Ecstasy

by Mary Sharratt

  Dearest Almschi,

  This song is a fairy tale from my youthful days.

  Your Gustav

  The song cycle was drawn from a folk tale about two rival brothers courting a queen. Alma was playing the piece when Carl came in and seated himself in the armchair beside the piano. Abruptly, she lifted her hands from the keys and braced herself for the inevitable lecture—Carl had that paterfamilias look on his face.

  “About Gustav Mahler,” Carl began. “You’re in love with the man and nothing I say or do will put you off. At least it’s a relief that it’s Mahler, not Zemlinsky.”

  Alma remained silent, the shame of her betrayal of Alex pressing down on her.

  “Mahler isn’t exactly the husband I would have wished for you,” her stepfather went on. “He’s not young, and I have it on very good authority he’s in debt.”

  “He had to support his siblings when his parents died,” Alma said, rushing in to champion Gustav. “But now he has only Justine to support. He can afford to marry now—he told me so.”

  “Just keep in mind,” said Carl, “that if he loses his post as opera director his career is finished. He’s a man with strong opinions who’s forever locking horns with people. He has enemies as well as admirers, not least because he’s a Jew.”

  Alma could have thrown the sheet music in her stepfather’s face. “He’s the greatest opera director Vienna’s ever known! They would be insane to lose him.”

  More than ever before, Alma lived for the opera. First, she lost herself in the magnificence of Les contes d’ Hoffmann, which was all the more enchanting for her having seen the dress rehearsal. Marie Gutheil-Schoder, her skirts now decorously stitched together, was flawless. Later that same week, Alma reveled in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, a performance that Gustav had privately dedicated to her. Each time she watched him conduct, she gleaned a deeper understanding of the intricacy of his work. And Gustav turned on his podium to give her his most tender smile. She was so in love, she wanted to shout out her happiness to the world. But their engagement needed to remain secret for the time being. Gustav still had to break the news to Justine, who was possessive of her brother and jealous of female rivals.

  When Alma was with Gustav or watching him conduct, it was as if no other man existed. Only when they were apart did her doubts creep in. Now he was off to Berlin and Dresden, where he would conduct his Fourth Symphony.

  Alone at her piano, Alma allowed the questions she had shoved to the depths of her consciousness to rise to the surface one by one. Did she truly love him as a man, or had she simply been swept away by the force of his personality? She was so unraveled by it all, she no longer knew what to think or even how to think. Did she love Mahler the great conductor and opera director, or Gustav with his bitten fingernails who tripped over his shoelaces and kissed her so greedily? If Carl’s forebodings were correct and Gustav lost his position at the Court Opera, would she be just as dazzled by him? He would still remain a genius, the man with thick black hair who knew almost every poem of Schiller’s by heart. The man who had raised himself up from nearly nothing, embracing music as his path to transcendence. Who, as a three-year-old boy in Kalischt, Bohemia, had interrupted the cantor in the synagogue by shouting, That’s not music! Alma thought that if she lived one hundred years she would never meet Gustav Mahler’s equal.

  Yet he could be so high-handed, condescending to her like a schoolmaster, lecturing her on which books were seemly and which he would like her to burn. Even Mama and Carl didn’t presume to control what Alma read.

  If she married him and bound herself to him for the rest of her life, shouldn’t she believe in him unreservedly as a composer? As hard as she tried to understand the scores he sent her, his music left her cold. He surely deserved better from his future wife.

  One question plagued her more than any other—would Gustav inspire her to compose? Would he support her artistic strivings the way Alex had? The mere thought of Alex opened a chasm in her heart. What if she had made a terrible mistake that could never be undone? She had heard not a word from Alex since sending him her letter of confession. Perhaps he hated her and could never forgive her.

  Every day Alma waited for the morning and afternoon mail, for a letter or sign from Gustav to set her anxieties to rest. Dashing out to the front gate one morning when expecting the postman, she saw a familiar figure trudging up the snowy street. The most fragile hope stirred inside her.

