The Shinnery Review
The Kiss Marshall Fox Prelude: Maria lies awake in her bed at Palais Auersperg. Today she makes her way to the art gallery at the Belvedere Palace to meet with her friend, Gaultier, but first, like clockwork, she resets her own medieval device of temperance and redirects her thoughts from her dreams to her familial obligations. Maria must wind herself up every morning, always in order to perform the part assigned to her by Mother. There is the tour today, then a casual dinner with Mother’s friends, then Professor Schrattenthaler’s lecture on music and meaning. Every morning Mother presents to her another program of acts and scenes, which Maria can then try to mold into her own opera through her imagination; however, the stage is always framed by the Kinsky family name. Mother has Maria pinned down with her slim, bejeweled hand. ! While Austrian nobility was dissolved in the year 1919, the Kinsky family Maria represents lives on as an important and influential group in Viennese society. The family reclaimed Palais Auersperg from the Austrian Federal Monuments Office in the year 2006, and has beautifully maintained a baroque atmosphere that is ideal for all the concerts and art auctioning events Mother hosts throughout each year. Mother says the parties are for Maria, but they are all just as much put on for Mother as a way of her preserving the old Vienna to which she’s been comfortably accustomed her whole life. ! Tomorrow, Maria approves of the flower arrangements that are being made for Mother’s upcoming dinner party, then she will head to the Innere Stadt to celebrate the renovations of a historical restaurant on Graben Street, and then it’s off to the opera. Which opera is it, again? Her servant enters the bedroom to present Maria with what attire she is to wear this day. Let’s see. Beige leather coat, a white raffia skirt, pearls. Maria stares from where she lies in her bed out into the city of Vienna through the window she drew open minutes ago. The procession is coming. ******************** The sun rises against the sovereign façade of the Upper Belvedere Palace. The copper roofing of the Belvedere has been made green and chalky during the long dry years. Today, the air is doggedly brisk, as per what must be a long-standing Viennese weather edict. Trees and hedges that are planted in adherence to the strict symmetromania of the Belvedere gardens are now immersed in the melodious morning air, and sunlight is refracted through each drop of dew. ! All of Vienna has come out to celebrate the one hundred-fiftieth birthday of l’Art Nouveau painter Gustav Klimt. 1 Streets surrounding the Belvedere Palace are flooded with aspiring artists and international fans of the painter, faces beaming with unabashed light that spills into local cafés, overbooked hotels, and parks required for the rare leisure moments"allotted catchings of breath"in between the tiring highlights of this monumental tour. ! The masses march down the sidewalks, chattering on and on with gusto. It is all about the Viennese succession movement in art (the few owners of, or those seeking, degrees from the University); reGustav Klimt (1862-1918) was the leader of the Viennese Secession, a progressive group in the arts in Vienna from 1897 to 1905. His paintings reflect the highly ornamented, fastidiousness of the fin-de-siècle society. Energetic and luminous, his works also represent the overbearing forces in life. Often he focuses on the female body, which he draws curvaceous to mimic the current of life. He will typically portray his subjects being dominated by love, erotic trances, and maternity. His paintings are “oriented towards the picture plane, background and foreground are linked together by ornamental patterns, between which gently modeled areas of impressionistic texture set an accent of added aesthetic refinement.” The ornamentation adds nobility and feeling to an already deeply emotional consciousness. The paintings that contain the gold leaf are from Klimt’s Golden Age. Klimt worked under meticulous formularization and then, later, a more open treatment that gives vitality to his ornaments and abstractions. Ina Stegen, Gustav Klimt: A Poster Book 1
Volume XVII laying the brief historical contents inside their unfolded pamphlets, held out in front of their scrunched faces just inches away from crossed eyes, said brochures marketed toward tourists with faux-colloquial titles, such as “The Stately Architecture of Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt,” (older tourists, usually, dragging their children); and the majority ask questions concerning the whereabouts of fashionable Viennese venues where they might find a suitable cup of espresso. ! Most of those congregated outside the palace are well aware that as Gustav Klimt worked in his lair he wore sandals, long robes, and no undergarments. Working as a sort of purposeful tarantula, he was entirely devoted to his canvass, spinning gold into erotic portraits and mythological evocations; he was rarely seen outside in café society. His elfishly pointed beard and wispily balding hair only heightened the public’s general consensus of his bewildering antics. Once censored and ostracized by political parties for his unblushing pieces of sexuality, the works of Gustav Klimt now commandeer the masses. The works of the man who composed mercurial paintings with ambiguous abstractions of the human form remained terribly majestic and wonderful to behold. Gustav Klimt paints rivers of gold leaf. Tables of power are constantly being turned over by the mysterious fluid of time, and the human body becomes an enigmatic stone to be further shaped and polished by its waters. ! An Englishman in a tweed jacket to his elderly mother-in-law: ! --Café Hawelka serves the most delicious Buchteln you can pair with your coffee, Charlotte. ! A slender woman with silver hair named Charlotte twists her face in