The Glass Room

by Simon Mawer

  He lifts the telephone receiver and phones one of the departments in the Špilas fortress. Amt IV. There is someone he knows there, a fellow Bavarian, not the kind of person he would call a friend but a contact nevertheless. ‘It’s Stahl at the Biometric Centre,’ he says. ‘Yes, Werner Stahl. How are you?’ Then he explains the problem. ‘She’s subversive, yes. She has been asking questions. And Jew-friendly.’ Judenfreundlich. ‘Hana Hanáková.’ He repeats the name, and then dictates the spelling in case the man on the other end should make a mistake. The address? Yes, he has her address.

  He feels much better now, as though something that was blocking his airway has been removed. He gets up from his desk and walks over to the window. Out there on the terrace the children used to play. Dolls, cars, that kind of thing, that’s what she told him. Two of them, a boy and a girl. Mischlinge. Where are they now, he wonders? Later he returns the file to the registry, and takes out another one. Lange, Elfriede it says on the cover. He opens it and lays those photographs out on the desk. Pale and perfect, her image blushes prettily back at a point just to the right of the camera, the place where he himself had stood watching. He wonders about that cloud of pale hair between her thighs, the texture of it, the scent.

  Ocean

  The rhythms of the carriage had become part of their consciousness. It was any break to those rhythms that disturbed them during the night – a half-hour when the train halted somewhere south of Lyon, another pause in an unnamed station where they watched a man attach water hoses to the train, and another near Avignon when the guard passed along the corridor blowing a whistle. An air raid warning. Viktor climbed out of his bunk and let the blinds up but there was nothing to see, just the black of night and, in the faint backwash of light from the sky, an anonymous signal gantry. Cool air came in through the open window, but there was no sound of aircraft, no distant exploding bombs, just the muttering of nighttime and the noise of people in the next compartment talking with subdued voices. In the upper bunks the children slept on.

  ‘What time is it?’ Liesel asked.

  ‘Half past two.’

  They dozed, and then another whistle sounded the all clear and the train gave a jolt and edged forward and the rhythms were restored and they slept once more until dawn came and they woke finally to a cool, bright morning with the train trundling along through the French countryside – low, scrubby hills, isolated farms, the occasional village. Viktor was standing at the window in his shirtsleeves, looking crumpled from the night. There was rough stubble on his chin. She had not seen him unshaven for years. The train rattled over points and they were passing through another station and this time there was a signboard visible: MONTPELLIER.

  ‘This is where Vitulka died,’ Liesel said. ‘You remember, Kaprál’s daughter. She married Mucha’s son, you remember? Hana told us in one of her letters. I suppose Mucha had the same idea as us. Getting her to Spain.’

  This tenuous coincidence with Vitulka Kaprálová seemed important. It was a thread that stretched across a hostile continent and linked them with home. Reduced to this exiguous compartment, this enforced intimacy, she clung to this thread of association, back through the years, back through different lives, all the way to the Glass Room, and Němec surrendering the piano and Vitulka sitting at the keyboard to play.

  ‘What was the piece she played? “Ondine,” wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Of course you do. Ravel.’

  The train rumbled on, away from the sea now, towards the other side of the country, towards the Atlantic. While Viktor went down the corridor to the bathroom and shaved in cold water, Katalin and Liesel folded the bunks away. There were some bread rolls for breakfast and some milk for the children. ‘It’s sour,’ Ottilie protested.

  ‘It’s not sour,’ Liesel told her. ‘It’s perfectly all right. Anyway, it’s all we’ve got. There are plenty of people who have nothing.’

  Once they had finished, Katalin organised the children with some kind of game. It involved spotting objects in the passing countryside – sheep, rivers, villages – and scoring points if you guessed correctly what would come next. Later in the morning they discovered another landmark. ‘A castle, a castle!’ cried Martin, and when they looked out of the window there were the walls and pointed turrets of a medieval town that Viktor could name. ‘Carcassonne,’ he said. Later they went at a walking pace through Toulouse where the platform was lined with uniformed police. People pushed past in the corridor, straining to see out of the windows. Stories went back and forth. They would be changing trains at Biarritz. They would go straight through to Spain. They’d have to get off at the Spanish border and walk over to another train. Papers would be checked. Papers would not be checked because the train was sealed: in effect they were already in Spain. There were as many theories as people you asked, but in fact no one knew.

