Stolen Beauty

by Laurie Lico Albanese

  “When I sleep, I forget,” he whispered.

  Wandering through the market district on a cold autumn morning, I spotted a windup phonograph in the window of a secondhand shop. A bell rang when I pushed open the door, and a man with a big, round belly came out of a back room wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

  “How much?” I asked, hoping that my English wouldn’t fail me. He stared just above my face, and seemed to consider my question for a moment.

  “Five pounds,” he said.

  I had two pounds, three shillings in my purse.

  “No,” I said, disappointed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Too much?” he asked. “What can you offer?

  “I have two pounds,” I said, taking care to string the sentence together properly.

  “Two pounds, and the hat you’re wearing.”

  I was wearing the fashionable fedora I’d worn when I left Vienna. It was blue felt, with a jaunty black brim and a net tucked inside that I could pull down to dress it up in the evening. I’d bought the hat for my honeymoon trousseau, and paid six crowns—a very dear price. The lining was black satin, and the Gerngross label, stamped in gold, was still fresh.

  “I’ll give you the hat, and one pound.”

  He considered my proposition. There was a green light filtering through the shop window, and rows of old cigarette cases and silver sets lined up on neat, clear shelves.

  “That will do just fine,” he said, finally.

  I sorted through a collection of records until I found what I was looking for, and breathed a relieved sigh when he let me take two records and the phonograph for the remainder of my coins. He even had a boy help me carry everything home.

  When I heard Fritz’s footsteps on the stairs that night, I cranked up the phonograph and dropped the needle. The sound of an Italian tenor singing Puccini met Fritz when he opened the door.

  “How did you do it?” He smiled at me with happy amazement. “You’re the greatest, Duck. I always knew you’d be the best wife a girl could be.”

  We spent the night listening to music by candlelight, and when he woke up in the morning, Fritz was still humming happily.

  On the last day of September the British and the French signed an agreement that gave Hitler the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. In exchange, Hitler vowed never to invade England or France.

  “Hitler will never keep his word,” Bernhard said that night. “The Sudetenland won’t satisfy him.”

  We were playing cards at Bernhard and Nettie’s kitchen table. The radiator was piping comforting steam heat, and the kitchen smelled of chicken soup. Bernhard had been right about Hitler all along, and I didn’t doubt him this time. My uncle was in Jungfer Brezan, deep in the heart of Bavaria, and I hoped that he would have the good sense to leave before Hitler’s armies crossed the borders.

  “Ferdinand will have to get out of Czechoslovakia quickly,” Bernhard said.

  “I’m frightened,” I said.

  Sometimes when my brother-in-law looked at me, I thought I saw a questioning pity in his eyes. I saw it that night while Nettie was putting the children to bed and Fritz was in the washroom.

  “Maria,” Bernhard said quietly. “You said you’re frightened, but you’re the bravest woman I know. Coming to Berlin—”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “Everyone is brave now. We’re all brave.”

  “My brother is very lucky to have you.”

  I looked at him with an expression that was as naked as I’d ever shown anyone, and whispered, “Please, that’s enough, Bernhard.”

  Soon after that, when I tried to call my uncle in Jungfer Brezan, the line was disconnected, and there was no way of knowing where my uncle was, or if he was safe. Like almost everyone else from home, he was lost in the Nazi’s shadows.

  We’d been in Liverpool for a little more than two months when I woke one morning to find Fritz’s side of the bed empty. I rolled over in the dark, pulled on my bathrobe, put on the kettle, and went to retrieve the paper from our landing.

  It was November eleventh, and the frosty air rose up to greet me even before I opened the door. On the stoop, a woman who lived on the second floor was standing with the newssheet open in her hands.

  “Look, Maria.”

  The headline screamed up at me: NAZI ATTACK ON JEWS: Orgy of Hitler Youth—Synagogues Burnt, Destruction and Plunder.

  “What does it mean?” the neighbor asked. Her two young children had been secreted out of Germany into Amsterdam, and she was still waiting for them to reach Liverpool. “What can it mean for my children?”

