The Painted Kiss (8 page)

Maria was a seventeen-year-old laundress living not far from the studio. She kept house with her father in a tiny cottage with an oilcloth tacked to the window wells and a thatched roof that never kept out the rain. The plaster was crumbling, bricks were missing. Her father was sick, a drunk; she grew what they ate and she took in laundry to pay for everything else. She attended church each day and tried to steer clear of the rough dockhands and laborers who filled the neighborhood. The city center wasn’t far, but it was a long walk if you had no carriage of your own and no money for the fare. She had been only once, when she was a child, to see the Silver Jubilee procession, the celebration of the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of the emperor and empress. She remembered carriages filled with flowers, and large, frightening people who pushed and threatened to crush her. When she thought of Vienna, she felt both in awe of its fragrance, its brilliance, and in equal measure a visceral fear of a crowded, airless space. She longed to go, to leave her father, get a job in a shop, go to hear music, but she was afraid. Such a girl, frail and credulous, could not have been prepared to meet a man like Gustav.

Maria was on her knees by the washtub when he appeared. She used the patch of dirt between her house and the one behind as her laundry area. The bodice of her dress was wet from the tub of suds in front of her. A man stood at the gate, bearded and hatless and wearing a long flowing robe. For a moment she was afraid that a messenger from God had arrived, perhaps to summon her to some special mission, and, as Maria was a girl who tried to attract as little attention as possible, she stopped scrubbing and with bowed head issued a fervent prayer that she was not chosen. She had been taught that when the angel came for you, your duty was to obey, and at the very least she hoped that if this was in fact an angel, what he asked would not be too difficult for her.

“Oh, keep scrubbing,” the man said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. It makes a lovely sound, doesn’t it? Like a zither.”

“It does,” she said, surprised that an angel could speak in such a friendly, unthreatening voice.

“May I try it?” said the man, and to her dismay came and kneeled next to her, taking the washboard and laying it across his lap. “I must say that I am fascinated by gadgets like this. Did you make it yourself?”

“My father,” said Maria. “He used to be a carpenter.” She was aware of the smell of chemicals on the man’s robe, and wondered if instead of an angel he wasn’t from the asylum.

“It’s the perfect object,” he said, running his hand over the wooden slats so that they vibrated like bees buzzing. “Useful and beautiful.” He looked at her, and she squirmed under his gaze. He smiled.

“I need a laundress,” he said. “At the tailor’s they told me that you might be available.”

With relief, Maria realized that though the man looked like a carving of St. Peter on the front of the Church of St. Stephen Martyr, he was not going to ask her to preach to the lepers or fight the infidel.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“My name is Gustav Klimt, and I am an artist. Each week I soil a great number of rags and towels with paint, alcohol, and oil. They aren’t easy to clean. What do you think the job is worth?”

“Ten rags for a shilling,” she said after a moment’s thought, hoping he wouldn’t laugh at the extravagant price. She’d heard artists were rich, but the man in front of her obviously didn’t even have the money for a suit.

The man smiled. “Don’t you think you should charge more?” he asked. “I am a very well-known artist. It would look bad if anyone found out I was paying you that little.”

“Five rags for a shilling?” she asked timidly.

“Agreed,” he said. She watched him examine her, the untidy hair, the freckles on her chest. “In the village they said your name is Maria.”

“Maria Ucicky,” she said.

“Your husband is the Ucicky that sells me my firewood?”

“My uncle.”

“Not married, then?” Maria shook her head. He frowned, seemingly outraged at the poor taste of the local youths.

For two months he brought her the rags each Saturday, and picked them up on Monday. Then one Saturday he asked if she could deliver them to the studio on Monday. “I’ll pay extra,” he said. “I have to finish this painting by Tuesday or I’ll lose my commission.”

“Of course,” she said. On Monday she brushed her fine hair, rubbed tallow on her raw hands, and walked to the place he told her.