  In the afternoon the train slid slowly into another station. ‘Soldiers!’ Liesel cried, looking out of the window. The word struck a chill.

  Katalin peered over her shoulder. ‘Germans,’ she whispered, as though she might be overheard through the window and over the grinding of the brakes. ‘I thought the Germans were in the north. I thought it was the French in the south.’

  But they were Germans, a motley collection of the young and the middle-aged, the lucky ones who were not on the Eastern Front, stern in their grey-green uniforms.

  BAYONNE, a signboard said. The train stopped. There was shouting, the banging open of doors. ‘Raus! Raus!’ Someone hammered on the window with a cane. ‘Raus! Alle raus!’

  Liesel and Katalin gathered their things. ‘Do we take our suitcases? Do we take everything?’

  People pushed and shoved along the corridor, some with bags, some without. Passengers climbed down onto the platform, blinking like animals emerging from a stable. An old woman had to be helped down the steps while people behind her urged her to hurry, shouting at her as though it was all her fault.

  On the platform, Liesel grabbed Ottilie and Martin and held them tight. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked Viktor. ‘What are they doing? Why Germans?’ She suddenly had the terrible fear that they would be separated, that women and children would go one way and men would go the other. ‘Stay with us, Viktor,’ she pleaded, as though he had any power over such matters.

  ‘Line up!’ an officer called in French and German. ‘Get in line! Papers! Have your papers ready!’

  Some of the passengers struggled back on board to retrieve their documents. There was more shouting and pushing. German voices railed. Eventually queues formed, awkward, shifting queues, like sheep jostling at a gate. At the head of each queue was a desk, where a pair of officials sat in judgement. They wore uniform and silver gorgets hanging round their necks like symbols of some arcane priesthood.

  ‘Silence!’

  There was a smell amongst the waiting crowd, the smell of stale sweat, of unwashed bodies. ‘People pong,’ exclaimed Ottilie. Talk died down to a low muttering. In the sky above there was something new, great white birds circling and calling, a mocking, jeering sound that reminded Liesel of summers spent in Nice. ‘Seagulls,’ she told the children.

  They edged forward, the children wedged in behind Viktor, with Liesel and Katalin standing behind them. Katalin was trembling. Liesel grasped her hand for comfort. At their backs soldiers were going through the train. They could hear them banging around, opening doors and pulling luggage down from racks. Some kind of disturbance broke out at one of the carriages. A man shouted and there was a scuffle as a figure was dragged away. Outside the station an engine revved. The story diffused amongst the waiting passengers, people muttering to one another out of the hearing of the soldiers. Chinese whispers. There were people on board without papers. Stowaways. The Germans had caught them and taken them away.

  The queues shuffled forward. Passports were being stamped. Passengers were climbing back on board. Once they had got past the desks, people were going back on board! But so
me were being taken away, off the platform into one of the station buildings. Problems with papers, questions of identity, that kind of thing. Some were taken away but most were being let through. Relief spread though the crowd like something palpable, a kind of joy, a kind of ecstasy; but it was relief mingled with the fear that when your turn came you might not pass the test.

  ‘Documents,’ the man said, snapping his fingers under Viktor’s nose. He was stout and middle-aged, with a poor complexion and thinning hair slicked over a bald head. The master race. What had he been before the war? A minor civil servant in Darmstadt or something. Now he had a uniform and a silver plate on his breast with an eagle with wings outspread and the title Feldgendarmerie.

  Viktor laid their papers out on the desk in neat piles. ‘My family – me, my wife and two children. And the children’s nanny. And her daughter.’