  I read: In Vienna the synagogues were blown up with bombs—thousands of Jews were arrested.

  She ran a shaking finger along the news story.

  “What does it mean, Maria?”

  I looked up and saw Fritz hurrying up the street unshaved, a cigarette dangling from his lips. I ran to him.

  “Did you hear?” I asked. “Did you hear what happened at home?”

  When he held me close, I smelled Chanel No. 5 on his jacket—I could never mistake it. All the blood rushed to my head.

  “Where were you?” I asked, pulling away. “Why do you smell like perfume?”

  He hung his head and mumbled something. The streets were beginning to come alive with the news. People were on their doorsteps, and there was a siren in the distance.

  “Fritz, please tell me where you were,” I said.

  “I went to the pub for a drink.”

  “No you didn’t,” I said. “The pubs aren’t open now—”

  He tried to pull me into his arms, but it was too late. I turned away, dizzy and angry, my vision slipping away as if someone had put a black cloth over my eyes.

  They called it Kristallnacht: the Night of Broken Glass. I did not forget the empty side of our bed, or the smell of Chanel No. 5, but I pushed it from my mind.

  In Liverpool we gathered in the markets and the bakeries and could speak of nothing else. People broke down in tears in the middle of the squares, and gathered before sunset to wait for the evening newspapers to reach the corner stands.

  News from Vienna slowed to a trickle, and it was impossible to reach my mother. Bernhard had been working through friends to get her an immigration visa, but after that he exhausted every legal way of bringing her to safety.

  “We don’t even know if she’s alive,” I said.

  “She’s alive,” Bernhard said. “I know that much. And as long as it’s humanly possible, I will get her out.”

  Of course he said that. He knew that I would accept no other answer. But what was possible and what was impossible was all a matter of luck. And I knew far too much about secrets and lies to trust in luck.

  ADELE

  1908

  The day of the Kunstschau dawned clear and inviting. I chose low-heeled shoes, and had scones and fruit sent on a tray to my room with my morning coffee. At ten o’clock, Ferdinand and I climbed into our carriage with Thedy and Gustav and joined the emperor’s procession of gold carriages and noisy new automobiles decorated with red and gold imperial buntings. Ferdinand wore the royal commendation sash he’d received from Emperor Franz Joseph, and I wore a lavender crepe dress with yellow trim.

  My brother-in-law hummed under his breath while his fingers played an imaginary cello, and for a brief moment a flock of starlings trailed behind our carriage, piping out a song to accompany him. The fruit trees along the Ringstrasse were in brilliant pink blossom, and the flower gardens that rimmed the Hofburg Palace were a rainbow of color alive with hummingbirds and butterflies.

  Thedy wore a lovely hat decorated with two fresh white chrysanthemums; she was six months pregnant, and radiant.

  “Tell us what you think of Adele’s portrait,” my sister said to Ferdinand. He had attended a private preview of the show the night before, and come home bursting with enthusiasm.

  “I’m very pleased,” he said. “The emperor told me personally that he finds it remarkable. The word he used was ‘brilliant.’�
��”

  “That’s wonderful,” Thedy clapped. “Isn’t it wonderful, Adele?”

  “It’s wonderful,” I agreed.

  I saw Thedy and Ferdinand exchange worried glances. They were eager for me to recover my happiness, and I was grateful to them. But I was still in mourning for my unborn child, and unprepared for festivities. The time Klimt and I had spent on the portrait had belonged to us alone; now the painting would belong to the public, where anyone could pass judgment on us. With the weight of loss upon me, I felt sad and nervous. As much as I wanted to enjoy the day, what I wanted most was to go back home and crawl under my soft blankets.

  The others chattered about the new artists who’d come to Vienna for the show, but I kept my eyes trained on the flat green horizon, where the new white exhibition buildings rose in the distance like a sprawling fairground.

  “Adele knows who they are.” Ferdinand put a hand lightly on my knee. “She’ll be our guide if she feels up to it.”

  I blinked at him, at a loss. In the distance I heard a marching band.

  “The other artists,” Thedy said. “Klimt’s protégés—what’s the name of that young, wild one?”

