Ecstasy

by Mary Sharratt

  The following afternoon, the Orient Express arrived at the Gare de Lyon in Paris. Alma held her daughter’s hand while disembarking and directing the porters handling her family’s luggage. If Miss Turner had any clue as to what her mistress had been up to on the train, she managed to conceal it under a heroic mantle of British reserve.

  Alma and Gustav spent one night in Paris before traveling on to Cherbourg and boarding their ship, the Kaiser Wilhelm II. Though summer was long past, the sun shone in clemency. The ocean was as smooth as glass, mirroring the heavens. This Atlantic crossing was the calmest her family had ever experienced, the first time Gustav had been able to enjoy the voyage without being holed up in his cabin with seasickness.

  In possession of the new camera that Mama and Carl had given her for her birthday, Alma photographed her husband and daughter on the ship’s deck. Gustav beamed at her and squinted into that dazzling light, his hands resting protectively on Gucki’s shoulders.

  How can I be both women? Alma asked herself. The resourceful adulteress who had contrived this last rendezvous with her lover and the serene wife walking on her husband’s arm, her soul lifting to be united with him again, who adored him as the center of her existence? How dare she think she could have it all—an adoring husband, a beautiful daughter, a lover, and her music? Why didn’t the weight of her sin crush her to pieces?

  Alma had never felt closer to Gustav than she did that season in New York. Her husband was a changed man, ever attentive to her and Gucki despite his long hours with the Philharmonic. Like courting lovers, he and Alma walked arm in arm through Central Park. Heads bent together, they discussed their future. The decades they still had before them.

  “I’ll carry on with the Philharmonic again next year,” Gustav said. “After that, we’ll have enough saved to retire to the country.”

  They had purchased land at Breitenstein, high up near the Semmering pass, where Gustav loved to hike. In the summer they would hire an architect to design their new home.

  “We’ll plant a garden and an orchard, and grow our own food,” Gustav said.

  “We’ll call it Villa Mahler,” said Alma.

  As they spoke their dreams aloud, their future home seemed to take shape and form before their eyes.

  Gustav’s second season with the Philharmonic was far more successful than the first. He had compromised with Mrs. Seney Sheldon’s committee to create a more popular repertoire that included American composers as well as his standard roster of French, Italian, and German work. His touring schedule took him to Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and various locations in upstate New York.

  In early December Alma went up on the train to meet Gustav in Buffalo, where he was directing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. The two of them stole away on a day trip to Niagara Falls, that popular honeymoon destination. The wild grandeur was like nothing they had ever seen in Europe. The American Falls, over a thousand feet wide, plunged 176 feet into the Niagara River. Farther down were the Bridal Veil Falls and, separated by Goat Island, the Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side.

  The winter day was as cold as it was bright, brilliant sun gleaming on the snow. Every tree glistened with ice and frost. Though the river was frozen in places, the sheer volume of water coming over the falls gushed down in a roar. The plummeting water and rising mist created fantastical ice formations. Miniature icebergs bobbed in the foaming river.

  Alma clasped Gustav’s hands when they stepped inside the elevator and descended to the viewing platform beneath the American Falls.

  “It’s like a cathedral,” she said.

  A cathedral of towering ice filled with the thunder of falling water beneath the high, frozen roof. The strength of the greenish light coming through hurt their eyes. Holding each other for warmth, they spent hours under and near the falls.

  That evening, with the boom of Niagara still sounding in her ears, Alma watched Gustav conduct Beethoven.

  “Finally, a proper fortissimo,” he told her afterward.

  Not wanting to spend too much time away from Gucki, Alma returned to Manhattan the following morning. On the train journey back through that frozen landscape, she read Gustav’s most beloved novel, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. She sent Gustav a telegram when she arrived back at the Savoy.

  Splendid journey with Alyosha.

  He telegraphed his reply the next day.

  My journey with Almiosha even more splendid.

  Gustav returned from his tour and Alma prepared for Christmas. She ordered a tree and dozens of candles and bought presents for her family. On the afternoon of December 24, she sent her husband and daughter out for a walk so she could wrap their gifts. Though Gustav didn’t particularly care for Christmas, Alma had never lost the childlike thrill of expectancy. The delight of giving and receiving.

