The Glass Room (30 page)

‘More like an art gallery.’

A voice, heavy with irony, says, ‘Degenerate art,’ and there is more laughter, confident laughter now as they begin to sense each other’s views. Stahl is delighted with them. Perfect examples of the finer points of the Teutonic race. His children, he thinks, although they are barely younger than he is; his flock. Two of them, a man called Weber and a woman called Elfriede Lange, worked under Fischer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin where Lange was a pupil of the redoubtable Agnes Bluhm. Lothar Scherer and Ewald Amsel have come from Jena, from Karl Astel’s Institute for Human Genetics and Racial Policy. There is a representative of Fritz Lenz’s group in Berlin and another from Reche’s Institute for Race and Ethnology at Leipzig University. Three others come from the newly established Institute for Racial Biology at Charles University in Prague and bring with them the advantage of speaking Czech. ‘We must look upon ourselves as pioneers in this great endeavour,’ Stahl tells them. ‘Remember, always remember, that we are first and foremost scientists. It is as scientists that we shall comport ourselves in this delicate work.’ He talks to them in inspiring terms, of science, of discovery, of the frontiers of knowledge being pushed forward even as the armies of the German people push forward the frontiers of the Third Reich. ‘We live,’ he tells them, ‘in historic times.’

By now the house has been transformed. The upstairs rooms have become offices and the kitchens are being converted into a laboratory. In the basement one room is being prepared to receive an X-ray machine. Another room is already a photographic darkroom, left by the original owners. Curtains have been drawn in order to divide one section of the Glass Room from another. There are anthropometrical devices in front of the onyx wall, scales for weighing, a vertical stand for measuring height, a chair that resembles a dentist’s but with a construction of steel rulers suspended above the head rest, tables with callipers lying ready. Drapes have been hung in front of the semicircle of Macassar panelling and lights erected to shine on the focus of the curve, converting the dining area into a photographic studio. A camera — a Rolleiflex twin lens reflex — stands ready on a tripod. Only the piano, incongruously, remains from the past. Stahl has seen to it that a piano tuner, a Jew, has done his work and restored the perfect tones of the Bösendorfer.

After the furniture comes the documentation equipment. A lorry draws up outside and heavy machines are unloaded into the garage. Workmen undo the packaging and stand back to examine what they have been carrying: great black contraptions in steel and Bakelite with the name of the manufacturer on brass plates, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft mbH. One of the machines resembles a mangle. Another has a typewriter keyboard but the machine itself is out of all proportion to a typewriter, as large as an upright piano; a printing machine, perhaps. The whole space that once housed two Landauer motor cars now takes on the aspect of the print shop of a newspaper. There is the same hum of machinery, the same smell of ink and ozone. Soldiers carry boxes and boxes of files into the main building, all the documentary evidence that has been collected so far in Vienna and is forming the basis for the most important catalogue on human variation that the world has ever seen.

And then the subjects begin to arrive.

A bus offloads them at the gate, no more than a dozen at a time. There is a uniformity about each group — either a dozen males or a dozen females, all of approximately the same age. The soldiers on the gate watch as the visitors are ushered across the pavement to the front door. There is no shouting, no military coercion, just the quiet, polite indication of where they should go and what they should do. Czech or German is spoken as required. ‘We are scientists,’ Stahl has reminded the staff. ‘Zoologists treat animals with due respect. So as anthropologists we must treat our human subjects with due respect.’

The subjects are taken by the receptionist down to the lower level, into the Glass Room. Details are filled in on a form: date of birth, place of birth, first language, second language, other languages, religion, race, nation. There are other matters — a record of diseases suffered, of conditions present in the ancestry: mongolism, alcoholism, criminality, mental retardation. It is all confidential. It is all in the interests of pure science.

Clutching their files the subjects move into the library area. Here there is a series of tests to perform — shapes to match, series to complete, patterns to identify. Then they move to one of the cubicles to change into medical gowns. From there they move to a desk where a needleprick — a sharp intake of breath, sometimes a small cry — reveals blood groups, and a sphygmomanometer measures blood pressure.

Stahl watches.

