The Painted Kiss (7 page)

“You like sweets?” he said, watching me. “I’ll see if mother won’t bake something chocolate next time.”

“With hazelnuts,” I said. Then I felt guilty. “If it’s not too expensive,” I added.

“Are you a socialist?” he asked, returning to the subject of the Kunstlerhaus. “What would your father say?”

“I’m not anything,” I said. “It just seems like everyone being able to express their opinion is better than one person telling everyone else what to do.”

“You’d think having everyone’s opinion would be a good thing, but most people don’t have opinions worth taking into account. Especially when it comes to art.”

I thought about my father and the cab driver with the pungent cigar, and decided that he was probably right.

We had arrived in the Volksgarten and Klimt led me to a bench and took an acrid handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the seat. The bench was small and even when dry the cold of it traveled up through my bones. I wanted to huddle against Klimt for warmth like a child, but I couldn’t. I sat rigidly to keep myself from shivering. I could see my breath.

The air was thick and gray with cold rain that threatened to turn to ice. Everyone who passed wore an expression of concentration, a determination to endure the discomfort of the cold, thinking of the café or the fireplace that awaited him at his destination. Not one of the pedestrians with clenched teeth would be out if they had a choice. It was hard for me to concentrate on looking. My feet were going numb. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Klimt didn’t say anything. When I looked over at him he wore the same expression his mother did when she sat at the kitchen table.

“Do you torture all of your students this way?” I asked after thirty minutes. He startled, as if he’d forgotten I was there, and turned to me with a puzzled look.

“I don’t have any other students,” he said.

“I thought…” I stumbled for a diplomatic reply.

“That I must need the money badly to give lessons to you?” He seemed amused. “When we got the theater commission we got a lot of money. I tried to buy my mother another house, but she likes that one. She’s used to it. My father made her move several times a year for twenty years, always promising the next house would be better, and always it was worse. Now she says she will never move again.”

“What about you? You don’t have anything,” I said, thinking about the ill-fitting suit.

“Only paint,” he said. “But I don’t need anything else.”

“Then why did you take me as a student?”

“Everyone needs a protégé.”

“I’m not a protégé,” I said. Surprise made me blunt. “I’m terrible.”

“You’re not as terrible as you think you are.” It was as close to a compliment as he had ever given me, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I looked quickly around for some visual to distract him. I found a woman with red hair leaning against a slick dark tree trunk. It elicited a lecture on contrast. As he talked I wondered about the woman. She wasn’t much older than I and wasn’t wearing a hat, which was a horrible faux pas in addition to being foolish, given the weather. She was pale and looked worried. Her hands moved constantly, smoothing her hair, adjusting her coat. Who was she waiting for?

As we walked back to the train station at the end of an hour, he told me that the cartoons for the theater were being exhibited at the Kunstlerhaus in a week’s time. I should come, he said, and bring my parents or my sisters. There would be a reception. It was important for a student to see her teacher’s work. Then you can decide if I am worth respecting, he said. I said I would try to come.

I told Helene. We decided we would not tell our parents, who surely would forbid us to go. We would make an excuse and go by ourselves. It wasn’t far to walk; we could hurry back before anyone missed us. We said we were going to the coffee shop for
Schlagobers
. Pauline, thankfully, did not want to come. She thought we were going to ogle some handsome new waiter, which didn’t interest her. She’d preferred to stay home with a book.

Our plan seemed brilliant until we were mounting the steps of the building, the one Klimt had forced me to admit was ugly. Ugly or not, it was intimidating to two young girls. Everyone else there seemed much older, sure of themselves. They looked as if they knew where they were going. We watched several groups swing open the brass doors and disappear before we took a deep breath and slipped inside.

The floor of the rotunda was mosaic tile and the ceiling was frescoed with angels. At a long table artists were pouring new wine, still bubbling and fermenting in the bottle, into cheap glasses. Lots of people Klimt had talked about, people who had modeled for him, were there, including Katherina Schratt and the crown prince. Or so Helene told me later. All I could see was the cartoons.

They were only long rolls of paper fixed to the wall, but they were filled with light, like crystal chandeliers. I stepped very close to look at the brushstrokes. The paint slid across the paper in rivers, and trickled down in rivulets. I thought I could tell which ones Klimt had done. It was hard to say how I knew. They were less careful, though not at all sloppy, just the opposite. The brush ran free like a virtuoso’s bow.

Each scene was from the history of the theater, from a Greek amphitheater to a Viennese play from last season, but I didn’t know that yet, because I was mesmerized in front of a scene from an Elizabethan production of Romeo and Juliet, all peacock blue and moss green velvet. I thought I recognized Mercutio.

I don’t know how long I was standing there before Klimt saw me. He must have watched me for a while because he asked if I was all right. He introduced his brother Ernst to Helene and me. Helene told Ernst politely how much she admired the cartoons. I, on the other hand, couldn’t say anything.

“Don’t you like them?” Klimt seemed worried.

Helene told him that dumb amazement had always been my usual response to something I loved. She told him about the first time I went to see the Lippizaners and estimated that I loved his cartoons at least as much, if not more than, the dancing white horses.

