The Glass Room (28 page)

Katalin shrugged. ‘He helped me from time to time. It was difficult to get by sometimes.’ And then she looked up, suddenly defiant. ‘Do you want me to say that I’m ashamed of taking money from him? Well, I’m not. You’ve never had to worry about where you’re going to spend the night, have you? Or where your next meal’s coming from. Or how you are going to buy clothes for your baby. But when you can’t find a job and you can’t afford the rent, then things look very different.’

‘And when was this?’

‘A few years ago.’

The girl looked as though she was about to cry, that was the absurd thing. She made a small, sorry figure standing there looking at the ducks, her face pale, her eyes glistening, her mouth drawn down in childish misery. Like Ottilie when she was about to burst into tears, but not Ottilie now — Ottilie when she was six. A child. ‘I’m sorry, Frau Liesel, but I don’t want to lie to you.’

‘In a way you already have, haven’t you? Did you plan it all? Coming to Mĕsto, I mean. Did you think you might find him and inveigle your way into his family?’

Katalin shook her head vehemently. ‘I had no idea where he lived. I didn’t even know his name. Only Viktor. And we’d not seen each other for some time. I’d got frightened, see.’

‘Frightened?’

‘Of what I felt for him. The occasional pick-up was easy to forget. But not him.’ She blinked the tears away. ‘I moved away from my place and got a job and I never expected to see him again. He’d given me a bit of money, for Marika really, and I thought we could make a fresh start with that. Look, I’m sorry about this, Frau Liesel, it’s not what I wanted to say but you really surprised me with that question. You’ll probably throw me out now, won’t you? What’ll I do then? I can’t get work here, can I? I’ll have to go back …’ She was weeping now, like a child faced with some impossible demand. Liesel watched her, barely comprehending.

‘I’m not saying that at all, Kati. I don’t really know what I
am
saying. Or what to think.’ But she
was
thinking: she was thinking an image, just an image that shifted across the screen of memory: people crowded into the Glass Room. And the noise, the talk and the laughter, she heard that; and the sound of metal — a knife — against glass, and Viktor being helped up onto a chair and standing there and calling for quiet, and an approximate hush descending so that his voice could rise above the residual chatter to talk of transparency and clarity and how he wanted his house to be like that — transparent and full of light. And all the time he was going on business trips to Vienna and fucking Katalin in the shabby opaque world of some hotel bedroom.

She drew on the cigarette. And yet she had known, hadn’t she? From the moment that Katalin had stood there on the stage in the Glass Room and he had looked at her with shock, with horror even, she had known.

She looked round. ‘Are you in love with Viktor?’

There was a long pause. ‘Yes, I think I am.’

Liesel thought for a minute. It seemed very important that she get this right, use the right words, say the correct things. Which weren’t
correct
at all, not in that sense. Most incorrect, in fact. The kind of thing she would only have dared say to Hana. ‘You don’t speak Czech, do you? Of course you don’t. Well, in Czech we have an expression,
propadnout lásce
, to
fall
in love. You can’t do that in German, can you? In German you just come into love. But in Czech you can
fall
into it. Am I making sense? Well that never happened to me. I never fell in love with Viktor. Came into it, perhaps, but never fell. And then when Martin came along …’ She drew on the cigarette and held the smoke in her lungs before letting it out in a thin stream. ‘The birth was very difficult. I lost a lot of blood and was very ill afterwards. When it was all over things had changed.’

‘Changed?’

‘Between us. It’s difficult to explain. My need for him had gone. Isn’t that strange? I found him … intrusive. I mean physically. Can you understand what I’m saying, Kati?’ She glanced round. ‘I don’t even know whether I should call you that. Kati? Kata? Which? What does Viktor call you?’

‘Kata’s fine. Or Kati.’ The girl looked ahead across the water, with a faint frown, as though she was trying to understand which should be her name. ‘I don’t mind which, Frau Liesel, really I don’t.’

