The Flames, page 26
‘Tatjana didn’t have anywhere else to go,’ Vally replied. ‘She just turned up uninvited.’ Tatjana shot her a betrayed look. ‘She was drenched. I told her she could dry off here before we send her home. When the storm is over.’
Tatjana burst into sobs. ‘You can’t make me! I’m never going back there.’
Egon looked at Vally with steady eyes, his brows raised in a weary challenge.
‘Well, it’s not going to be possible for you to stay here,’ he said to the girl.
‘Vally said I could come any time.’
‘Tatjana! That’s not what I said. Egon, I never—’
‘You can’t stay here. We’ve a full house as it is,’ Egon continued.
Erwin dropped Vally’s clean dishcloth into the puddle of wine. ‘It’s hardly likely Anton will make it from Vienna tonight. We can sleep in here, Egon. Vally and this little lady can take the bed. You can’t send her back out into the night looking like that, for Christ’s sake. You’ll be the talk of the town. You’re already an ogre, from what I hear.’ He knocked Egon’s shoulder, playfully.
‘Please,’ Tatjana pleaded.
Vally could see the desperation in her eyes. ‘She’ll be on her way first thing, won’t you, Tatti?’
‘I’ll be gone before you even wake up,’ the young girl promised.
The next day, Tatjana was at the table, having prepared four plates for breakfast, by the time Vally emerged. When she’d found the other side of the bed deserted, Vally had hoped that the girl had made good on her promise and left at first light. But there she was, cheerful to the point of obnoxiousness, cutting bread and setting out jars of fruit preserve. Tatjana had also picked daisies and colourful weeds from the garden and had placed them in a jar filled with water.
‘I thought you were leaving?’ Vally said, taking a seat.
‘I am!’ Tatjana replied. ‘I’m going to Vienna to stay with my grandmama.’
‘You can’t go all that way by yourself!’
‘I’m heading back to Vienna today,’ Erwin said, entering the kitchen. ‘And Egon’s coming with me, aren’t you?’ the young man shouted into the other room, where the two men had slept on the cot and the floor. Egon came in with his shirt unbuttoned, his teeth stained crimson from the previous night’s drinking.
‘Am I?’ he asked, giving Vally a stern look when he noticed Tatjana. Vally busied herself with the coffee on the stove.
‘You said you wanted to visit Roessler, about that commission. You were complaining that he never sells your work.’ Erwin helped himself to the lion’s share of the bread. ‘And we can find Anton and ask him what, or who, kept him from turning up last night.’
‘Erwin and Egon can accompany me on the train to Vienna,’ Tatjana said to Vally.
‘You’ll be safe with us,’ Erwin smirked.
‘Tatti should return home. She’s fourteen. Her parents will be worried,’ Vally said.
‘I’m never going home. It’s dangerous. My father will hurt me,’ Tatjana said, exposing her arms once more. ‘I said I was going to Vienna. He told me to go and never come back.’
‘Oh, Tatjana,’ Vally said. ‘People often say hurtful things in anger. He’ll apologize.’
‘Your father did that to you?’ Erwin interrupted, examining her bruises.
‘I’m going to Vienna whether you agree or not,’ she said.
Vally sighed. There was a softness in Egon’s eyes, telling her he wouldn’t argue with her on this.
‘Fine. But I’m coming with you all,’ she said. ‘Someone has to make sure Tatjana gets to her grandmother’s apartment.’
‘On your head be it.’ Egon gave a half-smile, and took a sip of coffee.
Vally and Tatjana made the trip from Vienna’s West Railway Station to her grandmother’s house in the west of the city. Egon and Erwin had more important business to attend to. Tatjana faithfully recalled the address. She was certain about the street name and number. They arrived at a neatly painted door in a well-to-do neighbourhood.
‘This must be it.’ Tatjana knocked with vigour. ‘Imagine Grandmama’s surprise when she sees me.’
She knocked again.
‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ Vally asked.
‘Of course I am!’
A few moments later, the door opened a crack.
‘Shoo! I’m not expecting anyone.’ A wrinkled hand gestured them away before closing the door once more.
