Stolen Beauty
Page 4
I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up his hand.
“You’re being relocated to other rooms on the third floor,” Landau said. He looked around the apartment, and ran his hand over my leather chair. “I’m going to quite enjoy my new home.”
ADELE
1898
“Mother will let you do almost anything right now,” Thedy said. “Just to see you smile.”
“Even this?” I asked with a thrill. I held up a sheath of white silk and wrapped it around myself like a toga. “Will she let me dress as a spring nymph?”
I was seventeen, my legs coltish in their new excitement, my hips still slim as a boy’s.
“I think we can convince her,” Thedy said. “I think you’re still young enough to get away with it, too.”
My sister was planning a party to celebrate her engagement to Gustav Bloch.
Engraved invitations had gone out, white lilies ordered, the menu planned. It was in vogue to have parties with Greek themes, and ours was to be a spring bacchanal. It was our first party since Karl’s death more than a year ago, and even I knew it was time.
Thedy’s long hair was newly oiled to make it shine, and her complexion was powdered to a smooth ivory. At twenty-three, she was almost too old to be a bride, but she’d waited through a period of mourning and then made an excellent match for our family. Gustav was considerably older than my sister and had already proven himself steady, reliable, and secure thanks to his family’s sugar beet fortune.
Their love and tenderness thrilled me, but it was the suitability of the union that pleased Mother and Father.
People didn’t marry for love, at least not the people we knew. They married for station, dowry, and dynasty. Even the Wittgensteins and the von Rothschilds carefully cultivated their social standing with marital alliances, annual society balls, and favors for the imperial family. And yet things were changing—there were hints of passion and rebellion everywhere, if only you wanted to see it. The crown prince had committed a stunning murder-suicide for love, and the emperor’s cousin had run off to Switzerland with her young paramour. My friends and I had been deliciously shocked by a play at the Burgtheater about a man who takes a prostitute as his lover, and Gustav Klimt’s new Union of Austrian Artists had been raising an uproar with their Secessionist show at the old Botanical House that spring.
The new art was said to be seductive and crude, and Father had forbidden me to see it. I was still too young to go anywhere without a chaperone, and I couldn’t have properly asked one of my suitors—even if Thedy had agreed to accompany us—without causing a ruckus.
The suitors bored me, anyway. Fair-haired Klaus Fleischer was frightened of my father, Edward Krauss was handsome but unadventurous, and it was impossible to talk with the lawyer Pieter Nebel about anything artistic. They all thought I’d be a sweet, steady girl like Thedy, enchanted by domestic life and eager to be a bride. But I was not. I still felt my brother’s spirit urging me on, telling me I was clever and warning me not to be put in a box. I’d begun to suffer terrible bouts of insomnia that year, and neither the suitors nor Mother and Father understood my nervous impatience or the dark circles under my eyes.
Thedy understood me, though. Thank God there was dear, tender Thedy.
“I have an idea,” my sister said. “If you tell Mother you want to recite a poem for the party, and dress as a spring nymph—”
“Athena,” I said, interrupting her. I still had mythology books stacked beside my bed, and had worn the pages thin reading through the night. “The goddess of wisdom and poetry.”
“Nothing too complex,” Thedy said patiently. “Just a spring nymph, reciting a poem. That will appeal to Mother’s sense of proper aesthetics.”
“I’ll write a love poem for you and Gustav,” I said. I don’t know what prompted me to say that. I’d had few crushes in my short life, and sometimes wondered if perhaps I’d be passed over when it came to romantic longing. But Thedy smiled, and that was that.
“A love poem,” she said. “I like that idea. I’ll tell Mother you’ve written it for us already. The rest will fall into place, I promise.”
She reminded me that I would meet Gustav Bloch’s brother at the party, and that she thought he would make an excellent match for me.