annoyance: ! --The room is too smoky. Your wife and I visited yesterday. You know how my eyes can be ! easily irritated! ! Then a young boy to his mother: ! --Mama! Look at the birds! I want to feed them! ! The Austrian woman responds to her child who lags behind her long, adult strides toward ! the palace: ! --Come along, Axel, you are dragging your feet again. ! A younger lady in a chic blue jumper turns to her boyfriend: ! --Are you going to be on your cell phone the entire day? You promised you would be here with us with your work left back at the office. Christ, it’s your day off! ! Another newlywed man speaks aloofly to his conquered lady while his eyes remain fixed on the steps to the palace entrance: ! --Dear, I am so sorry. Did you want to see the Orangery? ! To which his wife answers: ! --Why, yes, can we— ! --We can always stop by later. ! --Of course, darling. ! Maria stands in the palace’s Marble Hall with her head tilted back in eloquent, poised meditation on the baroque painting of Apollo and the muses that hovers above her head. She conducts herself beautifully, keeping vulgar displays of emotion reserved under her expensive, golden locks of hair, and always, dutifully observing the rules of etiquette that may pertain to a particular party or palace. This is in keeping with Mother’s advice. She tells Maria to moderate her imagination, which is like a roaring ocean that tends to unnerve Mother. Today, like all other days, Maria is the young, promising face of the hautebourgeoisie estate. Those pestering members of society who have taken it upon themselves to critique the modes and moods of the day have persistently acclaimed her as being the befitting projection of everything they would like to see for the rest of her Viennese generation. Elegant, temperate, politically uninvolved. She doesn’t meddle with the tasteless crowds that blast rock and pop music. Maria is firmly established in her studies at the University. Not that she will ever make any real use of them. Viennese society, or at least the portion whose opinion is worth Mother’s serious consideration, has its eyes turned in tune to each step she takes in the name of the family. Those steps must not deviate from the past. Maria continues to stare at the ceiling. This is when it happens.
The Shinnery Review ! An Invitation to Maria: Apollo now extends his hand from the heavens. The heart must be the messenger from the head to our hands, Maria hums to herself.2 Maria watches the air that is drenched in her words float up through the heavens of the Belvedere marble hall, as if plucked out from one of the many baroque harps Mother keeps back at the estate, and then, finally, as her words join with the swirling molding outlining the palace ceiling, they dissipate in clouds, eau de sentiment acharné, among the Greek muses, who are the central figures of the atmospherically baroque painting. The Grecian image above has entertained tourists and invitees in the resplendent hall long before the time of Gustav Klimt. The ceiling fresco was commissioned in the year 1719, over fifty years before the marriage of Archduchess Maria Antonia to her French Dauphin, Louis-Auguste, which would secure the elaborate web of alliances Queen Maria Theresa had stepped into after the Seven Years’ War. The marriage was performance art for Europe. For some time people believed that Austria had made political amends with France. Both the Belvedere Palace and Versailles courts went on eating their apfelstrudel (the Austrians) and their macaroons (the French). In those days, the Danube and Seine rivers flowed with champagne. ! All of Vienna once celebrated that royal marriage on these same marble floors, Maria thinks as she is overcome by the sublime notion of human continuity through space and time. It was a masked ball on this same floor! ! The vision continues. The tumbling storm above the foyer rains down through the chandeliers in notes of summer honey, fresh jasmine. Apollo is leading the soft, pink muses in blissful clouds as Maria strums the outside of her right thigh. Maria is not, however, a strumpet. She humors a notion: the fall of class rigidity and artistic moderation to unmitigated passions and blooming love. Maria stands erect"like a Byzantine sculpture of beauty and terrible potential"and taps her stiletto heel gently on the floor. ! A sigh. Then a minute passes. Maria waits for her longtime friend, Monsieur Gaultier, to meet with her before they both set off together in a tour of the glittering installation. Gaultier is not yet here in the gallery. Perhaps he has been only momentarily delayed due to familial obligations of some sort. An older couple shares a kiss spaces away. Maria opens up one of the art gallery’s brochures from her purse to occupy her hands. One of the many perks to having a first-class education is the learned strategy of readily inducing patience in herself. Patience, Maria calmly says to herself as she skims words, not really registering their signification. Pedestrians continue to buzz through the hall. ! Maria turns around to the left and realizes there is in fact a harp being played along with a small string sextet, heralding in the gods with the atonal notes of Arnold Schönberg. There is no conductor leading the musicians. They are dressed in formal concert attire"black tuxes for the men and simple, black dresses for the women" and they fill up the chamber with an invisible, synched pulse. ! The real grandeur of Klimt hovers glowingly above the space that has been morphing from glimpse of hope to virginal, material occupancy and back again ever since the disbandment of Austrian nobility that followed the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A space that has been confiscated by a whole symphony of movements throughout the past century: Viennese succession artists, Nazis, Communists, and the Austrian People’s Party-Social Democratic Party coalition. A space is such that it is to be constantly filled up and then emptied of its fluidity by its congregation to the point of idealistic drunkenness. Aspiring artists gather upon this freshly laid out golden path, walking starry-eyed under the potent puissance toward their ever-deepening understanding of the way the planets spin. ! Maria recognizes the sextet being played as Schönberg’s earliest composition. From her class at the University she learned that the chromaticism and phrasing subvert the foundation of the metrical boundaries, transfiguring the piece into a rich outpour of breath that feeds into the listener, bringing in
