Back home, the theater and opera seasons were beginning. The flower gardens were in their last blossoms, and the leaves on the trees along the Ringstrasse were beginning to blush into the first shades of autumn. January ball committees were called, and invitations came in from across the city. Berta asked me to spend a day at the grape harvest festival in Grinzing, and I had a postcard from Klimt: Will you come?
My heart soared.
I studied the sepia drawing on the front of the card, and his blue scrawl across the back. There was nothing in it that seemed improper, but just to be certain, I tucked it inside one of my novels, and sent him a reply without signing my name.
I will come, I wrote, and set a day and hour.
All the wine gardens in Grinzing hung grape boughs and lanterns on the fence posts to welcome visitors, and garden gates were flung open on the day of the harvest fest. Polka music played in the squares, and the village roads were filled with men in lederhosen and women in smocked dresses. Berta wore a peasant-style skirt and hat, and my hair was coiled on top of my head in a twisting braid.
It was a brisk autumn day, and there were rich and poor families with picnic baskets and blankets. In a clearing at the edge of the vineyards, my friend and I made our way to a white tent decorated with vines and flowers, where long rows of wooden tables were set with red-and-white-checkered cloths. Little boys ran hoops through the streets on long sticks, and girls danced.
“It’s good to be home,” Berta said. She was in an affectionate mood, and slipped her arm around my waist. I’d missed her company, and was glad to have her to myself.
An accordion player with a dog tied to a rope sidled up to our table, and bowed. He showed us two black teeth when he smiled, cranked the bellows and ran his fingers along the white keys. I was about to shoo him away when Berta snapped open her purse and handed him half a week’s worth of wages.
The man’s eyes widened comically, but he made quick business of pocketing the coins and striking up a loud, new song.
“So much?” I asked under my breath.
“My great uncle was an accordion player in Galicia,” Berta said with a shrug. She tapped her fingers to the music. “He was the kindest, saddest man I knew.”
We ordered a carafe of new Grüner Veltliner and a plate of bread with chopped liver and pickled onions, and caught up on our summer months. I told Berta about the theater in Prague, and she told me about the Salzburg music festivals.
“We went to Attersee in August, and stayed in a little house across from the Villa Paulick,” she said. She told me the Flöge sisters were making new blue dresses with Japanese designs, and that Klimt spent his afternoons swimming and rowing with his niece—“the little girl is in love with him,” she said—or tromping through the woods in his long robe.
“The local people call him their Wood Sprite,” she said, laughing. “Or maybe they call him their Wood Devil.”
I told her about the Attersee painting—there, I thought, now Ferdinand can’t return it—and asked after Emil and their son. She said her little boy was ready to start school, and was showing a keen interest in anatomy, like his father. I thought of my brother Karl, but blinked away the sadness.
We were finishing our food and wine, feeling merry and loose, when I heard a familiar giggle.
“Frau Zuckerkandl and Frau Bloch-Bauer,” Serena Lederer exclaimed. She was dressed head to toe in a traditional peasant costume, with her little girl on one side of her and Alma Mahler on the other. Alma’s hat was decorated with grape leaves, fresh flowers, and ferns.
“It’s remarkable to see you here,” Serena said after we’d exchanged the usual pleasantries. “When I just saw you two nights ago in Prague—really, what are the chances?”
“Are you speaking to me?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine what she meant.
“You must be exhausted,” she said, sliding her gaze just a bit too far to one side as she spoke. “The way you and Ferdinand were dancing at the Rudolfinum.”
I bit my tongue, and tipped my head to one side. I saw that Alma was looking at me with bright eyes.
“I tried to catch you, but Ferdinand said you’d gone up to bed and that was that,” Serena added. “Tell me, why would you stay at a hotel in Prague when you have Jungfer Brezan?”
An answer was required, that was clear. I felt all the women looking at me, and I smiled.
“It’s Ferdinand,” I said. “He likes to . . .”
