They took seats toward the back, holding hands. The castrato, a man of nearly seventy with his face like an old wrinkled apple, again glared at them. Beggars huddled in corners, making themselves as small as possible. By the back door behind the gold altar a small line of poor people gathered, waiting for alms. “We could have given them our uncle’s pork pies,” Josefa said almost to herself. “That is, if you wouldn’t have eaten them all at once like the piggy you are.”
They hardly noticed when the organ ceased, leaving a great hum in the air for a moment, and when footsteps sounded on the steps descending from the loft; they did not know their father’s friend Mozart was approaching them until he touched their shoulders and bowed.
They had seldom seen him since he had come that Thursday night with the song Aloysia sang at sight. They had heard he was visiting great houses outside the city to play. Once they had noticed him in the market, and he had waved to them. Now he looked as he did when he had ceased playing the clavier that first night at their house, half in another world, small and neat, with his natural light brown hair uncurled and fastened with ribbons at the back of his head. He said, “Mesdemoiselles Weber, what is it? Why are you huddled here? You look as though something has troubled you. May I sit with you?” With that he took a place courteously beside them.
Aloysia’s eyes filled with tears. Her life, which she felt ready to spring out to magnificence, had retreated since that magical night when she had stood among a pressing, admiring group of friends and family and sung his lyrical song on first sight. The music now lay under some other things, and she could not bear to look at it. It reminded her of how, in the openness of her heart that evening, she had agreed to secret meetings with Leutgeb, and how, during them, she had allowed him to put his hand where no good woman should. She should never have given so much; the faithless horn player had abruptly returned to Salzburg and, in spite of his heated promises, had never written a word to her. She had said nothing of this to anyone, of course, because she was ashamed, but now with her unhappiness over that and the lost Swedish opportunity combined with the rejection of Uncle Joseph, she blurted the story of her family’s misfortunes. She said more than she would have otherwise as she tore at her handkerchief and wiped the corners of her eyes.
Josefa only nodded grimly. This young composer from Salzburg for all his kindness and her father’s favor toward him was not one of them, and she had her mother’s horror of showing their dirty linen to a stranger. Her mouth compressed tightly, and she felt as she had in the carriage when she had tried to hide in the shadows. Once she nudged her sister sharply to stop the flow of her grieved, high voice.
As Aloysia spoke, Mozart looked at the shivering girls as intensely as he had looked inside himself in the loft the hour before, searching for a fugue by the lamented Bach, which he had heard once years before. His eyes filled with compassion at their faces reddened by the wind, their wind-loosened hair that fell in strands down their necks, their chapped lips, and their pale clasped hands. He thought of his mother’s neat gloves. The smaller girl shivered spasmodically, and flung her arms about her chest.
“Mesdemoiselles Weber,” he murmured. “You honor me to trust me with these confidences. Believe me, I won’t betray them. There’s little work for musicians here but for the orchestra. My mother and I are thinking of leaving when she returns from her visit to my father and sister in Salzburg. Still, there must be some way to take your family from its difficulties. You sing charmingly, beautifully. You yourselves are charming and beautiful.” He caught at their hands in both of his, chafing them, rubbing his supple fingers over them. “Go home now; you’re cold. I know some people, and I have some influence. Perhaps I can do something to help you.”
Mozart took his midday meal of large veal chops and soup a few hours later in a smoky eating house with the orchestra director, Cannabich, and other musician friends who were passing through the city. They spoke of symphonies, of chamber music, of masses, of where work was; they spoke of good livings to be made that someone else always seemed just to have taken. They gathered around the table looking out at the muddy street that, in the dim light, retained the history of those who had passed this hour: the surly indentation of wheels left for a time until swept over by a beggar’s broom or the trailing, ragged skirts of a half-drunken whore.
