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performance? Was he tired of giving me lessons?
    “There’s the Kunstlerhaus,” he said, finally, pointing at a grand building. “All the artists meet there, they post the calls for submissions on the wall there, we have lectures and shows.”
    “It’s pretty,” I said politely.
    “Do you really think so?” he said, and stopped walking. “Or did you just say what you think I wanted to hear?” He turned me by the shoulders and faced me toward the building. I felt caught out.
    “Of course it’s not pretty,” I said. “The bottom is too delicate for the top, or the top is too heavy for the bottom, and all those marble carvings are just vulgar.”
    He laughed. “That’s my girl. You’ll never offend me with the truth, remember that.”
    “Why is the artist’s building so ugly?” I asked.
    “Because of committees,” he said. “A committee tries to appease everyone and ends up with the worst parts of all the ideas that are discussed. The Kunstlerhaus is full of committees. I’m on one myself, the Traveling Show committee. We try to bring the work of foreign artists like Pissarro or Turner or Burne-Jones here so people can see them. But the Finance committee wants to abolish the Traveling Show committee on the grounds that it costs too much, and absorb it into the general Exhibition committee. That’s the latest controversy. Artists are horribly political.”
    “So you think it would be better if the Kunstlerhaus was a monarchy?” I asked pointedly. I don’t know why I said that. I suppose I was showing off; we’d been studying political systems in school.
    “Yes, with me as king,” he said teasingly. “What’s wrong with that?”
    I shrugged, because I didn’t really care who ran the Kunstlerhaus, and paused to look in the window of a bakery we were passing, where a particularly delicious-looking caramel cake sat atop a crystal cake plate.
    “You like sweets?” he said, watching me. “I’ll see if mother won’t bake something chocolate next time.”
    “With hazelnuts,” I said. Then I felt guilty. “If it’s not too expensive,” I added.
    “Are you a socialist?” he asked, returning to the subject of the Kunstlerhaus. “What would your father say?”
    “I’m not anything,” I said. “It just seems like everyone being able to express their opinion is better than one person telling everyone else what to do.”
    “You’d think having everyone’s opinion would be a good thing, but most people don’t have opinions worth taking into account. Especially when it comes to art.”
    I thought about my father and the cab driver with the pungent cigar, and decided that he was probably right.
    We had arrived in the Volksgarten and Klimt led me to a bench and took an acrid handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the seat. The bench was small and even when dry the cold of it traveled up through my bones. I wanted to huddle against Klimt for warmth like a child, but I couldn’t. I sat rigidly to keep myself from shivering. I could see my breath.
    The air was thick and gray with cold rain that threatened to turn to ice. Everyone who passed wore an expression of concentration, a determination to endure the discomfort of the cold, thinking of the café or the fireplace that awaited him at his destination. Not one of the pedestrians with clenched teeth would be out if they had a choice. It was hard for me to concentrate on looking. My feet were going numb. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Klimt didn’t say anything. When I looked over at him he wore the same expression his mother did when she sat at the kitchen table.
    “Do you torture all of your students this way?” I asked after thirty minutes. He startled, as if he’d forgotten I was there, and turned to me with a puzzled look.
    “I don’t have any other students,” he said.
    “I thought…” I stumbled for a diplomatic reply.
    “That I must need the money badly to give lessons to you?” He seemed amused. “When we got the theater