Read Online The Glass Room by Simon Mawer - Free Book Online Page A

the space, the furniture, the floors, all conceptually there as a sculpture is somehow there in the mind of the sculptor before he completes it. Men climb ladders and tiptoe across the beams as though searching for this mysterious grail. The site engineer, a small man with glasses and energetic arms, is discussing something with the foreman. ‘They all want walls,’ Rainer explains, ‘and I insist that Frau Liesel does not want walls. She wants space and light for her new child. That’s what I tell them.’
    He smiles at her and she feels iridescently happy, as though lights have been turned on, multicoloured lights that shimmer and wobble and reflect off moving mirrors. This man has a vision that he is realising for her alone, for her and Viktor and their baby. It seems fantastic. ‘Will you come and see her?’ she asks. It suddenly seems important that she should show him Ottilie. ‘Can I drag you away from your work for a few minutes?’
    ‘Of course you can.’
    Her car is waiting, with the chauffeur, Laník, behind the wheel. They drive round to the other house, the turreted and bastioned one in the Masaryk quarter, the one with small windows and weighty walls, the towers and the turrets. The nurse goes and fetches Ottilie while Liesel entertains von Abt in the sitting room. A maid brings coffee and cakes. They talk enthusiastically of furnishings and interiors, of the space in which to create her family, which is not like the space of this room with its heavy drapes, its furniture like coffins and pews, its chandeliers and heavy flock wallpaper. ‘A new way of life,’ von Abt is saying as the nurse comes in with a bundle of shawls that is Ottilie. ‘That’s what you will have. Away with all this fustian.’
    Liesel takes her child. ‘She has been sleeping. In a moment she will awaken and will want to feed. That’s it. Sleep and feeding.’ She laughs at the absurdity of such a life and holds the baby for von Abt to see. He reaches out and strokes a cheek with the tip of one finger, then looks up at Liesel and touches her hand where it holds Ottilie’s shawl aside. ‘It is marvellous to see you so happy.’
    ‘I
am
very happy,’ she agrees, as though there has been some suggestion that she might not be.
    ‘Viktor is a lucky man.’
    ‘We are both of us very lucky.’
    The baby wakes, her eyes suddenly there like jewels amongst the crumpled features. She opens a toothless mouth.
    ‘You see? She is hungry. That is the sum total of her intellectual achievement at the moment. Do you mind if I feed her?’
    ‘Of course not …’ He makes to go, but she stops him.
    ‘No, please don’t bother. If you don’t mind … And please don’t look away. You may watch, Rainer. I would like you to watch.’ And there and then, conscious of the immense power she possesses, she unbuttons the front of her dress and releases her breast. Once meagre, her breasts have become functional organs as heavy and full as fruit. As she holds the nipple for the baby, she feels Rainer’s eyes on her like a thrilling touch. And then Ottilie takes the nipple in her hard gums and there is the particular ecstasy of her suck. Liesel looks up directly at him. ‘There,’ she says, and wonders why it is that having Rainer von Abt watch her do this is so important.
    ‘Pure superstition,’ Viktor said dismissively when the question of Ottilie’s baptism was broached. ‘We profess not to believe so why do we have to do this kind of thing for our child?’
    ‘For my mother’s sake.’
    ‘First she insisted on a church wedding, and now she demands that her granddaughter be baptised. She is merciless.’
    ‘And I want Hana to be her godmother,’ Liesel added.
    ‘That woman!’
    ‘She is not
that woman
. She is my dearest friend. You stopped me naming the baby Hana but you must allow me this.’
    ‘Well she’s hardly going to instil fidelity and modesty in our daughter, is she?’
    ‘She’ll be very conscious of her