Men in Space (23 page)

He’s woken up suddenly from deep sleep. It could be eighteen hours, ten hours or twenty minutes later. A new day, at any rate: the uniform who’s nudging him awake is freshly shaven and has toothpaste on his breath – although he could have risen around midnight to begin the night shift. They’re taking Anton by the arm, raising him to his feet. Must be to escort him to his new cell. They could be a little gentler; maybe they don’t know he’s been reclassified, needs kid-glove treatment – in a bureaucracy like this information probably takes a while to filter down. The uniforms lead him along the corridor and down the staircase again to … Strange: he’s being taken back to the interview room. Has he slept through two, three days? Will he be told that the children are already here, waiting for him now with Helena somewhere? Or even find them right here, here in this … No. The lieutenant’s
sitting back from the table, to the right of the door, smoking, resting his clipboard on his knees as before. The dark-haired man’s wearing the same shirt as last time but has taken the tie off. His face is red, with bags beneath the eyes. He’s standing in front of the table all excited.

“Close the door and get out,” he says to the uniforms. He’s cranked up with something, but it doesn’t look like joy. Anton’s own smile fades from his face. He walks to his side of the desk. The dark-haired man doesn’t wait for him to sit down before starting:

“What the fuck are you playing at?”

A jolt surges through Anton. There’s some thing very dangerous coming at him and he doesn’t know how to ward it off, because he doesn’t know what it is.

“Hey?” the dark-haired man’s shouting now. “What the fuck did you take us for?” The chair goes flying across the room and slams into the wall. The dark-haired man’s turning his head round as though loosening his neck muscles, a manic circular move ment. He looks up and fixes Anton with a bitter smile.

“Did you think we wouldn’t find out? That … I know what you thought: that in the time before the art people realized what you’d done you’d have walked out of here laughing. That’s it, isn’t it? Is that what you thought? That you and your … your
brood
would be in America before we found out?”

Anton can see the vein in his left temple bulging, grey, forking its way down from his dark hair like a streak of lightning.

“I really …”

“Fuck you! Fuck you, Anton! I did – we all did so much for you. We moved heaven and earth. You would have had them back within the week! You greedy shit! You fucking greedy Jew!” He pauses and rolls his head again. “Well, you’ve blown the whole thing. We’re back to zero. Are you happy?”

“I don’t …”

“Is this what you wanted? Because this is where you’ve got us!”

“I don’t understand.”

“No!” His eyelids are screwed up tight. Both hands are trembling beside his head, but it’s not Italianate now. “You don’t say anything until I tell you to! OK? Now, let’s start the whole thing again. Sit down.”

He’s still crouched just above his chair, half in, half out. The dark-haired man watches him slide in, breathes out slowly, and then, measuring each word for his own benefit, continues:

“Right. It’s very simple. You are going to tell me now, this second, where the original painting is.”

Is that all this is about? “It’s the one with the red mark on the side.”

“No!” The dark-haired man’s hands are moving up and down in sheer frustration. “No …”

He tries again: “The left side, near the …”

“No! No! No!” this last one’s thumped out on the table. “Don’t – fuck – around – with – me! One more time, the last time, and I hope, I hope for your sake that you come clean here, because it’s out of my hands if you don’t, and you won’t be seeing
anybody
” – with the
anybody
spit flies from his mouth and hits Anton on the cheek – “wife, children, anybody you know in a big long fucking time. Where – is – the – real – painting?”

What’s happening? What’s happening? The question and the anger are completely genuine. So’s the terror: the dark-haired man’s almost as frightened as he is. The whole procedure’s moved into a zone neither of them understands. A new, pitch-black labyrinth’s sprung up around them and this time there’s no chink and no one to lead them to the door; they’re both running around blind, bumping against hard, dirty walls, against closed doors, each other. How can
both
paintings be …

“If one of those two that were at my flat isn’t it, then I swear, I swear I don’t know! I swear on my life! I don’t know!”

He’s crying now. The dark-haired man squeals in anguish. He pushes the table forwards at him, shoves it so it slams against his thighs, then shoves it again. When it won’t move the second time he runs round it and pushes Anton to the floor. Anton shuffles back towards the wall, animal fear making his muscles move, his right leg pulled over his left, head up as the dark-haired man jerks his own right leg, holds it, jerks it again, waiting for the right moment to strike, like a good centre forward waiting for the bounce to settle, the goalkeeper to go down; then the leg comes back and …

“He doesn’t know.”

