Vienna by Karen Uttien

Anna sat quietly watching through the two-way window as the patrons marvelled at her paintings in the gallery below.

Everyone stopped at Vienna.  The piece she kept in the old wooden chest with her sentimental collection.

The young girl in the picture was her.  A self-portrait.  Perhaps her first.  Painted from a photo her father had taken while they were on holiday in Vienna.  It was a happy time.  The happiest.

She was wearing her favourite dress.  It was bright red – like her hair and strawberry lips.  Her cheeks were painted pink to match the freckles on her nose and her eyes were ripples of green and blue with flecks of white and silver and gold to make them sparkle – reflecting the sunshine outside and the happiness within.

But the patrons didn’t smile.  They didn’t see the happiness of the little girl in Vienna.  Only the wretchedness of the young girl painting the picture.

***

She remembered it well.  Alone in the attic.  Away from the torment that filled the rooms below.  She found the album in one of the dusty old boxes stacked in the corner marked ‘Europe 1972’. 

Anna was five when they went to Europe – her and her mother and father and baby brother Vincent.  They flew to Paris from London then travelled the continent by train.

They played cards and scrabble and eye-spy.  Visited castles and museums and botanical gardens.  She sipped a little champagne in France and ate gelato in Florence and in Munich her father drank beer from a glass bigger than his head!

Her fondest memory was in Vienna where they were invited to a garden party by a relative of her father.  Her mother had bought her a new dress in Paris especially for the occasion and – with her hair in braids and gold diamanté sandals on her feet – she had never felt so grown up.  And she had never felt so happy.

But that was a long time ago. 

When the house smelled of roast potatoes and gravy.  When records played all day and they danced all night.  When her mother and father discussed politics and planned Sunday outings.  When baby Vincent still giggled in his cot. 

Before they put his tiny body in a white casket and locked the nursery door.  Before her mother lost her mind and smashed the plates.  Before they closed the curtains to block the sun.  Before her father stopped coming home.

When it all got too much – Anna would climb the ladder to the attic and paint – mostly flowers and rainbows but it wasn’t until she found the photo in the album that she began to feel joy again.

With each stroke of the brush – the memories came – transporting her back to that wonderful day in Vienna when the sun shone brightly and flowers bobbed in the breeze and birds sang merrily in the treetops.  That day in Vienna when laughter came easily. 

She finished the painting – let it dry then put it away in the wooden chest and started again.  And again.  And again.  And again.

***

The painting she chose for the gallery was perhaps her first.

It was almost closing time.  Anna got up from behind the two-way window and made her way through the gallery.  She stopped at Vienna and looked deep into the little girl’s eyes.

“You have come a long way my friend,” she said.  “It is time to let you go.”

Vienna sold at auction.  An anonymous bidder.  For a record price.

Karen Uttien

Image by Van3ssa 🩺 Zheki 🙏 Dazzy 🎹 from Pixabay A container of oil paint tubes in many colours and a paint brush