The Painted Kiss (21 page)

G
ustav and I went together to Adele’s party for Alma and Mahler. I was beside him when he kissed Alma. I kissed her, too; her cheek was warm and smelled of powder. I felt sorry for Mahler, he looked as if his suit was two sizes too small. I kissed Adele; she smelled of jasmine. White flowers were her favorite.

“I’m so glad you could come,” she said. “You’ve never seen my house. When I have a moment, I’ll give you a tour. It will take hours, thank God. I’m dying to get away from all of these people.”

“When is Klimt going to finish that damn painting?” asked her husband when we were introduced. “I pay him enough for five or six paintings. You see that space at the top of the stairwell? That’s where it’s going when he’s finished.”

The stairs were marble, smooth and cascading like Michelangelo’s at the Laurentian library. The chandelier thirty feet above our heads glinted with hundreds of crystals. “Eight hundred and twelve,” said Herr Bloch-Bauer when I complimented it. It weighed four hundred pounds, he said, and was brought in pieces from Prague. I imagined it falling on him.

The apartment was much gaudier than Berta Zuckerkandl’s. Every room was done in red and white and gold, like the imperial palace. I understood now why Adele hated red, and why Gustav said she often threatened to tear the place down to the ground and start over.

Gustav disappeared soon after we arrived. I could manage very well without him by this time. I sat on a yellow silk chaise with Berta and drank. By now she was my friend and no longer frightened me. She had helped me to find investors for the salon and, despite her innate skepticism of fashion, had promised to come and be measured and then to be extremely stylish and extravagant in the coming years.

At parties like this Berta didn’t mingle; she sat in a corner and waited for people to pay their respects, and then gossiped about them after they left. It was an entertaining way to pass an evening. The waiters kept coming with their trays and I kept putting empty champagne flutes on them and taking full ones away. Adele must have had thousands of such glasses. I wondered who washed them.

During a lull Berta asked about the preparations for the salon. Moll and Moser, Hoffmann and Mahler, all had come and gone. She wanted to know if Adele was on the list of those who would be given the first appointments when we began taking measurements and making personalized dummies for top clients. I said Adele had not asked to be, though she had already bought a few small things, and I could not bring myself to ask her.

“She will ask you,” said Berta. “She wants to get a good look at you, I imagine. In private, I mean.” I did not pretend that I didn’t know what she was talking about, because you couldn’t pretend with Berta. She knew everything that went on. And despite the fact that she was Gustav’s friend, I knew that she sympathized with me, and that I could trust her.

“She’ll be disappointed, then,” I said. “I don’t present much competition.”

Berta looked as if she wanted to shake me; in fact she put down her glass and pinched my arm.

“I doubt that’s what she thought,” she said. “If it was…”

I knew what she was going to say. If she had thought me harmless, she wouldn’t have disappeared with Gustav. She wouldn’t have felt it necessary. The next sitting would have been good enough.

“It’s not like it was with Alma,” I said. “I like Adele, despite everything. I could stand for them to be together. If he’d married Alma I would’ve jumped off of a bridge.”

“You’re a fool, Emilie,” said Berta. Her voice was harsh and angry, like my father’s when I forgot to do something.

“I know,” I replied dismally. “Everyone tells me that: my sisters, Alma…”

“You don’t understand me,” Berta said. “You’re a fool for thinking that Alma or Adele are any stronger than you are.”

“Aren’t they?”

“You could have Gustav, even have him all to yourself if you really wanted him. But you have to decide if that’s what you really want.”

I thought she was crazy and I told her so. But she only smiled and flagged down another waiter.

Bloch-Bauer appeared beside me. “Where is Adele?” he hissed. Berta said that we had been sitting in the same spot for the last hour and had not seen her.

“She’s disappeared,” he said. “At her own party, goddamn it!” When I said I would look for her Berta sighed theatrically and stood up to leave. I’ll leave you to your martyrdom, her expression said.

“Look for Klimt while you’re at it,” Bloch-Bauer said. “But make sure you make a lot of noise, to give them plenty of time to dress.”

