Ecstasy

by Mary Sharratt

  “Now I’m studying black folk songs,” Miss Curtis said. “The music of former slaves. I want to see black people performing in Carnegie Hall. Just like your husband, Mrs. Mahler.”

  Alma wondered how Gustav would react to that.

  “Mrs. Untermyer told me you are also a composer,” she said, hoping Miss Curtis wouldn’t hear the plaintiveness in her voice.

  “Why, yes, ma’am, I certainly am. Shall I play you something, Mrs. Mahler?”

  Though they were in the midst of their luncheon with the white-gloved ladies delicately picking away at their quail on toast, Miss Curtis swept herself off to the piano to play a piece of haunting beauty. Alma had never heard anything like it anywhere—it sounded as radically innovative as anything Arnold Schoenberg had composed. Why wasn’t Natalie Curtis’s music being performed in Carnegie Hall? Perhaps, with these ladies’ intercession, it will be.

  “It’s drawn from an Indian theme,” Miss Curtis said, when she returned to the table to polish off her quail, which she ate with her hands. “A Pueblo corn-grinding song.”

  She was so confident, so assured, so absolutely convinced that her vocation could make a difference in the world. She doesn’t need to flirt with men at parties just to feel alive. Alma wished she could yank off her own skin and step inside Miss Curtis’s. This is what a woman might accomplish if she believes in herself. What I might have achieved had I only been brave enough to stand strong without a man.

  “We white people have it all wrong,” Miss Curtis told Alma. “We spend half our lives acquiring things, then spend the other half taking care of those things. But what good are things if we don’t have a chance to truly live?”

  Alma could only nod in agreement. The gulf between what she had and what she yearned for had never seemed greater. This August she would turn thirty. When, if ever, am I going to truly come alive?

  “A chief once told me that white people’s faces are lined with the tracks of hunted animals,” Miss Curtis said, while mopping up her plate with her bread roll.

  Alma shifted uncomfortably in her chair and thought of Gustav’s drawn and furious face when he had accused her of infidelity. Those furrows in his face that only deepened with each passing year of their marriage.

  “Mrs. Mahler, are you feeling all right?” Miss Curtis’s eyebrows lifted in concern. “You’ve gone awfully pale.”

  Alma felt a twinge in her belly, which she rested her hand on, the universal sign language of pregnancy—that mysterious and terrifying frontier into which the adventurous Miss Curtis had never set foot.

  At half past four, Alma returned to the Savoy, where Gucki was drawing pictures and Miss Turner the Younger, as Gustav liked to call her, was knitting for the new baby. The sight of those little booties made Alma wrench away. The twinge in her womb had turned into cramps. She thought she would split in two.

  Not even bothering to unpin her hat, Alma collapsed on her bed and lay on her side, hugging her knees to her belly. No, no, no. Surely this couldn’t be happening to her again. And yet she felt the gush between her legs that she knew to be blood. Would Gustav blame her for this, too? What’s wrong with me? It was as though her flesh had risen up in sullen defiance, rejecting her husband’s seed. I’m no longer capable of having babies. Only ghosts. Alma bit the corner of the pillow to keep herself from screaming while Maud Turner and poor frightened Gucki hovered in the doorway.

  This time Dr. Fraenkel gave Alma laudanum, which she found far more amenable than strychnine. Leaving the broken vessel of her body behind, her spirit roved free over the red Arizona desert where Miss Curtis sat recording Pueblo women singing as they ground their maize. That sound faded, and Alma’s own music surged through her brain like a tidal wave. She was unmarried and free. She could do anything. Clad in a virginal white dress, she performed her lieder at Carnegie Hall while the ladies from the New York Women’s Club cheered her on. Except it wasn’t enough for her to be single like Miss Curtis. I want it all. My music, love, sex, and children. What I want doesn’t exist.

  But after the laudanum had worn off, she reflected how Mrs. Seney Sheldon and Mrs. Untermyer were married with children and they were fiercely ambitious. They were giants, shaping the cultural landscape of America’s leading metropolis with their new Philharmonic. They held her husband’s professional future in their white-gloved hands. And they held up a mirror to her weakness. To how she had given away every last scrap of her power.

