Here is where my awakening shall occur , Alma told herself. In magical Venice, in the spring of the year and the spring of her life. Never mind that it was pouring rain and fog hung as thickly as wool. In the hotel salon, she played piano, accompanying her mother who sang lieder to entertain their fellow tourists sheltering from the miserable weather. How beautiful was her mother's soprano, how flawless her diction. Mama had been an opera singer before she married Alma's father, now almost seven years dead. At the song's close came a burst of applause. Alma beamed at her audience. Sitting among the English and German tourists were Gretl; their stepfather, Carl; and his colleague Gustav Klimt, who seemed to regard Alma with amused speculation. For Easter, Herr Klimt had given her a silly card of a shepherdess encircled by adoring sheep sporting gentlemen's hats--Alma kept it tucked in her journal. He is so handsome , she thought, heat rising in her face. With his powerful body, his curly hair and beard, he reminded her of the figures on ancient Greek vases. If Gustav Klimt had even the faintest clue how infatuated she was, she would die. Thirty-seven years old, the most celebrated painter in all Vienna, he could marry a countess just by snapping his fingers. Nonetheless, Alma made herself stare right back at him to prove she wasn't some giddy girl he could disarm with a smile. Her stepfather was so fond of Klimt, he had all but begged him to join them on their journey through Italy even though Klimt swore that he hated foreign travel and was terrible with languages. As a painter, Carl was nowhere near as brilliant as Klimt--or Emil Schindler, whose protégé Carl had been. Klimt and Papa are giants , Alma told herself. But Carl was a lesser talent who hung on to the coattails of the great in hope that some of their glory might rub off on him. It wasn't that her stepfather was a bad man, but Alma often wondered why Mama seemed to worship him. Alma set her sights higher. Nothing less than a man of brilliance would do for her, a truly modern man who understood her need to continue composing even after she was married. She wasn't one, like her sister, to settle for the very first suitor. Gretl was engaged to the tedious Wilhelm Legler, a painter of almost numbing mediocrity. No, Alma vowed to wait for the right man, the one whose love would help her unfold to her highest purpose. Rising from the piano bench, Alma was gathering up her music scores when an elderly English lady approached her. "Fräulein, you played so beautifully, like a concert pianist," she said. "Tell me, who was the composer?" "I am," Alma replied. She lowered her eyes. "My daughter composed all eight lieder we performed," Mama added, with warmth and pride. The English lady seemed most impressed. She grasped Alma's hands. "Keep on composing, won't you, dear? Show the men that we women can achieve something." Alma found herself flushing and speechless, seized with both a bottomless joy and an ambition that left her breathless. Many a girl showed talent and promise only to give it up for marriage, as Mama had done when she was only twenty-one and pregnant--out of wedlock!--with Alma. But wasn't a new age dawning, all the rules for art, music, and society changing at once? As the English lady and her companions took their leave, Gretl announced that she was dying for a game of whist, so Mama and Carl sat down with her at the card table. But Alma could think of no pastime more deadening to the intellect and spirit. Mumbling her excuses, she carried her music scores upstairs to the room that she and Gretl were sharing. Closing the door behind her, Alma sank into an armchair and buried herself in Flaubert's Madame Bovary , which Mama considered unseemly for a young girl. But Mama had long given up trying to control what Alma read. You're so stubborn , her mother was always saying. So boneheaded. Yet truth be told, Alma was rapidly losing patience with Emma Bovary. She found the character incomprehensible. Her madness, her degrading love affairs, her endless lying to herself and others--was this woman flighty, cowardly, or simply coarse and common? Tossing the book aside, Alma opened the French doors and stepped out on the balcony to breathe in the fresh, cool air now that the rain had finally let up. The canal below was gray with a shimmer of yellow as the sun broke through gaps in the fog. Gray was her favorite color, the way it so seamlessly merged with other hues. An artist's daughter, she observed how every raindrop on the balcony rail became a gleaming pearl. The crumbling palazzos across the canal seemed almost rosy. Everything flickered and glowed in dreamy gray light. Hearing a noise in the room, Alma left the balcony and stepped inside. "Gretl?" she called. She had left the door unlocked since her sister was always forgetting her key. Instead, she found Gustav Klimt standing in the middle of her room. Her heart began to pound even as she told herself that he must be looking for Carl and had wandered in here by mistake. "Alma," he said. "Are you on your own?" "Why, yes," she said, without thinking. "The others are--" Before she could finish her sentence, Klimt crossed the room in two huge strides. A gasp caught in her throat as he pulled her body against his, kissing her with vehemence and heat, his lips firm and insistent, his beard bristling against her chin. Her first kiss. What magic was this? It was as though her hidden longing had summoned him straight into her embrace. Time seemed to drop away, everything before or after this single moment diminishing into nothingness as the ecstasy surged inside her, crashing like a wave inside her heart. Klimt cupped her face to his. "I could see all the passion locked inside you while you were playing the piano. The time has come to set it free." She trembled just to gaze into his gray green eyes. "Love me," he whispered, running his fingers around her lips. She tenderly caressed his hair, feeling the thick, springy curls twining around her fingertips. She kissed him with a hunger that left her aching. The soft quivering in her belly and knees was countered by a shooting heat, a rising energy that made her want to dance. But instead of losing herself in her frenzy, she made herself slow down, kissing him with deliberation, savoring each nuance of his lips against hers, her chest against his, their lungs swelling in unison as if sharing the same breath. All the dusty descriptions of love scenes she had read in Madame Bovary and elsewhere seemed meaningless now. This was what passion, what awakening, truly was. When Klimt asked if he could take out her hairpins, Alma nodded, moved beyond speech. He pulled them out one by one until her brown hair fell over her shoulders like a cloak. As if in holy awe, Klimt drew back and stared. "How I long to paint you." He positioned her before the full-length mirror. His arm around her waist, he stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. When their eyes met in the mirror, he commanded her to look at herself, as though he, the artist, were revealing her own image to her for the very first time. Alma squirmed but couldn't take her eyes off the mirror, for this was as exciting as it was uncomfortable. This is what men see when they look at me. Tall, she stood shoulder to shoulder with Klimt. Her face was flushed with yearning, her blue eyes huge, blinking rapidly. "You are so ripe and voluptuous," he said, drawing her attention to her waving tresses flowing over her breasts. His hands traced the curve of her hips. Swinging her around to face him again, he stroked her hair. "Alma," he said. "My little wife." Oh, to marry Klimt. A sweet ache bloomed inside her as they kissed, his tongue flicking between her teeth. Then she jolted at the sound of Mama's and Carl's voices in the adjoining room. Then she jolted at the sound of Mama's and Carl's voices in the adjoining room. Excerpted from Ecstasy: A Novel by Mary Sharratt All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