  This year their suite boasted a large corner sitting room with a sweeping view of Central Park. Glancing out the window, Alma saw Gustav and Gucki engaged in a snowball fight. For a six-year-old, Gucki’s aim was astonishingly good—she landed a snowball in her father’s face. Alma observed him cleaning the snow off his spectacles. She could almost hear their laughter rising through the wintery air.

  Later, after Gucki had her bath and changed into her new dress of green tartan silk, Alma was about to start lighting the candles on the tree. With an air of ceremony, Gustav took the matches from her hand. He and Gucki escorted her out of the room.

  “It’s a surprise,” Gucki said solemnly.

  Smiling to herself at their conspiracy, Alma retreated to her room to read Mama’s latest letter. Her mother planned to join them in New York in March and then they could all sail home together. Alma looked up from the letter when Gucki appeared again.

  “Papa wants your good tablecloth,” the child announced, with a most mysterious air.

  Somewhat amazed, Alma opened the linen closet and handed the lace-and-linen cloth to her daughter, who bore it away. A short while later, Gucki returned, this time holding her father’s hand. “Follow us, Mama.”

  Alma accompanied them into the festive room. All the candles were lit and a fire crackled in the hearth. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Mama, look!” Gucki turned her around and pointed.

  There, on the dining table, was a mound covered with the white tablecloth and pink roses. Alma froze. Something awful climbed up her throat, for it looked exactly like a funeral shroud. But then she blinked and forced that horrific image away. Smiling and clapping her hands, she drew back the roses and cloth to reveal the gifts Gustav had bought for her—the first time he had gone to the trouble of surprising her on Christmas. Her heart overflowed to behold his offering of love. He had given her a bottle of perfume, a thing that she loved and he detested. Another box held a gift certificate for a diamond solitaire of her choosing. His largess left her speechless.

  Gucki cradled the perfume bottle as though it were the grail. “Let me smell it, Mama.”

  Alma anointed her daughter’s wrists with the scent of tuberose. “Now open one of your presents, Guckerl.”

  She hoped her daughter would enjoy her new ice skates. That Gustav would approve of the tweed traveling suit she had custom-made for him by the best tailor she could find.

  They spent their Christmas Eve as a family with no guests to intrude on the enchantment. Gustav played excerpts from Das Lied von der Erde, which Alma so adored. Gucki, the young prodigy, performed a piece by Mozart that she had learned by heart. How earnest and intelligent their daughter appeared, seated on the piano stool, her little feet not touching the floor. The candlelight gleamed on her glossy fair hair cut in a bob.

  “She has your profile,” Alma whispered to Gustav. “She’s a genius, just like you.”

  The three of them sat together on the window seat overlooking Central Park, a milk-white shimmer with illuminated skyscrapers rising like castles in the distance. At the stroke of midnight, all the church bells in the city rang as one. Every boat and ship in the Hudson River blasted
its fog horn. A moment of such fragile beauty. Alma held her husband and daughter, and wept without even understanding why.

  All the while, Alma had been revising her old songs and writing new ones. She was working at the piano one January afternoon when the telephone rang. The concierge announced that a visitor was on her way up—none other than Frances Alda, the renowned soprano.

  “What a pleasure,” Alma said, opening the door to the flame-haired beauty.

  After taking her guest’s mink coat, she invited her into the parlor. The lady was the epitome of elegance, clad in a linen-and-wool suit with a daringly short skirt that revealed her booted ankles. She recently had married Giulio Gatti-Casazza, director of the Metropolitan Opera, and she was one of the Met’s brightest stars.

  “I saw you in La bohème last month,” Alma said. “You were magnificent! You must be here to see my husband. Let me get him—he’s in his study.”

