It was Renner and Alma who stopped our battle.
“Let them read whatever they want, Julius,” said Karl. “We have far more pressing political concerns.”
It was true. I went myself to be sure the books were shelved in the library we had built, and then turned my attention to the Russian experiment and the Palestinian territory. There was talk of a Jewish national home in Palestine, just as dear Theodore Herzl had once proposed, and we were all excited when Alma and her new husband announced plans to travel to Jerusalem.
The money my friends and I raised went to Renner’s Red Vienna programs, and a good portion of my time that year was spent helping the new Belvedere director bring hundreds of modern Austrian paintings and sculptures to the collection.
Little Maria went to school, and proved that she was very bright. Even if she was a bit of a coquette she was also robust, and liked the outdoors. I had missed out on hearty excursions as a child because of Mother and Father’s ideas about female decorum, and so I encouraged it as much as possible as Maria grew. I did not want her to grow weak and plagued with headaches, as I was.
“You remember how I longed to play like our brothers did,” I said to Thedy. “I couldn’t do it then, but your daughter has every opportunity.”
Ferdinand and I were set to take Maria ice-skating at Stadtpark on a cold morning in January 1925 when I woke with a blinding headache. The clouds were low, and the sky was promising snow.
“Please bring me calcium lactate and sodium bicarbonate,” I asked the maid. “And pull the curtains shut.”
I’d had matching fur muffs made for Maria and myself, and ordered her a new pair of white leather skates from Wurzl’s. They were decorated with red pompoms and wrapped in a white box with a bow. The gifts were waiting on my mantel, above the roaring fire.
“You give them to her, please,” I said to Ferdinand when he came up. “If I feel better, I’ll meet you later.”
After he’d gone, I drank a sleeping tonic, wrapped a cloth over my eyes, and burrowed under the blankets as the snow began to fall.
When Alma and her husband came to collect some of my books about Palestine and Jerusalem, I let Alma pick them off my shelves, and then burrowed back to sleep.
Many hours later, I heard the door pop open downstairs as Ferdinand and Maria came in from the cold. I felt feverish: my hands clammy, my chest damp and tight.
At first I was frightened, but then fear seemed to float beneath me like a sea of grass, as if my body was in the clouds but my mind was rising higher still; as if I were rising up out of the bed and looking down over my blue curtains and the place where I was resting.
I saw my portrait on the wall, the gold-rimmed porcelain tea set beside the chair where I’d sat up late the night before, the open book of Baudelaire poems and my new pack of Gauloises tossed beside the heavy ashtray.
It was strange, I thought, that I could see everything as if in a dream when I was wide awake and looking across my tangle of sheets and the splayed pillows and my loose hair spreading across them like a dark stain.
Then I saw Ferdinand in his office turning the pages of an enormous accounting book, I saw Schiller Park bathed in early-morning light and then I was becoming the light, I was in the courtyard outside the art history museum, I was looking down on St. Stephen’s Square and the Danube River, and out of the corner of my eye were the thick woods that marked the edge of my beloved Jungfer Brezan, and far, far below was the cemetery where my name was being chiseled into a tombstone and Ferdinand—my Ferdinand—was crying as he ran his fingers over the letters in cold marble, ADELE BLOCH-BAUER 1881–1925, and a tiny piece of my soul—the soul I’d never believed in, the ka Klimt had painted—was looking out from the portrait and through the window of 18 Elisabethstrasse, where I could see the circle of time unfolding and folding upon itself, winding my story through Maria’s until it stopped—it went black—and I could see no more.
MARIA
1945
The white airmail envelope was postmarked two days before my uncle’s death.
I recognized the shaky handwriting, the Hotel du Lac stationery, and the Swiss stamp. The war was over and Uncle Ferdinand was gone, but as I read his words I could almost feel him in the room with me, squeezing my hand.
My Dear Maria, I have little time left so I will be brief.
