourbon had promised him for his ‘hoe’ weren’t there. It wasn’t clear how Bourbon had been pla
Apart from various rags, a map of the metro imprinted with notations that only its dead owner would understand, and a hundred grammes of weed, he found a few pieces of smoked meat in plastic bags and a notebook at the bottom of the rucksack. Artyom didn’t read the book and he was disappointed in the rest of the stuff. In the depths of his soul, he had hoped to find something mysterious, maybe something precious – the reason that Bourbon was so intent on getting through the tu
Then he remembered that he had left the poor man in the middle of the tu
‘So what do you do here with those that die?’ Artyom asked Khan after a long bout of thinking.
‘What do you mean, my friend?’ Khan answered a question with a question. ‘Are you talking about the souls of the deceased or about their perished bodies?’
‘About the corpses,’ Artyom growled. He was becoming fed up with his talk of the netherworld.
‘There are two tu
Artyom started to feel ill when he realized that he would have to go back to the place where Khan had picked him up, to drag Bourbon’s rat-gnawed body to the station and then to the ravine in the second tu