  “Mrs. Mahler, it’s you I’ve come to see,” the lady said warmly. She opened a slim briefcase. “Our mutual friend, Natalie Curtis, thought I would be interested in this.” With a flourish, she held up the score of Alma’s own Five Songs. “I’ve read through your lieder, Mrs. Mahler, and with your permission, I’d like to choose one to perform on March 3 in Carnegie Hall.” The New Zealand–born soprano spoke with such a strong antipodean accent that Alma wondered whether she had understood her correctly. “My personal favorite is ‘Laue Sommernacht.’”

  Alma thought she might faint. So her published songs weren’t just a vanity project. A celebrated opera singer had discovered her work. “This is a great honor, Mrs. Gatti-Casazza.”

  “Miss Alda, actually. I’ve kept my own name. Of course, my husband would prefer me to sing as Madame Gatti-Casazza like a good Italian wife. But I worked so hard to establish my stage persona as Frances Alda.” She smiled. “But I think you know what it means to be married to a famous man, Mrs. Mahler. Shall we go through your song? You can accompany me on piano and tell me if I’m interpreting it correctly.”

  When Alma sat at the piano and Miss Alda began to sing, Gustav emerged from his study. He appeared absolutely entranced.

  “Mrs. Gatti-Casazza,” he said, shaking her hand. “What a surprise.”

  “The good lady wants to perform one of my songs,” Alma said, not caring if she gushed like a schoolgirl.

  “One of your songs? Why not all five?” Ever the enterprising impresario, Gustav appealed to Miss Alda.

  “I’m afraid the repertoire is already set,” the soprano said. “As much as I love Mrs. Mahler’s songs, I have room for only one.”

  Gustav glanced at the score on the piano. “Let’s hear you sing ‘Laue Sommernacht’ then.”

  Shivers ran up and down Alma’s back while she played and listened to Miss Alda’s heartbreakingly beautiful voice singing her song.

  “Is this how you want it to sound?” Gustav asked Alma.

  She was too euphoric to think straight. Here it unfolded, her dearest dream come true. Her work was going to be performed in Carnegie Hall. Out of all the songs by all the composers in all the world, the great Frances Alda had chosen one of hers.

  45

  Alma and Gustav lived in harmony. Walter’s secret letters had dwindled, and she was content to let it rest. Everything was as it should be. Her lover’s infatuation had run its course, and the affair itself had served to purge her of her demons, allowing her to love her husband with a wide-open heart.

  Such happy winter days, walking with Gustav and Gucki through Central Park. Meeting Natalie Curtis at the Women’s Club for lunch and sharing her good news that Frances Alda would be singing one of her lieder. Miss Alda sent her piano accompanist to the Savoy to consult Alma’s artistic direction. He played her piece for her to make sure he had the tempi right. This is how it feels to be a professional composer! When she wasn’t working on her own music, Alma continued giving piano lessons to Gucki.

  One morning in February, Gustav awakened with a fever and an inflamed throat. Though he didn’t seem to think it was anything serious, Alma took the precaution of telephoning Dr. Fraenkel. She looked on while the doctor took her husband’s pulse and temperature, and peered down his throat.

  “Tonsillitis,” Dr. Fraenkel said solemnly. “I’d advise you to bow out of tomorrow evening’s concert.”

  “I couldn’t possibly!” Gustav sounded offended by the very notion. “I’m conducting the world premiere of Busoni’s Berceuse élégiaque.”

  Gustav had come down with tonsillitis in the past and had always shaken it off. Apart from a septic throat just before Christmas, he had enjoyed excellent health this winter. Still, Alma was sobered to see how concerned Dr. Fraenkel was.

  “Maybe you should do as he says,” she told Gustav, after the doctor had left. “Stay home until you feel better.”

  Gustav shrugged. “I’ve conducted with a fever before. But I’ll rest in bed until it’s time for the performance if that makes you happy, Almschi.”

  The following evening, Alma made sure her husband was warmly dressed. She bundled him in blankets for the cab ride to Carnegie Hall. Dr. Fraenkel came along and joined Alma in the director’s box, where they watched Gustav conduct with his usual vigor, his thin body whipping like that of a jockey on a racehorse. Alma breathed in relief to see that everything seemed to be going well.

