The Glass Room (17 page)

‘Play something for me, Liesi,’ Hana says when the record comes to an end.

‘I’m not good enough, not when I’ve been drinking. I make mistakes.’

‘I’ll forgive your mistakes. I’ll always forgive your mistakes.’

So they go over to the piano and Liesel plays something she has been practising, Chopin’s Nocturne in F sharp major, a tender and elegiac piece that seems to express what she feels better than any words. The notes fall softly in the soundbox of the Glass Room, as softly and precisely as autumnal leaves on a still day, and when the piece comes to an end Hana bends and kisses her on the nape of her neck.

Carefully Liesel closes the lid of the piano. ‘I think we’d better go to bed.’

Leaving the mess for the maid to clear up in the morning, they turn off the lights and go upstairs. The narrow spaces on the upper floor are clinical and cool, bathed in that milky light that is the mark of this place, whether it comes through the glass panels by day or from the globes in the ceiling by night. They look in on the children and watch them sleeping, they listen at the door of Viktor’s room and hear the faint murmur of his breathing, and then they pause outside the door to the guest room. Liesel turns the handle, then looks at Hana. ‘We are silly things, aren’t we?’ she says.

Silly things,
dumme Dinger
. It sounds absurd.

Vienna had changed. The city of dreams had become the city of nightmares, a city of fear and anticipation. A tide of political violence lapped around the ponderous baroque buildings and although the jolly music, the waltzes and the polkas, continued to be played in the cafés and the ballrooms, the dance was a dance of death.

When Viktor telephoned the Goldene Kugel she had gone.

What did they mean?

She’d pushed off — left the area.

He felt panic bubbling up inside him like vomit. Where was she now?

They had no idea, no idea at all.

What was she doing?

The voice on the other end laughed. ‘What does a girl like that always do?’

He hurried round to the street where she had her little apartment. It wasn’t difficult to find the place. There was the
kasher
butcher and the pawnshop across the street, and the heavy door with its peeling paint. The climb up the dingy stairwell towards the attic was vividly familiar. There was the same smell of cabbages or drains, the same damp, the same taint of mould, and when he got to the top and peered out the window, he saw the Riesenrad over the roof tops just as before. But it wasn’t just as before. This time the door to Kata’s apartment was locked and when he knocked the sound was hollow, as though the space inside were empty and he was hammering on a drum.

‘Anyone there?’ he called against the wood.

There was a movement on the stair below. He looked over the banister and saw an old woman peering up at him. ‘I’m trying to find Frau Kata,’ he told her.

The old crone sucked her teeth and seemed to assess the taste of what she found there. Was this was the woman who looked after Kata’s daughter? ‘Frau Kata,’ he repeated.

‘She’s not here.’

‘Do you know where she is?’

‘She’s not here.’

‘Do you have any idea where she’s gone?’

‘She’s not here.’

‘But do you know where she’s gone?’

The movement of the lips, the thoughtful assessment continued. The woman’s face was shrivelled, like one of those shrunken heads he had seen in the anthropological museum, the skin stretched tight across the cheekbones, the hair scraped up and knotted on the top of the head. ‘She’s not here,’ she repeated.

He came down the stairs. As he approached, the woman backed into the open doorway to her own apartment, slipping behind the door and peering out at him. ‘You keep your distance,’ she said.

‘I just want to know where she is. Do you have any idea where she might have gone to?’ He was suddenly inspired. ‘I’m Marika’s uncle. You know Marika, don’t you? I’m her uncle. I’ve come to bring her a present.’

But the old crone kept chewing on the morsel of whatever it was inside her shrivelled lips, peering at him through the crack in the doorway and repeating, ‘She’s gone away. She’s gone away.’

Hopelessly he went down the stairs and back out into the street. The sulphurous smell of exhaust fumes tainted the air. On the Praterstrasse there was the roar of lorries and cars, the clatter and clang of trams. Pedestrians gathered on the island in the centre and moved across in herds, like people being driven to their fate by unseen forces. Where was Kata? He went round the corner to the Goldene Kugel and found one of the waiters he thought he recognised. Did he have any idea where Fraülein Kata was? But the man hadn’t seen her for some time. Weeks, he thought. No idea, no idea at all. He enquired at the bar but got the same response. ‘Don’t people phone for her?’ Viktor asked, but the barman only shrugged and turned away to serve another customer.

