Ecstasy

by Mary Sharratt

  “If she falls, catch her,” Gustav said. “I catch you every time you fall, don’t I, Gucki?”

  How could I have ever betrayed this beautiful man? Alma asked herself.

  After Miss Turner and Gucki had left, and the maid had departed, Alma read to Gustav from his beloved Dostoyevsky. But he still had enough strength to reach forward and take the book from her hand.

  “Almschi, you’re still so young and beautiful. You’ll be in great demand when I’m gone.”

  Her eyes filled. “Gustav, don’t.”

  But in the same humorous voice as before, he began to list her potential suitors. “Max Burckhard has loved you since you were a girl. Klimt is still single. Alex never stopped loving you. And I daresay, Dr. Fraenkel’s quite infatuated with you, in case you haven’t noticed. Who shall it be?”

  It seemed he made a point of deliberately excluding Walter Gropius from his list.

  “No one.” Alma kissed him. “Don’t speak of it.”

  “Burckhard is banal. Klimt is a rake. Alex, alas, is married. Fraenkel’s not artistic enough to suit you. It will be better if I do hold on and stay with you, after all.”

  Alma had to laugh and cry at the same time. In the white winter light, she lay beside him on the sofa and embraced him. She held his hands to her breasts and loved him as fiercely, as tenderly, as his weakened body allowed.

  “My madly beloved Almschi,” he said. “Breath of my life.”

  What blooms between us is ecstasy. Together they had endured every storm. Our love, she thought, is nothing less than divine. A bliss without repose that blurred the edges of life and death.

  “Viridans streptococci,” Dr. Fraenkel announced. He had come to personally deliver the results of the blood test.

  Alma, seated at Gustav’s bedside, exchanged a blank look with her husband. It seemed he was as clueless as she as to what that diagnosis even meant. But it was impossible to ignore how devastated Dr. Fraenkel appeared.

  “My friend, you have a serious bacterial infection,” Fraenkel told Gustav. “You were born with a heart valve defect, which is itself a cause for concern. The streptococci have now settled in the heart tissue. The result is a slowly progressing inflammation of the inner lining of the heart—endocarditis. Compromised heart function has led to poor circulation—hence the clubbing in your fingers.”

  “What can be done?” Gustav asked, with clear-eyed practicality.

  “You might try Collargol injections,” Fraenkel said. “But if you’re well enough to travel, I suggest you go to Paris to consult André Chantemesse. He’s one of the world’s leading bacteriologists.”

  Black spots swam before Alma’s eyes. Her skin went clammy. No doctor in all America was qualified to treat her husband’s disease? She sensed there was an awful truth that Dr. Fraenkel was trying to hide.

  When she saw him to the door and handed him his hat and coat, Fraenkel hovered over her in paternal concern—or was it more than that? Was there any substance to Gustav’s jest that their house doctor was in love with her? He gazed at her with a possessive air, as if the tragic inevitability of her husband’s illness would one day make her his own. The thought made her want to spew. Fraenkel already knew her most intimate parts from tending her after her miscarriages. She wanted to shriek in his face. Stop looking at me like that, as though my husband were already dead.

  “Alma,” he said, clutching his hat to his heart. “You need to prepare for the worst.”

  Alma looked after Gustav day and night, hardly leaving his side. Mama was on her way over to join them and they would all sail back together. Maybe the Parisian specialist could cure Gustav. As long as hope remained, Alma would clutch at it with her last strength.

  Their friends, the Baumfelds, had thoughtfully sent over invalid’s food for Gustav, including a tureen of soup that Alma now warmed over a spirit stove. When she carried the soup into Gustav’s room, he looked up at her expectantly. “Isn’t your concert tonight?”

  In the wake of his illness, she had nearly forgotten that Frances Alda would be singing “Laue Sommernacht” at Carnegie Hall. Miss Alda had sent her two tickets. This was the moment Alma had longed for her entire life, and yet it seemed obscene to leave Gustav alone.

  “I insist you go,” he said. “Miss Turner and Gucki will keep me company. I only wish with all my heart that I could be with you and share your moment of glory, Almscherl.”

