Tom Mccarthy: Men in Space

“You’ve practised that.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Thanks.”

Outside, the sun’s breaking through the thick December cloud that was covering the whole city as Anton made his way to the Kavárna. Roofs — red-, gold- and brown-tiled — are still icy. Anton crosses the tram tracks at the edge of Malostranská Náměstí and walks down Mostecká, past bureaux de change and shops selling Bohemian crystal. He lets his shoe-soles scrape the pavement’s alternating black and white cobbles. It’s a habit he has. Helena complains that it wears his shoes out, but he likes the noise, the sand and tap. His rhythm is broken when he passes beneath the portal onto Karlův Most: there are too many people on the bridge. It’s the usual crowd: journeyman artists hawking sketches of the Staré Město skyline, or drawing people perched on stools in front of them. Portréty, Karikatury . Solitary violinists playing Mozart, red fingers poking through the ends of cutoff gloves, frosted breath drifting off the strings. Quartets of musicians playing more Mozart. Minstrels dressed in pseudo-eighteenth-century frills and stockings singing Mozart arias a cappella. Always fucking Mozart. There’s a quick-change artist doing the three-cups-one-ball trick, a troupe of red-nosed Slovakians in national costume twanging thick pieces of string attached to rough-cut wooden blocks. There are organ grinders; dreadlocked jugglers; hair-wrappers, cross-legged on woven mats; masseurs; tarot readers; puppeteers; men with parrots and boa constrictors; women selling tacky jewellery. And tourists, endless tourists, wearing brightly coloured scarves and jackets, oozing and coagulating around maps and cameras like some dense, radioactive mass, a fluorescent toxic spill; coagulating around Anton too, hemming him in …

The bridge ends, releasing him onto the tramlines on Křižovnická. Through the thinning red and yellow coats he can see Zhelyazkov and Spasiev behind their stalls on Karlova. Zhelyazkov’s wearing a combat jacket and a Sparta scarf. Bottles of lemonade are piled up in pyramids on the stall: Anton’s lemonade. Right next to Zhelyazkov, Spasiev’s togged up in a thick fur coat. He’s got his bulkiest Soviet army hat on, ear-flaps down. In front of him sit rows of other Soviet army hats: infantry, light cavalry, armoured division, sappers. Bulk-made in Turkey. Anton’s seen a whole consignment of them in Ilievski’s garage once, Janachkov grumbling as he scuffed them with sandpaper, one by one.

“Comrade pilot,” Spasiev shouts, pulling an airman’s cap down over Anton’s head, “fly us somewhere warm!”

“Have you heard the joke about the Russian pilot and the English pilot who both crashed on the same desert island?” Anton asks him.

“Go on.”

“The English one is looking through a telescope and he sees a St Bernard dog — one of those giant dogs with tiny barrels of rum tied to their necks — swimming towards the island. So the English pilot says: ‘Hey, look! It’s man’s best friend!’ And the Russian pilot grabs the telescope and looks through it and says: ‘Yeah, and there’s a dog with it!’ ”

There’s a pause, then both men bend over in laughter. They stay crumpled for a while, then look up at each other and immediately crumple again, the laughter growing louder, shoulders and backs shaking as they cough and sob over the joke. Spasiev’s banging on the table. Zhelyazkov’s leaning forwards on his stall’s canopy. Eventually he straightens up, pulls a hip flask from his combat’s pocket and holds it out to Anton.

“Man’s best friend!”

“Exactly. Oh, right. No thanks.”

“Lemonade?”

“Thanks, no.”

Zhelyazkov pulls a wad of cash out of another pocket and slaps it against Anton’s chest. Spasiev opens up a metal box and does the same. Anton counts both wads, then slips them into his dossier.

“Here, I’ve got another one. This American delegation goes to Moscow to visit a factory. So the Party tell the factory chief that American delegations are always asking about anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, so to make sure he shows them some happy Jewish workers. The chief says: ‘But there aren’t any Jewish workers here, because you made me fire them all last year.’ So they say: ‘OK then, choose a worker and we’ll give him Jewish papers and we’ll call him Comrade Rubenstein, and when the Americans come he’ll show them his papers to prove he’s Jewish and he’ll tell them that he’s treated just as well as everyone else.’ So the chief goes off and picks out Comrade, I don’t know, say Comrade Tabalov, and gives him the Jewish papers and tells him to answer to the name of Rubenstein and so on. So the American delegation comes and sure enough they ask the question about anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, and the chief says: ‘Gentlemen, there is no anti-Semitism here. Our own Jewish comrade, Comrade Rubenstein, will tell you as much. Call Comrade Rubenstein!’ They wait, and wait some more, and some more still, and after ages the assistant chief comes back and whispers in the chief’s ear: ‘Chief! Comrade Rubenstein has emigrated to Israel!’ ”

This time the laughter’s forced.

“That’s Jews for you,” says Spasiev, prefacing his observation with a click of his tongue.

There’s an awkward silence. They think he’s Jewish too. He’s not: solid Orthodox. By thirteen he was bearing cups at Sveta Sofia. Uncle Stoyann would give him rosaries and Prayer Books on his birthdays. I don’t speak English, but it doesn’t matter , Stoyann told him as he met Anton for the last time before leaving on a religious visa for Philadelphia; I’ll talk vulgate Latin with the other priests. That’s one language even you don’t speak! Each time he steps into an Orthodox church, even here in Prague, the smell of incense and the dull chanting from the seats behind the altar usher him back into his childhood and, at the same time, summon up the tall buildings, gushing steam and stilted metros of Uncle Stoyann’s new home that he hasn’t made it to, not yet …

He’ll go up to the automat at Mústek, make a pick-up from Janachkov, then hop on the yellow line. Pleasantries first. To Zhelyazkov:

“The pop not selling so well?”

“Too cold.”

“You should sell coffee. Hot wine.”

“Tell Ilievski to sort it out with Saudek.”

“Saudek?”

“Runs the next patch.” Zhelyazkov jerks his thumb towards the stall five metres away. Steam is piping out of two large samovars. A board in front reads: Káva, Čaj, Svařené Víno . “Little Bulgaria ends here. It’s Czechs from here on up to Husova. They made Ili agree we won’t sell hot stuff.”

“Well, that’s capitalism. You’ll clean up come spring. I’ve got to go.”

At the top of Karlova Anton glances into the window of the Prague House of Photography and sees a girl sitting at a desk. On a wall hook behind her hangs a leopard-skin, or possibly fake-leopard-skin, jacket. She catches his eye, smiles. Does he know her? Shy, he presses on, crosses Staroměstské Náměstí and walks up Melantrichova. The sky’s blue now, with small clouds hovering round its edges to the northwest, over Letná. Anton enters the Korunní Automat, sails past the roast-chicken counter and makes for the cake-and-coffee section. There they are, camped out around tables: money changers. Czechs and Poles, Algerians and Moroccans, Russians, Turks. Shouting figures and exchange rates to each other; laughing, arguing, jostling; shunting their clients from one table to the next; swapping cigarettes and calculators; re-exchanging money back among themselves between transactions; hop ping from one language to another, to a third, a fourth — as though words, too, had negotiable value. Anton picks out Janachkov, who’s hitting hard on two North Africans, shoving a napkin with some kind of algorithm written on it in their faces: wants them to buy zlotys. He sees Anton, breaks off his negotiations, reaches into his trouser pocket, takes out a wad of five-hundred-crown notes and hands it to him.