The Glass Room (18 page)

They came round the front of the art gallery. The building was a confection of the Vienna Secession, all sinuous window mouldings and exhortatory epigraphs on the walls.
Dům umĕní
announced a noticeboard, but the frieze above the portal still said
Künstlerhaus
and still celebrated the jubilee of Emperor Franz Josef. They paid for their tickets and went inside. The photographs in the exhibition were strange and disorientating. One was a close-up of a single female eye. It watched you wherever you went. Then there was an abstract photograph in which the artist had apparently used the photographic process itself to create a swirling pattern of shade and shape. Another picture showed a female doll, the kind of thing Ottilie played with. But this doll was naked and starkly lit, with its head broken off, and there was machinery coming out through its neck, clockwork machinery, cogwheels and springs.

‘I haven’t told you the end of my adventure with Eva Mandl,’ Hana said as they stood looking at this image.

‘I’m not sure I want to know.’

‘Oh but you do, darling. She spent the night in my bed — that was my reward.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘To try and make you jealous. And the next morning — that was just yesterday. It seems an age. Anyway, the next morning I put her on the train to Prague. Paris, that’s where she wanted to go. I offered to go with her but she said no. She’ll write, she said she’ll write.’

‘What does she intend to do?’

Hana laughed bitterly. ‘She wants to become a movie star.’

The radio is on in every bar, in every café, in every living room across the city. Rumour comes quicker than the news broadcasts, conveyed on its own mysterious ether — the Austrian army has fought back against the invasion, hundreds of deaths have been reported, there are riots in Vienna where the Communists have taken to the barricades. There is fighting in the streets between National Socialists and the police. Almost as quickly come the denials: there is no unrest, the Austrian chancellor Schuschnigg has ordered the army not to resist, there must be no shedding of German blood.

The next day the newspapers print photographs of troops crossing the border, and a line of German police marching into some quaint Tyrolean town with villagers raising their arms in the Hitler salute. One picture shows a peasant woman in tears. The German papers claim that they are tears of joy; the Czech papers opt for tears of despair.

The same morning they tune in to Austrian radio and hear the great sea-sound of the crowd at the Heldenplatz in Vienna, the drums beating and the bands playing and Hitler’s voice crackling out through the quiet and calm of the Glass Room, announcing
Anschluss
, union. Austria is no longer an independent republic: overnight it has become an eastern province of the greater German Reich, Österreich become Ostmark.

Where, Viktor wonders, is Kata now?

‘It is simply illegal,’ he says. He sounds absurd saying that, absurd and impotent. But more than that, he
knows
that he sounds absurd as he paces up and down the Glass Room waving the latest edition of
Lidové Noviny
and talking about the treaties of Versailles and St Germain. Both those accords seem like something out of the history books, like Magna Carta or the Edict of Worms: things that apply to different people in different places a long time ago. ‘If he’s allowed to do this, what the devil will happen next?’

What happens, like torrential rain after the first crack of thunder, is the arrival of the refugees. They cross the southern border, from Vienna and the other cities, a ragbag collection of men, women and children with whatever possessions they can carry with them. They flood into the country and the city, some by train, some by car, some tramping along the roads pushing handcarts and humping suitcases. The flood runs down streets and amongst the houses, trickling through the alleyways, settling where it can into pools of misery and fear. You cannot go into the city without seeing the human debris washed up against doors and deposited on street corners, the flotsam and jetsam of the new Europe.

‘We must do something for them,’ Viktor says. The expanse of the Glass Room is a reproach, a space where the refugees won’t come, won’t find shelter, won’t be able to unroll their blankets and sleep.

‘What can we do?’ Liesel asks. ‘This is a problem for governments not individuals. How can we help?’

‘It is up to individuals to stir their governments into action.’

Outside in the garden, oblivious to all this, the children are playing. Ottilie is directing Martin in some complex game. Viktor can hear their voices like the chattering of swallows. Ottilie is clearly the wife of their little family, instructing Martin what to do and how to do it. They have her toy pram with them and Martin’s pedal car. But the pedal car won’t go well on the wet grass.

