Ecstasy

by Mary Sharratt

  But Alma hadn’t paid this visit with decorating foremost on her mind. Gustav showed her into his study with his grand piano, his stacks of scores by him and countless other composers, his shelves of Russian novels and the works of the German romantics, and the sofa where he invited her to sit beside him. They were soon locked in an embrace, kissing and stroking each other until Alma thought her torment would become unbearable. Why must they wait for a church wedding? Such old-fashioned thinking seemed ridiculous in this modern age when all the rules were crying out to be written anew.

  Through the walls came the racket of the army officer in the next apartment playing his gramophone at full volume—some awful brass military march.

  “He does that just to annoy me,” Gustav told her. “Especially when I’m playing the piano and trying to compose.”

  Their jagged breathing soon drowned out the brass music. Slowly, with great deliberation, Gustav took off his waistcoat and then his shirt. Looking deep into her eyes, he guided her hand to his bare chest, holding her palm to his pounding heart. Then he drew her hand down to his swollen groin. The blood roared in Alma’s temples. This is holy, pure. A divine mystery. His body was hers. No one, nothing existed other than Gustav. No other thought. He loosened her hair so that it streamed down, as loose and filmy as a mermaid’s, and he buried his face in it. She let him open her blouse and kiss her breasts. Every part of her was his. She let him help her out of her skirt and draw down her drawers, exploring every part of her until she thought she would explode.

  Standing up, Gustav let his trousers fall to the floor. Alma caught her breath as he swung himself over her. This is the moment I become a woman. That raw carnal hunger that Klimt had awakened in her in Venice nearly three years ago would finally be sated. She closed her eyes, opening herself completely to this miracle of transformation. Then, just as she felt Gustav penetrate her, he lost all strength. He collapsed, his head on her breasts, and wept in shame.

  Alma roiled, at wit’s end. Those intimate caresses and the promise of what lay beyond had stirred her blood to its boiling point, and now Gustav lay there, limp and humiliated. A force rose inside her, beyond her control, uncoiling like a cobra, rising, undulating. She straddled him and kissed him mercilessly, not letting him go, until he, too, was on fire. And then she yelped at the sharp jolt of pain. In savage victory, she cried out as wave after wave of heat rippled from her loins to her head. A woman at last. She thought her passion would be enough to slay them both—this her Liebestod, the climax of everything. The petite mort she had read about in racy novels. Except it transpired that they were still very much alive. She had never seen Gustav’s face glow like that, as though lit from within.

  “Lux, Alma, my light.” Gustav kissed her eyelids, her breasts. “My Luchs,” he added playfully, calling her a lynx, a wildcat. “You carried me to sixth heaven. The seventh is still waiting for us.”

  Five days later, Alma returned to her fiancé’s apartment, this time accompanied by Mama, Carl, and Kolo Moser. Justine was hosting a dinner party to introduce Alma to Gustav’s friends.

  Alex had warned her that Gustav’s elite circle would never accept her, but she pushed that dire prophecy out of her mind and attempted to embody a queenly assurance as she strode into the parlor with its assembled guests. Had she not mastered the art of parties, of winning hearts with her conviviality and charm? She was clad in the same lilac evening gown she had worn to Berta Zuckerkandl’s soiree back in November when Gustav first fell in love with her. The diamond-edged brooch he’d given her for Christmas glittered at her breast. Their lovemaking had filled her with a lingering radiance. Even now she felt a sinuous grace moving through her limbs as though their embraces had indeed transformed her into a lynx. Something wild and rare.

  But Gustav didn’t even appear to notice Alma had arrived because he was so completely immersed in conversation with a gray-haired woman in her forties. After a moment, Alma recognized her as the violist Natalie Bauer-Lechner. The woman was staring at Gustav pitifully, like a lovesick dog. Meanwhile, Justine introduced Alma to the others in the room.

  Siegfried Lipiner, a poet and translator who worked as a librarian for the Imperial Senate, looked Alma up and down as though she were a heifer up for auction.

  “So you’re the girl who turned old Gustav’s head,” Lipiner said. “My dear child, most of us here have known and loved him since before you could walk.”