Maria was not foolish enough to believe that anything would come of it; she and her friends knew how such things went. A girl like her was not able to refuse a man like him, but a man like him would surely ruin her. After her visits to the studio Maria went to confession and begged forgiveness. She was frightened of hell. Her friends consoled her, but they were envious, too. He had bought her things, a hat, a shawl. They told her to model for him, make some extra money, but she was too shy, and fearful for her already endangered mortal soul. She could hardly stand the embarrassment and guilt when he touched her, how could she stand in front of him not wearing any clothes? None of her friends knew that in a few months she would bear his child. Her father hadn’t guessed; she wore large aprons and avoided him whenever she could. Gustav had been kind and had not turned her away, but he hadn’t said whether or not he would give her any money. She knew better than to think he would marry her. She didn’t know how she would raise a child alone, or whether her father would throw her into the street.

At the studio she tended the fire, swept the floor, washed the teacups as if she were Gustav’s maid and not his lover. Sometimes when he was out she waited for him there, falling asleep on the chaise with her hand under her cheek, like a child. Even as she slept she looked worried. When Gustav came in he moved quietly, so as not to wake her. He tiptoed to the easel and took down his pad of paper. Gently he moved the hand away from her face. Her blanket was peeled back and her chemise had ridden up her chest in her tossing and turning. He put them right. Her long hair tangled all around her face like seaweed, with the rhythmic pulsing of the tide and the heartbeat. He pulled a piece of charcoal from his pocket, kneeled in front of her, and began to draw.

When he was finished he set the drawing aside and laid his head on her belly, still flat and taut with hunger and youth. Her innocence nearly broke his heart, her rough hands, her pale, undernourished body. He was consumed with remorse. She deserved better than the life of penury and hard labor she was born to, and the life of ostracism and destitution he had given her. But it was too late; she had been too innocent to know what she had to do, and he had been too inexperienced to know he had to tell her.

For a wild moment he thought of marrying her and bringing her there to his studio to live with him. He thought of her in the garden, scrubbing away at one of his painting smocks with her wonderful washboard, of goulash and noodles on the dinner table, and children with dirty faces knocking over the easel. But that was someone else’s life, not his. He woke Maria and told her she had better hurry home before her father roused from his drunken stupor and noticed she was not there.

T
he Klimts’ studio was on the fourth floor of a silver manufacturer’s factory. To get there we caught the streetcar on Gumpendorferstrasse, changed at the Ring, got off just on the other side of the Donaukanal, and walked six blocks. The money for the streetcar was Pauline’s. We didn’t have any money of our own, but she had once won an essay contest. She kept her hoard in a kerchief hidden in her underwear drawer, but of course we knew where it was. We didn’t think about what would happen when she noticed it was missing. We left school at midday.

It was a street where goods were unloaded from ships and put into wagons, where nets of fish were hauled into warehouses to be gutted and salted. You could have a horse’s shoe repaired, or your own, a sail mended, or a cow butchered and divided into pieces. The air was oppressive with the smell of things that had been rotting in bins and had finally been exposed to the air.

Large families lived in the buildings surrounding the factories and warehouses. I could see their soiled handmade curtains and their cheaply painted oil lamps as I walked by their windows. Every day the men went to work on the ships and the women walked to work at milliners’ and dressmaking shops in better parts of town.

In the tenement next to Gustav’s building an immigrant from Silesia and his wife had a bakery, and as we climbed the stairs the aroma of dough and hot oil mingled with the sharp, sweet smell of turpentine and the bitter one of iron. The stairs slanted toward the street and a few of them gave way when you stepped on them.

The studio was cold, since the artists were consistently short of coal for the furnace, and bare, since all of the chairs were piled in the center of the room to be used in a tableau. The floor was made of cement and had cracked in places. It was filthy with charcoal dust. Some of the panes in the tall windows were broken and cardboard had been taped over them. The glass looked thin and weak, too weak to keep the cold out.

Despite this, or maybe because of it, I had never seen a more wonderful place in all my life. The artists had taped things to the walls: a color wheel, newspaper clippings about an actress named Limova from Moscow who had toured the European capitals, engravings of buildings in Rome that had obviously been ripped from books, postcards, sketches of cubes and cylinders with measurements penciled in beside them. They had a chipped enamel stove that they had salvaged from a garbage bin somewhere, and they heated water on it for coffee and chocolate. In a box next to it they kept tins of tea and coffee, cups and spoons, as well as loaves of raisin bread and paper bags of salted nuts and a nutcracker. There were shells on the floor.

There were four easels, each one with a small table next to it. Gustav was standing next to one easel, stirring something in a bowl. His table was bare except for two wooden models of the human figure, embracing.

