Men in Space (29 page)

Inside the compound there were also huts, perhaps of workmen. Their windows were black and opaque. Some of these were mounted on wheels, as though with a view to being moved quickly to a new location if events made this necessary, although the wheels were grey and rusty, which suggested that they had been static for some time. Inside the compound was another compound with an iron fence around it; inside this one, yet another. The fences were dilapidated, leaning; bushes clambered over them like crowds storming barriers. Inside one of the inner compounds there were piles of wooden pallets and of coal, with rubber tubing coiled around their sides, as though a group of long, thin snakes were guarding them – or rather, had been guarding them, had shed their skins, and left. There were cages, of the shape and size of lions’ cages, although these, also, were empty. The cages, coupled with the wheeled cabins, gave the impression that a circus troupe had been here, had passed by and left its refuse, its broken wagons, all the things that it no longer needed.

I was here. I stood here for some time. I do not know for how long. As I did so, and before witnessing Former Colleague Robinek’s arrival on the scene, I observed Subject talking in the car market with Associates Milachkov and Koulin. I still had my directional microphone with me, but its batteries were low and in any case it served no purpose since I no longer hear anything at all: the dislocated noises that were assailing me some weeks ago have faded away, leaving nothing in their place. Walking around the city, it seems to me that I am watching television, or a film, without the sound. People speak, perhaps to me, perhaps not, but no words come from their mouths. Cars and trams glide by silently. The world seems drained of content: its objects and locations remain, but the transmission field that ran through these, enveloping them and holding them together, is now gone. Despite this total loss of field, I continue to observe and to record as best I can – but I wonder to whom I should now address my dispatches. All my superiors have drawn back, made themselves inaccessible to me. None of them have called me, and I’ve had no contact with the precinct now for weeks. As I watched Subject speaking with Associates Milachkov and Koulin, my former colleague Robinek walked past me on the street. I made to move towards him, in order to make contact with him – but, doing so, was overcome by an immense feeling of lethargy, one that I’d been experiencing ever since my hearing started going. This, coupled with a loss of equilibrium that also has been constantly with me, rooted me to the side of the pavement where I was leaning against a stone balustrade, and I was unable to make myself known to him.

If Former Colleague Robinek noticed my presence at all, he failed to recognize me, possibly due to the dishevelled look I’d observed in my own person on those occasions when I’d caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. Several weeks’ of beard-growth was by now covering my cheeks. In any case, he seemed preoccupied. He made his way past me and turned
down a stone staircase leading to the lower-level car market. Once there, he walked straight towards Subject, Associate Koulin and Associate Milachkov, the last of whom greeted him warmly, extending his arm and shaking Former Colleague Robinek’s hand. He then introduced Former Colleague Robinek to Subject himself, whose hand he also shook, and finally to Associate Koulin, with whom he performed the same act. A conversation ensued, or so I believe, as they gesticulated to each other and moved their lips. I watched them. There was no noise. I tried to imagine what words could be passing between them, but when I did so my mind filled the holes in their mouths with incongruous passages, phrases such as “After all, we did try to inform him” and “You know, we’ll take it all away”, or shorter phrases, two-word snatches such as “skip-wave” and “plucking poppies”. I believe that sometimes, when a scene from a television or film drama is being shot in an exterior location, the contingent sound is such that, although the actors speak their lines, the quality of these when replayed is insufficient to be broadcast, and they are obliged to repeat the same lines in the studio, behind a window, into microphones as they watch themselves on a screen outside the isolation room, aiming to synchronize their words with the original lip movements. I am uncertain of the value of these observations, or indeed whether anyone at all will read or file them – yet I feel that I should continue making them until instructed otherwise.

Former Colleague Robinek conversed with Subject and Associates for some time. At one point in their conversation, Subject appeared to become agitated, even enraged. He stepped back from Former Colleague Robinek and waved his arms at him. He turned his back on him and on Associates Koulin and Milachkov, the latter of whom followed tentatively behind him. He turned round again and pointed his finger at Former Colleague Robinek, moving this digit forwards and backwards several times. Former Colleague
Robinek gesticulated back. After some time Subject appeared to become calmer, approached Former Colleague Robinek again and continued to converse with him. He turned to Associate Koulin, spoke to him also, and pointed in the direction of Libeňský Island, whereupon Associate Koulin walked off towards the island. Subject opened the door of his Mercedes and pulled out a dossier from which he then removed an envelope and handed this to Former Colleague Robinek. Former Colleague Robinek placed the envelope in his jacket pocket, shook Subject’s hand again, then once more shook Associate Milachkov’s hand as well; then he left, ascending to the higher street level by the steps closer to the metro station, and therefore not passing by me for a second time.

