Ecstasy

by Mary Sharratt

  Such was her husband’s celebrity that Alma couldn’t even walk across the Savoy lobby without being accosted by at least one breathless admirer of Gustav’s. A timid lady even begged Alma for her autograph. Every day brought a flood of cards and letters from their American friends and acquaintances. To be foreign in this country was not just to be other but also exotic and exalted. Sought after. Each afternoon, Alma sorted through the pile of invitations to parties and receptions, trying to select the ones that would be the most enchanting or the most impolitic to refuse.

  The president of the New York Philharmonic invited them to dinner. This being America, the president was a woman—Gustav’s great patron, Mrs. Mary Seney Sheldon.

  Arriving at their hostess’s Murray Hill mansion, Alma and Gustav ascended the oval staircase to the piano nobile, the noble floor, with its grand dining room. Walls of veined Cipollino marble imported from Switzerland were set off with mosaics of dolphins and nereids. Instead of a chandelier, three great lamps with alabaster shades hung from antique brass chains. On one end of the room was a fireplace big enough to roast an ox in. On the other end was a bow-shaped minstrels’ gallery where a brass quintet played—Gustav raised his eyebrows at this bit of American ostentation. The ceiling boasted a fresco of Ulysses defying Circe.

  Dinner parties started early in America. Alma was shown to her seat at precisely seven fifteen. When a liveried manservant came to fill the Waterford crystal goblets, he poured lemon cordial instead of wine. A woman of good Methodist stock, Mrs. Seney Sheldon shunned alcohol.

  “Let’s lift our glasses to Mr. Mahler,” their hostess said, shimmering in her sapphire blue gown and diamond collier. “Who has promised to build the greatest orchestra America has ever known!”

  No more Herr Direktor then, Alma thought, glancing surreptitiously at her husband to gauge his reaction. Just plain Mr. Mahler. No differently addressed than a cab driver or shopkeeper.

  So many eminent guests were present, Alma didn’t know where to look. Seated across from her was Sara Delano Roosevelt, a cousin of the former president’s, and farther down the table were her son, Franklin, and his wife, Eleanor, who was deep in conversation with Natalie Curtis. How Alma wished she was sitting close enough to join their discussion. Instead, she exchanged small talk with her host, Mr. George Rumsey Sheldon, a banker. It was fortunate that Otto Kahn was sitting beside Alma and entertained her with pithy asides in German.

  “Sheldon’s a bigwig in the Republican Party,” Kahn whispered. “That’s why the Roosevelts are so cozy with him. He helped get their cousin elected.”

  “Mrs. Mahler, you and your husband must visit the family estate in Oyster Bay,” Sara Roosevelt said. “We would love to show you around.”

  “It would be a great honor to meet the former president,” Alma said, delighted at the prospect.

  “I’m afraid Teddy’s off in Africa at the moment,” the lady said. “Big-game hunting, don’t you know.”

  Everyone turned at the sound of Mrs. Seney Sheldon tapping on her water glass. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Mahler will now discuss his upcoming program for our beloved Philharmonic.” Mrs. Seney Sheldon spoke of the orchestra with a possessive pride that was almost maternal. Alma understood that their hostess traced her ancestry back to the American Revolution. The daughter of a great philanthropist who had founded Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, Mrs. Seney Sheldon seemed intent on leaving behind her own legacy of enduring cultural significance.

  All eyes were on Gustav, who rose from his chair to address the twenty-odd guests seated at the table. Alma watched him explain how the forty-seven concerts he would direct that season would be divided into four categories. A Beethoven cycle. Subscription concerts for their dedicated supporters. Popular concerts on Sunday afternoons to draw in larger crowds. And a series of ambitious “historical” concerts, highlighting the work of obscure and seldom-performed eighteenth-century composers such as Händel. The repertoire would be wide-ranging, featuring everything from Schubert and Tchaikovsky to startlingly modern works, including Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche.

  “I will be introducing new composers never before performed in New York, such as Claude Debussy,” Gustav said. “The purpose of the Philharmonic is not just to entertain but also to educate.”

