The Glass Room

by Simon Mawer

  The hotel was old-fashioned and rather run down, a relic from pre-war years when people had more money and a greater need to move around, days when the city was an imperial capital rather than the overfed chief city of a rump state. A porter showed them upstairs to a dingy room that was redolent of many temporary assignations. Once closeted with him in the room, the girl didn’t do anything special. There was no artifice, no seduction, no ridiculous striptease. While Viktor sat watching on the bed she just took her clothes off, folded them carefully and put them on a chair. Then, almost so he would not see too much, she turned quickly and slipped beneath the sheets.

  ‘How often have you done this?’ he asked.

  ‘Gone with a stranger?’ She made a face, a small moue of discontent. ‘A few times. I’m not a tart, you know. I work in the fashion business. This is only when I need a bit of extra.’

  ‘What are you, a mannequin?’

  She hesitated, on the brink of the lie: ‘A seamstress, actually. Hats at the moment, I work with hats.’

  ‘Your own hat?’

  ‘Yeah, I did that.’ She laughed. He liked her laugh. ‘It’s classy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘And now you need a bit of extra?’

  ‘Of course. The rent, stuff like that. You know what it’s like. It’s no joke getting by on my wage, not these days. Look, aren’t you going to come in? Isn’t this what you want?’

  He was uncertain of the answer to her question. He who was always sure of himself, was suddenly confused by the mockery he saw in the girl’s expression. He reached out and took her hand. There was something innocent about it, something ill-formed and jejune, the fingernails bitten to the quick like a child’s. ‘I don’t know what I want.’

  ‘Oh, yes you do. You want to do this without feeling any guilt. Well I don’t feel guilt, so why should you?’

  He laughed. ‘Are you a philosopher?’

  ‘I’m realistic. If I weren’t I’d be picking your pocket or something.’

  So he took off his clothes and got into bed with her, and she did what he asked, which would have shamed him with Liesel but which with this girl seemed entirely natural. And afterwards he felt no guilt, only a feeling of sadness. What was that Latin saying? Post coitum omne animal triste. After coitus every animal is sad. But sad for what? The passing of that moment of pure, shameless innocence, perhaps.

  ‘Well, I’ll be going then,’ she said, rolling away from him.

  He put out a hand to stop her. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Don’t just go straight away. I want to talk a bit. I’ll give you something extra, if you like.’

  ‘You’ll pay me for talking?’

  ‘Why not?’

  And so they talked. It was a strange conversation. From time to time, usually in the factory, he met women of her class. He would exchange pleasantries with them, but they never talked. And now he did talk with this girl, and she was quick and clever and amusing, lying beside him in the bed smoking a cigarette and telling him what it was like in the world she inhabited, on the planet of the underclass where who you were mattered little and what you did was all, and that not very much. And where you went with a man when you needed a bit extra.

  ‘Look, I’ve really got to go, eh? I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘You can’t stay the night?’

  But she couldn’t. If he’d told her at the start, then maybe she could have made arrangements. The next time perhaps, but not now. He watched her climb out of bed and collect up her clothes. Naked, without the accoutrements of fashion, she looked much younger. He watched as she pulled on her clothes and reversed the transformation, turning herself into the woman he had encountered in the Prater: bright, neat and amused, with a thin veneer of sophistication that made him almost laugh with delight.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘You don’t owe me anything. Let’s just say it’s a present.’

  He found his wallet and counted out enough money to make her eyes widen. ‘When might I see you again?’ The question was unplanned and absurd, a suggestion that came on the spur of the moment as she lifted herself on her toes to kiss him chastely on the cheek.

  ‘Whenever you like.’ She found a pencil and scribbled a number on a piece of paper. ‘You can contact me here. That is, if you want to. And I pick up letters at the Nordbahnhof post office, if you want to write a note. You can address them to Kata Kalman.’

  Then she opened the door and slipped out into the corridor, leaving him alone in the shabby room, with nothing more than her scent on the sheets and her smell on his fingers.

  ‘I have decided,’ he told Liesel in the morning, ‘you may have your onyx wall.’