  “Kokoschka,” I answered. “Oskar Kokoschka.”

  “I caught a glimpse of his work last night,” Ferdinand said. “I suppose I should trust Klimt’s judgment, but orange faces and blue hens seem like the product of a crazy man.”

  “People are saying that,” I said. “But they called Klimt far worse, and we know they were wrong.”

  There was a long line of open-topped cars and carriages full of women in new hats as large as beehives; mothers and nannies pushing prams with new babies and fathers holding their sons by the hands. I had to blink away sadness as best I could as our driver stopped at the welcoming stand and two footmen helped us onto a red-and-white carpet that stretched across the grass.

  Inside the gates, refined Viennese were walking side by side with foreigners from every edge of the empire: Magyar silk importers and their wives wrapped in colorful scarves, Bosnians in dark brocade, Slavs with sharp cheekbones and deep blue eyes. There were Nords, Ukrainians, Germans, Parisians, and even a few Italians speaking in loud voices and waving their hands. On everyone’s lips, in a chorus of tongues, I heard Klimt’s name.

  When we reached the inner courtyard, my friend was about to deliver his opening speech. After so much rejection and disappointment, this was a great day for Klimt, and I was glad. He was well turned out in a fine three-piece linen suit, and was carrying on a lively conversation with two officials from the culture ministries. Emilie Flöge had her arm wrapped through his, and Moll was behind them with his hands in his pockets.

  I hugged Ferdinand’s arm more tightly, and took a seat at the end of an aisle. It was hard not to think back to the first night I’d met Klimt, when I was a newlywed and everything had still been in front of me. Now I was afraid everything was behind me.

  “I can’t wait to see the portrait.” Thedy put a hand on my arm. “I’m sure it’s splendid—I’m sure it will mark the beginning of a wonderful new phase of your life, Adele.”

  Thedy knew what I needed to hear, as always.

  Klimt welcomed everyone to the show and thanked the ministries for their support. Every piece of art in the show was for sale, he announced—eliciting a burst of laughter from the crowd. He thanked the emperor and the two hundred artists who’d come from far and wide to display their creations, and the city itself, “for making a home for visionary art and artists, who’ve been able to explore the edges of creativity thanks to the support and enthusiasm of Vienna’s generous patrons and ministers.”

  When he was finished, Ferdinand and I inched slowly through the crowd behind dozens of well-wishers, until Klimt saw us and pulled Ferdinand into an embrace.

  “The reception is spectacular,” he said. “Come, we’ll go to the gallery together.”

  My husband wasn’t used to taking directions from anyone, but Klimt’s excitement was contagious. We followed him into the central gallery, where five new paintings hung beneath modern spotlights. In a magnificent gold frame, my portrait looked like something from a different universe, and I like an exotic woman from a mysterious dreamland. I had seen it in the studio, but in public it was a shock: my mouth was luscious and red, my eyes limpid with an expression of longing and desire that even I could not decipher.

  A crowd was staring up the painting, and waiters were circulating with trays of champagne. When I was handed a glass of champagne, I drank it in three quick gulps.

  “Easy, Adele,” Ferdinand said. “That will go right to your head.”

  I wanted it to go right to my head. When he turned his back, I took another glass, and tossed it down quickly. As I handed the empty glass to a passing waiter, I saw Emilie Flöge smiling at me.

  “It’s disorienting to see your face up there, isn’t it?” She slid close to me. Klimt had once painted her dressed in a blue gown with her hand on her waist, and her hair a reddish halo around her pale face. “I don’t think anyone is ever prepared for what it’s like to see it in public.”

  I nodded, but no words came.

  “Just remember that’s not really you on the canvas,” she said in my ear. “That was the hardest thing for me—that people kept insisting it was me, when it wasn’t me at all.”

  “Who was it, then?” I asked.

  “It was Klimt, of course,” she said with a funny laugh. “It’s what Klimt saw when he was looking at me, looking at him.”

  “But isn’t it more than that?”

  The same stillness I’d seen on Klimt washed over her, and she closed her eyes. She seemed to travel somewhere inside of herself, and then to come back when she had her answer.

