The Glass Room (51 page)

‘Liesel has gone blind.’

There is a moment of stasis. The word
slepý
sounds through the brilliance of the Glass Room, the place where light is everything, where reflection and refraction are paramount. There is a chrome pillar near them. Their reflections are thrown off the metal surface, elongated by the curvature.

‘Blind?’

‘Here.’ Hana points to the page, to the words
Ich bin blind geworden. ‘Blind, slepý
.’ She reads on, translating as she goes:

Is that a shock to you? Of course it will be. It seems so strange and rather frightening. I have spent years going back and forth to hospitals and clinics but they don’t really seem to understand, and some of the specialists here in Boston are meant to be the best in the world! They use long words that seem to mean they don’t know anything. ‘Idiopathic’, that’s one of them. The blindness just seems a random thing, but in truth I suppose it is no more random than anything else in life. Anyway, Ottilie is very good with me and comes rushing to help when I need.

And then Hana looks away, towards the glass of the conservatory where ficus and cycads stand solemnly against the light just as they used to do in Liesel’s time, and tears come to her eyes. It is quite unexpected, even to Hana herself, this weeping. She stands there in the shadow of the onyx wall with tears welling up in her eyes while Zdenka looks on helplessly. ‘I loved her, you know that?’ she tells Zdenka. ‘I loved her like I love myself. It was as though — ridiculous because we were so different — as though we were twins. And friends. And lovers. That was always a shock to her because she was a mother and because she loved Viktor as well. Do you mind my telling you this?’

Zdenka shakes her head. Love seems a relative quality, not a unitary thing that can exist independent of an object. Love
for
, love
of
, never just love. There are different grades of love, different shades of love, different scents and tastes of love. It is not like happiness or misery, qualities that seem dull and limited. Love is limitless, she feels. You can love one person one way and another person another way and your store of love, all the different loves, is never diminished. And she loves Hana. She loves her as a daughter loves a mother, as a pupil loves a teacher, as friends love and lovers love, all these things all the time. ‘I don’t mind,’ she says. ‘I don’t mind if you don’t mind.’

Hana returns to the letter, reading it awkwardly, turning it from German into Czech as she does so:

I’m writing this without Ottilie’s help so that I can say things that I maybe wouldn’t otherwise. I hope I haven’t made a mess of things and you can read it all right.

Hana looks up. ‘I knew her here, in this room. Better than anywhere, I knew her here.’

Viktor died in 1958 in a boating accident. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t tell you something like that so casually, but how else? Maybe you already know. Maybe the embassy have told you. You know how he took to sailing when we were in Switzerland? When we came here he took up the sport again, but this time on the ocean of course, and that was how he died, when the boat he was in capsized. Now I am alone, except for Ottilie and her husband, and Martin of course, who is a lawyer and lives in Boston. I am, I must tell you, an American citizen now, and so was Viktor. And the children, of course. We did that in 1948. You can imagine why. And that’s when we changed the name to Landor. It seemed easier like that, to spell it as the Americans pronounce it. Viktor started up a business — Landor Marine it was called — here in Falmouth, building boats, just small things — cabin cruisers, speed boats — and that is where I still live, with Ottilie, who is an angel. She has a little boy, so I am a grandmother. Charlie was born after the accident so Viktor never knew him which is a shame. He would have been so proud. He would also have been proud of Martin who is a successful lawyer working for a Boston law firm. That’s what you come to treasure.

Hana stops. ‘There’s more, lots more. Maybe you’d better deal with your pupils. Maybe it’d be better if I didn’t read it to you.’

‘That’s all right,’ Zdenka says. ‘That’s all right.’

But what is all right isn’t clear. Is the past all right, is the fact of lost and wasted years all right? She turns to the class and starts to put them through their exercises. Hana finds a seat and reads again what she has already read.

