The Glass Room

by Simon Mawer

  ‘She was four years old by then. We drove from Munich. It is not far but it was winter and the roads weren’t easy. When we arrived everything lay under snow. We parked the car outside the main gate and carried Erika up to the entrance. An orderly came almost immediately when we rang the bell, as though they had been waiting for us. I suppose they had been. They knew we were coming.’

  ‘A clinic?’

  ‘A kind of clinic. It was very quick and efficient. Of course there were a few forms to sign but everything had already been taken care of so they only really wanted to confirm our identity. Then we were shown into a waiting room where we could do whatever we wished – say a prayer or something. We tried to say goodbye to Erika, but there was no point by then. The way I look at it, we had already said goodbye to our child months ago. After five minutes a nurse came and took her away.’

  Outside the windows the sun has settled below the horizon, the blood-red bladder suddenly bursting all over the sky in a great mess of crimson. Hana is very still. ‘What for?’

  ‘They took her away to kill her. Painlessly and quickly, an injection of morphia and scopolamine to put her out of her misery. I think …’ What does he think? He thinks that science holds the key to everything, that science will ultimately reveal all the answers and solve all the problems. ‘I think it was for the best.’

  ‘I don’t know how to take this,’ Hana says quietly.

  ‘Who does? There aren’t any easy answers. Hedda didn’t find any. A few days later she came back early from the conservatory, ran a bath, climbed in and cut open her veins with one of my razors.’

  Why ever did he do it? Why did he tell her? Knowledge is power, and she now has power over both his body and his mind. She knows everything about him, every shadow and every light, every small particle of fear and every minute focus of gratification. She knows how to evoke memory and how to bring, for a moment, forgetting. ‘Stop,’ he tells her, but she doesn’t stop for his words have no power over her. He lies there helpless, on the unforgiving floor of the Glass Room, while she kneels astride him. Her hands are on his throat. Above him the dark maw of her shame threatening him with ecstasy.

  ‘Please,’ he begs her. ‘Please.’

  She lowers her hips. There is no world beyond her. There is no light, no smell, no taste, no touch that is not hers. The Glass Room is not there. The balance and the reason has vanished. There is only her shame enclosing him, suffocating him, enveloping him, her choking fingers bringing sensation and oblivion in equal measure.

  ‘Someone might have come,’ he says afterwards, pulling on his clothes and trying to find some semblance of normality, some shred of command. ‘You must never come here again, do you understand? Never.’

  She smiles. This smile is particular. It starts from a downward turn of the mouth that is almost an expression of contempt, and it ends in warmth and promise. She leans towards his face and her tongue laps across his mouth, tasting herself. ‘“Never” is a word I am not entirely familiar with,’ she says. ‘If we listened to never we would never have done what we just did. And how would you like that?’

  Leaving

  They were on the terrace at the back of the house, the girls playing some board game, Katalin helping Martin to draw a picture of the house. They all looked round as Liesel came out with the post. ‘There’s a letter from Oma for the two of you,’ she said. ‘And one from Auntie Hana for me.’

  It was a ritual, the reading of the letters, that fragile thread that linked them back to home. Ottilie opened the letter from their grandmother and prepared to read it to Martin. Liesel opened the one from Hana.

  Life here is drudgery, she read. O can do less and less. You know how he always liked to wear a buttonhole – a rose or a carnation? Well, now things are different and it is impossible to find any flowers but the Star of Bethlehem, and then only a poor imitation in yellow cloth. So he refuses to go out. If he can’t dress properly then he won’t set foot outside the house, that’s what he says. So I have to do everything for him.

  She stopped and looked up. ‘The yellow star,’ she said, to no one in particular. ‘It was in the papers a few days ago. A yellow star. And now Oskar has to wear one.’

  ‘Would Tatínek have to wear one if we were still at home?’ Ottilie asked.

  ‘Yes, he would.’

  ‘And would we have to?’

  ‘I really don’t know. It just seems …’ She shook her head in disbelief, ‘… absurd. Unbelievable. Like branding cattle. Poor Hana is the only one who goes out now.’

