Marrying Mozart

by Stephanie Cowell

  Outside of this and the fact that my temper is much worse, I am fine. I don’t know why I burst out with things now; I didn’t used to do it, and now I can’t stop myself. I shouted at Henri the other day when he stopped by to ask me out for a coffee. He walked away from me and then I had to run after him.

  Sophie says to tell you that she has taken in another cat that she found freezing in the snow. She also saw saints and cherubim in church on Good Friday, just walking down the nave as if out for a stroll. She mentioned it offhandedly, wondering if I saw them, too. But if I could see Father, I suppose she can see Blessed Saint Anne and Saint Bridget. What other news? Boarders come and go here, but we hardly see Mozart; he’s so withdrawn and distant he hardly notices any of us. Letters from his father come weekly or more, and he reads them carefully. I hear him walking up and down in his room. He hardly laughs anymore. I think he’s going to go away. Oh, if it weren’t for Sophie, I’d run off with Henri, but one of us must stay with Mama. Perhaps when you return we can all live here so that she never has to worry about money and then she’ll be a kinder person.

  The Easter bells are ringing outside, but the weather is still cold. I miss you so. Sophie sends all her love. Don’t let your throat get chilled after you sing; wear the warm scarf Mama knit you last year around your mouth and throat. It is very dangerous to chill the voice after singing. Papa always warned you.

  With a thousand kisses, your sister in life and death,

  Constanze

  “You’re called Constanze,” her father had said. “It means constancy. In the worst of times, you hold us together.” But had she? Could she? Two of her sisters were gone now, and the house was angry and scattered, her mother weeping over the breaded meat in the kitchen, declaring that life was against her and nothing was her fault. Sometimes when Constanze encountered her, the older woman would stare at her bleakly, as if to say, You see how unhappy I am? You see that you have entirely failed to make me happy?

  Constanze sealed her letter and went downstairs and out into the snow, her heavy flannel underpetticoats and smock hardly keeping her warm. She posted the letter and then slipped into the church, where she sat for a long time, her head leaning forward on the seat before her.

  The coffee and pastry café on the Graben was the most beautiful one in Vienna: tiers of marble shelves held cakes on silver dishes; a chandelier reflected many times in the gilded mirrors; and a trio of harpsichord, violin, and violoncello played popular tunes in one corner. The rich scent of coffee and cinnamon greeted patrons at the door. And Thorwart was expansive, generous, pouring out the steaming coffee in a neat arc with his heavy hand, into which his rings pressed deeply. He ordered a three-tiered dish of little cakes with chocolate, sweetened nuts, and a few frosted pink with sugar roses.

  Maria Caecilia Weber, from her side of the small round table, brought her handkerchief to her slightly rouged mouth.

  Even with the mistake he had made regarding her small investment, Maria Caecilia still insisted to her family and friends that Johann Thorwart was one of the most clever men she knew. Now he had risen to a position of general factotum of Viennese opera under Count Orsini-Rosenberg, and as Orsini-Rosenberg knew the Emperor well, Thorwart now also regarded himself as an intimate of the imperial court. These things made Maria Caecilia regard him even more highly than she had before.

  “You need to get away from your cares,” Thorwart had said, descending on her suddenly when she was in the midst of her housekeeping. He made her fetch her hat, then swept her away here.

  Now he sat back, coat open to reveal his waistcoat and his silver watch chain, and said, “And how are your girls? How beautiful they all were when I used to come to your Thursdays in Mannheim, though the music did go on and on. I envied them, compared to my one daughter, who speaks to me almost as little as my wife.”

  “Johann, you’ve been treated unfairly!” she said. She could see the hurt in his full mouth even after he had spoken. He leaned one arm on the table and looked about the room as if to say, Has any man here been treated so ill?

  “After all you’ve given them!” she continued. “And you’re such a good man! I’m sorry that any thought has made you sad.”

