The Painted Kiss (10 page)

That’s a beautiful dress, he said as he handed me a chipped cup of cardamom tea. The aroma of India wafted up into my face. Gustav sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of me, put his chin in his hands, and stared at me dolefully.

I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want cheap flattery. I stood up quickly and all the blood rushed to my head, momentarily filling my eye sockets with gray. When it cleared I placed my tea on the floor and went over to the easel to look at the drawing he’d been doing. My face was flushed and sweaty but I felt chilled and clammy. There they were, on the paper, Minna and Helga. I had never seen a drawing of Gustav’s drawn with more passion than the two writhing bodies of these women. Every line was emphatic, every curve was suggestive. They were practically alive on the page.

I thought of a self-portrait Gustav had done as a joke. He had drawn his head, pointy beard, broad forehead, but with horns, atop a teardrop-shaped body with a deep cleft in it. He gave himself a goat’s tail and hoofs. I wasn’t supposed to see it, the artists had laughed over it and then Gustav had hidden it under one of his books, but I had retrieved it when no one was looking and had taken it home. Helene and I had puzzled over it. Clearly it was something illicit. It had the scent of sex on it. But we were young enough and ignorant enough not to know what it was or what it meant.

I took a deep breath. “Is it yours?” I asked. We were not allowed to discuss pregnancy or childbirth in mixed company. There were euphemisms, there were secrets. But I had to know.

“Of course not,” he said.

“Whose is it, then?” I asked.

“Some tavern keeper,” he said. “I go there at dinnertime. He makes a good sauerbraten.”

“Will he help her?” I was relieved. He was telling me things I wasn’t supposed to hear, brutal coarse things he would only tell to an equal, a friend. I felt a rush of compassion for malnourished Minna. She wasn’t much older than I, after all. She could’ve been my sister.

“Why do you think I’ve kept her on?” he said. “She can’t get any other work in her condition. Even other artists don’t want her as a model right now.”

“What will happen to her?”

“She’ll be all right. She’s been on her own since she was fifteen.”

In an instant I felt as smart and worldly as a pet cat. I was fed, I was groomed, but the cats that ate out of garbage cans would have me for lunch. I didn’t even have claws. I disgusted myself.

Gustav was standing behind me and couldn’t see my tears. The thought of him pitying me, worrying about what such a sight would do to my delicate sensibilities, worrying about what I might say to my parents, as if I would tell, made me want to die.

“Look at me, Emilie,” he said. Instead I gazed across the room at the pile of chairs in the corner next to the window. They were upside-down and on their sides and stacked one on top of the other, the ones near the top dangling precariously. In the gray light they cast no shadow. It was like a pile of bones from the slaughterhouse. I tried to memorize the parallel lines and right angles and triangles and various tones of dark and light. Slowly the shapes sharpened into distinct pieces. I began to see each individual chair. It was a haphazard collection, begged and borrowed from friends and relatives: a stool painted white, a warped rocking chair, a tattered sofa. One I recognized from our house: the stripped frame of an old armchair, covered with a purple velvet drape. How did it get there, I wondered.

“I use models all the time,” he said. “I have to, to get the muscles exactly right.”

“Of course, the muscles,” I said. I knew the tears he couldn’t see were audible in my thick, choked voice, but there was nothing I could do about that. “Muscles are so important. Especially the movement of them.” Helga’s back was succulent as a piece of fruit. Minna’s arms were curved like willow branches.

“How they attach to the bones and tendons,” he said. “At school we studied cadavers. Peeled the skin and fat off like a winter coat. Had to have a strong stomach for that.” I thought that peeling Minna would be more like blanching a peach. Her skin looked so thin, and she didn’t seem to have any fat.

I clenched my fist and looked at the tendons on the inside of my wrist. They were like reeds, tied into a bundle with purple and blue string. So we were going to turn this into an anatomy lesson. “What do the muscles look like?” I asked.

