The Glass Room (50 page)

‘
You
may not. There are plenty of people here who do.’

‘Martin, please!’ The older woman’s voice brought silence. ‘My son has just driven down from Boston, Mr Veselý. He is upset because he has had to take a day off from work to be here. Under such trying circumstances I hope you live up to your name.’

Veselý smiled at the joke. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Can we speak English, please?’ the young man said.

‘Of course we can speak English, if Mr Jolly is happy with that. But I have so little opportunity to speak Czech these days it seems a shame. Now, may we get you a cup of tea or something? And you can explain what this is all about.’

The daughter went to make the tea. Veselý sat in one of the armchairs with his briefcase propped on his knees. It was only then he noticed the white cane propped against Mrs Landor’s chair, and understood the reason for her vague and uncertain look. She was blind. Even now she was trying to sense exactly which chair he had sat in, her head moving so that she might pick up the faintest sound from him. Echo-location, he thought. Like a bat. ‘It’s about the house,’ he said, and her eyes centred on him.

‘I know it’s about the house. You told me that in your letter.’

‘
Our
house,’ the son said. ‘Sequestrated, first by one illegal government and then by another. And don’t tell me about the Beneš decrees because I don’t believe they’d have force of law in any civilised country. Anyways, even in Czechoslovak law the decrees only apply to those Germans deemed to have been Nazi sympathisers. They could hardly be applied retroactively to people who were driven into exile by the Nazi invasion.’

Mrs Landor smiled. ‘Martin is a lawyer.’

‘I’m afraid that I can’t offer any view about the legality of the situation,’ Veselý said. ‘All I know is that the house is there in Mĕsto and the city authorities feel that it should not be used for its current purpose …’

‘And exactly what is that?’ Her English was marked by German intonation just like her Czech, the precise sounds tripping off her tongue like the steps of a dance.

‘Apparently it has been used by the children’s hospital as a gymnasium. Physiotherapy.’

‘How strange.’

‘And now they want to do it justice and open it to the public. A museum, they want it to become a museum. I’m afraid I have not seen the place, but they say it’s an architectural masterpiece. We contacted the architect—’

‘You’ve spoken to Rainer von Abt?’

‘The cultural attaché has. It seems von Abt likes the idea. He calls it his finest piece of domestic architecture …’

‘I’m surprised he didn’t tell me about this.’

‘I believe it was through him that we managed to contact you. It wasn’t easy to find out where you were. I understand there was a name change …’

She nodded. ‘We weren’t trying to hide. Or at least I don’t think we were trying to hide. My husband changed the name to Landor for business purposes. Landauer seemed difficult and the Americans like things to be straightforward.’ She smiled in Veselý’s direction, a smile of complicity. ‘So tell me why you have been tracking us down.’

‘The authorities of Mĕsto wish to invite you to be witness to this handover. All expenses would be paid by the city, of course. I have a letter here from the Ambassador conveying such an invitation.’ Veselý removed the letter from his briefcase and held it out uncertainly, wondering who might take it from him.

‘Maybe we should wait for Ottilie.’

But Martin Landor took the proffered envelope. There was a pause while he examined the words carefully, as though searching for weaknesses. When he looked up he had the look of a lawyer delivering a judgement. ‘If you were to accept this invitation, Mother, it would amount to a de facto recognition of the legal ownership of the property by the city.’

Mrs Landor smiled. ‘But, de facto, the city does own the house, Martin. We haven’t lived in the place since you were a little boy. Thirty years ago. How can we go on pretending that we still have rights over it?’

At that moment, the daughter came in with a tray of tea things, porcelain cups, little pots with Chinese decorations. ‘Rights over the house?’ she asked. ‘Is that what this is all about?’

‘They want Mother to go and visit,’ Landor said.

The little boy was offering Veselý
bábovka
cake. ‘Mommy and me made it specially for you,’ he explained. His mother had paused, a teapot in her hand. ‘
Visit
? Return home for the first time? How amazing!’

‘I’ve told her not to accept. They’re just looking for recognition of their ownership.’