  Turning back to her, he once more thrust out his wide chest. “Not in the least!” he cried. “A moment’s reverie, that’s all. I didn’t ask you here today to speak of my small misfortunes but of you.” He turned the tiered plate around, offering her the pink cakes with the sugar roses. “You know, I promised Fridolin I’d look after you, and more’s needed than procuring your wretched pension. ”

  “Yes, it’s wretched,” she said. “It barely pays for wood. For all the years my husband served the Elector, should I have only this to show for it? My boarders barely pay for the house rental with all the food they eat—the veal, the bread! The assistance from my Aloysia is often late and less than promised, and there’s not so much as a letter from Josefa, much less any money. My heart breaks that I should have to depend on these heartless girls when I have always wanted only the best for them.”

  Thorwart nodded solemnly. “We’ve both tried our best. Still, my dear Maria Caecilia, I have only one child. God has given you two more daughters.”

  “Yes, and I need to have them married and provided for. I wouldn’t want them to have to earn their bread, but I have no idea how to proceed with Sophie.”

  Thorwart poured more coffee—hot, creamy, and smelling of cinnamon. They leaned their heads closer together to hear each other over the chattering from other tables and the soaring of the chamber trio. “Our little Sophie,” he mused, his wide finger near his lips. “Yes, how do we proceed with that girl? She has no fortune, no dowry, and, most unfortunately, no figure. (I can’t quite understand how a daughter of yours can have no figure, Caecilia!) You can’t encourage her to wear padding for hips and bosom as many do these days? Then what can be done for her?”

  He cleared a little space before him, his wide face taking on the serious expression she had seen him wear in his office in the opera house. “But the problem of Constanze must be managed as well. She may not marry this French cellist, or he may not marry her. I know from his banker, who receives his letters of credit from Paris, that the young man’s family expects him to marry a French girl.”

  “Then theirs is just a playful romance, even though she wears his ring! What a cruel world, my friend! Is there no justice?” Maria Caecilia cried. She thought of the little book with the tooled-leather cover decorated with flowers that she now kept in her bedroom drawer and into which she continued to write names of possible suitors for her younger girls. She had actually crossed out all the other names on Constanze’s list but for this Frenchman.

  Thorwart laid his hand over hers. “Still, I understand he will not be leaving for a time, so that leaves us some leisure to consider the problem. We will find someone truly splendid for our sweet Constanze, but it is Sophie whom we must manage at once, for I fear she’s near danger.”

  “Sophie near danger?” came Maria Caecilia’s whisper. “Can it be?”

  “I am very much afraid of it. Recall: wasn’t your closest friend in Zell years ago much like her, plain and flat as a board? And yet, did that stop her from a loss of virtue? I remember the sorrow around the courtyard, for when her mother looked the other way, the girl was on her back with her skirts up! There was wailing at the common pump. The thought’s heavy with me: it will be the butcher’s boy, or one of the boarders, or even one of the priests for your little one; yes, they’re not above those things. It might even be, the saints forbid it, a family friend.”

  Now he pushed aside his empty plate and leaned forward in a businesslike way. He gazed at the tabletop, as if studying some important papers before him. Looking up at Maria Caecilia, he said, “You’ve asked my advice, and I’ll give it. We can find a good marriage for Constanze, if you give me time to do it. I know many more people now in my new position at the opera, but Sophie you must marry at once to an honorable man, one who wi
ll support you in your older years. I know of one such man.”

  “Who could you mean, my friend?”

  “The answer’s under your nose.” He sat back expansively, fingers in his waistcoat pockets. “Your lodger, young Mozart.”

  Maria Caecilia was speechless for a moment. “But he has no money.”

  “He has little now, but I have it on good authority that his fortunes may soon change. Allow me,” and he poured more coffee, adding extra cinnamon from a small silver container, and some small coarsely ground bits of sugar, stirring and stirring the silver spoon in the cup. He stirred more slowly and suddenly drew in his breath. He frowned and looked away, his eyes focusing on one of the gilded mirrors across the room.

