Tom Mccarthy - Men in Space

“They found drugs, you know.”

Both men look down. Nick mumbles:

“I don’t think …”

“They made him a little crazy. Unrealistic. One of his friends thinks he was murdered. The girl who came round when you were there, when was it?”

“Me?” asks Nick, setting his fork down.

“Yes. The girl who the police took away. She probably takes drugs too. I think she loved him.”

Nick looks over at Joost, catches his eye and holds it while he tentatively says:

“I’m sorry, but I really have to go. The friend who I’m staying with is waiting for me in her flat. Gábina Wichterlova. She was one of your pupils in primary school. Maybe you remember her …”

“Klárá’s her name.”

“Sorry?”

“Eat! Eat more.”

“It’s just that I don’t have keys, and …” He can feel them in his trouser pocket, pressing into his skin above where the dog’s claws pressed: one small Yale and one chunky security key, digging at him in reproach. Joost’s rising from the table.

“I must leave also. The stew really was delicious. If I could …”

“You didn’t eat it all!”

“We’ll carry the things down and I’ll go hail a taxi in the square,” Nick says, heading for the washing room.

When he comes back with his trunk, Mrs Maňásková’s tipped the contents of the frying pan into a casserole dish and swaddled the dish in a drying-up towel. Despite all her confusion, she’s sly: she knows that one of them will have to bring it back. She balances it on top of Nick’s trunk as they shuffle out of the door, an apron string tied to the backs of children that aren’t hers.

* * * * *

… an acute sense of being cut off. On my return to Headquarters after being discharged from hospital, it took me several hours to find someone willing to talk to me about the current state of the case and what my future role in it might be. Even when people did grant me interviews — people with whom I was not familiar, or at least with whom I was not aware of being familiar — my overall state of confusion was such that I was unable to piece together the scraps of information that they offered me. Why had Subject and Associate Markov been released? Where was the painting? As it was made clear to me that my presence was not required at Headquarters, I left and wandered, in a kind of daze, back to Korunní, where I had last had contact with events. I waited there, I do not know for how long, observing the front door of number 75 [seventy-five]. When Associate Markov eventually emerged from this and headed for the metro at Jiřího z Poděbrad, I followed him.

He rode the A line to Hradčanská, where he rose to street level by way of first the escalator then the steps. Rising some paces behind him, I experienced considerable distress due to the changes in both pressure and acoustics brought about by the ascent. My ears were assailed by sounds of banging and drilling, as though workmen were dismantling the walls of the station itself, tearing apart the very tube that led from the platform to the street. Occasionally, voices emerged from the banging and drilling, and spoke words which seemed to be those contained within the advertising posters lining the station’s walls, as though someone, or several people, were reading these out aloud. I cannot say for certain whether this was indeed happening, or whether the sounds were mutations of the residual noise I was by now experiencing constantly. One might have thought that the damage caused to my aural apparatus by extended periods of listening outside first Subject’s and then Maňásek’s apartments, compounded by the fireworks on December 31st [thirty-first] and exacerbated by the blows I received to the side of my head in Korunní on the following day, would have diminished my powers of hearing. On the contrary, they seem to have augmented them. It is as though I could hear everything , and all at once: traffic, human voices, sounds of crowds in bars and squares, in football stadiums and auditoria of concert halls, the crackle of radios and television sets. I seem to hear the noises given out by neon signs, fluorescent lights, power lines and power substations, atmospheric noise produced by lightning dis charged during thunderstorms, galactic noise caused by disturbances originating outside the ionosphere. But it’s all noise: I’ve lost the signal. All I pick up now is interference.

Associate Markov left Hradčanská Metro station. As I neared the exit doors I found that the beeping sound these emit to guide blind people towards them was administering to my body a shock of some considerable force — repeatedly, with every beep. Twice I was forced back onto the station’s inner concourse; it was only when I ascertained the beeps’ frequency and timed my exit so as to pass through the doors in the pause between 2 [two] pulses that I was able to continue. On my emerging into open air, a new sound was added to the others I was hearing: that of a loud bell. Its noise was different to the ringing I’d experienced some days ago: where that had been a background noise, this one was sharp and intrusive, like a large needle piercing my eardrum. So intense was the pain it caused that I had to lean on a bar; I remember it being red and white, with a drawn-out, rhythmic black-and-yellow rush behind it — also a funnel of wind being both sucked away from and blown in at me, as though I had been clinging to the side of some kind of cannon from which a projectile had just been fired. I was vaguely aware as I watched the projectile expelled that Associate Markov and, indeed, Subject himself, who had somehow joined him, had been expelled from the same cannon, but sideways, as though by the recoil, and were still somewhere close to me. As the projectile’s sound subsided, I caught sight of them turning the corner into Dejvická, and made to follow them, removing my directional microphone from my pocket. It seemed to me that other people I recognized, colleagues of mine, were also present, although I was unable to confirm this as they disappeared before I could identify them.

This interference business troubles me. On a professional level, I know all about it. I understand internal interference such as that created in receivers by the amplifying circuits used to boost small audio signals up to audible levels; I understand external interference such as is generated by mountains and buildings; I know how multi-path interference can be caused by reflected transmissions reaching the receiver at random-phase relationships to one another. I have even studied the correlation between degrees of sky-wave interference and the eleven-year cycles of sunspots. But these were things that happened to the equipment; now they’re happening to me. Crossing Dejvická, I found myself unable to concentrate my attention on Subject and Associate Markov: instead, it was guided, as though by an alien hand which was somehow tuning it, to first one spot then another. I was made to focus on a wooden stall behind which a large woman was selling satsumas. The satsumas were piled up high; she scooped them into bags and weighed them as she sold them. Occasionally some would fall from the pile or from her arms, displacing others so that small cascades occurred. My attention was then transferred to a smoked window from behind which a man was selling deep-fried battered cheese. I can remember nothing more about this man or his product. I then noticed a large cello that was leaning against the wall of the Sokolovna public house. The cello was uncovered and, although no one was playing it, sounds — all kinds of sounds — seemed to undulate around it. Clearly, the cello was not the origin of these sounds, yet there seemed to be a connection between them and it — indeed, between them and all the objects in my vision. The sounds undulated in dislocated waves. Objects undulated too: cheese, satsumas, cello. Unable to continue following Subject and Associate Markov, I …