The article is devoted to the problem of constructing spatial images in the novel by Milorad Pavić “Drugo telo”. It was revealed that the mechanism mental construction mechanism of spatial images is based on the principle of complementarity of verbal and non-verbal languages, that is, on the principle of multimodal information coding. There are visual, auditory, tactile and other images behind the verbal text. The reliability of mental spatial images is ensured by the detail of the memories on which the reader relies during the interpretation of the text. The realism of the perception of the text is prepared by the fact that iconic non-verbal pictures are stored in the reader’s memory behind the verbal indexes.