  After a thorough and excruciating examination, Dr. Fraenkel proclaimed that there was nothing physically wrong with Alma that prevented her from carrying a pregnancy to term.

  “I suspect the origins of your wife’s recurring spontaneous abortions lie in hysteria,” the doctor proclaimed to Gustav in the next room while Alma lay in bed and grimaced at the ceiling. She thought her shame would completely obliterate her.

  In terms of physical health, Alma recovered soon enough. But she felt like an empty shell on two legs. Despair stuck to her like pitch. The utter hopelessness. No one had ever warned her that grief is cumulative. That loss after loss—first Putzi and then two miscarriages—would snowball into an impossible weight that would crush her. Smash her bones to splinters. Any little thing could set her off in floods of tears. The sight of a pregnant woman with that beautiful glow on her face. Or if Gustav smiled or spoke warmly to Maud, who was blameless of any indecency.

  Unlike Putzi’s death, the miscarriages were invisible losses, which made them all the harder to bear. No funeral cortege or mourning garb marked her as bereaved so that others might be extra gentle with her. No, Gustav expected her to carry out her duties as before, attending his performances and guarding his precious privacy. Dashing outside to bribe some organ grinder to go away lest the noise disturb her husband. It had become too much. She could no longer keep up the façade of holding it all together. For just as he had refused to talk about Putzi’s death, he never spoke to her about her miscarriages. Yet his unspoken blame thickened the air between them. He seemed to think that these failures of hers—spontaneous abortions!—were something appalling that must be hidden away like her blood-soaked nightgown.

  But Natalie Curtis was kindness itself, stopping by to visit every afternoon with cakes and cornbread she had baked herself. The blessed woman didn’t seem the least bit fazed by Alma’s despondency.

  “Don’t blame yourself, Alma,” she said. “Half the married ladies I know have had at least one miscarriage. Probably your own mother, too.”

  Her eyes filling, Alma nodded, remembering when Mama had confessed about losing a baby before becoming pregnant with Maria. Natalie’s solicitude was as fortifying as her golden cornbread spread with thick sweet butter and honey. At long last, Alma had a true friend in this country. A confidante like no other.

  To distract Alma from her grief, Natalie played Hopi music and her own compositions on the piano. Then one day, when Gustav was out, Alma played four of her songs for Natalie. The two of them sang in harmony.

  “Why did you stop composing? These are good enough to be performed at Carnegie Hall.”

  “My husband required it,” Alma said under her breath, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

  Natalie seemed absolutely livid. “If any man tried to take my music away from me, why I’d—” She glanced at Gucki watching them from the open doorway and stopped short. “I can’t say what I’d do in front of an impressionable child because it involves too many cuss words. But honestly, Alma, what’s stopping you? What can he do if you just compose anyway? Chop off your hands?”

  Alma could only laugh drily and change the subject. What could a free spirit like Natalie understand of marital sacrifice? Of Gustav’s coldness?

  After Natalie left, Alma went to Gustav’s desk to read his volume of Novalis’s poetry. I will find one perfect poem and set it to music. Just one song. Perhaps this would keep her from tipping off the edge of despair. Instead, she came across an unfinished letter written in her husband’s hand. She would have ignored it
had she not seen her own name. It was addressed to her stepfather.

  Alma is very well. About her present state she has doubtlessly written to you herself. She has been relieved of her burden. But this time she actually regrets it.

  For a long moment, she couldn’t breathe. Black stars swam before her eyes. His words sank in slowly, as insidious as poison. How could he even think she had been glad to miscarry? How could he misread her and blame her so? To think he could be this heartless. Was he blind and deaf to her inner torment? Not even Natalie’s compassion could ease this pain.

  Alma crumpled at her husband’s desk and began to write a letter. Mama, help me. I can’t go on.

  37

  It was simply no good that Gustav Mahler’s wife should be seen to suffer from frequent bouts of nervous debilitation. Mama sailed to New York to take charge of the household until it was time for Alma and her family to return to Europe. At least Alma didn’t have to explain her grief to her mother, who knew firsthand what an awful thing a miscarriage is.