Taken from Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction film, “Metropolis.” The silent film, scored in German expressionism, is an exposé on the relationship between the ruling and working class in an explicitly capitalistic society. “The Mediator between the head and hands must be the heart!” is the film’s ultimate message revealed in the denouement. 2
Volume XVII new life. Transfiguration: See how brightly the universe gleams! There is radiance on everything! A beautiful river flows from its origins in the Black Forest. Maria is filled with a roaring sea of aching and longing. ! Further down the halls Klimt’s painting, Water Serpents N° 1, portrays two women with golden hair embracing in a hug as the move serenely through water. They move through the river moss and algae with a luxuriant sensuality. As the intertwined bodies spin, their soft skin brushes against brown reptilian scales below. The ripples they produce pulse in synchronism with the rhythm of life. ! Taking up a new score, richly poured progressions from the string sextet electrify the rebounding air. If Maria is not careful, her hair will frizz in its radiance. Her teeth buzz from the resonance. She holds her left hand up to the side of her face, her palm, steadying her jaw. Maria feels her teeth vibrate. She pretends they are tectonic foldings of crust, falling and rising up again in her gums and crystallizing into celestial bodies never before seen with the naked eye. Maria paces in a circle to capture a panoramic image of the marble room. Someone observing her might think she is practicing for one of Mother’s illustrious balls. The foyer seems to her now giddily aware of her presence and it rings out brilliantly in the meditative tombeau until all of its reverberations are absorbed in the bold arbitrariness of color and gold leaf in Klimt’s works. ! Maria holds her fingers out in front of her body so that the tips on each of her left fingers touch those on the right. Maria is not bored. She is conscious of the powerful and mysterious river of time, and from its pressing waters, she has learned to cultivate a deep love for each object she possesses. She touches and watches her surroundings, deeply concerned with the existence of each body. She eyes each chandelier, each tourist passing by as a creature intimating a higher, celestial form. Maria is a circuit painted in syndetic gold leaf that connects to the phenomena in unconscious fellowship. A graymustached father is holding his daughter’s hand as she points to the staircase, then off to the plump lady in her violet suit jacket, her little mouth open and willing to piece together new visual concepts. Maria smiles from all the warmness she tries to contain. Young couples walk in devil-may-care strides away from the foyer and into the exhibit of the exalted Gustav Klimt. ! Maria watches them bounce along in something similar to envy. Mother has ensured Maria never takes too much of a fancy to art as a vocation. (Mother to Maria) All of Vienna is built on pillars of music. There is no need to waste minutes studying what could instead be a hobby. Anyway, musicians are always in wait at the Palais Auersperg for the call to entertain through such mediums. ! The painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer catches her attention. The main subject, Adele, is swallowed in gold leaf. Adele is pale and fragile like Mother. She keeps her bony hands close to her chest. Where Adele does not fill up space, the painting’s texture is warm and smooth and blends together pretence and reality. The gold looks so soft that, upon human touch, it might melt off the canvass like butter. A thousand sparkling ornaments float about Adele’s head and her neck is choked with pearls. ! Now Maria is a metallic automaton, pumped furiously with the gold beyond all gold. Another man with bleached white hair laboriously shakes his finger at what looks like his son, age six or seven, and boils over as is customary with fathers and sons. Young men stand clustered in the marble hall bantering at another lady in solitude with whistles. Maria observes their craft. They whistle at the lady as if she is a dog. The woman responds with dimmed, alluring eyes and draws back the corners of her lips into an unmistakably titillating simper. Nonplussed by the audacity of the young men to make such a banal display under the magnificent ceiling fresco, Maria begins to walk away from the foyer. She will instead wait under Klimt’s first painting of Judith, ironically her favorite, considering her previous dismissal of the last scene in the marble hall and also that the painting happens to be profusely erotic. When she arrives at her destination, Maria looks up at the face of Judith. The face is rolling in such ecstasy that its eyes can barely keep open. Under her obsidian black hair, the cheeks are flushed and the lips, wet with a honey-like dew, are gingerly spread apart to reveal opalled-teeth. Her breasts, pulled back by an obscenely thick choker, hang behind silk de nuit and are over-scored by the fluorescent gold for which Klimt has become so famous. She holds the head of unfortunate Holofernes, staunch general to King Nebuchadnezzar, against the left of her creamy belly, his mouth, also open, adjacent to her navel.