In the measurement areas the staff work in pairs, a recorder and an examiner, the one positioning the subject at the stadiometer — legs fractionally apart, heels, buttocks and shoulder blades in contact with the back board, heads held in a grip, chins horizontal with the ground — while the other waits, pen in hand. The examiner kneels down, pushing and pulling, adjusting and cajoling. It all has to be just right, standardised, exact. Measurements are taken: total height, hip diameter, chest diameter. Then sitting: leg measurements, arm measurements. Then the dentist’s chair: head dimensions, the callipers holding the different crania in their cool jaws. The smooth girls, the grizzled men, the matrons and the husbands. Skin colour is assessed, the inside forearm compared with a von Luschan chromatic chart. Eye colour is recorded, rows of glaucous model eyes staring back at the examiner to be matched with those real ones, wide and anxious, in the subject’s own face. ‘It’s all right,’ the examiners reassure their subjects, ‘there’s nothing to worry about. No pain, no discomfort.’

Stahl watches.

Precision, the cool gaze of scientific objectivity. The measurement is as perfect as the dimensions of the Glass Room itself.

‘Now we will just take some photographs, and then everything is done. Please take off your gown and hand it to the assistant. This is a scientific examination. We are all scientists here. And the records are entirely confidential.’

Stahl watches.

Gown handed aside, the subject stands naked under the lights and before the judgement of the camera. Sometimes they are as white and pure as alabaster, sometimes mottled or brushed with hair, sometimes creased and sagging like old cloth, sometimes firm and youthful, some bellies bloated, some mere cushions, ribs visible in some, breasts sagging like bladders or sharp and prominent like fruit, penises hanging, strangely ageless, like the probosces of blind, hirsute animals. The whole gamut of human variation.

Stahl watches, enthralled by the systematic measurement of what defines human and subhuman, of what makes
Herrenvolk
and
Untermenschen
.

Switzerland was an island in the midst of disaster. All around swirled the floodwaters of war, fetid and dangerous, carrying with them the wreckage of lives and places. They heard on the wireless and read in the newspapers of armies marching, of men dying, of refugees fleeing, of Paris itself disappearing under the flood.

Have you heard about Kaprálová
?, Hana wrote. Nowadays the letters always came with official stamps — the eagle with the
Hakenkreuz
in its talons — and a sticky label holding the flap down and announcing
Geöffnet
, opened. Liesel imagined bored men and women glancing over the banalities, missing the little bits of personal code, peering dully into other people’s private lives, seeing everything and understanding nothing.

You know she dropped Martinů and married this fellow on the rebound? Perhaps you don’t. Jiři Mucha, Alfons Mucha’s son, would you believe! Well, she fell ill and was in hospital just as the Germans were approaching Paris. Can you imagine the panic? Apparently — I got this from Kundera who heard it from old Kaprál himself — her husband managed to get her out of the city just in time. They fled south, to Montpellier, I think. But there was nothing to be done: the poor girl died in hospital two days after the fall of Paris. God knows what it was. An ectopic pregnancy? Anyway, the lovely creature is dead, and Kaprál and his wife distraught.

Liesel looked up from the letter. Kaprálová dead! Another part of the past dead. The young dying as often as the old. Out of the window the sun was bright on the lake, but she saw the wreckage of lives all around her, and herself cast up on this island of safety. How long would it last, she wondered?

We ourselves are as poor as church mice nowadays
, Hana continued. She wrote that bit in Czech —
chudý jako kostelní myš
. That’s what she did, mixed her German and Czech, perhaps to make it difficult for the censors.
All O’s money is frozen — some new move against his people — and we are living hand to mouth
.
Darling, you cannot imagine how dreadful it is becoming
…

‘His people’ was code, Liesel had worked that out months ago. It meant the Jews.

I think I may have to look for work, can you imagine?! God knows what I’ll do — walk the streets, probably!

She smiled at Hana’s exaggerations, folded the letter back into its envelope, put it away in a drawer and hurried downstairs. The reply would have to wait. It was almost midday and they had a guest for lunch. ‘Are the children ready?’ she called to Katalin. ‘I want them to look presentable.’

