Ecstasy

by Mary Sharratt

  “When you smile at me like that, it drives me mad,” he whispered. “I want to make love to you right here in the middle of the dance floor.”

  She attempted to remain demure. “Young man, you’ll have to wait until after I put Gucki to bed. Then I shall tiptoe to your room.”

  They danced as close to each other as they dared. Her cheek brushing his chest, she felt his body heat rising through his collarless linen shirt.

  “I’ll build us a house,” he whispered. “With walls of glass so we won’t have to hide.”

  How luscious it was to indulge in the fantasy that their romance could stretch on forever. That she wouldn’t be obliged to return to her husband after her six-week cure was over. She quickly pushed all thought of Gustav from her mind.

  “I will compose while you design your beautiful buildings,” she said.

  “Will you write a song for me?”

  “I will! A hymn to Eros!”

  His eyes softened even more. It was so hard not to kiss him.

  “Alma,” he said, laughing. “Here we are dancing and the music has stopped.”

  “I didn’t even notice.” She glanced around the emptied room before turning to him mischievously. “We are the music, my love.”

  The thought that they were alone emboldened her to twine her arms around his neck and pull him close. But his face went pale, and he stepped away from her as a nurse marched in.

  “Frau Direktor, you have a visitor.”

  Alma spun in panic. Had Gustav come unannounced? It seemed impossible, with him so busy rehearsing his Eighth Symphony in Munich. But it was Mama, her face set in deep, grave lines.

  “Hello, Alma. Won’t you introduce me to your new friend?”

  “Herr Gropius is an architect,” Alma said, flushed and stammering. “He studied in Berlin with one of Papa’s friends,” she added, as if that would mollify her mother.

  “What an honor to meet you, Herr Gropius,” Mama said, with cool politesse. “Would you give me a moment alone with my daughter, please?”

  His face bright red, Walter retreated.

  “I wasn’t expecting you, Mama.” Alma pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples.

  “Well, that was obvious!” Mama folded her arms in front of her chest. “Gustav asked me to see if you were all right. He’s worried because your letters were sounding strange. Now I understand why. At least I have to commend your taste. Herr Gropius is a very good-looking young person.”

  A viselike grip closed around Alma’s brow. She thought her brain would be crushed to pulp. “Will you tell Gustav?” Collapsing on a bench, she began to sob. It’s hopeless. My life is hopeless.

  “Alma, don’t!” Mama’s voice cracked. She sat beside her and hugged her. “I mean to help you. Now listen to me.”

  Dazed, Alma sat up straight and looked at her mother.

  “Darling, I know marriage is sometimes very hard. Gustav is a good man but a difficult husband. I know you’ve been miserable for quite some time—I’m not blind.” Mama was in tears herself. “Carl and I made a terrible mistake. We should have let you study at the conservatory. We should have let you marry your Alex. He would have made you happy.”

  Mama’s admission sent Alma’s thoughts spinning in a dizzying rush. Was it so transparent that her marriage was a failure? Her mother spoke as if it weighed heavily on her heart that both Alma and Gretl had spent their married lives in and out of sanatoriums and she held herself responsible. As though she wanted to help salvage what she could of her daughters’ dignity and happiness.

  “Men make the rules,” Mama said, holding Alma close. “And we break them so we don’t go mad. Sometimes a wife must grant herself certain liberties if she’s to go on in her marriage.”

  The look her mother gave her was so complicit that Alma wanted to pinch herself. Mama was giving her permission to be unfaithful? Then she remembered the liberties Mama herself may have taken—her rumored affair with Papa’s trusted colleague, Julius Victor Berger, who might have been Gretl’s natural father. And then the affair with Carl, Papa’s protégé.

  “Now tell me honestly, do you truly love this Herr Gropius? Does he truly care for you?”

  Alma spoke from the depths of her tangled emotions. “He made me live again when I thought I was dead.”