The Shinnery Review Maria observes the Assyrian head at near eye level. The obscure head is always last to be noticed under the triumphant presence of Judith. ! Judith is flowered to the wall, now confined to be an arborous ornament of Austria. Maria loosely knows the story of how Judith secured the Jewish people’s counter-attack upon the Assyrians by luring drunken Holofernes into bed and cutting off his head with his own sword; however, the historical context appears to be completely irrelevant. Judith’s cunning secured the prize. Here, drowned in gold leaf, Judith is something wicked, a force at once both terrible and magnificent to behold. It is hard for Maria to imagine Judith ever once being a symbol of chastity triumphing over vice for Christians. Is it sexual frustration that drives her motion or the thirst for vengeance on a man who robbed her of her virginity? Judith does not appear to operate under the strings of an imminent lord, but out of her own accord. The portrait hypnotizes Maria. ! I wonder what it would be like to have Judith at one of Mother’s parties. Is she as commanding in real life as she is on Klimtian canvass? Judith seems unperturbed at the precipitous presumptions of others when they come to stand in silent consideration of woman’s power and its limitations under the fire breath of man. Could she break free of the canvass to squander all of these pedestrian tourists? What connects her head to her hands as they clasp around Holofernes’ decapitated head? Is she blooming in unequivocal passion? Was her marvelous act all for the political security of Israel? Does she ever grow tired of the residual taste of blood in her mouth, turned to rusted serum and chalky clots of what used to be an infinite ocean of hedonic happiness? She is unfading in beauty, her strength unceasing. She stomps over the illustrious metropolis, smashing its buildings down to dust and rubble. ! --Maria! (Gaultier calls out from behind in short, youthful staccato) ! Maria turns around to embrace her friend, the Belvedere notes of summer honey and fresh jasmine still massaging her tongue. Gaultier glistens in a light sweat, as if he had been running to get here. Maria melts under his radiance. His arrival is such that Maria feels he is Apollo, descended from heaven, from the arms of beautiful, pink muses or that he has just returned from a delightful excursion through outer space with aliens who have seen beyond everything there is to see. ! Maria is very quick to forgive him for being late, for he is absolutely delectable to have in company. While he comes from a family as affluent and revered as those who pay calls to the Palais Auersperg, he softens the austerity of the upper class by sporting an amoretto colored pompadour hairstyle. He does not wear a tie. He laughs as if he does not fall under the very same classist rigidity that necessitates constant observances of social etiquette from Maria, that he bears no responsibility. But it is indeed a privileged laugh only one from such a class as theirs could ever hope to master. ! Maria responds to the pomp of Gaultier’s arrival: ! --Well! How are we today, my friend? --Better now that I managed to shrug off that nasty Frau Gloeckner from my back. Gaultier brings his voice up to a much shriller octave in jest of his subject: --You should always take your coffee after visiting an art gallery and never beforehand. That way you have something to look forward to while suffering through all the long, endless halls of paintings gawked at by screaming, unappreciative children. ! --Oh, yes, yes, but please do be nice to her. She really is somewhat delicate. ! --I know, I know. Your mother has also invited her to the dinner party. ! --Yes, which you are coming to, of course? ! --Would I ever refuse an invitation from your mother? ! Maria laughs: ! --No one would ever dare. (A pause). Where were you, Gaultier? I’ve been waiting here for nearly an hour. ! Gaultier smiles as he shrugs his shoulders and manages to squeeze around Maria’s question: ! --Everything is in place?
Volume XVII ! --Fine. Don’t tell me. And, God, enough of the party, Gaultier. I’m here now to get away from all the planning and the fuss going on back at home. Oh, look! Klimt’s painting of Schloss Kammer Park. Oh, how I love the trees. ! Gaultier rests his arm around Maria’s shoulders as he draws in closer to read her brochure. He massages her left shoulder with his fingers. His touch is unbearable for Maria, so she distracts herself from this moment of tingling ecstasy by rambling on with the mundane: ! --According to my brochure here, it’s one of his later works. ! Gaultier gallivants around her in flirtatious jolts. He is an expert at keeping her attention: ! --Maria, have I told you that you look absolutely beautiful today? ! Maria rolls her eyes and puts her brochure back into her purse: ! --No, but I’m assuming that you’re about to? ! He looks into her eyes and does not break eye contact: ! --It kills me. ! Maria folds her arms in front of her breasts to show just how trite she finds his remarks and, really, as a means to defend herself from Gaultier’s incessant probing: ! --Well. Thank you, but I’m sure you’ll somehow manage. ! Last year the two would sit under the French Rivieran sun for hours at a time on the terrace of Gaultier’s summer abode, discussing different summer social events or operas they attended. Discussing how splendid it was to escape and breathe in the sea air. There were cypress trees around the terrace that faced the sapphire waters of the Mediterranean. After sail boating, plates with sea scallops, soaked in morel and pistachio sauce or center-cut filets with Marseille rose spices au cognac were brought out in the late afternoon. They both drank their wine and watched the daylight crumble down like sugar sprinkled into the sea tide, swirling and churning away into blue and yellow abstractions on the horizon. There were always laughs and even moments where Maria believed Gaultier to have grown seriously attached to her. ! Maria reflects upon these times, but does not let her