The Artist's Wife by Max Phillips

Author:Max Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466873186
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

VIII

BY SPRING the Breitenstein place was nearly finished, and Oskar and I went to live there. The house was pleasant, full of air and light, with fine large rooms and a fireplace of granite blocks cut from the Semmering mountains. The electricity wasn’t hooked up yet, so we lit the place with dozens of candles. The weather was mild. I was newly pregnant. The whole thing was a terrible idea.

I’d always thought I’d change Oskar’s life, the way I changed Mahler’s. I felt I’d shown Mahler what a woman’s love was—which in a way, I suppose, I did—and then afterward he was never the same—which is certainly true, because then he died. But Oskar was used to changing things round, not being changed round himself. And when he moved in, he thought, I’m the man of the house at last, and what I say goes.

He insulted all my visitors and forbade my Sundays. He painted faces and horns on the bottles in the pantry. They were meant to be guardian fetishes and he complained when they were emptied, for certain spirits must be yellow-faced with oil or red-faced with wine. He spoke in a deeper voice, now that he was practically a father. He tried to teach me Greek, which he didn’t know. When he couldn’t think of a word, he bit his lip and waved his arms. He pulled my clothes from their places and sorted them in a system of his own invention, and threw on the floor those that were made in unlucky colors or unsuitable for a married woman, because now all my dresses had to be closed at the neck and the wrists, and he forbade me to cross my legs when I sat down. It was immodest. He hunted through our rubbish to see if I’d thrown out anything I shouldn’t. He waved a withered pear and called me a rich girl. He said he wouldn’t have made the parlor quite so wide. It was arriviste. I might have an eye for proportion, but it wanted development.

He said, “You must begin a new girlhood with me.”

He said, “You must conduct your life nobly in order to remain an emblem for me.”

He said, “You have lived worthily ever since you really learned to love.”

We began that famously perfect summer of 1914. The weather cosseted you. I was furious as a child who’s sick of cosseting. By now Oskar and I were having real shrieking fights. We sounded like one of his plays: eeeee, aaaagggh, oooof. Outside, I was storming around all the time, but inside, I was almost quiet. Inside, I was collecting his outrages like butterflies and waiting for him to go a little too far.

One day Mahler’s death mask arrived in the mail. We were all still busy with the house. Mami was giving instructions to the cook. I was showing the servants how I wanted the draperies sewn, yelling over the clatter of the sewing machines. Gucki was eating chestnuts and watching Onkel Oskar paint a fresco over the fireplace.

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