Tom Mccarthy - Men in Space

“Yeah, it’s a new country now. How was New Year in London?”

“It was strange this time, with Dad gone. Oh! Somebody phoned from Amsterdam for you.”

“Was it Julia Emerson?”

“Emerson, yes, like Ralph Waldo. She wants you to start at European Art in February. She left a number here.”

“ Art in Europe . When did she call?”

“Two days ago. I’ve been trying to call you, but the number didn’t work. I got a prerecorded operator saying something in Czech.”

He’s been getting this, too, each time he tries to call Ivan: that infuriating na-na-NAH routine, three rising pips, then some nasal slapper telling him that the number he’s dialled isn’t in service. Nick asks his mother:

“Did she leave Art in Europe ’s number?”

“Yes. I’ll give it to you. Hang on.”

“Oh! I haven’t got a pen. I’ll … hello?”

“Yes, I’m back. The number’s …”

“I don’t have a pen. I’ll have to memorize the number and then hang up and ring her straight away.”

She reads him the number. He repeats it to her twice, then quickly says goodbye and, severing the connection, dials it. A well-to-do English girl’s voice answers:

“Hello, Art in Europe ?”

“Hello, could I speak to Julia Emerson?”

“She’s not here right now. Can I take a message?”

“This is Nicholas Boardaman. She phoned me in London. Only I’m in Prague.”

“Oh yes, I know who you are. You can call her at home.”

He goes through the same routine with her as he did with his mother. She laughs as he explains to her why he has to hang up. He pictures her as young, pretty and smart. Home Counties, West London at a pinch. Always has a pen on her, a Filofax … One of the South Americans is tapping on the window, holding up a watchless wrist. Nick holds his index finger up: one minute . Julia Emerson turns out not to be at home. Nick leaves Maňásek’s number on her answering machine, then remembers it’s not working and changes his message halfway through, telling her he’ll phone her later today — before remembering that he hasn’t written her number down. The South American is tapping again. Nick hangs up and leaves the cabin.

Art in Europe . That means he’ll be leaving Prague. Karolina, Ivan, cold mornings naked up at AVU all seem to telescope away from him. It’s a vertiginous feeling. He’ll have to get over to Amsterdam, sort out a place to live. Mladen mentioned a friend of his who lives there. Maybe Julia Emerson will help him. But it doesn’t matter: getting the job’s the main thing. I’m an art critic. Yeah, I write for Art in Europe . Yeah, that’s right … Bars stretched along canals unfold in his imagination; he populates them with Dutch girls who are impressed by him. As he leaves the cabin he lets out a loud whoop. The people still queuing turn to look at him, then look away again.

* * * * *

… that the equipment had been changed. The change had been implemented in the period between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, as foreseen. I had, of course, been made aware of this, but it had slipped my mind during the days I spent in their entirety outside Ivan Maňásek’s apartment. It was only when I entered Headquarters after resting for several hours that I became aware of it again. I was making my way to the equipment store to be issued with my new radio when I bumped into my colleague Robinek, who, looking at my directional microphone, addressed a question to me. Sleep had done little to improve my ears’ condition, and I had to ask him to repeat his question several times. Eventually I understood him to be asking whether I was returning from the Korunní swoop. Completely unaware that such an event had been planned, let alone that it was occurring at this very moment, I ran from the building. My car was still where I had left it the previous night, some distance from Headquarters; not wanting to waste time by going through the process of requisitioning another one, I hailed a taxi and made straight for Korunní.

On my arrival there, I found the area around the entrance to Associate Markov’s building cordoned off. From my taxi’s window I could see Associate Markov, a man whom I recognized from photographs as Subject himself and a woman unknown to me being led handcuffed from the building by uniformed officers. Behind them, 2 [two] officers in plain clothes were carrying what I assume were the 2 [two] paintings I’d observed being transported from Maňásek’s the previous night. The paintings had been removed from their paper wrapping and re-covered in bubbled plastic. The whole operation was being directed by Lieutenant Forman, whom I could see positioned some metres from the building’s door. Around him were my colleagues Rosický and Novotný, and sundry members of the visual surveillance team I’d seen outside Maňásek’s throughout the previous week.

Naturally wishing to announce my presence to the Lieutenant, I instructed the taxi driver to proceed through the police cordon towards the front door of Korunní 75 [seventy-five]. Unfortunately, the officers manning this cordon were unknown to me; moreover, when I reached into my pocket for my police badge, I realized that I had left it in my car the previous night. An officer leant into the car to instruct us to turn around; I tried to explain who I was, but he cut me off, saying something which the ringing in my ears prevented me from hearing. Beyond him, I could see that all the people directly involved in the swoop — Lieutenant Forman, Rosický, Novotný and their teams — who were all those to whom I was known, were now departing, leaving me with no means of verifying the claims I was trying to express, viz. that I was a policeman detailed to this very case. I stepped out of the taxi and started walking in the direction of the cars into which they were now entering. As I did so, the officer with whom I had been remonstrating, entirely without warning, struck me on the side of my head with his baton, causing me to fall down to the ground, where my head was once again struck, this time by the pavement as it hit it. As a consequence of this …

* * * * *

c/o Martin Blažek etc

4th January 1993

My dear Han ,

A dreadful thing has happened: Ivan Maňásek is dead. He fell from the windows of his atelier on New Year’s Eve and landed in the street below. He lives — lived — right on the top floor of his building: the fifth, maybe the sixth. Impossible to survive a fall like that. It’s really horrible .

The police are taking blood samples, to see if he was drunk. I wouldn’t bet against a positive result on that count. Drugs are suspected also. Ditto. They are presuming that it was an accident, though — not suicide. The skylights were stained half black from all the pollution that Prague’s filthy air had been depositing over the years, and it seems Maňásek got the idea into his mad head to clean them some time just before midnight on the thirty-first. It is the kind of thing he’d do. I can picture him saying to himself in that archaic English: “I shall embark upon the new year with pristine skylights!” — although, obviously, he’d have said it in Czech. While we’re on the subject of language: his mother told me he’d been smartly dressed , dressed to go out. Zum Ausgehen gekleidet , she said (we talked in German): as though Death had used his fall to make a cheap pun …

His mother’s scary: a big Russian woman. I met her on the second (Happy New Year, by the way. I tried to phone you on the very stroke of midnight — where were you?), not long after I’d heard the news. I’d been at Martin’s gallery, and one of his hopeless artists mentioned it by the by when he came round, so I went straight over to Maňásek’s place. There were flowers in the street, bunches propped up against the building’s wall. His concierge was brushing the snow from the steps. It snowed quite a bit over Christmas, but hasn’t for a few days since, so the snow was packed down and dented — and I couldn’t for the life of me prevent myself from looking at the dents around the flowers and thinking, “Did he make that one? Was it there he fell?” Kind of perverse, I know …