Free The Glass Room by Simon Mawer Page A

My God! About half a million crowns. Enough to build an entire house.’
    Von Abt nodded. ‘But think how remarkable it will be, Herr Viktor.’
    ‘Certainly it will be remarkable. There are many people who possess onyx ashtrays. I don’t imagine there’s a single one with an onyx wall.’
    That was the end of the viewing, really, a sour note of cost intruding on the exercise of fantasy that was required to imagine the house as it would be, not as it was — a thing of light and reflection, not this dull box of grey concrete. They saw von Abt off on the Vienna train and returned to their turreted villa in silence.
    ‘You’re angry about Rainer’s proposals, aren’t you?’ Liesel said when they were in the sitting room after dinner.
    He shrugged. ‘They seem extravagant at times. It’s our money he’s spending, not his own.’
    ‘The onyx wall, you mean? Viktor, do you know what “onyx” means? It’s the Greek for a fingernail. It’s Venus’s fingernail, isn’t that wonderful? The fingernail of the goddess of love.’
    ‘Did von Abt tell you that?’
    ‘As a matter of fact, he did.’
    ‘It’s an inordinately expensive fingernail.’
    ‘Oh, don’t be so dull, Viktor. If we are going to do something wonderful, then we must make sacrifices.’
    Didn’t she understand? She lived in her protected world, along with Hana Hanáková and her other friends, and they talked about their painters and their musicians and their actors and actresses, and meanwhile the outside world battled with recession and political unrest. When would the one world impinge on the other? And what kind of shock would they feel then?
    He got up and put his book aside. ‘I’m going to bed.’
    ‘Darling, have I made you angry?’
    ‘Of course you haven’t.’
    But she had. She came up to bed later and he lay in the darkness, listening to her as she went to her bathroom to wash, and then crossed the corridor to her room. There was a thin baby’s cry and then silence. She would be feeding Ottilie. Although she sometimes did it openly in front of him, the process always seemed alien, something private between mother and child. Her large, milky breasts were quite changed from the small paps he had once stroked and kissed, indeed her whole body seemed different now, a thing designed for mothering rather than sex. The baby made strange grunting noises as she fed, like a pig suckling. And there wasn’t much difference, was there? A sow feeding her litter, a woman with a baby. Animals both, with animal needs and compulsions. He lay in the darkness and thought of Liesel and motherhood and the new house. It was in this dark and womblike house — the Castle, he called it — that Liesel had conceived their child. What would be conceived in the new house? Other children, perhaps. And what else?
    His mind wandered, in and out of sleep. The onyx wall, he thought of the onyx wall. A fingernail, Venus’s fingernail. He thought of fingernails — Liesel’s, which were long and painted red, and others which were blunt and uncoloured and bitten down to the quick, holding between them a cigarette.
    ‘Have you got a light?’
    Naively he had paused to answer her.
    ‘A light,’ she repeated. ‘D’you have a light?’ There was an air of impatience about her manner, as though she was hurrying to an appointment. All around him was the fairground noise of the Prater, the laughter of children, the calls of stallholders; ahead of him the Nordbahnhof and the train home; and in front of him this woman — smaller than Liesel, with quick, intelligent features and a slight sheen to her complexion — holding an unlit cigarette between her fingers. Her eyes were blue, so pale that they gave the curious illusion of transparency, as though you were looking through them and seeing the sky.
    He fumbled for his lighter and watched as she bent towards the flame. She wore a grey cloche hat and her hair was dark and cut short, not cropped as severely as