He turns to Liesel. She is reading a magazine, one of those dreadful fashion things she borrows from Hana, a catalogue of attenuated women with bored expressions and no breasts. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I think we may have to consider going ourselves.’

She looks up. It is strange how he has never become used to her looks, her features, the elongated bone structure and long nose and compressed mouth. Every time he looks at her he thinks of the first time they met, the first glance, the first small stir of attraction. ‘Going? Where?’

‘It sounds like running away, doesn’t it? But I don’t see any alternative if things get much worse. I mean, if you look at the situation—’

The magazine lies open on her lap, showing women wearing peignoirs and negligées. ‘Viktor dear, what are you talking about? Where exactly are we going?’

She hasn’t understood. He always expects her to understand what he is talking about and usually she does. Usually she follows the flights of his mind. ‘I mean leaving the house, the city, the country, Liesel. I’m talking about leaving all this just as these wretched refugees have left their homes.’ He looks round as though to emphasise the point: all this, the Glass Room, the quiet and the measured, the ineffable balance and rationality of it all. ‘I mean emigrating. We might have to emigrate.’

Now surely she has understood, but she still hasn’t said anything. The magazine still lies open on her lap, displaying the languid women.

‘At least until all this blows over.’

‘Blows over?’

He shrugs. ‘Who knows? Someone might shoot him. He might have a heart attack — God knows, he looks likely to when you hear him ranting and raving in the way he does. But you can’t rely on something like that, can you? We should at least make plans. Just in case.’

She glances down, and for a moment it seems as though she might continue reading the magazine, but then she looks up again. ‘In case of what?’

‘In case of war, my dear. Invasion. By the way things are going the next target is going to be this country. Look at what’s happening in the border territories already.’

‘Are you serious about this, Viktor?’

‘Would I joke about it?’

She closes the magazine. There’s the faint slap of glossy paper. ‘But how could we leave? This is where we belong. This is our home. We don’t know anywhere else. Oh, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to give me some proverb or other: home is where the heart is, something like that. But home is also this house, this city, our family and friends. And what about the business? How can you suggest just abandoning that?’

He shrugs. ‘I’m a Jew, Liesel, whether I like it or not. Ottilie and Martin are Jews — or half-breeds or whatever they call them nowadays. It’s not by choice. It’s a matter of fact. You can choose not to be a Bolshevik or a homosexual or most of the other things they hate, but you cannot choose not to be a Jew. They decide for you. Jews can’t hold down professional jobs, they can’t own businesses, they pay extra taxes, they can’t marry gentiles, they can’t even visit gentiles in their houses. They get arrested and imprisoned on any pretext whatever. What’s going to happen next? Compulsory divorce for people of mixed marriages? How about that? Jewish children banned from schools? Jews thrown out of their homes? God knows.’

‘But all that’s in Germany, not here.’

‘Don’t be naive, Liesel. It’s Austria as well now. The Nazis are no more than fifty kilometres away from us here in our nice safe house, and in between them and us are the border territories — which are already German anyway.’ He turns and looks out of the great windows again, as though searching for the first signs of their coming. But nothing has changed. The children are still playing, the city is still there, the air is still smudged with the smoke from a thousand fires. Nothing has changed and yet everything has changed. ‘I don’t want us to be in a panic to get out like all those wretched people from Austria. I don’t want to be grabbing things into a suitcase at the last moment. I don’t want my family to be like that.’

‘So where are you planning to go? Not Palestine, for goodness’ sake.’

‘Of course not Palestine. Switzerland. I’ve been moving funds …’

‘You’ve been
what
?’

He looks ahead through the window. What has happened to Kata? He wonders this often. All he knows is that fifteen thousand Schillings were moved out of his Viennese bank account. Nothing more. She just vanished. ‘Advance planning,’ he says to Liesel. ‘Never be caught out without a plan, never be caught out by the market. I’ve been making arrangements. It’s only now that it seemed right to mention it to you.’