“Balls of twine,” he said. “Or skeins of yarn wrapped around your hands. Bundled and red, so beautiful. Doctors are lucky, to have the human body as their medium. There isn’t anything more perfect in all the world. Of course I could never be one. Blood makes me queasy. And people are better when they are naked and their mouths are shut.”

I began to quiver with sobs, silently at first. I knew that Gustav’s mind was far away, remembering the latissimus dorsi of some long-dead indigent. He was staring absentmindedly at his painting, comparing Minna’s physiognomy to others he had drawn. How her elbows were double-jointed and her torso was short. I wanted him to stay there, far away from me, but then his gaze moved from Minna’s form to mine.

He grabbed my shaking shoulders and turned me around.

“What are you crying for?” he said. I couldn’t answer. Now I was crying for real and couldn’t be stopped, loud, wet, heartbroken, sore-throated yelps, like a puppy left alone all day. “Don’t be such a baby,” he said. “You’re not hurt. Nothing’s been done to you.”

He had never spoken to me harshly before. It shocked me out of my crying. He wasn’t very much taller than me and his face was very close to mine. On a cloudy day his eyes were the green of a still pond. He let his hands drop to his sides.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re just a little girl. I should’ve known better than to bring you here.”

“I brought myself,” I said.

“I mean I should never have invited you. I’m a bad influence.”

Not knowing what to say or do, I kissed him. I don’t know what came over me; I suppose it was the atmosphere of the studio, charged as it was.

I had never kissed anyone not of my family before. I half-expected Gustav to pull away from me, but he didn’t. His beard was very soft, which was surprising. It tickled my face. Gently he prised my lips apart and put his tongue inside. It was odd, but not unpleasant. He tasted of coffee and peppermint. I opened my eyes and looked at his eyelashes, which were long like a girl’s. His arms were around me as solid as marble. I felt strangely unmoved by the event. Wasn’t I supposed to swoon? Wasn’t I supposed to feel something glorious?

We stopped. His eyes opened. For a moment I was afraid.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he said. He traced my mouth with his finger.

“Like what?”

“Your eyes are nearly cerulean,” he said, accusingly.

“I can’t help that,” I said.

“No, you can’t.” He set me aside, gently, but aside.

“Where are you going?”

“To get your coat. A sick girl like you should be at home in bed.”

He held the coat open and I slipped into it. He fumbled with the bone buttons but they were too small for his fingers. He reprimanded me for not wearing a hat, said he would buy me one, a pretty one, the other day he’d seen a wine-colored one made of cashmere in a store window. He told me about the hat as if it were a soothing bedtime story.

I was humiliated. I was nothing but a little girl to him. It made me angry. I tried to think of a way to punish him.

“You’ve never let me draw a model,” I said as we walked slowly down the stairs.

“It’s not…” he said. “You can’t.” He tried to think of a reason, but there wasn’t one that didn’t sound bourgeois.

“Shouldn’t I be able to get the muscles right, too?”

“All right then, next time you can draw one of my arms.”

“I’m so lucky,” I said.

We had reached the street and opened the door. Perhaps if I had had more time I would have been able to come up with something much more sarcastic and cutting to say to Gustav, but it was not to be. There on the steps, just about to enter the building, was Ernst and my sister Helene.

My sister Helene who was with her friend Amelie. My sister Helene who had never kept anything from me in her entire life.

All four of us stopped. Helene turned white and I turned pink. Her look of horror must have mirrored mine. Ernst was looking at the ground, as if we would disappear if he didn’t look at us. I looked over at Gustav, who seemed very amused.

“Out for a stroll?” he asked pleasantly.

“Yes, I ran into Helene on the street and she said she’d forgotten her fur muff at the studio, so I said I’d accompany her to pick it up, then walk her home.” Ernst was rattling off words as if it were a memorized speech.

“What happened to Amelie?” I said.

