In Vienna, the contorted faces of Egon Schiele’s self-portraits stared back from the walls of the Albertina. David had come from Rome to meet me, and we had gone to the museum. “Look at the women,” he said. Their naked bodies defiantly sexual, their eyes challenging the averted gaze. I looked back at David, the delight in his face, and maybe it was the joy of his presence, but I was finding the city a wonderful surprise.
I had imagined Vienna gray and filled with Nazis. Instead, I saw statues of women reclining on pediments, figures perched on roofs, domed churches, skaters in the park in front of the Rathaus, its Gothic spires filigreed against the evening sky. People stopped to give us directions, taking off their glasses, putting down packages to examine the map David and I helplessly extended. The sleek trolleys running along the Ringstrasse were more a child’s fantasy than the ominous streetcars of World War II movies.
That night we went to the opera, David in a tux, I in my long velvet skirt, vestiges of formality, like the Staatsoper itself. The opera house, bombed during the war, had been rebuilt and regilded. David looked crisp in his penguin suit, his scrubbed face glowing with anticipation. Così was his favorite. Just wait for the trios, he said. As we settled into our seats, I thought, This hall is everything Andreas detests, the orchestra pit a moat between singers and audience. I brushed away the thought and opened my program. Così fan tutte, ossia la scuola degli amanti (They’re All Like That, or The School for Lovers). The conductor appeared, the audience settled, the overture began, the curtain rose on an all-white set. A blank screen, the age-old question: would the women be unfaithful? Still that question, after all that had happened. I turned to David. He was entranced. I had read the synopsis in English, the opera was in Italian. I liked it better in a language I didn’t understand.
The next morning, we followed Prinz Eugenstrasse to the Upper Belvedere Palace, now a museum. I wanted to see the Klimts. In the room to the right at the top of the stairs, The Kiss dominated the far wall, its length majestic, the experience of the actual painting startling after the endless reproductions. I stared transfixed, unsure of what I was seeing. The man’s head was bent toward the woman, his hands caressing her face. The tenderness of his kiss was set off by the rigidity of the gold garment enveloping them. The audio guide pointed out the squares on his side of the gold, the circles on hers. Trite. And then I saw it. He was completely encased, only his face and his hands visible, the garment enclosing him like a sarcophagus. But she? “Look at her,” I said, my voice rising in astonishment. “She’s with him inside there, and also not.” Her bare arms wove in and out of the gold, the shape of her body, the pattern of her dress, clear. On her side, the cover was transparent. You could see she was kneeling, and her feet—they were bare and sticking out completely.
I rewound the audiotape and listened again. The guide had missed it, or chosen not to see it. “Look at her hand,” David said. Her arm was draped around his neck, her fourth finger crooked in a casual gesture. “He’s trapped in that gold glitter; she’s all that he has in there with him. She’s in it with him, yet she’s also outside it.” The kiss, his kiss, became heartbreaking.
I turned to the opposite wall, a painting of Adam and Eve. Her eyes were wide open, his were shut.
Something was coalescing. The artists had seen it. In the Albertina, the naked men in Schiele’s portraits looked haunted, their bodies exhausted. In The Kiss, a man trapped in opulence was reaching for human contact. Klimt’s Adam had closed his eyes to the knowledge Eve was offering him. If the audio guide was any indication, it was forbidden to see this.
David bought a book about Klimt at the shop and read it to me over lunch at a Greek taverna, located improbably across the street. The specials on the board outside sounded enticing, but the owner insisted on overriding our choices and choosing for us, providing a bottle of wine to distract us from the cost.
David turned to the pages on the university paintings. Klimt had been commissioned by the Ministry of Culture to design three ceiling panels representing Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence for the ceremonial hall of the new university. The theme, set by the academics, was to be the triumph of light over darkness. Yet Klimt had shown the darkness, not the triumph. We stared at the illustrations: detached, mythical figures representing Reason, Science, and Justice surrounded by twisted chains of naked bodies drifting in a void. At the center of Jurisprudence, a naked victim of the law writhed in a nest of snakes. In Medicine, a headless nude floated in space, her pelvis thrust forward, her outstretched arms suggesting crucifixion. The paintings had created a scandal, dividing faculties in the manner we knew so well.
“Listen to this,” David said, reading aloud from the text:
“‘Representatives of the university demanded that if the figure in the Medicine painting had to be female, then it should be clothed, or if it was unavoidable that it be naked, then it should be a male figure instead.’” He closed the book.
“It would be one thing,” he said, “if Law or Medicine or Philosophy or the university had stood up to the Nazis, but that’s not what happened.” The commissioning of the paintings had coincided with the election of a blatant anti-Semite as mayor of Vienna. The emperor, Franz Joseph, held out for two years, refusing to ratify the election, but in 1897, he gave in.
I worried about my presentation. “Sweetheart, you’ll be fine,” David said. “Just remember Klimt. They showed him what they thought of his murals, he showed what he thought about them.” The Kiss was a late painting, its perception of the situation of men and women haunting.
