Martin Landauer’s forceps birth and Liesel Landauer’s grave postpartum illness form a family crisis in which survival depends not only on medical care but on the devotion of Hana Hanáková. Liesel’s near-death experience unsettles ordinary assumptions about marriage and friendship: after recovering, she imagines the life Viktor Landauer might have shared with Hana and speaks more openly about the choices and vulnerabilities she had previously concealed.

Birth and Medical Crisis

Martin was delivered by forceps because of a problem with his presentation. After the birth, Liesel remained in hospital for days with a high fever, at times delirious and at others only intermittently conscious. She sometimes called for Martin, Viktor, or Hana, while doctors and nurses spoke in hushed voices as though death were already close. At her mother’s urging, a Catholic priest was brought to her bedside to pray and perhaps administer the last rites, though the family never knew exactly what had been done.

Viktor visited as often as he could, but Hana devoted herself to Liesel throughout the dangerous illness. Her care exceeded Viktor’s expectation of what a friend would do. When Liesel was improving enough to receive visitors, he admitted that he almost considered Hana part of the family and did not know how he would have managed without her.

Recovery and Changed Domestic Life

Liesel’s recovery did not immediately restore her to her former life. The illness left her tall and gaunt, and she returned home with a nurse to care for her. Viktor moved from his dressing room into a bedroom so Liesel could recover in peace and the nurse could attend her. During the day, Liesel walked through the open space of the Glass Room; at night, she lay alone beneath a sheet. With Martin in a bassinet beside her, she sat before the large windows and looked out at the city with a distracted expression, as if she did not quite recognize where she was.

Her voice had become soft and melodic. She told Viktor that she had nearly left him, then wondered aloud what he would have done without her. When he said he did not know, she suggested he would soon have found another woman and hoped he would have chosen wisely. Her words make the possibility of her death an immediate question within their marriage, rather than an abstraction. She explained that coming close to death changes a person and makes previously unthinkable possibilities available for consideration.

Hana and the Marriage

Liesel’s recovery also brings the question of Hana into her marriage with Viktor. She tells him that she thinks he would have gone to Hana had Liesel died. She reasons that the two would have shared interests in modern art, music, and literature, and that Hana might have kept him from being drawn to another woman. Viktor dismisses the suggestion, but Liesel’s calm speculation gives voice to a possibility he would rather not consider.

Earlier, while Liesel was still in hospital, she had already warned Viktor not to assume that Hana’s closeness to her would protect him from Hana’s sexual interest. Viktor was horrified by the suggestion and insisted that Hana was like a sister to him. Liesel countered that Hana would not regard a family bond as a prohibition. The exchange reveals how differently the two women understand intimacy, while also establishing that Liesel’s trust in Hana coexists with her recognition of Hana’s capacity for desire. Her later conjecture about Viktor and Hana turns that tension into a possible future shaped by her own absence.

Mortality, Disclosure, and Consequence

The illness gives Liesel a new perspective on what she had kept hidden. In another conversation, she explains that she had wanted Viktor to see something but had feared it would frighten him away; now, she says, she sees no reason to hide it. Her words connect the experience of approaching death with a willingness to reveal what she had previously withheld. The evidence does not specify that the disclosure is caused by the illness, but the two moments together show a Liesel more prepared to consider risk and speak plainly about private matters.

The episode’s consequences extend beyond the immediate return home. Hana’s sustained care establishes her as a dependable presence in the family’s most vulnerable moment, while Liesel’s near-death becomes a point from which she reconsiders what her husband might do without her. The contrast is striking: Viktor understands Hana’s loyalty as almost familial, while Liesel recognizes that devotion and desire need not be opposites. Martin’s birth thus marks not only the beginning of his life but a rupture in the household’s assumptions about who belongs to it, how love might be redirected, and what Liesel’s survival makes possible.