Men in Space (4 page)

18 [eighteen] minutes after activating the transmitter from the listening post in my vehicle, I heard Subject enter the room in which it had been placed. He offered
slivovice
to an Associate whose identity I could not ascertain. Associate accepted. I could distinguish the sound of a cork being slipped from a bottle and 2 [two] glasses being poured, then a clink as the glasses came into contact with one another. Subject opined that Czech liquor tastes like toilet water; Associate concurred. Subject informed Associate that supplies of Rakia
would be delivered to them later that night, alongside supplies of Stolichnaya vodka, pronouncing “Stolichnaya” in a tone of voice that called into question the product’s authenticity and provenance. Associate bemoaned the unavailability of sour-milk yoghurt in Prague’s retail outlets; Subject claimed it was not possible to export this product, since it invariably goes off when it leaves Bulgarian soil. Associate argued that there was no reason it should do so; Subject insisted that his assertion was true nonetheless, citing in its defence a newspaper article he had read about an attempt to reproduce this very type of yoghurt in a laboratory in America, an attempt which, he informed Associate, had proved unsuccessful, to the bewilderment of the scientists involved.

The conversation continued in this vein for 41 [forty-one] minutes, during which time repeated popping, pouring and clinking sounds indicated to me that more
slivovice
was consumed. Topics discussed included the breakdown and distribution, by nationality, of street prostitutes in Prague One; the possibility of Skoda being taken over by a Western automobile manufacturer in the near future; the changes in car licence plates to be expected after the splitting up of Czechoslovakia next month; the large number of Yugoslavians who have sought refuge in Prague following the outbreak of war in their country; the maximum height, in storeys, from which one could reasonably expect to survive a fall; and other subjects I was not able to follow due to deficiencies in my Bulgarian – although the whole dialogue was, needless to say, recorded and has been submitted to the relevant bodies for further scrutiny.

Eventually their deliberations were interrupted by a buzzing which I took to be that of Subject’s doorbell. Subject greeted this sound with approval. He instructed Associate to help him unload a car; they left the room, and no further audio surveillance was possible that night. Despite Associate’s scepticism, it seems to me that Subject’s claim
about the yoghurt is credible. The earth’s conductivity and electromagnetic field vary substantially from one place to another, as every radio operator knows. I left my listening post soon after 2 [two] a.m. and, returning to CCP Headquarters …

* * * * *

Nicholas Boardaman is dreaming of ships. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them are in transit: old ones, iron and wood, moving and at the same time packed together so tightly that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the next begins. Decks form a jumble of walkways you could scramble and zigzag over endlessly; gaffs and mizzen booms point in all directions; masts jostle and list; bowsprits trespass across alien foredecks; main booms parry yards so multiple and various they don’t even have names, at least not names he knows. The rigging, a cacophony of intersecting lines, buzzes and hums, a switchboard. Perched in a crow’s nest made of some transparent material that curves round his head, Nick looks down on the scene as though watching a performance – some tragedy, or farce, whose outcome he already knows – play itself out.
We’ve been here
, he thinks:
we’ve seen all of this before …

A man is shuffling and tapping his way across one of the decks below him, preparing to speak: an old man, looking up at him. His mouth moves and important words come out, but these don’t reach Nick’s eyrie. Struggling to catch them, he pushes and twists his way free of the nest and plunges down onto the deck of what turns out to be a luxury cruise liner. Think
Love Boat
,
Monkey Business
. Chandeliers hover over marble staircases; shuffleboard courts are marked out on deck; liveried waiters glide by balancing trays of cocktails over their shoulders; sequins pop from ladies’ ball gowns and roll across polished floorboards, making a raspy sound.

Nick finds himself in a tuxedo, playing cards against a suave middle-aged man named Zachary. The stakes have risen dangerously high, and gone far beyond mere money: as other players fold, Nick finds himself betting head to head with this Zachary, wagering
all his fluid
against the other’s hand – every last drop in his body, or perhaps even the world. What’s worse, Zachary is cheating: holding Nick’s eyes with his own, his fingers deftly slip from his white glove a card whose surface Nick can’t quite discern. There’s some kind of figure on it, dots around him, then instructions … Nick can’t quite make it all out – but he knows, and so does everyone around him, that this is the trump card: Zachary’s won. Nick jumps up to complain, but Zachary edges back the lapel of his smoking jacket to reveal a pistol nestling by his armpit, trumping Nick again. As waiters whisk the cards away, Zachary, smirking, siphons Nick’s fluid from him, storing it in a lower-deck swimming pool to which only he and those like him have access.

