Some time after Former Colleague Robinek’s departure, Associate Koulin returned from Libeňský Island carrying a spade. He stopped in front of Subject and showed him the spade. Spades are for digging holes, and mouths are holes. Ears too, with inner and outer compounds. Why do I write this? Subject opened the boot of his car, and Associate Koulin placed the spade inside this, whereupon Subject closed the door again. Then Subject and Associates Koulin and Milachkov entered the vehicle and drove it away silently. I watched them. Fighting my excessive lethargy, I moved towards the stone steps, for what purpose I can’t say. There was a parapet; I leant on it and looked down. To the west of the car market, just beside the river, there was an old shipyard. In one corner there was a huge, long, hollow building whose triangular roof made it look like a Viking assembly hall. Metal stair cases zigzagged up towards the roof beams, joining walkways from which sliding boxes hung. Below these a network of scaffolding curved concavely outwards on both sides to form a cradle for the carcass of a giant metal ship. The ship was being dismantled. Parts of it had been laid out on the ground beside the building; old cranes mounted on caterpillar belts were carrying more parts to join them. The parts were being sorted into groups. In one area hundreds of metal girders rested side by side, like dead soldiers lined up for a body count after a battle. In another pairs of U-shaped hollow tubes were curled around each other, all facing the same way, like lovers lying in bed, one holding the other as they fall asleep. In a smaller area pulleys had been grouped by size: the smallest were stacked up on shelves at whose feet metal cables slumped. There was blue machinery and green machinery, conveyor belts, wheels, metal wires and hooks and springs: all disconnected, taken to pieces.
I was here. I am still here now. They are taking everything apart. A fat man in red overalls is slowly moving round a yard carrying boxes of cogs towards a wooden hut in whose small windows dirty white lace curtains are hanging. His hair is grey. Cigarette smoke is curling up from beneath his fingers, forming a grey, wispy column in the sunlight. He looks up at me where I lean against the parapet, pauses, I don’t know for how long, then lumbers on into the hut and closes the door behind him. There is no noise; the transmission field is well and truly gone. I can hardly move: the act of writing itself half-exhausts me. Inside the Viking hall the sliding boxes seem to move, but so slowly that the movement is imperceptible. There are rails, straight ones, warped and twisted ones. Some have markings on the side. If only I could …
* * * * *
Han’s studio is way out west — right next to the Rietveld, Sasha’s art school. It’s on a street called Windtunnelkade: look out for the space station, Han said, rather obliquely. Nick’s riding out there on a bike he bought from some guy on a bridge on Oudezijds Achterburgwal. These junkies hang around there with their stolen bikes; you go up furtively and buy one — and in a month’s time, two on average if you buy a U-lock which will cost you twice what you paid for the bike (the bike’s the price of the next hit, no more, no less), another junky, or perhaps the same one, will steal it again. There used to be these “white bikes” in the Sixties: they were white and had no locks and anyone could take one any time they saw one, ride it to wherever they were going and then leave it for a new person to ride off; but these all ended up painted other colours and with locks on, being sold five times a year on the bridge by the Oudezidsachterburgwaal.
It’s taken three quarters of an hour from Nieuwmarkt: the longest bike ride Nick’s done so far in this city. This is ring-road territory, all car showrooms and petrol stations and stilted overpasses. Get to Anthony Fokkerweg and you’re there, Sasha told him.
“Fokker? Like the …”
“Yes, Fokker, who has make those aeroplanes for Nazis. Dutch hero.”
Nick’s on Anthony Fokkerweg now; he’s already passed the Rietveld, but there’s no sign of Windtunnelkade. He’s stopped in front of a 1950s building made of concrete bricks and panels fronted with those white ceramic tiles you get in swimming pools. Through the glass door he can see a lobby in which a uniform is wallowing behind a desk; he’ll go in and ask. No need to lock the bike up here: he’ll lean it on the steps. In solid, big blue letters on the wall above the entrance are the words: Nationaal Lucht- en Ruimtevaart Laboratorium. Vaart is voyage, like Fahrt in German; Lucht must be air, like Luft, and Ruimte, Ruimte … The metal door handle is cast into a logo which depicts, around the letters NLR, a circle whose bottom turns into an aeroplane and from the top of which a rocket shoots off into space. Of course: space travel. Ruimte, space, like Raum, Raumfahrt. It’s the National Laboratory of Air and Space Traveclass="underline" that’s what Han meant by “space station” …
The lobby’s tall; it has walkways round the top that lead off into hangar-like halls with factory piping hanging from the ceiling and those black-and-yellow radiation warning signs you get in James Bond movies dotted round the walls. Men in overalls are walking about carrying lathes. Their overalls are worn and oily, not Teflony and shiny like you’d think space-centre clothes would be. Nick wonders what they use the lathes for: to twist and hammer rocket parts together? Do they stick cameras to their outsides using Heidi’s father’s glue? Since when has Holland had a space programme, in any case? This place looks more like some old tool factory, but there’s the plane and rocket logo again on the jacket of the uniform Nick’s walking up to …
The man tells him to go left and left and left again. The first left takes him from Anthony Fokkerweg to Fokkerstraat, the next onto Luchtvaartstraat. Then there’s a Propellenstraat, which he turns down, but then doubles back out of because it should be Windtunnelkade but isn’t: the man must have forgotten this one. Propellen: this really is aviation city. Did Kiefer’s aeroplane have propellers? Nick can’t remember. Just past Propellenstraat there’s a dance schooclass="underline" he can see an old lady leading three rows of dancers through a set of movements, men and women dressed in shorts and leotards and leg warmers just like the kids from Fame, all moving in sync in front of a giant mirror. They’re stepping very slowly forwards across the floor, hoisting their feet right up, pointing the toes out and then guiding them back down as their hands reach out and pull the air back as though it were a liquid denser than water. Their right shoulders dip and they slowly spin round, then start the sequence again. They look like astronauts space-walking — with the mirror, six rows of astronauts and two elderly mission commanders approaching one another with great trepidation, advancing from both sides towards the black hole of the mirror’s surface, the flatness into which, eventually, they’ll all be swallowed up and disappear. There’s a sign above the window that says Christine Chattel Dance Studio. Is the woman in front of the class Christine Chattel? Maybe Christine Chattel’s long gone, part of the same age as Anthony Fokker and aeroplanes that had propellers and big blue solid lettering on buildings. Past the school, finally, is Windtunnelkade. It’s on a canaclass="underline" facing some dilapidated moored boats is a row of one-storey workshops.
Han’s is number 6. The windows are blacked out by cardboard, round the edges of which red light seeps. Bumpings and murmurings are coming from inside, sounds of things being carried and set down — plus this kind of whining, a repetitive electrical noise like windscreen wipers make. Nick raps on the door and a boy of maybe eighteen answers. He says something in Dutch. Nick tells him, in English: