“Someone’s … I’ve just got to …” He goes to the toilet, slaps some water on his face, then looks up at the mirror. It is white, with pink pools growing in the cheeks where the cold water hit it. He tries to imagine what it’s like falling through ice: you might just slip off peacefully as cold closes down your body slowly, without pain. Or maybe you’d panic and, trapped, claw at the ice’s underside like Sasha banging and scraping on his windows, but without an audience: just sky and the odd seagull. Even if there were people on the other side who you could see, above the surface, they wouldn’t know you were there if they hadn’t seen you fall …
Nick feels claustrophobic. He opens the toilet’s window. From this height, the layout of canals below looks like a spider’s web. The buildings and the sky blur into a continuous grey for a few seconds and then separate out again and grow distinct. The creak of a bicycle’s wheels comes to him from the street, and mingles with Julia’s voice, which is calling to him that she’s got the Galerie Schröder on the phone.
* * * * *
… to the car market by Palmovka. Above it was a fenced-off compound in which 3 [three] shafts rose from the earth. They looked to me like pens, like the pen with which I am writing now: 3 [three] pens with their caps fitted to their tail ends, the clips with which pens can be made to remain stable in their users’ pockets forming slight protrusions, the nibs buried deep down in the earth below. They also looked like periscopes, although the slatted surface of the clips’ outer sides made me think of microphones more than of viewing eyes. There were also large cylinders, or tubes, piled up in pyramid formation. They were rusty. I think it likely, although not certain, that these were previously sections of a gas or sewage pipe. They were intended to be placed beneath the ground and yet were placed above, in full view of passers-by while, conversely, the shafts were plunged far down, as though to ventilate a world of people who had chosen to conduct subterranean existences in a burrow-like network of rooms and tunnels. Some things should be hidden, some things not. Why do I write this? I do not know, and yet I feel that I should, for the record.
Inside the compound there were also huts, perhaps of workmen. Their windows were black and opaque. Some of these were mounted on wheels, as though with a view to being moved quickly to a new location if events made this necessary, although the wheels were grey and rusty, which suggested that they had been static for some time. Inside the compound was another compound with an iron fence around it; inside this one, yet another. The fences were dilapidated, leaning; bushes clambered over them like crowds storming barriers. Inside one of the inner compounds there were piles of wooden pallets and of coal, with rubber tubing coiled around their sides, as though a group of long, thin snakes were guarding them — or rather, had been guarding them, had shed their skins, and left. There were cages, of the shape and size of lions’ cages, although these, also, were empty. The cages, coupled with the wheeled cabins, gave the impression that a circus troupe had been here, had passed by and left its refuse, its broken wagons, all the things that it no longer needed.
I was here. I stood here for some time. I do not know for how long. As I did so, and before witnessing Former Colleague Robinek’s arrival on the scene, I observed Subject talking in the car market with Associates Milachkov and Koulin. I still had my directional microphone with me, but its batteries were low and in any case it served no purpose since I no longer hear anything at alclass="underline" the dislocated noises that were assailing me some weeks ago have faded away, leaving nothing in their place. Walking around the city, it seems to me that I am watching television, or a film, without the sound. People speak, perhaps to me, perhaps not, but no words come from their mouths. Cars and trams glide by silently. The world seems drained of content: its objects and locations remain, but the transmission field that ran through these, enveloping them and holding them together, is now gone. Despite this total loss of field, I continue to observe and to record as best I can — but I wonder to whom I should now address my dispatches. All my superiors have drawn back, made themselves inaccessible to me. None of them have called me, and I’ve had no contact with the precinct now for weeks. As I watched Subject speaking with Associates Milachkov and Koulin, my former colleague Robinek walked past me on the street. I made to move towards him, in order to make contact with him — but, doing so, was overcome by an immense feeling of lethargy, one that I’d been experiencing ever since my hearing started going. This, coupled with a loss of equilibrium that also has been constantly with me, rooted me to the side of the pavement where I was leaning against a stone balustrade, and I was unable to make myself known to him.
If Former Colleague Robinek noticed my presence at all, he failed to recognize me, possibly due to the dishevelled look I’d observed in my own person on those occasions when I’d caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. Several weeks’ of beard-growth was by now covering my cheeks. In any case, he seemed preoccupied. He made his way past me and turned down a stone staircase leading to the lower-level car market. Once there, he walked straight towards Subject, Associate Koulin and Associate Milachkov, the last of whom greeted him warmly, extending his arm and shaking Former Colleague Robinek’s hand. He then introduced Former Colleague Robinek to Subject himself, whose hand he also shook, and finally to Associate Koulin, with whom he performed the same act. A conversation ensued, or so I believe, as they gesticulated to each other and moved their lips. I watched them. There was no noise. I tried to imagine what words could be passing between them, but when I did so my mind filled the holes in their mouths with incongruous passages, phrases such as “After all, we did try to inform him” and “You know, we’ll take it all away”, or shorter phrases, two-word snatches such as “skip-wave” and “plucking poppies”. I believe that sometimes, when a scene from a television or film drama is being shot in an exterior location, the contingent sound is such that, although the actors speak their lines, the quality of these when replayed is insufficient to be broadcast, and they are obliged to repeat the same lines in the studio, behind a window, into microphones as they watch themselves on a screen outside the isolation room, aiming to synchronize their words with the original lip movements. I am uncertain of the value of these observations, or indeed whether anyone at all will read or file them — yet I feel that I should continue making them until instructed otherwise.
Former Colleague Robinek conversed with Subject and Associates for some time. At one point in their conversation, Subject appeared to become agitated, even enraged. He stepped back from Former Colleague Robinek and waved his arms at him. He turned his back on him and on Associates Koulin and Milachkov, the latter of whom followed tentatively behind him. He turned round again and pointed his finger at Former Colleague Robinek, moving this digit forwards and backwards several times. Former Colleague Robinek gesticulated back. After some time Subject appeared to become calmer, approached Former Colleague Robinek again and continued to converse with him. He turned to Associate Koulin, spoke to him also, and pointed in the direction of Libeňský Island, whereupon Associate Koulin walked off towards the island. Subject opened the door of his Mercedes and pulled out a dossier from which he then removed an envelope and handed this to Former Colleague Robinek. Former Colleague Robinek placed the envelope in his jacket pocket, shook Subject’s hand again, then once more shook Associate Milachkov’s hand as well; then he left, ascending to the higher street level by the steps closer to the metro station, and therefore not passing by me for a second time.