The ship’s approaching land now. Speakers strung to its masts pronounce the words the old man spoke a few moments ago:
I gape in sympathy towards Eramia
. They blare the line out repeatedly, but it’s different each time:
Agape in symphony towards Erania
 … As the ship slows down, its great engines send shudders up from far below the Plimsoll line. Chandeliers, floors, staircases vibrate. Railings lose their solidity and flutter like the wings of dragonflies or humming birds. The surfaces of cocktails become choppy. Behind the ring of elegant people who have gathered round the card table, a trapped albatross is floundering …

It’s the rattling that wakes him. It’s worked its way up from the tram tracks in the street five floors below, wormed its way through bricks and girders, through the mattress’s cheap styrofoam, the feathers of the pillow wedged beneath his head and of the duvet wrapped around him, made his own flesh rattle. He opens his eyes and sees dried-out paintbrushes
shaking against the sides of jars on shelves, a spoon’s handle drilling round the rim of a coffee cup sitting on the floor. The rattling lasts for five, six seconds and then dies away.

Nick rolls onto his back and looks up. There are other feathers too: above the grid of black wires that criss-cross the smog-stained skylight, pigeons are strutting and cooing. Dirty. One of them is sliding on its claws against the glass’s incline as it tries to gain a foothold. Nick’s mind replays a cartoon in which a hunter (or was it a bear?) races up a mountain slope in pursuit of a wily, agile fox without realizing that his steps are only keeping him stationary as his feet slip off the thick-packed snow; eventually the hunter/bear looks down, stops running and turns towards the camera, casting a pathetic glance before he plummets backwards,
pzanggg!
, into a valley with no bottom. The cartoon gives way to images of Michael Jackson moonwalking in ‘Billie Jean’, then unfit joggers waddling along rubber treadmills, then Nick’s sister’s hamster frantically spinning his wheel, feet grabbing and releasing rung after rung, nose perpetually sniffing ten o’clock – then, finally, the big wheel here in Prague.

The wheel’s in Holešovice, in the National Exhibition Park, behind the AVU buildings.
Akademie Výtvarných Umění
: Academy of Fine Art. Nick feels an anxious wave surge through his chest up to his dull, hung-over head: what’s the time? They might be there already, waiting for him. He gets up, stumbles to the toilet, pisses. In the main room the phone rings. It’s probably them. To the rush and plash of yellow liquid plunging into brine he pictures all the students in the studio, impatient, angry, Kolář flipping through his notebook to find someone to replace him, Dana stabbing her chunky fingers into the dialling disc holes of the payphone in the lobby, waiting for him to pick up so that she can shout at him. Perhaps he should just let it ring: they’ll think he’s on his way. He has to pass the phone to get back to his room. He’ll just skirt by it, throw some clothes on …

He picks it up. It’s too hard not to: could be Heidi, asking where Jean-Luc’s party is tonight, or leopard-skin-wearing Angelika, from whom he’s been getting certain signals ever since he helped her get a job – or, thinking along the same lines, that Hungarian girl into whose hand he pressed his number two nights ago in Futurum … Cradling the receiver on his neck, he tells the mouthpiece:

“Nicholas Boardaman.”

“Hello?”

“Hello, yes?”

“Do you hear me OK?” The caller’s male, and speaks in English with an accent that’s foreign but not Czech.

“I can hear you, yes.”

“Is it possible to speak with Ivan Maňásek?”

Ivan Patrik Maňásek, an artist, lives here: the principal, and only other, tenant. It was he who, after they met at some opening at which Nick talked about being evicted, proposed that Nick, in exchange for a monthly rent of roughly the price of a pack of cigarettes in London, move into the spare room of his atelier – or, as Ivan and his constant stream of visitors call it, The Spaceship:
Kosmická Lod’
. Nick last saw Ivan last night, in a club called Újezd. He’s probably still sleeping. Nick tells the caller.

“I’ll see if he’s here.” He sets down the receiver and goes to look in Ivan’s room. Negative: the bed is empty, its duvet slipped right off onto the floor. As Nick moves back through the main room towards the phone, another tram passes in the street five floors below, sending tremors through the floor, furniture and walls, shaking the metal bars that run beneath the skylight and a wooden angel who hangs from the bars by the stump of her left arm. Nick flinches. If she falls it’ll be onto him. Imagine a freak accident like that concluding your entry in the directory of human lives:
Crushed by an angel …

“Hello?” Nick says, picking the receiver up again.

“Yes, hello? That is Ivan Maňásek?”