Some time after Former Colleague Robinek’s departure, Associate Koulin returned from Libeňský Island carrying a spade. He stopped in front of Subject and showed him the spade. Spades are for digging holes, and mouths are holes. Ears too, with inner and outer compounds. Why do I write this? Subject opened the boot of his car, and Associate Koulin placed the spade inside this, whereupon Subject closed the door again. Then Subject and Associates Koulin and Milachkov entered the vehicle and drove it away silently. I watched them. Fighting my excessive lethargy, I moved towards the stone steps, for what purpose I can’t say. There was a parapet; I leant on it and looked down. To the west of the car market, just beside the river, there was an old shipyard. In one corner there was a huge, long, hollow building whose triangular roof made it look like a Viking assembly hall. Metal stair cases zigzagged up towards the roof beams, joining walkways from which sliding boxes hung. Below these a network of scaffolding curved concavely outwards on both sides to form a cradle for the carcass of a giant metal ship. The ship was being dismantled. Parts of it had been laid out on the ground beside the building;
old cranes mounted on caterpillar belts were carrying more parts to join them. The parts were being sorted into groups. In one area hundreds of metal girders rested side by side, like dead soldiers lined up for a body count after a battle. In another pairs of U-shaped hollow tubes were curled around each other, all facing the same way, like lovers lying in bed, one holding the other as they fall asleep. In a smaller area pulleys had been grouped by size: the smallest were stacked up on shelves at whose feet metal cables slumped. There was blue machinery and green machinery, conveyor belts, wheels, metal wires and hooks and springs: all disconnected, taken to pieces.

I was here. I am still here now. They are taking everything apart. A fat man in red overalls is slowly moving round a yard carrying boxes of cogs towards a wooden hut in whose small windows dirty white lace curtains are hanging. His hair is grey. Cigarette smoke is curling up from beneath his fingers, forming a grey, wispy column in the sunlight. He looks up at me where I lean against the parapet, pauses, I don’t know for how long, then lumbers on into the hut and closes the door behind him. There is no noise; the transmission field is well and truly gone. I can hardly move: the act of writing itself half-exhausts me. Inside the Viking hall the sliding boxes seem to move, but so slowly that the movement is imperceptible. There are rails, straight ones, warped and twisted ones. Some have markings on the side. If only I could …

* * * * *

Han’s studio is way out west – right next to the Rietveld, Sasha’s art school. It’s on a street called Windtunnelkade: look out for the space station, Han said, rather obliquely. Nick’s riding out there on a bike he bought from some guy on a bridge on Oudezijds Achterburgwal. These junkies hang around there with their stolen bikes; you go up furtively and
buy one – and in a month’s time, two on average if you buy a U-lock which will cost you twice what you paid for the bike (the bike’s the price of the next hit, no more, no less), another junky, or perhaps the same one, will steal it again. There used to be these “white bikes” in the Sixties: they were white and had no locks and anyone could take one any time they saw one, ride it to wherever they were going and then leave it for a new person to ride off; but these all ended up painted other colours and with locks on, being sold five times a year on the bridge by the Oudezidsachterburgwaal.

It’s taken three quarters of an hour from Nieuwmarkt: the longest bike ride Nick’s done so far in this city. This is ring-road territory, all car showrooms and petrol stations and stilted overpasses. Get to Anthony Fokkerweg and you’re there, Sasha told him.

“Fokker? Like the …”

“Yes, Fokker, who has make those aeroplanes for Nazis. Dutch hero.”

