Tom Mccarthy - Men in Space

“If I wanted to see that I could just stay at home,” he says.

“Your flat?” she asks. “What’s on TV?”

“No: Yugoslavia.”

“Oh yes. Of course. Poor you. But I have just the thing for that. Look, I took something else: a New Year’s present from the State to me.”

She slips her hand into her pocket again, slips out a bottle and holds it up for him to read.

“What’s that?” The label means nothing to him.

“Codeine. For stopping pain. It makes you … dreamy. You want some?”

He shrugs and holds his hand out. Angelika presses down on the bottle’s top, cranks the lid past the anti-child catch, screws it off. David’s ambled up to them. She peers at him.

“Who’s this?”

“David. He was at that party at Jean-Luc’s.”

Angelika puts her hand on David’s forehead, as though to feel his temperature.

“He’s so young! Does he want some as well?”

David, coy, takes a pill from the small palm she holds out to him. Angelika tssk s and places three in his hand.

“I’m a doctor! Will be soon, in any case. I know how many you should take.”

Mladen takes six. She doesn’t count hers out, just throws a whole pile back into her mouth.

“Water. To swallow …”

She ducks into the crowd and comes back with a bottle of white bubbles and an anxious-looking man in tow. She tilts her head back, swills, then passes the bottle on to Mladen. The man says something in Italian, then, tentatively, reaching out, in English:

“Not all …”

She sweeps his hand away. “You’ll get it back. And I’ll give you a kiss. Old Czech tradition at New Year, you understand?”

The bottle is passed on to David. It’s almost empty when it comes back round to the Italian.

“Is not my …”

“That kiss,” Angelika turns to him, lifting up her face, lips pouted out. “No tongue. I know what you people are like.”

By the time he’s faded back into the crowd it’s virtually midnight. People are looking at their watches or at the old clock, the hands marching across its astrolabe through borders of planetary hours, sidereal time and ecliptics. The crowd start counting seconds down, shouting the numbers out, a multilingual ground control: Osm! Sedm! Šest! Cinque! Quatre! Trois! Two! One! — and then all cheer and turn and kiss each other, circulate and kiss more people, grabbing hold of strangers amidst bang s and shrieks and cackles, bells booming deep and hollow, acrid smoke. Angelika, David and Mladen go and sit on the steps beneath Jan Hus, looking on in silence Time passes; people drift away. A middle-aged man lingers beside them, swaying as he waves a cocktail-stick-sized new Czech flag and shouts Youpee! Youpee! on and on and on, Youpee! Then he’s gone without ever really going; the Youpee s must have slowly faded out. The square is almost empty now, but they’re still on the steps watching it: the odd drunk staggerer veering left or right, a figure hugging arches as he pukes, or chorus lines of three or four or five, arms linked, singing some song that Mladen doesn’t know, whose words he doesn’t understand, taking the odd swipe with their feet at empty bottles of fake champagne or shells of burnt-out fireworks that litter the floor like the disintegrated fuselage of something that was once beautiful, fallen back to Earth after an aborted flight.

* * * * *

… until the arrival, shortly before midnight, of Associate Markov, whom I saw entering Maňásek’s building. This was the first time I had visually observed either Associate Markov or Maňásek. Associate Markov was a shortish, well-dressed man, Maňásek a taller man with sleek, meticulously groomed black hair with streaks of grey in it. He wore some kind of robe, which, when he stepped into an elongated, oval-shaped zone of light cast on the pavement by a nearby street lamp, I could see was red. He stepped into the street just briefly. With the aid of my directional microphone, I was able to hear him ask Associate Markov where his car was parked. Associate Markov answered that he’d parked it some 20 [twenty] metres from the house door of Lidická number 5 [five], the spaces nearer by being taken — not least by my own car and by those of the visual surveillance team whose presence I had discerned over the last few days but with whom I had refrained from making contact. That our positions determined the one Associate Markov would take, and hence the need for Maňásek to step out of his flat — a whole set of displacements — raises for me a question that has been in my mind for some time: is it in fact possible, truly possible, to do what we do, viz. to observe events, without influencing them? Don’t we, to some extent, shape the very situations on which we report, and in so doing help to form the guilt or innocence of our quarries? I don’t know what importance these deliberations have, but I feel for some reason that I should record them.

The 2 [two] men disappeared inside the building. Shortly afterwards, resuming surveillance via the drop transmitters, I heard them enter Maňásek’s studio. Associate Markov asked which of the 2 [two] artworks was the original and which the copy; Maňásek informed him that he had made a tiny red mark on the side of the original so that it could be identified. Associate Markov expressed admiration at the degree of likeness Maňásek had achieved in his reproduction. Maňásek asked him whether he would be transporting the 2 [two] artworks far; Associate Markov answered that he was taking them to his apartment in Vinohrady; Maňásek told him he would lightly wrap both paintings to protect them.

Further conversation followed, but its content was obscured by crackling which I took to be the rustle of the paper with which Maňásek was covering the artworks, but which could equally have come from another source. The quality of audio I was receiving from the flat had been deteriorating for some time: radio and other signals had started breaking in more frequently, and this, coupled with the ever-increasing volume of the ringing in my ears, was putting a great strain on the operation. When Associate Markov re-emerged from the house door of Lidická number 5 [five], he carried the wrapped-up paintings to his car and drove away. The visual-surveillance team’s car pulled out shortly after him, and followed. I, for my part, radioed my own team stationed outside Associate Markov’s apartment, but was unable to establish contact with them. I then attempted to make radio contact with Headquarters, but with no more success. Reasoning that demand on the airwaves was probably high due to it being New Year’s Eve, I decided to make my own way to Associate Markov’s, switched off the holding signal on the drop transmitters in Maňásek’s studio and drove off — a course of action that I now regret. Had I remained, I might have been able to shed light on the dark events that were to transpire at that location later that night.

On arriving outside Associate Markov’s building at Korunní 75 [seventy-five], I attempted once more to make radio contact with my team, but had no more success this time than I had before. I then tried to pick up the signal of the listening device placed in Associate Markov’s apartment, but, being unaware of the frequency on which it was transmitting, was unable to do so. Knowing that my team was nearby, I started walking up and down Korunní and its surrounding streets peering into cars in an attempt to find them, but, again, was unsuccessful. Neither could I locate the vehicle from which the visual surveillance team was operating. The only course of action open to me was to contact Headquarters by telephone, and I set about finding a working phone box. This took some time: the first one I came across had been irreparably vandalized; the second connected me in such a way that, while I could just about hear them speaking to me, the desk could not hear me speaking to them; the third had been entirely decked in shaving foam. Even when I did manage to get through, the damage to my hearing was such that I was still unable to make out what Lieutenant Forman was saying to me, and had to ask him to repeat it several times. I eventually understood that he was telling me to go home and rest for a few hours and, accordingly, returned to my car and drove down towards Prague One.