METRO 2033: The Gospel According to Artyom. by Dmitry Glukhovsky Page B

along the wide winding alleys until the dinner time. Having lost our way we accidentally found a tiny Japan-themed garden lost in the vast park. A pond filled with the water lilies, a rickety bridge crossing it and unbelievably beautiful birds swimming around dark mirror-like surface…
     
    It's actually amazing how much I remember. I remember so much stuff I could easily do without... And yet I forget the most important of all – the sight of her face.
     
    My mother's face.
     
    I don't know why or who prohibited me from seeing her eyes, her smile and her hair. I never accepted this prohibition, and for as long as I remember I always wanted to go back to that day – to the whispering alleys, the mandarin ducks, the warm asphalt with sun beams piercing the cover of the trees. Back to my mom.
     
    And yet, the world I was seeking so desperately is gone forever, and my mother's gone with it. There's nothing left of that world except for that day and two or three rough sketches still stored in my memory: an evening in our flat, cozy light from a lamp, warmth…
     
    I only wish I could recall her face. The way she looked at me. The way she whispered that I've nothing to fear. The way she'd wink at me. I'd sell my soul just to recall that. I'd do that any day, any time. And I did.
     
    The Judgment Day came. The righteous and the sinful were called to be rendered to according to their deeds. And we hid from God's sight in the Metro, and we were saved from His wrath and He apparently decided that flushing us out wasn't worth the trouble. Then He went about his business or, perhaps, died, and we stayed on this discarded Earth. And we continued going along its orbit into nothingness.
     
                  The Humanity was executed, while we two were among those given a short reprieve. Hers has proven to be way too short, mine – way too long. 
     
                  My mom was devoured by rats. I don't remember that day. But, if I was spared from that memory in exchange for the one about that summer morning in the Botanical Gardens, I'm ready to exchange them back. Do you hear me, whoever you are?..
     
                  I was picked up by a man who thought he'd adopt me. A pity, I was not ready to become his son. We grew closer, and yet we remained strangers forever. The shadow of my mother, whom he was unable to save from the rat onslaught and whom I was unable to bring myself up to die with, remained between us. I never told him a word of reproach, but I could not completely forgive him, either.
     
    I was like a branch broken off a tree – an attempt to attach me to another trunk failed, since the break-off point was so scarred and all the cells that were supposed to take root and connect me to a new tree were dead. No amount of effort could make the merge happen.
     
    That's how we'd live together yet apart, he – a loner, me – an orphan. 
     
                  I could never see her face even in my dreams. I saw that day wit the mandarin ducks a lot of times, but I never saw mother. Her shape, her voice, her laughter... Everything was vague, trying to concentrate, reaching out was useless – she was ever-elusive, ephemeral. Touching her or holding her was completely impossible.
     
     
    *               *               *
     
     
                  It was my idea to go visit the Botanical Gardens station. Mine completely. I was afraid to go alone, and I wouldn't have made it that way – somebody had to draw the attention of the guards standing watch in the northern tunnel, otherwise we'd be caught at the very first roadblock.
     
                  I went there to reach the surface. I don't know what did I hope to see there; it was definitely not that long lost summer day with its cerulean sky, not the ice-cream stand   still open for business in an open challenge to all the laws of the universe and not rays of sun dancing on the