Nick’s on Anthony Fokkerweg now; he’s already passed the Rietveld, but there’s no sign of Windtunnelkade. He’s stopped in front of a 1950s building made of concrete bricks and panels fronted with those white ceramic tiles you get in swimming pools. Through the glass door he can see a lobby in which a uniform is wallowing behind a desk; he’ll go in and ask. No need to lock the bike up here: he’ll lean it on the steps. In solid, big blue letters on the wall above the entrance are the words:
Nationaal Lucht- en Ruimtevaart Laboratorium
.
Vaart
is voyage, like
Fahrt
in German;
Lucht
must be air, like
Luft
, and
Ruimte
,
Ruimte
 … The metal door handle is cast into a logo which depicts, around the letters NLR, a circle whose bottom turns into an aeroplane and from the top of which a rocket shoots off into space. Of course: space travel.
Ruimte
, space, like
Raum
,
Raumfahrt
. It’s the National Laboratory of Air and Space Travel: that’s what Han meant by “space station” …

The lobby’s tall; it has walkways round the top that lead off into hangar-like halls with factory piping hanging from the ceiling and those black-and-yellow radiation warning signs you get in James Bond movies dotted round the walls. Men in overalls are walking about carrying lathes. Their overalls are worn and oily, not Teflony and shiny like you’d think space-centre clothes would be. Nick wonders what they use the lathes for: to twist and hammer rocket parts together? Do they stick cameras to their outsides using Heidi’s father’s glue? Since when has Holland had a space programme, in any case? This place looks more like some old tool factory, but there’s the plane and rocket logo again on the jacket of the uniform Nick’s walking up to …

The man tells him to go left and left and left again. The first left takes him from Anthony Fokkerweg to Fokkerstraat, the next onto Luchtvaartstraat. Then there’s a Propellenstraat, which he turns down, but then doubles back out of because it should be Windtunnelkade but isn’t: the man must have forgotten this one.
Propellen
: this really is aviation city. Did Kiefer’s aeroplane have propellers? Nick can’t remember. Just past Propellenstraat there’s a dance school: he can see an old lady leading three rows of dancers through a set of movements, men and women dressed in shorts and leotards and leg warmers just like the kids from
Fame
, all moving in sync in front of a giant mirror. They’re stepping very slowly forwards across the floor, hoisting their feet right up, pointing the toes out and then guiding them back down as their hands reach out and pull the air back as though it were a liquid denser than water. Their right shoulders dip and they slowly spin round, then start the sequence again. They look like astronauts space-walking – with the mirror, six rows of astronauts and two elderly mission commanders approaching one another with great trepidation, advancing from both sides towards the black hole of the mirror’s surface, the flatness into which, eventually, they’ll all be swallowed
up and disappear. There’s a sign above the window that says
Christine Chattel Dance Studio
. Is the woman in front of the class Christine Chattel? Maybe Christine Chattel’s long gone, part of the same age as Anthony Fokker and aeroplanes that had propellers and big blue solid lettering on buildings. Past the school, finally, is Windtunnelkade. It’s on a canal: facing some dilapidated moored boats is a row of one-storey workshops.

Han’s is number 6. The windows are blacked out by cardboard, round the edges of which red light seeps. Bumpings and murmurings are coming from inside, sounds of things being carried and set down – plus this kind of whining, a repetitive electrical noise like windscreen wipers make. Nick raps on the door and a boy of maybe eighteen answers. He says something in Dutch. Nick tells him, in English:

“I have a meeting here with Han.”

“He’s in the back room.” That rising intonation again. Nick steps in off the street. It’s a long rectangular space cluttered with tins of ink and stacks of paper and thin metallic plates. On the walls, wooden shelves covered in bottles of white spirit, jars of emulsion, battered tubes that ooze some kind of resin. There are photos scattered all across the floor and pegged up to dry above a sink from beside which a red bulb is effusing all this crimson light which coats the whole room. In the middle of the floor is the room’s centrepiece: a huge printing press. It’s this that’s making the electric whining noise, pulling at large sheets of white paper which are stacked up on a tray at one end, swallowing them, then squeezing them out onto a kind of footrest at the far end, face down. There are three or four more boys in this room, all about the same age as the one who opened the door to Nick; they move around carrying filters, guillotines and light boxes, or handing more stacks of white paper forwards to another boy who’s squatting down beside the printing press, reloading it. At the far end of the room’s a door. Nick walks through it into a smaller office.