Gustav was different here. For one thing, he was wearing a robe instead of a suit. It was like what I imagined a patient in a hospital would wear. To see a healthy grown man in it was shocking. I tried not to look at him, which was easy, since he hardly glanced in my direction. He was purposeful and completely absorbed. Every now and then he would say something to Ernst, and Ernst would laugh, but they spoke so softly that we couldn’t hear them. We stood off to the side, not sure what to do. We were still in our coats, as no one had taken them. I wondered whom the other easels were for.

“Franz and Georg should be here soon,” said Ernst, anticipating our question. He turned away from his table, which was much messier than Gustav’s. The surface was covered with books with a forest of little pieces of paper sticking out of the side, mangled tubes, dirty bottles and cans.

We looked at each other.

“Do you ever clean up?” said Helene wonderingly.

“Why should we?” said Gustav. “This place is empty. When it gets too dirty to work in, we’ll move upstairs.”

The idea couldn’t have been more radical to us. So much of our lives were consumed with keeping things neat. I felt like throwing my coat onto the floor. The two artists went on with what they were doing. Ernst was cleaning his brushes with a rag, one at a time, grooming them like show dogs. Gustav finished his mixing and began pouring oil onto a palette.

After what seemed like an hour Gustav went over to a trunk in the corner and pulled out some garments. He came back over to us and handed Helene a thin dress of white silk. “This is for you to wear. In the back we have a changing room.” He nodded toward it.

“Where did you get this?” asked Helene, looking at the label.

“It was loaned to us by the actress Marie Geistinger.” She was Helene’s favorite actress.

“You know her? Will she come here? Can I meet her?”

“She only comes in the evenings,” said Ernst without thinking. Then he blushed and fell silent, looking at the floor.

“She sleeps during the day and performs at night,” said Gustav. “Sometimes she comes back here afterward to sit for me. That’s how actresses live, you know. Like bats.”

He gave me a coarse brown thing like a flour sack, and winked.

“For the little girl.”

“What is it?”

“It’s your dress.”

“Who am I to be in the tableau?”

“The servant. It’s perfect, you’re just the right age.”

The changing room was separated from the rest of the studio by a woolen blanket tacked across the doorframe of what was once a storage closet. Nervously we pulled off our dresses and hung them on the nails that jutted from the wall. We were both self-conscious, despite the fact that without our dresses we still had on woolen underthings that covered us from wrist to ankle, and a chemise and a petticoat on top of that. I stayed as close to the closet corners as I could. Helene held her arms protectively over her chest. Awkwardly, trying not to be seen, we threw our costumes on.

I couldn’t see myself, but I doubted I was much to look at. The neckline of my dress was cut straight across, what they now call a boatneck. The hems of the sleeves and skirt had been ripped out and frayed ends hung unevenly on my wrists and ankles. My broad, plump feet were bare for everyone to see.

Helene, however, was a vision, even with her chemise showing underneath the low cut dress. She was slighter than the usual Viennese girl, who tended to be plump, and the line of her neck and arms was like a dancer’s.

It was a lovely, regal gown, and I could imagine Helene, her hair piled in curls, a golden band around her forehead, pointing her slender arm in the attitude of a queen.

“Do I look all right?” she asked, nervously trying to lift the neckline and fan the straps out to cover her arms.

“You’ll have to take off the chemise, it looks ridiculous.”

“But I can’t!”

“If you go out there they’ll just tell you to come back in.”

“Do you really think I should? I’ll be half naked.”

“Try it and see.” I held the dress so it wouldn’t get dirty while she stripped down, then I helped her put it back on.

“I’ll never be able to wear this in front of them,” said Helene when she had her dress on. The sleeveless gown dipped dangerously low in the front and in the back. Large expanses of skin that no one but Pauline and I had ever seen would be on display. Helene was modest. Even in our bedroom she changed behind a sheet. That was why it was so easy to say what I did next.

“It is awfully revealing.”

She put her head on my shoulder. She was shaking and her hand on my bare neck was ghostly in its chill. “I’ll never be able to face them.”

I tried to sound worried and sympathetic. “We could trade,” I said. “I’ll wear it.”

“Would you? Won’t you be embarrassed?”

“A little. But one of us has to do it.”