reminiscing seep out of her insides into any maudlin expressions on her face that would incriminate her under the glowing eyes of her friend. She must not be seen as a delicate thing to torture with hints of, dare she think it, love. Here, under Judith’s empowering presence, Maria longs for a kiss from Gaultier, but Gaultier, presumably victor of many lady conquests, as she guesses from his impenetrable self-assurance, enjoys playing with his prey before he finally breaks down and obliges their passions. ! Gaultier has never even kissed Maria, and Maria has always adamantly tried not to give him any idea of her desires. Since Maria cannot really possibly know what exactly Gaultier is thinking, she creates her own version of what visions and thoughts he ought to be holding: a Byzantine mental image of unabashed decadence: her own body, ravishing in a Klimtian display of frank eroticism, bathed in sunlight, soaked in warm milk. She fills up the unknowable space in Gaultier’s head with thoughts of adoration and amazement: Maria is quite lovely and moves down the Belvedere hallways in an effortless waltz as a swan might glide down the beautiful Blue Danube River. ! She continues trying to decipher his face. Gaultier incessantly beams beside himself when reviewing such marvelous pictures. Luckily for Gaultier, Maria desires the crush of masculine power on her pelvis just as much as she longs to crush the soldier and reign victoriously. In spite of her fantasies, Gaultier does not kiss Maria. Maria smiles for Gaultier and allows him to lead her further into the Belvedere halls. Gaultier takes her hand, as she looks back at Judith’s face one last time. ******************** Early in the morning Maria bathes in preparation for a new day; she finds that submerging herself in water often promotes periods of deep, self-encompassing reflection. The stream of hot water is a violent aorta, pumping and pressing down into the warm basin. Her servant leaves the room with her soiled nightgown, and Maria is now alone. I should have told her to bring in the stereo. It’s so quiet. Maria turns the hot water knob off when the right temperature is established and then she sinks into the water,
The Shinnery Review her eyes closed and hands cupped over her knees. Here I Am. Not in the blue Danube River, although that would be most ideal, but in a bath of my own. ! She runs her fingers through the water as if she is playing the piano. Her thoughts turn to the dinner at Palais Kinsky tomorrow night. Mother has provided a small list of tasks to complete beforehand that consists mostly of making sure the flower arrangements are in order and that each place setting is labeled with the correct guest name. She can already hear fanfarish cacophonies of the earlier hours segue into terrific shouts and ballroom stride of victorious grandiloquence. Maria toys with poetry: Oh, but until my heart can learn to make accommodation for the entire universe, until my rib caged-urn can contain that unknowable ocean, I will continue onward into this voyage of mine. ! Filled with Klimtian images of woman triumphant, Maria cannot help but try to reaffirm herself as a work of art. Attaining such freedom from her former concerns of the day will mean ridding herself of all shame and resurrecting herself as a masterpiece, then, eventually letting the mirror containing the filth and carking putridity of the day swirl down into the drain, off to other more taboo regions. Of course what filth could a woman like Maria possibly ever possess from the hours of the day? ! In her mind Maria revisits lectures from the University from yesterday. Maria longs to be steeled by the sense of a higher power, some calling, or at least by a sensation of height. From the heavens she wants to plummet down into the opulently decorated bathroom of baroque austerity and buoy in rippling idylls. She wants to bombard her body with the uncontainable scope of infinity, and she accompanies such visions with music: ! Part one of the concerto (Gustav Klimt): ! --It was once suggested that we each somehow acquire a room of our own in the midst of the city’s armature. No, be more generous to your soul! ! Maria sits up straight in her tub. Without turning her head, she moves her hand toward her pack of pink cigarettes and blindly selects one to smoke, her mind still transfixed upon this newly sprung chorus. ! Part two of the concerto (Gaultier): --Allow your beast to wonder as it pleases. Demand a copious space, an ample garden without ridged walls and corners that proportion thought and feeling… God, do you look beautiful, Maria! ! Maria sucks in the smoke deeply and puffs. She can see her own breath, struck by rays of light from the window; it becomes a Klimtian river of time and space. Maria enjoys the thought of making herself a canvass for the genius of Gustav Klimt. She spreads apart her legs. Maria responds to the chorus: ! --That is all very lovely, Gaultier, but if you carry on too much longer you will begin to sound like old Professor rambling at one of my musical seminars. Remember his unkempt attire? Remember how zany his bantering impetus to auditorium morale was? What an off-kilter man. ! Maria smiles because she is so easily able to pull Gaultier’s voice from out of her memory. When public, Maria keeps up a pretense of ambivalence toward the man’s playful admiration, and yet here she is, in her solitude, posing with her legs spread wide apart. Maria fancies herself the Archduchess Maria Antonia about to dance with her French Dauphin. There would be fireworks to ring in the kiss of all kisses, to rain down in sparkling abstractions of Klimt’s golden spirit. She takes another drag of her cigarette. ! Gaultier to Maria: ! --Above all I cherish that space in our memory when we were together. The summer we spent in the salty air and gold-leafed sunrises and sunsets. ! Part three of the concerto (Maria): ! Gustav Klimt runs his paintbrush up and down Maria’s skin. He smears pieces of gold leaf into the flesh and dabs the canvass with wild circles of juvenile colors. Step into the light.
