by Simon Mawer
‘When?’ asks the Américaine. ‘When were you here?’
‘Please,’ the guide says. ‘Not to sit in chair.’
‘Oh, let her be.’ The Américaine crouches down, her hand on Marie’s shoulder. ‘Aren’t you feeling well? You just rest a bit and don’t take any notice of her. Maybe we can get you a glass of water.’
‘I’m all right. Really.’ She tries to get up, then sits back down. ‘I used to live here,’ she says to this American woman who seems sympathetic, who will perhaps listen to this tale of loss and forgetting. ‘Many years ago, with my mother. That’s why. The memories.’
‘You used to live here?’
‘Before the war. Just a short time. My mother was a nanny. The children, there were the children.’
‘Ottilie and Martin.’
Marie looks up in surprise. ‘That’s right. How do you know that? Ottilie and Martin.’
The American woman’s expression is cut through with confusion. ‘Marika?’ she asks. ‘Are you Marika?’
‘How do you know Marika?’
The American woman is on her knees now, holding Marie’s hands. ‘I’m Ottilie,’ she says, an absurd idea because Ottilie is a child, a mere twelve years old, trapped irrevocably in distant memory. But this woman with the weather-beaten face and polished skin and dyed hair is claiming this identity, laughing and crying at the same time while the other two watch, Milada no longer complaining about the chair being sat on, the young man looking bewildered.
‘For God’s sake, I’m Ottilie.’
And all around them is the Glass Room, a place of balance and reason, an ageless place held in a rectilinear frame that handles light like a substance and volume like a tangible material and denies the very existence of time.
Afterword
The title of this book, The Glass Room, needs some explanation. It is, as is clear, a translation of the original German – Der Glasraum. Raum is, of course, ‘room’. Yet this is not the ‘room’ of English, the Zimmer of our holidays, with double bed, wardrobe and writing desk beneath a print of some precipitous Alpine valley. Within the confines of the Germanic ‘room’ there is room for so much more: Raum is an expansive word. It is spacious, vague, precise, conceptual, literal, all those things. From the capacity of the coffee cup in one’s hand, to the room one is sitting in to sip from it, to the district of the city in which the café itself stands, to the very void above our heads, outer space, der Weltraum. There is room to move in Raum.
So: The Glass Space, perhaps; or The Glass Volume; or The Glass Zone. Whichever way you please. Poetry is what is lost in translation, as Robert Frost so memorably said. So we do our best with this sorry and thankless task, aware that we will be condemned for trying and condemned for not trying. Take it as you please: the Glass Room; der Glasraum.
Copyright © Simon Mawer 2009
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Little, Brown
Other Press edition 2009
Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas
The architectural drawings are of unknown origin. All possible efforts to trace the rights holder have been made.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Mawer, Simon.
The glass room / by Simon Mawer.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-59051-397-2
1. Architecture, Modern—
Fiction. 2. Dwellings—Czechoslovakia—Fiction. 3. World War,
1939-1945–Social aspects—Czechoslovakia—Fiction.
4. Czechoslovakia—History—1938–1945—Fiction.
5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PR9120.9.M38G53 2009
823’.914—dc22 2009039912
PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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