  Alma covertly scanned the polite but mildly skeptical faces. Everyone present possessed a degree of intellectual sophistication—nearly every man at the table had studied at either Harvard or Yale. It looked as though they didn’t believe they required further edification.

  “But Mr. Mahler,” one of the bankers said. “What if the public doesn’t want to pay good money to listen to some unknown oratorio by an obscure composer? If we lose too much money, this project will fail.”

  “Part of our purpose is to take artistic risks,” Mrs. Seney Sheldon said, coming to Gustav’s rescue. “New York has never seen anything like this.”

  “Mr. Mahler, what’s your opinion of American music?” Natalie asked. “Some European composers, such as your Claude Debussy, have been influenced by ragtime. Would you ever consider including our music in your repertoire?”

  Had Gustav ever dreamed he would be interrogated by a female ethnomusicologist, Alma wondered. Natalie’s challenge was so passionate and earnest, it reminded Alma of when she herself had confronted Gustav all those years ago at Berta Zuckerkandl’s party, demanding to know why the Herr Direktor had given Alex’s ballet such short shrift. With her, Gustav had been disarmingly erudite and charming. But obliged to reply to Natalie in English, Gustav was at his most stilted.

  “My dear Miss Curtis, I do not think this Negro idiom you call ragtime is something for Carnegie Hall. All cultures must take their time to evolve. It took Northern Europe a thousand years to evolve from barbarism to civilization. So I think it is fair to say that your ragtime has not evolved to the degree of European classical music even though some composers, such as Debussy and Satie, have experimented with primitive African influences.”

  Natalie’s face turned as stony as the marble walls. It looked as though she was on the brink of some stinging reply but, out of respect for Mrs. Seney Sheldon, decided to hold her tongue. Alma, her face burning, stared at the uneaten beef Wellington on her plate. The only one to break the icy silence that followed was Otto Kahn.

  “My wife and I think ragtime is just swell, don’t we, Addie? We even dance the cakewalk on occasion. Are you calling us primitive, Gustav?” Kahn laughed warmly, as though to wash away any lingering hostility. “No, of course, you didn’t really mean that. You’re just understandably partial to the great music of Europe that you know best, which we’re all going to enjoy during this concert season. To Mrs. Seney Sheldon and Gustav Mahler!” He raised his glass of lemonade. “To the New York Philharmonic!”

  After dinner, the men adjourned to the smoking room while the ladies gathered in the salon, another American peculiarity. While the maid served Chinese tea in hand-painted porcelain cups, the ladies’ eyes slid uncomfortably past Alma as though they could not quite get over her husband’s faux pas. Natalie, in particular, looked as grim as an executioner.

  “Alma Maria, would you care to join me in the garden for a cigarette?” she asked.

  “I don’t smoke,” said Alma.

  Natalie, however, was already propelling her out the French doors into the moonlit garden dripping in ivy. Her friend did not, in fact, light a cigarette, but from within her embroidered silk purse produced a hip flask. “I think we could both do with a shot of something stronger than lemonade. You first.”

  Alma regarded the leather-bound flask with some trepidation before raising it to her lips. It burned all the way down her gullet and brought tears to her eyes.

  “Arizona firewater,” Natalie said, with some satisfaction. “Out West I used it for disinfecting rattlesnake bites.” She took a long slug before hiding it in her purse again. “Now don’t get me wrong, Alma. I’m awfully fond of you and I wish your husband all the bes
t, but he has to remember that this isn’t the Old World anymore. He has to play to the audience, not talk down to them. Mrs. Seney Sheldon raised money from the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Carnegies for this orchestra. Her donors don’t want to be lectured on the inferiority of the American way.”

  Alma endeavored to speak in Gustav’s defense but was only just recovering her powers of speech from the Arizona firewater. “In Vienna my husband had absolute authority over his repertoire. Not even the emperor told him what to do.”

  But she stopped herself from trying to explain that Gustav aimed to raise both the Philharmonic and his American audience to his level—just as he had attempted to raise her to his level. As Natalie had so bluntly pointed out, Americans did not take kindly to being belittled and patronized.