  All his friends are twenty years older than you, Alex had informed her. Alma shook hands with Lipiner’s divorced first wife, Nina, and her husband, Dr. Albert Spiegler; Lipiner’s current wife, Clementine; and his reputed mistress, Anna von Mildenburg. Though surrounded by a veritable harem of his women past and present, Lipiner seemed to loathe the idea of sharing his friend Gustav with Alma. His hostility was enough to raise her skin.

  Alma nearly dropped her punch glass when she overheard Natalie Bauer-Lechner’s plaintive murmurings to Gustav. “I thought you would marry me.”

  Laughing uneasily, Gustav edged away from the violist. Finally, he noticed Alma and kissed her in greeting, then warmly welcomed Mama and Carl. But before Alma could set herself at ease, she overheard Justine’s chilly rejoinder to Natalie Bauer-Lechner. “My dear, you know my brother could only marry someone beautiful.”

  For the remainder of the evening, the gray-haired violist glared at Alma in contempt. Waves of animosity seemed to slap Alma from every corner of the room. When she sat at the dining table, she could hardly bring herself to eat. It seemed that her style of hairdressing, her evening gown, her frank way of speaking were all under review, as though this were some ghastly audition she had to pass before Gustav’s inner circle would allow her to marry their brilliant friend. They seemed to hold Alma’s youth and beauty against her as evidence that their friend was the victim of his own misguided infatuation with an insipid socialite. Her stomach curdling, Alma began to wonder if Justine had arranged this on purpose to undermine her. For this was the last dinner party that Justine would host here before Alma took over as mistress of the house.

  Anna von Mildenburg fixed Alma with a tight-lipped smile. “How surprised we all were when we learned of Gustav’s betrothal.” The diva pouted at him. “Back in Hamburg, I thought he was going to marry me.”

  Gustav laughed and shook his head as though he had come to expect such teasing from her. Everyone else chuckled along, even Mama, as though to hide her embarrassment. Justine, after fighting for years to keep these women at bay, leaned back in her chair and appeared coolly amused by the fracas. If that wasn’t bad enough, Lipiner seemed intent on prying into Alma’s lack of formal education.

  “I was schooled at home. My father was the great artist Emil Schindler,” Alma heard herself say defensively.

  “If you’re such an expert on art, my girl, do you not agree that Guido Reni is a magnificent painter?” he asked.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Alma said flatly.

  “Is your stepdaughter truly so ignorant?” Lipiner asked Carl.

  Alma shot a beseeching look at Gustav, but he seemed too engrossed in his discussion with Dr. Spiegler to notice her distress. How dare Lipiner demean her like this, this failed poet and bogus Goethe who hadn’t published anything since 1880? In an attempt to reestablish her sovereignty in the art of conversation, Alma changed the subject to literature, hoping that Gustav would join in by quoting Schiller. She mentioned that she was reading Plato’s Symposium. But this only elicited smug, surmising glances across the table.

  “Surely, child, that’s far above your head,” said Lipiner, with a dryness Alma had never before encountered in any human being.

  Like a she-wolf who sensed Alma’s weakness, Anna von Mildenburg moved in for the kill. “What do you think of Gustav’s music?”

  She’s setting me up for the fall. Alma knew that whatever she said they would ridicule her. And Gustav just sat there not uttering a word in her defense while his friends raked her over the coals. Did I bring this on myself
, Alma wondered, with a queasy stab in her gut. By giving herself to him so completely, body and soul, before their marriage? By wholly submerging herself in his being? Had he lost all respect for her as a person in her own right? Liebestod, indeed.

  But she could hardly just sit here and passively endure this. If Gustav’s friends were going to burn her at the stake, she might as well have the satisfaction of playing the witch.

  “I know very little of his music,” Alma said. “But what I do, I don’t like.”

  Why did I say that? she asked herself, wanting to clap her hands over her mouth. It was a lie. Gustav had sent her the score for his Fourth Symphony, which had impressed her very much. But at least she managed to make Mildenburg’s face turn purple.

  “Alma!” Mama cried. “For shame! Did I raise you to be so rude?”

