The Painted Kiss (29 page)

“Silk voile,” he announced. “From Bianchini. But I never saw this color.”

“It was dyed exclusively for the Wiener Werkstätte,” I said.

“The embroidery is very well done,” he said. “Will you let me keep it?”

“Why not?” I said. “I have many others.”

“All the same color?” he asked. I told him that one style was acid green and the other was a melon color.

“I think I can incorporate something like this into my next collection. It’s inspired by the Orient and is very silky and flowing, lots of movement and many thin layers. I think this will work very nicely.”

“Does Emilie get a percentage of the profits?” Gustav asked. Poiret laughed. “No, but I promise I will send her my very best ensemble as a present.”

When he had gone Gustav wiped his brow in mock relief. “I was afraid that if he stayed he would take all of your clothes and you would be left standing naked.”

“Like a very bad dream.”

“Or a very good one for someone else.”

Elsewhere at the party, a momentous love affair was beginning. Alma and Kokoschka had not met before, since Alma had been in New York when Kokoschka had begun to work for the Wiener Werkstätte. When she returned she had nursed Mahler through his last illness, and though she was already having an affair with the architect Walter Gropius, she was by all accounts genuinely distraught. For weeks afterward she did not go out. In fact, this was her first public appearance since her husband’s funeral. Alma and Kokoschka had not been properly introduced, but I forgot about that when I sent him over to her. In our circle things like that didn’t matter quite as much anyway.

I don’t know what he said to her; if I had considered it at all I would have said that he was too unpolished for her, too odd. He was certainly much too young. But when I glanced at them again I saw that they were engaged in a conversation of great intensity. Kokoschka had grabbed her hand in the midst of some earnest declamation, and she allowed him to keep it.

We were only talking about art, she said later. He didn’t even try to kiss me until weeks later. But from that afternoon until he was called into the army they were never separated. He painted her in 1914, a painting called
The Tempest
. The background is a blue-black ocean and in the center, two lovers recline. The man is cadaverous, the woman suffused with white light. Their relationship was like a great dark storm that consumed them both and left them damaged afterward.

T
he next year Schiele was arrested and put on trial for obscenity. Gustav had known for some time that Schiele was drawing children, and, though he did not see the harm, had warned Schiele of how other people might interpret what he was doing. The trial was in Neulengbach, a half hour from Vienna by train. Gustav was terribly worried about him and went to the courthouse the day the verdict was read: his drawings would be burned. It was a terrible moment and seemed to presage what was to come.

War had been on the horizon for some time, but I had been trying not to think about it. I was of two minds about it all. On the one hand, what use are lovely gowns or fashion photographs or even paintings in times like these? But on the other hand, in ugly times the world needs beauty more than ever. Eventually Gustav and I decided that we must carry on with our work, though the assassinations in Belgrade horrified us, the death of the emperor saddened us, news of the war depressed us. What else could we do? I could train as a nurse, or join a relief committee, neither of which held much appeal for me. Gustav was too old to be a soldier, even if he had wanted to be, and not glib enough to be a statesman. He did not want to write articles for the newspapers, or give speeches. He only wanted to paint.

It was difficult for me to continue making clothes of the quality I had before, as the ports were blocked, and goods were impossible to get or insanely expensive. We made do without French fabric, French patterns, French magazines. I tried to compensate with even more stringent standards of workmanship, though the silk was cheap and flawed. My customers were appreciative and loyal.

Life was not easy during those years, certainly. Things were rationed: flour, meat, fuel. But you could still get them if you knew the right people and had enough money, and I did. Most of the time I tried to pretend that nothing had changed. Gustav and I still went to Attersee in the summers, and he was painting furiously, turning out canvases faster than he ever had before.

Then, in the fall of 1917, Pauline contracted pneumonia and died after several weeks of illness. I thought it was the worst thing that could happen to me, to lose my sister. My sister, who had tied my hair ribbons and lent me money and supported me all of my life with her solidity and practicality. For months I was in a sort of daze, until something much worse happened.

I was reading in the sitting room. Even in times of sorrow there was always an intense feeling of satisfaction in the back of my mind that the felt carpet beneath me was dense and soft, that the spindle-backed chair underneath me was lacquered ebony, that the tea tray in front of me was hammered silver and perfectly square. For years I would take a few moments in each busy day to admire my walls or my cabinets and door hinges. If it still existed I might do it yet.