  The man turned over the pages, glancing up every now and again. Passports, French transit visas, Spanish visa. He pursed his lips and nodded at the display of documentation, then snapped his fingers again. ‘Tickets.’ The tickets were laid out before him, like someone disclosing a winning hand at poker. But the stakes were high and victory wasn’t guaranteed.

  ‘Jew?’ he asked, looking up.

  Viktor was impassive. He still had that ability, the business negotiator, keeping his cards to himself. ‘Czechoslovak,’ he said.

  ‘Czechoslovakia no longer exists,’ the official said. ‘Now it is the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.’

  ‘Moravian, then.’

  The man sniffed. ‘And this one?’ He tapped Katalin’s temporary passport, her Nansen passport, a desolate, homeless document. Liesel could feel Katalin’s fingers tighten around her arm.

  ‘That is our nanny, the children’s nanny. And her daughter.’

  The man considered. He was one of those people who has been reared on the importance of pieces of paper. Official stamps were ranked in front of him like stormtroopers in the victory of bureaucracy. ‘Come forward, woman,’ he said.

  Katalin stood in front of him, trembling. He looked her up and down, as though what he saw there might be reflected in some aspect of her dubious papers. ‘What is this document?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s what it says,’ Viktor pointed out. ‘She has no passport. The League of Nations issues these—’

  ‘I didn’t ask you.’

  Katalin shrugged. ‘It’s all I have.’

  ‘She’s in our employ,’ said Viktor.

  ‘I didn’t ask you to speak, sir,’ the soldier repeated with elaborate politeness. He held up a hand to call another official over. There was a moment of consultation. They examined the passport and the various visas while Katalin looked on with terrified, rabbit eyes. And then things happened with a disturbing rapidity. A uniformed figure took her by the elbow and led her away towards a nearby hut. Marika shouted, ‘Mama!’ and Liesel grabbed her and pulled her closer. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Is this the woman’s child?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Liesel replied. ‘She’s with us. We’ll look after her.’

  ‘She must go with the mother.’

  ‘What the devil’s going on?’ Viktor demanded.

  The official gathered up their documents and handed them to him. ‘A procedural issue. The rest of you may move on.’

  The soldier led Marika away, pushing her towards her mother. As they were shoved into the hut Katalin gave a desperate glance over her shoulder. ‘Viktor!’ she cried.

  Viktor was shouting. His face was contorted with fear and anger and he was shouting: ‘Her papers are in order! She’s travelling on a refugee passport, a Nansen passport.’

  ‘I suggest you move back into the train,’ the official said. ‘Unless you wish to find yourself in detention.’

  ‘We left Czechoslovakia like that. She has everything that’s needed! It was all right for entering France. It’s all right for Spain.’ People were pushing from behind. The crowd was stirring with something animal and feral, the desire to survive, the desire not to be one of the unlucky ones who were taken away, a desire to have the little incident forgotten.

  ‘Move on, Herr Landauer,’ the German said quietly. ‘For your own sake, move on. Maybe the delay will only be temporary. Maybe all will be well. Just be patient.’ The official was looking past him to the next family, holding out his hand for their papers, wanting to get the job done. A soldier, a mere child, it seemed to Liesel, pushed them away towards the carriage, pushed them as you might push cattle. He came into the carriage and took Katalin’s and Marika’s suitcases away.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Viktor demanded. ‘They’ll be coming back. They’re coming with us.’ But the youth just shrugged as he humped the cases out into the corridor.

  In the compartment, Martin was crying and asking what had happened. Ottilie was telling him not to worry. ‘It’s just a procedural issue,’ she said, not knowing what the words meant but liking the sound of them. Overhead the sound of gulls seemed jeering and malevolent.

