The Glass Room (8 page)

‘It’s well sealed underneath,’ von Abt reassured him. ‘Modern materials. We’re not living in the nineteenth century. And when we lay the pavement we’ll put a slope on it. There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘But still …’

They looked round the other rooms, the bare spaces that would be bathrooms and bedrooms. Their voices echoed down the stairs and into the living room, the wide and empty expanse below. Canvas hung where the glass would go, casting the space in shadow. A plank lay abandoned on the floor. There was a bucket with remains of cement in the bottom, and a sheet of newspaper, the title
Lidové Noviny
plainly visible. The three of them walked round in the twilight, trying to picture the place as it would be, the new life that would be enacted there. Instead there was this concrete space, as large as a garage.

‘The partition will be here,’ von Abt said, standing in the middle and holding out his arms, ‘to divide the sitting area from the library area.’

The partition was a matter of contention. What would the material be? ‘It must be onyx,’ von Abt had insisted when they had discussed the matter in Vienna some days earlier. Onyx seemed absurd, extravagant. It was a gemstone, a meretricious material, a thing of cameo brooches and decorative boxes. But then von Abt himself seemed absurd at times, with his dramatic flourishes and his talk of space and light, of volume and thrust. ‘I have considered alabaster and travertine, but have fallen for onyx. It will be the
pièce de résistance
.’

He stood now in the shadows of the unfinished living space, and extolled the virtues of his idea, described the complex veining of the rock, the lucidity, the delicate colour of honey and gold. ‘The colour of a young girl’s hair,’ he said, glancing at Liesel. ‘The colour of your daughter’s hair.’

Viktor looked at the two of them, sensing that small current of sexuality that travelled like a spark between them. The evidence was there plain enough, in the widening of her eyes behind her spectacles, in the faint opening of her lips as though to admit something shameful. He wondered about it not with jealousy but with a calm consideration of the possibilities of faithfulness and betrayal.

‘How much would it cost, this onyx?’

Von Abt’s eloquence stopped. ‘Ah. The cost. The cost is, I am afraid, considerable.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Approximately fifteen thousand dollars. That is about—’

‘It is about a small fortune! My God! About half a million crowns. Enough to build an entire house.’

Von Abt nodded. ‘But think how remarkable it will be, Herr Viktor.’

‘Certainly it will be remarkable. There are many people who possess onyx ashtrays. I don’t imagine there’s a single one with an onyx wall.’

That was the end of the viewing, really, a sour note of cost intruding on the exercise of fantasy that was required to imagine the house as it would be, not as it was — a thing of light and reflection, not this dull box of grey concrete. They saw von Abt off on the Vienna train and returned to their turreted villa in silence.

‘You’re angry about Rainer’s proposals, aren’t you?’ Liesel said when they were in the sitting room after dinner.

He shrugged. ‘They seem extravagant at times. It’s our money he’s spending, not his own.’

‘The onyx wall, you mean? Viktor, do you know what “onyx” means? It’s the Greek for a fingernail. It’s Venus’s fingernail, isn’t that wonderful? The fingernail of the goddess of love.’

‘Did von Abt tell you that?’

‘As a matter of fact, he did.’

‘It’s an inordinately expensive fingernail.’

‘Oh, don’t be so dull, Viktor. If we are going to do something wonderful, then we must make sacrifices.’

Didn’t she understand? She lived in her protected world, along with Hana Hanáková and her other friends, and they talked about their painters and their musicians and their actors and actresses, and meanwhile the outside world battled with recession and political unrest. When would the one world impinge on the other? And what kind of shock would they feel then?

He got up and put his book aside. ‘I’m going to bed.’

‘Darling, have I made you angry?’

‘Of course you haven’t.’

But she had. She came up to bed later and he lay in the darkness, listening to her as she went to her bathroom to wash, and then crossed the corridor to her room. There was a thin baby’s cry and then silence. She would be feeding Ottilie. Although she sometimes did it openly in front of him, the process always seemed alien, something private between mother and child. Her large, milky breasts were quite changed from the small paps he had once stroked and kissed, indeed her whole body seemed different now, a thing designed for mothering rather than sex. The baby made strange grunting noises as she fed, like a pig suckling. And there wasn’t much difference, was there? A sow feeding her litter, a woman with a baby. Animals both, with animal needs and compulsions. He lay in the darkness and thought of Liesel and motherhood and the new house. It was in this dark and womblike house — the Castle, he called it — that Liesel had conceived their child. What would be conceived in the new house? Other children, perhaps. And what else?

His mind wandered, in and out of sleep. The onyx wall, he thought of the onyx wall. A fingernail, Venus’s fingernail. He thought of fingernails — Liesel’s, which were long and painted red, and others which were blunt and uncoloured and bitten down to the quick, holding between them a cigarette.

‘Have you got a light?’

Naively he had paused to answer her.