  Natalie was so daring and resourceful. To think she had once been audacious enough to grab the ear of President Roosevelt and make him change the law to help the Indians whose rights she championed. By comparison, Alma felt like a drudge. A limp rag, wringing her hands and meekly defending her husband. What must it be like to feel strong? A force to be reckoned with? To speak my mind without fear.

  “Just tell him to watch his step,” Natalie said, in a gentler tone. “He doesn’t want to fall out of favor with Mrs. Seney Sheldon.”

  “Will I see you at the Women’s Club?” Alma asked, following her friend back into the salon. “You must come to the Savoy for tea. I’ve missed our chats.”

  Natalie had been terribly busy this winter, and Alma hadn’t seen nearly as much of her as she wished.

  “I’ll keep tomorrow free just for you, Alma. But then I’m going away.” Natalie cracked a grin. “You can tell Mr. Mahler I’m off to Virginia to study black music.”

  Mrs. Seney Sheldon’s dinner party was over by nine fifteen. No wonder Americans are so productive, Alma reflected. Their social life consisted of dry parties that ended early enough to insure everyone could be in bed by ten.

  Gustav, however, was in a foul mood during the cab ride back to the Savoy. “Of all the indignities,” he said. “Having to explain myself to a committee of women.”

  “Be careful, Gustav. Women are powerful in this country. You must take them seriously.” Alma spoke softly and her voice shook.

  But when had Gustav ever encountered women like Mary Seney Sheldon and Natalie Curtis? Back in Vienna, not even Berta Zuckerkandl had wielded that kind of influence. Mrs. Seney Sheldon and Mrs. Untermyer were living proof that even married women with children could be ambitious without apology in this country. Yet Gustav only seemed to view them as an aberration. And this is precisely why he demanded I give up composing, Alma thought, with a sickening lurch. Not because she wasn’t talented but because he regarded ambition and independence as unacceptable for any female. He would never recognize women as truly talented except for the female singers who were his protégées and served to showcase his brilliance.

  But I was never an aberration, she thought, fighting back her tears as she looked out the cab window at the darkened city streets. Never abnormal. It’s my life that’s an aberration. It had been so much easier to resign herself to her allotted role in Austria because there it was every woman’s lot, with a few rare exceptions—spinsters like Ilse Conrat who were pitied as the third sex. But the women of New York had revealed to her how shackled she was. How she longed to break free, but she didn’t know how. She feared she would only keep coming up against Gustav’s brick wall.

  A pall descended on her, like a black curtain blowing over her face.

  39

  “Alma, you don’t look well,” Mama whispered. “You’re not expecting again, are you?”

  Alma forced a smile and shook her head. She and her mother sat with Sophie Clemenceau in her private balcony in the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, where Gustav was directing the French premiere of his Second Symphony. This was meant to be a moment of triumph for him. Yesterday Sophie Clemenceau had hosted a luncheon in Gustav’s honor with none other than Claude Debussy, whose music Gustav had championed in New York. But the French composer had been cold and aloof to both him and Alma.

  Training her opera glasses on Debussy, Alma watched him yawn and dig out his pocket watch as though he could hardly wait for the concert to be over. As for the rest of the audience, Gustav’s soaring symphony of transfiguration appeared mere background music for the real drama at hand. Everyone seemed to be gawking at the Countess Greffulhe, who at the age of nearly fifty was still Paris’s reigning beauty. Her diamond tiara scintillating in her lustrous dark curls, she appeared to be having a steamy tête-à-tête with the handsome young Don Perosi, a Vatican envoy and composer of sacred music. Their faces were so close, they almost appeared to be kissing. A titter arose at the sheer scandal of it all. Had Gustav any clue of what was transpiring behind his back, he would have thrown down his baton in despair.

  But even the countess and her priest were upstaged when Debussy walked out in the middle of the second movement.

  “Mahler—quel malheur!” Debussy said, in a voice that could be heard through the concert hall. “Too Schubertian. Too Slavic. Too Viennese.”