  ‘Doesn’t she wear the star?’ Martin asked.

  ‘She’s not a Jew.’

  Money is the difficulty as I told you. I can’t really explain the details in a letter but let us say that my scientist contributes to the funds and in exchange I contribute to his well-being. Once or twice a week at the Grand. And once – I’ll confess – just once in the Glass Room. He even played for me, and not too badly. There was a wife and she played the violin, so he’s got talents other than his science. And he has a little boy’s weakness for plums. They cost a lot these days – eighty crowns a kilo. But he gobbles them up.

  She stopped reading and looked up, startled, to where bright daylight glittered on the lake. Plums. Pflaumen. She felt the blood in her cheeks, remembering laughter in the darkness, a laughter that faded to silence, and strong limbs open and hands on her head, and an intricate perception of touch and taste and scent there at the crux. Ecstasy and shame in intense conjugation.

  Should I be telling you this? You’ll think me a disgrace but you cannot imagine what things are like here, Liesel. Really. People in Město get by selling whatever they have. That’s the way it works. That’s what I do. Nothing more than that. Tell me something happy. Tell me all about you and the children, and even Viktor, the old goat, and the Cuckoo whose circumstances I understand a little better now.

  Burn this letter immediately!

  Your loving

  Hana.

  She got up. ‘I must go and answer this,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long.’

  She was sitting in her room attempting a reply when she heard Viktor’s car draw up outside. The car door slammed, and then the front door opened and closed and footsteps came up the stairs. Carefully she covered up what she had been writing. There was a knock and Viktor stood there in the doorway, holding a large buff envelope in his hand.

  ‘The tickets have come,’ he said.

  Should she be happy or sad? She felt something physical, a throb of anguish behind her breastbone, as though her heart had stopped. ‘They’ve come?’

  ‘It’s a ship called the Magallanes. That’s Magellan, I think. A Spanish line.’ He glanced at the letter in his hand and attempted the Spanish pronunciation. ‘Compañía Transatlántica. Return tickets—’

  ‘Return?’

  ‘I told you, that’s what the Cuban authorities require. A fee of two hundred and fifty dollars for each visa applicant, a letter of credit for two thousand dollars, a caution of five hundred against the visitor’s leaving the country, a one hundred and fifty dollar security against an onward ticket to the country of final destination, and a return ticket so they can put you back on the boat if you can’t go anywhere else.’ He pulled one of the tickets out, a veritable booklet with a liner steaming across the cover towards a vivid sunset. ‘Seven hundred for this alone. It’s a seller’s market.’

  ‘And Katalin and Marika? Their visas?’

  ‘That’s all been taken care of.’

  She looked back to the view. The past was slipping away, the coast of Bohemia dropping away behind her, Hana standing on the shore waving, as she had stood that day at the aerodrome. ‘We’d better start thinking about packing, then.’

  ‘I suggest we move immediately. We need to be ready to go as soon as the train tickets are confirmed. I suggest we take a hotel near Geneva, what do you think?’

  Of course she agreed with him. He was the planner and the driving force. Where would she be withou
t him? Back in Město in all probability. He seemed to be fired with enthusiasm, as though departure for the New World were a good thing rather than a disaster. ‘America, you’ve got it better than our old continent,’ he said. ‘We’re going to leave Europe’s useless memories and pointless conflicts behind us.’ They were words from a poem by Goethe. He was always quoting it these days. She remembered the first time he had quoted Goethe to her, on their honeymoon when they had just got to Italy and all seemed settled. She turned from the window, from the sailing boats on the lake and the hills in the distance, and looked at him. ‘Are memories really useless? They’re all we have, aren’t they? There’s nothing else.’

  ‘There’s the future.’

  ‘I’m not sure I believe in the future. What they’re doing in our old house, anthropology, race, whatever it was that Hana said. That’s the future.’

  ‘It won’t last, and at least they haven’t pulled it down ‘

  ‘I was so happy there. Although it was an illusory happiness, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Isn’t all happiness illusory?’

  ‘How cynical you are.’

