Men in Space (24 page)

After he’s packed the trunk Nick hears Mrs Maňásková talking to Joost in the other room. The corridor’s covered in hardboard, not the usual parquetry. He tiptoes – but it still creaks as he steps back into the kitchen. The dog straightens, then finds its feet, like one of those collapsed wooden figures that jumps to attention when you remove your thumb from its base. Nick steps towards the cooker, trying to ignore it – then changes direction and moves over to the window. What’s he supposed to do? A strange, stumpy tree is standing in the courtyard outside, with some kind of tin-and-string contraption wedged between its two forked branches. To encourage birds to nest? None seem to have accepted the invitation. Maybe they’ve migrated …

“Get off! Off!”

To do this now, of all times: the dog’s hips are pumping at Nick’s knee, its nose straining upwards to his crotch, tongue
lolling out and throbbing as it pants, the front feet clawing through the trousers … How could anybody want to
own
a thing like this? …

“Get off me!” Nick shouts – then, for some bizarre reason: “
Raus! Raus! Weg!
”

Mrs Maňásková appears beside him and yanks the dog off, shouting Russian curses at it. She picks up a spatula that’s lying on the sideboard and hits the dog across the rump with it. She hits it hard; the dog shrinks back and yelps, but she steps forwards and hits it again. Its feet skid over the floor like the feet of someone on a frozen lake; then it flips from passive to aggressive, raises its head and growls at her. She backs off, shouting at it to get out of the kitchen.

“Stupid dog! It doesn’t understand. Call the other man. We’ll eat.”

She wipes the spatula on her apron, then plunges it into the pan and stirs the food. Nick goes and tells Joost that the meal’s ready.

“But I’ve already eaten those … those
chlebí
-things. I can’t stay. I have to get the paintings over to Vinohrady,” he half-whispers to Nick, in English.

“I have to go to Vinohrady too. Why don’t we eat a bit, then leave together? I think she really wants …”

“
Ganz fertig!
”

The plates are steaming on the table. Stringy red strips of pepper have been added to the stew. It was Karolina, as they walked back from the square on New Year’s Eve, who told him about dogs and periods. Mrs Maňásková sits between them, at the head, but doesn’t eat. She’s poured them glasses of some kind of liquor. If Nick puts a chunk of meat in his mouth and then sips before he swallows, he can get it down without gagging. Joost tells Mrs Maňásková he likes the stew. She says:

“Do either of you know a man named František?”

They look at each other and shake their heads.

“Before Ivan lost consciousness, he said that name twice. František.”

Neither of them answer. So he was conscious after falling? She hasn’t mentioned the accident before now, but Nick doesn’t dare take this allusion as an invitation to ask more. It’s her call. They eat.

“I’ve seen the work of many artists here in Prague,” Joost says, setting his fork down as he looks at her, “and in my opinion Ivan was the best one of his generation. The older painters, Pavel Brázda and the like – well, their work’s …”

“His generation. Some of them are running businesses now. Ivan wouldn’t change. He fought so hard for it but didn’t like it when it came. He had no place in the new Czech Republic.”

Nothing to venture to this either. What could he say? Joost tells Mrs Maňásková he likes the stew again. She turns her head in his direction, as though his compliment had been a fly buzzing somewhere vaguely around the area of his head.

“They found drugs, you know.”

Both men look down. Nick mumbles:

“I don’t think …”

“They made him a little crazy. Unrealistic. One of his friends thinks he was murdered. The girl who came round when you were there, when was it?”

“Me?” asks Nick, setting his fork down.

“Yes. The girl who the police took away. She probably takes drugs too. I think she loved him.”

Nick looks over at Joost, catches his eye and holds it while he tentatively says:

“I’m sorry, but I really have to go. The friend who I’m staying with is waiting for me in her flat. Gábina Wichterlova. She was one of your pupils in primary school. Maybe you remember her …”

“Klárá’s her name.”

“Sorry?”

“Eat! Eat more.”

“It’s just that I don’t have keys, and …” He can feel them in his trouser pocket, pressing into his skin above where the dog’s claws pressed: one small Yale and one chunky security key, digging at him in reproach. Joost’s rising from the table.