“No, it’s me again. I’m afraid Ivan’s not here right now. Maybe in two or three hours …”

“Here is Joost van Straten. Of the Stedelijk Bureau in Amsterdam.”

Amsterdam. Just before leaving London for Prague last summer, Nick was interviewed in a swish office just off Tottenham Court Road by a woman called Julia Emerson, editor of the Amsterdam-based journal
Art in Europe
. It was for a staffer job. Fresh out of college, Nick fidgeted and talked non-stop, name-checking furiously: Beuys, Basquiat, Koons, Twombly, Nitsch … Julia Emerson smiled wryly, made the odd note, then told him she’d be in touch towards the end of the year. That’s now. Nick really wants the job. There’d be administrative work – but he’d get to review shows too, see his name in print with (who knows?) maybe even a photograph of him, smiling or studious or … This Joost van Straten’s calling from here in Prague, and is saying that he’s supposed to meet Ivan later today to talk about an exhibition, but they haven’t fixed a time or place. Nick asks him:

“Do you know what time it is now?”

“It’s too early?” Joost van Straten sounds worried.

“Sorry?”

“Do I call too early?”

“No! No, not at all. It’s just that I don’t have a watch.”

“So I understand. It’s quarter-past nine. Nine fifteen.”

That’s fine: quarter-past nine is fine. They won’t even be there yet. Or they’ll just be trickling in: Jirka and Karolina first, always those two. Joost van Straten asks:

“Will you see him?”

“See him? No, I’ve got to go out.” He’ll stop at Anděl, have a
věneček
.

“Can you write for him a message?”

There’s no pen on the coffee table – just some of Ivan’s porno magazines. The floor beneath’s a sea of paint-stained
clothes and oil rags that swirl around an archipelago of chair legs and free-standing shelves. The remains of a half-eaten potato salad cling to a plate; children’s toys spill from a capsized freight carton. Two of these, the engine carriage of a train and a rifle-bearing soldier with a hammer-and-sickle emblem on his plastic cap, have found their way onto a canvas hanging on the wall. So has some of the potato salad – plus a silk tie, a used condom and a photograph, an old one showing a family picnicking beside a lake. Below the canvas, a work table with a pen on it: a biro, lying in a pool of black paint. He can’t reach it from here, has to set the phone down again …

“Just a second.” The paint’s still wet; it gets on his fingers. “OK …”

“Are you Czech or English?”

“English. Czech too. My grandfather’s Czech.” Was. His mother’s father: died two months ago now – not quite two. Nick flew back for the funeral: a cemetery off some motorway near Leicester. Holding the biro, he remembers sunlight wedging crisp across the chapel, sees his mother read
There’s nothing like the sun as the year dies
beside a wreath from the Royal Air Force Foreign Pilots’ Association … Then the scene fades and he’s telling Joost van Straten: “I can write your message now.”

“You are ready?”

“Yes.”

“So. I’ll be at the Gallery MXM. It’s in the park behind Karlův Most, Charles Bridge …”

“Kampa Park. Yes, I know it. Ivan knows it too.”

“I’ll be there all day today. Until five.”

“How do you …”

“Joost: J-o-o-s-t. Van Straten: S-t-r-a-t-e-n.” Nick’s ripped a page out of one of the magazines and is writing the note on it. That way Ivan’s bound to see it.
MXM
: right where this girl’s bending over, on her arse …

In the street outside it’s cold and icy, grey.
Lidická
: People’s Street. On the opposite pavement people are queuing at a tram stop. On this side another queue’s formed by a tank from which two men are selling carp. Always queuing, these people. Nick walks two blocks and steps into the Anděl Automat. The smell of broth and gravy hits him as the door closes behind him. Warm, moist air intensifies the odour, giving it a pungent edge. Clinks of cutlery and dishes rise from the high metal tables, echo off the plaster walls and blend beneath the ceiling boards with the scrapes of stools being pulled back, the squeaks of shoes rubbing the worn fake marble floor. Steam hisses behind the metal counters in the kitchen area and mingles with the sound of ladles plunging into swampy cauldrons, splattering thick liquid onto porcelain. Slurps, splashes, the odd cough. It reminds Nick of the baths in Greenwich where he learnt to swim: that mixture of closeness and distance; sounds of strangers echoing and dying across a cherubless, unfrescoed dome; and then the brothy smell of oxtail trickling from the drinks machine afterwards. His mother would have soup and he and his brother and sister would have Chopsticks, with their infinite regress packets, a boy playing a piano while holding a packet of Chopsticks on which a boy was playing a piano while …