Did she have to betray me like that?

He brought me some wine. I didn’t tell him I wasn’t allowed to have it. “So you like them?” he said. I could only nod. My school-girl vocabulary seemed inadequate and I was suddenly intimidated by him. Men kept coming up to us and shaking Klimt’s hand. They didn’t even look at me, and I realized how insignificant I must be in his life. I thought that at his own reception he should leave me and go talk to the important people, and I decided it must be good manners that were keeping him.

“Where’s Helene?” I said, to give him an excuse. “I must go and find her.”

“She’s a grown-up young lady,” he said. “She can take care of herself. Let me show you the rest.” He led me around the room, showing me the different panels, telling me who each person was, whispering bits of gossip so that no one else could hear, explaining why he had done things a certain way. I really did wonder what had happened to Helene but after a while I forgot to look for her.

“You like it?” he kept saying. “Are you sure?” He wanted to know why I liked it. When I said I thought it was beautiful he frowned. That was not the right answer. I tried to explain about the brush-strokes but he said any artist worth his smock could do that. I didn’t know what else to say.

“It’s no good,” he said. “I’ve failed.” I didn’t understand his sudden gloom. I had never seen him this way. It seemed as if the party, which should have been the high point of the whole process, was in fact depressing to him. I couldn’t convince him that the work was good.

A burly blond man approached us as we tackled the Greek section. “It’s Moll,” Klimt said. “I don’t feel like talking to him right now.” He pushed me toward the back of the room. I thought he was actually going to hide us behind the drapes, but Moll accosted us before he could.

I had heard Klimt talk about Moll. He had a powerful personality and liked to organize things, which made him a valuable comrade. I knew that Klimt liked him, but had doubts about him as an artist.

He clapped Klimt on the back, practically knocking him over. “Magnificent!” he said in a loud bass voice. “A triumph!”

“Spare me your bullshit, Moll,” Klimt said. “You can say that to the reporters, but tell me what you really think.”

“You’ve outdone Makart,” said Moll. “It captures the Viennese spirit.”

“I know,” sighed Klimt. “That’s the problem. It’s tired and bourgeois.” He sounded defeated. I wondered, if this was such a failure, what one of his successes would look like.

“You’re worn out,” said Moll, “and you’ve looked at it so much you can’t see it any more. Come away from it and have a drink with me, that ought to help. There’s something I want to discuss with you anyway.”

Klimt gave me an apologetic smile as Moll led him away. I realized as they disappeared that he hadn’t introduced me to Moll, and that Moll hadn’t looked at me once.

I found Helene with a girl she knew, two years ahead of her in school, talking Schiller. On the way home she told me that Ernst had asked if she’d like to model for their next project, a Roman mural for an Esterházy palace outside of Budapest. She said she would if I could come, too. The sittings would be in the studio.

It was one thing to sneak away to attend an art opening in a public place, and quite another to go alone to an artist’s studio. We would be risking everything, and we both knew it. Still, neither of us hesitated. We spent that night discussing how we could accomplish it without our parents finding out.

Now, when I thought of him, it was not as Klimt, but as Gustav. And I thought about him much more. It was as if I had cracked open his chest and seen his beating heart, and I could never look at him the same way again. I told myself that I admired his talent, that I thought he was a good teacher, that somehow over time he had become my friend. If occasionally a thought rose to the surface that there might be something more, I rigorously suppressed it.

T
oday our neighbor Heitzmann came to the house with a basket full of vegetables: red onions, sweet onions, parsnips, small fat carrots with feathery heads cascading like a mermaid’s hair. His wife had woven the basket from saplings soaked in water. The whole thing was as beautiful as a still life, and I nearly cried. They had some extra, he lied. If we didn’t eat them, they would go to waste. He and his wife have seven children and it didn’t rain much this summer, but we knew better than to refuse.

We’ve always known Heitzmann. He was a fat, red baby who grew into a chubby, ruddy boy who delivered eggs and milk to us from his father’s dairy farm on the other side of the road. Now he is lean and tanned, but he still flushes easily in heat or embarrassment, and rocks back and forth on his hobnail boots in that way that I remember. He married a girl from St. Wolfgang whom he met at a harvest festival. That’s the way of things around here.

He feels sorry for us, I know. My sisters and I were grand ladies to him once. Now I’ve had to write him for help and here I am, decrepit and alone. No family other than my niece. The modern, sophisticated life I lived in Vienna seems so far away now, and my money doesn’t really do me any good under these circumstances.

We thanked him gratefully for the vegetables. All we ate last night were some potatoes we had found in the pantry, their shoots like little green snakes crawling across the floor. We roasted them but they still tasted mealy and bitter. Supplemented with crackers and coffee, they weren’t much of a meal.

Helene asked him if his wife might like to earn some money baking bread for us. I could tell she felt a little guilty, paying someone for something we should be able to do ourselves, but neither of us has the energy or the inclination for baking. I listened as they settled on a price and a delivery schedule. He said he would send his son Hermann on Tuesdays and Saturdays with a loaf of rye and a loaf of wheat.