  “Evidently,” Lipiner said, with some relish.

  At least Alma’s outburst knocked Gustav out of his complacency. Laughing loudly, he sprang to his feet and escorted Alma away from the table into Justine’s little room.

  “It’s horrid out there,” he said, holding her as she fell weeping against him. “Let’s stay here for a while, just the two of us.”

  They sat kissing and holding each other on his sister’s bed while in the next room Alma could still hear his friends muttering about her disgrace.

  Alma was filled with the foreboding that Gustav’s friends were united in their aversion to her. That they would conspire to convince him that his marriage to her would be an utter disaster. Alone in her room, she wept and wailed, resigning herself.

  Yet two days after the party, Gustav called in, as loving as ever, with the score for his Fourth Symphony arranged for piano.

  “Perhaps you’ll come to love my music,” he said gently, “if we play it together.”

  And so they played through the entire symphony, their four hands up and down the keyboard. Her virtuosity at the piano, at least, was something that his friends could not dispute. Alma and Gustav played in perfect accord, both his music and his tenderness moving her close to tears. Although his friends hated her and had tried to sway him, Gustav had stayed the course, faithfully hers.

  When they were together, Alma felt serene and content in the warmth of Gustav’s admiration, which allowed her to be the woman he wanted her to be. Earnest and self-improving. His awestruck beloved who held nothing back. But when they were apart, a second self surfaced, selfish and outspoken. This self only desired to be free.

  I have two souls, she told herself. But which was her true soul, her fundamental essence? The self-sacrificing fiancée or the shrew who insulted Gustav’s music in front of his friends? When she saw the love and happiness on his face when he stepped through the door with his sheet music or a book he wanted her to read, the most profound elation gripped her. Was that a lie? No, no, no. That false self, that vacillating, capricious self, must be banished. Drive a stake through her heart and bury her in a lead coffin lest she rise again and again.

  And so the inner war raged on inside Alma until the middle of February when she discovered it was too late to back out of this marriage even if every part of her was screaming for release.

  Scrambling out of bed one morning, she clung to the blue and white toilet, and spewed until only blood and saliva came out. Afterward, she was so weak, she collapsed on the tile floor and wept in helpless fury that in the eleventh hour the choice had been taken from her. She had only herself to blame. So much for being a courageous New Woman! She was just an idiot who had to rush into marriage because she was pregnant. When she finally had the strength to pull herself upright, she saw her mother in the doorway.

  “Oh, you poor, foolish girl,” Mama said, taking Alma in her arms, rocking her back and forth. “Don’t despair, my dear. The wedding’s only a few weeks away. You won’t be showing yet. You’ll still look beautiful.”

  Alma’s wedding was no elaborate affair like Gretl’s. No orange blossoms or lacy bridal veil for her. Gustav hated big ostentatious weddings. He fooled the press by announcing that the nuptials would take place in the evening. Instead, the ceremony was held early in the morning before journalists and gawkers could gather.

  Alma, Mama, Carl, Justine, and Arnold Rosé all arrived by cab. But Gustav insisted on walking to the church despite the torrential rain. His galoshes squelched on the Karlskirche’s marble floor as he marched up the aisle to where Alma and the others awaited him. Their party of six had that monumental church to themselves.

  Battling both morning sickness and the beginnings of a cold, Alma witnessed everything through the shimmer of her rising fever. Amid that baroque splendor, in this church designed to give a foretaste of the magnificence of heaven, she and her bridegroom exchanged their eternal vows. Above them soared the huge oval dome with its frescoes of angels and clouds, and at the very top hovered the dove of the Holy Spirit. You carried me to sixth heaven. The seventh is still waiting for us. Before them, high over the main altar, the Hebrew name of God blazed amid a transcendent, upward-pointing triangle emanating golden rays.

  During the rite, Gustav tripped over a hassock, which made everyone laugh. Even the priest smiled.

  “Urlicht,” Gustav whispered to Alma, with a backward glance at the altar before they walked out of the church arm in arm, husband and wife. “I always envisioned God as the light at the beginning of time.”