  “There must be no scandal, Alma. Divorce would be unthinkable for a woman in your position. We have Gucki to consider, and Gustav’s heart condition. He’s so much older than you.” Never had her mother’s words sounded so stark and clear. “You must have something to live for when Gustav’s no longer with us. You and Herr Gropius are still young. If his love is genuine, he can wait until you’re free. Just like Carl waited for me.”

  Mama’s pragmatism dumbfounded Alma. So it was possible to have it all, to remain respectably wed to Gustav and have a discreet affair with Walter. Then, when she was a widow, after a suitable period of mourning, she and Walter could marry and live in his dream house with its walls of glass, with nothing to conceal. Everyone’s good name would be preserved intact.

  And if Mama’s proposal seemed cold-blooded, Alma had to concede that it was the only solution that wouldn’t ruin her. She simply couldn’t go on in her marriage as it was. But if she ran away with Walter, she would be in exactly the same predicament as Mathilde Schoenberg was the previous summer. If Gustav repudiated her, she would lose everything. Lose Gucki. Lose all she had worked for in her eight years of marriage. Those hundreds of pages of Gustav’s scores she had copied and transcribed for him. If Walter tired of her, she would be left with nothing but disgrace, shunned from respectable society.

  “Mama,” Alma said, moving on to more immediate concerns. “I don’t want to have a child that isn’t Gustav’s. Will you go with me to the doctor in Graz? I want to be fitted for a Dutch cap, but I’m afraid he’ll say no.” She had heard too many stories of how doctors humiliated women who asked for contraceptive devices.

  Her mother nodded. “Yes, that’s most sensible. You can be frank with Gustav about this, at least. After those miscarriages, he’ll have to understand.”

  After Mama had a long conversation with Walter, making certain that he was a decent young man from a good family, she agreed to become their ally, the sworn guardian of their secret. With Mama accompanying her to browbeat the doctor into compliance, Alma visited a gynecologist in nearby Graz and returned to the sanatorium with her new Dutch cap.

  “I want to have your child,” she whispered to Walter, when she crept into his bed. “But not yet.”

  Pouncing on him, she tugged off his pajamas, then gazed down at his long muscled body washed golden in the lamplight. Walter Gropius, the most beautiful man she had ever loved.

  “You are my Apollo,” she murmured, caressing every inch of his flesh with her tongue. “My shining Eros. I want to devour you.”

  He groaned and pulled her into his embrace, kissing her until she thought he would steal her breath away. Secure in the knowledge that she wouldn’t be punished for her sin by pregnancy or miscarriage, she gave herself to him with exquisite surrender. She abandoned every inhibition, every rule of how a respectable woman must behave. Not Gustav Mahler’s wife anymore but herself, her deep original self that she thought she had lost.

  In the aftermath of their lovemaking, reality intruded once more. Nestling her head on Walter’s chest, she told him her news. “My husband sent a cable from Munich. He’s coming to visit for two days.”

  Walter drew her up so that they lay face-to-face. He appeared absolutely stricken with jealousy of a man he hadn’t even met. “You’re not going to sleep with him, are you?”

  She couldn’t keep herself from smiling at his possessiveness. “He’ll probably be too distracted by his rehearsals to bother.”

  To calm her nerves and soothe Walter’s anxieties, Alma made love to him all night before the day of Gustav’s arrival. It was the most urgently charged lovemaking she had ever experienced, as though their entire future was at stake and Walt
er wanted to love every single trace of Gustav out of her. In the morning, when she washed, her skin felt flushed in the afterglow of bliss. But that only made her more jittery. If Gustav was canny enough to sense from her letters that something was not quite right, how would she manage to dissemble when they met face-to-face?

  Alma watched her husband emerge from the car that had fetched him from the station. After the way he had behaved to her in Rome, she had expected to feel aversion at the very sight of him. But he appeared like a completely different man, almost plaintive. It was he who seemed nervous, raking his hand self-consciously through his hair.

  “Look, Almschi! No bad haircut this time!” Gustav stepped toward her, as though about to embrace her, but he stopped short, looking her up and down as though he no longer recognized her. “For a while, your letters left me so depressed, but now I understand.”