Vally knocked until the man opened it again. ‘Excuse me, we’re looking for Frau von Mossig. She’s my friend’s grandmother. Is she here?’
‘Never heard of her,’ the old man wheezed.
Tatjana reddened. ‘She lives here, she does.’
‘I’d know about it if she did. Now, push off, the pair of you.’
They tried three similar addresses, Vally growing increasingly desperate as the day wore on. ‘I’ve no idea what we’ll do if we don’t find your grandmother,’ she said. ‘We’ve missed the last train back to Neulengbach. We’ll have to stay the night.’
There was nothing else they could do. So, they found a cheap place to stay near the station, then left at first light. On the train back to Neulengbach, Tatjana was sulking. ‘I don’t want to go home,’ she repeated.
‘You have to go,’ Vally urged. ‘You’ve already caused enough trouble.’
At the corner of the road to her home, Tatjana had hugged Vally, almost crushing her. ‘I wish it could be just the two of us, always,’ she said, with longing.
Vally looked into the younger girl’s eyes, never imagining what would follow.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ she promised. ‘Now, go! Try to make amends with your father.’
14
April 1912
The basement cell in which Egon is being detained is stuffy, claustrophobic, with a high, curved ceiling and an iron-barred slit for a window. On the other side, Vally knows well, is a sheer drop, for she has considered trying to reach him that way, to offer reassuring words and throw any small tokens she could through the gaps.
Now she’s at the scuffed wooden door, looking through the grate at him. She reaches out to touch his fingers.
‘Vally! You came. Thank you. Everyone else has abandoned me,’ he says. ‘This is the first human contact I’ve had in almost a week,’ he adds, pressing the tips of her fingers to his lips. He breathes her in, as if she were a fresh bloom. ‘Nothing has ever seemed sweeter. But how did you convince that tyrant of a guard to let you in?’ Egon asks, pressing his face to the grate.
‘Never mind that,’ she says sadly, rubbing his cheek. ‘You’ve not shaved,’ she adds, after a moment.
‘They won’t allow me a paintbrush, let alone a razor blade,’ he replies.
‘Ah, bristles on a stick, the deadliest of weapons,’ she says, trying to raise a smile in return.
‘They’ve denied me everything. My muscles ache. My hands act out the motion of drawing, of painting, in thin air. I’ve begged, but they won’t let me have even a pencil. I’ve been forced to mark lines upon the wall, using my fingers and spittle from my mouth. It dries before I move on to the next stroke, but the image remains, in here.’ He touches his temple.
‘It’s an outrage,’ Vally tells Egon. ‘To contain you in this way.’
‘I’m powerless,’ he replies. ‘They have the key to this heavy door, with its lock that cannot be broken. I’m in their system. I could be in this dungeon for weeks, months, years, even.’ Vally sees fear and anger in his eyes. ‘Yesterday, the guard made me scrub the floor. I scrubbed until my fingers were raw. I was almost proud of what I’d done, but he offered no praise. He spat on my efforts! How do people find joy in humiliating others?’
‘It’s senseless,’ she agrees.
‘And how is it that mere words – a malicious or careless complaint – can deprive a man of his freedom? I don’t even know what it is I’m supposed to have done.’
Vally looks past him, through the bars, into the cell. Against the rough-plaster wall is a narrow cot, covered in grey blankets. There’s a washbasin and a wooden chair. A bucket, covered with a rag, is pushed into the corner.
Vally tries to steady her voice. ‘Egon, you’re going to be put on trial.’
‘It will be a circus. My guilt is already decided.’
‘They say you seduced a girl, that Tatjana was kidnapped,’ she explains. ‘You’re here so you can’t influence her, or influence her father to retract his case against you.’ She wipes her eyes with her sleeve. ‘It’s all my fault. We should never have accompanied her to Vienna.’
Egon closes his eyes, finally comprehending.
‘Oh, Vally.’ He gives a deep sigh. ‘We can’t blame Tatjana. Or ourselves. If not this, now, it would have been something else, later. They have always been out to get me. I suspect Uncle Leopold has also played a hand in my humiliation. He knows people in the courthouse in this town. He could have stopped this if he wanted to, yet his silence is deafening. I’ve heard from no one, not Roessler, Erwin, not even Gerti. You’re the single person who has stood by my side.’