  “Alex, is that you?” she cried.

  “You’re looking well, Fräulein.” Alex’s gaze was guarded, and he addressed her stiffly, with the formal Sie, as though an entire glacier divided them.

  “Come in, come in,” she said, flustered. “It’s so cold out here.”

  In the parlor, Alex sat at the piano while Alma sat in the armchair beside it and watched as her former lover paged through the score of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen that Alma had been playing all morning in an attempt to better comprehend.

  Alex rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “All this studied naïveté and simplicity. Rather disingenuous coming from Mahler, don’t you think?”

  “He was very young when he wrote it.” Alma had spent many hours imagining Gustav as he had been at her age, struggling to compose, to find his own style.

  Alex laughed abrasively. “I don’t believe he was ever that young. Or that innocent.”

  “That’s a very unkind thing to say.” Alma found she couldn’t even look at him, only at her hands clasped in her lap.

  But Alex turned to her and stared until she looked into his eyes.

  “I always knew you’d throw me over for someone with money,” he said. “Someone who could keep you in every comfort.”

  They both blushed to hear Alex slipping back into the familiar Du form, as if in spite of himself.

  “I don’t even blame you for that,” he went on. “But for God’s sake, Alma, why him? A middle-aged man with hemorrhoids! You’ll have to fight your way past his sister, who guards him like a rottweiler. She’s driven all his other women away.”

  Alma swayed in her chair to hear Alex speak of Gustav as if he were some failed Lothario. Did Justine’s zealousness indeed explain why Gustav had not married earlier?

  “I like Justine,” Alma lied.

  She had met Gustav’s sister once and was terrified of her. All that Mahlerian intensity poured into a female body and not given any other occupation but keeping house for her brother and guarding his honor. Gustav had brought his sister along on his trip to Berlin and Dresden in an attempt to win her over to the idea of his marrying Alma.

  “All his friends are twenty years older than you,” Alex said. “They’ll look down their noses at you as the child he married.”

  “I shall still have my own friends,” she said hotly. “My own circle.”

  “You and he both have such strong personalities. He’ll never bow down to accommodate you. You shall have to make all the compromises.” Alex looked at her imploringly, as though trying to reach to her across an abyss. “You’re only twenty-two. What about your dreams of becoming a composer? Don’t you see, Alma? You’re not just betraying me—you’re betraying yourself!”

  Alex’s voice broke, and Alma’s eyes blurred with tears. She could think of nothing to say. Must I be subdued? Was that what marriage was, a battle of wills with a winner and a loser? Was it not meant to be something divine, an alchemical union of souls that made both husband and wife greater than the sum of their parts?

  “It would surely do me no harm,” she said, in a small voice, “to study under his tutelage. To be raised to his level.”

  When Alex took his leave, they shook hands and parted cordially. But there was no getting past his hurt and resignation or her own guilty sense of how her choice had shattered him. She suspected that this would signal the end of their lessons and his visits to her home. With a pang, she thought of Tristan und Isolde, the opera that both she and Alex loved above all others. It was as though she were Isolde, and
instead of risking everything to run away with Tristan, she had spurned him for King Mark. She had chosen the old king over the young lover. Liebestod.

  18

  What about your dreams of becoming a composer? Haunted by Alex’s words, Alma set aside Gustav’s scores to work on her own lieder. When Gustav returned to Vienna, she would ask him to help her, to teach her. Couldn’t a husband also be a mentor? She thought about Robert and Clara Schumann composing side by side.

  Gustav’s letters, filled with both tenderness and soul-searching, arrived daily.

  Only one thing troubles me, Almschi: whether a person who is already growing old has the right to such youth and beauty . . . I know I have much to offer, but that is no exchange for the right to be young.

  He implored her to reply by return post and to write legibly, for he found her handwriting as difficult to decipher as hieroglyphics.

