“Move along,” the woman barked, calling for the person behind me. “You Jews need to learn some manners.”
Gentle snow had been falling when my uncle and I left the Metropole on my thirteenth birthday. He’d told his driver we were going to walk, and guided me up the long block that sloped toward Rudolf Park.
Back then, Uncle Ferdinand rarely mentioned Aunt Adele’s name without choking up. Sometimes when I visited 18 Elisabethstrasse, I’d found him gazing up at her portrait as if expecting the picture to speak. But his memories seemed happy that day, and he went on about the books my aunt had read and enjoyed, the philosophers, “dark,” he said, “but worth a look at least,” and the British and French novelists.
“I want to take you to your aunt’s favorite bookshop,” Uncle Ferry said. “Since you can read French now—” he began, and I laughed.
I couldn’t read French at all, then.
“Don’t laugh.” Uncle Ferry smiled. “I thought we might get you a copy of Proust in the original. If your aunt were alive, that’s what she’d want for you.”
I beamed at him. He treated me very well, and I loved him very much.
“That sounds lovely,” I said, taking his arm.
We walked quickly in the snow, chattering away. Before we reached the bookstore I thought I heard someone cry out in pain, but my uncle was talking and he didn’t hear it. He kept going, and we turned onto Sterngasse. Right in front of us, not less than forty feet away, men in brown shirts were beating a small group of men in front of a storefront. One used a baseball bat to knock a man to his knees. Another kicked him in the face.
“Jewish swine!” someone shouted.
That stopped my uncle cold. His eyes narrowed, and he put an arm around my shoulder. In that moment I saw everything clearly: the front of Schuster & Sons Booksellers, the torn sign in the shop window that read Young Socialists Meeting Today. A chain swinging through the air and catching a man’s cheek. Blood splattering.
“Brownshirts,” my uncle said. He was already pulling me backward. “Let’s go, Maria.”
“Filthy Socialist pig,” a man roared. He cracked a stick on a small man’s head, and then my uncle and I were around the corner and we were running.
We went at least two blocks until we turned onto the main boulevard and my uncle bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. In the distance I could see the army barracks at the top of the hill, and I could hear a military band playing a familiar battle march. The men’s shouts echoed in my ears. I heard the two-note cry of a police car, and hoped it was heading toward the bookstore.
“Who were those men in brown shirts?”
“National Socialists,” he said, still struggling to breathe.
“Socialists?” I asked. I thought maybe he was confused. “Not the men who were being beaten. I mean the other ones.”
My uncle wiped a hand across his face.
“The Brownshirts aren’t Socialists, they’re National Socialists—Nazis.” He spat the word. “They follow Adolf Hitler and they hate Socialists.”
I’d heard my parents speak of Adolf Hitler once or twice before, but his name had meant nothing to me until that moment—and even then, it didn’t mean enough.
“They called those men filthy Jews,” I said. “Are all Socialists Jewish?”
“Socialists are from all backgrounds,” my uncle said. He’d begun to catch his breath, and he was straightening his coat. “But Jews are the ones being blamed.”
“Blamed for what?” I asked.
“For whatever is wrong,” he said. “Poverty, hunger, the state of the German economy.”
“The state of the German economy.” I repeated his words, barely understanding their meaning.
“The Nazis are trying to take control in Germany,” my uncle said. He’d stood up fully by then, but his face was still very red. “They hate anyone that’s not like them—especially Jews.”
“Why are they here?” I asked. “Why doesn’t the chancellor make the Nazis leave?”
“He’s trying,” he said. “A lot of us are trying to keep the Nazis out of Austria.”
I thought my uncle could do anything, then. If he was working against the Nazis, I didn’t think I had anything to fear.
My black gloves were still on my hands, the jewels still sewn into the lining, as I returned through the factory gates and hurried back to my empty apartment. The telephone line clicked and buzzed and rang across the miles to Czechoslovakia, and finally a voice answered. For a second, I felt as if I could reach back through time and bring everything back as it had once been. But of course I could not.
