Men in Space (18 page)

On arriving outside Associate Markov’s building at Korunní 75 [seventy-five], I attempted once more to make radio contact with my team, but had no more success this time than I had before. I then tried to pick up the signal of the listening device placed in Associate Markov’s apartment, but, being unaware of the frequency on which it was transmitting, was unable to do so. Knowing that my team was nearby, I started walking up and down Korunní and its surrounding streets peering into cars in an attempt to find them, but, again, was unsuccessful. Neither could I locate the vehicle from which the visual surveillance team was operating. The only course of action open to me was to contact Headquarters by telephone, and I set about finding a working phone box. This took some time: the first one I came across had been irreparably vandalized; the second connected me in such a way that, while I could just about hear them speaking to me, the desk could not hear me speaking to them; the third had been entirely decked in shaving foam. Even when I did manage to get through, the damage to my hearing was such that I was still unable to make out what Lieutenant Forman was saying to me, and had to ask him to repeat it several times. I eventually understood that he was telling me to go home and rest for a few hours and, accordingly, returned to my car and drove down towards Prague One.

The streets were full of people. As I made my way through Nové Město, their number grew larger. After a while, crowds were flowing round my car, and I found it increasingly difficult to progress. The crowds were in the highest possible spirits. I
tried to clear a swathe through them by first using my horn, then affixing to my car’s roof my police light – but by the time I’d reached Náměstí Republiky even this didn’t work, so thickly were the revellers hemmed together. I thought it best to leave my car and continue home by foot, taking only my directional microphone with me. Emerging from its cabin, I found the noise overwhelming. The ringing in my ears was compounded by shrieks, whistles and the almost constant explosion of fireworks all around me. The sounds all ran together; I was unable to distinguish one from another. The sensation was extremely disorienting. I believe I may have panicked slightly: I remember shouting at people to let me by, but none of them seemed to hear me. I myself could not make out my own voice above the noise, nor even be sure that my vocal cords were amplifying it at all. I have no clear recollection of arriving home, nor of the noise subsiding. It was only when …

* * * * *

The English grass seems greener. Maybe it’s the climate: Nick said it really did rain all the time there. Maybe they use hi-tech fertilizer. Maybe they even paint it, like they do Astroturf in America. The players slide across its rich green surface, pool balls over felt, stripes turning and colliding, numbers on backs organizing themselves into rows and phalanxes, then breaking apart and reorganizing, like some living algorithm. White lines and boxes channel them, imposing structure on contingencies of movement, herding chance into patterns. An intermittent crackle comes from the set’s speakers, drowning out the commentator. It’s not static: the reception’s good – the Žižkov tower is only a few blocks away. No, it’s the
crrkk!
of the crowd’s applause, swelling as the ball floats past the goal post, past fluorescent yellow English police on dark brown horses, orange-coated ground
staff, this strange ocean of colour beamed to them through outer space …

“Helena? Have you got …” Ilievski’s holding up his cigarette as though it were something he’d just found behind the sofa. It’s almost half smoked; a tall column of ash is bending sideways from the vertical lower half.

“What? Oh! Sorry, Constantine. I’ll just go get one.”

“Bring some nuts as well, honey.” Anton’s craning forwards at the TV, as though worried that he’ll miss some detail if he spreads out and relaxes. “Liverpool are favourites here,” he says, explaining this ostensibly for Ilievski’s benefit, although he’d probably do it if Ilievski weren’t there. “They’ve got Redknapp, McManaman, Barnes, Matteo, Fowler – and Rush, of course. And they’re at home. And the statistics bear this out: they’ve had three corners, Bolton none. Two, now three shots at goal. Played mostly in the other half, their opponents’ one …”

“Didn’t the Liverpool team all die in some coach crash or something?”

“A plane crash, yes – but it was Manchester United, not Liverpool. In nineteen fifty-eight, in Munich. Not just Manchester United: half the English team as well. The Man U players were so good that half of them were playing for the national side.”

“It’s always sporting teams.” Ilievski’s speaking cautiously, without gesturing, so as not to tip the ash column over. “That, and rock stars. Never get into an aeroplane with a rock star or a football team. That’s my advice to you. When you and Helena and,” he lowers his voice, eyes darting to the door, “the children – when you all go over to America, my advice to you is that before you step onto that plane, just as you’re checking in your luggage, ask if there are any rock stars or football teams on it. Keep still Rambo. And if there are, don’t get on board. Film stars are alright, mind. Thank you Helena.” He removes his cupped left hand from underneath
the right one, which then slowly steers the cigarette towards the ashtray she’s brought for him, but the column drops just short. “
Fuck it!
I’m sorry!”