I was looking through an old
Journal of Arts and Crafts
. I had remembered there had once been an article about Romanian folk dress, and after going through several boxes of back issues I had at last found it. The article was accompanied by several photographs and even more drawings. As ideas came to me for new designs I scribbled notes in the margins.

It was January 11, 1918. The bread ration had just been reduced and there would be food riots and massive worker strikes in the suburb of Wiener Neustadt in just a few days, but by then I wouldn’t even read the papers, much less care what was in them.

It was bitter cold that day. Gustav had icicles in his beard as he walked to the studio and an awful headache, but the cold can give you a headache, especially if you are balding and have forgotten to wear your hat.

Johanna Staude was coming to sit for him. He made his usual preparations, stopping once to lie down in front of the fire. He couldn’t seem to get warm. Later I found the bottle of aspirin on the floor, the pills scattered everywhere. He must have left it open on the sink, and the cats had batted it to the floor.

He was fifty-six, not old at all. Still very strong. No arthritis in his hands, still rowing across the lake, still painting through the night, still juggling countless lovers. There were six canvases in his studio in various stages of completion:
The Bride, Amalie Zuckerkandl, Portrait of a Lady, Portrait of a Lady in White, Full-face Portrait of a Lady,
and
Johanna Staude.

Johanna had severe bone structure, a square face. Gustav put a feather boa around her neck for softness. Then he threw some extra kindling on the stove. They told me later he wouldn’t have felt very bad, just a little nauseated. He didn’t even mention it to Johanna. While he was mixing his paints Johanna dragged the boa along the floor for the cat, which stalked and pounced tirelessly. She told Gustav that her son had just said his first word: sugar. Gustav, to tease her, told her it was not a good sign at all. He drew a pig with a curling tail on a piece of scrap paper to remind him to send her some little pink sugar pigs from Demel’s.

She was light-eyed, warm, full of laughter. I always liked her; I was sorry she had to be there. It must have been horrifying for her. But for Gustav’s sake I was glad that she was there, and not some flighty young girl who might faint or run from the studio in a panic. I think about it all of the time, even now; what could have been done differently, how it could have been stopped. But it happened.

Finally Gustav was ready and Johanna draped the feathers over her shoulder again and only her hands moved, fiddling with the boa’s ends.

“Stop that,” Gustav said reprovingly. “You drop your chin when you do that.” Gustav was hard at work on the highlights of her face. They were a lurid orange and blue. The background was still completely unworked, stark white, like an unmade bed.

Then he felt a sudden vertigo. A rush, as if the air were being sucked from the room. Then a sharp pain. It was everywhere, all over. His body hitting the floor sounded like a sack being loaded onto a freight car.

Everything happened very slowly. He was conscious at first. On the ground but still dizzy. The air was filled with paint. Johanna kneeled beside Gustav and touched his face. Her hands were cool; her voice was deep and soothing. She said something to him, but he couldn’t understand the words. The cat brushed his back against Gustav’s calves. Like a sick horse he tried to stand, Johanna said, but he only managed to lift his head a few inches. Then he said one thing.

“Send for Emilie.”

Johanna ran from the room and found our friend Naumann, with the recalcitrant dog. He went for the doctor.

I was in the sitting room reading when the telegram came. I didn’t even take a coat. I ran down the stairs and out into the street. Once inside the cab I realized that I was still holding the
Journal of Arts and Crafts
in my hand. I opened the window and threw it out into the ruts of ice the wheels of the cars made.

When I got to the studio the doctor was there. He had a white beard and a black medical bag. He asked me if I was Gustav’s wife. I said I was. He said that Gustav had had a stroke. He looked sorry when he told me there was nothing he could do. He might recover on his own; sometimes if the damage was not too severe the brain could heal itself. The only thing to do was to take him home and wait.

He lay on the sofa with a blanket thrown over him. Johanna kneeled beside him, trying to spoon some water into his mouth. The water ran out of the right side of his mouth and onto the floor. His left eye was completely open, the right a gruesome half-open, like a corpse. His face was lifeless, slack. His fingers were stiff and curled, like Adele’s.