Mozart had managed some weeks before to move with his mother to the comfortable house of the privy counselor, where she was warm and happy, and coughing less. She was treated as a family member, gossiping at table, and was altogether less (he arched his shoulders to think of it) of a burden on him. Still, they needed money, and, as he had not yet completed the second concerto and flute quartets of the Dutchman’s commission, he had not received any payment. In his pocket even now was a letter from his father that had arrived yesterday. “My dressing gown is in tatters. If someone had told me two years ago that I would have to wear woolen stockings and your old felt shoes over my old ones to warm myself ...” And he had written back rapidly just that morning: “But you know, my dearest Papa, this is not my fault.” Was it? It haunted him.
The clavier player and violinist who had played in a corner of the eating house had left, and Mozart scraped back his chair to go sit down at the instrument. Yesterday afternoon he had gone with friends to hear Holsbauer’s opera Günther von Schwarzburg, and now he began to play some of the beautiful music from memory. Cannabich listened for a time, and then came to stand beside him. His hair, pulled simply back in a ribbon, here and there showed traces of white, lavender-scented powder from his recent performance. He was a family man, with three gifted children.
“Enough of that opera!” he cried stoutly. “Let’s have a better tune.” Leaning over the small composer, he began to play with his right hand, clenching his pipe between his teeth. “La finta giardiniera, ” he said, words and smoke rising with the music. “You wrote it three years ago for a Munich performance. I recall parts from memory. How old were you then, you gray beard? Eighteen? And how old when you penned that gorgeous little singspiel Bastien? Twelve in God’s name?”
Mozart said, “Nothing’s better than opera for me—music, drama, poetry. Play that bit again. Use both hands; I’ll sing it.”
Cannabich drew up another chair and they played competitively, crossing hands. “Here come the strings. Ah, that’s a nice tenor! What is happening, Wolfgang? No word on the position here?”
“Nothing, and more of nothing. I managed to corner the Elector himself on his way from chapel in a hall of the palace and asked him again about the position. ‘I am sorry, my dear child,’ he said solemnly, ‘but there is no position.’ My dear child—those words.” Mozart played more intensely, leaning forward, and began to sing again.
“That’s the girl’s aria. You’ll rival the women the way you sing! I met Joseph Haydn last year, you know; he has the patronage of Esterházy in Hungary. He much admires your work. Didn’t his sister-in-law sing in Finta? ”
“Yes, and his brother is konzertmeister at Salzburg. I’ve never met Joseph Haydn. Here’s the tempo change.”
“You know his quartets?”
“I admire them deeply. The tempo’s slower here. I can’t sing and play at once! What do you think opera should be, Cannabich, eh? Comic and serious, common and heavenly?”
In the early winter dusk Mozart returned to his new rooms in the comfortable house of the privy counselor. He looked at the score of another of his unfinished operas; then, putting it aside with a sigh, he began to work again on the second flute quartet. When he put down his pen, he did not know if the church bells were signaling the last service of the night or the first of the new morning.
Mozart stood up, stretched his aching back, and began to walk up and down the room. Then he noticed another letter to him standing by the washing bowl; the writer was his cousin in Augsburg. Their hosts must have brought it in. He felt the old stirring in his breeches and laughter rising in his chest. Tearing open the seal, he stood reading it with his h
and over his mouth. By God, she was witty, sexy, and priceless, and next time he would have all of her. He would travel there somehow, and tear off her petticoats and her lace-trimmed drawers. Why not? She was willing.
And then what? They should both be compromised. He would have her to support as well, and perhaps a baby, and he could not even manage his mother, father, and sister, who always waited patiently for him. No, he could not manage it all. Then, turning to some words written small in the margin, he frowned, swore, and threw down the letter. What, had she ... he was breathless, and read it again. “I have a lover now,” it read. “So very sorry it wasn’t you, Wolferl. Waiting’s awful. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. My dull old father knows nothing; he’s never felt these things. Old people never could. You don’t mind so much, do you, old cousin? We’re best of friends.”