Outside on the pavement he stood irresolutely for a while, then began to walk up Praterstrasse towards the railway station. The disproportionate city lay all around him, a city of faded glories and dying significance, a city with a decorative and frivolous surface but with dark secrets at its heart. The slogan
Juden raus
! was painted on a wall, along with a little stick figure hanging from a crudely painted scaffold. Elsewhere there was a black swastika daubed over a poster that showed a hammer and sickle. Above the roofs of the buildings he could see the arc of the Riesenrad turning slowly in the evening air. In the railway station he wrote a letter and posted it at the office from where he had phoned.

My darling Kata, I have been to your flat and discovered that you have gone. Please contact me. Please don’t just abandon me
.

Then he wrote his telephone number, and signed the note,
With love, Viktor
.

‘It was at the Sacher, darling. Where else?’ They were in the Café Zeman, amidst the chatter and the gossip, sitting at their favourite table where they could see and be seen.

‘And you arranged it all?’

‘A glorious plot, just like spies. The problem was getting her away from her companion. I’ve told you about her, haven’t I? Some dreadful woman with a moustache like a walrus and jaws like nutcrackers. So I waited for her in the café and as she and the walrus came in, I slipped out to the bathroom. That was the plan, that she was to meet me there. But she didn’t come. There I was, standing in the corridor for about half an hour and wondering whether to put plan B into action.’

‘Plan B?’

‘Rush in and push a
Sachertorte
in the walrus’s face and just grab Eva. Anyway, just as I’m about to make my move, out she comes, looking as pale as a ghost but many, many times more lovely. It seems she had had a stand-up row with the walrus. “I don’t care what orders my husband gave you, I’m going to have a piss all by myself!” That’s what she said apparently, with the whole café listening, can you imagine? Poor love, she was almost paralysed with fright. But so brave! So I grab her by the hand and off we go, down the corridor and out of the back entrance, imagining the walrus on our heels.’

‘Hanička, this is ridiculous.’

‘You think I’m making it up?’

‘When was all this?’

‘Three days ago. Darling, you knew I was going to Vienna. I told you.’

‘But you never told me you were going to meet Eva Mandl.’

‘I’m telling you now, darling. You know the back door of the Sacher? The one onto Maysedergasse?’

‘I’ve never used it.’

‘Of course you haven’t. But it’s there sure enough. I had a taxi waiting, with the engine running and the meter ticking over. A getaway car, just like in the films.’

‘You
are
making this up.’

‘I already had the stuff in the taxi. A black suit from Grünbaum and the dearest little pillbox hat with a veil from P&C Habig. We pulled the blinds down and Eva changed there and then. Can you imagine
that
? Eva Mandl half undressed in a taxi? I had to help her, just had to.’

‘Hanička, this is absurd!’

‘Liesi, it is
true
! By the time I’d got her to the Nordbahnhof I’d transformed her into the Merry Widow. No one would have recognised her behind her veil. And we had a private compartment booked on the train. The logic was that the first place they’d look would be the Westbahnhof for the Paris trains, but still we had ten minutes to wait, sitting there in the compartment with the blinds drawn. It felt like an execution chamber. And then finally the whistles blew, the train began to move. And Eva burst into tears and threw herself into my arms.’

There was something shrill about her, as though the story of excitement and plotting was thinly painted over a deep fracture. ‘Can you imagine? A whole hour alone with Eva Mandl in a compartment! Tell me, what do you think is the most beautiful thing about her? Of the things that one can see in polite company, of course. I’m not talking about what she showed to cinema audiences, although heaven knows, I could. Her mouth or her eyes? It’s one or the other, isn’t it? I still can’t make up my mind. Most people say her eyes, but I am inclined towards her mouth. The way her upper lip comes down at the very summit of its curve in a delicious little pout. I touched it with my tongue and she gave a little cry, just as though I had touched her
piča
.’

Startled by the language, people at the nearest table looked round.

‘Hana! For goodness’ sake, not here!’