“I must leave also. The stew really was delicious. If I could …”

“You didn’t eat it all!”

“We’ll carry the things down and I’ll go hail a taxi in the square,” Nick says, heading for the washing room.

When he comes back with his trunk, Mrs Maňásková’s tipped the contents of the frying pan into a casserole dish and swaddled the dish in a drying-up towel. Despite all her confusion, she’s sly: she knows that one of them will have to bring it back. She balances it on top of Nick’s trunk as they shuffle out of the door, an apron string tied to the backs of children that aren’t hers.

* * * * *

 … an acute sense of being cut off. On my return to Headquarters after being discharged from hospital, it took me several hours to find someone willing to talk to me about the current state of the case and what my future role in it might be. Even when people did grant me interviews – people with whom I was not familiar, or at least with whom I was not aware of being familiar – my overall state of confusion was such that I was unable to piece together the scraps of information that they offered me. Why had Subject and Associate Markov been released? Where was the painting? As it was made clear to me that my presence was not required at Headquarters, I left and wandered, in a kind of daze, back to Korunní, where I had last had contact with events. I waited there, I do not
know for how long, observing the front door of number 75 [seventy-five]. When Associate Markov eventually emerged from this and headed for the metro at Jiřího z Poděbrad, I followed him.

He rode the A line to Hradčanská, where he rose to street level by way of first the escalator then the steps. Rising some paces behind him, I experienced considerable distress due to the changes in both pressure and acoustics brought about by the ascent. My ears were assailed by sounds of banging and drilling, as though workmen were dismantling the walls of the station itself, tearing apart the very tube that led from the platform to the street. Occasionally, voices emerged from the banging and drilling, and spoke words which seemed to be those contained within the advertising posters lining the station’s walls, as though someone, or several people, were reading these out aloud. I cannot say for certain whether this was indeed happening, or whether the sounds were mutations of the residual noise I was by now experiencing constantly. One might have thought that the damage caused to my aural apparatus by extended periods of listening outside first Subject’s and then Maňásek’s apartments, compounded by the fireworks on December 31st [thirty-first] and exacerbated by the blows I received to the side of my head in Korunní on the following day, would have diminished my powers of hearing. On the contrary, they seem to have augmented them. It is as though I could hear
everything
, and all at once: traffic, human voices, sounds of crowds in bars and squares, in football stadiums and auditoria of concert halls, the crackle of radios and television sets. I seem to hear the noises given out by neon signs, fluorescent lights, power lines and power substations, atmospheric noise produced by lightning dis charged during thunderstorms, galactic noise caused by disturbances originating outside the ionosphere. But it’s all noise: I’ve lost the signal. All I pick up now is interference.

Associate Markov left Hradčanská Metro station. As I neared the exit doors I found that the beeping sound these emit to guide blind people towards them was administering to my body a shock of some considerable force – repeatedly, with every beep. Twice I was forced back onto the station’s inner concourse; it was only when I ascertained the beeps’ frequency and timed my exit so as to pass through the doors in the pause between 2 [two] pulses that I was able to continue. On my emerging into open air, a new sound was added to the others I was hearing: that of a loud bell. Its noise was different to the ringing I’d experienced some days ago: where that had been a background noise, this one was sharp and intrusive, like a large needle piercing my eardrum. So intense was the pain it caused that I had to lean on a bar; I remember it being red and white, with a drawn-out, rhythmic black-and-yellow rush behind it – also a funnel of wind being both sucked away from and blown in at me, as though I had been clinging to the side of some kind of cannon from which a projectile had just been fired. I was vaguely aware as I watched the projectile expelled that Associate Markov and, indeed, Subject himself, who had somehow joined him, had been expelled from the same cannon, but sideways, as though by the recoil, and were still somewhere close to me. As the projectile’s sound subsided, I caught sight of them turning the corner into Dejvická, and made to follow them, removing my directional microphone from my pocket. It seemed to me that other people I recognized, colleagues of mine, were also present, although I was unable to confirm this as they disappeared before I could identify them.