“Ferdinand’s not a very cultured man, but he’s smart and rich, and he built the family’s sugar beet fields into a dynasty,” Thedy said. “He needs a young wife—someone like you, Adele, who can give him élan and style. If we marry brothers, the family will be united through blood on both sides,” she added. “And you’ll find you have a lot more freedom as a young bride than you have here at home with Father.”
I was happy for my sister, but had no intention of letting Gustav’s brother court me. My head was full of myths and poetry about unrequited love and passion that swelled but was never satisfied, and I wrote a poem that I thought answered those ideas with a rebuttal: Thedy and Gustav, at least, had found love together.
Ferdinand Bloch wasn’t handsome, but he was substantial and striking in the newest style from London—black tuxedo, ruffled shirt, and a velvet trimmed top hat, which he handed to the maid when he arrived the following Saturday for my sister’s party. His beard was laced with bits of gray, his eyes were soft brown, and his lips were full. He was old—nearly forty—and looked more like one of my father’s important friends than the sort of sharp young man I expected to marry.
I felt light and unencumbered in my white toga when I greeted him at the foot of the iron staircase.
“Please come with me, Herr Bloch,” I said, slipping an arm through his. When he smiled, he revealed a gap in his front teeth. He wore cologne, and a medal of honor from Emperor Franz Joseph pinned to his lapel. I wore a wreath of hyacinth and violets, and in my bare feet I led him to a seat between the groom-to-be and my brother David.
Mother had ordered the parlor decorated with white orchids hung from the ceiling, ferns in pots along the windows, and thirty white folding chairs adorned with paper flowers and netting. A pianist began to play Beethoven, and on cue I ducked out from behind a white curtain and recited the verses I’d written.
“Do you know me?” I called out. I was holding a cornucopia of greenhouse lilies and orchids across my chest. “I bring you joy,” I said. “I bring you lust for life!”
The poem was juvenile, but I was very proud of it. When I was finished, there was applause, red roses for the pianist, and then dinner my mother and sister had carefully planned. We started with cold Grüner Veltliner from Father’s favorite vineyards, shrimp and oysters on beds of ice, little blintzes with caviar, and pickled asparagus that I saw Ferdinand spit into his napkin.
When Ferdinand caught me watching him, he winked and I giggled. I hated pickled asparagus, too.
“Your sister tells me that you appreciate fine art,” Ferdinand said later.
Dessert had been served, and he was stirring sugar into his coffee. At Mother’s insistence, I’d been laced into a proper corset and gown before sitting for dinner, and I felt a bit breathless. We’d been in a hurry, and I think the corset was laced too tight.
“Did you see the Secessionist show at the Botanical House?” he asked.
“No.” I was surprised that he would mention the modern art show, and flattered to be asked. “Although I wanted to. And I’d like to see the new gallery they’re building over on Friedrichstrasse, too.”
“Would you?” Ferdinand let out a small laugh. “I suppose it’s quite a sight to see the emperor’s artisans working alongside Magyar laborers.”
I cast about for a word I’d read in an obscure French journal that one of my brothers had brought into the house.
“It sounds quite avant-garde,” I said. “I admire that, Herr Bloch.”
“As do I,” he said. I couldn’t make out if he was humoring me or not, but I liked the easy way he said it. “I admire ingenuity, and anything that advances the empire.”
The intelligence and tenderness in Ferdin
and’s face appealed to me. So many people I knew were dull or cruel. Ferdinand was neither. I tilted my head at him and smiled. He put down his coffee, and folded his hands on the table.
“I hope you don’t think me too forward, Fräulein Bauer,” he said. “I’d be honored if you would come for a ride in my carriage to see how their work on the new Secession gallery is progressing.”
It was a formal and proper invitation. Because he was my future brother-in-law, he was all the chaperone I would need—and that, alone, was novel for me. I was tired of being tethered to my mother and sister. When I glanced over at Mother, she was nodding approvingly at me.
“I would enjoy that very much, Herr Bloch.”
He smiled broadly.
“I have a friend who’s a great admirer of Herr Gustav Klimt’s,” he added. “Frau Berta Zuckerkandl, do you know her?”