  Alma closed her eyes and braced herself. He knows. He’d had to take only one look at her to see that she had betrayed him. Then she opened her eyes to feel his fingers stroking her hair.

  “I haven’t seen you looking this fresh and healthy in years, Almscherl. Whatever therapies you’ve been taking here have done you a power of good.”

  Alma strolled with her husband and daughter through the meadows and woods. Though she had thought it impossible, she felt a stirring of renewed affection for Gustav. For all his genius, he was a driven and lonely man. During his Munich rehearsals, he had been conducting so furiously, he managed to pull a muscle in his upper arm. After his visit here, he would be going to their summer home at Trenkerhof, where she would join him in two weeks when her cure was complete.

  “But you’ll be alone up there for your fiftieth birthday,” Alma said, taking his hand. “Won’t you at least invite Justine?”

  Gustav shook his head. “You know how I hate having a fuss made about my birthday. My real celebration will be when you and Gucki join me, and we can live as a family again. But I absolutely forbid you to break off your cure early for my sake, Almscherl. Stay here for as long as you can. You’re on the road to recovery, but if you suffer another relapse, make sure that you’re still being cared for.”

  Alma kept her head down so Gustav wouldn’t see her blush.

  Suite 5

  My Storm Song

  41

  In mid-July Alma left the sanatorium to rejoin Gustav at Trenkerhof. They danced a Ländler in the meadow outside the farmhouse while Gucki skipped circles around them. Gustav twirled Alma round and round until she was laughing and dizzy, clutching his shoulders so she wouldn’t fall. What a mystery love is! To think it had taken an adulterous liaison to restore their marriage. She effervesced with a vitality and joy that Gustav seemed to find irresistible.

  As far as her husband was concerned, their life had been restored to its proper order. In Alma’s absence, he had struggled with the most basic matters of day-to-day living, unable to find his socks without her help. While Alma and Gucki wandered through the fields and picked wildflowers, Gustav was happily ensconced in his composing hut. He had just started work on his Tenth Symphony. Smiling to herself, Alma listened to his distant piano notes mingling with the birdsong and chiming cowbells.

  She felt as though she were floating above the earth, living in a cloud of euphoria, even in Walter’s absence. Blindsided by love. By both her reveries of her wild nights with Walter and the present reality of her measured days with Gustav. Her heart brimmed for them both. Did that make her a bad woman, immoral and duplicitous? But she overflowed with optimism and bliss. I am in love with two men, both of them geniuses. A virile young lover who was destined for great things. And a titan at the height of his powers. Gustav, with his towering soul—her man-child who couldn’t function without her. Could she truly love them both at once?

  Yes, it’s possible to be happy. Yes, there’s such a thing as perfect joy. This love triangle had been her bridge back to life. Suddenly, she was restored to the world, enamored of this earthly existence with all its complications and contradictions, this divine immanence of sunlight on grass and her daughter’s laughter and prancing little feet. Walter had resurrected her. Gustav remained unsuspecting and supremely pleased with the result. Everyone had benefitted. Walter’s love allowed her to go on serving Gustav without resentment.

  Of course, she had sworn Walter to secrecy. He remained at the sanatorium and sent her searing letters via general delivery.

  Alma, your passion is so intense, it shakes me like an earthquake. I’m falling to pieces for you. When can we see each other again?

  They would meet for a secret tryst some day. Mama would help them find a way. We must be patient and tread carefully, Alma had written to Walter. She discovered he’d had previous affairs with married women, so he knew the risks involved. As much as she ached for him, she had no intention of ruining her family with some careless indiscretion.

  Later, during Gucki’s afternoon nap, Alma would cycle to the village to see if there was a new letter from Walter waiting for her at the post office. And mail her latest outpouring to him.

  You float before me like a figure of light—a most beautiful youth. I want your beauty to melt inside me.

  Gucki at her heels, Alma entered the farmhouse with her arms full of wildflowers. She found Gustav seated at the grand piano, his face drawn deathly white. It looked as though he could hardly sit upright. The china tray where Käthe left the mail lay shattered at his feet.

