Ecstasy

by Mary Sharratt

  They held each other, both of them in tears.

  Veni Creator Spiritus. The creative spirit swelled inside Alma as it hadn’t since she was a girl. In his schoolmasterly way, Gustav was just as strict about her composing as he had been about her giving up her music nine years earlier. He insisted that she work on her songs for hours each day. When he was off in his composing hut, she sat at the piano in the main house and revised her lieder. The five songs Alma had chosen to polish and perfect were “Laue Sommernacht,” “In meines Vaters Garten,” “Bei dir ist es traut,” “Die stille Stadt,” and “Ich wandle unter Blumen.”

  My life’s most ardent desire has become clear again, she wrote to Walter. To compose! I can scarcely believe such happiness can exist!

  Why can’t I give up Walter? Alma asked herself with a guilty twinge, now that Gustav was taking such pains to prove his love for her. Surely any decent woman would put an end to this clandestine correspondence. Yet, for all her joy and excitement to have Gustav supporting her music at last, a lingering fear remained. What if Gustav’s benevolence was short-lived? How could she go on if he reverted to his old ways? Like a woman who had nearly drowned once before, Alma refused to let go of Walter, her secret lifeline.

  After this summer’s storm, no man could ever possess her again. Lilith blazed inside her, unrepentant. Fueled by her forbidden fire, Alma began to write new songs, including a setting of Richard Dehmel’s poem “Ansturm.” This was her ode to the tempest that had shaken her marriage and left a completely new existence in its wake. Her love song and apologia to Gustav.

  O don’t be angry with me if my desire

  bursts darkly out of its bounds;

  I fear it may consume us

  unless it gets out into the light.

  You know of my inner surgings,

  and when the tides crash on the shore,

  stranding high over your peace,

  you tremble, but not in rage.

  43

  In September, while Gustav was in Munich for the final rehearsals of his Eighth Symphony, Alma and Gucki stayed with Mama in Vienna. On this golden afternoon, Miss Turner took Gucki and ten-year-old Maria to the amusement park on Prater Island. With Carl and the children out of the house, Mama invited Walter Gropius to tea.

  Seeing her lover for the first time since they had parted in July left Alma so jittery she could scarcely hold her teacup without spilling on herself. Walter had to only look into her eyes to reawaken her longing for him. Her desire continued to burst darkly out of its bounds. As for Mama, she had taken a shine to Walter and he to her. It was Mama’s explicit benediction that had enabled their affair to go on.

  “One thing is certain,” Mama said, as Walter stirred sugar into his tea. “There must be no scandal. Nothing to bring shame on Gustav—that’s out of the question. So what to do? You love my daughter. You and Alma must be strong and disciplined. And patient. I firmly believe the love you two share will outlast everything else. You have a very beautiful goal before you.”

  Walter nodded reverently. Mama rose from the table, patted his shoulder, and then left him and Alma alone. When she closed the door behind her with a gentle click, Alma and Walter sprang into each other’s arms.

  “How can we bear to wait?” Walter gripped her tightly. “Do you still love me as much as before?”

  “Can’t you tell from my letters?” Alma kissed him until she ached. She wanted to make love with him here and now—right on her mother’s velvet sofa. Of course, she would do no such thing. “I love you every bit as much as I did in Tobelbad.”

  “Except you’ve changed since Tobelbad.” He traced every curve of her face. “You look so happy. Complete.”

  “I’m composing again!” She sought to infect him with her glee. “My life has a purpose.”

  Walter appeared downcast. “Sometimes I fear your love for me is just a diversion. You used me to win back your husband.”

  “You begrudge me my husband’s affection?” Alma frowned and pulled away. “Do you expect me to live for passion alone, like Anna Karenina? I have a family to think of. Besides, aren’t you very young to burden yourself with a wife and another man’s child? I fear if I clung to you too tightly, you’d run away.”

  “Take me seriously.” He wrapped his arms around her once more, pulling her body to his.