“No worry. I’ll get a cloth.” She sets the nut bowl on the side table and goes back into the kitchen.

“Bring some nuts, honey.”

“She did. They’re right beside you.”

“Oh? Good.”

“What’s that, Anton?” Helena calls through the wall.

“Nothing. I just wanted … It’s a corner. Came off McAteer.”

“We’ll take it out of here tomorrow.” Ilievski balances what’s left of his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. “The painting. The fake one, I mean. Anton.” He’s looking at the two paintings that are leaning against the filing cabinet beside the television, eyes moving from one to the other then back again.

“Right. Look: Fowler’s going to take it. How are you going to let it be found by the police, then?”

“It’s going to our people in Vienna. They’ll leave it with a gallery, who’ll check it against Interpol’s art loss register as a matter of course, and call the police in when they realize what it is – I mean, what they think it is. If they don’t recognize it straight away, of course.”

“It’s that high profile?”

“Oh yes.”

“Might someone not eventually discover it’s a fake?”

“Perhaps, eventually; perhaps not. But that’s not our problem. As far as we’re concerned, all that matters is that it’s taken off the art-loss register for long enough for us to move it around and unload it.”

The ball’s been curved too fine, and flighted too high anyway. It drifts above a wedge of straining heads and catches in the goalkeeper’s gloved hands. The crowd
crrkk!
Anton cracks a pistachio. Ilievski says:

“The real one stays here till the people in Sofia give the go-ahead. You might like to rewrap it and take it down to your cellar, just as a precaution.”

“OK. I’ll do that. Look: there’s the whistle. Half-time. He’s done well so far, this referee. He’s let the game run smoothly, not held it up. More wine?”

“Are you back with us now?” Ilievski stubs out his cigarette. “Sure. I’ll have another glass. First day of the new year. Happy New Year, Rambo. Cheers, Anton.”

They clink glasses. Ilievski asks:

“Which is the real one?”

“The one on the left.” Anton gets up, walks over to the paintings and crouches beside them. “Maňásek made a small red mark on the side, right here,” he says, tapping it. “Good thing he did. They’re hard to tell apart.”

“That’s what we paid him for. Funny painting, huh?”

Anton straightens his legs, then comes and sits beside Ilievski again. “We looked at it lots, Helena and I, when I brought it up here last night. We were trying to work out who the figure is.”

“Isn’t it Jesus?”

“Helena doesn’t think so. He always has long hair. Isn’t that what you said, honey?”

“Is it half-time?” She’s dabbing at the ash mark on the sofa with a damp cloth. “Oh, the painting. Yes, it’s strange. Quite beautiful. But that’s a very odd shape at the top he’s rising into. It’s kind of egg-shaped – like in those Dutch Renaissance paintings that have different planes. As though if you moved around and looked at it from another angle there’d be a different painting: another work entirely, with its surface angled differently, in line with the oval.”

“I don’t know about the Dutch Resistance,” says Ilievski, looking round her. “But I’ll tell you this: I think the birds are kind of funny.”

“See that, Helena? He thinks they’re birds as well.”

“I don’t.” She crouches down like Anton did a moment ago by the two paintings. “I think they’re humans who are falling down the mountain.”

“Why have they got wings then? Huh? Huh?” Anton throws a nut at her, which flies past her head and hits the painting. Ilievski winces.

“Watch out there! That cost us fifty thousand. And it’s probably worth fifty times as much.”

“Sorry.” Anton pours himself another glass as well. “I saw a painting recently, a modern painting, with a bird-man in it, falling. It was at that party of the French painter: Jean-Something. That was when I first met Ivan Maňásek and gave him the job.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s where I saw a painting of a bird-man falling.”

“Who?”

“In the painting. This figure was falling, with his wings on fire.”

“Icarus,” says Helena, picking the fallen nut from the carpet and popping it into her mouth. “He flew too close to the sun and the wings his father’d made for him caught fire.”

“When was this?” Ilievski holds his glass out to let Anton refill it.

