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

family as unteachable. Then everything would go back to the way it was, and I wouldn’t have to see him again.
    “You’re not the least bit curious?” she asked. “You’re not the least bit interested in the studio, or the artists, or learning how to draw?”
    “No,” I said, but she knew me better than that.
    “Maybe I’ll let you borrow my new gray skirt,” she said. “It would look nice with your pink blouse.”
    After breakfast my father took my arm and walked me briskly toward the east, toward the Naschmarkt.
    “I thought the studio was in Leopoldstadt,” I said.
    My father was annoyed. He hated any evidence that we had failed to listen to our instructions. “We’re not going to the studio,” he said. “Whatever gave you that idea? We’re going to their house, it’s in Hietzing.”
    Hietzing was a long way away, in the countryside. It was where the summer palace was. I had never been there.
    A man my father knew passed us, reading the newspaper as he walked. My father stood in front of him and the man nearly collided with him. The man folded up his newspaper and shook my father’s hand.
    At the corner was a cab stand. The horse-drawn carriages were lined up for a block, waiting. My father gave a wave that was more like a salute, and the driver nodded and hopped down to open the door. He was in his shirtsleeves, and underneath his oily mustache a cigar as fat as a snake was clamped between his teeth. The smoke was acrid, not sweet and spicy like the tobacco I was used to. I coughed without meaning to as he helped me into the compartment.
    “Ever smoke a pipe?” asked my father. “Much healthier.”
    I curled into the corner of the carriage, trying not to breathe. Why did my father try to sell pipes to everyone he met?
    The man’s laugh was full of phlegm. “Don’t worry about me. My wife’ll kill me long before these things do.” He wrapped a plaid blanket around me, rather too tightly.
    We passed the dry goods stores, the florists, the churches, and bakeries that lined the busy street. There was a gaping hole where they were building the new theater, in between two somber stone apartment buildings. Men were standing in the muddy maw passing stone blocks to one another. We passed blocks of rowhouses with windowboxes cascading ivy and geraniums and impatiens.
    His house! Whatever small appeal the morning had was now lost. A studio was mysterious, exotic, peopled with men with fevered eyes. A house had lace antimacassars pinned to the furniture.
    My father pulled out his pipe and the leather pouch in which he kept his tobacco, maybe hoping that in the process of packing and lighting and smoking he would entice the driver with the aroma. I was turned away from him but I could tell he was ready to speak.
    “You know, Emilie,” he said, “this is a great honor for you.”
    I wanted to say that I had ridden in a carriage before, when Pauline had scarlet fever, but I didn’t.
    “Yes, Father,” I said instead.
    “And for our family,” he continued. “I trust that you won’t do anything to jeopardize our good opinion of you.”
    “No, Father.”
    “I expect to receive a full report on your performance from Mr. Klimt at the end of the lesson.”
    With a nod of his head, the interview was over. I was free to turn back to the window. We had passed the train station and things had started to change. A bareheaded man in a bright red vest was selling what looked like small pieces of paper.
    “What is that man doing?” I asked my father. He explained that the man was a charlatan. He sold fortunes, the cheapest ones preprinted on a card, the more expensive ones written out after a consultation. The flowers in the florist’s were limp and tinged with brown, like burned toast. A knife-sharpener pushed his cart. Three wizened old men with white beards were lurking outside a bakery, waiting for the day-old bread.
    “Have you ever been to Klimt’s house?” I asked nervously, forgetting to call him