  “I do.” She kissed him long and hard. “Why else would I be meeting you here? Risking so much? Why else would Mama be helping us?”

  “I’m burning for you,” he whispered into her hair. “Burning, Alma.”

  They fell on the sofa and kissed until Alma thought their combined yearning would set them both on fire.

  “Your husband knows, doesn’t he?” Walter asked her later, when they had to pull themselves apart for fear of going too far in Mama’s pristine parlor with Carl’s paintings staring down at them from every wall. “You and he have an understanding, is that what it is? As long as you remain discreet, as long as you don’t leave him, he’ll look the other way?”

  The thought that Gustav knew stunned Alma. “Perhaps he does know,” she said quietly, staring down at her hands in her lap. “Perhaps his soul is bigger than yours or mine could ever be.”

  She jerked at the sound of Mama’s brisk knock on the door. “Alma, the children are back.”

  “Yes, Mama,” she called, before pressing her face to Walter’s heart. “We must say good-bye for now.”

  “Will I see you again before you leave for New York?” He clung to her.

  “Are you coming to Munich for Gustav’s concert?”

  He nodded. “I’m staying at the Hotel Regina.”

  “I’ll try to meet you in back of the hotel, but only to talk. Trust me?” She kissed him before letting him go.

  On the train to Munich the next morning, Alma mulled over Walter’s words. How much did Gustav know or suspect? When Miss Turner got up to stretch her legs and Gucki and Maria were happily chattering to each other, Alma turned to her mother.

  “Did Papa know about you and Carl?” she asked. For now she understood that the dark rumors of her mother’s past affairs were true.

  Mama’s face went bright pink. “Yes,” she said, looking out of the window with an air of contemplation. “It was never discussed, you understand. But he knew and accepted it. At least Carl was his friend and student, someone he loved and trusted.” Mama blushed again, as though lost in memories of her tangled past.

  Back in those days, Mama would have been exactly the same age as Alma was now. A woman with a genius husband, a younger lover, and two daughters. How had her mother managed to keep up the appearance of utter bourgeois respectability? Was it hypocrisy on Mama’s part, as Alma had suspected in her younger days? Or was it a deep emotional honesty? Her mother, more than anyone, knew what it meant to love two men.

  “Love and marriage,” Mama said, still staring out the window. “It’s so much more complicated than people realize.”

  Alma remembered herself just before her thirteenth birthday. She stood with her father on the island of Sylt only weeks before he died of appendicitis. All these years later, she could still see his face, his play of moods. Love, sadness, and peace had seemed to exude from him simultaneously. Never had she felt so close to him, beside him on the seashore in late August while he taught her to see the world with a painter’s vision. To recognize all the gradations of color. Every subtle shade and tone. After Papa opened Alma’s eyes, nothing could ever be black-and-white again.

  When Gustav met them at Munich Hauptbahnhof, Alma was troubled to see how thin he looked, a feverish brightness in his eyes. “Gustl, are you ill? Have you been working too hard? If only I’d been here to look after you.”

  “It’s only a sore throat. Nothing to be alarmed about. Eh, Gucki?” As if to prove he was fit for duty, Gustav lifted their six-year-old daughter in the air until she giggled helplessly, as besotted with her father as Alma had once been with hers.

  Gustav had reserved a suite for them at the
Grand Hotel Continental. He opened the door with a flourish. There were pink roses awaiting Mama and Gucki in their rooms, and scarlet roses in his and Alma’s room.

  “It smells like paradise,” Alma said, as she danced around with him. “The Garden of Eden.”

  Gustav led her to the desk where something far more precious than roses awaited her: the newly published score of his Eighth Symphony, opened to the dedication page.

  For my beloved wife, Alma Maria

  “Gustav!” Alma turned to kiss him.

  “There’s something more,” he said. “Look, Almschi.”

  Beside his massive score was a much slimmer one bearing the same title page design—a dreamy Jugendstil illustration of a laurel-crowned maiden playing a lyre.