  Alma dropped the flowers and ran to him. “Gustav, what is it? Your heart?”

  “Can you explain this?” He thrust a letter at her—an envelope addressed to Herr Direktor Mahler, Trenkerhof, Alt Schluderbach, Tyrol. Recognizing Walter’s handwriting, Alma thought her heart would explode.

  “Gucki,” she said. “Go to Miss Turner. Now!”

  “Read the letter, Alma.” Gustav’s voice was so cold, as if he had disowned her.

  Though the envelope was addressed to her husband, she saw to her horror that the letter within was written to her.

  Beloved Alma,

  You have driven me to madness. All I can think of is you, the way you gave yourself to me as no other woman could. I cannot forget the vision of you naked in my bed, your hair spilling over my pillow, your exquisite voluptuousness.

  Beloved, you must end my torment. If you truly care for me, as you swore you did, you will leave your husband and begin a new life with me. You know you don’t love him. Your heart is mine. I am coming to Trenkerhof to ask for your hand. You can’t stop me, Alma. I beg you to make up your mind and choose what is right.

  Your Walter

  Alma tore the letter in half. Fleeing Gustav’s stony eyes, she rushed to the kitchen and tossed the cursed missive into the stove.

  Käthe looked up from the dough she was kneading. “Are you all right, Frau Direktor?”

  Alma shook her head. Her tears scalded her. Walter knew very well that he was supposed to write her via general delivery, not send any letters directly to the house, certainly not addressed to her husband! Yet it seemed he had deliberately betrayed her to force her hand. Had he intended to so infuriate Gustav that he would boot her out the door and leave her no choice but to go crawling back to Walter? She wanted to pack her bags and run away from both men.

  “Alma.” Gustav stalked into the kitchen, prompting Käthe to slink out the back door. “I’m still waiting for an explanation,” he said, in that chilly, controlled rage that he had perfected in their eight years of marriage. “So this was what you were hiding from me.” He looked at her as though she were more wretched than the dirt on his shoes. “Did he seduce you? Or did you start flirting with him?”

  When Alma held her hands over her face and refused to answer, Gustav took her by the shoulders.

  “Was it just one night?” he demanded. “Or did you carry on the entire six weeks?”

  Alma shrieked and shoved Gustav away. It was too late for her to burst into tears and beg his forgiveness. Too late to fall to her knees and beseech him to raise her
up, raise her to his level. She was the djinn that had escaped the bottle and could not be forced back inside no matter how her husband tried to shame her. Trapped and cornered, she turned on him, turned into a fury, her rage rising to meet his, fire to his ice.

  “To hell with you, Gustav! For eight years I longed for nothing but your love! But you just overlooked me. You never even saw me. Everything I did was for you—it all revolved around you. I gave up my music, all the things I loved. It was always up to me to make the sacrifices. You treated me like a servant. You treated me like a whore, Gustav, climbing on top of me in Rome when I wasn’t even conscious. Can you even remember the last time we actually made love?”

  He went pale and backed away, holding out his hands as if to ward himself, but she closed the distance between them and shook his shoulders so that once and for all he was compelled to see her.

  “You blamed me for Putzi’s death. You were horrible to me after the miscarriages. You ignored my birthdays. I didn’t even get a proper wedding. I gave and I gave until there was nothing left and I thought I would die. Then I met a young man who saw me as a person. Who made love to me! To me! I was dying for tenderness, Gustav! Dying!”

  Exhausted by the force of her confession, she collapsed against the kitchen wall. She braced herself for his reprisal, his denunciation, his schoolmasterly lecture on the immaturity of her soul. Instead, he seemed to reel, as if it had never before entered his mind that he could lose her. That she could leave him.

  “Don’t you love me, Almschi?” His eyes glittered with tears.

  “Do you love me?” she asked him, leaning against the wall to hold herself upright. “You have to love me for who I am. Not for who you would have me be. I destroyed myself trying to be the woman you wanted me to be. That woman is dead.”