Free The Painted Kiss by Elizabeth Hickey

dumb amazement had always been my usual response to something I loved. She told him about the first time I went to see the Lippizaners and estimated that I loved his cartoons at least as much, if not more than, the dancing white horses.
    Did she have to betray me like that?
    He brought me some wine. I didn’t tell him I wasn’t allowed to have it. “So you like them?” he said. I could only nod. My school-girl vocabulary seemed inadequate and I was suddenly intimidated by him. Men kept coming up to us and shaking Klimt’s hand. They didn’t even look at me, and I realized how insignificant I must be in his life. I thought that at his own reception he should leave me and go talk to the important people, and I decided it must be good manners that were keeping him.
    “Where’s Helene?” I said, to give him an excuse. “I must go and find her.”
    “She’s a grown-up young lady,” he said. “She can take care of herself. Let me show you the rest.” He led me around the room, showing me the different panels, telling me who each person was, whispering bits of gossip so that no one else could hear, explaining why he had done things a certain way. I really did wonder what had happened to Helene but after a while I forgot to look for her.
    “You like it?” he kept saying. “Are you sure?” He wanted to know why I liked it. When I said I thought it was beautiful he frowned. That was not the right answer. I tried to explain about the brush-strokes but he said any artist worth his smock could do that. I didn’t know what else to say.
    “It’s no good,” he said. “I’ve failed.” I didn’t understand his sudden gloom. I had never seen him this way. It seemed as if the party, which should have been the high point of the whole process, was in fact depressing to him. I couldn’t convince him that the work was good.
    A burly blond man approached us as we tackled the Greek section. “It’s Moll,” Klimt said. “I don’t feel like talking to him right now.” He pushed me toward the back of the room. I thought he was actually going to hide us behind the drapes, but Moll accosted us before he could.
    I had heard Klimt talk about Moll. He had a powerful personality and liked to organize things, which made him a valuable comrade. I knew that Klimt liked him, but had doubts about him as an artist.
    He clapped Klimt on the back, practically knocking him over. “Magnificent!” he said in a loud bass voice. “A triumph!”
    “Spare me your bullshit, Moll,” Klimt said. “You can say that to the reporters, but tell me what you really think.”
    “You’ve outdone Makart,” said Moll. “It captures the Viennese spirit.”
    “I know,” sighed Klimt. “That’s the problem. It’s tired and bourgeois.” He sounded defeated. I wondered, if this was such a failure, what one of his successes would look like.
    “You’re worn out,” said Moll, “and you’ve looked at it so much you can’t see it any more. Come away from it and have a drink with me, that ought to help. There’s something I want to discuss with you anyway.”
    Klimt gave me an apologetic smile as Moll led him away. I realized as they disappeared that he hadn’t introduced me to Moll, and that Moll hadn’t looked at me once.
    I found Helene with a girl she knew, two years ahead of her in school, talking Schiller. On the way home she told me that Ernst had asked if she’d like to model for their next project, a Roman mural for an Esterházy palace outside of Budapest. She said she would if I could come, too. The sittings would be in the studio.
    It was one thing to sneak away to attend an art opening in a public place, and quite another to go alone to an artist’s studio. We would be risking everything, and we both knew it. Still, neither of us hesitated. We spent that night discussing how we could accomplish it without our parents finding out.
    Now, when I thought of him, it was not as Klimt, but as Gustav. And I thought about him much