  During the intermission, she and Dr. Fraenkel rushed down to check on Gustav in his office backstage. The doctor had brought aspirin powders, and Alma carried a bottle of Gustav’s favorite seltzer water and a fresh lemon. They found him slumped in his chair, as though conducting the first half of the concert had drained the life from him. Alma’s throat tightened, but then Gustav looked up at her and smiled.

  “I have a headache” was as much as he would admit.

  However, he gratefully accepted the aspirin and seltzer water that Alma infused with fresh lemon juice. In his customary fashion, he appeared to pull himself together, as though his health was a matter of personal willpower.

  Gustav conducted the second half with fiery brilliance, tilting between passion and vehemence. Half god and half demon. His forty-eighth concert in three months, and he was giving it his all, as though this performance would be his last. An ice-cold presentiment seized Alma. Dr. Fraenkel gripped her hand, as if exactly the same thought had occurred to him.

  When all three of them returned to the Savoy, Dr. Fraenkel examined Gustav once more.

  “The fever’s gone,” the doctor said in astonishment.

  Alma’s heart leapt. So it was nothing, after all.

  “I told you so,” Gustav said cheerfully. “I conducted myself back to health. So much angst over a sore throat!”

  In a matter of days, Gustav’s throat inflammation was gone. He was giving Gucki piggyback rides through their suite. Not long afterward, his fever returned, but it was mild and gave him no cause for alarm. Then it worsened only to recede again before returning with a vengeance. At night the fever ebbed, then mounted again during the day. Gustav kept vacillating between illness and moments of respite when he swore he was on the mend. These ups and downs kept Alma on a knife-edge.

  One morning he collapsed, as he had done at Trenkerhof last summer. Alma held his head in her lap and pressed cool, damp towels to his chest while Miss Turner phoned the doctor.

  “Almschi, I’m not right, am I?”

  Gustav’s face, deathly pale, glistened with cold sweat. His breathing was shallow and weak. His beautiful slender fingers had gone stiff, curling inward at the tips, as though some poison were paralyzing him. Alma kissed his fingertips, as if her love had the power to cure him.

  “You’ll have to telephone Mrs. Seney Sheldon,” he told her. “She’ll need to find another conductor.”

  Gustav’s resignation terrified Alma. She had never seen him this broken.

  Dr. Fraenkel arranged for a specialist from Mount Sinai Hospital to come out.

  Alma sat at Gustav’s bedside and held his hand while the specialist ins
erted the biggest needle and syringe she had ever seen into her husband’s arm. The doctor and his assistant needed to withdraw blood to prepare a diagnostic culture. She had to look away, but Gustav endured his ordeal with stoic fortitude. The procedure was so laborious that afterward the bed, bedroom floor, and bathroom were spattered with his blood.

  “We’ll take these samples back to the laboratory,” the specialist said, when he was finished. “We should have the results in five days.” But his drawn countenance gave Alma little cause for hope.

  “Almschi, look on the bright side,” Gustav said, when the specialist and his assistant had left. “My fever’s gone down. Maybe there’s actually something to that old technique of bleeding patients to make them well again.”

  Even as he lay in the bed linens spattered with his own blood, he was trying to inject humor into their tragedy. If they didn’t laugh, they would never stop crying. The room looked like a murder scene.

  Alma wrapped him in his dressing gown and helped him to the sofa in the sitting room while the hotel maid cleaned away the bloodstains and made up his bed with fresh sheets and blankets.

  “You should eat something, Gustl,” Alma said. She ordered up an omelet and tea from the restaurant downstairs, and fed him as though he were her child, putting every little bite in his mouth.

  “When I’m well again, we’ll have to go on like this,” he said. “You feeding me. It’s so nice.”

  Little Gucki stared at them, her huge eyes spilling tears. Just seeing the frightened look on the child’s face made Alma fear that she, too, would begin to weep. How could that poor little girl make sense of what was happening to their family?

  “Don’t cry, Guckerl.” Gustav kissed their daughter’s forehead. “Your mama’s looking after me.”

  Miss Turner, who looked as though she were also trying her best not to cry, said she would take Gucki ice-skating.