It is not easy for me to talk about Viktor to you. In a way I always loved him, but he was dishonest with me just as I was dishonest, I suppose, with him. Anyway, he had his life and I had mine. There was even a time when I had a
milenec
.
^*
You would have been proud of me! He was called Piet and was of Dutch origin and worked for Viktor’s company and was much younger than me and we were very happy in a child-like kind of way. I don’t know what he saw in a woman of my age (this was in the early 50s and he was more than ten years younger than me!). He used to call me his ‘Czech mate’.
^*
You understand the pun? That came to an end at about the time of Viktor’s accident. But I never knew a love like yours, Haničko, never knew one so intense and so deep. There, I have said it. Anyway now I am here with Ottilie and her husband who works at the marine biology place and looks at sea urchins all day. They are blind too, I suppose. I have written enough, perhaps too much. I will take up the invitation to visit but you can imagine how difficult it will be for me to travel. And what about the political situation? But how much I would give to be in the house again! I am pleased, I suppose, that it should be kept as a museum of some kind although I don’t really like that word. Museums are where you keep works of art, but the house is a work of art in itself. A memorial perhaps — to Rainer and Viktor, and, in a small part, the ‘me’ that was!

Please do write and tell me everything. Your loving,

Liesel.

1 In Czech in the original.
Milenec
: lover, boyfriend.

2 In English in the original.

Someone is coming towards her. She can sense the form, perceive the nucleus of shadow against the light. Somehow she knows. What is it? A sense of motion, that particular movement, the sway of her hips as she walks? Perhaps even the perception of her scent. Or the sound of her breathing. She says the name before anyone speaks, says it as a statement more than a question.

‘Hana.’

‘Liesi! God, you recognised me. How on earth did you do that?’

She feels arms around her, a smooth cheek against hers. Both sensations are familiar. They don’t have to be dragged up from the depths of memory: they are already there, buoyant at the surface. Tears? Perhaps there are tears. ‘You don’t forget things. You store them up.’

‘And is this…?’

She turns to her left where she knows Ottilie will be. ‘Ottilie.’

Hana makes a noise like a child, some kind of cry of joy. Liesel puts out a hand to touch them as they embrace. ‘Let me look at you,’ Hana is saying. ‘Let me look at you.’ And Liesel can imagine it: Hana holding Ottilie at arm’s length, as though to create lines of perspective and place the younger woman in the context of a past that seems so distant. Thirty years, and war, makes it seem a century. We were all so happy then, she thinks. And suddenly she can see. As though the curtains of time have been drawn aside and everything is clear again. She can see Martin and Ottilie playing on the terrace outside the windows, and Viktor sitting in the library pondering something in the newspaper, and Hana, vibrant with her presence and her promise, standing beside her as they look out over the garden. And a small bright figure appearing at the bottom of the garden and walking up the path towards the house, hand in hand with a little girl. Katalin, with Marika.

‘What do you think about her?’ asks Hana.

‘Katalin? I like her.’

‘I’d be careful if I were you.’

‘I think she’s wonderful. I don’t know what I’d do without her.’

More people, a dozen people or more are circling round them to shake her hand. She can sense them, but she cannot see them. She can see light and shadow, space and substance. ‘Don’t be silly, Maminko,’ Ottilie is saying. ‘You’d do perfectly well without me. You know you would.’ There are more hands to be shaken. Someone is talking, about her, about the house. ‘A treasure that belongs to the city, and the country, and the whole world. This symbol of peace.’

A round of applause is directed at her, as though she has done something remarkable. ‘Comrade Landauerová,’ says one. There’s something familiar about the voice. ‘Don’t you remember me?’

She struggles with the memory, the coarse accent, the undercurrent of sarcastic laughter.

‘Comrade Laník,’ the voice says. ‘Josef Laník.’

‘Good gracious, Laník. How are you?’ And she realises, with a small prick of guilt, that she never knew his first name. ‘What are you doing? What a surprise.’

He talks, at her, not with her. About his trials and tribulations. About the way he looked after the building, about the dangers and the fighting. About the bomb, about the glorious liberation by the fraternal forces of the Soviet Union. Does he mean then or now?

‘We must catch up,’ she assures him. ‘We must have a good talk.’

People are crowding round her. She feels trapped, claustrophobic. She has never felt this in the Glass Room before: the oppressive crush of people. ‘Let’s get some fresh air,’ she whispers to Hana. One of the group — their host, the chief of the urban planning department — has begun to give a speech about the house and its place in the canon of European architecture. Hana leads her towards the terrace.

