Men in Space (20 page)

* * * * *

The cell has one bed and one toilet. No windows. Anton thinks it’s on the ground floor, although he couldn’t say why. Was he led up some steps? Helena and Ilievski were separated from him before they’d left Korunní. Each in their own car, he imagines, so they couldn’t talk together. Helena would have been released almost immediately, but Ilievski could be further down this corridor, in the next cell; or he could be somewhere else entirely, some other station. At one point a little earlier he heard a dog barking: could have been Rambo. Do they put dogs in cells as well? Does Rambo count, by proxy, as a criminal dog? Or do they throw him in with all their sniffers and Alsatians, in some big pen, let him fend for himself? …

Anton imagined he’d be thrown in, too, with mongrel humans: drug addicts and drunks and shoplifters and Gypsies who’d already have established a mute hierarchy among themselves, or at least carved the cell up into patches, territories; who’d look him over as he meekly edged his way between them, sizing him up, sniffing him, and know immediately that he’d never been arrested before, harass him, go through his pockets to take what the police hadn’t already relieved him of. But as it turns out, he’s alone. He should stretch out on the bed and get some sleep, but he’s much too cranked up for that; he hasn’t even sat down in the several hours he’s been here. He’s spent the whole time pacing around the cell, trying to get a sense of where things stand …

He’s been caught with a stolen work of art: that must be serious. One from another country too: must make it worse – his own country to boot, from which he’s emigrated, defected. Will they rescind his refugee status, send him back? If he pleads guilty, which of course he won’t … Where’s Michael Branka? Someone must know by now that they’ve been arrested, Janachkov or Milachkov or someone, and will have phoned up Branka. How
many
hours has he been here? He wasn’t wearing his watch when the police came; it was lying beside the bed, on that table. Will anyone have closed the flat’s door? Is the television still on, the game long since finished, cartoons or some sitcom playing, canned laughter lost on empty chairs and sofa? Will they have arrested Ivan Maňásek as well? The artwork was found on his own property: that must be serious. He’s going round in circles physically as well as mentally. It’s got so that particular objects have associated themselves with particular elements of the situation: the bedpost with Ilievski, the Formica floor with the Korunní neighbours … If he tries to break the cycle, cut across it by stepping diagonally from one point to another, he just jumps to another part of the same quandary, not out.

The door is the most frightening point. Anton skirts past it each time, and tries not to keep his back turned on it for too long. The door represents everything he’s faced with, the procedure waiting out there to descend on him. He imagines pencils being sharpened, typewriters being threaded with new ribbons, secretaries flexing fingers as they prepare to have charge sheets dictated to them, courtroom benches being dusted, prison vans having their engines serviced, tyres pumped up, oil changed. He’ll have to face it all soon, step out into it and face it. It’s like those dreams he had when he’d just been granted his refereeing licence: he’d be out there on the playing field, whistle clenched between his teeth, cards stiff in his shirt pocket and the game would be flowing all
around him – and then something weird would happen that he didn’t understand. Something to do with engineering or his family or who knows what would edge its way into the game and become part of it, an incident requiring a decision one way or another, fair or foul. He’d fumble around for his rule book and find that he’d left it in the changing room, behind the wooden slats or in the showers or … Only now, it’s not him who’s charged with the responsibility for making the process work. This is more like a bullfight: all the little men with feathery dart-like arrows and the squat, stout men on padded horses and the men with capes and then the one man with the sword, the victim’s nemesis, all working together, playing one game whose rules they know and understand, and the bull – him – playing another game, pure survival. Anton thinks this through, this whole analogy, and finds that he’s stopped circling the room: the bullfight image, strangely, terrifies him less than the dream-football one – even though he knows the bull dies and the referee doesn’t …

