Men in Space

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Here’s Anton Markov, sitting at a table, running his finger round a saucer’s rim as he watches his compatriot Koulin stride across the Malostranská Kavárna’s floor. Koulin takes bouncy, elastic steps. He swings his arms and hips round chairs and tables. He turns like an ice skater to glide backwards for two paces as he skirts around the waitress, a girl of twenty-odd. Wall-mounted mirrors, one on either side of the door from which he’s just emerged, the door that leads off to the toilets, render the event in triplicate: three Koulins — front, left profile and right profile, like in police mugshots. There are three waitresses too, three sets of background customers. Looking at the multiplying scene, Anton recalls his refereeing days in Bulgaria: the trick was to see all the near-identical shirts, repeated runs, sudden departures, switches and loop-backs as one single movement, parts of a modulating system which you had to watch as though from outside, or above, or somewhere else.

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