  Imagine I’m sitting beside you and you’re telling me about your day-to-day life. Every detail!

  Writing her reply, she described her spirited dinner conversation with Max Burckhard about the importance of her individuality and personal potential. How she must triumph as an individual soul, one who was devoted to her music.

  Forgive me for cutting this letter short, dear Gustav, but I must work on my lieder. How magnificent that we’re both composers! That I should be your colleague and your wife!

  The following day, Alma went Christmas shopping with her mother. Alma bought a pair of warm fur-lined gloves for Gustav and a pretty bracelet of silver and aquamarine for Gretl while Mama bought a hot water bottle for Cilli, whose circulation was poor and who was forever complaining about her chilblains.

  All Vienna seemed to be out and about preparing for the festive season; the squares were crammed with market stalls selling gingerbread, oranges, wooden toys, and brightly painted spinning tops.

  After they had finished shopping, Alma and Mama joined Carl at Café Sacher before riding home in an open fiacre, the winter sun beaming down with a brightness that illuminated everything with sharp, crystal clarity. The naked chestnut trees. The businessmen in their top hats tapping their canes in the dirty snow as they strode along. The steam rising off the sweating backs of horses pulling wagons, carriages, and omnibuses.

  Alma’s heart lurched at the sight of Alex walking down Ringstrasse, his arm linked with that of a young lady she’d never seen before who gazed at him adoringly. Their laughter rose in the frosty air.

  “Well, it looks like it didn’t take long for Zemlinsky to get over you,” her stepfather observed.

  “Carl, don’t be crass,” Mama said. But she seemed unable to hide her relief that she no longer needed to worry about Alma marrying him.

  Alma tried to turn her thoughts away from Alex, but she felt half-sick at the loss of him. For she was bereft of not only a lover and a friend but also the finest teacher she’d ever had. I betrayed him. I destroyed us. There was no way back. That bridge was gone. She had made her choice and that was Gustav.

  When Alma stepped in the door, Cilli came prancing with the thickest envelope Alma had ever seen.

  “From Herr Direktor Mahler!” Cilli’s face glowed pink with the romance of it all.

  Even Carl was impressed with the heft of the missive. “Did he write you a love letter or an entire symphony?”

  Alma dashed up to her room to read Gustav’s letter in privacy. Flinging herself on her bed, she tore it open, breathless not only from the sprint up the stairs but also from the hope that such a long letter must surely include some analysis of her lieder.

  My beloved Alma,

  It is with a heavy heart that I set out to write this letter. I know that I must hurt you, but I have no choice.

  Her heart pricked in worry. Whatever could be the matter? He didn’t care for her music, was that it? It was true that after the initial interest he had expressed in her scores he had hardly spoken about them. Was it to spare her feelings from his honest appraisal?

  As she continued reading that twenty-page letter written on stationery from the Hotel Bellevue in Berlin, every part of her froze. For it was not her music Gustav examined under the glaring spotlight of his scrutiny but her character. In his mind, she was no fully formed individual but an immature girl who lacked any original ideas of her own, who merely parroted the philosophies of those around her or the latest book she had read and only half-digested. How his words stung!

  Not only that, he maintained that she had an inflated sense of her own importance as an aspiring composer, which Gustav blamed on men like Burckhard and Zemlinsky who had encouraged her not because she had any actual talent but merely because they were infatuated with her.

  Because you are beautiful and men are attracted to you, they enjoy paying tribute to you. Would they heap such praise on an ugly girl? My Alma, you have grown vain, your vanity the result of what these men see in you, or would like to see in you . . .

  Almschi, please read my words with care. Our relationship must not degenerate into a mere flirt. Before we speak again you must renounce everything superficial, all vanity and outward show concerning your individuality and your own work . . .