  Five Songs by Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler

  for Voice & Piano

  Alma was so elated, she thought she would float off over the rooftops of Munich. I am a real composer, she thought, with a shiver of triumph.

  “Gustav, I have you to thank. For everything.”

  They tumbled down on the bed and held each other, his tenderness enveloping both of them in a golden cloud. For this was the crux of the mystery of their shared awakening. Gustav loved her, truly loved her. Loved Lilith more than he had ever cared for Eve. They were happier together than they had ever been. Men say they want Eve, say they want Holy Mary, while secretly it’s Lilith they crave. They follow her deep into the labyrinth. Lilith with her wings and searing kisses. Her wild edge and dark undercurrent. This, her freedom in body and mind, that drove her to compose again. All that passion and creative stirring welled up from the same forbidden place, that velvet blackness between her thighs, the ecstasy that seized her in their lovemaking, carrying her and Gustav to heaven.

  Nearly insensible with anticipation, Alma sat in the director’s box with Mama and Gucki. Her daughter was bouncing on her seat in excitement—this was the first time Gucki had been allowed to attend one of her papa’s evening concerts.

  The Neue Musik-Festhalle was a starkly modern edifice of glass, steel, and concrete built to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the founding of Munich. Every one of the three thousand seats was occupied. In honor of this momentous occasion, Alma was wearing the diamond tiara Gustav had given her for her birthday two weeks ago.

  Dignitaries, critics, and intellectuals had poured in from every corner of Europe to attend this premiere of Gustav’s Eighth Symphony. Sophie Clemenceau and the composer Camille Saint-Saëns had come from Paris. Richard Wagner’s son, Siegfried, was here, not to mention Richard Strauss. Alex had come from Vienna, as had Berta Zuckerkandl, Anna von Mildenburg, Alfred Roller, and Justine and Arnold Rosé. The writers Arthur Schnitzler and Thomas Mann were also in attendance.

  And there, across the auditorium, was Walter staring back at Alma until she flushed and had to hide her face in her program. Yesterday they had met for a fleeting stroll, the two of them stammering to each other with the awkwardness of infatuated children. Deeper intimacies she couldn’t risk. All of Munich was talking about her husband. Any false step of hers would be noted and gossiped about until she died of infamy.

  Though Gustav had yet to appear, all eyes were on the stage. Never had Alma seen such a vast assembly of musicians. An orchestra of 170 was arranged in ascending tiers rising toward the organ gallery. Eight solo vocalists were positioned behind them. Three choirs totalling 850 singers, including 350 young children, squeezed into the remaining space to the left and right of the orchestra. Little wonder Gustav had exhausted himself with the rehearsals.

  An electric charge passed through the auditorium when Gustav entered through a side door. The audience rose to their feet when they saw him climb the high podium. When he faced the crowd, there was a stupendous silence that was an even deeper homage than the standing ovation that followed. Through it all Gustav stood motionless. A monolith.

  Only when it was quiet again, so quiet that Alma could hear her heartbeat, did Gustav turn and signal the choirs to stand. He lifted his baton, paused, then brought it down, unleashing a thunderous organ chord. One bar later, the five hundred voices of the double adult choir sang “Veni Creator Spiritus.” Alma leaned forward to see her husband transform those waves of sound into fountains of light.

  This segued fluidly into the second part of the symphony—the final scene of Goethe’s Faust, Part Two. Ancient Latin church music gave way to secular German poetry, Gustav’s mystical vision uniting the two disparate parts into a transcendent whole. Goethe’s Faust sold his soul to the devil. Yet in this climactic scene, he gained redemption through the agency of the Feminine Divine.

  “Virgin, Mother, Queen,” Faust sang in his guise of Doctor Marianus. “Goddess, be gracious.”

  “Look up!” the choir sang.

  Slowly and quietly, the Chorus Mysticus began, almost in a hush, taking its time to build inexorably into a long crescendo before mounting into a heart-stopping triple-forte climax that had the audience literally leaping from their seats.

  All that passes

  Is merely a parable;

  The unrealized

  Is now fulfilled;

  The ineffable

  Is now made manifest.

