Silence, just total silence. Koulin and Janachkov have turned their faces so far from him that they seem to have acquired owls’ necks. Ilievski’s back is motionless, like the back of one of those half-dead Soviet premiers. Anton asks them:
“Where are we going?”
“Up here,” Milachkov, utterly un-owlish, refuses again to turn his head the slightest bit. “Out a little.”
“Out? What, to the airport?” He can see a plane overhead, descending towards Ruzyn? wheels stretching out like hawks’ or eagles’ feet.
“On a journey. Sort of … after …” This clunking in the boot’s annoying.
“What?”
Koulin takes over: “There’s this guy, this Turkish guy — you speak Turkish, right?”
“No.”
“Greek,” Janachkov mumbles, still facing away.
“Right, Greek. That’s what I meant. You speak Greek …”
“A tiny bit. My wife’s the one who …”
“So, there’s this guy we’re doing business with, and he’s Greek, like I said, and we need you to cut this deal with him.”
“What deal? What type of business?”
“Just business. You know …”
“You have to brief me if I’m going to negotiate. And anyway, my Greek’s really not good. Three or four phrases is all. Maybe it’s …”
“It’s pretty straightforward. You just need to fix a price for some stuff he’s exporting. Keep him below half a million.”
“What stuff?”
“Oh, machinery. Nothing interesting.”
“Well, I’ll try. Maybe he’ll speak English. Or German. Or whatever …”
They’ve cleared the castle complex now. You can see right back down into the city’s bowl. There’s Staré Město, all the golden roofs, the river, the television tower. The green awning of the Hotel Savoy blocks it out, flashes five stars at Anton as they turn a sharp corner above which a convex mirror’s mounted, elongating other cars then catapulting them towards their own as they pass its centre. There’s the sliding in the boot again, then the clump as Milachkov accelerates into another uphill straight. A police car passes by, going the other way. The road’s quite steep now. Steps lead up from it on the left; more steps tumble down the hillside to the right. Beside them there’s a statue of … who is it? He’s holding a slide rule, looking straight at Anton, and there’s an inscription: K-e-p … Kepler. Of course. One of old Toitov’s favourites. Worked here in Prague under Tycho Brahe; figured out that planets orbit not in perfect circles but in ovals. Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres bumps Earth from the centre, sending it careening into space, making space itself infinite and uncentred and removing any single point to which objects might fall, its title naming all future revolutions — then his follower takes away the basic form of measurement, the circle. Kepler must have chosen to live here on this hill, up above the city, closer to the stars. His eyes still seem to follow Anton as he falls away behind the car — and, as they do, Anton sees Toitov’s eyes in them, watching him receding upwards, drawn away. Force of association. Maybe the eyes are similar, though: kind, indulgent eyes that seem to understand the gravity of his journey, all his journeys …
“Stop!”
These are the first words Ilievski’s spoken since Anton stepped into the car. His back’s still totally impassive, but now Anton can see movement at the top edges, round the shoulders. They’re moving up and down in keeping with his heavy breathing. Too many cigarettes. Maybe the air’s thinner up here, too. Milachkov’s pulled up beside a large and well-stocked flower shop. In its window and in buckets lined up on rising benches, like a choir on a stage, are hundreds of flowers. There are birds of paradise and tiger, calla and stargazer lilies, daffodils, purple tulips, agapanthuses — plus, dominating the display, chrysanthemums. The chrysanthemums take up a whole bench. They’re all white: powerful, globed white masses that seem to bulge with the fullness of their volume. Ilievski’s looking sideways, out of the car window, at these. He lays his hand on the door lever, then withdraws it again and turns round to face Anton. Anton’s amazed to see that Ili’s eyes are watery.
“Constantine! What …”
Ilievski raises his hand — and then seems not to know what to do with it. He moves it first towards his own mouth, as though he wanted to signal for Anton to stop talking; then he moves it out towards Anton’s shoulder, as though he wanted to pat or clasp it. But it’s barely cleared the space above the handbrake when he draws it back towards himself again. It’s shaking. Something drops onto the leather of his seat, a tiny drop of … is that a tear?
“Constantine! What on …”
But he’s opened the door, spun out of the car and walked away, and Mila’s pulled off again, before he can even … Anton looks through the rear window at Ili’s back, his brown coat and grey hair shrinking against a billowing sea of white chrysanthemums, retreating down a corridor of other shopfronts, motorbike shops, tobacconists, textile shops, a bath-and-shower centre, posters lining the road on each side …
“What’s wrong with him?” Anton’s voice is squeaky with sheer disbelief. Did he just see a, yes, a tear splatter the leather?
“He’s preoccupied,” says Jana, still looking away.
“Preoccupied? He looked absolutely … I don’t know. Devastated. About something or other.”
“He’s got the flu. I think we’re all coming down too. Better watch out.”
They’re on the same steep uphill road, but its name’s changed now, to Bělohorská. Means “white mountain”, like the one the saint was floating above in the painting. There’s a motorcyclist chugging along beside them wearing a scarf and goggles, like some early aviator. They pull up at some lights. Anton leans back and knocks his shoulders against Koulin’s and Janachkov’s. He leans forwards again and says to Milachkov:
“Shouldn’t one of us move into the front?”
“We’re almost there now.”
The light turns green. That sliding, then the bump again. They’re really out of town now, passing villas with dogs lounging in the gardens. They’ll have one like that, he and Helena, when he retires. He’ll sit there on the porch watching Kristof and Larissa and their own, his own two children playing footbalclass="underline" Bulgaria against America, although they’ll all want to be America of course. The last villa on the hill is a shop selling giant satellite antennae that look designed more for air-traffic control than for television viewing — maybe even mission ground control. Past this villa it’s shrubby woodland, bushes, rocks and grass. Then the ground evens out into a plain. Must be the highest point around Prague: top of the white mountain. Milachkov turns right into a lay-by just beside where the tram rails that have accompanied them all the way up from the Summer Palace cut an elongated loop into the ground. The twenty-two they raced with earlier is sliding into this right now, stopping, its driver climbing out to buy a káva or a pivo from this little stand …
“OK, then.”
Mila, Koulin and Jana have all thrown their doors open as though they couldn’t get out of the car fast enough — as though somebody had farted, or they’d been carrying meat long past its sell-by date. Anton steps out too, stretches his legs, looks up. The sky’s overcast but bright. The hidden sun’s making a patch of cloud glow brighter — a sphere that seems to buzz or hum: what’s making that … It’s an aeroplane, circling above the plain: must be held in a queue, waiting to land, in which case why’s it smaller than the raven it’s just passed beneath? Is this some kind of optical illusion only Kepler or Toitov would understand? It’s turning now, outlined against some trees that rise behind a wall on the plain’s far side. What on … Now he sees them, standing on the grass: two kids holding a radio controller with a pointy aerial, guiding their model’s twists and loops. The other three are leading him towards the wall. It’s a long, white wall that runs right across the plain’s perimeter, enclosing the trees behind it. Anton says: