He kept the cloth pressed against my face, and I watched his features disappear into a set of spinning red lights.
When I woke, Ferdinand was sitting in the dark, holding my hand.
“I love you, Adele,” he said. A tear slid down my cheek and into my mouth, and then Thedy was whispering, “I’m so glad that whatever came between you and Ferry has passed.” I didn’t know if she’d been there the whole time, or if Ferdinand had come and gone. I didn’t know if an hour had passed, or a day.
“I don’t know, Thedy,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”
They gave me Bayer’s Heroin for the pain, and I floated in a jumbled twilight for days. I dreamt of red sugar beet juice and clean white shelves, sloe-eyed Egyptian women sliding across my bedroom walls, a genie stretching her hands toward something she couldn’t reach, and a choir of women with golden haloes standing at the window, singing. I heard poetry set to music, and sopranos hitting high notes in clear, bright voices.
It was like sleeping inside one of Klimt’s murals. By comparison, the real world that awaited me was temperate and barren, but it was filled with dark coffee and the allure of bathing, dressing, and slipping into warm cotton stockings and a loose velvet dress.
“I’d like to get back to the land of the living,” I said after the doctor finished an early-morning examination. I lit my first cigarette.
“Then you should go about your daily routine.” Dr. Frank waved away my plume of smoke. “You are healed.”
Pale February sun shone through the clouds like a light in a smoky theater. Boiled eggs, toast and apricot jam, liver on bread, fruit and cheese were all put in front of me. I poured steamed milk into my coffee and liberally stirred in the sugar. The newspapers were folded on the table, unread.
“I’m happy to see you up and dressed,” Ferry said, rather formally. His face was blank, as if he’d intentionally wiped it clean for me. “You look beautiful. I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through.”
He fumbled in his jacket pocket and pushed a small box across the table. Inside was a gold ring with two pearls and a ruby.
“Dr. Frank said we can try again,” he said. Something must have flashed across my face, because he added, “In time, of course.”
“I want a doctor who speaks kindly to me,” I told him.
“Choose who you want,” he said. “As long as he’s an excellent doctor.”
“I’ve heard there are young physicians at the university who are filled with new ideas.”
“You’ll have whatever you want.” He slipped the ring onto my finger.
I thanked him, but I knew the antidote to my sadness wasn’t in jewels or a new doctor. The antidote was across the city, in the sunny studio on Josefstädter Strasse.
After breakfast I wrote a quick note—I am better and will be there shortly—and asked the maid to drop it into the box on the corner. By the time Ferdinand had gone to his offices, I was dressed and the carriage was waiting.
I smelled their perfume as soon as Klimt opened the door. There was a dark-haired beauty, a redheaded sylph, and a very tall blonde. They were dressed in diaphanous pastel sheaths—something I couldn’t imagine finding in Vienna—with daisies and feathers in their hair.
“This is Martha—she’s Madness,” Klimt said. The girl’s long, messy braid fell past her shoulders. She looked pleasant until Klimt said the word madness, and then she contorted her face in a way that made me laugh but also cringe.
“Now Gerda,” he called to the redhead. Her waist and neck were long, her bust full under the thin fabric of her dress. “Gerda is Lust.”
She looked like a woman who could carry and birth many beautiful children, and I had to turn away.
“And you?” I asked the last one.
“I’m Debauchery, madame,” the blonde said, so seriously that I burst out laughing. There were merry squeals from everyone, and soon Klimt was telling the girls to be dressed and on their way, “until I send for you again, my lovelies,” he said.
Only after he’d closed the door behind them did I see how strained and tired he was. His face was thin, and his beard was untrimmed. There were dark circles under his eyes.
“I’m sorry—maybe you know what kept me away,” I said. I spoke in a nervous rush, as I’d done that first morning on his doorstep.
“You don’t need to explain,” he said. “I don’t expect you to.”
“I would have come if I could,” I said.
“I told you, you don’t owe me anything.”
He motioned me to sit, and I did. I felt a bit woozy.
The studio was as I’d expected to find it, littered with sketches and cats, a landscape filled with white birch trees and another of a garden path filled with chickens. There was a new formal portrait on an easel, and I recognized Gertrud Loew’s pale, pretty face.
“Why didn’t you wait before you finished our Judith?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, Adele.” I could see that he was truly sorry. “Moll practically took it off the easel while it was still wet—I didn’t have a choice. With all the trouble over the murals, I have to keep producing.”
I looked to the back room where we’d spent our time in afternoon candlelight. The animal furs were gone, replaced by twisted branches from the garden and two tall vases stuffed with fresh holly.
“You know the Academy turned me down?” he asked.
I knew he’d applied for a teaching position and been rejected.
“That was a mistake,” I said.
“When you don’t keep the ministers happy, they do whatever they want.”
“Now what?” I asked.
He gave a sort of shrug, and I was shocked at how drained I felt. Fatigue set in like a stone in my pocket, and I sank deeper into the chair. On the table, there was a book of poetry facedown, split open. I picked it up.
“Are you reading Schiller?” It was foolish, but I felt a stab of jealousy. I had a ludicrous image of the redhead nursing her child and reading aloud from the book. “Or does it belong to someone else?”
Klimt groaned.
“It’s for the Beethoven Frieze.” He finally came toward me, and I could smell unwashed nights under his robe. “I’ve got to have the mural designs and materials ready by April.”
I’d read about the Secessionists’ plans for a Gesamtkunstwerk—a complete artwork—with music, painting, sculpture, and poetry.
“That’s why the girls were here,” he added. “I have to fill three walls and I’m stuck on the last image. Everything I’m picturing seems too much or too little.”
He showed me the poem he’d marked—it was “Ode to Joy”—and I read it slowly.
“What about the kiss?” I asked. I turned the book to him—“You circled it, right here—be embraced, millions—this kiss for the entire world.”
“Right,” he said. “I’ve read those lines over and over, but I can’t make the crescendo feel real.”
I remembered lying in his arms after our passion had been spent.
“What about an embrace instead of a kiss?” I asked slowly. “What about what holds lovers together after the passion is slaked?”
“Keep talking,” he said.
I felt unsure, but the look on his face encouraged me.
“I don’t have a picture in my mind,” I said. “But doesn’t everyone want to be held just the right way, and for just long enough? If we don’t have it, we’re sad, but if we’re held too tightly, then we feel bound.”
He drew slowly at first, then more intently. He drew a man’s broad naked back, and his arms wrapped around a woman. He used red chalk and blue, and soon he’d filled a long sheet of paper that stretched the length of his workshop.
When he stepped away, his eyes were shining. On the page were the same flying genies and naked women I’d seen in my heroin-laced dreams.
“A kiss for the whole world. A kiss to save the world,” he said. “For you, Adele.”
It was as I’d suspected all along—my min
d, more than my body, was what would keep me alive and away from the edges of sadness.
“It’s going to be magnificent,” I said.
I was wrapping my scarf around my shoulders, preparing to go, when I said quietly, “I was pregnant. That’s why I didn’t come.”
He looked up from his work.
“But I’m not anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Adele. I know it’s what you want.”
“Yes, it’s what I want,” I said. “I want everything. I want this, and I want that, too. I’m greedy, Gustav.”
“I’m greedy, too,” he said. “We’re all greedy for something—only you and I, we’re willing to admit it.”
MARIA
1938
We were in Germany without traveling papers or proper identification, and afternoon was sliding away quickly. Fritz put his hand on my waist, and guided me in front of a festive-looking restaurant with a small poster that said Hitler is good for Germany!
Soldiers and women with black stockings and netted hats walked by, laughing merrily. I was wearing my best blue hat, and I was glad for it.
“What if Paul was caught?” I asked quietly. “If he was caught, then we should stop right now.”
“And do what?” Fritz asked. “We have no choice, we have to keep going.”
A man in a black fedora narrowed his eyes when he heard Fritz’s voice, and circled back around us. What could I do? If I spoke, he would hear my Austrian accent. If I didn’t speak, surely Fritz would say something more.
I squeezed my husband’s arm and pulled him into a candy shop. I felt myself growing faint. The man in the fedora stared at me through the window. I pointed at a box of chocolates and fumbled for my wallet. I turned away from the window and murmured quietly, “I think we’re being followed.”
I knew Fritz heard me, but he didn’t even blink.
“A black fedora, at the shop window,” I said softly. “He heard you speaking.”
I paid for the candy, and waited while the shopgirl wrapped it in silver foil and put it in a bag.
Outside on the street, the man in the black hat had moved to the end of the block. Fritz hailed a taxi, and we got in.
“We’re going to Kohlscheid,” he said in his best, guttural German. I didn’t dare look out the window as the taxi pulled away from the curb.
Thirty minutes later we were following the cobblestone paths outside of Kohlscheid. My shoes were cutting into my heels and my head was aching, but we had to act calm, as if we were on a little outing together.
We arrived at a farmhouse just after dark.
“Are we sure it’s right?” I asked.
Fritz recited the instructions we’d memorized: Follow the lane past two boulders, take the road that splits to the right and look for the house with the red barn and the crooked weathervane. He pointed to the weathervane: it was bent nearly in half, and looked like a swastika. The farmhouse door was blue, with peeling paint. Fritz tapped timidly. When the door swung open, my knees buckled. If Fritz hadn’t caught me, I would have fallen onto the hardwood floors.
“You’re safe here,” the farmer said, once we were inside. He was younger than I’d expected, and there was a carved wooden cross on the wall behind him. “You’ll eat and sleep. Then it will be time to go.”
He gave us buttered rolls and ham, and we ate alone in his kitchen. I heard children somewhere in the house, and a mother hushing them. Simply by having us in her home, she’d put her family in danger. I felt deeply grateful as I curled into a root cellar with Fritz and slept until a hand on my arm woke me in the dark.
“It’s a moonless night,” the farmer whispered. “You’re lucky.”
As I smoothed down my dress and gathered my coat and purse, I remembered the chocolate. I left it on the folded blankets for the woman and her children.
Silently we followed the man into the dark fields. We walked in single file, with me behind the farmer and Fritz in the rear. I tried not to think about anything but one foot in front of the other as we moved through the cool night. A low wire fence marked the border between Germany and Holland. It was as far as the farmer would take us.
“Go about ten meters,” he said. “My nephew will meet you there before morning.”
He faded into the darkness before I could thank him.
Fritz stepped across the wire fence, then turned and held it down for me. I heard a loud, sudden noise—like the ricochet of a gunshot. My stocking caught on a snag of wire, and I fell to my knees. Fritz shut off the flashlight, and dropped down beside me.
“I heard it, too,” he said in the faintest whisper.
Small animals scurried in the nearby shrubs as we lay on the ground. My ankle throbbed, and I was trembling. My hands were cold, the field was damp. There was something alive in the night, and something dying, too.
The night grew still, and the sounds of small insects filled my ears. The stars overhead twinkled like bullets, and I remembered the first time Fritz kissed me, when I’d tasted cinnamon stars.
An hour passed before Fritz spoke again.
“We should go further,” he said. “The sun will be up soon.”
We rose to a crouch and ran toward a cluster of farm buildings.
A truck roared to life, and a dog started barking.
As a faint light broke on the horizon we washed in a stream and inspected one another quickly. My hem was streaked with mud and my stockings were ripped, but I’d managed to keep my coat out of the mud and it was passably clean. So was Fritz’s.
“You’re beautiful,” Fritz said.
“I love you,” I told him.
We walked into a small Dutch village just as it was beginning to wake. The smell of fresh bread came through an open bakery window, and we heard someone whistling.
We stopped and the whistling stopped. That was our sign.
“Fritz?” the young man said in a hush. “Maria? It’s all right—Cousin Paul sent me.”
Fritz asked him a question—something about our passage that only someone who knew our plan could have answered.
The young man seemed confused. He gave a stammered reply.
“You’re Fritz and Maria, aren’t you?”
“We’re looking for the train,” Fritz said.
“I have an aunt in Aachen,” the young man said, brightening. “Do you know my aunt Hilda?”
“Yes,” Fritz said, visibly relieved. “Aunt Hilda, who lives in Aachen.”
“You can take the train to Aachen from here,” the young man said. “It will be coming shortly.”
I washed my face and rinsed out my stockings in a basin behind the bakery. The Dutchman gave us fresh bread and a lunch pack, and we made our way to the small station. With its rustic wooden doors and colorful shutters, it looked more like a fairy-tale cottage than a country railway station.
Our guide leaned in as if we were old friends.
“May God be with you,” he said, and then he melted away just as the farmer had done.
When we heard the low whistle of the train, Fritz turned to me with a terrified expression.
“We forgot to change our money,” he said. “All we have are reichsmarks.”
The train hissed to a stop, and we climbed aboard. I was thankful that it was empty as we slid into a red seat. The conductor, stout and elderly, arrived a few minutes later.
“Our apologies,” I spoke as steadily as I could. “I’m afraid we only have reichsmarks. My aunt Adele in Amsterdam is very ill, and we barely had time to throw some things together before we left.”
The conductor looked from me to Fritz and back again. I saw him look at my feet, and I followed his eyes. My shoes were caked with mud. It was clear that I was lying.
“I hope your aunt feels better soon,” he said, taking the German currency and handing me two second-class tickets.
“Thank you,” I said, nearly in tears.
“Aunt Adele?” Fritz asked with a weak smile, after the conductor was gone.
“It just slip
ped out,” I said.
I flushed to imagine what I looked like—a far cry from the strong and proper woman my uncle spoke about so longingly. But I’d been courageous and fierce, as she’d always urged me to be, and I believed she would have been proud.
We forced ourselves to stay seated and look calmly out the window as the patchwork of colorful trees and fields slid by. Fritz even closed his eyes for a time, although he surely didn’t sleep.
Four hours later, when we reached Amsterdam, I scanned the tracks. Neither of us said a thing as a German couple pushed in front of us to step off the train. As my foot touched the platform, a strong hand took hold of my arm.
“Thank God,” Bernhard said. The three of us hugged quickly. “We have the plane waiting.”
A taxi took us to a small new airport, where we climbed into a tiny silver airplane.
“Nettie and the children are already in Liverpool,” my brother-in-law said. “She’s found you a flat. You’ll be safe there.”
As air and clouds bled together and we rose over the earth, I saw a white moon rising in the blue sky to the north. Somewhere under that same sky my mother was preparing her afternoon dinner. She was looking out her window, she was getting smaller and smaller as the ground slipped away and our airplane flew like a lone bird across the North Sea.
ADELE
1902
“What comes after Hope?” Berta whispered in my ear as the crowd pressed around us at the Secession gallery.
“I think that’s Ambition,” I said. I recognized a young beauty I’d seen at Klimt’s studio, and pointed to her face high above us on the stucco wall. “The other one is Compassion.”
People crushed around us with their necks craning, fingers pointing. Overhead, Klimt’s magnificent Beethoven Frieze filled three walls with seductive and frightening figures rendered in black, white, and gold. There was a beastly ape with snakelike arms reaching toward Sickness, a skeletal Death personified, ghostly women floating as if in a dream, and a heroic knight in shining armor fighting his way toward Lasciviousness, Wantonness, and fat, bloated Intemperance.
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