We switched. I took my underthings off, Helene put hers back on. I put on the thin dress, she put on the thick one.

“Well?”

“It looks like a nightgown on you,” she said. It did bag in the front where my breasts were supposed to be, and the little cord belt didn’t cinch as tight as it did on Helene, but I was wearing it.

“I hope they’re not angry,” she said as we stepped out.

They laughed, which was not what I was hoping for.

“Baby Juno,” Gustav roared. “You’re a vision, really.”

“I think there’s been some mistake,” said Ernst. He looked at Helene. “You were supposed to wear the other dress.” She looked at him pleadingly. “Unless you don’t want to,” he said quickly. “In that case it’s perfectly all right.”

“We’ll try it, anyway,” said Gustav. “If it doesn’t work we can send a note to Lotte and maybe she can come tomorrow.”

“Who’s Lotte?” asked Helene.

“A professional model. She works for us sometimes.” It was amazing, the number of women who seemed to be in and out of the studio.

“What’s wrong with me?” I wanted to know. “Why can’t I do it?”

“Well, if you’re going to, quit whining about it and get on the platform,” said Ernst churlishly. I couldn’t understand why he was so angry.

The platform was little more than a wooden box covered with a blanket. An assemblage of broken chairs, unraveling pillows, and a tatty chaise completed it. Gustav told me where to stand and positioned my arms and face. He showed Helene how to kneel so that she wouldn’t get tired.

No such provision was made for me and I stood with my arm pointing toward the windows, for what seemed like hours. Helene knelt at my feet, holding a jug. Every now and then she would whisper that her neck hurt and could I see? Were they almost done? My arm ached, but they wouldn’t let me rest. This is what models do, said Ernst. If you don’t like it you can go home.

They were sketching my profile and so I couldn’t look at what they were doing. I concentrated on counting the panes of glass and the tiles in the ceiling. The sun moved across the window. It was two, then three. My arm drooped lower and lower. At three-fifteen Gustav propped it up on a lectern that had mysteriously appeared. At three-thirty some other people came in. I couldn’t see them, but the volume in the room rose drastically.

“Who’re these two?” asked a man. Franz or Georg, I assumed.

“The Flöge girls, remember I told you?” said Ernst.

“Oh yes, the young ladies,” sneered the other man. I heard things rattling and pages being torn. At one point it sounded like an easel fell over.

“Where’ve you been?” asked Gustav.

“Out late last night,” said the first man.

“With Therese,” snorted the second one.

“And was she good?”

The man must have gestured because all I heard was muffled laughter.

At four we took a break. My arm felt like I was wearing a fat heavy glove. Helene immediately ran into the closet to put her regular clothes back on, or to hide until the break was over, I wasn’t sure which.

Gustav introduced me to his brother Georg and their friend Franz Matsch. Georg was wide and blond and was the one who had knocked over the easel. Apparently he was the reason no glass was allowed in the studio.

“He’ll just break it and then a model will step on it and cut her foot and that’s the last thing we need, a model with blood poisoning,” explained Franz. He was blond too, but long and thin. He had a wispy mustache and red bumps on his neck. He offered me a cup of coffee.

“You were quite a trouper, staying up there so long,” he said. “None of the models would have been able to hold their arm like that for that amount of time. Or willing, for that matter.”

“They told me I had to.” He smiled.

“If you’re going to model regularly you’re going to have to stand up to them. Gustav especially. He’ll make you do as much as he thinks he can get away with.”

“We’re doing it for fun.”

“So much the better. You can walk out anytime, you don’t have to worry about earning enough for food or rent.”

I thought about holding money in my hand, money that I had earned, and about buying as many vanilla caramels as I wanted and eating them all at once. I thought about a pair of garnet earrings and a room with a door that locked. I thought about going to the theater and sleeping until noon the next day. It sounded thrilling, but also a little bit lonely. If I ever went to live on my own Helene would have to come with me.

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly. For the next pose I had to lie on the floor as if I were dead, and I fell asleep. Every now and then a laugh or shout would jolt me awake, and I would try to hear what they were saying. They were full of secrets, full of knowledge about a darker, more muscular world than the one I lived in, and I wanted to be admitted. That was why I would do anything Gustav asked me to.

We left at five and got home before anyone missed us, since we told them our school outing to the art museum would probably run late.