‘Perhaps the news hasn’t reached them yet?’
‘Bad news travels faster than light. With every hour that passes, I fear I’ll lose my mind, like my father did.’
The guard bangs open the door at the other end of the corridor. Vally flinches. ‘Time’s up,’ he drawls.
‘You will endure,’ she promises Egon.
He swallows. ‘Wait, I made something for you.’ He passes it to her; it is the texture and size of an apricot stone. ‘It’s not much,’ he says, as she examines the tiny carving of a face in her palm. ‘I squeezed some bread into a ball and sculpted it with my nails.’
‘I mean it,’ the guard shouts down the hallway, hacking his throat clear.
Vally returns her hands to her pockets. ‘Ah,’ she says. ‘And I have something special for you.’ She pulls out an orange, its skin glistening. ‘They’re in short supply, but I knew you’d appreciate it.’
Its fierce, ripe scent lingers in the air between them.
‘It’s the most unspoiled thing I’ve ever seen. Please, see if you can charm the guard once more, and bring my watercolours, for I want to paint it, on the cot in this cell.’
‘A splash of colour amid all this grey,’ she replies.
‘It will be my only light.’
She turns to leave, aching at the thought of being separated from him again.
‘I love you,’ she thinks she hears him whisper.
15
May 1912
Vally sits in the second row of the dark-panelled courtroom in Sankt Pölten, waiting for the hearing to begin. Egon has spent three weeks under arrest in Neulengbach prison. His fate – and hers – will be played out today. She scratches the skin around her thumbnails.
She has spoken to others little more than Egon has in these past weeks, and has lived as a hermit in their cottage, sipping vodka in the daytime, walking from room to room, forgetting where she’s meant to be and why. If she has talked, it has been to the girls in Egon’s paintings, which she has pinned on the walls once more. They stare back at her, silent, their eyes challenging, their shoulders set, hips thrusting. Before she met Egon and became familiar with his work, Vally had never seen women presented in this way, with such unabashed confidence, as if they might step off the paper and grab the viewer by the scruff of the neck, ready to deliver a kiss or a kick. Even Gustav wasn’t as bold.
Vally’s thoughts circle around an image of herself. She envies the woman trapped there.
There’s a flutter of activity as the judge enters. Reporters from Vienna strain forward, pencils poised. Locals Vally recognizes from Neulengbach, and others from as far away as Krumau, have made the trip to see Schiele get what he deserves. Egon’s sisters are in the front row with his mother. They wear black and their expressions are serious, drawn. None of them, when they’d been waiting to enter earlier, had acknowledged Vally, or invited her to join them. Anton Peschka arrives just as the room is quietening to a hush and takes a seat next to Gertrude.
The judge adjusts his heavy black robes as he sits. The elderly man is smaller than Vally expected, with compact features and oversized ears bristling with grey hairs. In any other walk of life, he’d be a laughable figure.
People fidget in their seats. With the sound of a key grating in an old lock, the courtroom inhales collectively. The door opens and, for a few moments, everyone stares into the space it exhibits. Then, with shuffling footsteps, an officer with glistening buttons emerges, his prisoner cuffed by his side. Egon is gaunt, his leg in a heavy brace. Despite the indignity of the excessive restraints, he enters with his head held high, his eyes resting on an undetermined point in the distance, his shoulders straight. He looks around the room, takes one deep, steadying breath, as if admiring the sea’s horizon, then takes his seat in the dock.
The judge arranges his papers. He doesn’t look in the artist’s direction.
‘Name?’ he demands.
‘My name is Egon Schiele.’ He stands, bringing both hands up, cuffed as they are, as if to straighten his tie. Vally can hear the smallest wobble in his voice.
‘And what is your profession?’ The final word rolls off the judge’s tongue.
‘Maler, your Honour. I’m an artist.’ He draws a deep breath before he takes the opportunity to continue. ‘For twenty-one days I’ve been under arrest, Your Honour. Five hundred and four hours. Would you concede your liberty for that length of time? What has your investigation into my behaviour revealed? Tell me, what wrongdoing have you unearthed?’