I took him to the salon. All I could think was that I wanted to be with him every minute, as long as I could. I put him in my own bed. I didn’t consider the symbolism until much later. Day became night and then day again. The doctor came and performed his examinations. He left behind medicines, which I administered. I bathed him and changed the soiled linens and turned him so that he didn’t develop bedsores. I spooned consommé and oatmeal and pureed vegetables into his mouth as if he were a baby. When I was too exhausted to go on, Helene relieved me and I collapsed into her bed. Visitors came, with their pots of amaryllis and their nervous, uncomfortable smiles. I wished they wouldn’t bother.

Slowly, Gustav emerged from his stupor. After a few days he could sit but he still could not speak. His eyes rolled aimlessly around the room and his mouth was set in a grim snarl. I looked for the Gustav I had known and couldn’t find him. Still, I knew that I would be grateful for any bit of him that remained, even if it was this pale husk of the man I had known.

A week passed, and then two. I thought that he was well enough to be given a sketch pad and a pencil. I thought it might cheer him. And the doctor said the mental stimulation might speed his recovery. I wrapped his fist tightly around the pencil and gave him what I hoped was an encouraging smile. On the first attempt he pressed the pencil too hard against the paper and it sprung from his hand and hit me in the chest. I put it back in his hand. The second time, trying to be more gentle, he let go of the pencil, and it rolled off of the bed and into the corner. I fetched it and brought it back to him. The third time he managed to hold onto it, and I left him alone to draw what he pleased.

When I returned a few minutes later with his dinner, he was still working. I set down my tray and looked over his shoulder. In twenty minutes he had drawn a circle the size of a pea. The next day he spent an hour on a wobbly triangle. The next day he worked the entire afternoon to create a V with lines that did not intersect.

The next day I found the broken pencil underneath the bed.

When Gustav discovered that he couldn’t draw, all of the life went out of him. He stopped eating. I pleaded with him, I told him that with time he would be as he was before, that he was getting better, that he shouldn’t give up, but I don’t know how much he heard or understood. I told him I needed him to live, but perhaps that wasn’t a good enough reason.

He died of pneumonia on February 6, 1918.

The last word he said was my name.

T
he nurses had shaved his beard in the last days and he looked nothing like himself. Schiele drew a death portrait of him, but I could not bring myself to look at it, then or ever. Sometimes it is reproduced in books and I always quickly turn the page. The papers were full of the peace negotiations with Ukraine and Russia, and the speculation that the war might soon be over. There was only the smallest notice of Gustav’s death. Some city officials offered to have a special burial, erect a monument, have a ceremony. I said no. After what had happened with the University Hall paintings, after he had been turned down countless times for a professorship, after he had been excoriated in the press, to receive acceptance posthumously—it was galling. Schiele thought that his studio should be kept as it was, turned into a museum for future generations. I thought the idea was a good one, but Gustav didn’t leave much money when he died, and his sisters, who had always depended on him for support, needed the money that the things in the studio would bring.

As executor, it was left to me to go through everything. One day in the studio I happened to see a sketch on his worktable. It was a sketch of
The Kiss,
in a pile of things he’d done the year before he died. I didn’t know why he would make a sketch of a painting long finished, but then I was arrested by the letters running up the side of the drawing:
EMILIE
.

Why had we never spoken about the painting? Now it was too late, and I was left with this drawing and so many unanswered questions. I put my head down on the table and wept.

When Gustav died I was only forty-four, but it seemed as if the best of life was past. I was not the only one who thought so. When Gustav died, and then Schiele, and Moser, and the war ended with the dismantling of the empire, everyone felt that the light had gone out of our lives. There were still parties, so there were still dresses to be made, but fewer and fewer of my customers bought the Reform dresses anymore. The daughters of my original clients thought my prints were quaint and my embroidered coats extravagant and outrageous. They asked me for ordinary things, things anyone could make. With no one to design for I felt that I was only a dressmaker, not a designer any longer.

Berta still had parties, and so did Adele, and artists still flocked to them, but the art world had passed us by, gone to the Bauhaus, and we all knew it. Alma married the architect Walter Gropius and moved to Berlin. Kokoschka had gone to Dresden. With each departure there were fewer of us to carry on.