Mozart stood, staring straight ahead of him. Fury filled him, not only jealousy that someone he had thought of so much had not had time to wait, but that she had gone on to experience this thing and left him behind. He put the letter facedown on his flute quartet and continued his walk back and forth in his narrow bedroom. Why had he ever taken any pleasure with his cousin? Even if they had made love fully, she would have turned her attention elsewhere the moment he left the city. If he were to love someone, it should be a good girl. He stood quietly for a moment, remembering the voices of the Weber sisters as they sat together in the church confiding in him, and then their excellent singing, the one soprano darker and more sensual, the other high as an angel. They were good: nothing but virtuous and selfless thoughts passed their minds.
Josefa was too tall; he did not want a woman to tower over him—but there was Aloysia. He saw her, the line of her neck to her breast under the heavy cloak, the pretty open hand that floated on the air as she spoke, her beautiful eyes. That boor Leutgeb had played about with her feelings. Just last week Mozart had had a letter written from Salzburg from him.
Dear Mozart, dear idiot,
It’s over between Mademoiselle A. and me. I’m uncertain I want to pledge my future to a singer, even such a delicious little one. Not that I compromised her: only a kiss and a touch in the dark, and what is that? But mainly, old friend, my reluctance lies with the family. They have a huge pull on her. If I marry her, I’ll have the lot of them on my hands, and my grandfather’s shop in Vienna doesn’t sell that much cheese. They’re a heavy lot, particularly that mother of hers. The father’s a sort of crooked saint, kindliness himself, but with more goodwill than sense. I advise you, old friend, fall in love with some merchant’s wealthy widow. We don’t have much money, either of us. I have cheese, and you have genius. Forget love and look after money. Frau Weber does, believe me.
Mozart did not move. The words of the letter repeated themselves in his head until they faded before his memory of the two sisters in the church, their breath in the cold air, Aloysias chapped, pale lips, the elder sister’s bitten fingernails. Was not the world full of hopeful women, untouched, waiting? But what had it to do with him?
Yet what had happened in that room between the two of them when she had sung his song? What had happened and what had not? Mozart remained still but for his hands drumming on his music, thinking of her. What had been created between song maker and singer in that little parlor that night? Should he have followed her when she left the room? Had she intended it? No, of course not; she was simply too beautiful and good. Such women were to walk about shyly, and to be dreamed about. And besides, he knew her mother wanted a titled man of old family for the girl, and with her grace and charm she could likely have one. What had he to offer? And yet he was not half bad. He could have had his love affairs if he had wanted them, and yet he always drew back.
There was that confidential, drunken hour with Leutgeb in the beer cellar when the girls had come, and the hour after when he and the horn player had spoken so frankly of their hopes. Why hadn’t he told Leutgeb, whom he trusted, that he had never taken a woman to bed? “By Christ,” he murmured aloud in the room, “I couldn’t say that.” He was flushed even to think that the painted wallpaper of this pleasant room, the books, his coat thrown over a chair could have heard him.
He fell into his bed late that night, tossing his bedclothes to the floor. In the morning he sprang up naked from bed and stood shivering in the cold room; he threw on a dressing gown, uncorked the ink, and wrote hastily. “Mademoiselle Aloysia Weber, in all friendship, will you meet me at the Confectionery at three? Your servant in all respect, WA.M.” and sent it over by a boy.
She won’t come, he thought.
But she did.
Aloysia Weber floated across the Confectionery under the gold-and-white ceiling. In the mirrors around him, he saw her approaching in her dark cloak with the muddy hem, past the small marble tables and the sideboard heaped with cakes. She was so perfectly made he could have taken her under his arm and swept her away. By the time she reached him and made her curtsey, he was not sure who he had been before she entered the doors.
He bowed, and again she curtseyed; he seated her. Then he said as calmly as he had intended, “I have come up with a plan to solve your difficulties.”
“Tell me,” she said. “My father will be so grateful. No one helps us, no one, and here you are, yet a stranger to our family.” She leaned forward on the chair. In her throat, the unblemished flesh of an innocent girl not quite seventeen, was a hollow where her breath quivered. He could not take his eyes from it.