Motionless now, Anton tries to empty his mind completely, to start from nothing and build up. He stands on the formica floor. He is a human in a cell. The cell has one bed, one toilet, no windows. It could be any space. It could be a hospital room, a lecture hall, a street or a sky beside a mountain, like where the saint is in that picture. There’s no essential difference: you’ve got a space, and then a person in it. The rest is contingent: all the events and decisions and complications that have led to this person being here, all the reactions and solutions that might lead him out of it again. He thinks of mystic monks. They lived their whole lives in cells like this; before was a blur of childhood, out again just darkness, death. He’ll leave this cell alive, but it’s not clear how. There are those procedures that he’ll have to pass through, like that labyrinth Helena was talking about – but he should think of them as being
exchanges
. They’ll present him with questions, he’ll surrender information in return and, according to the
value of his information, progress through the labyrinth. Transfers of energy, like engineering – or like a game. He doesn’t know the rules but will intuit them.
I will intuit the rules
, he intones.
I will intuit …
But when he tries to factor the specifics back in, the whole thought-circuit overloads and he can feel his heart thump in his chest, blood racing down his arms …

Footsteps have been coming and going all the time he’s been here – but these ones right now seem meant for him, their rhythm easing off as they approach his cell; then there’s jingling, contact, a metallic yielding as the lock clicks and turns. Anton sits down on the bed and then stands up again immediately as a uniformed man steps into the cell and asks him to accompany him and his colleague who’s standing by the door. He doesn’t say where. They lead him down the corridor, then down a flight of stairs, then through another corridor into another room. This room’s different: no bed, no toilet, still no window – but there’s a desk or table in the middle. In front of the table are two chairs; behind it, one. The uniform who spoke to him before tells him to sit down on the single chair. He does so and both uniforms walk out, closing the door.

Anton sits still, alone again. He wants to get up, move around, think – but then what if they come back and find he’s disobeyed them? The footsteps he’s listening to now aren’t the two uniforms walking away; they’re two new sets, growing louder, nearer. The door opens and two other men come in. One is in his fifties, portly, with tufty grey hair retreating up his crown. Anton saw him earlier, talking into a radio in Korunní as he was bundled into the car. In one hand he holds a clipboard and a pack of Sparta; with the other he takes one of the two chairs facing Anton and pulls it away from the table towards the room’s corner before sitting down on it. He slides a metal pen out from under the clip and taps its top against the paper on his board so
that the point comes out. When he’s checked it’s working properly, he knocks a Sparta from the packet and lights it up.

The other’s in his thirties, just a year or so older than Anton. He was one of the officers who burst into the apartment when Helena opened the door. He’s thin, dark-haired: where the older man’s shirt and grey-brown pullover have customized themselves to his frame, stretched and folded till they’re part of him, an outer body, this one’s clothes seem less inhabited. The light-blue jacket hangs stiff from his shoulders down his back. The tie, too, seems stiff. It’s black, the same colour as his hair, which is abundant but straight, parted from the left at the front, stopping just short of his collar at the back. He’s carrying a cup of coffee, which he sets down on the table. He’s just about to sit down when he notices the older man is smoking.

“Oh! Should I …”

The older man shakes his head almost imperceptibly, then rises from his chair and walks out of the room. The younger one starts towards the door behind him but then catches him self and turns back. His eyes meet Anton’s for an instant and glance away again. The older one’s footsteps are coming back. The younger one places his hands on the back of the chair that’s left on his side of the table and, catching and holding Anton’s eyes now, sits down. The older man walks in with an ashtray. No nuts. In his other hand he holds some papers, which he waves forwards so they brush against the younger’s shoulder. The younger turns round and sees the papers.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. Thank you.”

He takes the papers, lays them on the table and sits down. The older man takes a step backwards and, without glancing behind him, places his hand on his chair’s back and sits down too. Like a footballer: he knows the space exactly, doesn’t need to look. He sets the ashtray on the floor beside him,
rests the clipboard on his knees, checks the pen once more, then lifts its point slightly from the paper’s surface and holds it there, poised to write. The younger, thin, dark-haired man flips through the pages in front of him, giving each a cursory glance before bringing his head up, locking Anton’s eyes again and speaking to him:

“
Dobar den
.”

He’s said it in Bulgarian. Instinctively, Anton smiles at him as he replies: “
Dobar den
.”

“Mr Markov. Anton. I understand your Czech is excellent.” There’s an indulgence in his tone that’s bordering on kindness.

“Your Bulgarian is pretty good too.”