We divided the check, registering our gullibility but deciding in the end it was better to have trusted and lost than to go through life withholding and suspicious.
The conference started after lunch on Thursday, banners hanging from the front of the MAK proclaiming its mission: Art, Architecture, and Design. The nineteenth-century building stood at one end of the Ringstrasse, just before it curved around the park. The Baroque façade was predictable, but the high-columned, open main hall had more of a Renaissance feeling, arches lining the sides, a balcony ringing the space from above. Despite the size, it had the intimacy of a cloister, the open area light and airy, filled with chairs in place of a garden. I saw colleagues, old friends from school, people I’d met at other conferences, the atmosphere friendly, informal. Richard Livingston had arrived from Boston, his blue blazer an anomaly among the hip black outfits, which were more New York than Boston, more European than American. I was happy to see him. The design crowd and the urban planners had gathered in Vienna, the center of Europe, what better place to reenvision the city? I was glad I had bought the persimmon boots.
Georg Naumann, the museum’s new director, a trim man with the sharp eyes and quick manner of the Viennese, opened the meeting. Art functions as an investment in and a prophecy of the future of society, he said, and he was determined that the future not repeat the past. Monuments of barbarism, like the antiaircraft tower in a Vienna park, could be turned into international centers, showing contemporary projects. The city itself, the crucible of civilization, must be reimagined with architecture leading the way. The museum would be a central forum for resistance against the widespread loss of meaning pandemic in contemporary popular culture.
A heady vision. I looked around the room: there was a minimum of skepticism. The conference itself, I realized, was an act of resistance.
“How will this happen?” Naumann asked. A flurry of attention. “This is our task.” He smiled, much applause, high energy in the room.
I left after the coffee break. Too many people, too many conversations, my head was spinning. My talk was scheduled for the next morning, I needed to settle into myself. On the way back to the hotel, I stopped at a drugstore and bought some bath oil, green with algae from some remote sea. I would read over my paper, soak in the tub, spend the evening by myself.
At five-thirty, the phone rang. Dripping, I answered it, David on the other end. He was afraid I would spend the ev
ening worrying, so he had leaned on the concierge, who produced two standing-room tickets for the Musikverein. For seats, he said, you must wait for someone to die. It was a Vienna Philharmonic concert, Mozart arias, a Chopin concerto. I put on my black slacks and sweater, adding the jade necklace Lily had given me, and met him in the lobby. It had started to rain, and the concierge, after a mini-lesson in German—house is haus, mouse is maus, here is hier— smiled broadly and offered an umbrella. We took it and headed out.
The standing room was at the back, behind a railing and in front of a graying mirror, the purpose of which was obscure. The hall itself, aside from the gilding, was strictly wood, seats included, a requirement for the acoustics. Gold statues of women lined the sides, weight-bearing women, slim, holding up the first tier. We squeezed in among the standees, finding a place in the middle. I opened the program. It was in German, the concierge not around to help. Three Mozart arias, the third from Così, followed by the Chopin, then intermission, with a Schumann symphony to end the evening. The pianist for the Chopin was young, a new star. The soprano I had never heard of. Yet it was her voice I would remember, clear, unencumbered, her singing effortless, the phrasing exquisite. A young, dark-haired woman in a blue dress, a visitor from another world. And maybe it was a premonition, because after the Chopin, during the intermission, when we were discussing whether or not to stay, leave, whether we really wanted to hear the Schumann, I saw him coming toward me, toward us. David, a soldier on guard, having spotted him first, was standing close beside me.
“Kyra,” Andreas said.
My face froze.
He stood there, motionless, as in a dream.
David took my hand. The intermission crowd was pressing around us. We were blocking the way to the bar. We moved off to one side.
Andreas followed, his eyes darting between us.
“I’m David, Kyra’s friend,” David said, steadying the situation. “We’ve met.”
A flicker of recognition on Andreas’s face, memory registering. He cleared his throat. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then swallowed hard. His eyes on my face.
Chandeliers glittered. On my left, the wide marble staircase. He followed my glance.
“If you’re leaving now, will you join us?” he said.
Us? I thought, suddenly stricken.
David tightened his grip. My hand turned cold.
“The pianist,” Andreas said, “he’s a friend.” His voice was toneless. “We’re going out for supper.” He scanned my face.
“Will you come?”
And maybe it was the openness of the question, because determination rose to fill the hollow that had formed inside my chest. I had seen the resolve in David’s face when he told me he was planning to stay on in Italy, not go back to Cambridge. A similar resolve formed inside me. I would hold my ground.
I looked at David. He would take my cue. If there was anyone I trusted, it was him.
“Let’s go with them,” I said, heading down the stairs.
The first bell sounded, the intermission was ending.
The rain gusted, blown by the wind, changing directions. I was freezing. The pianist, a red-haired Hungarian, high from the performance, a fidgety energy, talking nonstop about the Chopin, the conductor, the decision made at the last moment to pick up the tempo. David adjusted the umbrella, a sail in the wind. I thought of the soprano, her effortless singing, stunning in her dark hair and blue dress. A wave of self-consciousness. What was I thinking? This was hardly the moment for a confrontation, my new boots now stained with rain.