“Uncle Ferry?”
“Maria?” It was hard not to cry when he said my name. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
Quickly, before we lost the connection, I told my uncle that Fritz had been arrested, and asked if he could reach Bernhard in Paris.
“We need him to release the accounts,” I said. “They want all of our assets.”
“I’ll do whatever I can,” Uncle Ferdinand said. “I still have some friends in Vienna.”
He sounded very sure of himself, and I believed he would help us. But when he called the next day, his voice was grave.
“I went to the bank in Prague yesterday,” he said. “The Germans had everything transferred to the Austrian Länderbank. Even the Swiss accounts. The Nazis have everything now.”
“Were you able to reach Bernhard?”
“Your brother-in-law has gone very quiet in Paris,” my uncle said. “No one seems to have a telephone number for him.”
I didn’t say anything.
“There’s more,” my uncle said. “You’ll have to prepare your parents.”
My knees gave out, and I sank to the floor. Every last bit of my courage slid away.
“The Germans have Leopold,” Uncle Ferdinand said. “He’s being taken to Dachau.”
“Leopold? My brother is in Dachau?”
“I was told that my accounts may help secure his release.”
“Then what about Fritz?”
The line was silent. Somewhere, I could hear the buzz of another conversation, in another life. A woman’s laughter came through the line, and the ghost voice of a child I would never meet.
“We won’t give up,” my uncle said. “I promise, I’ll never give up.”
“But Fritz isn’t here.” I felt very young and scared. “I’m alone.”
“They allow packages to go in and out of Rossauer Prison,” Uncle Ferdinand said gently. “You can bring Fritz clean laundry, and hide notes inside the shirts. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”
When I hung up the phone, I began to gather Fritz’s shirts. I thought they would smell like his cinnamon aftershave. I thought they would smell like him, but they didn’t. They smelled like fear. They smelled like the people in the Metropole. They smelled like all of us.
The painter shuts his work trunk and stacks it on top of the brown leather suitcases. The cats are mewling against his legs, brushing their tails along the blank canvases he’s tied together with a long rope. The canvases are four-feet squares, and he intends to paint a landscape on each one. That’s his indulgence every summer—never portraits, only landscapes.
While he waits for his carriage, Mimi comes to the studio carrying the boy in her arms. They kiss hello and he hands her a fat envelope.
“It’s more than enough for two months,” he says. “If you need anything, you can see Moll. He’ll get word to me.”
The toddler is sucking on a candy, and looks up at his father through wide brown eyes.
“Papa will miss you,” Klimt says. “I’ll see you when I come back.”
Mimi tucks the money inside her dress, and slowly walks away in the heat.
When the carriage comes, Klimt and the driver lift the heavy trunks into the back. The courtyard garden is hot and dusty, and he’s happy to leave it behind. He closes his eyes, and imagines diving straight into the cold, blue Lake Atter
see water.
ADELE
1900
Everyone escaped Vienna in July and August. Berta and Emil went to Salzburg, where they had a summer apartment close to the Mozarteum. Klimt took the Flöge sisters and his niece to Seewalchen on Lake Attersee. And we went to Bohemia with Thedy and her family.
At Jungfer Brezan we had picture windows that overlooked the valley. Church bells rang in town every morning at seven, and when I went down to the breakfast room, iced cinnamon pastries and dark coffee were always waiting. Crisp linens were hung out to dry in the sun. It was heaven.
My sister and I wore loose cotton shifts with only bloomers and a chemise underneath, and long swimming costumes that draped below our knees. We all wore hats, even in the shade, and everyone’s skin smelled of sleep that was rinsed away as soon as we took that first dive off the dock into brisk water.
Thedy’s little boy was almost a year old, and a red ball and colorful wooden blocks kept him busy for hours.
“When will you have a child?” my sister asked as we watched her little Karl toddling across the lawn in a white and blue sailor suit.