Then she hurried around, putting things right in the sitting room, going in to the kitchen to make sure that the cook was prepared. They saw so few people these days, and this was a very special person, a link with the past, a link back to the house. He would bring with him that air of bullish self-confidence that would put everything else in perspective for a few hours.

‘There’s the car! We must all go and greet him. Hurry, let’s hurry.’

They came out to welcome him as the taxi drew up on the gravel, Martin, Ottilie and Marika standing in an obedient line in their Sunday best with Katalin behind them and Viktor beside Liesel. And their guest played the part to perfection, almost as though he was inspecting a guard of honour, bowing solemnly to Marika and her mother, shaking Martin’s hand and proffering a cheek for Ottilie’s kiss. ‘I remember when you were just a little baby,’ he told the girl; and Liesel remembered too. She remembered baring her breast for the baby to suck, and Rainer watching, his cheeks flushed, perhaps with embarrassment, perhaps with desire, maybe both. Liesel felt something like that now, a flush of something that was not quite embarrassment.

‘I see you’ve betrayed the cause, Landauer,’ he said, looking up at the front of the villa, at the ogive windows and the crenellations, at the tower with its pointed turret. ‘If ornament is crime then this house is a capital offence.’

Viktor smiled. ‘We are beggars now, von Abt. Beggars can’t be choosers.’

‘They can always choose the bridge they sleep under.’

‘Let me show you the garden,’ Liesel suggested. ‘You may loathe the house but you will love the garden. Viktor, are you coming?’

But Viktor was going to see about the wine. He had a particularly fine Montrachet, something that Rainer would surely appreciate. Not quite beggars yet. So Liesel and Rainer walked down the lawn to the lakeside together, Liesel with her arm through his, the children running on ahead. She hadn’t expected to be so delighted with his visit. He reminded her of the excitement of those early days, the days of optimism when they were planning and building the house, when there was hope and confidence and the storm clouds were so far away on the horizon that it was possible to ignore them altogether. ‘How do you enjoy the life of a refugee?’ she asked. ‘Are you like me, in danger of dying of exile?’

But he insisted that he was not a refugee. He had a project in Zurich, some bank that wanted a new headquarters. And then the German government wanted him to go back and design entire towns. ‘That fellow Speer has been begging me. He’s not a complete fool like some of them.’

The idea was shocking. ‘But you won’t accept?’

That loud and roguish laugh. ‘Certainly not. They can do their own dirty work. When I’m finished here I’m off to America.’

‘America!’

‘They’ve offered me a post at one of their absurd universities that no one has ever heard of. The Michigan Institute for Science and Technology. It is known to one and all as MIST. How do you like that? Out of the European mess and into the American muck.’
^*

She laughed at the joke and hugged his arm to her. Rainer gave her hope, a sense of possibility. He talked of steel and glass, of light and volume, of buildings soaring up so high that clouds obscured their summits. America! Apparently this institute of the future wanted him to redesign their whole campus. It seemed incredible: in Europe they were destroying but in America they were building.

‘You know the house is no longer ours?’ she told him. ‘They took it from us, stole it. Because Viktor is a Jew.’

‘That means nothing. When the war is over …’

‘But will it ever be over? That’s what I want to know. Will it ever be over? It was terrible when we left, you know that? Our beloved house. Viktor’s and mine, but yours as well. It was like having a limb amputated. We were so happy there. You know I compose it in my mind? It’s like recreating it in a dream. I walk round the terrace and pick up the children’s toys. I go inside and walk into the rooms, Ottilie’s, Martin’s, and their bathroom with the ducks — you’d be appalled to see them, Rainer, a line of rubber duck silhouettes following their mother across the tiles and into the bath. Then I go down into the Glass Room — twelve steps to the curve, and then round and down nine more, and the space opens out around me just as it really was. I’m there, right there, where we were so happy.’

‘And you’re not happy now?’

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to explain about Viktor and Katalin and the awful penalty of isolation and indifference. Surely Rainer would understand. ‘I don’t feel I belong here. Viktor says he belongs anywhere. He claims to be a citizen of the world, but I miss home and friends much more. And everything is so uncertain. He always talks of going to the United States, but it’s not that simple for people like us, without work, without relatives there. They have quotas. He says that one way of doing it is via Cuba, but who wants to go to Cuba?’