Volume XVII ! Madness: Gustav Klimt composes roaring seas of aching and longing, and suddenly Maria frolics with ideas of how she and, surely, Gaultier must share such passions. She sinks back into her tub and relaxes her muscles. She rubs her breasts under the water as she pictures the stars falling down as blazing ornaments into the Mediterranean Sea from the terrace view at Gaultier’s summer home. Maria envisions herself cradled in the hands of Gaultier. His dark hair is crowned with a laurel and her blonde curls adorned with wild flowers. He presses his hands into her neck and she feels grounded into a mossy bank under his weight. Her lips tremor as they rest next to his. She longs for Gaultier to unravel the fabric from her chest and to baste together their love in kisses. She holds a clearer image of the human body and desires to loosen her veins notwithstanding; just as the beautifully constructed tapestries Mother purchased for the estate weather away to abstraction with the fraying of each thread. ! Maria is speechless for several seconds and the chorus of men evaporates from her bath. ! The silence catches her off guard. ! The water in her bath has turned cold, so it is time for her to move on. Maria gives her bathroom décor a piercing look. It is noon, the earth is tilted, and the sun glimmers high above Vienna. A window generously allows its light to pour into the room, and in return, she softly releases gratitude from her lips, which is the only true way to respond during these moments of brilliant gorgeousness. Tomorrow night, she will arrange a private conversation with him. She knows that she cannot keep going on like this. Maria decides to be honest with herself, because she is not sure how much longer she can hold herself in this crushing suspense. She gingerly spreads apart her lips in ecstasy, covered in honey-like dew. Tomorrow night. ! After the opera Maria returns to Palais Auersperg and has her nightly cup of tea. Then she goes to sleep. ******************** Maria lies naked on marble tile. Her head is heavy as if having been injected with a paralyzing poison. A golden goblet rests on its side just out of arm’s reach and a black liquid oozes out onto the floor. On the wall in front of her body hangs a dark canvass framed in gold. Maria is perplexed by the dark void that hangs in such regal framing. ! Now Maria is sprawled out on the grass of her Mother’s garden at Palais Auersperg. She does not remember the circumstances that led her to this sanctum. Upon closer inspection Maria discovers that this garden is not the same garden she remembers from the estate. Where are the white roses? All around her there is a wall of clipped green hedges, all at least fifteen feet tall. Usually she can hear birds chirping. Thirty feet in front of her is a cloister of foreign trees, all gray. She cannot hear Mother’s fountain. ! She reminds herself to take in long breaths, to exhale her burning air slowly. Maria speaks to herself to soothe her body in this unprecedented siege of anxiety: Melt into the earth; fall down into the earth. The lungs are crusted over with liquid dread, and she cannot control the frantic manner in which her chest pounds up and down. She is an incumbent body, lying stunned upon the mossy floor of this garden, and she digs her fingers deep into the earth. The blades of grass make a damp quilt of comfort with loose, unfeeling threads. She is trying to climb back into Mother’s womb, green and moist, but whatever her efforts, she still remains an assailable body, vulnerable under the canopy of gray tree limbs, under the blinding white sun. Everything in the garden is marvelously hued in green, violet, and red. Only the trees above reach toward each other in slow stillness, noble lords, the gap of gray matter that seem to Maria to be ambivalent toward the opera below. She opens her eyes. ! Always, always there are the myopic eyes lurking in the bushes. Men with Venetian masquerade masks with overhanging noses and engorged genitalia exposed from their velvety Elizabethan doublets. The circling party has not made an advance toward her yet. The men are encapsulated in a fronting stone arrangement, waiting, as if for a signal to be given from some eminent puppeteer hidden deep within the garden. Waiting as if this tableau vivant is soon to be conducted out of a boiling temperament. ! One man sports antlers in addition to his mask that sprout from his amaretto colored hair"antlers freshly cut off from a stag. She wants to know what has happened to the stag, but cannot find its
The Shinnery Review body anywhere. Always, always there are the hours in between her breaths, and they press down upon her skin in pounding mallets of a masked fury. She is an earthworm pinned down to the ground. She remembers there is a fountain somewhere in Mother’s garden. She listens for the sound of unstill water and reaches out with her fingers, one of the few parts of her body graciously left unparalyzed, toward its source to tread its waters. She grimaces in nervousness. ! Now there is the sound of an ocean tide, sweeping and drawing back, increasing in volume, swallowing the colors before Maria’s eyes. The world spirals around her body, and she finds herself wading into a foreign river. No normal current pools at her legs. Instead, the river has calmed down to a drumming blackish sludge. Maria folds her arms, clutching her elbows under the moonlight. The night air is bitterly cold. She is overcome with the feeling of vulnerability, and now that the eyes in the bushes are gone, she feels even more confused. Everything around her could be concealing a perfidious entity. ! Music begins from the sky. Maria looks up to night, swirled with purple and black oil that obscures the connection between the observer and the observed, its clouds illuminated by the pressing moon. Here are the soft, pink muses from the Grecian image in the Belvedere palace, hovering yards above the water. They sing in an atonal sextet that churns and builds with each meter like an impeding dénouement that is about to be revealed in a sublime climax of fireworks, whistling up and up and crackling into a thousand celestial bodies of sparkling fire. Apollo is not here. He must still be somewhere higher up in the heavens. Here in the shallow waters of the river Maria is almost calmed by the fluid night sky and wants to serenade back to the soft stillness, but before she can begin to relax she notices the limp carcass of a stag on the other side of the river. Its head bears two gapping red holes and its