Your aunt expected more of herself than of anyone else.
For this I believe I owe her one last bequest.
Save the portrait. Fight for her dignity. It will be up to you and to your brothers after I am gone.
I held the letter to my face and tried to inhale the familiar scent of cigars and aftershave, but all I could smell was the dark distance of the grave.
The ghosts were always with me after that. They were beseeching, they were proud, they were whispering, they were angry. Sometimes I forgot about them, but they didn’t forget me.
They were watching when Fritz and I became American citizens and hung our red, white, and blue flag on our front lawn.
They were there when my brother called to tell me that we would never be able to bring Adele’s portrait to America.
“Our lawyer in Vienna tells us the Austrians have a copy of Aunt Adele’s will,” Robert said. “He says that she left the portrait to the Belvedere.”
Robert put my mother on the phone.
“Is it true, Mama?” I asked.
“I think it is true.” Her voice was frail. “I remember my sister saying that she wanted her portrait to hang with the others at the Belvedere. She wanted the paintings to be shared with the Viennese.”
I was thirty years old: younger than my aunt had been when I was born. I could remember her pinning up her hair and sitting in her parlor, talking about books.
“To be Viennese is the most important thing in the world,” she’d said. I had not asked her what she’d meant then, and I could not ask her now.
All I knew was what my brothers told me: the Austrians were offering our family a few of my uncle’s old sentimental landscapes and a dozen pieces of his porcelain. In exchange, we had to sign an agreement that acknowledged we had no claim to the Klimts.
“Uncle Ferdinand wanted something different,” I said again to my brother. I could not bear to take the letter from the drawer and reread it, but I knew very well what he’d asked of me. “He told me to fight for Aunt Adele’s dignity.”
“No one is winning these cases in Austria now,” Robert said. “If we don’t sign, we’ll never have another chance to get even these lesser paintings back for our family.”
“The watercolors meant nothing to Uncle Ferdinand,” I said.
“We can sell them,” Robert said. “Every one of us can use that money now.”
I fretted over this all night, pacing in our bedroom.
“My uncle wanted me to bring Aunt Adele’s portrait to America,” I said. There was a night-light in our hallway, and it cast my long shadow across the bed where Fritz lay.
“But your aunt wanted it in the museum in Vienna.” Fritz sat up and reached for me. “And your brothers are clever negotiators.”
Of course my brothers should have asked the Austrians send us each a copy of Aunt Adele’s will. But they didn’t. I took their word, and they took the word of our enemy.
My brothers sold the watercolor paintings and porcelain the Austrians sent, and we divided the proceeds among us. I bought a new sewing machine and signed up for a sewing class at the local citizens’ center. Fritz bought a used violin, and began to play on Sunday mornings just as my father had once done. We used the largest sum to buy my mother a ticket from Vancouver to Los Angeles.
It had been nine years since I’d seen her, and I was stunned by how thin and slow she looked as the stewardess helped her down the airplane steps. She had aged, but when I ran to her on the tarmac, I was relieved to find her still graceful and elegant in her mink-trimmed coat.
“You look beautiful, Maria,” she said, putting a hand on my face.
&
nbsp; She touched me with her black glove and I remembered another glove, packed with colored jewels.
“You are beautiful,” I replied.
I’d almost forgotten how good she made me feel.
“You once told me that you would teach the children German,” Mama said.
She was wrapped in a blanket, and my little girl was resting against her shoulder. My boys were too full of wild energy for Mama, but my three-year-old daughter was entranced.
“Yes, I remember that day.” I glanced at my little one. Her thumb was in her mouth and her eyes were closing. The boys were off in their rooms, and Fritz was in the back den, playing his violin and singing in German.
“They understand a little,” I said. “They just don’t speak it.”
Mama nodded, and I could not wait any longer.
“Uncle Ferdinand wanted me to fight for the painting, you know,” I said. “He loved Aunt Adele so much.”
I saw my mother’s eyes cloud, and remembered the rumors about the painter and my aunt.
“Mama?” I checked to be sure my little girl was sleeping. “What did Aunt Adele die of?”
I couldn’t bring myself to say the word syphilis, but I knew that many people had succumbed to it, and there had been rumors about Gustav Klimt.
“Meningitis,” my mother said without missing a beat. “She went to bed with a migraine and no one thought anything of it—she suffered terrible headaches all of her life.”
“And?”
“And the next morning, she didn’t wake.” My mother teared up. “She was supposed to take you ice-skating.”
I remembered that day; my uncle had given me a pair of new white ice skates with red pom-poms, and we’d flown together across the ice.
“They’re all gone, now,” my mother said. “I never imagined outliving them all.”
I put my hand on hers. She wore a single gold wedding band. Her hands were wrinkled, but still nimble and strong.
“Please tell me honestly—do you think they were lovers?” I asked, half wanting her to tell the truth, and half wanting her to stay silent. “Aunt Adele and Klimt?”
My mother looked away.
“I’m grown up now, Mama. You can say it.”
She nodded. She gathered the blanket around her more tightly, and talked about a long-ago spring day, grand white buildings in a green field, and Aunt Adele’s golden portrait in a crowded room.
“I saw the way she and Klimt looked at one another that morning,” she said. “I’d never seen her look at anyone that way.”
“But Uncle Ferdinand loved her,” I whispered. “He loved her so much, she was his dying wish.”
My mother looked surprised.
“Ferdinand loved her, and she loved him,” my mother said. “But every marriage has its secrets, Maria.”
“Do you think Uncle Ferdinand knew?”
“I don’t know,” my mother said. “Adele was headstrong, but she was fragile. He held her the way he would have held a wild bird. And marriages were different then. Men had mistresses. I’m sure your uncle had more than one.”
“And Papa?
My mother wiped an invisible spot off my little girl’s chin. I’ve only been with one man, I wanted to say. But of course, that would have been a lie.
“Women are much stronger than men,” she said quietly. “It may not always look like we’re the strong ones, because our men would never let it seem that way. But every woman I know is stronger than her husband. Adele was. I certainly was. And so are you.”
My mother was the one who’d put the needle and thread in my hands and shown me how to hide jewels and coins inside my gloves and brassiere. My mother was the one who’d told me to get out of Austria as soon as I could. My father had died, and she had gone on living.
“I’m not strong,” I said. I was shocked to find a tear slipping down my cheek. “I didn’t do what Uncle Ferdinand asked.”
“You are very strong, Maria,” my mother said. She wrapped her old hand around mine. Her grip was surprisingly firm. “Look how brave you’ve been—you’re the bravest woman I know.”
I wanted whatever it was that my mother saw in me to be alive and awake in my spirit. But when she died five years later, I still felt weak inside—haunted by the ghosts whispering to me, calling to me, asking me for something that I didn’t know how to summon.
I made them be quiet, so that I could live my life.
MARIA
1965
I didn’t see them at first.
Fritz and I stepped out of the yellow taxicab in front of the Guggenheim Museum, and joined a long line of people who’d come to see the first Klimt show in America. Bright banners fluttered from the lampposts, and everyone was dressed in colorful clothing.
“I’ve heard there are nudes in a back room,” someone said.
“He was quite the ladies’ man,” said another.
Everything moved quickly, and soon Fritz and I were in a crowded elevator going up to the fifth floor. I’d bought the tickets, I’d made the arrangements with our travel agent, and I thought I’d prepared for the show.
But when the elevator doors opened, and I was looking directly into the face of a girl I’d known in Vienna, my feet stopped moving. The ghosts were there.
“What is it?” Fritz asked.
Mada Primavesi was wearing a white dress with flowers and ruffles, exactly as I remembered it. Her eyes were brown and steady, and the blue bow in her hair looked as fresh as it had been almost fifty years ago.
