THE LAST WORKS OF EGON SCHIELE
(A fictionalized short story based on true dates, details & documents)
by Joshua Heineman
Vienna, October 1918 —
The pencil scratched the paper as Egon Schiele searched out his wife’s features in a sketch from a chair next to the bed where she lay dying.
Her forehead was white, wet with fever sweat, and pressed with matted clumps of her damp red hair. A washbowl sat on the nightstand beside her with a cloth draped from its side, dripping water now and then onto the floorboards. A candle lit the details of the bed in a dim flicker. Moonlight shone on the far wall where a figure painting hung.
Egon traced the contour of her neck, the patterned grays of the blanket, and the swell where her womb held their first and unborn child. He mapped her face, her tired eyes, on the page and in memory. It wouldn’t be long. She breathed so shallowly that he had to look closely to detect the rise and fall of the blanket on her chest. The movement was minute, but it was there and, in a way, reassuring.
The bulge of her belly. Now that the war was ending, he thought about the new world that was only just emerging, a world that could tend its children again. It all seemed so cruel, so out of reach. After all that he’d been through, after all that Austria, all of Europe had endured in the last four years — now this. He dropped his pencil and let the pad of paper fall into his lap and then to the floor. The pages fanned out around his bare feet.
Egon took the candle from the nightstand and sat at a desk in the corner to write a letter. He thought about writing to his sister. They were very close. But instead he addressed the letter to his mother. She’d been hurt and estranged several years before when Egon was imprisoned on obscenity charges. He hadn’t written her in nearly a year. But now, in the still of a winter bedroom, he took a pencil from a rations canister on the top shelf and a piece of letter paper from a nearby heap. He looked back at the dark bed. He could see nothing but his own sadness and the emptiness of the world. Water dripped from the washrag. He wrote:
Mother,
Eight days ago Edith contracted the Spanish flu and has developed pneumonia. She is in her sixth month of pregnancy. The illness is extremely serious and life-threatening. I am already preparing myself for the worst, for she is constantly short of breath.
There is no sense to life…
ES
Egon folded the note into an envelope. He’d send it out in the morning, he thought. Downstairs in his study, he had a stack of mail sent by galleries from every corner of Europe. At 28, he was receiving the first real waves of recognition for his art as the weight of war subsided and the public could once again entertain such frivolous pleasures. And now that Klimt was dead, along with an entire generation of younger artists, Egon felt that he must carry his age onward.
But he hadn’t answered any mail since Edith fell ill. It happened shortly after returning from a meeting with a black marketer who smuggled groceries into the city. Egon had warned her not to go. They had very little in the house but without life, he’d said, they had nothing. She hadn’t listened. Though he loved her immensely, their marriage had been suffering. Where once Egon had spent the days painting from her body, he had of late been using other models exclusively. One had been her sister. Though they hadn’t spoken a word about it, Egon knew he had damaged himself in Edith’s eyes.
He took the candle to the bed where she slept uneasily. He soaked the cloth and dotted her forehead with it, pushing her hair away from the pale skin. Her eyes opened, dilated and fixed, focused on the ceiling and then fell to Egon’s face. She smiled weakly.
“Darling, can I get you anything?” he said. “Tell me you’re feeling better. You’ve been asleep for hours. How’s your breathing? Darling? Everything is going to be fine.”
She held her stare, but said nothing. Egon replaced the washcloth to the edge of the bowl.
“I’ve written a note to mother. We’re going to put everything behind us. When you’re better, perhaps we can visit her. Would you like that? I’ve told her about the baby. She’ll be a grandmother now. Surely she’ll have us for a visit. And I’ll have an income, I’m getting offers to show my work from everywhere. It’s going to be fine.”
Something in her eyes faded and they closed.
“No, don’t talk,” he said. “Rest, and we can talk in the morning. Yes, in the morning we’ll talk.”
He gathered the papers from the floor. He set them on the nightstand with the candle. Then he shivered deeply. His own fever had built steadily during the course of the day and now its chills ran deep in his bones like a cold bath. He put his ear to her mouth, listening for the sounds that meant she was only sleeping. Thank god, he thought, she was still there. Egon took a deep breathe, extinguished the candle and found the upholstered chair to sleep until morning.
He awoke as church bells rang the hour. It was 8 am. The room felt cold and empty in the early winter sun. Egon could see that his wife had turned toward him sometime in the night. She’d left a piece of paper beneath her hands. The candlestick had fallen to the pillow and his pencil lay on the floor. She must have been awake, he thought. He slid the paper out from under her cupped hands. It was the sketch he’d made the previous night. There was a note written on the back. Egon strained to read the frail handwriting:
My dearest heart — I love you eternally and love you more and more infinitely and immeasurably. Goodbye.
He let the page go and hung his fevered face next to her still mouth. There was nothing. No wind from her lungs, no words. Egon collapsed onto the bed, grasping at her body wildly as if he could pull the life back into her. He then curled up next to her, his hand over her womb, and stayed like that until the church bells struck noon.
When he got up, he did it slowly, like a ghost, and went to the desk. He wrote four words — Edith Schiele no more — to later send his sister. He placed the note in an envelope without signing, leaving it on top of the letter addressed to his mother. By the time his sister saw the note three days later, Egon too would be dead.
