Men in Space by Tom McCarthy

Author:Tom McCarthy [McCarthy, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General, Literary, Post-Communism - Europe; Eastern, Art Thefts
ISBN: 9781846880506
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2007-01-28T05:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

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.

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