  When Alma entered Carnegie Hall, she found Natalie Curtis awaiting her in the lobby. Messy hair, scuffed boots, and all.

  “Do you think I’d miss this?” her friend asked, kissing Alma’s cheek.

  They sat together in the gallery with a bird’s-eye view of the stage. Alma had wanted to hide in the back row, but Natalie drew her forward. Even her friend’s enthusiasm couldn’t quell Alma’s nerves. It seemed almost embarrassing to see her own name in the program. What would people say about her? Her song was such a little thing compared to Gustav’s massive body of work. He was the genius and she the half-formed dilettante. And what did her music even mean to her if she lost him? What if she was to blame for what might prove to be his fatal illness? You’re a whore. Your affair made him ill. He knew, knew all along. Knew what you got up to on the Orient Express night train to Paris.

  “Alma, why on earth are you crying?” Natalie gave her arm a squeeze. “I know your husband’s not well, but wouldn’t he want you to be happy tonight? I think we need to toast your success.”

  Natalie discreetly passed Alma her hip flask of Arizona firewater.

  The curtain swept open. The crowd fell silent at the sight of Frances Alda, unbearably beautiful with her red hair and slanting green eyes, her creamy shoulders rising from her sea-green gown. Alma listened to the concert with her heart in her throat, her own song being performed last in the repertoire. Then the moment arrived. Alda’s exquisite soprano gave voice to “Laue Sommernacht.” Her soulful interpretation rendered the piece as worthy as any song written by anyone. Every note was incandescent with yearning. Alma was in tears, but they were no longer tears of shame. I did this. I am a composer. All that striving has come to fruition. Was this how Gustav felt when he directed his own work? Her heart broke for him. If only he could be here to hear Frances Alda sing.

  Upon a mild summer night, beneath a starless sky

  in the wide woods, we were searching in the dark

  and we found each other.

  Alma grabbed Natalie’s hand in disbelief when her song was encored. The sense of delirium that possessed her was unlike anything she had experienced since the day she went into labor with Gucki and thought she had an entire opera pouring out of her. The applause made her quake, especially when Frances Alda lifted her arm to direct the audience’s attention to Alma in the gallery. Her heart raced. She felt dizzy. It seemed impossible that all these people were cheering not for Gustav but for her.

  Alma hurried back to the Savoy to find Gustav awaiting her return with the keenest suspense.

  “Almschi, how did it go? Tell me everything.”

  He held out his arms. She kicked off her shoes and nestled beside him on the bed.

  “Gustl, they encored my song!”

  He looked so joyful, the color returning to his face. “Thank God for that! Almschi, I swear I’ve never been in such a state of excitement for my own work. I’m so proud of you.”

  46

  Mama arrived in New York to help look after Gustav while Alma packed and prepared for her family’s passage back to Europe.

  On April 8, the day of their departure, porters were waiting with a stretcher for Gustav. He waved it aside, leaning instead on Alma’s arm as she helped him to the elevator. The Savoy’s enormous lobby was empty. The hotel manager had cleared everyone out to spare Gustav the humiliation of being gawked at in his weakened state. At the side entrance, Mrs. Untermyer from the Philharmonic committee was waiting with her car to drive them to their ship.

  Once they had settled him inside the car, Gustav craned his head t
o peer out the window at the skyscrapers. “Our last view of New York, Almschi.” Gustav held her hand. “Take a good look.”

  Clinging to her grandmother, Gucki looked frightened and sad. Miss Turner hid her face in her handkerchief.

  When they boarded the ship, they found their cabin filled with flowers from friends and people they didn’t even know. Gustav cracked a smile. “Who knew we were so popular, Almschi?”

  But by the time they lifted anchor, he was already asleep in his narrow bed.

  “I hope the passage is calm,” Alma whispered to Mama. “He gets so seasick.”

  Her eyeballs felt like sandpaper. It hurt just to look at her husband’s unconscious body, his face as white as the pillow. His emaciated hands lay folded on the blanket. It wrung her out to see him so weak, this man who had once been consumed by fire.

