Read Online The Painted Kiss by Elizabeth Hickey - Free Book Online Page B

commission we got a lot of money. I tried to buy my mother another house, but she likes that one. She’s used to it. My father made her move several times a year for twenty years, always promising the next house would be better, and always it was worse. Now she says she will never move again.”
    “What about you? You don’t have anything,” I said, thinking about the ill-fitting suit.
    “Only paint,” he said. “But I don’t need anything else.”
    “Then why did you take me as a student?”
    “Everyone needs a protégé.”
    “I’m not a protégé,” I said. Surprise made me blunt. “I’m terrible.”
    “You’re not as terrible as you think you are.” It was as close to a compliment as he had ever given me, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I looked quickly around for some visual to distract him. I found a woman with red hair leaning against a slick dark tree trunk. It elicited a lecture on contrast. As he talked I wondered about the woman. She wasn’t much older than I and wasn’t wearing a hat, which was a horrible faux pas in addition to being foolish, given the weather. She was pale and looked worried. Her hands moved constantly, smoothing her hair, adjusting her coat. Who was she waiting for?
    As we walked back to the train station at the end of an hour, he told me that the cartoons for the theater were being exhibited at the Kunstlerhaus in a week’s time. I should come, he said, and bring my parents or my sisters. There would be a reception. It was important for a student to see her teacher’s work. Then you can decide if I am worth respecting, he said. I said I would try to come.
    I told Helene. We decided we would not tell our parents, who surely would forbid us to go. We would make an excuse and go by ourselves. It wasn’t far to walk; we could hurry back before anyone missed us. We said we were going to the coffee shop for Schlagobers . Pauline, thankfully, did not want to come. She thought we were going to ogle some handsome new waiter, which didn’t interest her. She’d preferred to stay home with a book.
    Our plan seemed brilliant until we were mounting the steps of the building, the one Klimt had forced me to admit was ugly. Ugly or not, it was intimidating to two young girls. Everyone else there seemed much older, sure of themselves. They looked as if they knew where they were going. We watched several groups swing open the brass doors and disappear before we took a deep breath and slipped inside.
    The floor of the rotunda was mosaic tile and the ceiling was frescoed with angels. At a long table artists were pouring new wine, still bubbling and fermenting in the bottle, into cheap glasses. Lots of people Klimt had talked about, people who had modeled for him, were there, including Katherina Schratt and the crown prince. Or so Helene told me later. All I could see was the cartoons.
    They were only long rolls of paper fixed to the wall, but they were filled with light, like crystal chandeliers. I stepped very close to look at the brushstrokes. The paint slid across the paper in rivers, and trickled down in rivulets. I thought I could tell which ones Klimt had done. It was hard to say how I knew. They were less careful, though not at all sloppy, just the opposite. The brush ran free like a virtuoso’s bow.
    Each scene was from the history of the theater, from a Greek amphitheater to a Viennese play from last season, but I didn’t know that yet, because I was mesmerized in front of a scene from an Elizabethan production of Romeo and Juliet, all peacock blue and moss green velvet. I thought I recognized Mercutio.
    I don’t know how long I was standing there before Klimt saw me. He must have watched me for a while because he asked if I was all right. He introduced his brother Ernst to Helene and me. Helene told Ernst politely how much she admired the cartoons. I, on the other hand, couldn’t say anything.
    “Don’t you like them?” Klimt seemed worried.
    Helene told him that