  He came into the room and put his hand on her shoulder. She liked the contact with him, that was a strange thing. Was it absurd to crave contact and yet feel betrayed? ‘You were happy. We were both happy. Isn’t that enough?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand you, Viktor, I really don’t. After all these years.’

  He smiled, that smile that had captivated her, captivated dozens of women. It was so open, so honest. ‘Do you expect to? No one really understands another. I don’t understand you, either. You and Hana, for example.’

  She looked up, startled, blood coming to her cheeks. ‘What about Hana and me?’

  He bent and kissed her on the forehead. ‘That’s exactly the question, isn’t it? What about you and Hana?’ He dropped the envelope of tickets on the desk in front of her. ‘Here, put these somewhere safe.’

  Protektor

  There is panic in the Glass Room. The Reichsprotektor will be visiting Město. Not old von Neurath, the dear old fellow whom everyone loves, but the new man, the martinet, Obergruppenführer Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich. Telegrams and telephone calls speed here and there. Plans are made and just as soon abandoned. Rumours trample over speculation. The Reichsprotektor will be visiting the Biometric Centre; he will not be visiting. He will come in the morning; he will come in the afternoon. He will want to meet with all the staff; he will wish to see the place when no one is around. Eventually, of course, the full itinerary comes, stamped with the seal of the Reichsprotektor’s office in Prague Castle, and there is no longer any question or argument: the Biometric Centre will be available for his inspection at eleven o’clock in the morning, with all the staff on parade.

  The visitor’s convoy arrives exactly on time. There is the distant rumble of motorcycles and then a sudden proximal roar and the vehicles come into view from the direction of the children’s hospital. Motor bikes are followed by a closed car containing officials, and then a dark green Mercedes convertible with the Hakenkreuz flying from the front mudguard and SS–3 on the number plate. It takes little to understand where this man stands in the hierarchy of the state. The Führer is SS–1; Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler is SS–2; this man is SS–3. The father, the son and the holy ghost. A trinity. The hood of the car is down so that the people may see him sitting in splendour in the back and indeed he looks like something ghostly, pale and solemn, rising to his feet as the car draws to a halt. Medals and badges glint in the sunshine: the eagle on his left arm, his pilot’s wings on his left breast, the golden badge of the Party, the ribbon of the Knight’s Cross. His face is long and immobile, with pale eyes and a proud prow of a nose, reminiscent of an Aztec mask that Stahl recalls seeing at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. What, he wonders, does it say about the man’s genealogy? His ears are lobed, his hair is blond, his mouth is full and sensual and pulled for the moment into a bleak smile. He has wide, almost feminine hips.

  Standing there with all the staff, Stahl raises his right arm and pronounces the clarion call ‘Heil Hitler!’ The Reichsprotektor steps down on to the pavement and gives a jaunty acknowledgement of the salute, a mere wave, as though he has privileged knowledge of the man who is being invoked and therefore may treat the matter with some familiarity. ‘Stahl,’ he says holding out his hand. ‘I have heard about you and your work.’

  For a moment Stahl is overcome. ‘Herr Obergruppenführer Heydrich, you are …’ What is he? Welcome? Feared? Impressive? ‘… most gracious to favour our small outpost of scientific endeavour with your presence. As humble warriors in the battle for truth and understanding we—’

  The Reichsprotektor cuts him short. ‘I’m sure everything you say is quite laudable but I’m afraid I don’t have time for that kind of thing. I wish to see what you people do, not hear what you may or may not think about my visit.’

  ‘Of course, Herr Reichsprotektor.’ Stahl turns to where the scientific staff are waiting. ‘May I introduce you to my fellow researchers—’

  The Reichsprotektor nods at the line of scientists. ‘That’s fine. I am sure they do their work well. Please show me the way.’

  And so they move on, ten minutes ahead of schedule, with people scattering before them. ‘What kind of building was this?’ Heydrich asks as they descend towards the Glass Room.

  ‘A private house.’