  She gave a little cry of pleasure. ‘What made you change your mind?’

  ‘Fingernails,’ he said. ‘Venus’s fingernails.’

  Interior

  That summer they went to Marienbad to take the waters. They took a suite at the Palace-Hotel Fürstenhof, where Viktor used to spend summers with his parents. The staff greeted him as Herr Viktor and smiled benignly on the gnädige Frau and clucked over Ottilie in her bassinet. Their suite overlooked the spa gardens where morning mist drifted among the trees and gave the place a mysterious, oriental air. In the afternoon the band played outside the Kolonada while people strolled back and forth from one spring to another, sipping from their porcelain flasks and believing, with little evidence, that they were being cured of something other than mere ennui. In the evenings there were concerts – a Chopin recital, some Dvořák, the inevitable mélange of Strauss.

  Posters in the town announced the new Landauer Popular. Landauer Luxury in a Popular Package was the slogan, above pictures of smiling families driving out to the lakes and the mountains for their summer break, with the children waving gaily out of the windows of their new motor car. They had to put up with the attentions of a journalist from a woman’s magazine who wanted to ask Liesel about motherhood in the new decade, and a journalist from Lidové Noviny who had questions for Viktor about the economic climate and the new car, but for much of the time they were alone with themselves. The nurse took care of Ottilie while Viktor and Liesel went for walks in the woods above the town, Liesel barelegged in shorts and hiking boots and looking as young as she had when they first met. Viktor wore a pair of doeskin breeches that gave him the look of a Bohemian farmer. That was what Liesel told him, laughing. ‘A very handsome Bohemian farmer,’ she insisted. The summit of their achievement was to hike over the Podhorn to the monastery at Tepl where Liesel was forbidden entry to the library and museum of the monastery because she was a woman. She had to sit on a bench outside and feel self-conscious about her bare knees while Viktor went inside. They laughed disappointment away and felt superior in the face of such absurd prejudice. Indeed the ridiculous temporary separation served somehow to unite them further – in the woods above the monastery they kissed like lovers and even discussed, laughing at their shamelessness, the possibility of making love there and then, in the open air. Perhaps they would have done it despite Liesel’s protests but voices among the trees warned of an approaching group of walkers. They pulled apart and hastily composed themselves as a dozen Sokol hikers clattered past.

  When they got back to the hotel they undressed straight away, their bodies rank with the sweat of their walk, and made love beneath the open window of their bedroom, with the sound of carriages in the street below. ‘I love you, Viktor,’ Liesel whispered when they had finished and were lying side by side in the cool air.

  ‘And I love you,’ he replied.

  She propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at him thoughtfully. ‘Would you ever be unfaithful to me?’

  ‘Whatever makes you think of that possibility?’

  ‘Hana says that all men are capable of infidelity. It’s in their genes, she says.’

  He laughed scornfully.

  Exterior

  ‘Look at this,’ Oskar said one day. They were in the reading room of the German House, am
id the heavy columns and polished leather. He handed Viktor a copy of the Frankfurter Zeitung, folded to a page that discussed the political successes of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei in the recent elections in Germany. Eighteen per cent of the vote, according to the paper. Over one hundred seats in the Reichstag.

  ‘Pogroms!’ he said. ‘That’s what’s coming, Viktor. Pogroms.’

  Viktor tossed the paper aside. ‘How can there be pogroms in Germany? The only people who hold the German economy together are the Jews.’

  ‘Spoken like a Jew,’ Oskar said, laughing. ‘But you see if I’m not right. Germany is a chimera of a nation. You don’t know if it’s lion, serpent or goat. The Germans themselves doesn’t know either. Like any monster, you can laugh at it if you keep your distance – but you don’t want to get too close.’ He drew on his cigar and contemplated Viktor thoughtfully. ‘How’s the new house going? Hana tells me it’s going to be super-modern, like that fellow Fuchs builds.’

  ‘They’re laying the flooring tomorrow. You should come and see.’

  ‘Too busy, I’m afraid. She tells me it’s going to be a sensation.’

