The Painted Kiss (15 page)

I
avoided Gustav for a while. I had to; it hurt too much to be near him. But he wouldn’t accept it. He wrote me wheedling notes, apologizing for lying. He groveled. When I did see him he always had a present for me, a Moravian doll in folk costume, a box of truffles, a silver bracelet. The more disgusted I looked, the harder he tried.

He never apologized for Alma, though.

Slowly, I thawed. I couldn’t seem to help myself. I found his antics charming, his beseeching smile adorable. And without him my days were a tedious and empty round of marketing and dusting. In the evenings I studied French or sketched my parents as they read. Forgiving him meant a return to cafés, to parties, to discussions with artists and long strolls in the Volksgarten. Is it any wonder I gave in?

The next spring Gustav announced to the Kunstlerhaus that he had formed a new group of artists, dedicated to raising the level of art in Austria. The older members of the Kunstlerhaus didn’t take very kindly to this news. During a contentious meeting, Gustav walked out, and his supporters followed him. Several days later he resigned from the Kunstlerhaus altogether. He called his new group the Secession and was elected president of it. They modeled themselves after other rebellious art movements like the Pre-Raphaelites. They decided that they would publish a journal, called
Ver Sacrum,
and that they would have a gallery to show their own art and also to host traveling shows. Gustav began making drawings for the Secession building.

Berta Zuckerkandl had a party to celebrate the founding of the Secession and he asked me to go with him. Though I was dying to go, it was more nerve-wracking than being presented at court would have been.

Among the musicians, writers, and especially artists of Vienna, Berta Zuckerkandl’s Sunday night gatherings were famous. If you were young and struggling, an invitation often meant your first major commission, if you spoke well and didn’t look too seedy. The apartment was sumptuous enough to intimidate the daughter of a factory owner. In it one could forget sordid things like bills and groceries existed. The drawing room walls were crowded with artwork; a portrait by Whistler, two dark and bright Dutch flower paintings, a cartoon by Rubens, drawings by Ingres and Delacroix. Later I found out that this was just a fraction of what she owned; her drawing room was a rotating exhibition that changed with her mood. Brocade chairs and sofas were arranged in corners. An intricate parquet floor spiraled dizzyingly from underneath the enormous chandelier. When the heavy drapes were tied back you could look across the Ring to the Rathaus, gleaming as if with phosphorescence. Lights from people’s homes were strewn like glitter.

Berta Zuckerkandl was a large woman of indeterminate middle age, strong-boned, with a stern mouth and a regal bearing. In fact, the night I met her she was wearing plum-colored velvet and a copious amount of diamonds. She kissed Gustav and then fixed her eyes on me.

“Who is this little girl?” I didn’t like the way she looked at me, as if I were too insignificant to waste her precious sight on. To her, a woman was worthless until proven otherwise.

“Emilie Flöge, a friend of mine.”

Berta Zuckerkandl looked surprised. “I didn’t know you had time for friends, Gustav. I thought you were too busy revolutionizing art.”

“I can’t work all the time, you know.” He grinned at her.

“Of course not.” Her eyes drifted to me. “You are a secretive man, aren’t you?” She squeezed his hand. “I’ll speak with you later.” And we were away from her, swimming through the crowd.

Carl Moll was upon us before we had gone very far. He wanted to talk about an artist’s meeting they had called for the following week. I hardly listened; I was too busy looking around. There were flowers everywhere, blindingly white: the elegant flutes of calla lilies in every window, a thick rope of peonies and stock on every mantel. Light reflected off of every crystal in the chandelier and every jewel in the ladies’ hair. I knew few people there, but I recognized Josef Hoffmann from the café. Mahler was there with his arm wrapped in the velvet curtain, gazing out over the city. Several people came over to talk to him, but he waved them away.