‘I suppose it’s not unusual for our part of the world, is it?’ Oskar is saying. ‘Empires come and go, countries come and go, people come and go.’ His bald head gleams in the pale lights of the Glass Room. He is sitting in the front row of chairs, with Hana and Liesel on one side and Viktor on the other. Around them people are taking their seats, the Coordin ating Committee for Refugees, a committee of committees, an assembly of the concerned and the self-satisfied, the do-gooders and the worriers, the selfless and the self- serving.

‘Look at our own little statelet,’ Oskar continues, ‘carved out of central Europe like an intricate piece of folk art. Now you see it, now you don’t. Here one moment and’ — he clicks his fingers — ‘gone the next.’

‘For God’s sake, Oskar,’ Hana snaps. ‘Have a little more tact.’

‘Ah, tact. Like that tactful fellow, Herr Hitler.’

Businessmen, lawyers, academics take their places. Clerics of various persuasions and religions nod cautiously when they meet, like former enemies eyeing each other across recently dismantled barricades. The talk dies away and the chairman of the committee gets to his feet and begins his address.

‘So what sort of stunt is this?’ Oskar whispers loudly.

Hana tries to hush him to silence. ‘They’ve brought some typical refugees to speak to us.’

‘What’s a typical refugee?’

‘For God’s sake shut up and listen.’

Fiddling with his pince-nez, nervously shuffling his papers, anxiously eyeing the bald man in the front row, the chairman endeavours to explain: there is the need for shelter, the need for food, the problem of schooling for displaced children and medical treatment for the sick and care for the elderly, and underneath it all, the pressing need for money. ‘But the intention of this meeting is to try to bring the plight of the refugees home to us all, make their personal, human tragedy part of our own lives. We have decided to introduce you to some witnesses of these terrible events, people who can tell you in their own words what has happened, to share with us the reality that has unfolded in Austria. Perhaps like that we can take these tragic occurrences out of the realm of the newspaper and the newsreel and into our own hearts.’

There is coming and going round the committee table. The secretary, a middle-aged woman with the manner of a schoolteacher, whispers something in the chairman’s ear. ‘I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a delay,’ the chairman explains. ‘But they’re coming, they’re coming.’

‘A nonsense,’ says Oskar. ‘A refugee’s just you and me. There’s nothing to see.’

‘Their story,’ Liesel says. ‘They want to tell their story.’

‘Their story is anybody’s story. That’s not the point. The point is, they are here and the government has got to do something about them.’

Eventually the refugees appear. They are ushered in from the dining area — presumably they’ve been brought down through the kitchens — three adults and three children shuffling round the partition under the direction of the secretary of the committee. With their entry, the Glass Room has taken on something of the quality of a theatre, a small studio theatre of the kind that has become fashionable for avant-garde productions, where the audience sits within touching distance of the actors. No elevated stage, no proscenium arch, just the performance about to begin in the space between the dining area and the door from the stairs. ‘Stand there,’ the secretary tells them. ‘And you, yes, you, go over there.’

The refugees obey dumbly, confused by their sudden appearance before an audience. There is a middle-aged couple, with between them a ten-year-old boy and a fifteen-year-old, bespectacled girl. Their clothes are crumpled, as though they might have spent the night sitting in a third-class railway compartment. Maybe they have. One lens of the girl’s spectacles is cracked, giving her a squint-eyed look. Beside this family of four there is a single woman with her daughter. The daughter is about eight years old, a bright blonde girl in a shabby floral dress. She blushes at the sight of so many people gawping at her. The mother seems to be in her early thirties. She is small and neat, with a sharp, pretty face. Men observe her with close interest. But as she looks back at the audience her expression is one of faint disdain. And those eyes, as pale as the sky at the horizon.

Kata.

The whole essence of the Glass Room is reason. That is what Viktor thinks, anyway. For him it embodies the pure rationality of a Greek classical temple, the austere beauty of a perfect composition, the grace and balance of a painting by Mondrian. There are no disturbing curves to upset the rectilinear austerity of the space. There is nothing convolute, involute, awkward or complex. Here everything can be understood as a matter of proportion and dimension. Yet there, standing mere feet away from him, is Kata.