“Dance,” Berta said, as if she’d just woken up. “Yes, Ferdinand likes to dance.”
Serena giggled again.
“That’s funny,” she said, staring at me. “It’s hard to imagine that he can outpace you on the dance floor.”
The accordion player with the black teeth came back, and I glared at him. The music was too loud, the wine too sweet, the air too warm.
“Yes, it is,” I said. “It is hard to imagine.”
When Serena and Alma left us to find their companions, I paid the bill and told Berta I had a headache.
“Don’t let them bother you,” my friend said. “It’s all nonsense, you know.”
It had never occurred to me that my husband could have a mistress. Now it seemed clear—the nights at the factory, the way he’d come home exhausted.
“It’s nothing to make a fuss over,” Berta said, putting her arm around my waist again. “I suggest that you leave it as it is.”
“I feel so foolish,” I said. I felt hurt and angry, too. “Why would you have me leave it as it is?”
Her face was bright under her hat, her cheeks flushed from the wine. She was close enough to kiss, if that’s what I wanted.
“Ferdinand was a bachelor for a long time, Adele. And this is the way things are done.”
“Even Ferdinand sees that you and Emil are equals,” I said. “Does that mean that you’re both free to take lovers?”
My friend demurred, but she didn’t say no. And that gave me something else to think about: the possibility that I, too, could take a lover.
“Ferdinand has a mistress in Prague,” I blurted out to Thedy. “I feel ridiculous that I didn’t know.”
We were walking through the Volksgarten, and Karl and the nursemaid had gone ahead. Thedy was wearing an old-fashioned pink dress, without the belt that went around the waist. I told her what had happened in Grinzing, and what Berta had said.
“I agree with Berta,” she said. Thedy didn’t seem the least bit surprised or shocked by my news. “If his mistress is in the country, it means she’s probably clean and devoted.”
“Devoted?”
“Yes.” My sister looked at me as if I were still a child. “Faithful to him—so that she won’t give him a disease that he’ll bring home to you.”
The last of the daylilies were losing their bloom, and the grass was browning at the edges of the lawn. My sister’s face was lined and puffy.
“You say it so easily—as if it’s already settled.”
“You’ll have children soon, and then you won’t mind,” she said. “You know, Adele, sometimes I wish . . .” Her voice faded. “I wish . . .”
We stopped next to a small fountain. Thedy put her hand to her chest, and startled me with a long, dry sob.
“What is it?” I asked. “Is something wrong between you and Gustav?”
“No.” She buried her face against my shoulder, and I lead her to a garden bench beside a hedgerow. “There isn’t anything wrong.”
“Then what?”
She covered her face with her hands.
“I’m having another baby.” Her words came out in a teary blur, but what I could make out sounded something like, “I’m tired . . . she’ll do things you don’t want to do . . . if he has a mistress, he’ll leave you alone . . .”
I stroked her head, and tried to make sense of it all.
“Are you saying you want Gustav to take a mistress?” I asked.
Karl came toddling back in our direction, waving two pinecones in his plump fist. The nursemaid was rig
ht behind him.
“Maybe,” my sister said quietly. “It would make things so much easier for me.”
I’d married too young, it was clear. I’d married without knowing the world.
“Let Ferdinand keep her,” she said. “Soon enough you’ll have your children, and then everything will be as it should.”
Karl put a fat pinecone on my sister’s lap, and one on mine. I thought about the doctor in Paris, and the way my brother had said don’t let them put you in a box.
“You can decide a thing without deciding, you know,” Thedy added. “You can just keep it to yourself.”
“I saw Serena Lederer in Grinzing on Saturday,” I said after dessert was served.
Ferdinand lifted his eyes from his chocolate mousse. He’d been home for three days, and hadn’t yet come to my bedroom.
“I always thought she was a silly woman,” he said.
There was candlelight, and the sound of the cook in the kitchen.
“Did you go dancing in Prague?” I asked. I was surprised at how calm I felt.
He blinked and put down his spoon. That was all. He didn’t even clear his throat.
“Yes,” he nodded. “I did go dancing.”
In the silence I felt as if we were deciding something together. Something modern, I suppose. Something like the dappled swirl in Klimt’s painting, or the way the bare winter trees against a cobalt sky are as much about life as they are about death.
The butler came into the room and refilled Ferdinand’s teacup. The clock struck seven. We had tickets for the opera, and the butler said the coach was ready and that Thedy and Gustav were waiting downstairs.
“Please don’t return the painting, Ferry,” I said in a rush. “Please let me have my life, too.”
His face turned red. It was only for an instant, but I saw his expression crack, and I saw how much he cared for me.
“Everyone in this city watches what you do,” he said.
“But I will have the art, Ferry.” I forced myself to say it bravely. “You promised me that. You know you did.”
He wiped his mouth, and pushed away from the table.
Downstairs, Thedy was already in the carriage, wrapped under a blanket. I sat beside her, and watched our husbands talk easily about the evening’s performance.
“Tonight it’s Tristan and Isolde,” Gustav said. “What a treat.”
We got out of the carriage on Operaring and joined the throng. I watched the way Thedy held Gustav’s arm, and the way he leaned toward her. He was protective of her, and she relied on him.
Ferdinand put a hand on the small of my back, but I held the banister and stepped up to our box without my husband’s help. As far as I was concerned, whatever he thought was settled, and whatever I thought was settled had been left largely unspoken. I thought this was to become the way we lived our lives. But when the curtain came up, Ferdinand put his hand on my knee. As the violinists lifted their instruments, and Mahler raised his baton, my husband put his lips against my ear.
“I expect fidelity from you,” he whispered.
MARIA
1938
My father and mother were getting old and fading quickly, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. We had relied on Uncle Ferdinand all of our lives—Papa most of all—and it was impossible to imagine what we would do if Uncle Ferry couldn’t help us anymore.
So when the Nazis released Leopold at the end of June—just as my uncle had said they would—a tiny bit of our faith and hope was restored.
Leopold had lost a lot of weight, and there were deep, dark rings around his eyes. But he said he hadn’t been hurt, and that he’d never been to Dachau.
“I was in a room on the third floor of the Hotel Metropole the whole time,” Leopold said. We were in my father’s study, talking by the light of a single lamp. My brother was smoking a cigar, and drinking the last of my father’s brandy.
“There was a banner hanging over the window, and all the light in the room looked red,” he said. He was folded into his chair, almost bent in two. “I was alone all the time, but I think that was better than anything else.”
“I went to the Metropole,” I whispered. “It was unspeakable.”
Leopold glanced at our parents, and shook his head.
“It was bearable,” he said, but I knew he wasn’t telling the truth. I’d heard the screaming. I knew why he looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. It seemed a miracle that he’d not been beaten and broken, but it gave me hope for Fritz.
“Thank God Uncle Ferry gave them what they wanted,” he said.
Leopold told us he was going to Canada. There was no way to soften the news. He didn’t even try.
“I was able to get papers for Robert and his family, too,” he said, reaching for my mother’s hand. “I’m sorry, Mama, that’s all they would give me.”
“Don’t worry about us,” my mother said. She’d wept so many tears, I think her ducts were dry. “We’re all waiting for Fritz. We can’t leave without Maria and Fritz.”
“I’m not leaving,” my father said from the deep recesses of his armchair. “I’m not strong enough to go anywhere.”
Leopold had nothing to take but the clothes on his back. My mother gave him a scarf and an extra pair of socks, but he couldn’t carry anything more. When he’d buttoned up his coat, and wrapped Papa’s scarf around his neck, my brother pulled me into a hard, long hug.
“Take care of them, and don’t give up on Fritz,” he said in a low voice. “Most of all, Maria, take care of yourself.”