‘I never expected Laník,’ Liesel says. ‘He always gave me the creeps. I think he used to spy on me.’

‘That’s no surprise. He’s a Party official now. Good Soldier Švejk promoted to captain. That’s the nightmare really: the whole damn country has been ruled by people like him, a whole army of Švejks. And just when we seem to be getting something different, the fraternal Soviet Army returns to liberate us.’

‘What will happen now?’

She feels Hana’s shrug. ‘
Normalizace
, they call it. Normalisation. The Švejks will come back, I suppose. If they ever really went.’

They’ve reached the door to the terrace. She can feel the cool air on her face and the daylight. Behind them the man is still talking. ‘
Tento klenot domácí architektury
,’ he is saying. A jewel of modern domestic architecture.

‘Are we being rude? Should we stay and listen?’

‘Let them be. They enjoy the sound of their own voices. Liesi, there’s someone I especially want you to meet.’

She senses a small shadow standing in front of her and when she reaches out a slender hand is slipped into hers. ‘Zdenka,’ a voice says, and then adds something rapid in Czech in which Liesel catches the words ‘honour’ and ‘delight’. ‘Hana has told me so much about you.’

How much? she wonders. The woman is small and light. Liesel senses that. And beautiful. How can you sense beauty? Does beauty have a smell? Is Hana’s scent, the smell of grass and vanilla, also the scent of beauty?

‘Zdenka is part of the staff of the clinic,’ Hana says.

‘We work with polio victims,’ the other voice explains. ‘That is what the gym is for.’

‘The gym?’

‘This room. The Glass Room.’

Someone else approaches and introduces himself as a doctor, representing the hospital. Tomáš, he says, shaking her outstretched hand. She finds his grip firm and uncompromising. Not unlike Viktor’s. ‘It’s very courageous of you to make the journey over here. Especially in the light of what has happened.’ He means the Russians. He means the tanks in the street and the heavy hand of the Soviet politicians.

‘I couldn’t have done it without my daughter.’

‘She couldn’t have done anything without you.’

That makes her laugh. He is an attractive person, this Doctor Tomáš. They stand outside on the terrace — mercifully it has stopped raining — while the speeches go on inside and Tomáš talks about the clinic and his hopes for the future. And the future of the country. ‘It is still hopeful, isn’t it?’ Liesel asks. She’s doing exactly what she was told not to do — talking about the political situation. But she senses that she can trust this man. That’s one of the things that blindness has done, taught her to listen to voices, to trust and not to trust. ‘Socialism with a human face. Is that all over?’

Tomáš laughs at her words, but she can hear shadows in his laughter. Viktor’s laugh, she thinks. ‘Do you know about encephalitis lethargica?’ he asks. ‘I’m sorry, of course you don’t know about it. Why should you? It’s a rare disease, a kind of sleeping-sickness with no known cause. You get occasional cases everywhere but there was a particular outbreak in the nineteen-twenties in America. Since then the sufferers have been in a state of suspended animation. Asleep, if you like. There is no treatment and no cure. That is how our country has been for the last two decades. Asleep.’

‘And now? Surely it has woken up.’

Again that laugh, coming out of the darkness. ‘Recently they discovered a new drug. It’s called L-Dopa. They tried this new drug on the people with encephalitis lethargica and, lo and behold, the patients woke up. They’d been asleep for forty years and they woke up! Can you imagine the shock, to go to sleep when you are fifteen, say, and wake up over forty years old? Where has your life gone?’

‘Is this true?’

‘Of course it’s true. Just last year. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? A miracle cure. Of course the patients are a bit behind the times and have a lot of catching up to do. But at least they’ve rejoined the world. The only trouble with L-Dopa is that the effect of the drug wears off after a while. They tried increasing the dose but it was no good. Slowly, with the doctors looking on helplessly, the patients slipped back into their sleep. Just like this country. That’s exactly what is happening here. In six months’ time do you think you will find me here? Of course not. I’ll be sweeping the streets or something. This country is falling back into a coma; God alone knows whether it will ever wake up again.’