The Painted Kiss by Elizabeth Hickey Read Free Book Online Page A

just starting to arrive from the country with produce for the market. There was always a man in a wide-brimmed hat driving and a few children of various ages sitting on pumpkins in the back. They rattled and bounced like seeds in a gourd. Idly I wondered how early they had to wake up to get to Vienna at that hour. Most likely they were used to it. It might even be fun, to see the countryside in the half-light, clopping into the city when everyone there was still asleep.
    The light paled. Soon shafts of sunlight would pierce the watery early morning and things would get stark and clear. Soon I would have to wash my face with cold water that would bring up the goose bumps on my arms. I would have to eat every bite of the coarse porridge mother said was the best thing for us, though I noticed that she ate pastry stuffed with raspberry or apple. I would have to listen to many admonitions to mind my manners and apply myself. I would have to put on my ugly felt hat and leave the house and walk past the newspaper man. I didn’t want to think beyond that.
    More than cannibals, more than inoculations, more than tripe, I feared being laughed at. What would the artist say when he saw my clumsy attempts at drawing? It was going to be so humiliating. My stomach cramped at the thought. Maybe I would be sick and not have to go.
    Helene appeared next to me, wearing her coverlet over her head like the Virgin Mary. “It’s too cold to sit there like that,” she said. “Go back to bed.”
    I shook my head and turned back to the outside. One of the men with a cart was trading a bag of yellow apples for a newspaper. The children were throwing what appeared to be chestnuts at one another.
    “Are you nervous?” she asked sympathetically.
    “About what?” I said.
    I had never had a lesson that wasn’t given by a nun. Not that they didn’t have their terrifying qualities: their stern, thin-lipped mouths; their ghostly costumes; their fondness for standing over your shoulder while you worked on an assignment until you were so flustered you couldn’t even remember what subject you were doing. But a nun was a known quantity. I already knew what pleased them: tidy hair, clean hands, wide-open eyes, and a slight smile, but never a grin. I could fall asleep with my face arranged like that.
    “When I had my first singing lesson I was terrified,” said Helene. “I thought I would forget all of the notes. The night before I had a dream that I was a pigeon and could only make that horrible cooing sound. But then Mrs. Schraft was not so bad.”
    Mrs. Schraft was seventy and her wool coat always smelled like a sheepdog. She carried hazelnut candies wrapped in colored foil in her skirt pocket and liberally dispensed them to her students.
    “I wish I was going to Mrs. Shraft.”
    Helene sat down, unfurled her headdress and wrapped me in it as well. We sat back to back, like caryatids.
    “I wish I could go with you,” she said.
    I wished she could, too. It would take half of the attention off of me. Maybe afterward Papa would let us go to a café and we could order hot chocolate and laugh about it.
    “You want to learn to draw?” I asked her.
    “I want to see the studio. I wonder if anyone famous will come while you’re there.”
    “I doubt it. I think he made all of that up.”
    Helene shook her head. She didn’t understand why I didn’t like Klimt. She thought he was interesting.
    “What are you going to wear?” she said. I leaned forward and dumped her off of my back. I turned to glare at her.
    “Why does it matter?”
    “Don’t you want to make a good impression?”
    “I don’t care if I make a good impression on Klimt.”
    “You’d better say Mr. Klimt,” she said, shocked. “What if Mama and Papa heard you?”
    Then I told her my secret plan: I was going to be polite, and quiet, but completely inept. Klimt wouldn’t be able to complain about me, but I would frustrate him so much that he would give up, and return me to my