Berta Zuckerkandl was the daughter of a newspaper publisher, and the only female writer in Gustav Klimt’s new circle of artists. I had read her cultural commentary and was dazzled by her acceptance of all that was dauntless and modern.
“People say she’s quite radical for a woman.” I dared not look at him. The thought of romantic love with Ferdinand did not excite me, but intellectual and artistic freedom surely did.
“A strong man has no need to fear a woman with a strong mind.” Ferdinand sounded almost jolly. “I think that’s what you mean by your French words,” he added, and then butchered the expression avant-garde into four distinct syllables.
It was clear his French was terrible, and when I barely suppressed a smile, I saw a flash of annoyance and what I would learn, soon enough, was his bottomless pride.
Ferdinand’s Lipizzan horses had been trained at the Spanish Riding School with the emperor’s own stallions, and when we rode along the Ring in his carriage the following week, heads turned and children waved as if we were royalty ourselves. Even my father’s wealth paled in comparison to Ferdinand’s, and that gave me a heady rush. I could feel what such wealth might do for a young woman of uncommon ambitions.
I watched out the carriage window as we approached the Vienna River, where the new Secession gallery was a brilliant white building rising at the edge of the proper city. On one side of the construction site were fishmongers and bakers stocking their wooden stalls, and on the other side, only a short distance away, the Academy of Fine Arts stretched the length of Schiller Park. The old Elizabeth Bridge had just been demolished, and there was a huge field of dust where new roads were being built on raised platforms that crisscrossed a winding patch of the river.
“It’s outside the Inner Districts, so the building isn’t a blemish on the Ringstrasse,” Ferdinand said. “I think it was a wise decision to keep it at a distance from the palace.”
The Secession gallery was much smaller than I’d expected, a fraction of the size of our grand art history museum with its dazzling marble columns and enormous murals. Square and sleek, the new gallery looked as if it had been built of small geometric patterns and white rectangles piled atop one another like a bright white wedding cake. I said as much to Ferdinand.
“You have a language for art that I don’t have,” he said as he motioned for the driver to stop on the square.
Set directly atop the center of the gallery, an intricate gold dome rose like a moon on the horizon. Men in white overalls balanced on a maze of scaffolding supported by pulley ropes, and we watched as they worked with small tools, chipping away to reveal a delicate filigree of golden leaves.
It was a warm day, and some of the men were working in their shirtsleeves, their hard muscles rippling in the sun. I couldn’t help but notice how much older Ferdinand looked in the daylight, and how soft his body was in comparison to the young laborers.
As if he’d realized suddenly that it was rather scandalous to have me in the midst of so many workmen, Ferdinand directed his carriage driver across the road to the Church of St. Charles, where we stopped at the edge of the green square. He produced a small silver cup so that I could take water from the public drinking fountain, and we walked away from the noise and dusty gallery construction. The church square was full of nannies and nursemaids with their charges, and older couples who were taking the air. We found a bench closer to the Ring, and watched a woman with a purple feather in her hat walk by with a little dog on a leash.
“Have you been to Paris?” Ferdinand asked.
“I’ve never traveled beyond Lake Attersee or Bad Ischl. I’ve spent most of my summers in the house where I was born.”
“If you were my wife, I would take you to Paris,” Ferdinand said. I was startled by his directness, but I don’t think that showed on my face. “And it would be in your power to bring the avant-garde here, to Vienna, if that’s what you wanted.”
His French pronunciation was remarkably improved—as if he’d studied and prepared to say that word for me. Beyond that, all I could do was smile and look away. The subject of marriage had been broached, and if I wanted to cut off such an idea, I would have had to tell him right then and there that he was wasting his time with me. And I didn’t. It was exciting to be at the edge of Vienna, where shirtless workmen were building a gallery and women with boa feather hats were walking little dogs alone, by themselves, without an escort or chaperone.