  The Eternal Feminine

  Draws us onward.

  After the last resounding chord faded away, a few seconds’ silence passed before the standing ovation that stretched on for twenty minutes. Facing his audience, Gustav appeared as overawed by their response as they were by his masterpiece. This, his greatest triumph, the crowning apex of his career. Alma cheered and clapped until she lost sensation in her hands. Then she hugged Gucki and Mama. Her husband’s most challenging and innovative symphony had been rapturously received and understood by this most eminent public. His detractors would be silenced under this avalanche of acclaim.

  Alma and Gustav held each other in the cab back to the hotel.

  “It was magnificent!” she told him. “Magnificent! No one in that audience will ever hear another concert like this again.”

  They arrived back at the Grand Hotel Continental to be swept into a gala reception. Alma sipped champagne with old friends while Gustav’s countless admirers offered him their tribute. Siegfried Wagner shook his hand. Thomas Mann nearly fell flat on his face while paying his respects. Justine, overcome with emotion and sisterly pride, threw her arms around her brother and wept in joy. All trace of Gustav’s sore throat had vanished. He seemed young, healthy, jolly.

  “This is his day of glory,” Alex said. “Tonight he’s proved that he’s Austria’s greatest living composer. No one can doubt that anymore. There are even rumors that the Vienna Court Opera wants him back as their director.”

  Alma shook her head derisively. “After the way they humiliated him, I doubt he’d even consider it.”

  “Maybe he won’t need to conduct at all anymore,” Berta Zuckerkandl said. “Now perhaps he can live on his own music alone.”

  Alma tried to imagine her and Gustav’s future together without his having to conduct other people’s work as his main source of income. We can live in the country and devote the rest of our lives to composing.

  “Gustav dedicated this symphony to you, I see,” Berta Zuckerkandl said, paging through the score that Alma had brought down to show her friends. “Anyone in the audience could understand why. My dear, I’ve never seen you more beautiful. You look like a queen with diamonds in your hair.”

  As Berta spoke, Alex regarded Alma with his soft dark eyes, as though he had never stopped loving her. At a loss, Alma offered him a copy of her Five Songs.

  “I know it’s a small thing compared to Gustav’s work,” she said. “But I signed it for you. A tribute to my great teacher.”

  When she met Alex’s gaze, she felt twenty-one again. Was it love, her boundaryless love, that was the bridge between past and present? That gathered her former and future lives and selves into something whole and complete?

  At midnight, Gustav bade his well-wishers farewell. Arm in arm
, he and Alma stepped inside the gilded elevator. Just like in my dream, she thought. Except now we rise together.

  Suite 6

  Ecstasy

  44

  In October it was time to return to New York. A week before their departure, Gustav traveled to Berlin to visit old friends. Alma arranged to make her own way to Paris, where she and Gustav would meet up before continuing their journey together.

  And thus her last forbidden adventure slotted into place with clockwork precision. Having booked one sleeping berth for herself and a separate one for Miss Turner and Gucki, Alma boarded the Orient Express in Vienna at noon. When the train stopped in Munich, Walter boarded and crept into her couchette. They made love voraciously, as though for the last time. How much longer could she expect a twenty-seven-year-old man to wait for her? Some force possessed her and she was no longer a wife and mother. No longer any one thing, elemental and wild. Utterly free. The laws of feminine propriety had nothing to do with her.

  “Leave him,” Walter begged her. “It’s what you really want. Let’s just run away together.”

  Alma silenced him with kisses, lapping his flesh with her tongue as though she were a mother cat, until he surrendered to her. To this stolen moment in time, this dizzying rush of desire made all the sweeter by its impermanence. This wood-paneled sleeping compartment was their sanctuary. Outside the window, the world rushed past in a blur of darkened, harvest-shorn fields and slumbering towns. Alma and Walter made love until their sweat ran together and they lay panting and exhausted in each other’s arms, their flesh welded into one body. She inhaled the musk of his skin as the train rocked them to sleep.