“Don’t say that,” I said, hugging him harder. “I’m not giving up on anyone, do you hear me? No one.”
Every week I brought clean clothes to Rossauer Prison and took away Fritz’s laundry to be washed. We exchanged trinkets in the bundles. Fritz drew funny little doodles for me, like a comical mouse eating a piece of cheese. I slipped a fresh biscuit into his basket, and a note that I sprayed with my perfume.
I waited in line against the dirty prison walls with hundreds of wives, daughters, and mothers all holding packages. Everything was orderly and civilized, and no one asked why the others were there. We knew that asking questions only caused trouble. Our talk came in snatches of shared conversation, some of it hopeful but most of it terrible.
“Bettina Flux and her brothers killed themselves last week—all four dead in their beds.”
“They seized the Rothschilds’ palace and arrested the father and son. The richest banker in Europe and there was nothing he could do to save his family.”
“They’re starving Jewish prisoners in Germany—giving them bread made of sawdust and mud.”
Soldiers patrolled the laundry line, sometimes stopping to flirt with a pretty woman. A hard-faced officer with very large hands singled me out one afternoon.
“Fräulein,” he called me, and I didn’t correct him. “Fräulein, who are you washing clothes for and waiting on line to please?”
“Fritz Altmann,” I said.
“Your brother, yes? Or your father?”
I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring. Everything had been hidden or sold.
“My husband.” I meant to hold his gaze, but I dropped my eyes and I whispered, “Fritz, my husband.”
“The Jews have such good wives,” he said. “To wait all these hours only to bring clean clothes and take away the filth.”
One morning the line at Rossauer was shorter than usual, and I quickly found myself at the front window.
“Package for Friedrich Altmann. Prisoner 61875,” I said by rote.
The officer riffled through a stack of papers.
“There is no Altmann here.”
The morning coffee burned in my stomach. In an instant, I was wide awake.
“He was here last week,” I said. I could feel the blood behind my eyes. My mouth tasted of metal. “Maybe there’s a mistake.”
The officer frowned. I tried to smile and look pretty.
“Wait here.” He disappeared into a back room
and emerged a moment later.
“He’s been moved to Landesgericht Prison. No packages. One letter a week, that’s all.”
“Why was he moved?” I asked in a voice I hardly recognized. “I don’t understand why he was moved.”
“Landesgericht is in the Eighth District,” the clerk said. He was already looking behind me. “There are no visitors. No laundry. One letter a week.”
For the next two days I braved the Landesgericht Courthouse, praying for a sympathetic officer who would tell me something or agree to pass my note to Fritz.
“Verboten,” I was told again and again. Forbidden.
On the third morning I found a letter in our mailbox with Fritz’s familiar handwriting. I tore it open and found his words slashed with black x’s by the censors.
Beloved Maria
I’m at XXXXX and am still all right. Stay strong for both of us and I’ll return to you soon. Please, Maria, I beg you not to come here. My cellmate’s wife was arrested last night at the prison door XXXXXXXXXXXXX must XXXXX my brother to release everything. It’s the only way. Your Fritz
On a bright June day, I found my father in bed in the middle of the afternoon. His dark room stank of black cough and something I couldn’t recognize.
“I’m scared,” my mother said.
Jewish doctors had been stripped of their right to practice and non-Jewish doctors could not enter a Jewish home, but there was still a black market and help was still possible with the right offer of jewels and gold.
Just before sundown on Friday, Dr. Schoenbart showed up at the kitchen door dressed as a handyman. He carried his medical tools in a workman’s satchel, and washed his hands in our kitchen sink. He was incognito: a doctor disguised as a plumber.
My father didn’t make a sound as his blood was drawn.
“He doesn’t have to eat,” the doctor said as he capped the small vial and slipped it into his bag along with two of my mother’s ruby earrings. “But make sure he’s is drinking some broth and weak juices.”
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