Andreas glanced in my direction, the pianist commanding his attention. What was he thinking? A quiet supper with friends?
The narrow street opened into a square behind the Albertina. The Schiele women, their stare defiant. If you look at me, I’ll look back at you. No need to speak. It was a plan.
Easily executed, as it turned out, because as we headed into the café facing the square, the three men fell into a discussion of music. Supper was ordered.
I went to the restroom, my hair spilling out of its clasp, curling wildly. I stared at myself.
Breathe. The morning warm-ups, Mika’s voice coming back. Let the breath fall in. The Tosca rehearsals. What did it mean to be unfaithful? It meant to betray someone you love, to betray trust. Is it true, Così, that all women are unfaithful? Aren’t all men unfaithful too? Air rushed into my body, solar plexus, sacrum, inner sun, sacred space expanding, oxygen circulating, coloring my face. I unlocked the door and went back to the table.
The food had arrived, and the conversation had turned to politics, the ins and outs of the music world, the pianist, now flushed with wine, clearly counting himself among the ins. Andreas glanced at me. I looked back at him steadily. His face was distressed.
“You can’t leave Vienna without eating Sacher torte at the Hotel Sacher,” the pianist announced, his wide face beatific, oblivious to the undercurrents swirling around him. He was leaving the next morning. And Andreas? I chose not to care. Either it would or it would not happen, the delayed conversation. As for the torte, David was game. We left the café, the hotel was just around the corner.
“This rain,” Andreas said, “it’s unrelenting. Budapest and Vienna, they’re crime scenes.” Then why did you go back, I wanted to ask. I said nothing.
We settled into the bar, the blue damasked walls gloomy, stifling. The waiter brought the tortes. Andreas picked up his fork, misery radiating from his body. Nobody said much of anything. I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight.
The pianist was leaving. David’s eyebrows formed a question: did I want to go or not?
I looked at my wrist, the scar imperceptible in the dim light. You can go, I signaled.
Once you choose a path, my father had said, you must follow it. At the time, he was talking about Simon. It was just before our marriage.
David left with the pianist. Andreas leaned forward, his elbows resting on the small table. He put his face in his hands.
My eyes swept the bar, empty now except for us.
“What can I say?” he said, the sound of his voice coming over a long, rough road, a letter arriving maybe too late.
He looked up, a fleeting hope in his eyes.
“What can I possibly say to you now? You were right. All I could think of was my work, my mission.”
He twisted his napkin, then bunched it into a ball and put it aside.
“I thought then that you would understand. You also have work you’re devoted to.”
He picked up his fork, put it down, searched my face.
“I’ve said this to you before, that terrible day last summer in Provincetown. It was raining then too. I couldn’t believe I would hurt you so terribly by going.”
My shoulders tensed. Me hurt? What about you?
I scraped the remaining chocolate from my plate, the taste bitter.
If I wanted to leave, this was the moment. Outside there would be air.
He read my thought.
“If only this rain would stop, we could walk. It would be easier then to talk.”
He looked around, distracted.
“This bar is like a bad opera set.”
He moved his plate to one side, put mine on top, clearing the space between us.
“I’m working on Pelleas again. Do you know the scene by the fountain where they are alone together, Pelleas and Melisande, and she loses the ring that her husband had given her?”
It was beside the point. Or maybe it was the point.
I didn’t say anything.
“The concert tonight,” he continued, his eyes fixed on my face, “during the Mozart, the aria from Così, I felt your presence. It was completely improbable, but I knew you were there. Then I saw you, standing a few rows in front of me. I was in back, leaning on the mirror. Did you feel it?”
I didn’t answer.
“You know, at the end of Pelleas when Melisande is dying, the old blind king tells her husband to leave her alone. Is that wha
t you want me to do?”
Did he think I was dying, like his dead wife? Or was he talking about Simon?
I broke my silence.
“Look, I don’t know these operas. I don’t care about these operas. You wanted me to come to supper. I came. Can you just say what you want to say?”
He raised his eyebrows, lines crossing his forehead like railroad tracks.
He took a deep breath.
“When my father became ill last summer in Boston, Jesse came back to Budapest with me. It was the first time we’d been alone. There was a woman who came in when I was working, but otherwise we were by ourselves. He would ask me these questions.”
A shadow crossed his face. He waited a moment. It passed. He continued, his eyes softening, his voice more present.
“One night when I was putting him to bed, he suddenly sat up and stared into my face with that serious look he has: ‘Papa, do you love Kyra?’ I couldn’t speak. Then he said, ‘I miss Kyra. I want to go back to Nashawena.’”
Andreas looked away, his eyes wet with tears.
It was too naked, this moment. I suddenly wanted to get away. I remembered what Anna once said to me about men. When they open like this, it’s so unguarded, almost too exposed. It’s hard not to rush in and cover them, cover for them. Before they cover themselves. I wrapped my coat around my shoulders and waited.
Kyra Page 19