The Painted Kiss Read Free Page B

time. Then the mother shrugged. “Buy the girl an ice.”
    Her father wouldn’t let her go to the cart with him. So I watched her standing off to the side while he got into line. Her eyes gleamed like emeralds.
    Then it was our turn. The woman shaved some ice into paper cups and asked us what flavor we wanted. There were three kinds: strawberry, cherry, and lemon. We decided to get one of each. She poured the syrup from three different watering cans onto our ice. Pauline handed her a coin, which she put in a leather belt at her waist. Then she wiped her face in her apron and went on to the next.
    We waited, licking our ices, to see what the girl would do. When it was her father’s turn he fumbled in his pocket for the money. The woman in the apron teased him but he didn’t smile. He held the ice awkwardly, as if it were a small animal. When he returned to the girl he handed the paper cone to her without looking at her. If he had looked at her he would have seen that Adele held the cone without tasting it until it melted down her arm and dried into a sticky poultice. The sleeve of her beautiful embroidered dress was stained sickly pink.
     
    When we got back to our father he was talking to a man we didn’t know. The man was wearing a threadbare sack suit and a pink daisy in his buttonhole. We had never seen a man wearing anything like that. He was not tall, but broad-shouldered and strong-looking. He was tan like the woman selling ices. He was carrying a leather case in one hand and what looked like a toolbox in the other.
    We hung back shyly.
    “He’s not wearing a hat,” whispered Pauline.
    “Maybe he’s a Gypsy,” said Helene.
    “Here are my daughters,” our father said. “Girls, come and meet Mr. Klimt.”
    “How do you do, Mr. Klimt.” We curtsied as we had been taught, trying not to spill our ices. As I bobbed my head I could see that the man was laughing at us.
    “I feel like an old man, or a prince,” he said. “Everyone calls me Gustav. And no one ever curtsies.”
    “Mr. Klimt is a painter,” Father said, as if that would explain it all: the suit, the flower, the tan, the laugh, everything.
    “I’m on my way to set up an easel near the art museum. My brother is already over there. It’s good publicity. And sometimes people pay us a little to make a drawing, which doesn’t hurt.” He winked at us. None of us knew what to do. Could we eat what was left of our ices, or was that rude? Helene tried to quietly sip the juice in the bottom of her cup, but Pauline kicked her.
    He said he had some ideas about a new style of pipe. It had a smaller bowl with some complicated combination of walnut veneer and gold filigree. My father listened and seemed interested. He thought Klimt should come by the factory sometime and show him the drawings.
    Then Father said we had to hurry on, and shook his hand. Klimt bowed and was gone, moving through the crowd, but he turned around once and smiled at us.
    We walked on, toward the Rathaus. I was quiet, thinking about the man. New people did not appear very often in our closely chaperoned, narrowly circumscribed lives.
    I wanted to watch Klimt draw. I knew Papa would never agree; we only had a few minutes to make it to our place.
    “Papa, there’s Anna Vogel,” I said. “Can I go over and say hello?”
    “Where?” said Helene, scanning the crowd for our school friend. I pinched her.
    “Quickly,” he said. “Be on the steps in ten minutes.” I tried not to run.
    A small knot of people was gathered behind Klimt and a thin boy with a smock tied on over his suit. That must be his brother, I thought. They were unfolding what looked like wooden music stands and clipping paper to them. I stood behind, peering into the spaces between men’s elbows, trying to get closer.
    An old woman passed carrying two pheasants tied around her neck with string. Impulsively, Klimt called out to her and motioned to the birds. Money changed hands and Klimt wound up with one of them.