The Glass Room

by Simon Mawer

  He had been warned clearly enough. ‘Make it easy for them,’ the security officer had said. ‘Drive slowly and steadily and don’t make any hasty turns. You make it difficult for them and they’ll make it difficult for you.’

  When the menu came he ordered baked scrod, and then went to phone the embassy. He was under instructions to report in at regular intervals. They wanted to know that everything was all right, that no political incident had occurred, no one had kidnapped him and that he had not decided to defect. That was the irony of the matter: they were as much checking on your own loyalty as your safety.

  As he got up from the table one of the men followed him. Perhaps they thought he was going to leave by the back door. Should he should acknowledge the man’s presence? Should he say hi and wish him good day or something? But in the event he just dialled the number and stood there holding the receiver to his ear as the man went past to the men’s room.

  ‘Falmouth,’ he said when the duty clerk answered. ‘At a diner … No, I don’t know the address. Does it matter? Betty’s, that’s what it’s called. Yes, Betty’s.’

  Then he cut the connection and dialled the place he was going, the woman he had already spoken to, just to confirm his appointment for the afternoon. She hadn’t forgotten. No, of course it was all right. She would be waiting for him. She sounded wary on the phone, suspicious of this man from the Embassy. But then, who wouldn’t be?

  The man came out of the men’s room and went back to his table just as Veselý hung up the receiver so by the time he got back to his own place both of his followers had resumed their meal and their subdued conversation and their undisguised examination of the prettier of the two waitresses. They didn’t look at him and didn’t even bother to move when he paid the check and got up to go; yet the Oldsmobile was behind him again when he drew out of the parking lot.

  From Falmouth he followed the coast road. It was a fine, sunny day and the sea glittered, creaming along the beach to the left. He was in good time, so where the road ran along a spit of land between the ocean and a brackish inland lagoon he pulled the car over to have a look. There were beach houses among the dunes. Gulls screamed overhead. Sailboats tacked back and forth between the shore and the island that lay offshore. The Oldsmobile waited in the background while he stood there savouring the breeze and the taste of salt on his lips. They were probably wondering what the hell he was up to. Searching for submarines, maybe. But all he was doing was looking at the ocean, because he had never seen it before.

  At Wood’s Hole he stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. The pump attendant scratched his head. ‘The Landor place, you say? That’ll be Gardiner Road, I guess.’ The Beatles blared from a transistor radio in the shack at the back of the forecourt. ‘Lady Madonna’. They had been playing it in Prague when Veselý had left only two weeks ago. The pump attendant gave directions and then looked at Veselý sideways. ‘Where you from, then?’

  ‘Czechoslovakia.’

  The man nodded. ‘That’ll be communist,’ he said, as though sharing a piece of exclusive information.

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Can’t say I approve of them Commies. But now they say things are different, at least in your neck of the woods.’

  ‘For the moment,’ Veselý said. ‘We’re keeping our fingers crossed.’

  ‘Them Russians. That’s what you want to watch.’

  Wanna watch. Veselý agreed. We wanna watch them Russians.

  It wasn’t difficult to find the house. It was numbered plainly enough and there was even the name on a board by the mailbox: Mahren House. They’d left the umlaut off which was typical enough of the whole country really – anything to make things easy. He turned in to the driveway and pulled up in front of the door. The house was one of those clapboard buildings that abound in that part of the world, an expensive place with gardens all round it and two cars in the carport and boat on a trailer parked alongside. He noticed a man standing at a downstairs window watching as he climbed out of the car, but when he rang the bell the door was opened by a woman. She was far too young to be the one he was going to visit. She was blonde, and dressed younger than she looked: jeans and a kind of kaftan top, with her feet in sandals. You could imagine her listening to Dylan and The Byrds and arguing about Vietnam. Or strumming a guitar and playing ‘We Shall Overcome’. Or sailing. You could imagine her out to sea with the salt wind in her hair. A little boy, equally blond, stood watching from the back of the hall. ‘Yes?’ the woman asked.

  ‘I’ve come from the Embassy. I rang earlier to confirm. To see Mrs Landor.’

  She flashed a nervous smile, just a flicker of welcome. ‘I’m her daughter. You’d best come through.’

  The house was all wood inside, wooden floor, wooden walls, wooden ceiling. Like a glorified chata, he thought. ‘Maminko,’ the woman called as she showed him into the living room, ‘it’s the man from the Embassy.’

  The living room spanned the whole depth of the house. It was a cool, expansive place with modern furniture. The paintings on the walls were abstracts with a vaguely nautical feel to them, as though the strokes of paint were sails and hulls, the blocks of blue and white were sky and clouds. A picture window showed the lawn at the back and, beyond some bushes, an azure smear of sea. The breath of air conditioning was like a sea breeze.

  There were two other people in the room, a woman sitting in an armchair beside the unlit fire and a young man standing by the window that overlooked the front drive. The woman was in her sixties, Veselý guessed. Her hair was pulled back to show fine, strong features. There was the shadow of her daughter there in the shape of her face. Her grip was firm as they shook hands but her look was wayward and uncertain, as though Veselý was not the only person she was expecting and she was trying to see if there was anyone else coming through the door behind him.

  ‘Please sit down, Mr Veselý,’ she said. She spoke in Czech but with a heavy German intonation, an amalgam of sound that came out of the past, from a time before the revolution and the war. ‘It’s most unusual to have a visit from the Embassy.’

  The young man – no older than Veselý himself – turned from the window. ‘There’s an automobile out there with two men in it.’ He spoke in English. ‘They’re watching the house from across the road. Is that anything to do with you?’

  ‘They follow us wherever we go.’

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘The FBI. Domestic Security Division.’

  ‘You mean those guys are on our side?’

  Veselý shrugged. The man seemed angry about something, but what was there to be angry about? The meeting had been arranged in advance and Mrs Landor had seemed happy to go through with it. It was hardly Veselý’s fault that the American authorities tailed him. ‘I don’t see it as being a matter of sides.’

  ‘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 Město 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 Město 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 Město. 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 tě, 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 i
n 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?’