  “You must devote the summer to your recovery,” Mama said. “But try to forgive Gustav for his blunderings. What do men understand of such things?”

  A rest cure was in order, but Alma had to bide her time. First, they stopped in Paris, where Gustav, at Carl’s behest, sat ten fitful, fidgeting days for Auguste Rodin, who sculpted his bust in bronze—comparing Gustav’s visage to Mozart’s, no less. Then it was off to Trenkerhof in the High Puster Valley. Only after installing her husband in their summer home and making certain everything was in order could Alma board the train to the sanatorium. Gustav escorted her, for by now her nerves were so shattered that he didn’t seem to trust her to make the journey alone. She wept in open daylight and could scarcely sleep.

  After the four-hour rail journey, they arrived at Löweneck, a thermal spa nestled in the Alps just west of Trento. Mama had arranged for Alma to spend four weeks here. What better place for a nerve-sick woman to revive her spirits? Empress Elisabeth had taken the waters here, as had the king of Belgium. This elegant clinic was enclosed by fifteen hectares of parkland graced with Caucasian spruces, gingkoes, and North American maple trees. Gucki and Miss Turner would be staying here as well. Gustav, after all, needed his solitude to work unburdened by domestic responsibilities.

  “Be a good girl and do as the doctors say,” he told Alma, in what sounded like forced good cheer. They stood before the white spa hotel with its geranium-bedecked wrought-iron balconies. “Absolutely no coffee or alcohol. You must follow the regime for at least two weeks before you’ll see any benefit.”

  Her husband seemed to believe that if only she adhered to a life as ascetic as his own all her ills would simply melt away. Through her tears, she searched his eyes for some spark of warmth to melt through the icy wall that had reared up between them. But even when he kissed her good-bye, she felt he wasn’t truly present with her. Perhaps her nerve sickness had left him at wit’s end and he no longer knew what to do with her. His eyes were distant and distracted, as though he heard not her voice but the notes of a new symphony bubbling up inside him. He seemed itching to be away from this sanatorium and back in his composing hut.

  “I’ll write to you every day, Almscherl,” he promised. After hugging and kissing their daughter, he rushed to catch his train.

  Alma submitted to the diet of lettuce and buttermilk. Rising at dawn, she dressed in the regulation linen shift before walking barefoot for an hour through the gardens while the grass was still chilly and wet with dew. She performed calisthenics. Afterward, still in her shift, she repaired to the baths where the Bademeister hosed her with hot and cold water. She drank liters of the Heilwasser with its high arsenic and iron content that the doctors swore was therapeutic. In the afternoon, she spent time with her daughter and admired Gucki’s drawings. Five-year-old Gucki was still innocent enough to believe that a girl’s talent mattered in this world.

  The days with their fixed routines were bearable, but evenings after dinner were an agony. That was when Alma’s darkest thoughts came home to roost like a murder of sooty crows. Left on her own without distraction, she could only brood on Gustav’s seeming indifference to her pain. All her wasted creative potential. I gave up my music for this?

  Standing listlessly on her balcony, Alma looked down at the fashionable people gathered in the garden below. In their evening dress, they glittered beneath the Chinese lanterns. Their laughter and gaiety sank knives into her heart. To see those carefree Viennese and Milanese, one might think this so-called rest cure was a lark, an excuse for bored countesses to flirt with young bankers. To enjoy a Liebelei, a lighthearted flirtation or even a full-blown love affair. Alma had never felt more sexless. Unloved and unlovable. As dried up as a dead leaf. After discovering Gustav’s letter to Carl about her supposed abortions, she had taken to locking her husband out of her bedroom. Another miscarriage would kill me. Yet, despite all this, she would have fallen straight into Gustav’s arms if only he could show her that he still cherished her.

  None of her doctors seemed capable of understanding her discontent. On the surface, Gustav was as dutiful a husband as any woman could ask for. True to his word, he wrote to her every day, but his letters discussed abstract topics in his schoolmasterly tone, as though she were not his wife but his backward pupil. About her current malaise he had written:

  The meaning, my dear Almschi, of all that has happened to you, of all that has been laid on you, is a necessity for the growth of the soul and the forging of the personality.