‘There is just one thing I’d like to add,’ Veselý put in. He was trying to discern the currents underlying the smooth, affluent surface of this group. Where, he wondered, was the original head of the family? What had happened that had brought the son to that position? ‘Our country has changed in recent months. You know that, the whole world knows that. This invitation is part of that change. Maybe you should consider that. We want to return to normal relationships with all our neighbours. This visit is part of that opening to the West. We want to talk about the past, admit the errors of the past. Socialism with a human face, as they say.’

Landor turned on him. ‘So you’re not only trying to confirm the confiscation of the house. You are also trying to use my mother in a political game.’

‘The political game, as you call it, is not a game to the people of Czechoslovakia. It is a matter of life and death. By travelling to the country your mother may be helping us.’

It was the inclusive pronoun that did it.
Us
. Martin Landor made some kind of noise that may have signified grudging agreement. ‘Quite so,’ said his mother firmly.

‘And there’s also this,’ Veselý added, reaching into his briefcase once more. ‘Another letter, I believe from someone on the architecture committee of Mĕsto. It’s marked “personal”.’

He held the envelope out. This time the daughter took it. ‘Shall I open it, Mother?’ she asked, but she had already done that: Veselý could see a scrawl of handwriting. Ottilie frowned, turning the pages over to glance at the back. ‘Good grief!’ She looked up in astonishment. ‘It’s from Auntie Hana.’

There was a silence in the room. Mrs Landor moved her head as though she was trying to see, as though she was trying to peer through fog. ‘Hana? Hana Hanáková? I thought she was dead. I thought Hana was dead.’

Ottilie looked down at the letter. ‘
Moc pro mne znamenáš
, she writes. You mean a lot to me. Is that correct?
Líbám tĕ
, I kiss you,
Hana
. How extraordinary. I think I even recognise her handwriting. I remember those letters you used to get in Switzerland …’

Her mother held out her hand. ‘Let me have it.’

‘Don’t you want me to read it for you?’

‘Let me have it,’ the older woman demanded. She took the letter and held it for a moment, and then put the page down on her knee and ran her fingers over the spider scrawl of writing, almost as though she were sensing something through contact. Veselý had heard of people in the Soviet Union who could read through their fingertips, read newspaper stories and such like. For an absurd moment he wondered whether this was one of those cases.

‘Can it really be Hana?’

‘That’s what it seems. Here, let me read it to you.’

But Mrs Landor seemed reluctant to surrender the letter. ‘I think we’d better be left alone. This is a private matter.’

Her son looked bemused. ‘Alone?’

‘I don’t want it read out in front of everyone. I want to be alone.’

‘You sound like Greta Garbo, Mother. Stop being dramatic.’

‘Do what Maminka says,’ the daughter snapped. ‘Show Mr Veselý round the house or something. And take Charlie with you.’

So the two men and the little boy left the room and stood awkwardly in the hallway while the women dealt with the letter. Outside the sitting room Landor seemed willing to put the legal mask aside for a moment, like an attorney chatting with an opponent outside the courtroom. He asked about the situation, about what was happening in Prague and the rest of the country, about the threats and the possibilities. ‘The Soviets won’t allow things to go on like this, will they?’

Veselý shrugged. ‘Secretary Dubček is no fool. It’s not going to be a repeat of Hungary.’

‘So what will it be? A surrender like 1939?’

‘We hope it won’t come to that.’

The man seemed to consider. ‘Strange, isn’t it, what can happen to people? Here I am, an all-American guy, and yet I was born there, spent my first few years there. But now the whole Czechoslovak thing just seems like a sort of dream, a fantasy world that happened to another person. Hell, I was younger than Charlie when we left.’

And then they were called back in, like children being summoned back to the company of adults. The daughter was sitting on the sofa, sitting forward towards her mother with the letter in her hand. Mrs Landor was sitting in her chair and staring into the distance. ‘We always thought she was dead,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘We heard that she’d been arrested and deported. That was in 1942, when we were in Cuba. And then …’ Her eyes tried to find Veselý. ‘You know what it was like immediately after the war, Mr Veselý? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you are too young. Anyway there was great confusion, the Germans being expelled — the
odsun
they call it, don’t they? — and displaced people trying to get home and you couldn’t get any information. My own family had left Moravia anyway, and my husband’s were all killed. They were Jews, you see, Mr Veselý. They died in the camps — Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka. And then the Iron Curtain came down and it was as though the whole country had vanished. We couldn’t hope to find out anything more. And now she’s alive.’

