Somehow the twig’s got into him. Ilievski’s finger, Jerémiah’s twig. Anton, still kneeling, turns round. Behind Janachkov, who’s holding some kind of black thing, a calculator on which he’s working out figures, exchange rates — or perhaps a toy, some kind of toy like kids were playing with somewhere, his and Helena’s kids or the ones she’s got already or perhaps himself when he was small, Anton can see the star’s face, winking one of its eyes at him, then winking another, red and white eyes on a white face, closing.
* * * * *
It’s an hour from Prague to Amsterdam, then eight hours from Amsterdam to JFK, then four more hours from there to San Francisco. The first leg’s on one of those cute little propeller numbers. Roger and Barbara walk out of the terminal, past the row of Soviet helicopters rotting in the long grass by the runway, then climb up a wheel-around staircase. It must have been like this to fly in the Sixties, or even the Fifties. Each time the plane hits a cloud it’s buffeted sideways, and both their Bloody Marys get all worked up in their glasses. Air pockets swallow and regurgitate them, as though deeming their tiny metal dragonfly too small to merit digesting. It’s overcast, but when they clear cloud level Roger’s amazed at how many other aeroplanes they can see. You never see any when you fly over the US. European airspace must be tightly regulated, carved up into invisible corridors to avoid collisions. Not so invisible, at that: vapour trails sparkle above and around them. When the cloud clears he can see markings cutting up the earth, too: motorways, rivers, fire breaks in forests, walls of cemeteries, the crossed loops of sewage works. They land among a coruscating whirl of yellow, white and red lines that split from and then rejoin one another as they lead them to the terminaclass="underline" feels like they’re moving over a huge basketball court …
They’ve only got two hours in Amsterdam: can’t even leave the airport. Barbara would have had to buy a visa, thirty dollars for two hours, and if they’d wanted to stay any longer they’d have had to pay a stopover excess, which fuck it. Mladen’s given him a number for Nick; he calls it, gets an answering machine, leaves a message. Then it’s up towards the stratosphere again, this time on a proper KLM jumbo with the works: Top Cat eye-covers and toothbrushes, headphones, rugs, slippers. When they’ve finished their meal and coffee and the lights are dimmed, two hours or so into the flight, they slip their rugs on and Barbara leads his hand into her lap, sends it past undone buttons and elastic to where it’s warm and damp, then turns her head away and presses it against the window, mouth opening to the dark blue of the early evening sky …
They’re flying with the sun: behind it, so it seems time’s standing still. It was dusk when they left Schiphol and it’s still dusk as they’re clearing Greenland. Roger can see huge white cliffs of ice that drop straight into the sea. He knows it’s Greenland because there’s a screen at the front of the section they’re in which has a map on it showing their position, speed and altitude. The image alternates between the area they’re over right now, with a large plane nudging its way across it, and the whole stretch of northern hemisphere between Europe and America, with a much smaller plane. Zooms and pull-backs, just like in cinema: they contextualize — is what he was taught back at Berkeley. The short dashes trailed behind the plane-symbol confer narrative progress. Bread-and-butter techniques: he should brush up on them when he gets home. Going to need them. Michael, the adman who he met at Jean-Luc’s party last December, has set him up with his agency’s San Francisco branch, a job in the creative dept: filming, editing, stuff like that. It’s perfect, just perfect. Maybe he can even come in Sundays and edit all the European rushes, the peasant 90210, get them shown at indie festivals. There’s time for everything; he’s just got to use it right, not get bogged down. Up here in the sky Roger feels good, confident, invigorated, that’s the word, ready to hit the ground running, eight hundred twenty kilometres/five hundred ten miles per hour …
Barbara’s fallen asleep. The screen gives over to promotional footage of a KLM jet in mid-flight: revolving angle, must have been shot from a fighter plane flying around it. There’s sunlight flashing from behind its fin — although the near side’s not in shadow, so the sun must have been edited in afterwards. The sunlight becomes a column beaming out from a projector, then the angle spins round to reveal the KLM in-flight entertainment logo blazing on a screen. They’re going to be shown Dances with Wolves. Whoopee. Roger slips his headphones on and finds the right channel. Kevin Costner is cruising the Wild West befriending animals and Indians alike, discovering among the latter group a squawed-up Mary McDonnell, with whom he sets about getting all jiggy. Trouble brews. Et cetera. After the first half hour Roger takes the headphones off and watches without sound. He finds he can infer the entire dialogue. Besides, watching it mute gives it a quality it never had originally — a rich, alien feel, as though the characters were living in some kind of outer space through which sound doesn’t travel …
After the movie ends he falls asleep too. When he wakes up they’re somewhere around the Canada/US border. It’s more than dusk now: they’ve given up chasing the sun and are heading south. Roger can vaguely make out coastline, but not much else. Barbara wakes up for Boston, a sprawl of yellow and green lights. There are refreshments, neither supper nor breakfast, then the descent over Long Island, touch down. From the terminal they can just see Manhattan, the top of the Empire State lit up green and red. While they’re waiting for their bags somebody taps him on the shoulder.
“Oh my God! What are you …” It’s Heidi, that girl he met at that party, same night he met Barbara, and …
“Welcome to America!” She’s beaming, and looks fuller than she did when he last saw her, in December. Not fatter, just less thin. “I take it you two have just arrived as well.”
“You’ve flown via Amsterdam?” he asks her.
“Paris. You live in New York?”
“No, San Francisco.”
“Oh, that’s right: you told me. I’d forgotten.”
“Yeah, we’ve got to do another four hours. How about you?”
“Vermont. I’ve got to go into Manhattan and catch a bus.”
“Let’s have a drink.”
“OK,” says Heidi. Roger has to wait for Barbara to clear immigration, so it takes them half an hour to get to the bar. Heidi’s on a stool drinking a coke. She’s taken her coat and jumper off and has a small bulge in her lower stomach.
“She’s pregnant,” Barbara whispers as they walk up to her.
“Hi again. You know what? I’ve got to go already. The last bus leaves Port Authority at ten.” Heidi stoops to pick up her bags and clothes. Barbara reaches down and gets them for her.
“Shall we carry these for you?”
“No thanks. I’m not that far gone. Only four months. I don’t feel weak, just sick sometimes. While it is true,” she switches to Czech, “that, of a morning, I have little appetite, nonetheless I do not breakfast eagerly, so for me this poses no great problem.” She’s smiling so much it seems she could just float to Vermont. She takes Barbara by the shoulders, plants a big, lippy kiss on each cheek, then does the same to him — then, without saying another word, turns round and walks away.
* * * * *
The Klementinum has an outer wall around it, running from Karlova to Mariánské Náměstí, then back down Platnéřská to Křižovnická. Inside this, a cobbled courtyard leads towards the library’s small entrance door. It’s got strange acoustics: Helena has small feet that never clump or stamp and rarely produce any sound at all — but here they send a kind of hushed rustle to the walls, and the walls send the rustle back, as though they and the feet were whispering to one another. Beyond the door, a smoking room with notices dotted around it. The reading room itself is down a corridor, past this guard leaning against the wall, pushing himself off it, stepping across to block her route now as she …