Both men stop moving and look over towards the lieutenant. He’s stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray, rising casually from his chair, laying the clipboard and pen down on its warm, dented seat. He scratches his hip, shakes his shoulders and repeats:

“He doesn’t know.” Then, with an inclination of his head towards the door: “Let’s go.”

They’re gone before he’s even got up. They don’t take anything with them: they just walk out. They don’t even close the door or call the uniforms in. Anton rises slowly, wipes his hand across his face. He’s shaking. He walks round the table and puts his hand on the back of the lieutenant’s chair to steady himself. He breathes in, then out, lips held tight in an
O
. Beneath him, on the chair’s seat, the lieutenant’s notes are lying abandoned. He looks down at them. The whole page is covered in lines: straight, unbroken lines, curved lines and jagged lines, lines that turret up and down as they march across the paper’s upper border, spiral inwards towards minute disappearing points or zigzag their way along the margin. That’s all there is on the page. No words, no figures: just lines. He flips the page over and looks at the one beneath: it’s the same, and so’s the one beneath that. A uniform comes through the door.

“You’re free to go.”

Anton looks at him. “Where? Go where?”

“To go. You may leave. You are no longer under arrest.”

Branka is waiting for him in the lobby. He takes Anton by the arm and leads him to the door.

“Where’s Helena?”

“At home. She’s fine.” It’s light outside, but only just. Either dawn or dusk. Branka leads him to Ilievski’s Mercedes which is waiting in the street, opens the rear door and slides him in. Ili’s at the wheel; he pulls off as soon as Branka gets into the front passenger seat. He drives up Bartolomějská in silence, then cuts through Náměstí Republiky and onto Švermův Most. He doesn’t speak until they’re stopped at the lights on Nábřeží Edvarda Beneše. His eyes meet Anton’s in the rear-view mirror:

“Your Maňásek has turned us over.”

Anton has nothing to reply; he’s too exhausted even to try. He just looks back at Ilievski’s eyes. The light goes green, a tram rings its bell; they start off again and enter the Letenský Tunnel.

“Oh yes. He’s turned us right over, is what he’s done.”

* * * * *

In Kampa Park a statue has fallen from its plinth and broken. This seems significant. Everything seems significant: shock does that to you. That in the month of Janus, god of open doors, he should come home to find his door padlocked … That, after being dragged from bed three weeks ago to watch Maňásek sending seagulls shooting up into the sky by Palackého Most, he’s just had one fall, dead, onto the pavement right in front of him … That he found out this morning that Gábina was taught Russian in primary school by Maňásek’s mother … These events take on the aspect of things more than coincidental, tokens shuffled around
by some invisible hand working the larger choreography of chance and circumstance. And there are ravens in the park, perched in branches overhanging the Vltava, cawing disgruntledly – perhaps because as death omens they’ve been pre-empted: the neighbour told him yesterday …

On the phone last night Maňásek’s mother said to Gábina, who Nick’s been staying with since Tuesday (Karolina’s out of town, and anyway seems to have cooled on him since learning of his imminent departure), that he should come by at four. The clock at Náměstí Míru was showing half-past three when he slid by it on the twenty-two. Her place is off the park, before Karlův Most. He doesn’t want to turn up early. Maybe in Amsterdam he’ll have to get a watch. Will there be meetings? Will he have to wear a suit from time to time? How can he think about these things with Maňásek not four days dead? His body will be in that very room where he and Angelika … This town is too small.
Splat!
There are three girls sitting on a bench, breath pushing out of them into the frosty air like – oh no, it
is
cigarette smoke. One of them must have a watch; he’ll ask them. They look like the Three Fates, wrapped in long black shawls and scarves. At least they’re not weaving …

The girls don’t understand him; they tell him so in French. He asks them in French for the time. It’s seven minutes to. Nick sparks a Marlboro up as he walks on, drawing the smoke into his lungs. Must phone Jean-Luc and ask him if he’s found Heidi’s glasses. If they take Maňásek’s insides, strip him like an old car, they’ll have enough diseased tissue for a whole semester. And Angelika snipping and cutting at it, too, eyes lit up with revenge:
Bite my leg, motherfucker?
He’s smiling.
You’re sick, Nick
, he says to himself – then says it out aloud, to ravens, broken statue, Fates:

“Sick Nick.”

It’s like a little maze just off the park. There’s even a canal here. Gábina knew exactly where the street is: right behind
the John Lennon wall. She joined the vigils there each day during the revolution. Nick’s seen the photos: wide-eyed Gábina with candle in hand, peace bandanna round her head, a teenage hippy. The wall’s got a huge portrait of the great Beatle painted on it; below this, a hundred little messages scrawled out and folded, stuffed in bottles or wedged under stones. As Nick moves past these towards Maňásek’s mother’s, the tune those buskers were playing at Jean-Luc’s party runs through his head again, its lyrics vague: something about bad flights, disconnected telephones and unpacked cases, a broken-down country …

It’s an old building with a street door you walk straight through to a mews-like porchway Mrs Maňásková lives on the second floor, up an uneven wooden staircase. When Nick rings the bell, a dog barks on the far side of the door. Mrs Maňásková opens, holding the dog back with her legs. She’s hefty – reminds Nick of Dana at AVU. Around her orange hair she wears a handkerchief.

“I’m … My friend Gábina phoned … I’m very sorry …”

Before he can finish she’s stepped forwards, wrapped her arms around him and hugged him right into her chest. She holds him there, face pressed into her plastic apron, for what seems like a long time, then pushes him back so he’s at arms’ length from her and, with her hands still clamped onto his shoulders, scrutinizes him.

“You speak German?”

“Yes. I also …”

“You’re frightened of the dog? Don’t worry. He’s a good dog.” They always say that. “Come in. Sit down here.” A plate of nibbled
chlebíčky
is sitting on the table. Another person’s appeared in a doorway that leads off from the kitchen to a corridor on its far side, a tall man of forty-odd. He moves awkwardly forwards and they shake hands: Joost, the man tells him.

“Oh yes,” says Nick, switching to English, “we …”

“You are hungry,
nein
?” Mrs Maňásková cuts in.

“Me? Oh no, I’m fine. I wouldn’t want to …”

“I’ll just go and …” Joost slips back away into the other room. Mrs Maňásková’s opening the fridge. She turns to Nick.

“When did you last eat?”

“Well … late this morning.” Bread with lard: Gábina saves butter for special occasions.

“I’m going to cook for you.” She turns back to the fridge and pulls from it a slab of wet red meat. The dog, a shabby black mongrel of some kind, is sniffing at his thigh. In Prague’s streets they all wear muzzles; he never has to worry about being attacked. In London he used to get it all the time: they can smell fear, like sharks. Blood too: who was it said they know when girls are on? Heidi? Angelika? Maybe dogs in Amsterdam have to wear muzzles too. Mrs Maňásková’s pulled open a drawer and taken out a wooden hammer. She lays the slab of meat out on the sideboard and starts tenderizing it. On a shelf to the right of the cooker there’s a framed photo of a man who looks like Maňásek but can’t be him because the photo’s old, with a metallic brown pigment smeared around the figure. The photo vibrates as Mrs Maňásková slams the hammer down onto the meat. She spends a long time pounding it; when she’s finished doing this she slices it up and drops the pieces into a frying pan. She reaches for another shelf just to the cooker’s right that’s lined with large jars half-full of various home-pickled produce. There are twenty or so hard-boiled eggs in one: they look years old. Another has shredded cabbage, sauerkraut; another, sausages. She’s trying to roll the cabbage jar towards the shelf’s edge, tickling its side with her fingertips. Nick gets up.

“Can I …”

But it’s already toppled over and begun its fall. She catches it before it hits the sideboard, firmly, confidently. With her
left arm still cradling it, she wrenches its lid loose, fishes out a tuft of white threads with her fingers and drops them into the pan.

“Five minutes now. You may go and place your possessions together. They’re in the second room through there.”

Well, no. The green trunk’s there, but it’s half empty. Where’s the Campbell’s Soup-can T-shirt Roger gave him? And the jeans he borrowed from Jean-Luc? A washing machine in this room’s corner has opened its stomach to strew sheets and socks across the floor, but none of them are his. It’s not really the time to ask her to locate missing things: he’ll just have to gather what he can. On the wall behind the washing machine there’s an old poster of the Soviet Union. Must have been for teaching her classes: all the states’ names are written in Cyrillic. It was compulsory, Gábina said: Russian, Soviet history, Soviet geography. Most of these coloured states must be gone now – gone, or going: veering apart like pool balls separating on the break, only Russia left …