  ‘It’s not intended to be a sensation. It’s intended to be a home.’

  ‘Of course everyone’s doing it these days. Building houses in the new style. Look at the Spiassys and their pile. Very nice if you like that kind of thing, but no artistry. It’s all the fault of that fellow Loos, isn’t it? Ornament is a crime, isn’t that the motto? I wish it were – it’d certainly keep us lawyers in business. But I like a bit of decoration myself. Hana always goes on at me for being old-fashioned, but I do. Artistry as well as good design.’

  ‘Universal, that’s the idea behind the project: neither Jewish nor German. Nor Czech come to that. International.’

  ‘All glass, isn’t it? I prefer solid brick walls, like this place.’ This place, the Deutsches Haus, was a confection of neo-Gothic redbrick from the last century, a hybrid of cathedral and castle, another chimera.

  The waiter brought their coffee and brandy. ‘You know what the Japanese do with their houses?’ Viktor asked.

  ‘No idea, old fellow. What do the Japanese do?’

  ‘They build them out of paper. Then when there’s an earthquake and they collapse no one gets hurt.’

  Oskar looked round the massive room, at the fluted pillars and plaster swags and ornate gilded ceiling with its massive chandeliers. ‘I suppose people would get hurt all right if this lot collapsed.’

  ‘Crushed to death,’ said Viktor, ‘all of us.’

  The conversation was nothing, a mere jot in the continuum of social intercourse. Nevertheless something stuck, like a speck of dust in the eye. Beneath the calm surface of the new country Viktor felt the tremors of uncertainty.

  Tiptoeing as if on eggshells they laid the flooring upstairs – squares of Italian travertine like a mother-of-pearl lining to the shell of the building. Days later they mounted the glass in the living room, the glaziers manoeuvring the wide transparent sheets with all the care of ordnance workers handling nitro-glycerine in the armaments factory on the river Svratka. And as they raised the panes into place, quite suddenly the empty space between two concrete floors metamorphosed into the Glass Room.

  Liesel and Viktor stood and marvelled at it. It had become a palace of light, light bouncing off the chrome pillars, light refulgent on the walls, light glistening on the dew in the garden, light reverberating from the glass. It was as though they stood inside a crystal of salt. ‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ she exclaimed, looking round with an expression of amazement. ‘You feel so free, so unconstrained. The sensation of space, of all things being possible. Don’t you think it is wonderful, Viktor? Don’t you think that Rainer has created a masterpiece for us?’

  In the autumn they travelled to Vienna to finalise decisions about the interior. It was months since Viktor’s last visit to the city. As he and Liesel arrived at the Nordbahnhof he wondered whether he might see Kata there, perhaps picking up her mail at the post office; and if he did, what would happen? Would she recognise him and smile secretively as she passed by? And what would he feel at the sight of her? Embarrassment and guilt? Or maybe disgust, that he could succumb to the attractions of such a woman? But the concern was misplaced. Vienna was a city of two million people and his presence in the Leopoldstadt quarter was merely transitory; yet as the taxi cab drove away from the station, there, ineluctably, was the great wheel, the Riesenrad, turning slowly in the cool autumnal air above their heads.

  The architect’s studio was in the Landstrasse district, in the attic of an old apartment block. The space was decorated in the modern manner, with white walls and spare furnishings, a hint of the way their house would look. Together with von Abt and his assistant they discussed issues of wall coverings and flooring, the minutiae of interior design. They talked about furniture – the ‘Venice’ chair, which had been intended for the Biennale pavilion, and the new one, the ‘Landauer’ chair, which would be specially for this gem of a house that was nearing completion in Město. And then there was something extra, a special creation that he was proposing to call the ‘Liesel’ chair in honour of Frau Liesel Landauer if she would be so gracious as to accept the homage.

  ‘How wonderful,’ she said, blushing, as she sat in the eponymous chair – all cantilevered chromed steel and black leather. Viktor sat in the prototype Landauer chair and watched.

