The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

Author:Simon Mawer [Mawer, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780748115686
Google: 7ajkRO4xneMC
Amazon: B002TOBI6U
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2009-08-20T14:57:37+00:00

On the surface of things little appeared to change, but that evening Katalin joined Liesel and Viktor for dinner when previously she had always eaten earlier with the children. Viktor didn’t remark on the change. Did he even notice? He was full of his account of meeting Fritz Mandl at lunch in Zurich. Mandl was going to South America, to make his fortune – his third or fourth fortune, Viktor couldn’t be sure which – and maybe that was where they should go, Venezuela or Argentina or somewhere. Mandl was looking for partners. ‘Do you know what happened to his wife? Apparently she left him; apparently she’s making a career in Hollywood.’

‘I told you that, Viktor. Hana helped her, don’t you remember?’

‘Did she? How strange …’

The conversation died away. It was like a family meal after the announcement of a death, stories started but not completed, comments stillborn. ‘How are the children getting on at school?’ he asked, which was not the kind of thing that usually concerned him. But the question was treated like a serious enquiry, each child’s progress analysed, teachers discussed, progress dissected. Katalin thought that Marika needed some help with her Latin – she hadn’t studied Latin before – and Viktor thought that it might be arranged. Some private tuition, perhaps. The cost? The cost would be no problem.

After the meal Katalin left them alone. ‘Perhaps we should talk,’ he said. ‘About that business this morning.’ He had spoken to Katalin, she knew that. His face betrayed him: anxiety, distraction, the knowledge that a life that had been disrupted by circumstance could now be blown to smithereens. The roles, she understood, had neatly reversed.

‘Why didn’t you do what I asked? Why did you speak to her?’

‘Why should I do what you ask? Because you’re my husband? It’s been going on for years, hasn’t it? We’ve been sharing you for most of our married life.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘All those trips to Vienna when you could so easily have come home. Oh yes, I know all about them. At least, I can imagine all about them. I thought it was just women, tarts, whatever. What men do. But it wasn’t tarts, was it? It was her. No, she hasn’t told me anything but it doesn’t take much to work it out. I tried to contact you once at the Sacher and they were most apologetic that you weren’t there. As though it was their fault. You weren’t at the Bristol either. You weren’t anywhere I knew.’ She gave a bitter laugh, lighting a cigarette and drawing the smoke deep into her lungs. ‘I suppose it happens all the time. I suppose the hotel staff are used to it.’

‘You never said anything.’

‘I didn’t want to believe it myself. We spend much of our lives not wanting to believe it ourselves, don’t we? When did it start?’

He shrugged but didn’t answer. She tapped cigarette ash onto her plate, something that he loathed. ‘Years,’ she said. ‘Before Martin? I suppose so.

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