Then my eyes met those of a woman across the room. She stood alone, gazing impassively into the crowd, a still point among rustling skirts and passing waiters. Tall, gaunt, and awkward, her body was twisted as if the owner were attempting to make herself invisible. In contrast to the fantastically ornamented women around her, she was wearing a slim and unadorned white silk dress. She held her hands in front of her in a little knot, a pose I was to learn was characteristic. Her head was supported by an impossibly long neck, which seemed to be reinforced by an elaborate choker of pearls and diamonds. There were dark shadows below her heavy-lidded eyes and thick brows above. She was not beautiful, and yet she was compelling. For a long time I watched her. No one came to talk to her; I wondered if she had come alone.

Gustav saw her, too; he broke off his conversation with Moll and we watched in silence as Gustav maneuvered his way toward the woman in the white silk dress. When she saw him she smiled slightly and untangled her hands to offer him one, which he kissed.

“You must meet my stepdaughter,” Moll said, while I tried to look at him and not at Gustav and the strange woman. “She’s here tonight. I think you’ll like her, she’s just your age.”

“I’m sure I will,” I said politely.

Hoffmann appeared with crumbs in his mustache and a drink in each hand. “I don’t know how this happened,” he said. “Here, you take one.” I sipped it gratefully; it gave me something to do with my hands.

“If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll fetch her,” said Moll. My eyes returned to Gustav and the woman in white. I had not seen him with a woman since that night at the opera, and I had never seen him with someone like her. She leaned against his shoulder. He took her by the wrist and held her bracelet to the light. They laughed.

“Who is that?” I asked Hoffmann when Moll was gone.

“Adele Bloch-Bauer. Wife of the sugar magnate. Extremely rich, extremely unhappy.” He looked at me intently. “The classic Viennese type. Schnitzler could write a novel about her. In fact, he probably has.”

“How do she and Gustav know each other?” I asked despite myself.

“I believe her husband has commissioned Gustav to paint her portrait.”

“Where is he?”

“Oh, he never comes to parties. He thinks they are a waste of time. Adele loves them, though, he can’t stop her from coming.”

“Sounds like a terrible marriage.”

“Oh, it is. But she likes it that way.”

Moll was back. “My stepdaughter,” he said, “Alma Schindler.”

Alma had luxuriant auburn hair piled on top of her head in the latest style and large green eyes. She was small and voluptuous. Her dress was as revealing as the one she had worn to the opera, and her emeralds were ostentatious. She was not pretty, but she managed to convince many people that she was a great beauty by the sheer force of her will. I looked over at Gustav, pleading with my eyes for him to come rescue me, but he did not look up. Why hadn’t he told me that Alma was Moll’s stepdaughter? Why hadn’t he warned me that she would be there? As Moll ticked off her accomplishments like so many circus tricks, Alma appraised me unsmiling. Then Moll and Hoffmann left us alone to become friends.

“I’ve seen you before,” she said. “At the opera.”

“Yes,” I said.

“How old are you?” she said.

“Twenty-two.”

“Then we’re not the same age, I’m eighteen. Gustav said you draw. Who are your favorite artists?”

I always hated that question, as I liked different qualities in different people, but had few that I admired unreservedly. Still, I named Manet and Ingres, the great French master of draftsman-ship.

“That’s so art school of you,” she said. She laughed. “Everyone in Paris is talking about Cézanne these days. Also someone called Braque. What do you think of him?”

I had to admit I hadn’t seen any of his work.

“Well, staying here you’ll never see anything. You have to travel. I’ve just been to Italy. Have you ever been there?”

I hadn’t. Did I know Italian, Greek, Latin, or English? No, I did not.

“This is tedious,” she said. “We have nothing in common at all.”

“Perhaps Mr. Moll thought we shared an interest in art,” I said, but she missed the allusion.

“You’re nothing but a dilettante, while I am going to be world-famous.”

I was so shocked I couldn’t say anything. She waited for a moment and then changed course. “You’ve known Gustav quite a long time, haven’t you?” she said.

“Since I was a child,” I said. “Our families…”

“Yes, I know,” she said impatiently. “He’s told me all about you.” I pondered what it could mean that she knew all about me and I knew nothing about her. “So it’s only natural that he would feel a fondness for you, and keep you around to do odd jobs, and take you to parties as a special treat, but it would be a shame if you were to think it was anything but that.” Her keen eyes took me in from the cut of my dress to my embroidered shawl. “Though I must say you’re not irredeemably ugly. And that’s a nice dress. Well, good-bye.”