When he left I put on a jacket and went out to examine the place where our garden used to be. If we are going to stay here for a long time we will have to grow some vegetables for ourselves. We can’t depend on Heitzmann forever; something could happen to him.

The flagstone path that leads from the front porch is overgrown and difficult to see. Lichen has spread colorfully over the stones and I stooped to examine the coralline ruffles and starbursts. There are shelf mushrooms growing at the base of the trees. I can’t recall which ones are edible and which not. Perhaps there is a book in the library that will refresh my memory.

We had roses in the garden, and herbs: rosemary for bread and lavender for sachets. Sometimes one of us would become enthusiastic and try to grow various exotic things: cotton, indigo, mulberry trees. We hoped to have silk worms. We trained orchids and bonsai in the greenhouse. Once we even obtained a pineapple tree. But that was a long time ago. What I found was merely an indentation in the ground, matted with yellow grass, like a grave the year after the funeral. All around the opportunists were thriving, as they always do: Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod and thistle. The stone bench was still there, worn and pitted, and the sundial, its brass dial bent. In any case, there’s not much sun this time of year.

It was quiet, as I remembered it being when I was a girl. Later city people in open-roofed automobiles would honk their horns and shout and wave, as they passed on their way to a picnic or a boating outing, but no one has any gasoline now and if anyone’s going on picnics I don’t know about it. Everyone’s walking, or riding a bicycle. Occasionally a farm cart rattles past, or a cow bellows to another, but the loudest sounds are my own breath and my anxious fingers tapping against stone.

There are ghosts everywhere here, not the kind that fill the pages of sensationalist magazines or terrify schoolboy campfires, but the kind we use to simultaneously torment and comfort ourselves. Gustav is sitting on the bench next to me, drawing on my wrist with a charcoal pencil. He is calling to me from under the black cape of the unwieldy wooden camera he had back then. Stand still, he says, though he knows I know what to do. My mother is reading letters out loud from under one of the larch trees. Pauline is spraying the rose leaves with a red pepper mixture while Helene practices her vocal scales. My father is standing quietly in the woods beyond, observing birds and marking down his observations in a red leather journal.

Worst of all is the ghost of myself, weak with longing as I’m drawn upon, swelled with pride as I model my own designs, teasing my mother about her proper accent, digging slugs in the garden, running to give my father a kiss, and scaring all the birds away.

At the end of the garden is the greenhouse that Gustav used as a studio when he stayed with us. Some of the glass panes are broken. All of them are opaque with grime. Maybe Heitzmann could give the place a thorough washing. I’m afraid to go inside. It’s like a jar you find in the back of the icebox. You can no longer remember what’s inside, and you know it can’t be anything good. However, it must be faced. Waiting will not get rid of it.

I circle a few times, ripping the seeds from some wheatlike grasses as I go. It burns my hand in a satisfying way. The door sticks, of course. I lean on it and step inside. It’s damp and cool, like a potato cellar. My eyes are slow to adjust to the close dimness. Then my heart stops for a moment.

There are three people standing on the other side of the room. Thin, wasted people: refugees? Ghosts? They are looking out toward the back of the studio, toward the woods. They are standing at attention, in some sort of formation, like soldiers. They don’t seem to notice me. I start to back out, trying to catch my breath.

Then with a blink I see that they are easels, skeletal and wooden. My heart resumes pumping and I have a laugh at myself. I used to be braver.

Some chipmunks and squirrels have clearly made their home in the corners, dragging in leaves and grass for their dens. There’s an old table that used to be my grandmother’s. It began in the kitchen, then moved to the porch, and finally, when even my father admitted it was too scratched and marred for the house, was banished to the studio. Now the finish is cracking and peeling away, damaged further by rain leaking in from the holes in the ceiling.

There is a row of galvanized buckets and a shelf of watering cans, thick gloves, rubber boots of various sizes, spades. Two shovels are lying crossed on the floor like a coat of arms. It still smells as it always did, like modeling clay and gasoline, though we never kept gas in here. Paint solvents, perhaps.

On the shelf next to the spades I find packets of seeds. The labels have faded away entirely. I pour one packet into my hand: sunflower or pumpkin, I think. The seeds in the next packet are moldy and half-eaten. The next batch, though, are tiny and brown. They’ll never grow, it’s been too long. Nevertheless, I pour these seeds back into their envelope and pull on some gloves. I take one of the shovels and go back to the garden. It feels good to hack at the grass as tightly woven as a burlap bag, to break the soil and flip it like a pancake, but it’s hard work and my shoulders burn almost immediately. I’m gasping for breath and I know I’ve turned an unlovely shade of purple.

After about half an hour I’ve turned up seven respectable holes. Luckily they don’t need to be very deep, not for these seeds, whatever they might be. I pour a few seeds in each and cover them up. Should I water them or will that just flood them? Does the soil have enough nutrients to support them?

I lie on the grass next to my newly planted plot and breathe in the smell of the earth. If Gustav were here he would bring a blanket from the house and he would draw me as I napped. If he were here he would dig all of the holes for me and fix the sundial, and afterward we’d walk across the road and steal apples from Heitzmann’s orchard. If Gustav were here I would strip off my clothes and offer myself like a salver of melon and pomegranate.