tongue hangs outside its mouth like a deflated balloon. Then Maria is tackled from behind. ! Maria cannot yet make sense of the sudden force that has pinned her to the riverbed. She is choking on water she swallowed during the fall. She tries to get to her feet, but her arms are being pressed down into the mud by strong, brutal hands. She summons enough effort to push her back off the slimy bed and up so that her head can get a glimpse of her attacker. Under the surface of the river, the same masked man with bloody antlers of a stag bends over her body. He does not wear anything except the mask. A few seconds later, the man’s body jumps away from her as if moved by a powerful, inhuman force. She jolts up and gasps for air, coughing up the cold water. The muses above fly around furiously and panic. Underneath their mad dance, a giant octopus has emerged from the deepest part of the river. Its magenta tentacles wrap around the man’s body, drawing him further and further toward its mouth. Her previous attacker suddenly looks feeble and flaccid, paralyzed in the grasp of this monstrosity that is sucking away at the man’s naked body. ! The octopus’ tentacles retract from the man and coil together with his masked head in a tangle of rubbery purple and blood. The man’s body stumbles about in eerie spasms, headless, blood spilling out from its groin, clawing away at the night, and then falls with a thud into the river. Now the river goes back to its original undisturbed state. Then silence. Transfixed, Maria still sits in the waters of the bank; she is unable to comprehend what fantastic event just took place. ! Transfiguration: See how brightly the universe gleams! There is radiance on everything! A beautiful river flows from its origins in the Black Forrest, its music much sweeter than by day. A tall, pale figure with obsidian black hair walks in the forest, deeply intent in whatever excursion on which she embarks. She holds out her right hand with unsettling majesty and the tree limbs part away from her tracks. Each footprint she leaves in the pine needles of the forest floor glows as a pool of fluorescent elixir that feeds into the life of the forest. Maria looks and looks as her frame grows smaller and the light of her aura grows dim behind the dense choir of coniferous trees. The mysterious lady has vanished, and the stag has no choice but to decompose and melt into the earth, but the river shines on into the night. ******************** Maria lies in her bed in the disorienting haze that follows waking. She squints her eyes in an attempt to rid herself of these images, but it is no use. The pictures are imbedded into her head, dark as Erebus. Mother’s portrait rests next to her bed on a heavily gilded nightstand, an invaluable piece of fur-
Volume XVII niture from rococo Vienna (of course). Maria turns over and rubs her face into a pink silk pillow, back and forth, back and forth in disbelief. Her four-poster bed resembles the same the Archduchess Maria Antonia and her French Dauphin used in Versailles, but in this morning she finds no consolation in its worth. Normally this would be a morning where Maria wakes up to begin pampering her face in preparations for whatever Mother has planned for her. Normally Maria slides out of bed to open her bedroom curtains before the servants come in to help her in her morning bath routine. Normally, like other young women from affluent, titled families, Maria resets her own medieval device of poised temperance. She envisions a young maiden having her head crudely clamped into a dead stare as punishment by royal decree. Her head is then slowly compressed under the weight of the apparatus. Screws drive in grinding spirals into the skull, teeth are shattered into the jaw, and the eyes slowly squeeze out from their burning sockets. The effects are, needless to say, excruciating. Maria ponders the ability of human beings to walk about so strung up in these self-chastising works as she stretches her arms and cracks her neck to release tension. Yes, Mother, I know it’s a nasty habit. The vertebrae disks of her cervical spine crackle over each other and her muscles tighten. She retreats to a ball with her head between her knees and her arms hugging her shins. ! There are more flower arrangements for Maria to examine. Pink and red peonies. Maria stays put in this fortress. The bedroom curtains remain closed. She takes in long breaths and slowly exhales her burning air. She remembers the private meeting she arranged with Gaultier tonight. She at once feels childish. Childish for her dreams in which Gaultier is hers and she is loved. Does he know? Does he sense my deep attachment to him and return my affections with unfeeling laughter? Childish for thinking his body was hers and hers alone. Childish for her night terror and the way she lets it affect her so deeply. She still aches for suppression underneath his weight, but now she feels simultaneously disgusting for her base desires. She will still see him. ! Maria reminds herself that the world rotates off of the predicted axis. Its meridian tilts away from the perpendicular because it has no metal clamps to hold it in constant rigidity. The air she releases is quickly stilled as if everyone in Palais Auersperg is still asleep, as if the entire universe is holding its breath in anticipation of a deep plunge into an unknown ocean. ******************** ! The guests have arrived. Mother oversees each distinguished guest walk in and hand his or her coat to the attendee. Palais Auersperg buzzes in frothy fraternization: ! Herr Müller to Mother: --Is that painting an authentic Francois Boucher? ! --Oh, yes, I have people in France that are constantly looking for his works these days. ! --I was just speaking with Herr Huber. We agree that your daughter is very beautiful, Frau Kinsky. Where is she? ! Mother smiles. ! --Thank you. You know, Herr Müller, I was just asking myself the same question. She should be down here any minute now. The flower arrangements are hers. Do you like them? Personally I find the red peonies overwhelming. Recently, the poor girl seems to have been very distracted. ! Herr Müller: --It all looks lovely. ! Herr Huber: --She was at the Belvedere two days ago, am I correct? She moves with an unparalleled eloquence. My daughter says she saw her with that Gaultier. ! Mother smiles and smiles. --Oh, he is a real work, isn’t he? ! --An Adonis! He is coming here tonight? Hopefully so, anyway. I have already promised Anika here that he will come. He certainly knows how to brighten a room.
