I’ve always loved paintings, the careful stokes a hand must master to create reality, yet not reality at the same time. Perhaps that is what I love most about art, the way it can be so unreal it becomes tangible. How could a simple mixture of color and canvas create a person, a landscape, an animal, or some mix of all three? I know it is imagination of the painter.

Egon Schiele was a painter, my painter. His dark eyes and sinister face appeared in my dreams when we first met, warping my peaceful sleep into nightmares, yet at the same time, I felt drawn to the way his presence could change a room of people in a matter of seconds. One, two, three, and everyone would be looking at him.

But that was not the only reason I loved him. I loved him because he was a painter. I loved him because even when his mouth could not find the words he desperately needed to say, his hands could, his hands, like God’s hands, so large and powerful that I believed he could destroy the world with a flick of his finger. He painted me. He painted other women, even when we were married. I longed to be mad, but I would see his hands, and I could do nothing but smile.

He was insane; I was insane, but we were insane together. Did we love each other? I really don’t know. I loved him, and he might have loved me. Through and through, his hands held mine the way they would a paint brush, delicate and powerful, as if he were afraid I would slip through his fingers as easily as smoke. He whisked my body across the canvass, manipulating me into both beauty and mistakes.

Those were the days when the Spanish Flu swept through Austria. People dropped dead every second of every day. Just count to one Mississippi and whoops, there goes another one. Though death was on the minds of most people, life was on my mind.

I came home one day to find Egon sketching furiously. His eyes focused on the paper with such intensity and diligence, I was surprised the drawing didn't catch fire in the light of his passion.

“I’m home my dear,” I said.

Egon did not look up from his work. A trace of pink lipstick glared at me from his shirt. I pushed it to the back of my head, aware that other women would forever be a part of my life.

“I said I’m home,” I repeated.

“Good for you. I don’t know where I am. Where am I Edith? Where did I go? Has the war come and gone, or will I be back on the front tomorrow? Is that blood on you? Were you shot? Oh Edith, my dear! How could you go out there? You know it’s war time.”

I sat down slowly, taking deep cleansing breaths. “It’s not war time Egon,” I whispered, taking his great hand in mine and running my fingers over the conspicuous veins. “The war has come and gone. Austria lost. You are home. I am home.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “It seems as though it was just yesterday.”

“It does indeed.”

“You need to tell me something. I can see it in your eyes.”

“You can? How?”

“They are expectant and bigger than ever. I can see the purple bags too.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Well, what is it? Are we at war with the communists? Do I have to go fight again? Don’t send me to them Edith! Keep me here! Protect me from war!”

“No, no. The thing is--well--I’m going to have a baby.”

He looked at me with eyes neither worried nor happy nor any other emotion I could quite place. His hands grabbed for a pen and began to fidget with it, passing the small black tool from left to right. His face gathered emotions as if they were paints, mixing them and testing them until he found a suitable color, anger.

“This world doesn’t need another boy to throw onto the battlefields! We will not have a baby. I won’t stand for it. He will be born and then he will die. Kill yourself my love. Kill yourself for your child. He can’t live here! He can’t live at all, or he will see war, as I have. No apple is falling off of this tree!”

Tears obscured my vision. “Take it back! Take it back my darling, my love! Why don’t you kill me yourself? Kill us! Kill the soldiers! Kill the world, you blood-lusty fool! Do it with your own two hands.”

“The hands you love so? Wouldn’t it be better to do it yourself.”

“Or not at all.”

“Or not at all.”

We stood in silence, the echoes of our screams bouncing about our heads.

“When will it come?”

“November.”

“Why?”

“Because every baby takes nine months. What more do you want from me?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

He returned to his sketching.

Seven months later, I caught the flu. Egon got his wish: I died before I could bring my child into the world. Laying on my death bed, he came to me.

“Edith, I drew a picture of our son.”

I coughed in response. He handed it to me with weak fingers. He too had developed the flu, and I watched my painter’s hands deteriorate from their omniscient strength to limp fists, still trying to grasp the world and only letting it slip farther in the process.

A boy stared up at me from the canvas, his slick black hair carefully combed and his innocent smile highlighted by red lips and raised eyebrows. His eyes watched me with a naive quality, but then I saw his hands, those of an old man, twisted at odd angles, broken. He was dressed completely in red, the color of blood. I tried to look at his face again, but all I could see were his hands. Who would he touch with those hands? Anyone? Would he touch me? Would he come far enough to feel my skin with old man hands? What were hands anyway but mere additions to the arms? Would my child even stick his hands out of the womb?

No.

“Egon,” I croaked, “Egon, we aren’t going to have a child.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he will die. We will both die, and you too. We are not going to have a child.”

Egon looked at me straight in the eyes. “You are going to live, damn it! You and I are going to have a child, and he will be innocent until he fights in the war where he will die, either as a noble casualty or by his own hand. He will hate this world as I do, and he will have ugly hands as I do, but he will live all the same.”

“I sure hope so. I love your hands, my painter.”

I coughed one last time and closed my eyes with my very last painting tattooed to the back of my eyelids forever.