The Glass Room (42 page)

Spring brings distant rumour of battle, like a storm on the horizon. To the house it is just a melting of the snow, an easing of the frost-hardened joints, a flexing of the concrete shell. People come to do business with Laník, descending the outside stairs down to the level of the basement, bringing their stories of hard luck and destitution. He listens sympathetically. You don’t want to antagonise your customers. He gives credit where credit is due and accepts payment in kind. He tries to do his best. Cigarettes, paraffin, powdered egg and powdered milk, they are all there in the maze-like rooms of the basement, carefully hoarded, not like a miser with his gold but like a banker with his investment. ‘You’ve got to take your opportunities,’ he shouts at his sister.
YOU’VE GOT TO TAKE YOUR OPPORTUNITIES
!

The city becomes a ferment of activity — troops coming and going, civilians looking to find refuge. The Soviets have driven through Hungary and taken Budapest after a two-month siege; now Vienna has fallen and the Red Army is turning north towards Mĕsto. Over three hundred thousand troops, Novotný tells his audience in the pub. They sit in a fug of cigarette smoke, drinking watery beer and discussing the situation. Nurses often drop in at the end of their shift at the hospital. They have stories to tell of wrecked bodies brought back from the front, of amputations, of burns, of young boys with their faces half blown away or their intestines spilling out over their knees. And they hear things as well, how the fighting is going, where the front line is. The Red Army has tried to cross the Morava river south of the city but has been held up by the flooding of the valley. Cossacks have died in their hundreds.

The word ‘Cossack’ brings a thrill. Taras Bulba is reborn. Next day the nearness of the Soviets becomes a presence: a formation of twin-engined bombers, red stars on their wings, appears over the city. It is a fine spring day, a Sunday, with people walking in the parks and going to church, where they are praying, presumably, for it all to be over quickly. From the upper terrace of the Landauer House Laník and his sister watch the aircraft circle over the city. There are distant concussions and smudges of smoke in the peerless blue sky. A burst of anti-aircraft fire throws clods of dirt at the aircraft, the sound of the flak coming later, detached from the event by distance. Untouched and indifferent, the planes turn away and disappear towards the east, leaving smoke rising over the railway station.

‘WE’LL HAVE TO KEEP OUR HEADS DOWN
,’ Laník shouts at his sister.

‘Haven’t you always done that?’

‘IT’S THE BEST THING TO DO, ISN’T IT? WHEN PEOPLE ARE GETTING THEIRS BLOWN OFF
.’

The next day German civilians begin to leave. A loudspeaker van drives through the city, its metallic voice telling them to report to the station or to the local police post, or just to get out, move north, move out into the countryside. The Germans move as best they can, in cars, with handcarts, on foot, in lorries, while the Czechs watch, sullenly.

That night the inhabitants of Mĕsto are woken by a new phenomenon, the persistent buzzing of a small aircraft over the centre of the city. It seeds the black sky with flares that cut through the darkness like electric arcs. The light exposes the Špilas fortress and the spires of the churches and the roofs of the old town to a merciless view. Some desultory machine-gun fire comes from the castle hill but the aircraft continues undisturbed in the darkness above the lights, weaving back and forth, round and round, dropping more flares and occasionally conjuring explosions down on the ground. The flares drift on the wind trailing plumes of pallid smoke.

The scene repeats itself the next night and the night after that, the same aircraft buzzing around in the darkness, coming and going as it pleases, casting the same lunar light over the darkened buildings, causing explosions where it pleases. Ivánek, little Ivan, people call the visitor. There is something impudent and quirky about the presence, as though the approaching army has a sense of humour as well as a store of pyrotechnics.

Novotný knows about the aircraft, as he seems to know everything. ‘“Night Witches,” that’s what the Krauts call them. They’re all piloted by women.’

In the pub, the men look at him in amazement. ‘Women?’

‘That’s right, women. Flying pussy.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Don’t believe me, eh? I tell you, the pilots are women, the mechanics are women, the whole squadron consists of women. This shows the heroic nature of the Soviet woman in her struggle for freedom. It also demonstrates that there is perfect equality of the sexes in the Soviet Union.’

‘Equality of sexes? Don’t let my missus know.’