“My parents and her parents were friends,” I whispered to Fritz. “I remember that painting hanging in their parlor.”
The New York crowd moved around me, but instead of their voices, I heard music playing at brunch. Instead of their faces, I saw my mother and aunt moving gracefully in long loose dresses. I heard my aunt telling me that art wasn’t always pretty. I saw my white shoes, a green sky, tigers at the Schönbrunn Zoo.
“Let’s keep moving,” Fritz said, putting a hand on my waist.
Klimt’s apple and birch tree paintings were so real I could almost smell the fields in Grinzing right before the harvest. The patch of blue water in Lake Attersee was as cold as the day I’d swum there with my mother, and the colorful Unterach rooftops were the same ones I’d seen from Villa Paulick with my brothers.
I remembered things from home I had not seen or thought of since the war: white dishes and silver tableware; mink coats and the smell of pine trees at Jungfer Brezan; Uncle Ferry and my father laughing together; the church bells ringing when Hitler came; taxi horns blaring the day that we left. Even though I didn’t want to, I remembered the way Landau’s fingers had brushed my collarbone. I remembered how he’d hurt me.
“Have you seen what’s in that room?” someone asked.
I came back to myself. I took Fritz’s arm and went into a side gallery where nine pencil sketches were pinned onto a dark wall, each with a spotlight above it. They were nudes. A woman with her legs spread. A woman bent over the bed. A woman wrapped in tangled sheets.
“He had a lot of illegitimate children,” a woman said in German. “I’ve heard ten or even thirteen.”
“Klimt’s son became a Nazi filmmaker,” someone else said. “His name is Gustav Ucicky, I read about him during the war.”
I thought I was going to faint.
“Let’s go,” Fritz said. He pulled me from the room, and led me to the elevator. As we made our way toward the exit, I was stunned to find a full-size reproduction of Adele’s golden portrait in the gift shop.
“Buy it for me, please,” I asked Fritz. “And a book of Klimt’s paintings, too.”
I carried that poster home and hung it over my sofa, where I studied my aunt’s face as if for the first time. There were symbols in her dress, the letters of her name raised in gold. Her eyes seemed to look out at me from the picture, and her lips seemed ready to say something that she desperately wanted me to hear.
“Do you see it?” I asked Fritz. I was kneeling o
n our red sofa, studying the expression in her eyes.
He put a hand on my shoulder and leaned over me.
“See what?”
“She wants something from me.”
“Maybe she does,” he said. “But you’ll never know what it is.”
“I know what it is,” I said. “I know what she wants from me.”
That night I opened the book of Klimt’s paintings, and turned the colorful pages one by one.
The women were beautiful and elegant, with flowers in their hair, and long white dresses. They were gazing out at me, each one calling across the years.
I read what critics had said about Adele’s portrait when it was new. I read how it had traveled across the empire and become synonymous with fin de siècle Vienna and intellectual power. I read all night, and by the time dawn had broken, I could hear my aunt’s voice telling me to be fierce and my mother’s saying I was strong.
I turned one more page, and then another. I was tired, but the paintings were a tapestry of faces and places from the past, so brilliant and fresh they could have been made yesterday.
There was a tree of life made of gold and silver, pretty girls and bent old ladies, men holding women as if they could protect them from everything with love. There was a stranger in a purple hat, Serena Lederer’s portrait, and there—I blinked; how could it be so?—there was my aunt’s face looking back at me again above the caption, Judith I.
I knew the story of Judith: a Jewish widow, a general’s tent. Seduction and murder.
“The original femme fatale,” the book called Judith. “A true heroine.”
Klimt’s Judith—my aunt Adele—was surrounded by gold. She was holding Holofernes’s decapitated head, and her face was full of pleasure and power. The book made no mention of a connection between Judith and the golden portrait, but it was clear to me that they were one and the same face. I was sure of it.
I was sure of the general’s hand reaching for Judith.
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