  ‘How could people live in such a place? Were they Jews?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  Heydrich pauses on the stairs. The hooded eyes are an ambush. ‘This work you do here. Does it mean that you can identify Jews?’

  ‘We are making inroads into the problem. For example, hair colour—’

  ‘I have heard that there are Jew diseases.’

  ‘They are a degenerate race and like all such races they may carry certain genetic diseases, what one expert has called “inborn errors of metabolism”. Sachs’s infantile amaurotic idiocy, for example; and the so-called spongy degeneration of the brain that Canavan identified. Then there is Gaucher’s disease, and one or two others. They all appear to be inherited in the Mendelian fashion.’

  There is a moment of stillness in the narrow space. ‘Is this what we have been looking for?’

  ‘It’s not that simple, Herr Reichsprotektor. Not all Jews have the diseases, and conversely, not all people with those diseases are Jews.’ Stahl pushes open the door and stands aside for Heydrich to go through. ‘Here we have adopted a different approach. In this laboratory we are trying to measure the most minute variations of phenotype, and then we search to see whether particular combinations of characteristics can lead to a racial diagnosis. That is what the Hollerith machines are for, to sort out all the data that we collect. Herr Reichsprotektor will see them later.’

  In the Glass Room the staff wait nervously. The visitor looks round, at the semicircle of expectant scientists, at the onyx wall and the open space, at the glass plates of the windows and the view across the city. ‘And this is where these Jew owners lived? It looks more like a fencing salle than a living room.’

  ‘They were very modern people, Herr Reichsprotektor.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘They emigrated.’

  ‘Excellent.’ He nods at the scientists, as though the emigration of the Landauer family were their merit. And then he notices the piano. ‘What is that doing here?’

  ‘It was left behind by the owners. We have chosen not to remove it.’

  ‘Why? Why have you kept it? Do you play?’

  Is there some Party ordinance that forbids such things? ‘I play a bit, Herr Reichsprotektor. I thought, some German culture might not be amiss.’

  ‘So it is in tune?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There is a pause. People stand watching, uniformed men from the Reichsprotektor’s party, the scientific staff in their white coats, all wondering what will happen. Heydrich lifts the lid of the instrument and
moves his fingers fluidly across the keys. A few notes spill out in the silence, the opening bars of one of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. ‘Spring’. The Reichsprotektor’s mouth moves in what might be considered a smile. ‘You don’t play Mendelssohn, I hope?’

  ‘Liszt. Beethoven,’ Stahl says. ‘Not Mendelssohn. Mendels sohn was a Jew.’

  ‘Does his being a Jew make his music any worse? It’s a shame I don’t have my violin with me. We could have played together, perhaps some Mendelssohn just to put him to the test. Now show me the measuring.’

  The wave of relief that overcomes Stahl is almost orgasmic. ‘Perhaps the Obergruppenführer would consent to be measured? It will give him a clear idea of our methods.’

  The Reichsprotektor hesitates. Hesitation is something he rarely discovers in himself; often in other people. It seems like a weakness, the first symptom of a degenerative disease, like those the Jews suffer from. Surely you can will weakness away? ‘Why not?’ he agrees finally. ‘I am sure we have a few minutes. Why not?’ He hands his cap to a minion and consents to be led into the mensuration area. Blushing Elfriede Lange indicates where he should stand, where he should sit, where he should lie down. The man’s body is long and languid on the couch. His boots gleam in the lights. His medals shine. He smiles up at Elfriede and she blushes more deeply. ‘You are of fine, Nordic stock,’ he tells her.

  ‘Thank you, Herr Reichsprotektor.’

  ‘You shouldn’t thank me, you should thank your parents.’

  She calls out the measurements and Stahl himself writes them down on a blank form.

  ‘So you say you have no single character to distinguish a Jew from someone of Nordic stock?’ Heydrich asks.

  ‘No single character,’ Stahl agrees.

  ‘But a combination?’

  ‘It is a possibility, Herr Obergruppenführer. That is what we are working on.’

  ‘And the Slavs? We are also interested in the Slavs. It is a question of whether they may be racially assimilated into the German stock or not. You understand?’