  Alma and Mama took turns nursing Gustav—he would let no one else near. Almost every day, he insisted on getting out of bed to prove he was still alive. Alma and her mother dressed him in his tweed traveling suit and helped him onto the sequestered area of the deck that the captain had screened off for Gustav’s privacy. When the ocean was calm, he propped himself up, supported by the rail and his walking stick wedged between the deck boards. Despite his every effort to remain valiant, his eyes were listless and dull, his mouth clamped in a grimace of pain.

  When they anchored in Cherbourg, Carl was there to meet them. Together they took the train to Paris, arriving at the Hôtel Elysées at five in the morning. After settling Gustav in bed, Alma collapsed. The journey and her mounting fears had worn her to tatters. She hurt down to her bones.

  Two hours later, she awakened to find Gustav on his feet. She lifted herself groggily on one elbow to see him telephone reception to order up breakfast. Before she could quite take it all in, he opened the balcony doors and stepped out into the April sunlight. Is this a dream?

  “Almschi, it’s a beautiful day,” he called to her. “Let’s order an automobile and go to the Bois de Boulogne.”

  She jolted out of bed. Yesterday she and Mama had to carry him from the ship to the train, but she rushed to his side to find him fully dressed. He had even shaved. She drew her fingers across his cheek in amazement.

  “Gustl, it’s a miracle.”

  “I knew I would be well again the moment I set foot in Europe. New York winters are too cold for me, Almschi. As soon as I recover my strength, let’s go to Egypt. We’ll see nothing but blue sky.”

  Crying out in joy, Alma called Gucki into the room to see her papa walking around like a cured man. Mama and Carl dashed in. All of them laughed and wept in relief. It seemed that Gustav was truly saved. Over breakfast, he spoke of the future concerts he envisioned.

  “I always wanted to direct Der Barbier von Bagdad.”

  In a festive mood, the entire family squeezed into a chauffeured automobile. Gustav was in raptures over the beauty of this spring morning with the magnolias in full blossom. Narcissi and primroses bloomed in the window boxes. The trees in the Bois du Boulogne were flush with soft new leaves, and in their dappled shade, children chased hoops while gallants cantered along on their warmbloods.

  Alma lost herself in the wonder of all this resurgent life after nearly two months of bearing helpless witness to her husband’s decline. She reached for Gustav’s hand only to discover his flesh had gone stone cold. His face was as white as bone.

  They rushed Gustav back to the hotel and summoned Dr. Chantemesse, but the most the world-renowned bacteriologist could do was send Gustav to a nursing home in the Rue du Pont where he ordered more blood tests, only to rhapsodize about the flourishing state of Monsieur Mahler’s streptococci.

  “I’ve never seen them in such a marvelous state of development!” He invited Alma to peer into the microscope. “Just like seaweed!”

  “What a useless man,” Mama muttered, as soon as Dr. Chantemesse was out of earshot.

  In desperation, Alma sprinted to the post office to telegraph Dr. Chvostek, the most respected doctor in Vienna, and beg him to come to Paris. Remarkably, Chvostek arrived the following day. After examining Gustav, he urged Alma to take her husband on the next express train to Vienna, where he could be cared for in the Sanatorium Loew.

  Hearing the news, Gustav smiled for the first time that day. “Home to Vienna. What a relief.”

  Vienna, the city that had spit him out like a broken tooth.

  Gustav was so weak, he had to be delivered to the Gare de Lyon by ambulance, then slid onto the train on a stretcher. Alma winced at the sight of the orderlies trying to manipulate the stretcher down the narrow corridor without accidentally tipping Gustav on the floor.

  The Orient Express night train from Paris to Vienna—here she was, retracing her journey of forbidden love with Walter, this time with her mortally ill husband. It was too awful. Again, the thought reared in her head that she had killed Gustav with her infidelity. You ungrateful whore. You Jezebel. You destroyed this great man. How could she face the world again? She would be forever reviled. Blood on her hands.

  Alma sat up through the night and watched over Gustav while he slept. Whenever they drew into a station, Carl and Dr. Chvostek stood guard to ward off the hordes of journalists. Gustav’s progress toward Vienna resembled that of a dying monarch’s. Every newspaper in Germany and Austria demanded quotes on the Herr Direktor’s condition.

  As the train rattled through the darkness, Gustav opened his eyes and looked up at Alma as she gazed down at him.

