Tom Mccarthy - Men in Space

“Order! Order! I’ll shoot if I have to! I’ll shoot every one of you, women and children first!”

He’s whooping out those laughs, which is he stoned or what ? And this is what makes this a truly bohemian party and totally different from those frat events she used to go to back home: the band plays on , and even picks up pace and comes out of their wall-of-noise mode back into the melody. Everybody’s dancing again, apart from Barbara and Roger, who are getting ready to make like babies and head out, gathering their coats while Roger gives Mladen instructions to carry on playing the old films beneath the table. While these two make their way from the atelier, this scruffy thin guy she thinks might be Jean-Luc sways on his feet as he looks at the damage on the painting. Jaromír is kind of apologizing to him for it, but not very graciously, implying it was all Roger’s fault, which well he’s got a point, she thinks, but still … and Tyrone is swinging his black pistol round the air yee-haw ing as though it were a lasso, and her beer is finished: she goes back to the antechamber, pulls back the fridge door and finds, what’s this, an uncracked Stoli bottle in the freezer comp. Why not? …

Five, ten minutes later she’s still knocking Stoli back with Mladen. Mladen’s going on about how a nasty situation has just been defused while they watch the film pictures of this capsule floating down towards the sea. Tyrone is still yee-haw ing — but he stops as he catches sight of the image, comes over to her and Mladen and, pointing his pistol at the screen, asks them:

“Did you hear about the Soviet cosmonaut?”

“No,” she says. “Is it a joke?”

“A joke? Honey, maybe it is. Isn’t history one big motherfucker of a joke?” He says this in a camp voice, like he’s quoting something: a line from a famous film perhaps, some reference Heidi should pick up but doesn’t. She says:

“Tell it to me, then.”

Tyrone rolls his eyes heavenwards as he explains: “There’s a Soviet cosmonaut stuck up in space. Orbiting round and round.”

“Yes … and? …” she asks him.

“That’s it, Vermont Baby!” he screams. “That’s the whole thing. The poor sister can’t come down because there ain’t no Soviet Union to come back down to!”

“A refugee, then,” says Mladen.

Tyrone places the gun’s muzzle to his lips, all pensive.

“I suppose he is. Must be going insane from lack of ass!”

Heidi swigs at the Stoli while she tries to work out what these two are talking about. Nick comes over, takes a swig and wonders out aloud:

“Where’s Jaromír got to anyway?”

These turn out to be ominous words: not thirty seconds later Barbara comes back in all white and shaking, followed shortly afterwards by Roger who’s sporting a huge cut above his left eye. Go figure.

“Jesus!” Heidi says to him. “Let me look at that.”

She takes off her glasses, lays them on the table and looks at the cut. It’s deep all right: his right eyebrow has split in two, a deep pink gash with hair on either side. Mladen suggests pouring Stoli on the cut to disinfect it, which she does. Nick says he’ll go get Angelika to look at it, because she’s a medical student. Heidi casts an anxious glance towards I.M. — but he’s off in a corner deeply engrossed in some conversation with Anton, and seems oblivious to all the bloodletting that’s just gone down. Heidi knocks back another swig of Stoli and notices that the floor is kind of at an angle but the podium is at a different one and the ladder at a third which, well, whatever. Nick leads Angelika over to Roger. Angelika is stoned, and then some: her pupils have contracted down to pinpricks. She looks at Roger’s cut and kind of purrs:

“Does this hurt?”

She pulls the skin apart. Roger yelps and jerks his head away. Nick says:

“I think that means it does,” and Roger says:

“He came up from behind. We were kissing in the doorway, sitting down. I think he used his foot,” but very matter-of-fact, not angry or resentful — and in fact Heidi reckons he’s enjoying all the attention, besides which, well, he got the girl and gets to play the hero … One of the Cal stoners has followed Angelika through; Angelika turns to him and says:

“Hey, Jimmy! Look at this!”

She pulls the skin apart again, and Jimmy goes:

“Wow! Pussy!”

Roger yelps again, and Barbara, still shaking, says:

“This doesn’t help him!”

Angelika says something back to her in Czech which Heidi doesn’t understand; they launch into some heated discussion, and it seems for a moment that another fight is on the cards. But Angelika calms down, switches back to English and announces:

“This needs sewing.”

“Stitches,” Nick says.

“Right,” says Angelika. “We should go to the hospital at Karlovo Náměstí. Hey, Nick! You have to come too.”

“Oh yes?” says Nick.

“I want to show you some still lifes.”

She starts explaining what she means, but as Heidi tries to listen the whole room begins to lose its proportions: the ladder, for example, seems to proceed sideways and the pictures have moved off the bedsheet screen and this scruffy thin guy who’s maybe Jean-Luc is coming at them with a paintbrush and her glasses aren’t there on the table any more and the music’s coming out of Mladen’s mouth or maybe from this black queen’s pistol which she never found out whoops! and in fact now, yup, here it comes she’s going to pass out …

She wakes up who knows how much later, lying on a bed. There are still some people there but not so many. Nick, Angelika, Mladen, Barbara and Roger have all split, presumably to get this eyebrow stitched up. The band people are packing all their stuff away. Heidi turns over on the bed and finds maybe-Jean-Luc kneeling on the floor beside it, working on his damaged painting. He sees she’s woken up and smiles. She asks him if he understands some English and he shrugs:

“It de -pend.”

“I’ve lost my glasses,” she says.

Eyes unfocussed, maybe-Jean-Luc scrutinizes her face, dips his paintbrush in his tin and paints what she can only presume is a pair of spectacles around her eyes. Ivan Maňásek appears beside her.

“Nick asked me to take care of you,” he says. “Perhaps you’d like to accompany me in pursuit of a late meal at the Intercontinental. I seem to have been considerably fortunate in a financial way this evening.”

He’s still got the duvet wrapped around his shoulders. Heidi turns away from him and pukes.

* * * * *

“Can’t we switch a light on?” Nick says, whispering.

“No. That would show from out of the top windows there. Just wait. Your eyes will get accustomed.”

They do. After half a minute Nick can make out maybe twelve tables, plus drainage channels running along the floor past each of these, like an irrigation system cutting across fields in ancient Egypt. Plus, a row of sinks along one wall and, beside these, a set of metal trunks. Plus, of course, Angelika, very pale-skinned, beside him, slipping off her leopard-skin, or possibly fake-leopard-skin, coat.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“You don’t have to whisper. There’s a ventilation system in the hall that makes a lot of noise.”

Nick breathes out heavily, then in again — and winces.

“What’s that sharp smell?”

“It’s formaldehyde. They use it to preserve the parts.”

“And all these slabs, these tables …”

“That’s where we do the cutting.” She makes slicing motions with her hand across his chest, then down towards his stomach. Nick says:

“I think I’d faint if I had to do that.”

“Many people do this the first time. I didn’t. I loved it. My favourite part’s when you take the face off. You cut round the neck, then peel the whole skin upwards. The face comes off like a mask. Did I tell you about the Helicopter Murder?”