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 …
* * * * *
There’s a bookstall at the top of the steps exiting the A line to Dejvická, on the near side of the overground tracks, by the level crossing: as promised, Ilievski’s waiting for him there, perusing a red hardback. Anton walks slowly up behind him and leans over his shoulder.
“It’s in Italian!”
“What the …” Ilievski slams the book shut, spins around, then sighs. “Jesus Christ, Anton! Do you want to kill me? Here,” he murmurs, keeping his head low, gesturing with his eyes at Anton’s chest so that at first Anton thinks there must be a mark of some type on his shirt, a blob of ketchup or something — until he realizes that Ilievski’s trying to indicate some spot behind him, a spot with eyes from whose gaze he’s hiding his own, “how many of them have you got with you?”
“How many … Oh, right. Two.”
“Two! I’ve only got one, as far as I can make out. What’s so important about you all of a sudden?”
Black humour, this; they both smile. He just noticed it this afternoon, not half an hour ago, as he stepped into the carriage at Jiřího z Poděbrad: a second one had joined in. For the first couple of days after being released, after Ilievski told him that they’d each be trailed constantly from now on until either they or the police retrieved the real painting, he was paranoid, saw undercover agents skulking around every stretch of pavement pretending to buy cigarettes or newspapers or to be making phone calls. But then he realized that there was only one. It didn’t take a great amount of cunning to flush him out from all the other, neutral faces hanging around him like human camouflage: these would change, but his was always there. In Sofia, when they were maybe seven or eight, Anton and the other kids in his street used to trail people for kicks, crouching behind dustbins and parked cars, dashing from one doorway to another: the whole point was not to be seen. But this guy doesn’t give a damn that Anton knows he’s with him. Not that he confronts him with his presence: he’s very unobtrusive, never coming too close, never eyeballing or even looking at him — but then never losing him either. If they’re in a tram or a metro carriage he’ll read his paper, genuinely read it, checking off what Anton presumes are racing or football odds with a pencil until Anton gets out; then he’ll fold the paper, slip the pencil back into his pocket and follow him. If Anton eats, he eats; if not, he doesn’t. He doesn’t care where they go, or how long it takes. It’s been dawning on Anton over the last day or so that other people, by comparison, accord him considerably more importance: they will interact with him, either making eye contact or shyly turning their eyes to the floor if he looks at them, moving aside or deciding to hold their ground if they’re blocking his path, racing him for empty seats in trams and on the metro. This man enters into no such congress with him. It’s his gaze, not theirs, which is the truly neutral one: it makes Anton feel half dead.
But then just twenty minutes ago, after the two of them had settled down into their seats, after the prerecorded message had informed them that the doors were about to close (Helena loves this Czech construction: It’s a participial adjective, she said when they first heard it: “in a state of imminence as far as the act of closing is concerned.” You get them a lot in Julius Caesar’s Wars …) and they’d started sliding shut, another man was catapulted through them. He skidded across the carriage’s floor and almost fell across Anton, then recoiled immediately, hiding his face as he backed off. As they rattled through the darkness he continued to snatch peeks at Anton from behind a paper which he obviously wasn’t reading. His eyes had a glazed, disoriented look. When they arrived at Hradčanská, the three of them — Anton, his tail and this clown — got off. Anton thought at first that he was mad, but noticed that his real tail seemed unsettled by his presence; as they rode the escalator he even gestured at him to go away, silently snarling at him when he thought Anton wasn’t looking. That lieutenant, or the thin, dark-haired man, or some commissioner in some office in the building on Bartolomějská, must have put a tail on without checking first whether one of the others had. They can throw coffee at you when they’ve got you in a locked room, threaten you with prison and who knows what else, but they’re idiots really …
A bell starts ringing up above them to the right. Ilievski puts his book down and turns towards the tracks. The bell’s attached to a white wooden signal cabin on the tracks’ far side, just a few metres away. A short, fat woman in grey uniform and a blue hat has emerged from the cabin and is now turning a handle, cranking it round so that two wooden barriers descend jerkily from posts on each side of the tracks, blocking the road and pavement. Even after they’ve come right down some pedestrians duck beneath them and walk across. Anton looks down the line towards Dejvická Station, then down the other way towards Letná: there’s no train coming yet.
“Shall we …” He makes to duck beneath the barrier as well, but Ilievski holds him back.
“No. Wait. I want us to lose these people for a while so we can go inside somewhere and talk. It’s cold out here.”