  “Ah, you’re there,” he said. “My angel.”

  She stroked his beautiful black hair. “Sleep, Gustl. You need your rest.”

  But he appeared wide awake. More lucid than he had been in days.

  “How many funeral marches did I write into my symphonies, Almschi?” He laughed, then sobered. “I don’t want any music at my funeral. No religious oration. No pomp. Just a plain headstone with MAHLER carved on it. Anyone who comes looking for me will know who I was. The rest don’t need to know.”

  Alma was struck dumb to hear him speak of himself in the past tense.

  “I want to be buried with Putzi in Grinzing Cemetery.” His voice broke.

  Alma cradled him while they wept together. The rising sun now illuminated the window shade. In its fragile pink light, she lay beside him on the berth and stared into his eyes.

  “Gustl, I can see straight into your soul.” Your beautiful soul.

  “I forbid you to wear black to mourn me or hide yourself away when I’m gone. See your friends. Go to concerts and plays. I want you to live, Almschi. Life is precious.”

  Her heart split open. She could no longer imagine facing her life without him.

  Gustav’s room at the Sanatorium Loew overflowed with wreaths and bouquets. A basket of lilies arrived from the New York Philharmonic. But Gustav seemed oblivious to these offerings. He grew more disoriented by the day. Justine came, distraught beyond measure to see her beloved brother barely hanging on to life. He didn’t recognize his own sister.

  Leaving Gucki in Mama’s care, Alma slept in the room next to Gustav’s. She was terrified of letting him out of her sight. As long as he breathed, he still lived. He was still hers. Even now, in his confused state, her presence seemed to mean something to him.

  “My Almschi,” he said, over and over.

  When Mama brought Gucki to see him, Gustav found the strength and clarity to take their daughter in his arms. “Be a good girl, my child.”

  On his fifth day in Sanatorium Loew, Gustav began to fight for each breath. The doctors gave him oxygen. Afterward, he lay dazed, propped on his pillows and conducting with one finger. As Alma watched him, he turned to her and smiled radiantly, as though he had just glimpsed a world of such beauty that she couldn’t even imagine.

  “Mozart,” he said, with huge, shining eyes.

  A few hours later, he fell into a coma.

  The doctors let Carl sit with Gustav until the very end but forced Alma to leave, even to vacate the room beside
her dying husband. She simply could not understand how they could be so callous as to drive her away. Was it because they feared a woman’s hysteria and grief? Dr. Chvostek put her into a hired cab and sent her home to her mother, as though she were no older than Gucki. Wrenched from her husband’s side, Alma felt as though she had been flung out of a train in a foreign country. I have no place on earth.

  Gustav died the following night at 11:05 p.m. in the midst of a thunderstorm. He was fifty years old. Sleepless with anguish, Alma fell ill with a fever that turned into pneumonia. Sick in body and soul, she kept twisting in bed to gaze at Gustav’s photograph on her bedside table. Never had the words “till death do us part” seemed so brutal. How can it be that I’m separated from you forever?

  She was too ill to attend his funeral. Even if she had been well, her stomach turned at the very notion of watching her husband being shoved into a grave. How could that radiant man be a corpse inside a coffin? Gustav, you are light. Pure light.

  While she stared at his photograph, his Second Symphony of transfiguration and transcendence played inside her head. His soul had broken free of his wasted body even as hers remained imprisoned in her flesh. The death mask Carl had made of Gustav watched over her from its place of honor on her bookcase. Fighting her weakness, she wrenched herself up from her sickbed. Taking the death mask in her hands, she kissed its lips.

  In her grief, she could hardly eat or drink.

  “Keep this up, and you’ll soon be where your husband is,” Dr. Chvostek said.

  That only made Alma smile. She imagined stepping through the veil to find Gustav and Putzi waiting for her. How could she resist such longing and temptation?

  After the doctor left, she drifted off to sleep. Hours later, she awakened from a dream of Gustav’s Second Symphony to see a small figure wreathed in the late afternoon sunlight. Shining hair and eyes as wide as heaven. The figure seemed to be made entirely of radiance. Was it an angel come to take her away? She cupped a white peony in her little hands.