Without Pauline, without Gustav, Helene and I clung to one another, and depended more and more on my niece Helene. We still went to the Opera and to the theater, but more often we stayed at home. Helene played the piano and sang, or we played cards. We often invited Hoffmann or Alfred Roller over to fill out our table, and I enjoyed their companionship, their friendship, but that was all.

There could be no one else. I knew some people thought that was silly, that I was making a martyr of myself, but Helene understood. Alma could have a torturous, tangled love life, married to Mahler while having affairs with Gropius and Kokoschka, married to Gropius while bearing children by Franz Werfel, but that life was not for me.

It was almost imperceptible at first, the way my customers drifted away. One immigrated to England, another to America. In 1920 my mother died in her sleep. In 1925, when she was still quite young, Adele died of meningitis. Another died of cancer. Some switched their loyalties to new houses, new designers. I let some of the seamstresses go.

In 1936 my sister Helene died. It was a terrible blow. We had been constant companions for more than sixty years, business partners, friends. I wasn’t sure I could survive without her, and sometimes I still have my doubts.

By then the political situation had become very bad for the Jews of Vienna. New restrictions were announced every day: those on the university faculty were fired, then the students were expelled. Men lost their businesses. I had never been interested in politics, only in art, and though I was appalled I am ashamed to say I paid little attention. I had no idea where it would lead.

As things got worse more and more people left, sometimes with the police on their heels: Alma left early in 1938, bound for France; Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer escaped to Zurich but had to leave everything behind, including the portraits of Adele.

When the Germans came into Vienna, those of my customers who hadn’t already fled were sent away. We were told they were being relocated, and I watched as their houses and paintings and furniture were confiscated. I wept to see them go, but I fully expected that when the political situation changed, they would return. Now I am not so sure.

The salon, too, was doomed. Cut off from our suppliers in France, our clientele dwindling, even a sentimental person could see there was no saving it.

It was November when we dismantled the salon, a nasty time of year. The wind blew needles of sleet into your face when you went out. Upon returning, you shook a lake of half-frozen water out of your coat onto the floor. It kept Helene busy wiping the stairs with a cloth so no one would slip. The trees melted and dripped and refroze like candlesticks. The summer flowers lay collapsed in stiff brown heaps like fallen soldiers.

We had been preparing for months, letting one seamstress go and then another, until only Herta was left. Then there came the day when I saw the last customer and she placed the last order. I’ve forgotten, probably on purpose, just who it was. I remember what she ordered, though: a suit, something practical and dreary in dark blue wool. It seemed fitting.

The very last day the salon was open to the public I watched from my window as a group of soldiers supervised three old women as they scrubbed the street. The women wore woolen scarves on their heads. A crowd was watching. Two of the women were crying, but one was not. Her mouth was clamped shut like a change purse; she did not seem afraid. Finally the women were allowed to go. The crowd dispersed, the women stumbled to gather their belongings, which were strewn along the street.

We sold what we could: sewing machines and bolts of fabric and light fixtures. We had a fire sale and it was humiliating to watch shabby businessmen picking disdainfully over the things Gustav had so carefully designed and Josef Hoffmann had so carefully executed. Some of them didn’t even know who Hoffmann or Klimt was.

Then came the men with their trucks to haul the refuse away: the naked dressmaker’s dummies, good only for kindling, and broken tables and chairs.

Helene sorted through the papers. There were still bills to be collected and paid, tax forms to submit, balance sheets to be completed. It would take several months to see it through, even though we would no longer be open for business.

After the trash men had gone with the load of large things Herta went through the piles of what was left. One heap of things was to be discarded, the other to be kept. The discard pile was three times the size of the other. There were treadles and spindles; unsold hats and scarves and skirts; spools of lilac and umber and turquoise thread; packages of needles; trimmings of all kinds: fur, embroidery, lace, ribbons. There were tiny onyx beads like apple seeds, opalescent sequins, dyed-pink ostrich feathers, intricately carved wooden combs.

Then it was over. Everything was sold, the papers filed away, the money in the bank. We were left in the ugly cramped apartment. We volunteered to sew uniforms. At least it kept us busy.

I lived simply with Helene in a small fourth-floor walk-up apartment on the Mariahilferstrasse and tried not to think about the past. Until Carl Moll came to visit.