“I hope it will be soon,” I told her, feeling a bit sad. “So does Ferdinand,” I added. “He wants sons. He wants heirs.”
Ferdinand seemed to pay little attention to Karl that summer, but maybe I wasn’t being fair. He had a lot on his mind: the price of sugar had fallen, new catwalks had to be built between barrels and tanks, and one of his young workers had been burned with scalding water when a valve burst. Ferry often had to stay overnight in an apartment beside the factory offices, where he took his dinner in a country café or at a picnic table with the men. Whenever he came home from one of those trips, he was exhausted.
In the long evenings my brother-in-law practiced his cello while Thedy and I did cardboard jigsaw puzzles or played gin rummy, and on the weekends we all went into Prague for dinner and entertainment. The restaurant at the Cheval Noir had a wonderful menu, the Rudolfinum Hotel had a grand dance floor, and the national theater put on charming summer plays. I loved the astrological clock in the Old Square, where we sat for a cold ice cream and watched the mechanical figures mark the hour.
The countryside was tonic for everything. I didn’t forget about Klimt, though. Something was awake in me—it was hungry, and I needed to feed it. Ferdinand and I were married six months by then, and I’d gotten used to having him in my bed. We had thick, wide mattresses stacked with goose down pillows at Jungfer Brezan, and when he came to my room in the dark, I closed my eyes and pretended he was Klimt.
Was it wrong? Certainly he never objected to any of it. I wrapped my legs around him and thrust up, moaning. I climbed on top and rubbed into him until that relief broke through me in waves. Then I threw back my head and laughed.
“What just happened?” Ferdinand asked, blinking into the dark. He seemed to genuinely not know.
“I think maybe we just conceived a child,” I said. I didn’t know how else to explain something to him that I barely had words for myself.
One night when I touched him in a way that made him shudder and writhe, my husband held my face in his hands and called me a vixen.
“You’ve bewitched me,” Ferdinand said.
It was August, and almost my birthday. His face was close and red. I could see I’d made him very happy, and I was glad.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said. “And I don’t want to wait.”
I pulled on my bathrobe, and he led me through the dark house to his library. The air smelled of tinder and ash, and my husband’s particular scent of perspiration. We didn’t have electric lights in the country, but the hurricane gaslight illuminated the far end of the room where a large, square painting tied up in brown paper was leaning against the wall.
Ferdinand tugged at the strings, happy as a schoolboy.
I was hoping it would be one of Klimt’s village landscapes. Instead, it was one of the unfinished pieces I’d seen in his studio—a brilliant patch of blue water against a sliver of sky.
“I arranged it with Moll,” Ferdinand said, beaming. “You’ll have a say in how it’s finished. It’s unusual, but they agreed to it.”
I tried to imagine what I would say if I were simply happy and excited about the painting, and not flooded with a rush of longing.
“It’s already a masterpiece of color and new perspective,” I managed.
I knelt close enough to see each of Klimt’s individual brushstrokes. There was pink in the blue water, and green, white and yellow, too—the very colors I’d seen on his fingertips.
“I bought Beech Forest II, also. It will be delivered after it’s finished,” Ferdinand said. He was happy and proud. “You see, Adele, I didn’t forget.”
I hugged him. He was generous and thoughtful, and I was very grateful. I felt I owed him honesty, at the very least.
“I want to tell you something, Ferry.”
I fished a cigarette from the pocket of my robe—by then I’d switched to a French cigarette that came in a box of ten—and slipped it into my cigarette holder.
“Go on.” Ferdinand pushed an ashtray across the desk.
“Klimt asked me to model for one of his paintings,” I said. I hesitated for a few seconds. “And I’ve agreed.”
“I don’t understand,” Ferdinand said. “Moll didn’t mention anything about it.”
I lit the cigarette and took a long inhale. I could see he was going to put up a fuss, as I’d expected.