“What happened to being at home sick in bed?”

“It’s quite a coincidence, really,” said Gustav. “Emilie forgot her gloves in the studio and came to get them. I’m taking her home right now.”

“Such a forgetful family,” Ernst said.

“Yes, it really shows a lack of parental discipline, doesn’t it?” said Gustav. He sounded as if he were about to burst into laughter.

“Shall we wait for you to fetch the muff?” said Gustav. “Then we can all walk together.”

“It’s all right,” said Helene. She looked panic-stricken. “There’s no need for you to see us home, now that we’re both here. I’ll get the muff another time. In this weather her cold could turn into pneumonia.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” said Ernst. I noticed that his fingers were pulling on her sleeve. But she hardly looked at him.

“Yes, fine,” she said brusquely. “Let’s go, Emilie.”

“Till next time then,” Ernst said hopefully.

“Thursday,” Gustav reminded us. “If Emilie’s feeling better, that is.”

Helene’s leather glove was icy cold on my bare hand and she gripped it so tightly it began to sting. I yanked it away. We walked quickly and silently, lost in our angry thoughts. We were blocks away before she spoke.

“What were you doing there alone with him?” she hissed. I hated her accusing older sister tone. “Don’t you know about him by now?”

“Know what?”

“He likes to seduce young girls. I can’t believe Mama and Papa let him keep giving you lessons.”

“He didn’t seduce me,” I said. I didn’t tell her about the kiss, though a few minutes ago I had been thinking about how I would describe it to her. I wasn’t sure now if I could trust her.

“Don’t lie,” she said. “It’s too important.” She yanked on my arm and turned to face me. We were the same height. Her coat was just like mine except a forest green instead of blue. Her eyes are nearly cerulean, too, I thought.

“He didn’t,” I said. She held my gaze to see if I would crack. Then her shoulders crumpled in relief, and she began to cry. I was alarmed. Perhaps what I’d done was even worse than I thought.

“It’s all right,” I said, stroking her shoulder. “I’m fine.”

“It’s not that,” she sobbed.

“What is it then? Is it Ernst?” My first thought was that he had hurt her in some way. She never cried; but then, I remembered, neither did I until that afternoon. She nodded and mumbled something. It sounded like, “I’m in love with him,” but I couldn’t believe that. They didn’t even know each other.

“You’re in love with him?” I really looked at her then. Her face was thinner and she had circles under her eyes. Why had I not noticed it before?

“Really?” She nodded with her eyes firmly fixed on something far behind me, down and to the left.

I pulled her into the nearest café and sat her down. It was a cheap place, with sticky wooden tables and withered pastries that looked days old, but there was no way we could go home just yet.

“For how long?”

“Since the summer. July.” Four months. Four months she had been keeping this secret from me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to get you in trouble if Mama and Papa found out.”

I didn’t understand when she could have found the time to fall in love with him, since I was almost always with her, but it turned out that it happened right under my nose. It began as furtive glances in the studio, she said. But with all of the gazing that was going on, how did she know that those looks were special and meant only for her? First it was how he adjusted her position when she was modeling. Then it was the presents he brought her: apples and pears and a jointed wooden doll he had bought from a Czech toymaker. I had never noticed him giving her these presents because he had slipped them into the pocket of her coat when no one was looking. Then came the notes. Finally, they met at the gardens at the Prater, an amusement park on the edge of town. How no one ever saw them in that popular place I’ll never understand. Or how careful Helene could be so brave, and so brazen.

It had to be a secret from our parents because Helene was not yet eighteen and because Ernst was too poor to make a legitimate offer for her. Mama and Papa would undoubtedly disapprove.

“Of course I won’t tell,” I said. I wanted to kiss her but the man at the next table was watching us.

“I don’t care if you go to the studio,” she said. “I just don’t want you getting into trouble.” It was a measure of how much our time with the Klimts had changed us that she said it, and that I knew what she meant.