The Shinnery Review ! Herr Huber hugs his daughter, Anika, tightly as she reddens with embarrassment. Mother smiles and smiles and smiles. ! Frau Gloeckner lightly coughs to solidify her presence and wobbles over toward Mother with a gnarled index finger: ! --I hope this dinner isn’t too rich. As you may know, I have hyperlipidemia and I just cannot ingest too many fatty foods these days. ! --Then don’t eat the duck terrine. ! Herr Huber embraces Frau Gloeckner in his drunken mirth: ! --We’re all simply not as young as we used to be! ! --Oh, but I do love duck terrine. ! Mother, trying her hardest to be patient with the inelegant Frau Gloeckner: ! --Then, by all means, eat the duck terrine. ! Mother looks at Gloeckner with lethargic contempt and then takes back the conversation’s reins: --Now, don’t say a word, but I believe Maria to be somewhat ensnared by our Gaultier. Let’s pay extra close attention to the way they interact around each other this evening. ! Mother laughs and opens her arms up to direct guests past the foyer into the lounge room, where they will be served champagne and enticing preludes to the night’s feast. Herr Huber and Herr Müller walk away with their friends. Anika Huber sheepishly follows with Frau Gloeckner attacking her with petty questions. Maria watches from a dark hallway as Vienna’s crème de la crème proceed in merriment off to the d'oeuvres of Palais Auersperg. Compliments will be given to Mother on her keen aesthetic and upholding of Viennese tradition, even though Mother did more pointing than actual creating in preparation for tonight. Maria feels sick to her stomach. She hugs her belly and winces at the escalading feeling of nausea. Maria wonders to herself what it is that connects her head to her hands. ! Gaultier has arrived. From her lair of darkness and comfort, Maria can hear his voice rebounding through the foyer walls. Maria peeks from behind the corner to get a glimpse of his company. He is not alone, but has brought two women with him. Twins in shimmery red frocks. Why on earth has he brought them? Gaultier stands in between them with an arm for each of the ladies’ waists. They are so beautiful. For a second Maria and he make eye contact. Maria quickly retreats behind the corner and slumps into the wall. You’re devious. She must compose herself. Mother enters the dark corridor from the other direction and calls her name. ! Maria: ! --Hello, Mother. ! Mother: ! --Well, hello, Maria. Mind sharing with me why you’re hanging back here like an unfriendly recluse? Come out and stand next to your lovely flower arrangements. ! Maria: ! --I’m glad I found you. ! Mother ignores Maria: ! --Oh, Maria, your hair, for God’s sake. Here I am exhausted from all the preparations and you stand there like that as if in spite of all I do for you. Has anyone seen you? Let me help you. ! Maria does not know how to articulate an appropriate response. She looks into Mother’s face under the same golden hair. Her eyes are blue like Maria’s, but they blaze as if she is always rapidly calculating an approach to or reassessment of how she might command the room’s atmosphere. This is my face. Maria walks in closer to Mother and holds her head in her dazed hands and brings her lips to kiss Mother’s. Adieu, Adieu. Mother quickly steps back, laughing to fill up the very still, dark corridor air. ! Mother speaks: ! --Maria! Have you gone insane? Get out there and talk to our guests! They’ve all been dying to see you. Gaultier is here, did you know? ! Maria manages to bring about a smile:
Volume XVII ! --Mother I don’t think I will be making it to dinner tonight. You can tell your friends that I am not feeling well. Or, tell them I am being ridiculous, that I’ve been distracted lately. Tell them whatever you wish. Maria walks out from the hallway without further explanation. Mother cannot deal with this unexpected difficulty her daughter presents on a night where guests are to be entertained. She scoffs at her daughter’s persistently riddling behavior and goes back to the lounging room, where guests are drinking champagne and cutting into their puff pastries and sumptuous duck terrine. They all laugh as directed by Mother. Hired musicians pluck away on the baroque harps. Gaultier has a twin saddling each of his knees. He gives Anika looks that make her blush. Very soon now the party will be slashing into impressive cuts of red meat. Blood will run down the sliced marbled slabs into puddles on their plates. Maria stands at the palace doors and touches her face. ! Gaultier, now aware that Maria has been absent from his side, finally excuses himself to go back to the foyer in an attempt to find Maria. Instead he finds that the front doors have been left wide open. He calls out Maria’s name and there is only silence. Gaultier closes the front doors, because the night’s cold air is rushing inside and stealing the guests’ warmth. ******************** Epoch: Fireworks shoot out from the grounds around the Belvedere palace. Vienna continues celebrating the works of Gustav Klimt late into the night. The art gallery is closed, but the streets remain flooded with happy couples, drunk and bewitched. The disappearance of Judith from her canvass has gone unnoticed for now. Holofernes’ head has been dropped from her hands and the frame now contains nothing more than space. In the heart of the Black Forest a woman walks under the moonlight. She keeps close to a river of light that is slowly poured from the heavens. Hoping to find fruit, she eats her way deep into flesh. Oh, endless tunnels.