  They settled down to wait like a family in a funeral parlour, talking in whispers, breaking off sentences to stare away out of the window. Outside on the platform the queues shifted forward inexorably towards the desks, souls queuing to cross the Styx. Viktor went down the corridor to see what was happening, while Liesel sat with her arms round Ottilie and Martin, as though comforting the bereaved. Viktor was down on the platform talking to someone in uniform. Would he do something stupid, say something stupid, he who was always so balanced and thoughtful, always in possession of a plan? He was gesturing and arguing, and the official shook his head and held out hopeless hands.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Liesel assured the children, while feeling no assurance herself. ‘You know how it is with documents. Things get muddled, mistakes get made. Tatínek will sort things out.’

  And then the two figures out on the platform moved. It was a sudden thing, a rapid dance of violence. Viktor made some gesture and the official shouted. A soldier ran across, unslinging his rifle and holding it across his chest. There was a moment of argument and then he drove the butt into Viktor’s body. Viktor staggered backwards. Liesel cried out. Ottilie screamed. The soldier advanced, pushing and shoving with his rifle, driving Viktor back to the steps of the train. A moment later he came into the compartment with blood on his face and on his hands.

  ‘What were you doing?’ Liesel shouted at him. ‘In God’s name what were you doing?’

  He dropped down onto the seat, shaking his head. It was as though the answer to her question was as difficult to understand as the reason for Katalin’s arrest. Just a shake of the head and his fingers touching the swelling on his cheek where the rifle had hit him. ‘Your responsibility is to us!’ she screamed. ‘Your duty is to your family! What the hell happens to us if you get taken away?’

  But he sat there, shaking his head and looking at the blood in his hands, as though oblivious to his wife standing over him and screaming. ‘You silly fucking bastard!’ she yelled. ‘That whore is more important to you than your wife and children! You silly fucking bastard!’

  And then came the aftermath of the storm and they sat and waited in a strange, ethereal silence. Ottilie wept quietly in the corner. Martin turned away to look at a book. And Liesel and Viktor sat side by side, as far apart as they could get, as far apart as they had ever been, while soldiers walked up and down the platform in that mindless way that they have, striding back and forth, going nowhere. From the corridor windows you could see others down on the track, looking up at the windows of the crowded train as though peering into another world, a civilian world that they did not, would not understand.

  Then the engine gave a snort of steam and the carriage jerked forward.

  ‘We’re going!’

  Liesel gave a small cry, of shock, of fear. ‘Where’s Marika?’ Ottilie cried. ‘Mutti, where has Marika gone?’ But there was no answer. The carriages clanked together, jerked and shudde
red, and then began to move more smoothly, out of the station area, through a short tunnel and then curving past dilapidated buildings and trundling across a bridge. There was a stretch of brown water below them and then more houses and open fields.

  ‘We’re going,’ Viktor said. His tone was incredulous. He looked at his wife. The blood had dried on his face, streaks of rust red down his forehead and on his cheeks. ‘What could I have done?’ he asked her. ‘What else could I have done?’

  Liesel shrugged and looked away. Suddenly she felt the dreadful enclosure of the compartment. She stood up at the window and put her face to the small opening to breathe in the outside air. There was something new borne on the breeze of their passage over the top of the pungent fumes from the engine. ‘Do you smell it?’ Liesel asked, turning to the children. ‘Do you smell it?’

  The breeze came from the west and it carried with it the scent of the ocean.

  Later they talked, in hushed tones so as not to wake the children, in allusive tones, in case they were awake and listening. The train trundled on through the darkness. They were in Spain now and there was no longer the constraint of the blackout. Looking out of the window you could see the lights from the neighbouring compartments falling onto the embankment, throwing rough grass and sere trees into momentary life, like frames from an old film.

  Viktor sat hunched in the darkness on the lower bunk, and she knew that he was weeping. She knew it by the set of his shoulders and the manner of his breathing and the hesitance in his speech, even though she had never known him weep before. It made her angry. ‘For God’s sake, pull yourself together. You’ll be no use to anyone in this state. You’ve got to pull yourself together and think about what we might do when we get to Bilbao. You’ll be completely useless like this.’

  ‘I thought …’ he said. ‘I thought …’

  ‘You don’t know what you thought. You haven’t known what to think for ages now.’