  Her bridegroom looked so gallant, so loving, so filled with hope. To be worthy, truly worthy of his love.

  The following day, after Justine and Arnold Rosé’s wedding, Alma and her new husband boarded the train to Saint Petersburg, where Gustav would be conducting works of Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky. As the train pulled out of Vienna, Alma took comfort in the fact that she and Gustav were alone at last, beginning their new life together. She no longer needed to conceal her pregnancy under the cloak of shame.

  “It’s a pity I’ll be so busy with my work,” Gustav told her, holding her close in the privacy of their sleeper carriage with its mahogany paneling and lacy curtains, its pull-down bed with the thick eiderdown quilt. “But let’s make this a proper honeymoon.”

  He drew her into his embrace.

  An unutterable tenderness seized her. I love him with my entire being. I made the right choice. Of course I did. Alma vowed she would make it her life mission to serve his genius. To move every stone from his path. To live for him alone.

  Suite 2

  Adagietto

  20

  In the April twilight, Alma climbed the steps of that hallowed temple of modern art, the Secession Museum, just across Karlsplatz from the church where she and Gustav had married a little more than a month ago.

  After the cold of Saint Petersburg, Alma was grateful to be back in Vienna in this most hopeful time of year. Great urns of Easter lilies and daffodils flanked the museum entrance. The foyer throbbed with cultured souls, all gathered for the 14th Secessionist Exhibition. Before Alma could even make her way to the garderobe to relieve herself of her hat and coat, family and friends thronged to greet her. Mama, Carl, Aunt Mie, Berta Zuckerkandl, and the Conrat sisters. Ilse was looking more elegant than Alma had ever seen her, in a sweeping white gown, her hair piled as high as a queen’s. She had returned from Brussels for this event where her work would be showcased along with the finest avant-garde sculpture in the empire. Caught up in the electric thrum of excitement, Alma congratulated her and kissed her cheeks before hugging Erica.

  Laughing and vivacious, Alma was her most charming self. It was the same as before her marriage, yet entirely different. A confusing tumult sounded in her heart when Klimt came to kiss her fondly.

  “Dear Alma,” he said. “Marriage becomes you. You look absolutely radiant.” He spoke with a profound respect, as though her wedded state placed her high above the reach of his lecherous designs. “I have a surprise in the exhibition hall just for you.”

  Before Alma could ask him what it was, Klimt smiled mysteriously and slipped off to greet the Bloch-Ba
uers.

  To her old friends, she was still Alma, but she could not quite get used to the novelty of being addressed as Frau Direktor, as the sculptor Max Klinger now did, the star of tonight’s exhibition.

  “Frau Direktor,” he said breathlessly. “I can’t tell you how honored I am that your husband has so graciously agreed to perform for us.”

  Alma smiled and dipped her head. Gustav was to be an integral part of this evening’s festivities, his presence intended to transform this musically themed sculpture installation into a total work of art.

  When it was time for everyone to file into the main exhibition hall, Max Klinger took Alma’s arm. Gustav and his ensemble of six trombones stood at attention beside the bulwark of Klinger’s colossal new sculpture that was still shrouded beneath a dust sheet. Twenty-one other new sculptures, including work by Ilse Conrat, were arranged around Klinger’s piece to form a constellation of stone and bronze. Running the length of the left wall, Klimt’s brand-new frieze created a spectacular backdrop, glittering with gold leaf.

  A hush fell over the crowd. Carl, with an air of great ceremony, unveiled Klinger’s new masterpiece, a huge statue of Beethoven enthroned with an eagle at his feet. This was a truly grandiose work, crafted from marble, bronze, alabaster, amber, ivory, mosaic, and gold leaf.

  Her heart in her throat, Alma looked to her husband, who smiled and held her gaze for one long incandescent moment before turning to his ensemble. His baton whipped like a willow in the wind, and his arrangement of the “Ode to Joy” chorus from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony filled the room. Originally, Carl had wanted a full orchestra and choir, but owing to space constraints, Gustav had instead decided for the radical simplicity of these six trombones. The music rang as stark as granite, moving Max Klinger to tears.