  She looked as well, and saw them both reflected. For a moment she, too, caught her breath, her fingers moving to her throat. What she saw in the mirror was not the Johann Franz Thorwart of today, a man in his late forties, but the man he had been: the round-faced university boy, the one she felt rather than saw in the dark of the courtyard so many years ago. She had been seventeen. After all these years, she could still hear the sound of her petticoats as she hurried toward him in the dark. She remembered how a shiver had rushed down her back when she took his hand and how he drew her into that dark doorway.

  Now, as they both gazed into the mirror, above the heads of the other patrons, she felt his hand move across the table and take hers, rubbing her fingertips slightly as if trying to read them. And she heard his husky voice as he leaned forward. “That month in Zell when you were seventeen.”

  She looked at their hands together on the table and didn’t pull it away. “Please don’t, Johann.”

  “You asked me if I was melancholy today, and yes, I am. I work so hard I don’t allow myself to feel it, then I go home, where I must bear silence. Only your happy household has made it possible for me—that and my work. Caecilia, my dearest. You were seventeen when I came back from university because my father was ill. You were going to be married in two months. That evening you came across the courtyard singing, and I went out to you. Do you remember? I heard your petticoats and your footsteps; you were lighter than the breeze. I begged you that day not to marry my friend Fridolin. I told you you’d be poor. I told you, Caecilia! That most beautiful evening when you came across the yard under the hanging wash to me! Did Fridolin ever suspect, ever ask you ... the uncertainty about—”

  “Enough, enough,” she whispered. “Johann, you agreed never to mention that night. I’m a respectable widow; I was a respectable married woman. No scandal can be uttered about me. I spoke foolish words to my Josefa once when in grief, and I’ve always regretted it. I would never speak further about it. She wouldn’t forgive me if she knew the truth. Keep your agreement; you’re a gentleman. I have valued you for that above everything. You are a gentleman.”

  Thorwart gazed at her from under his heavy eyebrows, then looked away, flustered, trying to bring back the man of business. From her reticule she took a tiny mirror and patted her face with some powder. He edged the tier of cakes toward her. “Have another.”

  “I couldn’t.” Her eyes had filled with angry tears. “What has life made of me? I do my best under the circumstances.”

  “One day she’ll have to know, Caecilia.”

  “And when that day is right, I’ll tell her. Now, let’s pretend we didn’t think of those old things. Tell me about Mozart’s prospects. That is the least you can do.”

  He bowed his head and cleared his throat. “Within several months, perhaps sooner, I’m told on good authority, the Emperor Francis Joseph is likely to award him some sinecure, kapellmeister of this or that, and with that everyone will want his music. In addition, there’s still a chance he may be given the commission for the opera in the autumn to celebrate the visit of the Russian Prince. If both of those events occur, he will at once be in demand everywhere. Every mother in Vienna will be sitting her unmarried beautiful daughter in the front row of his concerts to smile at him during the interval; he’ll be brought down by the first pretty face. And you, old friend, will have lost your opportunity.” »

  Sitting very straight with noticeable dignity, her back no longer touching the chair, Maria Caecilia said, “Then here’s my plan. I’ll settle on this before my poor little one gets in great trouble in her innocence, and hold out for someone finer for Constanze when she tires of her cellist. I need, I ought, to separate those two girls, you know. They’re too close. One puts silly ideas in the other’s head, and the other gives it back again until it passes for truth. There, my mind’s settled. Sophie will marry Mozart.”

  She leaned forward. “But how to persuade her? Tell me!”

  Thorwart blotted the table crumbs with his napkin as carefully as he might blot the damp ink of a contract. “Throw them together; make it occur. Young people are too foolish to see what is good for them. Make him feel as a young man does when an innocent girl crosses a dark yard to meet him. (I allude only to the feeling.) Throw them into each other’s arms.” His mouth was angry, and he compressed it. He folded the napkin carefully, and then, on second thought, dropped it with disdain to the tablecloth. He stood abruptly. “Good day, dear Maria Caecilia. I’ll do my best to see that Mozart has the opera, and can marry Sophie.”