  “He works and works until something alights on the canvas that’s much more than either one of you,” she said, opening her eyes. “That’s his genius.”

  Just then there was a loud cheer, and Klimt’s voice rose above the crowd.

  “I’ve done your wife’s beauty great justice Herr Bloch-Bauer,” he called out. “I hope we can agree on that.”

  “Indeed, we do agree on that,” my husband said.

  “He has done you justice,” Emilie murmured. “And now, thanks to him, you’ll look that way forever.”

  Ferdinand put a protective arm around my shoulder, and Emilie faded away just as Thedy put out a hand to steady me.

  “The painting is a masterpiece,” my sister said, fanning herself with a printed program. “You look positively regal, and your eyes are burning . . .”

  The end of her sentence was drowned out by laughter and a new surge of the crowd, and in another breath, Berta was beside me in a bright red shawl.

  “It’s indescribably gorgeous,” Berta pronounced. “Your face is floating over the city—he’s made you the queen of Vienna, Adele.”

  I looked from Berta’s smile to the faces that filled the gallery—from Klimt’s new portrait of Fritza Riedler to his naked Danaë with her bare bottom. Directly opposite my portrait was the golden Kiss; it was as spectacular as it had promised to be.

  “Of course your portrait is better than all of the others,” Thedy whispered. “And Ferdinand loves it. That’s really what matters, isn’t it?”

  Behind Thedy I spotted Fritza Riedler in the flesh, smiling at Klimt from the edge of a small group of admirers. I saw Serena Lederer, Rose von Rosthorn, and even Hermine Gallia, who’d come from Prague for the show. Like me, they had flooded into the galleries with their husbands by their sides, little dogs in their arms, children tugging at a hem. Like me, they were Klimt’s admirers and patrons. The possibility that they’d all been his lovers was so obvious that I should have seen it clearly all along—and yet it felt like a startling revelation as the women’s voices rose around me like a swarm of sirens.

  Klimt wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and mopped at a boil on his neck that I hoped no one else noticed.

  While everyone gathered around my portrait—and I did love
it—I forced myself to study Klimt’s Three Ages of Women more closely. It was a beautiful painting, in some ways superior to my portrait. He’d considered the entire life cycle and painted a child, a mother, and a crone with limbs entwined as if they were three faces of the same woman, or three phases of the same moon.

  What Klimt depicted there was true—a woman leaves her childhood behind when she becomes a mother, and ages as her children and grandchildren grow. But my life would not be that way. I would never be a mother, and I could not go from child to crone—I was too young for that; I was too smart, and too curious about the world.

  In a room crowded with friends and family, I felt suddenly bereft. I was lost in my thoughts when a man’s voice broke right in my ear.

  “Why is this art so ugly?” he demanded.

  I turned to see a burly German staring up at Fritza Riedler’s portrait.

  “I beg your pardon?” I asked.

  “They say this art is about truth,” his friend said, ignoring me. “But I don’t see what’s true about painting an ugly woman.”

  A third man glared up at my portrait and said something about the Jew’s gold. He had a thick Bavarian accent.

  “You have no taste—no refinement whatsoever.” I glared at him.

  The man who’d spoken first glanced at me.

  “They worship the Jews and their gold,” he said in a stage whisper.

  “If you don’t like the art, perhaps you should leave the show,” I said, but my words were lost among other voices, speaking in other tongues—not only German but also Czech, Polish, Romani, the hum of the Hungarian’s Magyar, and a choir of strange sounds from the edges of the empire.

  The room was filled with women in fine clothing and glittering jewels, satisfied businessmen and pompous dignitaries, artists and patrons congratulating themselves on a display of magnificent new art. But there was something else in the room, too. That sense that I could perceive what the naked eye could not returned, and I scanned the gallery until I saw two bedraggled young men standing away from the others. They were staring up at my portrait with a look of hatred and horror on their faces. The taller one wore a cap and gloves; the smaller of the two had a stiff toothbrush mustache and cold blue eyes. His face was a mask of barely controlled fury.