I’d feared that I would be lonely when my sister married. Instead I was free to go about with my new brother-in-law as I pleased. We went to an outdoor symphony on the great lawn behind the Schönbrunn Palace, and rode into the countryside with his horses flying along gravel roads. We spoke about the great architectural accomplishments along the Ring, and debated the new, simple styles that Olbrich and Wagner were bringing to Vienna.
“The Ringstrasse buildings are majestic,” Ferdinand said. “I applaud cultural advancement, but I’m not sure how Vienna is improved with a building that resembles a cake, or one that’s decorated with red poppies like Wagner’s new apartments.”
The chance to have my opinion taken seriously excited me.
“The opera house and the new history museums are grand and beautiful,” I agreed. “But what’s the purpose of simply repeating what’s been done before? Vienna deserves an identity of her own, separate from Rome and whatever the Germans are doing in Berlin now.”
Ferdinand seemed to weigh my words carefully. Then, he smiled.
“Frau Zuckerkandl wrote something quite like that in last week’s Tagblatt,” he said.
“I read it,” I said. “And I agree with her.”
He asked me to say more; to explain why, exactly, the new style appealed to me.
“Perhaps you’ll think me improper,” I said, although I knew that simple declaration would arouse his curiosity.
He urged me to go on.
“I wore a white toga the night of Thedy and Gustav’s party,” I said. “It was loose and free—a very simple Greek design.”
The edges of his ears pinked, and I felt a strange new power.
“The new architecture seems the same, to me,” I said. “Pure and also simple.”
“Less structured,” he said.
I had to resist the urge to add the word uncorseted, but I believe we both understood the allusion, and that I had somehow made my point in the most proper and yet personal way.
In early June, Ferdinand and I spent a long afternoon in the heuriger wine gardens in the hills of Grinzing, where I enjoyed too much chilled Muscat and paid the price the next morning.
Father was off on business, but at breakfast my mother quizzed me about the colored lanterns hanging in the trees in the wine gardens and the subject of my conversations with Ferdinand.
“All I can tell you, Mother, is that he’s a gentleman at all times,” I said. Then I excused myself and went back to bed with a terrible headache.
Ferdinand lived in a light-filled apartment not far from the Belvedere Castle, and collected landscapes by the best old Austrian painters. While Thedy and Gustav were honeymooning in Switzerland, he invited Mother and me to se
e his collections. His prized paintings were by Waldmüller and Alt, each a sentimental representation of the idyllic days I’d been enjoying that very season: rolling hills, red-cheeked girls, landscapes with yellow wheat fields and fat apple trees. The works hung in a huge parlor filled with stately furniture and wine-red carpets, where tall white shelves displayed dozens of beautiful pieces of gold-rimmed ivory porcelain from the eighteenth century.
“What inspired you to collect porcelain?” Mother asked.
Ferdinand was a practical businessman. I expected him to speak of the value of the collection or its connection to imperial history. Instead, he reached for a delicate teapot, and traced the slender spout.
“It’s important to preserve what’s old and beautiful, even as we welcome what’s new.” He glanced in my direction and added, “The porcelain is a valuable part of the empire’s heritage. By bringing together as many pieces as possible, they can be appreciated together in splendor.”
“Like a great extended family,” Mother said, with one of her satisfied nods.
Ferdinand had my mother’s approval, and he knew it.
Not long after Thedy and Gustav came home from the Alps, he took me to meet Berta Zuckerkandl in a new café near the art museum. Women didn’t generally visit coffeehouses, and I knew Father would forbid it—but Ferdinand held open the door for me, and I entered with a high head.
“Welcome to Café Central,” a young woman in a starched white apron said in a bright voice.
The tall, arched ceiling and marble columns resembled a museum or library, but instead of studious silence there was a cacophony of piano music, clanking tableware, carts rolling across smooth floors, the sharp smell of boiled coffee and bubbling cocoa, a ribbon of cakes and pastries arranged on plates along a zinc countertop, and men in crisp shirts waiting to serve the pastries topped with fat dollops of whipped cream.