“No time. In a Greek myth.”

“Something your father told you?”

“No, an ancient Greek one. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman. He built …”

“Listen to her, Constantine. My wife’s done a degree in this stuff.”

“I thought it was in physics. I thought that’s how …”

“That was her second degree. She’s a genius.”

“He built wings, and a labyrinth, where children were taken each year.”

“Every two years a new degree …”

“What children?” Ilievski asks. Anton reaches for more nuts.

“Athenian children. They were taken away each year, twelve of them …”

Her voice trails off. Anton rises from the sofa, carries the nut bowl to where she’s standing and offers her one.

“Have you got a glass?”

“I’ll get one.” She walks back into the kitchen. There’s a moment’s silence. Anton starts back towards the sofa, then turns around and peers at the paintings instead.

“This building at the bottom’s a bit like a labyrinth. A maze on several levels, with joining alleyways and floors. It’s like a Hopi pueblo.”

“Who’s that? Another painter?”

“No,” he answers, smiling, “it’s in Arizona. The Hopi are Indians. They lived on mesas, in buildings carved out of the rock. Still do, only now they have proper houses. That’s our first American holiday: Arizona.”

“You must understand that writing, then, if you studied ancient Greek,” Ilievski says to Helena, who’s come back with a wineglass.

“It’s not ancient Greek, though. It’ll be Byzantine, I should think, which is slightly different.” She pours herself a glass.

“Oh! The second half’s about to start.” Anton scampers back to the sofa, sits down on it and immediately shuffles forwards to its edge. A banging comes from somewhere.

“Was that the TV?” Helena’s holding her glass still, listening.

“No,” replies Anton, right hand feeling for the nut bowl on its left, flailing slowly on the table like a seal’s flipper. “Maybe it’s some fireworks left from last night. Here come the officials!”

The banging comes again from the hallway. It’s the door.

“Could you get that, honey?”

Helena sets her wineglass down and goes to answer. Ilievski looks out to the hallway.

“Are you expecting anyone?”

“Who knows? Maybe Milachkov’s come round to watch the second half. Look: here they are!”

The players’ tunnel’s mouth disgorges from whatever labyrinths lie behind it two lines of young men. The men jog out in single file; then, as they cross the painted touchline, they spread across the field, jump, stretch their groins or sprint in short bursts back and forth, waiting, like Anton, for the moment when the whistle will once more release them into game time, into pure geometries of green and white.

* * * * *

Nick’s been partying at Karolina’s place, at Gábina’s, at Marek’s and at Karolina’s again for days – over a week now. At Karolina’s in particular. He always thought, when modelling at AVU, that she scrutinized his body in a way that was more than academic; once or twice he let his imagination slip, picturing them together at a club or concert, then back at Maňásek’s, beneath the angel – and caught himself just in time, before his fantasy became public in front of a dozen people ready to capture its effect in crayon, ink and charcoal. Somewhere between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve and several bottles of Becherovka, he found out he hadn’t been too far off the mark in his imaginings when Karolina pulled him into a spare room at Marek’s, wrapping herself around him as they tumbled onto coats and pillows. He’s barely been back to Maňásek’s since then. He’s only left her flat right now because Mladen told him he’d heard of a phone box at Jiřího z Poděbrad that connects you anywhere in the world for a crown …

This turns out to be true, but half of Prague seems to have heard about it by now. There were six or eight shivering people queuing when Nick got here, all foreigners like him. The rule seems to be ten minutes each. He’s at the front now, right after this African who must have been in there eight minutes already. Behind him three short South Americans hop from
foot to foot, black felt hats pulled down tight over thick, oily hair. Probably musicians: he’s seen guys like them playing at Mústek. Never on Charles Bridge; those Californian potheads who were in Jean-Luc’s atelier play there most days. Bizarre: must be some kind of
quid pro quo
. Heidi said the South Americans sent all the cash they earned back to the Maoist guerrillas in Peru. It seems unlikely, but you never know. Behind them stands a gaggle of Vietnamese. They all have crooked teeth. Behind them, two fat Gypsy women with scarves wrapped around their heads, then two white men wearing old grey caps and jackets: maybe Poles. It’s an assembly line of the displaced, all waiting patiently to connect, if only for ten minutes, through a black, spiralling cord, to a spot in the past, some warm and fuzzy navel …