The judge raises his eyes. ‘Herr Schiele, you’re in this courtroom, today – the fourth day of May, 1912 – under very serious charges.’ Egon steadies himself on the dock’s rail. The people on the benches lean forward to better devour the indictment. ‘You are hereby charged with immorality – that is to say, the careless or wilful display of erotic drawings in your studio, to be viewed by children, which could contribute to their corruption.’ Vally thinks of the explicit drawings pinned to the walls of the bedroom that were found by officers the day of his arrest. Tatjana had seen them the night she came to the house. ‘Furthermore,’ the judge continues, ‘you are charged with seduction of a minor, and kidnap.’
The courtroom bursts into animated whispers. Egon closes his eyes. His fingers against the wood look bleached. Vally feels the ground shift beneath her feet. Such charges are absurd. The woman next to her tuts happily.
‘The girl in question is Tatjana Georgette Anna von Mossig, aged fourteen, daughter of Captain von Mossig of Neulengbach. The court understands that you did unlawfully detain her at your property, Au 48, in the same town, for one night without her parents’ knowledge or consent. You then abducted the minor, taking her to Vienna, whereby you spent one night together at an unknown location. Captain von Mossig, fearing for his daughter’s safety, immediately reported her missing and identified you as the culprit, on the basis of ongoing questionable interactions, between you and the child, that have taken place on your property over the course of several months. The girl, upon her rescue, exhibited serious bruising to her forearms, proving she resisted your advances, Herr Schiele.’ The judge pauses, cracking his fingers. ‘Charges as serious as these incur a maximum of five years in prison.’
Vally sees the swirl of Egon’s crown as his head falls forward in disbelief.
‘How do you plead?’ the judge demands.
The courtroom settles into a deep silence. Egon, ever the performer, makes them wait. Then he raises his eyes and looks at them with insolence. ‘I am without guilt, your Honour.’
The judge slams a palm on his bench. ‘The artist pleads not guilty.’
The woman next to Vally tuts again, her shoulders shaking from the sheer joy of it.
‘I had no interaction with Fräulein von Mossig. My companion, Fräulein Neuzil, will attest to that.’ Vally’s stomach lurches. ‘The girl was never out of her sight. As for abduction, I was trying to protect her. She begged for my help. I would have been a monster to deny help to a child in distress. Distress initiated by her own father.’
A gasp whips round the courtroom.
‘Captain von Mossig is an upstanding member of our community.’
‘Fräulein von Mossig is the victim in all this,’ Egon continues. ‘But I believe you’ll find the abuse of which you speak has occurred much closer to home. Of course the Captain would want to protect his reputation. The girl has been examined, I believe, and was found to be perfectly intact. That excludes any possibility of seduction.’
‘Are you calling Captain von Mossig a liar?’ he asks.
Egon does not reply.
The judge continues, referring to his file. ‘Let the record show that one hundred and twenty-five incriminating depictions of the human body were confiscated from the property. Such content is not fit for decent society.’
Egon takes a breath. ‘I do not deny that I have made drawings and watercolours that are erotic. But they are always works of art – to that I can attest, and people who understand something of this will gladly affirm it. Have other artists made no erotic pictures?’
The old judge narrows his eyes. ‘I’ve had the misfortune of seeing the works in question. They are vile, the product of a degenerate mind.’
‘No erotic work of art is filth if it is artistically significant. It is only turned into filth through the eyes of the beholder.’ Egon has to raise his voice to be heard.
The judge’s eyes bulge. ‘So we’re the ones at fault.’ He points a stubby finger at himself, then directs it around the gallery. He fumbles under the desk, reaching to extract something from a leather case. ‘Let’s see, shall we? Here is an example of one piece of “art” that an innocent girl of fourteen years old was forced to view in your residence.’ The judge pinches one corner of a piece of paper with his fingertips, as if the nude woman rendered in charcoal and gouache might crawl off the page and up his arm with the speed of a spider. It’s an artwork that Vally knows Egon values highly. It is of her.