“We’ll give concerts together; we’ll tour all Europe.”
“Oh, could we? What are you saying? All Europe? With me singing and you playing as we did that evening in our rooms? Would we go to Paris? Oh Herr Mozart, would we give a concert even in Paris?” She could hardly speak the words; her white throat quivered. A loose thread from her dress lay against her collarbone.
“Yes,” he said, “Paris, of course. Why not? I’ve just begun to plan it in my mind. I’ll write many songs that show your voice off to the best effect. First we’ll tour Austria, and give a concert in Vienna; I have friends there who would help us. We would go to Venice, to Florence, to Rome, and then we would go to Versailles.”
“Versailles,” she murmured. The loose thread moved as she breathed. He could see her reflection in every mirror over the silver cake plates.
“Versailles,” he repeated. “Mademoiselle, I assure you on my honor that wherever you lift your voice in song, strangers will beg for tickets. I can do this, for my name’s known. I’ll take your father and Mademoiselle Josefa as well. We’ll return with so much gold your family will never have to worry again.” He spoke with deep assurance, though his heart beat strongly and he leaned so close across the table that he could see a few faint freckles across her cheeks. “And then, both the Viennese opera houses will want you to sing once they have heard you. There’s never been such a voice, they’ll say.”
“Paris,” she murmured. “Vienna. Can it be?”
“Without a doubt. Give me a few days, and I’ll come to lay plans more clearly.”
Aloysia could hardly find her voice, and when she did she put her hand on his. “We’ll all be so very glad,” she stammered. “My sister and I particularly. I will need a new concert dress, perhaps of pink brocade. Don’t you think a dress of that fabric and color would suit me particularly, Herr Mozart?”
After a few hours they emerged from the Confectionery, hands almost touching. She kissed his cheek and, in her dark cloak and little flat shoes, disappeared around the corner of a church, while he remained gazing after her, his hand to his face where her lips had touched it.
Frau Mozart always unpacked her bags at once when she came from traveling, but this time she had gone to bed upon her return, and now morning had come with the cold day pressing outside the iron bars of the window. She had dreamed of her house plants, which she had left once more on the windowsills of her Salzburg home; she alone trimmed the dead leaves from them so lovingly, murmuring to them old Austrian endearments. But it was not in her own h
ome where she awoke, rather in their hosts’ house in Mannheim, in which she now found no charm.
Her son had gone out.
Rising and pulling on her dressing gown, she began to walk up and down her room past the still-buckled traveling bags, starting to make the bed and then forgetting it, until at last she sank into the chair and began to write.
Dear Husband,
I have returned from my two weeks’ stay with you to a catastrophe. What else can it be? Your son. He did not wait for me to take off my cloak yesterday before presenting me with what he assumed I would take as good news: that he intends to go on concert tour with the impoverished Webers, particularly Mademoiselle Aloysia, with whom he is beginning to fall in love, but of course he denies that. Instead of finishing the Dutchman’s flute compositions, which will bring us money, or the piano/violin duets in honor of the Electress to win her goodwill, he does little but write songs for the mademoiselle. Indeed, he performed a concert with her at some estate, and gave her and her family half the fee! Now what will occur with our plans to leave soon for Paris, where he will surely find the great success he deserves? He cannot quite recall we planned it; he waves it off with a dismissing hand and goes back to explaining his new idea. The Webers! He hopes to create their fortune, but what, I ask you, of our fortunes? We will all end paupers, begging on the corners of Salzburg.
She looked up, hearing footsteps, quickly blew on the letter to dry it, and turned it facedown. There was her son at the door, hair ruffled wildly as if the wind had once more gotten the best of him. Once more, as he often did when not in concert attire, he looked like an unmade bed. What was she to do with him?
She said coldly, “Wolfgang, I didn’t close my eyes all night. I can only presume that you have come to your senses and thought better of the ridiculous proposition you set before me last evening.”
Marrying Mozart Page 9