  ‘This is the disposition of the chairs in the living room,’ von Abt explained, showing the drawings that he had prepared. He indicated the sitting area in front of the onyx wall and the dining area enclosed by its semicircle partition of Macassar wood. ‘The dining table will be circular and able to seat six. However, it may be extended to seat a maximum of twenty-four.’

  Liesel laughed at the idea – ‘When on earth will we have that number?’ – while Viktor imagined a horde of relatives descending on the place, with views and ideas about how he should be running the factory and the house and his life. The meeting moved on to other matters, questions of textiles and soft furnishings, the curtains and carpets. Von Abt’s assistant already had ideas, already had samples, already knew. She displayed them like a market stallholder showing her wares, her patter fluid and convincing. ‘It’ll be a revolution,’ she said, ‘a casting off of the past. A new way of living.’

  Liesel’s eye shone with delight.

  It was when they were just finishing the meeting – mid-afternoon, with the prospect of taking the evening train back to Město – that a telephone call came for Herr Landauer from the Vienna office of the Landauer Motor Company. A problem had arisen that needed discussion. Was Herr Landauer available for a meeting the next morning? It was imperative, something to do with import quotas, a matter of a malleable government official, the possibility of financial persuasion achieving wonders.

  He turned helplessly to Liesel. It was understandable that she was reluctant to stay overnight when they had only intended a single day’s visit. It was natural that she wished to get back to Ottilie who was even now taking her first tottering steps. It was inevitable that the plan should be changed: Liesel would return home as arranged – Laník the chauffeur would be there to meet her at the station – while Viktor would find a room at the Bristol or the Sacher and attend this nuisance of a meeting the next morning.

  ‘But you’ve nothing with you.’

  ‘I’ll buy what I need. And the hotel can launder my shirt overnight.’ There was no difficulty, absolutely no difficulty whatsoever. This was the modern life, the way things worked in industry and commerce. If you weren’t able to adapt you would die, like Darwin said. Adapt or die. So he accompanied Liesel to the station and saw her off on the evening train to Město and then walked back down the platform by himself.

  Crowds pushed past him, workers hurrying to catch local trains home to the workers’ quarters in the north of the city. Steam blasted upwards towards the iron and glass roof. Doors slammed and whistles blew and trains drew out of the
station in that deliberate way they have, arms moving out as though to grasp the steel rails and drag them backwards. Only Viktor Landauer stood still. He possessed a telephone number, scribbled on a piece of paper and folded in his pocket diary. He was conscious of it inside his jacket, had been aware of it throughout the summer as his diary lay on his dressing table during the night, felt it whenever he opened the booklet to note something down or look something up. Just a number. Four digits, scribbled with a pencil. He could just as well have erased it. So why hadn’t he done so?

  He approached the end of the platform where the gates were, and beyond them concourse with the ticket offices and waiting rooms. There was a quickening of anticipation as he pushed through the doors and took a booth to make the telephone call. For an instant, as he waited for an answer, he hoped that there would be no reply. And then the ringing was interrupted and a man’s voice was speaking to him.

  ‘Die Goldene Kugel,’ the voice said.

  Viktor hadn’t really expected her to answer. The way she had said it – ‘You can contact me here’ – had seemed to preclude the possibility of it being her own line. ‘That is, if you want to,’ she had added.

  ‘I want to speak to Fräulein Kata. Kata Kalman.’

  ‘Hold on.’ There was noise, the receiver being laid down, the sound of voices, and then the receiver picked up once more and a different voice, still male, asking, ‘Who is this?’

  ‘I want to speak to Fräulein Kata.’

  ‘Who is it? Does she know you?’

  ‘I’m a friend.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  His heart stumbled. ‘Viktor,’ he said. ‘Herr Viktor.’

  ‘Hang on.’

  There was more noise off. The wooden kiosk was closer by far than the cabin of the Riesenrad, a close, sweltering box, dulled to the sounds from outside, insulated from the reality of the station concourse. It held within it the stale smell of other people, those itinerants who hung around railway stations, the indigent and homeless. There was something scored into the woodwork at eye level: My little crocodile, I love you, the scratching said. Viktor’s excitement died, to be replaced by a sweat of shame and embarrassment.