  Would it be possible for you to regard my music as your music from now on? As for “your” music, I prefer not to discuss that in detail right now. But how can you imagine both husband and wife being composers? Have you any idea how ridiculous and degrading such a rivalry would become? What would happen if inspiration strikes you—as it did when you broke off your last letter to me—when you’re obliged to look after the house for me or to bring me something I need?

  You must become the person I need if we are to be happy together. My wife and not my colleague.

  Gustav closed by telling her he would send his servant to collect her reply the following morning—she must have her answer prepared by then.

  The pages of his letter fell to the floor. It was as though a cold hand had wrenched her heart from her breast. What remained was a gaping void. Nothing left to cling to anymore, not her music or even her sense of self. Just the promise of his love and their future as man and wife if she agreed to his demands.

  But how could she abandon her music? Could he truly force such an ultimatum on her? The power is mine! I can refuse! Just as she had refused to let him burn The Collected Works of Nietzsche. But insisting on her own music would mean losing him. Their engagement would be over before it had even been officially announced. She had lost Alex irretrievably. And now she must lose Gustav, too?

  If she married him and carried on composing behind his back, it would still destroy her creative spirit. It was hard enough to compose without doing it under the cloak of secrecy without any encouragement or help at all. He thinks nothing of my music and everything of his own. What contempt he had displayed for her dream of a marriage of two composers who believed in and supported each other. That kind of partnership would have worked with Alex. But not with Gustav. Never with Gustav. And it was her own fault for turning Alex away. Then again, what if Gustav was right and Alex had praised her only because he desired her?

  I am so broken, so useless, my talent so slight. For if her gift was genuine, Gustav surely would have recognized it, would he not? Perhaps he was being cruel to be kind. Sparing her from the humiliation of having the greater world mock her mediocrity and pretensions. All of Herr Labor’s criticisms slammed inside her head. If that’s the best you can do, you might as well give up. You can’t be taken seriously!

  Alma began to pace, clutching herself and shivering. The fire in her grate had dwindled to ash. If only I were a somebody, a real person, capable of great things. But I am a nobody. The weight of Gustav’s words bowed her down to the ground. I am just another bourgeois girl prettily running her fingers up and down the piano keys. I am not remarkable. No Clara Schumann. My ambitions are laughable. Alma couldn’t imagine ever feeling like her old self again, the girl of last summer who was writing her first opera.

  She let out a cry as Mama entered the room in a rustl
e of midnight-blue silk.

  “Alma, why aren’t you dressed? Have you forgotten about Siegfried tonight? My dear, why are you crying?” Her mother looked searchingly into Alma’s eyes before bending to pick the twenty pages of Gustav’s letter off the floor.

  “As fond as I am of Mahler, I would advise you to refuse him,” Mama said. “He can’t ask you to give up your music. It’s monstrous.”

  The two of them rode in the cab to the opera. They huddled together, bundled against the cold in their winter coats and fur stoles, a rug across their laps to warm their legs. Alma felt a welling up of gratitude to hear that at least her mother believed her talent was real and worth fighting for. Still, she could not stop crying. She was torn in half.

  “Don’t give him any written reply.” Mama squeezed Alma’s gloved hand. “Let him come to you—he’ll soon be back from his travels. Perhaps he’ll even apologize and realize he’s been completely unreasonable. Although, I must say, he was very honest about what he expects from a wife—we have to grant him that. If you should agree to marry him under those conditions, at least you’ll go into it with your eyes wide open. No naïve illusions about becoming his protégée.”

  Alma could still not believe how much this hurt, like a hooked arrow sunk deep in her flesh. If only she and Gustav could have discussed this in person, in a conversation that she had a voice in, things could have been so different. No matter what choice she made regarding Gustav and her music, his letter would leave an indelible scar.

  At the opera, to Alma’s deepest embarrassment, she found that she and her mother were seated in the same row as Felix Muhr, her former suitor—the rich architect with his monocle and brilliantined hair. Noting Alma’s swollen red eyes, he beat a path over all the legs and feet to hover at her side.