  He might as well have said too Jewish.

  Alma saw Gustav’s back stiffen. Still, he carried on conducting, as though struggling to pretend that he hadn’t just been humiliated and condemned by France’s foremost composer.

  Gustav was in a bitter mood when they traveled on to Rome, where he would direct three concerts with the orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, one of the oldest musical institutions in Europe. Unfortunately, the best players had left for a concert tour of South America, leaving only the second-rate musicians behind.

  Alma watched Gustav and the orchestra rehearse his own Bach Suite in the circular Augusteo Concert Hall, newly built on the ancient site of Emperor Augustus’s mausoleum. The building’s graceful art nouveau curves and magnificent acoustics merely served to underline the orchestra’s incompetence—it sounded as if everyone was playing in a different key. She had never heard a professional orchestra perform so poorly.

  Though still April, it was sweltering. The musician’s faces glistened with sweat. Gustav’s was boiling red—a thing that made Alma brace herself. If he was renowned for being a severe taskmaster with his musicians, he rarely lost his self-control. But he was doing so now. Italian-German dictionary in hand, he railed at them, his insults echoing like gunfire. Stupidita! Indolenza! She trembled, as though those words were aimed at her. But the musicians, rather than being suitably chastened, stalked away in contempt, leaving Gustav and Alma alone in the auditorium. She could hardly look at her husband, hardly knew what to say that wouldn’t bring his wrath down on her. How are you going to direct three concerts with these people now that you’ve made them your enemies?

  As Alma could have predicted, the two subsequent performances were abysmal, the worst Gustav had ever conducted in his entire career. This time it was more than a few audience members who walked out. To Alma’s alarm, Gustav canceled the third concert altogether.

  “But you can’t just break your contract,” she said. “If they hear about this in Vienna, it will be all over the papers. Your critics will make a meal of this! Gustav, can’t you see this through? Just one more concert. Maybe be kind and try to win them over?” She addressed him as if she were as bold and confident as Natalie Curtis.

  She and Gustav were, after all, living from one temporary contract to the next. They no longer possessed a home but divided their peripatetic existence between hotels and their rented summerhouse. What if Gustav, with his impossibly high standards, burned all his bridges and alienated everyone? What if he made himself deathly ill from his own rage?

  “Alma, how can you even presume to tell me what to do?” he demanded, his anger enough to scorch her. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to scratch out a living directing one bad orchestra after the other?”

  He laid into her as though he held her responsible for the burden of supporting a family and all its
associated travails.

  She wept helplessly. “Why do you have to be so hard on people? Maybe they’re not stupid or indolent. Maybe they’re just afraid of you.”

  He turned away and announced they would be taking the first train to Vienna in the morning. Hadn’t she better sort out the tickets and telegram her mother with their arrival time?

  It was mercilessly hot even at night. After tossing for hours in her Roman hotel bed, Alma had finally fallen asleep. She dreamed of coolness and reprieve. A silver waterfall gushing down a fern grotto, the liquid collecting in a rippling green pool. Pure water lapping over her feet and ankles.

  Something hot and sticky seized hold of her and shoved her thighs apart. Hands clutched at her breasts. She awoke with a start to find Gustav on top of her, attempting to make love to her—if it could even be called that. She felt no love from him at all. No tenderness. Just this businesslike grappling and thrusting as though she were some anonymous whore he was using to service his urges. When he was finished, she shoved him off of her, pulled the bedsheet over her head, and howled like a beaten dog.

  “Almschi, why are you behaving like this? I’m your husband. We have to be up anyway. The train leaves in an hour.”

  Two days later Alma was back at the Hohe Warte. She locked herself in her girlhood bedroom and refused to come out.

  Her mad sister Gretl was the sane one now, reasonable and calm in her crisply ironed white dress. She carried in a tray of food adorned with a small vase of fragrant white lilacs. White—the color meant to calm the hysterical. It was past three o’clock in the afternoon, and Alma was still lying in her old bed where she had once dreamed of becoming a somebody. A composer.