Behind the laughter there is something else — admiration and fear. The Soviets have thrown everything into the battle, tens of thousands of tanks, thousands of aircraft, millions of men; and now even their women.

That evening Laník and his sister move all their things down into the basement. Previously they have been going down during raids but now it seems time to take shelter permanently. In the streets of the city the German forces are digging trenches, building tank traps, clearing lines of fire. Tanks and half-tracks rattle over the tramlines. Eighty-eight-millimetre guns appear at street intersections, their barrels pointing like fingers at the direction from which the Slav hordes will come. Reinforcements are coming down from the north, from Ostrava and the Polish border, lorry-loads of kids who stare out uncomprehendingly from under their helmets as they pass by the grey tenements. Rumour and report come in their wake: the Red Army is in the outskirts of Berlin, fighting from house to house, from street to street towards the heart of the city; the Anglo-Americans have crossed the Rhine and have reached the Elbe. Hitler is dead.

Except for the machinery of warfare the streets of Mĕsto lie deserted. People live a troglodyte existence, scurrying out from cellars and basements into the sunlight when they can. They are on the search for the elementary things of life — candles, potatoes, bread, paraffin for cooking, a piece of soap, a box of matches, a packet of cigarettes. Money has become insignificant: the city has been thrown back a thousand years to the days of barter.

Laník understands the cost of everything. He knows instinctively how much bread you get for how many cigarettes, how much cake buys a candle. When a young woman from a nearby house comes for powdered milk for her baby the calculation is easy. He takes her down the outside steps and into the basement. Jana, she’s called. Jana Kubecová. He likes the line of her jaw, the uneven turn of her mouth when she smiles. But she doesn’t often smile these days and her grey eyes have the tired look of defeat about them. Six months ago her husband was deported to Germany to work in a factory near Hamburg and she hasn’t heard from him for two months now. Perhaps he is dead. Perhaps he is one of the nameless victims of the bombing. Now, just when the country is on the verge of liberation, Jana looks as though she has given up. ‘I can’t be too long,’ she says. ‘I’ve left the baby asleep.’

Laník nods understandingly. ‘We’ll be quick about it, won’t we? And I’ll throw in a packet of cigarettes, how about that?’

She smiles her bleak little smile, that twist of resignation. ‘Thanks,’ she says, looking round for somewhere to put her clothes.

The end, when it comes, takes little more than a day. There is gunfire in the south and the west of the city, and smoke drifting across the skyline. Shells scream overhead to explode somewhere behind them in the northern suburbs. Aircraft fly low over the roofs, all of them with red stars on their wings, the roar of their engines dulling for a moment the chatter of gunfire. In any lull in the racket you can hear the sound of traffic on the road below the house, the rattle and roar of vehicles moving northward.

‘They’re going,’ Laník calls down to his sister. He’s standing on a chair to see out of the basement window. There’s smoke over the Špilas fortress but nothing else visible. The battle for the city is almost entirely a play of sound, a cacophony of percussion, from timpani to snare drum. More shells come over, tearing the air apart and crashing over the back somewhere. The ground shakes. Plaster falls from the ceiling of the basement. Near at hand there’s machine-gun fire, and the sound of an explosion. Perhaps there’s fighting down by the hospital. Stuck here in the bunker beneath the Landauer House, shut away from human contact, it’s impossible to tell.

‘We’d better go right inside, where it’s safest,’ Laník suggests. He leads the way into the inner rooms of the basement, going by the light of a candle. The power is out and the guttering candle gives mere glimpses of a store room with some furniture inside, a couple of chairs from the living room, a glass-fronted cupboard, a wardrobe. The noise of battle is more distant now, the occasional crump of an exploding shell more of a visceral sensation than a perceived sound.

‘What’s happened to the rest of the furniture?’ his sister asks as she makes herself comfortable in one of the chairs. It’s one of those named after Frau Landauer herself: a Liesel chair.

‘I sold it,’ he says.

‘It weren’t yours to sell. What happens when they come back?’

‘They’ll not be coming back. I’ve told you, they don’t belong here.’

‘Where do you think they are?’

‘The Landauers? How the hell should I know?’

‘I do wonder, though. I do wonder where they’ve fetched up, poor things.’