“Probably because Moll doesn’t know.” I blew a plume of smoke into the air. “It’s not a portrait, Ferry, and it’s not going to be a painting of me. I’m going to be Judith—the Jewish heroine who slayed Holofernes.”
He frowned.
“It doesn’t seem right,” he said. “Doesn’t he have models for that kind of thing?”
I had to think about exactly how to phrase my reply.
“His models aren’t Jewish women,” I said. “He needs someone who looks the part.”
“But why didn’t you ask me before you agreed?”
“Why would I need your permission?” I tried to keep my voice calm. “It’s not a commission, it’s my own time, and I’ll learn a lot. You said I could have the avant-garde, and this is it, Ferry.”
He glared at me as if I’d caught him in some kind of trick.
“I said you could have art, and I’ve bought it for you.”
“You said I could have freedom,” I said. “Remember the women walking alone in Paris? They ride bicycles in the summer there, too. They don’t ask their husband’s permission before they make a friend or choose a piece of art. Berta Zuckerkandl doesn’t, either.”
“Berta is an unusual woman. She and her husband are practically equals,” he said.
I pulled myself up tall. I imagined Judith standing up to a man in her tribe—someone who might have challenged her even after she’d killed the general.
“Are we not equals?” I asked.
By the way he looked at me, I knew the answer.
“I’m going to do it,” I said. “I’ve already agreed. It’s what I want—it’s what you promised me, Ferry.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said.
Ferdinand left early the next morning, and stayed at the factory apartment for several nights. Thedy and Gustav didn’t think anything of it, and I was glad. I saw how attentive my sister was to her husband, and how she deferred to him on so many things. I was sure that Ferdinand wished that I were more like her. But that wasn’t what I wanted, and I could not pretend.
“I love the painting,” I told Ferdinand when he came back.
“Then you should decide which you want,” he said. “The landscapes, or the Judith.”
He stayed away at the factory for three more nights the following week.
“What is the trouble?” Thedy asked one morning. Summer was drawing to an end, and it was clear that something wasn’t right.
“He’s angry because I’ve agreed to sit for a painting with Klim
t,” I said. “It’s not a portrait, and it’s not a public agreement. It’s private, between us.”
I told her all about the Zuckerkandls’ salon and the Volksblatt reviewer who said Jews should wear yellow triangles. I explained that Klimt was painting a powerful woman—a Judith in gold—as a response to the anti-Semites.
“But why you?”
“Because I inspired it,” I said. “That’s what he told me.”
Thedy pulled her son onto her lap, and sighed.
“I’d be very careful with a man like Klimt,” she said. “I’ve heard stories about him, and if even half of them are true, he’s dangerous for a woman of good standing.”
“I know what I want,” I said.
Dr. Freud said that every decision, every dream, and every creation were driven by unconscious impulses, but what did that mean, exactly—and what fed those impulses?
“You always have, Adele,” Thedy said. “But even so, I worry about you.”
I went back to Vienna with Thedy and her family the first week of September, but Ferdinand stayed behind. He said there were new centrifuges on order, and that he needed to be at the factory when the machinery arrived. I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but I didn’t put up a fuss.
“I’m sorry if you’re disappointed in me,” I said before we left. I had on my traveling clothes, and we were standing alone near the rear porch where no one could see us.
“I’m sending the Attersee back to Moll,” he said. He was formal and distant, as if he hadn’t called me a vixen only a few weeks ago. “I’ll tell him you didn’t care for it.”
“But I like it very much,” I said. “You can’t say that—it isn’t true and I won’t say it is.”
A flock of geese flew overhead, honking noisily.
“Then I’ll return it without an explanation,” he said.
“That will make you look like a man who doesn’t know your own mind,” I told him. He was stubborn, but so was I—and I could see by the way his face shuttered that I had hit a nerve.
“I know my own mind,” he said.
“Of course you do. And you know excellent art, Ferry. It’s as important to you as it is to me.”
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