‘A light,’ she repeated. ‘D’you have a light?’ There was an air of impatience about her manner, as though she was hurrying to an appointment. All around him was the fairground noise of the Prater, the laughter of children, the calls of stallholders; ahead of him the Nordbahnhof and the train home; and in front of him this woman — smaller than Liesel, with quick, intelligent features and a slight sheen to her complexion — holding an unlit cigarette between her fingers. Her eyes were blue, so pale that they gave the curious illusion of transparency, as though you were looking through them and seeing the sky.

He fumbled for his lighter and watched as she bent towards the flame. She wore a grey cloche hat and her hair was dark and cut short, not cropped as severely as Liesel’s and her friends’, but short enough to be a statement that she was a modern woman. A Slav, he fancied. There was no more than a smudge of rouge on her cheeks but her lips were a blood-red arabesque. Certainly she was pretty — a neat, precise prettiness — but she wasn’t in other respects remarkable. She might have been a maid out for a walk in the park, dressed up for her day off in a narrow knee-length skirt and a white blouse beneath her neat little jacket. There was a brooch pinned on the lapel, a lump of amber like a boiled sweet.

She straightened up and blew smoke away. ‘Can I do anything for you then?’

He hesitated. There in the park, with the Riesenrad, the Giant Wheel, looming over them, he considered what she had said, while she looked around at the crowd, as though to see if anything more interesting was in the offing. She drew on the cigarette in short, sharp snatches, as though she wasn’t really used to smoking. Maybe she was just about to move away. Maybe she had seen another possibility.

‘Yes, perhaps you can.’

‘All right, then. Where d’you want to go?’

Why had he not merely dismissed her and gone on to the station to catch the afternoon train back to Mĕsto? Curiosity, certainly, and something more, some quality of youth that he saw in her and, incongruously enough, innocence. But many other things. Plain sexuality, of course. The mystery of the unknown. And intangible things: the set of her head, the precise curve of cheek and eyebrow, her gentleness of expression and the quiet amusement that he saw behind her anxious look. ‘What about a ride on the wheel?’

She seemed startled. ‘That thing? You won’t get me up there.’

‘Are you afraid? Why are women always afraid of such things?’

It was the mention of her gender that did it. He could see it in her expression. She had been about to shrug her shoulders and move on, but now she paused and regarded him carefully, head on one side. ‘That’s not true. Women aren’t afraid. We just have real fears to deal with, not the silly fears that men dream up.’ There was a quality to her answer that startled him, a sharp edge of intelligence that he had not expected.

‘Come on then. Prove it.’

The idea seemed to amuse her. ‘All right.’

They had to join a short queue. There were some families in front, and a young couple, and then it was their turn. The great wheel, its circumference rising two hundred feet above, wound round and presented a cabin to them, its door held open by the attendant. For a moment it appeared that the group following, two women with half a dozen children between them, might crowd in behind but at the last moment the attendant held them back. Viktor and the young woman stepped alone into the empty cabin.

The box rocked gently, like a boat at the quayside. She tottered against him and there was that moment of unconsidered contact, his arms holding her, her hair against his face. She made a hasty apology and gripped the rail to look out of the window as the gondola shifted forwards and began to climb. ‘D’you know the last time I did this I was about ten years old?’

‘When was that?’

‘Fifteen years ago?’

‘You don’t look that old.’

She smiled slyly. ‘And what about you?’

The park was shrinking below them, the skyline unfolding. A distant view of hills. He thought of the view across Mĕsto from the new house; and he thought of Liesel. ‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Please yourself.’

The cabin swayed gently in the breeze. Standing side by side, they looked at the view and seemed to consider their options. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Kata. And yours?’

‘Viktor.’

Should he have given a false name? Was Kata itself false? What was it really? Katarina, something like that? She was, she told him, Hungarian not Slav, although she came from Slovakia; but then there were many Hungarians living across the border in the new country, weren’t there? Just another group of people cut off from their origins by politicians drawing lines on maps. ‘Like you,’ she pointed out.

‘Me?’

‘Aren’t you Czechish?’

‘How can you tell?’

Again that knowing smile. ‘You learn things.’

The wheel rose to its climax and tipped over into the descent. She gave a little gasp and gripped the rail tightly for a moment, then turned to him and laughed. Her laughter was delightful, a bubble of innocence, as though she had never before picked a man up in the Prater. ‘Where do you want to go then?’ she asked. ‘You got a hotel? I can recommend one if you like.’

‘That’d be fine. I’ll have to send a telegram first.’

‘To your wife?’

He shrugged, watching the world slowly rising to meet them, the Haupt-Allee with its strolling couples, its bicycle riders, its running children and dogs.

‘Don’t worry, most men are like that,’ she said, as though talking about the victims of some debilitating but non-lethal disease. ‘It’s just the way things are.’

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.