Captivating, Liesel thought. She understood exactly what Viktor saw in her: that pliancy of body, the scent of her skin and her hair, the neat symmetry of her face, the swelling of her bust, much fuller than her own. But something else as well, the hint of blatant sexuality beneath the sleek innocence, the knowledge that she had of men. ‘I like Kati. And that strange Magyar sound you give to it.
Koti
. Maybe you should call me Liesel now, when we’re alone together.’ And then, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t confide in you like this. And yet I have no one else. I’m here on my own and I’ve no one to whom I can tell these things.’ And quite unexpectedly both to herself and, presumably, to Katalin, she was in tears, tears running down her cheeks, tears threatening to dissolve the fragile fabric of her face, tears racking her body. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said through her weeping. ‘I’ve never spoken to anyone like this, Kati, and somehow telling it has made it all the more real.’ And Katalin turned to her and put her arms around her, the smaller woman comforting the taller. It was ridiculous really, Liesel thought. Height should give you some kind of defence, make you less vulnerable, make you able to control your life and your love and your destiny; but it doesn’t. A tall person in tears somehow seems, and feels, ridiculous.

On the surface of things little appeared to change, but that evening Katalin joined Liesel and Viktor for dinner when previously she had always eaten earlier with the children. Viktor didn’t remark on the change. Did he even notice? He was full of his account of meeting Fritz Mandl at lunch in Zurich. Mandl was going to South America, to make his fortune — his third or fourth fortune, Viktor couldn’t be sure which — and maybe that was where they should go, Venezuela or Argentina or somewhere. Mandl was looking for partners. ‘Do you know what happened to his wife? Apparently she left him; apparently she’s making a career in Hollywood.’

‘I told you that, Viktor. Hana helped her, don’t you remember?’

‘Did she? How strange …’

The conversation died away. It was like a family meal after the announcement of a death, stories started but not completed, comments stillborn. ‘How are the children getting on at school?’ he asked, which was not the kind of thing that usually concerned him. But the question was treated like a serious enquiry, each child’s progress analysed, teachers discussed, progress dissected. Katalin thought that Marika needed some help with her Latin — she hadn’t studied Latin before — and Viktor thought that it might be arranged. Some private tuition, perhaps. The cost? The cost would be no problem.

After the meal Katalin left them alone. ‘Perhaps we should talk,’ he said. ‘About that business this morning.’ He had spoken to Katalin, she knew that. His face betrayed him: anxiety, distraction, the knowledge that a life that had been disrupted by circumstance could now be blown to smithereens. The roles, she understood, had neatly reversed.

‘Why didn’t you do what I asked? Why did you speak to her?’

‘Why should I do what you ask? Because you’re my husband? It’s been going on for years, hasn’t it? We’ve been sharing you for most of our married life.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘All those trips to Vienna when you could so easily have come home. Oh yes, I know all about them. At least, I can imagine all about them. I thought it was just women, tarts, whatever. What men do. But it wasn’t tarts, was it? It was her. No, she hasn’t told me anything but it doesn’t take much to work it out. I tried to contact you once at the Sacher and they were most apologetic that you weren’t there. As though it was their fault. You weren’t at the Bristol either. You weren’t anywhere I knew.’ She gave a bitter laugh, lighting a cigarette and drawing the smoke deep into her lungs. ‘I suppose it happens all the time. I suppose the hotel staff are used to it.’

‘You never said anything.’

‘I didn’t want to believe it myself. We spend much of our lives not wanting to believe it ourselves, don’t we? When did it start?’

He shrugged but didn’t answer. She tapped cigarette ash onto her plate, something that he loathed. ‘Years,’ she said. ‘Before Martin? I suppose so. Did you love her as much as you loved me? Or maybe you never loved me. Maybe that’s it. I suppose she does things for you that I won’t do? Is that it? What does she do, suck your penis, is that it?’

‘Don’t be vulgar.’

She laughed, but the laughter didn’t really work. It seemed more like a cry of misery or pain or something. ‘You know what Hana always says? The way to a man’s heart is through his cock. She’s right, isn’t she?’

‘No, she’s not.’

‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it, Viktor. I don’t want to hear mention of it again, nor do I ever want to be embarrassed by it. And it goes without saying that the children must never, ever know. Now, if you don’t mind, I must go to bed. I was up most of last night and I feel very tired.’

The man from the planning department examines the hallway suspiciously, then glances at the plans that he has just taken out of his briefcase. He frowns, as though he expects to find inconsistencies between reality and the official documents. ‘Five bedrooms?’ he says, tapping with his finger. But he doesn’t wait for an answer as he sets off down the corridor, opening doors as he goes. Except for the odd bit of furniture — a bedframe in one, a cupboard in another — the rooms are bare.