I got the tour of the house that Adele had promised, wandering the rooms looking for the two of them. They were not in the ballroom or the many sitting rooms around it, where guests who were tired of dancing could sit. They were not in the card room, or the billiard room, or the library. They were not out in the gardens.

Eventually I found Gustav in the conservatory, a small, oddly shaped room with yellow silk walls and plenty of claw-footed mahogany chairs. He was alone. He sat on the stool of the piano, his elbows on the keys. As I came in he sat up to a jangle of notes and began to turn the pages of sheet music on the rack.

“Where’s Adele?” I said. He tried to look surprised at the question.

“I haven’t seen her since we came in,” he said.

“What have you been doing all this time?” I said, trying to sound curious and not accusing.

“Sitting here. I didn’t much feel like a party.”

“We could have gone.”

“It would have seemed rude.”

“Herr Bloch-Bauer sent me to find Adele. She’s wanted back at the party.”

He finally admitted that he and Adele had had an argument “about the painting.” I did not challenge him, only asked him where he thought she was likely to be. He said that he had left her in the library.

I said that she was not there now. He thought she might have gone upstairs to her bedroom. I asked him to lead me there since presumably he knew the house well. I got a strange look for that, but he took me up the back stairs past several maids’ rooms, onto a hall with a feminine sitting room, a dressing room, and then, at last, the bedroom. He did not follow me inside.

She was sitting in the window seat, surrounded by wine-colored velvet cushions, watching the sash of her white dress flutter out of the open casement. There was a halo of smoke over her head and a smell of tallow. As I got closer I saw that she had a candle in her hand, and was applying the flame to the inside of her forearm. When she felt that I was there she put the candle on the windowsill but kept her back to me. I could see her skin through her thin dress. She was shaking. I closed the window and snuffed the candle with my fingers.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Are you?” Adele said. I ignored her.

“Your husband’s been looking for you,” I said. “The guests are wondering where you are.”

“They don’t really care, and neither does he, except that it makes him look bad. As long as they have their food and their music, and pretty things to look at, it doesn’t matter.” She turned to look at me. “I don’t know why you came looking for me. I would think you’d be happy to have me disappear.”

“Of course that’s not true,” I said. I touched her hand and turned her arm over to look at it. “How badly is it burned?”

She laughed and I could see the redness and the pearl strand of blisters running from wrist to elbow. “I suppose I’ll need to wear long sleeves for a while,” she said, “but you can arrange that, can’t you? For now I think my shawl will cover it, if held just right.”

“I think we should put something on it,” I said. “We should ring your maid for some salve.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I like the throbbing, it makes me feel alive. What I would really like is a moment alone with Gustav. Could you ring for that instead?”

We were silent. She was looking at me with eyes like cinders; black on the surface, lit from within with some kind of fire.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll fetch him.” As I left the room I heard her stand up to open the window again.

“She’s in there burning herself with a candle,” I said.

“What can I do?” he said with a shrug. “Shouldn’t we go get Bloch-Bauer?”

“You’re the one who’s upset her, you’ll have to make it up.” I pushed him through the door. “I’ll wait for you here,” I said.

“It might take awhile,” he said. “Adele’s so nervous and excitable.”

That seemed rather an understatement, but I restrained myself from making any sarcastic comments. “I’ll wait for you here,” I repeated.

The doors were made of heavy oak, and I could neither see nor hear anything. I could imagine it quite well, though, his pleadings and jokes and caresses and her slow thaw. I traced the designs on the intricately carved doors with a finger. There were glossy landscapes painted in the coffers of the ceiling and I amused myself with them for several minutes. I counted the tiles on the floor.

“Adele needs some air,” he said when he came out. “She’s quite ill. We’re going to take her carriage for a turn around the Ring.”

“Didn’t she get enough air from sitting into the wind for God knows how long? Wouldn’t it be better to put her to bed?”

“You know no one can tell Adele anything. She wants to go. I’ll take care of her. Tell him it’s all right.”