  As if he believed that she, at the age of nearly thirty, still did not possess a fully formed personality, much less a soul. He sat in judgment of her like an Old Testament patriarch.

  Why such a sad letter today, Almschi? You complain of being lonely, but Gucki is with you and Miss Turner. You’re surrounded by people. Just think of my solitary existence here, day in and day out.

  Even at this, her lowest ebb, he penned her letter after letter devoid of any sense of intimacy or tenderness. They could have been written by anyone.

  Only when Alma stopped replying did Gustav become worried enough to announce that he was coming to visit.

  When he stepped off the train, she failed to recognize him. He had gone to the barber but had been too absorbed in his newspaper to pay attention to what the barber was doing. As a result, his beautiful black hair that she so loved was shorn as close as a convict’s. His strange appearance frightened their daughter, who burst into tears. To prove he was still her papa, Gustav sang to Gucki and covered her in kisses.

  Bad haircut notwithstanding, Gustav seemed jovial and relaxed. “Almschi, I’ve had a most productive few weeks. I finished editing Das Lied von der Erde and found a publisher for the Eighth Symphony. Except I couldn’t manage to start work on anything new.”

  As it transpired, he refused to even set foot in his composing hut until Alma returned.

  “It’s simply no good, Almschi, without you there to stand guard. The farm apprentices keep leaping over my fence and banging on the windows if I try to work in there. They even let the baby pigs and goats loose outside my hut. Can you imagine trying to compose in that racket?”

  Of Alma’s own emotional state, he made no inquiry. Indeed, his outburst left her feeling as though her weeks at the sanatorium were a selfish indulgence. He needed her to get on with his work, and if this need wasn’t exactly the love and attention she so craved, at least it was better than his former chilliness.

  Since the spa didn’t seem to be doing her much good and since Gucki had developed diarrhea from the ghastly diet, Alma packed her things. She, Gucki, and Miss Turner accompanied Gustav on the train to their summer home.

  The first morning Alma was back at Trenkerhof, Gustav joyfully retreated to his composing hut. As though her very presence filled him with inspiration and optimism, he made swift progress on his new Ninth Symphony. His composing, in turn, seemed to rejuvenate him and lend him renewed physical confidence. They went on hikes together once mor
e, up those meadows thick with monkshood and lady’s mantle. Alma in her broad-brimmed hat, her walking stick in hand to negotiate the steeply twisting stony trails. Gustav with his woolen jacket slung over his walking cane that he carried jauntily over his shoulder. He glowed with an almost boyish animation.

  “Almschi, I’m going to include a tuba fart in my Ländler movement. My secret revenge on those boneheaded farmhands!”

  She laughed while trying to ignore the pang inside—her unhealed loneliness and hurt. Her longing for him to open his eyes and truly see her. At least here at his side I have a purpose, she tried to console herself. A vocation of sorts. The custodian of her husband’s artistic solitude.

  38

  In autumn it was back to America, where Gustav would embark on his first season as director of the New York Philharmonic. The Atlantic crossing was exceptionally stormy. While her seasick husband locked himself in his cabin, Alma tended their seasick daughter. Yet as ill as Gustav had been on the ship, when they arrived in New York on October 20, he plunged straight into rehearsals of Beethoven’s Eroica, which was to premiere on November 4.

  To live in New York was to live life twice as fast as in the Old World. The stately Viennese waltz was swept aside for the frenetic, syncopated rhythms of ragtime. Alma worried how Gustav’s workload would affect his heart, though he insisted he was up to the challenge. For wasn’t having his own orchestra a dream come true?

  While Gustav was rehearsing, Alma cut newspaper clippings of the reviews singing his praises. New York throbbed with excitement about the Philharmonic and Gustav Mahler, Europe’s most prestigious conductor. She smiled at the poetic justice that even after Toscanini had connived to drive her husband away from the Metropolitan Opera Gustav effortlessly outshone his rival. The critics crowed how Gustav’s brilliance would elevate the Philharmonic to dizzying heights. At last, New York would have an orchestra to rival the renowned Boston Symphony.