‘Where then, darling? In private? With you?’ Her laugh was as brittle as overblown glass. ‘
Dumme Dinger
?’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’

Liesel began to gather up her things. ‘Please stop this nonsense. Let’s pay the bill and go.’

‘Do you know what she told me?’

‘You actually
talked
?’

‘Don’t be spiteful. It was a confession, really. She told me that when she was at finishing school in Lucerne she was seduced by her roommate. She was a mere fifteen years old, and this older girl slipped into her bed one night and showed her what to do. Georgie, that was the girl’s name. Deliciously androgynous, don’t you think? Quite an adept she was, apparently. And Eva was a quick learner.’

Liesel left some coins on the table and made for the door. ‘Please Hana. I don’t like you in this mood.’

‘The mood, my dear, is misery.’

They went out into the park, Hana’s arm through Liesel’s. Other couples strolled in the sunshine. A nanny pushed two little children in a pram.

‘You really are impossible at times, Hanička. Why can’t we just be good friends, like we always were?’

‘We
are
good friends. You know that. But you know we are more than that.’

‘Special friends, then. Particular friends. But I have obligations, to my children, to my husband.’

‘Obligations sound awfully dull. What about love, Liesi?’

‘Love as well.’

‘You don’t sound very certain.’

Liesel laughed. Once, she had felt childish and naive in Hana’s company, but things had changed. Now Hana had become a kind of supplicant. ‘When you’ve had two children things change. There’s a different kind of love.’

‘And your love for me? You do love me, don’t you? Tell me that you do.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘So why can’t you find joy in it? Tell Viktor. Be honest with him.’

‘He wouldn’t understand.’

‘He would understand more than you think. Look at Oskar.’

‘Does Oskar know about me? For God’s sake, Hana!’

‘Of course he doesn’t, darling. He knows lots but he doesn’t know about you. You are my one big secret.’

They walked on in the direction of the Künstlerhaus. Apparently there was a photographic exhibition that they just had to see —
Fotoskupina pĕti
, the group was called, Photo group 5. Why 5? Maybe there were just five of them. Surrealists. They made you look at objects from a completely different viewpoint: a hand became something of great mystery, a mirror became a philosophical statement, an egg was the birth of the whole world. That was what Hana said. She squeezed Liesel’s arm. ‘What would you say if you found out that Viktor had a mistress, Liesi? I mean, no threat to you. Just a woman whom he saw occasionally—’

‘Please Hana, must we talk about this kind of thing?’

‘But how would you feel?’

‘I don’t even think about things like that. Why should I? I’ve got my family and my friends and that is all I need. I don’t want great emotion.’

‘You haven’t answered the question.’

‘I’m not going to. I once asked Viktor if he had slept with you, do you know that?’ Why did she even mention it? Why didn’t she just let the conversation die? ‘It was when I was ill, shortly after Martin’s birth. You and he were alone together a lot of the time.’

Hana laughed. ‘And had he slept with me?’

‘He said he hadn’t.’

‘That’s what I remember too. But would you hate either of us if we had done so?’

‘I don’t think I would. Not hate. But I wouldn’t have been happy.’

‘You’re being — what’s the word? —
neupřímná
. Oh,
doppelsinnig
, something like that. You know what I mean.’

Liesel didn’t understand. The Czech evaded her, while the German escaped Hana. Quite suddenly, over the word ‘insincere’, they no longer understood each other. ‘Please don’t talk like this, Hanička. Please. I know what you mean and I know it doesn’t make sense, it’s a different thing. Why should feelings always be logical or rational?’

‘Viktor would say that they must be.’

‘But I’m not Viktor. I love him, but I’m not him. I love him and I love you, but I’m neither of you. And I don’t love you when you are talking like this.’

Beside the art gallery there was a war veteran begging, holding a tin and waiting mutely for money. His right trouser leg was pinned up to his waist and the space relinquished by his missing limb was startling, as though he had performed some kind of conjuring trick, a thing involving mirrors. Now you see it, now you don’t. Liesel found a crown in her purse and dropped it into his bowl. The man registered nothing, no nod of thanks, no glance upwards at his benefactor, nothing. What if Benno had returned from the war like that, ruined physically and mentally but still alive? Some kinds of life were worse than death, weren’t they?