Tom Mccarthy: Men in Space

Nick thinks: don’t panic. Someone’s bound to look up eventually and realize what’s happened; then they’ll be up with him in less than a minute, take this rope from his hand, pull him back. He’ll just have to try to concentrate on something till they do, like when he modelled back at AVU. The wheel, right by his head. From this strange angle it seems not round but slightly elongated, like the halo in that painting which must be down in the transit van right now. The wheel could be a halo to him, or a crown, proclaiming him king of this elevated, horizontal plane that he alone is occupying. The cross around it, viewed from this close, doesn’t seem like a cross any more — more like a set of geometric exercises, like the ones Maňásek was doing when he started copying the thing. Its two intersecting lines demarcate radii and segments. Behind them, the wheel’s spokes cut the sky behind them into smaller, secondary segments. That slice of lemon. Nick looks down. The table at which Sasha and Han are sitting is on a tangent that’s set off the diameter’s plumb line by an angle of perhaps thirty degrees. It, too, seems slightly elongated. Two coffee cups, Nick’s and Sasha’s, rest on saucers. Han’s genever glass is off-centre on its coaster. There’s his own empty Spa Rood glass beside it, minuscule from here, the lemon slice too small to see but certainly still in there. To be there now, at the table, in whatever conversation those two are engrossed in: if he could reinvent the world, copy it just like Maňásek copied the saint and the mountain and the buildings and the sea, he’d make everything almost exactly the same as it is now — only he’d tweak it just minutely, imperceptibly to the big scheme of things, so that he’d be down there on earth, his feet touching cobblestones, his nose sniffing cigarette smoke and cheese and herring and hot coffee and freshly baked macaroons, not up here breathing the sad, refined air of the abandoned cosmonaut.

Screams spill into the air above the square as the boat rises to its apex and hangs there, undecided whether to fall back or to plough on through the zero. Its passengers, suspended motionless, are much closer to him than the people on the ground — but then they’re upside down, and unlikely to look his way and notice his predicament. They hang there for a few seconds, then are fed on round their wheel: no cross to hold them back. Beneath them the square’s cobbled in alternating movements, like the parquetry of floors in Prague. Men are leaning on the window sills of the old people’s home, beneath the clock’s round face. To the home’s right, beside the metro, are the two men and their little radio. To the home’s right, the Chinese supermarket, indecipherable writing strung up in banners, red and gold, above its door. Beside that, three long benches, all mosaicked, then short, mushroomy seats dotted around them. Then the Chinese fish shop. Those men in jackets are still there, parked in front of it, more of them now: a second car has turned up and four men have joined the first three. They’re pointing towards the Loosje, where Han and Sasha’s table seems now to be moving, warping …

Nick’s feeling very faint. His mouth’s parched; his whole body’s dehydrated. He can’t let himself pass out: the hook would hurtle straight up; it might even knock him over, off the edge, to crash down onto the pavement. Don’t look there, he thinks: concentrate, look up. There are the ships’ masts again, beyond Centraal Station. They’re all bundled up together, criss-crossed, matchsticks strung with thread. Tonight there will be fireworks, rockets shooting up into the sky and hanging there like stars, then flickering out. Up here, Nick feels close to the dead. Maňásek, his grandfather, Joost, Anton. Not that they keep him company — he’s alone, they all are — but he feels that he’s entered the same zone as their aloneness, their alonenesses. Why did he list Anton with the dead? He’s delirious now. Seagulls are cutting the sky up, leaving trails of light behind them, traces, like when you overexpose a photograph. Palackého Most. Maňásek’s here now, directing the seagulls, clapping, like a conductor marshalling the sections of a symphony orchestra. The old, stooped man leaves the dry-cleaner’s, looks up, then shuffles on. The Bulgarians have started moving, cutting past the benches and the dot-seats in between them, closing in on Han and Sasha. Did he think Bulgarians? A girl said it to Joost, screamed it again and again: Bulharský! The white place: Heaven , Joost said as their beers came. Got to go up somehow to get there. A helicopter will do. Or a bubble. Pulleys leave something to be desired. The men with radios are moving forwards too. The Bulgarians’ hands are reaching for their inner pockets. Gaping symphony . The boat’s going round and round, not pausing as it now flips over twice, three times, screams looping over screams still hanging there from last time round, louder and louder. Now it’s getting dark; dusk’s falling quickly, coming down in blotches. The fireworks have already started: their bangs are rising from the square, mixing with screams and the boat’s spinning or is it the wheel spinning or is it just the earth, in orbit, spinning?

* * * * *

… entirely unaware how long I’ve been here. Days, certainly. It could be weeks, or even months. The batteries on my directional microphone are dead, but this is immaterial. Nights are chill, but not particularly cold. Sometimes I make a fire from dead twigs; recently, however, flowers have begun sprouting from the bushes that surround the buffers beside which I sleep, and I’m reluctant to disturb the natural balance of their habitat. There are birds too: they open their mouths, perhaps to sing, but no sound comes from them. There’s no one left to synchronize, to dub. Between the rails, just where they end against the buffers, I have placed a mattress I encountered some time ago while investigating this remote part of the shipyard. I encountered coats, too. I sleep on this, under these. I eat dehydrated, powdered food from packets, deeming it unnecessary to add water. Not far from where I’m situated, ships are being dismantled: this much I know. They have been mounted on rollers, stripped down to their hulls. The rollers slide on rails into the water — only they don’t slide. Here, movement is extremely rare. Very occasionally, I see a man, or men, walk over and point welding torches at the hulls, with a view to stripping sheets of metal from them — or, perhaps, tracing patterns on their surface, as though the rusty metal contained diagrams and maps they were consulting. Most of the time the hulls are without visitors. Cranes stand above the dock — stiff, as though with rigor mortis. Chains hang limp from these. As far as I can see, they serve no purpose.

There is a factory beside the dock, but this is derelict. Most of its windows have been broken. Aerials, perhaps for television, sit above its roof-tiles, but I doubt that these receive and pass on messages. There is no more signal: I’m entirely unaware how long I’ve been here, but I know this much. There is no signal, and there is no noise. Wires lead from the factory towards lamp-posts from which loudspeakers dangle, broken. The wires dip as their distance from each post increases, reaching a nadir when their distance from one post is equivalent to that from the post’s neighbour, whereupon they rise, reaching a summit as they join the next post. Then they dip again. Beneath them, the rails lead away, converging. In the main part of the shipyard, behind me, the rails have been lined up — straight ones, warped and twisted ones, ones with markings on the side. Here, the rails end against the buffers where I sleep. I deemed it wise to place my mattress between these, between the rails themselves, thus ensuring that, should I roll over in my sleep, they’ll function as a barrier preventing me from falling — 2 [two] barriers, one on each side. Why do I write this? Perhaps it is no longer necessary for me to continue. I will stop soon. Several metres from me, on the open ground, a set of movable, wheel-mounted steps has been abandoned. The steps lead nowhere. If one were to ascend them, one would simply end up on the ground again.