“If anyone sees you…”

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

I went back downstairs to find Bloch-Bauer, to make up a story to soothe him before he went looking for Adele. There he was in the drawing room, by the fireplace, telling bawdy jokes with two other businessmen. He was laughing, not thinking about Adele at all, but of course when he saw me his rage returned. I told him that Adele’s maid had taken her out for fresh air, but he knew what I meant, and his face swelled like a balloon. He put his face so close to mine that I could smell the brandy. That smell always reminded me of my grandparents, who drank it by the quart, as a tonic.

“Tell me what they’re up to. You know, I know you do.”

I demurred.

“Are you some sort of procuress, then, setting up his little trysts?”

This was so insulting that I could not answer, but he went on without waiting for a response. “Surely not. Surely you’re in love with him. You don’t want to see him with Adele any more than I do. Tell me what you know and I can catch them and put a stop to it.”

All I knew, I said, was that Adele was ill and had gone out for fresh air.

Then where was Gustav, he wanted to know. He had already gone home, I said. Sometimes an idea would strike him, wherever he was, and he would have to leave immediately for the studio.

“Is that what he tells you?” he said. “I don’t know much about artists, but I do know men. I’d advise you to get away from him before he does you some real damage.”

“I don’t need advice,” I said.

“If I had the chance to do it over I’d let Adele rot. I only married her because her father offered me some generous terms to take her off his hands, but it wasn’t worth it. I’ve earned that money, many times over. Adele pretends to be fragile but really she’s tough as bear hide. Well, she can do whatever she wants, except make a fool of me. I won’t allow that.” I thought about asking how he proposed to stop her, but I didn’t want to know.

“Adele is lonely,” I said. “She craves friendship. Is it any surprise that having failed to find that in you she would look for it in a sympathetic artist?”

For a moment I thought he might strike me, but then he laughed. “You’re a wonderful girl,” he said. “Loyal to a fault. I should have married someone like you.”

“Maybe I’m not as nice as you think,” I said.

I left the party and went home. Instead of going to bed I went to the sewing room. That was where we stored all of our supplies until we found a space to rent. It was where I kept the beautiful green dress I had made. I lit a lamp and there it was. I had not known until that moment that it was meant to be my wedding dress. Seeing it there, limp and bedraggled, was like glimpsing an actor backstage while a play is being performed. It still needed to be hemmed and all the loose threads pulled in. A few of the satin-covered buttons were missing. I had begun embroidering the skirt but not the sleeves, and the crystals were still in their boxes. I wouldn’t be able to use them after all, sewing them on by hand would take months. I slipped out of my clothes and pulled the dress over my head. It was difficult to slide into with no one to help me, but at last it was in place, and I held the bodice closed with my hand.

Of course it fit like a coat of varnish on a table; you couldn’t slide a piece of paper between my waist and the bodice. I turned in front of the mirror, noticing how the soft color made my hair look redder and how flattering the elongated silhouette was, but only for a moment, because I had a lot of work to do. It was fortunate, I thought, that Adele was thinner than I, because it is much easier to take in than to let out. I took the dress off and hung it back in the closet until I had carefully wiped the table. When I had thrown on a colorful printed dressing gown (it happened to be one I was making for Berta, but she would never know she wasn’t the first to wear it) I laid out the dress and began ripping.

As satisfying as it is to take pieces of cloth and bind them together, there is something in some ways more fulfilling about pulling them apart. It makes a wonderful sound, the snapping of the threads. I had to guess at Adele’s measurements but I thought I could get pretty close. She was much narrower in the shoulders and her arms were like twigs, so the sleeves had to be removed from the bodice and the bodice from the skirt. I knew that the color of the dress would make her look sallow, even ghoulish, but that seemed fitting. I happily abandoned myself to destruction. Tearing the fabric makes a beautiful sound, too, a metallic sound, but this fabric was heavy and didn’t tear easily; I had to make a cut with the scissors to start it and even then my hands were sore with the effort. I had managed to rip the skirt from hem to waist before I remembered I couldn’t ruin the dress, I was only supposed to be altering it. The skirt would have to be remade. The bodice had to be lengthened and tightened. I worked all night, finally falling asleep at the table. When Helene found me there, she didn’t say anything, except to offer to make me breakfast. In the afternoon I hand-finished the embroidery on the skirt. I put it in a dress box, carefully layered in tissue paper, and had it sent to Adele.