This interference business troubles me. On a professional level, I know all about it. I understand internal interference such as that created in receivers by the amplifying circuits used to boost small audio signals up to audible levels; I understand external interference such as is generated by mountains and
buildings; I know how multi-path interference can be caused by reflected transmissions reaching the receiver at random-phase relationships to one another. I have even studied the correlation between degrees of sky-wave interference and the eleven-year cycles of sunspots. But these were things that happened to the equipment; now they’re happening to me. Crossing Dejvická, I found myself unable to concentrate my attention on Subject and Associate Markov: instead, it was guided, as though by an alien hand which was somehow tuning it, to first one spot then another. I was made to focus on a wooden stall behind which a large woman was selling satsumas. The satsumas were piled up high; she scooped them into bags and weighed them as she sold them. Occasionally some would fall from the pile or from her arms, displacing others so that small cascades occurred. My attention was then transferred to a smoked window from behind which a man was selling deep-fried battered cheese. I can remember nothing more about this man or his product. I then noticed a large cello that was leaning against the wall of the Sokolovna public house. The cello was uncovered and, although no one was playing it, sounds – all kinds of sounds – seemed to undulate around it. Clearly, the cello was not the
origin
of these sounds, yet there seemed to be a
connection
between them and it – indeed, between them and all the objects in my vision. The sounds undulated in dislocated waves. Objects undulated too: cheese, satsumas, cello. Unable to continue following Subject and Associate Markov, I …

* * * * *

There’s a bookstall at the top of the steps exiting the A line to Dejvická, on the near side of the overground tracks, by the level crossing: as promised, Ilievski’s waiting for him there, perusing a red hardback. Anton walks slowly up behind him and leans over his shoulder.

“It’s in Italian!”

“What the …” Ilievski slams the book shut, spins around, then sighs. “Jesus Christ, Anton! Do you want to kill me? Here,” he murmurs, keeping his head low, gesturing with his eyes at Anton’s chest so that at first Anton thinks there must be a mark of some type on his shirt, a blob of ketchup or something – until he realizes that Ilievski’s trying to indicate some spot behind him, a spot with eyes from whose gaze he’s hiding his own, “how many of them have you got with you?”

“How many … Oh, right. Two.”

“Two! I’ve only got one, as far as I can make out. What’s so important about
you
all of a sudden?”

Black humour, this; they both smile. He just noticed it this afternoon, not half an hour ago, as he stepped into the carriage at Jiřího z Poděbrad: a second one had joined in. For the first couple of days after being released, after Ilievski told him that they’d each be trailed constantly from now on until either they or the police retrieved the real painting, he was paranoid, saw undercover agents skulking around every stretch of pavement pretending to buy cigarettes or newspapers or to be making phone calls. But then he realized that there was only one. It didn’t take a great amount of cunning to flush him out from all the other, neutral faces hanging around him like human camouflage: these would change, but his was always there. In Sofia, when they were maybe seven or eight, Anton and the other kids in his street used to trail people for kicks, crouching behind dustbins and parked cars, dashing from one doorway to another: the whole point was not to be seen. But this guy doesn’t give a damn that Anton knows he’s with him. Not that he confronts him with his presence: he’s very unobtrusive, never coming too close, never eyeballing or even looking at him – but then never losing him either. If they’re in a tram or a metro carriage he’ll read his paper, genuinely read it, checking off
what Anton presumes are racing or football odds with a pencil until Anton gets out; then he’ll fold the paper, slip the pencil back into his pocket and follow him. If Anton eats, he eats; if not, he doesn’t. He doesn’t care where they go, or how long it takes. It’s been dawning on Anton over the last day or so that other people, by comparison, accord him considerably more importance: they will interact with him, either making eye contact or shyly turning their eyes to the floor if he looks at them, moving aside or deciding to hold their ground if they’re blocking his path, racing him for empty seats in trams and on the metro. This man enters into no such congress with him. It’s his gaze, not theirs, which is the truly neutral one: it makes Anton feel half dead.