‘Poor things, my arse. They’re rich things. Rich enough to get out, rich enough to get to somewhere safe. Why should we worry about them?’

‘This is their house, after all.’

The whole building shakes to another explosion, closer this time. ‘They’re coming nearer!’ she cries, forgetting all about the Landauer family. ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph, they’re coming nearer.’

And suddenly there are footsteps overhead, the sound of people running, a sharp rattle of machine-gun fire right above them. ‘Keep quiet!’ Laník urges her. In the unsteady candlelight his face is flabby with fear. There is more firing, and even the sound of shouting, muffled through the concrete roof to their hiding place. They crouch in the darkness like neolithic cave-dwellers and listen to the battle above. She grips his hands for comfort. ‘Joška,’ she says. It’s the diminutive of his name, the way he was always called at home, the name she used when she rocked him to sleep. Above them the battle rages, machine guns rattling, mortars pounding, men running this way and that across the paving stones overhead. Then it falls quiet. Any noise is distant now, a background sound, the rumour of war but no longer the narrative being played out overhead. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Shh!’

‘There’s someone up there still. Who do you think it is?’

‘How the hell should I know?’

And then something more than mere human — giant footsteps, iron-shod footsteps, ringing on the pavement in front of the house and sounding down through the concrete spaces below to where Laník and his sister crouch in the dark. ‘The Golem?’ Laníková whispers, wide-eyed with fear.

‘Golem my arse. That’s a horse!’

In this world of mechanised warfare it seems absurd that a horse should intrude. Yet the sound is there overhead, and suddenly multiplied — half a dozen of the animals moving around, the strange syncopation of their hoofs clopping on the stone forecourt. And then something else, someone hammering on the front door two floors above their heads.

‘It’s the Russians,’ Laník says. ‘It must be the Russians. Who else can it be?’ He takes the candle and heads for the stairs.

‘Hey, where are you going?’

‘I’m going to see. Come on.’

‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here. Leave me the candle.’

‘Don’t be idiotic. They’re our liberators.’

‘They’re soldiers, that’s what they are. Rapists.’

‘Well they wouldn’t be daft enough to rape
you
, would they?’

In the main room of the basement Laník pauses to rummage in a cardboard box and comes up with a bottle of clear liquid. Hefting it in his hand like a weapon, he climbs the spiral stairs that lead directly up into the kitchens.

All is quiet. The daylight is dazzling after the sepulchral dark of the basement. Cautiously he opens the door into the living area, the Glass Room that no longer is. The afternoon sun is low over the castle hill, its rays slanting like blades through the gaps in the tarpaulin that he rigged. He tiptoes across the linoleum to the stairs, then climbs up to the top floor. In the milky light of the entrance hall he listens. The sound of battle has receded up the hill. Gunfire is only a sporadic sound on the afternoon air but there is a presence on the other side of the glass panels, the incongruous scrape of hooves and a distinctive snort. He thinks of cowboys, things seen in films or read about in Karl May’s books, men round the campfire cooking beans. Cautiously he opens the front door.

There’s a woman. That fact seems even more fantastic than horses or golems. A woman. She’s standing just outside the front door, looking straight at him. She has broad Mongol features and a green forage cap with a red star that gleams like a ruby. On her shoulders — as wide as a man’s — are shoulder-boards large enough to take a coffee cup and biscuits. More red stars. And medal ribbons on her khaki blouse, where Laník tries not to look because surely looking at an officer’s chest, however prominent and brilliantly decorated it may be, would be disrespectful. And he doesn’t want to be disrespectful, not least because she has a pistol levelled at his chest.

‘
Kamarád
,’ he says. And then adds
soudruh
, comrade, just to cover his options. And then
tovarish
. ‘A present to the victorious Red Army,’ he says, holding the bottle towards her. ‘I give.’

The woman’s eyes narrow. She isn’t so sure. Without taking her eyes away from Laník’s face she calls something to one of her companions. Half a dozen soldiers have come into Laník’s field of vision. And horses. There are at least three of the animals tethered to the front railings of the house, contemplatively munching from piles of hay thrown on the ground in front of them. One of the animals opens its anus and, with incontinent generosity, deposits a pile of steaming turds on the travertine pavement.