There was a silence. Veselý watched the Landors trying to come to terms with this piece of their past. During the war his own family had done what any ordinary family did. They’d got by. They’d made do. His father had worked in a factory and his mother had been a nurse and they’d got by. But for these people it had been different. However privileged they might have been, their whole world had been torn up and scattered to the winds.

‘It won’t be easy for me to travel,’ Mrs Landor said eventually.

Martin seemed amazed. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting—’

‘Certainly I am suggesting.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mother. Quite aside from your own difficulties, you’d be travelling to a country that is in the middle of political turmoil.’

She looked in her son’s direction. ‘My dear Martin, I’ve known political turmoil that you can barely imagine. And I know what your father would have wanted …’

‘You can hardly drag Pop into the argument …’

‘And Ottilie would travel with me.’

Ottilie was bright-eyed with the possibilities. ‘I’d love to see the country again. And Auntie Hana. She was a real character from what I remember.’ She appealed to Veselý as though he might adjudicate on the matter. ‘My God, I have memories, Mr Veselý, but they’re childhood memories. Everything’s the wrong size, you know what I mean? In my memory everything is large, the house … the house is huge. Have you seen it?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Acres and acres of space, that’s how I recall it. It’d be fascinating to see it all again.’

‘Under the circumstances, I’m sure that you would be included in the invitation,’ Veselý said. ‘But of course we’d have to wait for confirmation by the city authorities.’

The son came away from the window where he had been checking on the Oldsmobile again. ‘As your lawyer I cannot recommend this course of action,’ he said.

Mrs Landor smiled. She was smiling into the space between Veselý and her son, so that it was unclear where the expression was directed. ‘But Martin, you are
not
my lawyer. Mr Feinstein is my lawyer, you know that. And I expect him to take instructions from me, not the other way round.’ And then her eyes seemed to focus on Veselý, and she was still smiling. ‘We’ll come if you can arrange it. My daughter and I will come.’

‘Look,’ Hana says, holding out sheets of typed paper. She has come breathless into the Glass Room during one of the ballet classes. There are girls (and a single androgynous boy) standing around the space in various balletic postures, like so many Degas dancers.

‘Five minutes’ rest,’ Zdenka calls and goes across — she moves in bright quick skips, like a dancer — to the older woman. ‘What is it, Haničko? What is it? You look shocked.’

‘It’s what you see. Read it.’

Zdenka glances down at the typewritten page and shrugs. ‘It’s in German. I can’t read German. I can barely say
auf Wiedersehn
…’

Hana takes the letter back and looks at it thoughtfully, as though maybe its content will change if examined hard enough. ‘It’s from Liesel Landauer, only she doesn’t call herself Landauer any more. Apparently it was too difficult for the Americans. They’ve changed it to Landor. Elizabeth Landor.’

The dancers watch without much interest, occasionally flexing a leg, sometimes rising into an arabesque or dropping into a
plié
, like clockwork toys that are running down.

‘She’s written to you after all this time? You said …’

‘I know what I said, but we’ve been trying to find them through official channels. Apparently the Embassy succeeded, and now there’s this. It’s addressed to me personally. I’ll read it for you—’

‘Darling, the class—’

Hana is suddenly angry. ‘For God’s sake, get them to do their exercises or something. Surely they can keep themselves amused?’

Of course they can. Of course. Zdenka has not seen Hana like this, with anger beneath the pacific and thoughtful exterior. So she gives instructions to her pupils — practise this, work on that — and then moves with Hana to the other side of the onyx wall. Hana is agitated, her face pale and her hand, the hand that holds the letter, shaking slightly. She holds the pages out to show Zdenka, as though that alone will justify her interruption of the class. But of course it doesn’t. Zdenka cannot read the German, so she cannot see the mistypings, the uncorrected errors, the neighbouring letter substitutions, the occasional place where, for a phrase or two, every letter has been transposed to the row above or the row below on the keyboard, or shifted left or right, making the sense unintelligible.