‘These are the children’s rooms,’ Laník explains as he hurries along behind.

‘
Were
,’ the man says. ‘They
were
the children’s.’

‘Were. And the nanny’s room at the end. They had a nanny to look after the kids.’

The man writes something in his notes. ‘And the master bedroom?’

‘Two bedrooms, either side of the main bathroom. Back there.’

They examine those equally barren spaces. ‘This one was hers,’ Laník says of one of them. His tone is soft and affectionate. ‘She was all right. Lovely woman really. But
he
was a bastard. Arrogant, you know what I mean?’

‘A Jew,’ the man says, his tone implying, what do you expect? He opens the door onto the terrace. Outside it’s like the wreckage of a seaside holiday cottage — the pergola bare and rusting, the semicircular bench in need of a lick of paint, the sandpit empty. There are even some weeds growing round the edge of the sand, ragged, thrifty plants finding some kind of living in that unpromising soil. ‘Where the kids play during the summer,’ Laník explains.

‘Played.’

‘Played. That’s what I meant. Look, if they’re not coming back—’

‘I’ve told you, they no longer own the house. So even if they were to come back they wouldn’t come back here. Not without taking the matter to court. And they’re Jews. Jews aren’t going to win any more cases now.’

‘But what about me and my sister? That’s what I want to know. We live here as well.’

‘That remains to be seen. It all depends what we do with the building. But for the moment …’

‘But we need to live. We need a roof over our heads.’

The man ignores him. ‘Now the lower floor, I think.’

Laník shows the way, back inside and down the stairs. At the entrance to the Glass Room the surveyor pauses and glances at the plans once more. ‘Open-plan living space, eh? Very classy.’

‘They were classy people.’

‘But not very practical.’ He stalks around the Glass Room, tutting all the time. It’s a habit he has. The tut of bureaucratic disapproval. When he passes the piano he lifts the lid and plays a single note. The note does nothing in the place, just dies away amongst the chrome and the glass. He sniffs, looking round the empty expanse. ‘Where has all the furniture gone? Back in the office they said that it was all specially designed for the place, all of a piece. Where is it?’

‘Where is what?’

‘The furniture.’

‘Oh, that. They took it. Virtually all of it. Stacks of money, you see. So they just shipped it all out. Except for the piano. As you can see.’

The man glances in at the kitchens. ‘What’s downstairs?’

‘The basement. Pokey little rooms — laundry, storerooms, boiler, that kind of thing. Do you want to see? It’s not really worth it.’

The man opens the plans on a table. He points. ‘This is the garage?’

‘That’s right. Empty of course. Used to have a couple of Landauers, but they’ve gone too. And that’ — he gestures over the man’s shoulder to indicate the rooms behind the garage — ‘is where me and my sister live.’

The man isn’t really interested. He looks at the plans with an expert eye. ‘What is it? Sixteen by thirty-two, something like that. Over five hundred square metres per floor and not a lot you can do with it.’ Shaking his head he folds the plans away and returns them to his briefcase. ‘You can hardly put people in here, can you? It’s more like a gymnasium than a living room. What a waste.’

‘So what d’you think’ll happen?’

‘No idea. They’ll probably pull the place down.’

‘What about us? What about me and my sister?’ The surveyor shrugs. ‘In the meantime there needs to be somebody on site. I’ll have a word back at the office, see if I can fix you up as caretaker.’

The letter from the lawyers in Mĕsto reached the Landauer breakfast table days later. The mail — delivered promptly at seven o’clock by the celebrated Swiss postal service — was always placed beside Viktor’s plate. There were the usual bills, letters addressed to him about various business concerns, sometimes a letter for Liesel from home — perhaps from her mother, rarely from her father, occasionally (as this morning) from Hana. But this time there was also one from the family lawyers, a letter distinguished from the others by a certain gravity, as though the law firm’s legal fees could somehow be sensed by the weight and texture of the paper. Viktor glanced at it and then looked at her with a bleak expression that she did not quite recognise. But then there were many things she did not recognise about Viktor nowadays. ‘It’s from Procházka.’ Procházka was the partner who always dealt with personal matters of the family.