  Maria Caecilia almost felt her way home, touching the doors of buildings and the edges of lemonade stalls for support. She saw herself in the glass of a bookshop window and raised her fingers to her still soft cheeks. She was so languid with sensuality that she could hardly walk; she was caught between the memory of running across the dark yard so lithe and young, and the reality of her present heavy body. How did life change us and why? It was unfair. She could have walked to the park and sat there weeping, but what good did it do? She had her plans. Without plans life blew away, and Thorwart was right. There were still Constanze and Sophie.

  She found Sophie at home reading a book at the kitchen table. Yes, her mother thought, suddenly unhappy again, the girl’s plain as bread. How on earth shall I make something of her? She’ll do nothing for herself; she doesn’t even notice if her dress is stained or if her hair is standing on end. Now likely she’s reading a book by some saint or peculiar French philosopher. Is this truly what I have to make my plans come true?

  Sophie looked up dreamily, not a bit of rouge on her pale cheeks. “Come to me, my dearest,” Maria Caecilia said, opening her arms. She sat down in the one large chair by the fire, and when Sophie approached with her spectacles in her hand, her mother suddenly pulled her into her lap. “Tell me, precious child, do you truly want my happiness?”

  “You’re squeezing me. I was reading a book; why are you squeezing me? Why wouldn’t I want your happiness?”

  “Of course you do, more than the others.”

  “Mama, let me up. I always try to make sure you are happy. You know it.” The girl’s eyes looked longingly at the book, whose place she had marked with her thumb.

  “My love, today I drank coffee with your good uncle Thorwart, and with his auspicious guidance and heaven watching us, I understood how God has made a path for you and for me.”

  Sophie had managed to stand and was looking with bewilderment at her mother. “Yes, of course, God makes paths. But what do you mean? I was wanting to go out soon, Mama. Father Paul is giving a talk at the church on science and enlightenment and I want to go.”

  “Ah, what am I to do with you?” her mother cried, slamming her hands on her knees. “It’s always priests and philosophy with you, when you aren’t making plans to enter a convent. Don’t you want to marry and have children? You loved your sister’s poor infant more than she did. The answer’s clear. You’ll be happiest married, and I have just the man. You must marry Mozart.”

  “What, what?” cried the girl. “But we’re friends, or at least we were friends before everything happened with Aloysia and he stopped speaking to me, and stopped telling me funny stories. Marrying has never entered my mind, you know that. I want only to be a nun. You won’t ru
in my happiness the way you have—”

  “What are you saying? Can you speak this way to me? Don’t play such an innocent! I have heard you laughing with the boarders.”

  “It’s nothing more than laughter; why do you make more of it?” cried Sophie, staring nearsightedly at her mother. “I was having a nice afternoon. And how do you expect me to make him want such a thing when neither of us wants it?”

  “How do you know he doesn’t want it? He obviously doesn’t know what he wants. And what of my happiness? What of my future? When my mother ordered me to marry, did I resist her? No, I had respect for her, and bowed to her wishes.”

  “But there are so many versions of how you and Father came together I don’t know which is the truth,” cried Sophie, who was now red and stammering. “You’ve told me half a dozen and so did he, and now I’ll miss my lecture, for they’ll see I’ve been crying and Father Paul will ask me why. He’s already written to the convent on my behalf. He knows how unhappy I am with you, how unhappy we all are with your pushing and pulling us this way and that.”

  “So you’d go to a cloister and desert me,” cried Maria Caecilia, rising to her feet. “And one day they’ll come to you and say, your mother was found starved to death on the streets of Vienna. Then you can say your prayers with a quiet heart, knowing you have honored your father and mother as scripture tells you.”

  By this time Sophie was weeping in rage and confusion, her voice becoming childlike. She ran to her mother, who shook her off; Maria Caecilia was weeping terribly and felt blindly for her apron on its hook. “Do you think I don’t know what’s best for you? God had spoken to me. The young man doesn’t know himself ; you’ll teach him. I can see now what a good son-in-law he’d be to me. Now I must cook dinner for the wretches who live here. No, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to clean so much as one turnip! Go to your lecture and ask your priest if you can abandon your mother selfishly for God, and if God will be pleased when they find me dead in an almshouse from want and from your willfulness.”