I stood alone in the crowd as she slid away, noticing for the first time that a chamber ensemble was playing Schubert. Heavy skirts brushed mine, the plumes of hats touched my cheek, the laughter of couples and patches of conversation filtered in. “The tonal shifts represent the phases of beingness,” “Did she really have an affair with the archduke?” I suddenly understood what the woman in white had felt as I watched. I saw Gustav coming toward me holding two glasses. And the woman called Adele swept by like a white moth circling a lamp.

At dinner I was seated between Josef Hoffmann and another architect, Koloman Moser. Gustav was across from me, next to Alma, where I could watch them. She played with her emerald necklace, drawing his eyes to her bosom. She laughed hoarsely, and leaned in very close to whisper something in his ear.

I wished I could wear a blindfold, like a horse being led from a burning barn. Instead I focused on my dinner companions. I liked Hoffmann, thin and beaky and full of boundless energy, his eyes alight with ideas. Moser was quieter and somewhat preoccupied with drinking, but when he saw me glancing at him shyly, he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it on his plate.

“It’s my final design for the Secession building,” he said. He pushed his plate toward me so I could examine it.

“It’s like a Greek temple,” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “We need an antidote to all of those over-wrought buildings on the Ring, don’t you think?” Hoffmann grabbed the drawing from me and stuck it close to his face.

“I like it,” he said. “Much better than Gustav’s, with the pediment. Though are you really sure about the gilded laurel dome? It’s so…round.”

“Everyone knows of your fetish for the square, Hoffmann,” said Gustav. “It may shock you that some people think the circle is the most perfect of all shapes. The Alpha and the Omega.”

Hoffmann tossed the drawing back to Moser. “Curving shapes make me nauseated. And you know very well that I’m an atheist.”

“Will you build it, despite its blasphemous dome?” asked Moser.

“Of course,” said Hoffmann. “It will still be the most beautiful building in Vienna, even with a big head of gold cabbage on top of it.”

We were eating Camembert and figs when Alma spoke to me.

“Do you plan to be involved in the Secession, Miss Flöge? As a secretary, perhaps? You could stamp envelopes.”

The sound of people lifting their glasses and setting them back down was suddenly the loudest in the room. No one had ever spoken to me in such a way, and in front of so many people. I glanced at Gustav, and felt dizzy with anger; was he not going to come to my aid?

“I’m sure we’d be honored to have Miss Flöge’s help in whatever capacity she wishes,” said Hoffman kindly.

“Thank you very much,” I said, “but I’m working on something of my own.”

“Working?” said Alma, snickering. “What could you be working on?” The table was silent as they waited for my answer.

“I’m planning to open a fashion salon,” I said. The idea had come to me suddenly, in the midst of my nearly paralyzing fear, but as I said it I knew that it was true.

“That’s so feminine of you,” said Alma. “But then it’s clear you are a clotheshorse.”

“Clothing design is no less important than architecture,” said Hoffmann. “In fact, it’s architecture for the body. What would I do without my bespoke suits?”

“What would Alma do without her corsets?” said Berta, winking at me. I was grateful to her, and proud of myself; I had won her over.

Alma narrowed her eyes at Berta. I had to admire her fearlessness. “Gustav, was this your idea?” she asked. I watched her squeeze his arm high up, on the bicep.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he said. Perhaps he hoped that this would convince her that I was independent, but to me it made me seem like a dilettante, just as Alma had said.

Someone changed the subject to the date of the first exhibition. Alma and I both sulked.

“I wasn’t really serious,” I said to Gustav the next day at the café. “I had to say something so as not to be completely humiliated.” I was still angry with him for smiling blandly as Alma attacked me. And I was terrified. A fashion salon: What had I been thinking? The hothouse atmosphere at Berta’s had clearly intoxicated me.