“That’s possible, but we’ll be speaking in Czech.” The tone is slipping now, becoming more aggressive with each word, the pace of the speech quickening. “And you’ll use our language to engage with me frankly and clearly.” Anton feels a surge inside his chest. The older man makes his first note. What does the dark-haired man mean,
engage with me
? How engage? Does he mean answer questions, or …

“You’ve been found,” the dark-haired man’s coming at him again, “in possession of a stolen work of art.”

That’s not a question, but the man’s looking at him as though it had been, and is waiting for a response. Perform, then. Step into this silence and perform.
Intuit
: that was the mantra …

“I think there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. Nobody knew it was stolen. If you’re saying it’s stolen, like you’re saying now, that’s news to me.” He should have said that the other way round; he can hear his sentences denounce him even as he couples each onto the one before. The dark-haired man’s smirking. He leans his head and shoulders forwards so they’re over the table and snarls:

“I strongly advise you not to fuck around with me. I can’t overemphasize how strongly I advise you not to.”

Anton can feel his muscles suddenly contracting. He didn’t tell them to do that: they just did, like midfielders taken by surprise, a fast break down the wing or a long ball to the opponents’ centre forward, rushing backwards, merging with defenders as they shrink into formation round their own goal. The dark-haired man’s staring at him piercingly.

“Let’s get some basics clear. Some fundamentals. First is: we know everything. We know all about Ivan Maňásek …”

The older man grunts and shuffles in his chair. The dark-haired man turns and looks at him. The older one, eyes still on the paper in front of him, holds his finger up and makes it skip further down some imaginary line. The dark-haired man resumes:

“We probably know more about what you’ve been doing than your own wife – who, by the way, didn’t stand up very well to being in custody.”

“My wife knows nothing about anything! Even less than me! Where is she now?’ The thought of Helena locked up, interrogated, who knows what else, fills him with terror. The dark-haired man’s turned round to smile with wide eyes at the older one, who returns the look. They both seem amused by his reaction.

“No, Anton.” The dark-haired man’s eyes are still chuckling. “You haven’t got the basics straight.” His hand becomes a claw placed on his chest, pushing the straight tie upwards so it has to fold below the chin as he says: “I’m not here to answer your questions.” Now the claw turns to Anton, threatening him as he continues: “You’re here because you’re a criminal. And you’re going to listen to me when I tell you something, and when I ask you to respond, and only then, you’ll do so quickly and directly and politely. Do you understand me?” His voice crescendoes as he says this, reaching its peak on the final tonal rise into the question mark.

“If I’m allowed to see a lawyer, I mean if I have that right, I’d like to use it now.”

The dark-haired man’s risen to his feet, swept the coffee cup into his hand and flung it at him before he can react or get his hands up. It hits him on the shoulder, throwing its hot brown liquid out across his chin and neck and chest. The coffee stings. The dark-haired man’s upper body has crossed to his side of the table. His eyes have got him pinned down in his chair. Both arms are twitching: he could swing at him with either.

“Rights!”

Then a quieter, sub-linguistic boiling on the tongue, as though it were about to form expletives, gives over to a pursing of the lips. His right arm’s cranked right back, then frozen just before being released. The lips unpurse:

“You have no fucking rights! You understand? I’m your rights, you little Jewish shit!”

The eyes still pin him, daring him to move, to see if he’s fast enough to dodge the blow that will come the instant he does. Anton’s half-hidden his face behind his own hands, but not totally, in case the overly defensive posture brings the punch down on him. The two men stay in those positions, Anton with his hands up, the thin, dark-haired man with his arms tensed to swing, fists clenched, for several seconds. Eventually the dark-haired man breathes out in one long sigh, lets his shoulders and arms deflate and draws his head back to his own side of the table. He looks down at his papers, which are messed up, wet with coffee, and throws his arms up in a theatrical, Italianate way:
Look what you’ve made me do
. Anton breathes out too – and feels pain biting into his chest where his shirt’s wet with hot coffee. He pinches the shirt and pulls it forwards so it’s not in contact with his skin. The dark-haired man steps back, turns away from Anton and paces a small, ponderous circle before turning to face him again. Then: