Marrying Mozart

by Stephanie Cowell

  “You have stood against me.”

  “What cause have I to stand for you?”

  Mozart clutched the edge of the table hard. “Sir,” he said, “it would be easier for me to get all the positions you could ever obtain than for you to become what I am, even if you had three lifetimes to do it.”

  With the greatest dignity he bowed himself out of the room. Then he darted down many streets, between carriages and wagons, to the door of his librettist, and was let in by Stephanie’s startled wife. He pushed past her into the bedroom, shook the rotund, snoring man from his sleep, crying, “Where is the libretto? Give me the libretto!”

  The sections came on time as promised, and he did nothing but write. After three days his father went home, and Mozart continued in his cluttered rooms alone, composing piece after piece of his opera.

  In her bedroom some days later Constanze sat to write to her younger sister, now and then nibbling the end of her pen. There was a spot of ink on her apron front.

  18 July 1782

  Dearest dearest Sophie,

  It’s all over between Mozart and me. Just this morning his friend Leutgeb was here for an hour trying to persuade me to go back. He stood with his head to one side, listing all the true attributes of his friend (“Honest Wolfgang, good Wolfgang!”). “But I don’t think I want to marry at all,” I said. “And not with a father like his, not with that wretched cold man! I’ll stay home and help my mother. I’m the last sister, what can I do? I won’t marry at all.” And he came very close to me and said, “What a waste,” rather warmly, and I felt that old flush of heat that so frightens me because then I don’t know what I’ll do. I really don’t. My heart breaks for M., but after saying I wasn’t pretty, and attributing the worst to all of us, besides his wretched father, I feel it’s against my pride to go back. And he does nothing, nothing, but send me music. No words, just music. He sent me a rather astonishing serenade for thirteen wind instruments, and Leutgeb ran around singing the parts and shouting, “Listen to this—what music!” until I wanted to cry or cover my ears.

  I have almost forgiven you sending my letter to Herr Schantz, though it is the silliest thing you ever did. Perhaps it’s a good thing to do the silliest thing so young; then you can have the rest of your life to be wise. I must recall you’re only fifteen and a half.

  But why do I write any such things? I cry a lot. Tell me what to do. Even after that letter, I still trust you.

  Constanze

  The reply, sealed with the convent’s seal (a blurred impression of the Holy Ghost in blue wax), came rapidly.

  Dearest Constanze,

  After receiving your letter I couldn’t sleep, and went down to our chapel in the middle of the night. There was only one candle burning before the statue of Our Lady, and I knelt before it a long time and then perhaps I fell asleep and dreamed this, or perhaps it was a real vision sent to me. An angel came and sat beside me, his great soft wings almost pushing me out of my place. He smelled of lemonade. He was naked to the waist and rather beautiful, and I tried not to look at him, because I felt rather too moved. He sat there for a while talking of this and that, and then he said, “You must go home and make the marriage between your sister and Amadeus.” I couldn’t recall who Amadeus was at first, because we have never called him that, but it’s his middle name, right? The “A” he puts when he signs his music (and he prefers Amadé, he told me once). So it seems if you are being so silly, I must come home.

  I am rather glad to do so, to tell you the truth, because I find after testing my vocation that I prefer to love God in the world and not behind cloister walls, and besides, I don’t mind flirting. I like conversation on the true meaning of life with friends and wine and people playing music in a comfortable room, and my ideal is just what I had as a little girl, and I can’t have it here. I don’t ever intend to marry because I am more virtuous when chaste, but I intend you to marry him, so I can have what I want for you and we can have our Thursdays again. So I am packing my things. Two of our nuns are traveling to Vienna, and I am coming with them.

  Please don’t tell me that anything has happened to my cat.

  Constanze wrote back eagerly, using one of her father’s pens.

  Dearest Sophie,

  You are welcome, welcome, welcome. I read your letter with tears of joy. I want you to come here, and we’ll always be together, but I can’t marry Mozart. I’ll be thirty and old before we get his father’s consent. You must stop trying to arrange all our lives, but do come back.

  The cat is well and has six new kittens, which, as Josefa would say, must mean that she has been very well indeed, and enjoying the life of Vienna.

  Love always,

  Your sister C.

  Sophie swept home dragging her one modest leather portmanteau, pins falling from her untidy hair, and rushed up the stairs on her thin legs. She kissed the cat, was pleased that Constanze had watered the plants in the garden and in the hall, and went at once to see Father Paul, who confirmed her decision that her vocation was in the world and not behind convent walls. She found her favorite old straw hat and pinned flowers on it, wearing it over her pale freckled face with her spectacles. “I’ll dedicate myself to good works,” she said. She made a list that first night of the most pressing of them: find more boarders, persuade Mother to eat less noodles and cake, and burn that ridiculous book of suitors.

  The next morning, after she had lain in bed talking until ten with her sister, she got up and began to tie on her petticoat. “Come on,” she said. “You’re not marrying Mozart’s father, and Mozart’s jealous of anyone you’ve ever smiled at only because he loves you. Go and tell him that you’re at least friends again with him. I’ll walk with you. Wear your straw hat ... wait, I’ll pin flowers on yours as well. ”

  They walked over in their flower-printed dresses and large straw hats. “Now, go up,” Sophie said when they arrived at his rooms; they saw the concierge out front eating dark bread and sausage. “I’ll wait here. When you come down, we can all have a lemonade.”

  Constanze walked up the stairs, her hand lingering on the banister. She could hear the fortepiano that Mozart had ordered on credit from Stein, Johann Schantz’s competitor in the instrument business, and she stood for a moment in the open doorway watching him play, gazing at his fingers, which seemed hardly to touch the keys.

  “Constanze,” he said, looking up; then, after a long moment, he added, as if nothing difficult had ever passed between them, “Come look at this aria for the maid Blondchen from my opera. Will you sing it for me?”

  “I don’t sing very well. And I didn’t know there will still be an opera.”

  “There will be,” he said grimly. “And I’ll give all the fortune that I’ll ever have if you’ll sing this aria for me.” She came closer, and he caught her fingers and pulled her down to the bench beside him. “Listen to me,” he said. “Beloved, listen to me. I think of you all the time. There can’t be anyone for me but you. Let’s pretend we’ve just met. I know nothing about your family, nor you of mine. We introduce ourselves just so. Now I must tell you I have a present for you.”

  “But you didn’t know I was coming.”

  “Sophie sent word last night.”

  “Oh, that child—I’ll be forced to send her back to the convent. Well, show me the present but ... stop, we’ve just met. Remember that. We’ve just met, and we’re beginning again.”

  He took her hand and led her down to the concierge’s dark room by the main door, where in the corner there was a basket containing a dog and four pups. He knelt, pulling her down. “I already told her I’d take the brown one off her hands. Look, I said to myself, they’ll be taken and drowned, but not if there are homes for them. I said, this one’s for Stanzi. You can’t take her yet, she’s too young; but you can visit daily, or twice daily, or hourly, and when you do now and then, you will remember the lonely composer upstairs.” He hesitated. “When we have our own rooms, when we’re married, she’ll be ours.”
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  “I hope that will be soon,” she said, her face hidden under the brim of her hat.

  “It must be very soon, Constanze, for I’m suffering for want of you.”

  “And I’m suffering wanting you,” she murmured, her words muffled by her drooping hat brim and the soft puppy noises. “I suppose I should tell my mother and you’ll have to tell—”

  “I’ve already written him.”

  They were all already assembled as he came into the boardinghouse parlor with Leutgeb at his side, though the hour had not yet struck. Caecilia Weber wore her darkest and most formal dress, buttoned to the neck, and her white cap with the faintly yellowing lace at the edge. At her throat was fastened a brooch he recognized; he had always wondered if the piece contained a holy relic or some memento of her late husband.

  He bowed, and she inclined her head.

  To her right was Thorwart with a rolled piece of paper on his knee, which Mozart assumed to be the marriage contract. Behind him was Constanze, her small hands clasped in her lap and her head lowered. Mozart could see her only a little through the bulk of the others, but he thought she looked anxious. He would have liked to kiss her hands. Beside her, on the chair with a crooked leg, Sophie also sat with hands clasped in her lap. Whenever she moved a little, the chair tilted. He wondered which would last longer, the meeting or the chair.

  He took a seat and placed his hat on his knee. Leutgeb sat by his side, rocking back and forth slightly, his mouth twitching hard now and then. Mozart kept his eyes firmly focused on the bald spot of the rug around the clavier leg. If he dared look directly at Leutgeb or Sophie, he would not have been able to contain himself. He might have rolled across the worn rug, seizing one of the old red sofa cushions to stuff in his mouth. “You will behave?” he had pleaded to Leutgeb as they walked over. “The seriousness will be a bit higher than if the Archbishop of Salzburg had tried me for assault, but then, this is more important. After all, she owns the girl, or thinks she does.”

  “The wind bag, the moldy cheese.”

  “She’s not quite that bad.”

  But Mozart, raising his eyes to his future mother-in-law, thought, She’s worse.

  Thorwart cleared his throat. “We are gathered here—”

  Maria Caecilia put up her hand to silence him, inclined her head. “Herr Mozart,” she said. “My dear Herr Mozart, I believe I understand that you wish the hand of my daughter Constanze.”

  “I wish to marry her, yes, hand and all. Both hands and all other limbs, dear Frau Weber.”

  “You must understand certain things. We are not now quite as you found us some time ago in Mannheim, when my poor dear husband yet blessed us with his wisdom. I’m a widow now, with only two remaining daughters. You wish to marry my Maria Constanze, but how do we know you’ll do it? I am asking you as a mark of good faith to sign this contract that you will pay a certain sum of money if you haven’t married her within three years. You understand we are aware of the slowness between your words of love and your finalizing them in the blessed church, Herr Mozart. We should not wish a repetition of what occurred in my family between you and another.”

  Thorwart nodded gravely. His jaw was so stiff with purpose that it looked as if it might shatter, loosing his teeth all over the carpet. Mozart took a deep breath. He raised his eyes, and there saw Sophie looking at him, deliberately cross-eyed, nose wiggling, looking all the world like a drunken rabbit. He felt his laughter rising, and then Leutgeb’s hand on his knee to restrain him.

  “Your answer, Herr Mozart?”

  “You know I’ve agreed. I’ll agree to anything to have her. Give me a pen; you’ll have my signature.” He put out his arms impulsively. “I’ll marry her within three months. Madame, if I could, it would be within three days. Where’s the ink and pen? Where’s the notary?”

  “I am notary,” Thorwart said. “Maria Sophia is witness. Come.”

  At once all in the room except Maria Caecilia stood and walked to the table. Outside they heard the kitchen maid screaming at someone, and a crash of crockery. Maria Caecilia ignored it, watching as the young composer signed, and then she stood up, sweating faintly.

  Suddenly, Constanze pushed in among all of them and snatched the contract. “I need no contract from you,” she cried. “I believe your word. I believe it.” Turning to her mother, she cried, “Mama, it has nothing to do with you; it has only to do with Wolfgang and me.” The contract, now in many pieces, drifted down and settled under the clavier legs.

  They escaped outside the house to the back of the church, where they held each other without speaking. Then Sophie came trotting toward them with a large umbrella. “It will rain, I think,” she said. Her eyes crossed, her nose wriggled, and there was the rabbit in spectacles again.

  Later Constanze and Sophie locked themselves in the parlor while the boarders hurried up and down the stairs; outside the rain fell persistently over Vienna, over the linden walk and the opera houses and the imperial palace, streaming down the stone saints and angels of the churches, dampening organs and fortepianos, wetting the windows of the great shops of the marketplace with all their gorgeous apparel. The rain fell on the posters in front of the opera announcing the first performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail—The Abduction from the Seraglio.

  One week later, Josefa returned from Prague.

  She dropped her canvas bag by the front door of the boardinghouse, and took the steps two at a time to the room she had shared with her sisters. No one was there. She gazed at the hats, dresses, stockings, and books scattered about, then stooped to pick up one of Sophie’s flat, worn shoes, and held it against her heart. Her face contorted, and she shut her eyes hard. She would not cry now, not until it was over, and then maybe never again.

  Why weren’t Constanze and Sophie here? She had thought of them all the carriage ride to Vienna, of the games they had played as children. She had often been the hero; she had slain dragons, led her sisters from burning castles, removed evil spells with the wave of a crooked stick that seemed to glitter as it cut the air like a sword. Now she needed her sisters more than she ever had in her life, but of course she had not told them she was coming. No one knew at all.

  Josefa pulled the pins out of her hair, which fell halfway down her back, and with the pins clutched in her fingers, she descended the steps, slowing as she approached the parlor. “Papa,” she whispered. She opened the door, leaning against the frame. Maybe he would be there ... maybe! But he was not. There was his clavier, the fall board open, the overcast light from the window playing on the discolored and worn ivory keys. Hanging above it on the wall was his portrait, his slightly crooked and sweet smile. Fridolin Weber, second tenor in the chapel, violinist, generous host, throwing open the door as his guests mounted the Mannheim stairs. Come up, I long to embrace you! Playing scales as she stood before him learning to sing.

  “What, are you leaving so suddenly?” the bass Hofer had asked after her last performance in the Prague Opera when she had come into his dressing room to say good-bye. He stood, still in the robes of the king he had played in the opera that day. “I’ve been watching you since you’ve come, you know. You have a magnificent voice, but the feeling within you is what makes it so rare. People come to hear you. Why are you going away?”

  “I have to go.”

  He had crossed the room, and taken her hand; he was not a handsome man, but he listened to people, and she had always felt him listening to her.

  She said, “You are very kind, Monsieur Hofer.”

  “But you will return to Prague?”

  It all began in a parlor much like this, she thought; it began with my father. He gave me music and love. He always protected me; I was his girl. She turned abruptly, and descended to the kitchen.

  Maria Caecilia Weber was asleep in the old armchair they had brought in their travels from city to city, her hips spread out under her vast skirts, her head with its heavy chins drooped on her chest, which rose and fell with
her breathing. Rain beat on the kitchen window, a little seeping under the casement, while the upper floors of the boardinghouse were still and quiet, the way they sometimes were in the morning. Josefa listened. Not even the cellist played; he must be at rehearsal or moved away. The kitchen table was full of cold chicken, which would later be smothered in warm sauce and piles of vegetables and onions.

  She took a deep breath. “Mama,” she said sternly.

  Maria Caecilia sighed and stirred. She seemed to start a little as her eyes opened and focused on her eldest daughter. For a moment something soft crossed the heavy face with its still youthful skin, and Josefa remembered years before when she had rushed into her mother’s capacious lap and her mother had said, “Whose little girl are you? And who loves you best?”

  Her mother sat forward now, rearranging her expression, straightening her puckered white cap. “You stand there like a loose woman with your hair all down,” she said, her voice husky from sleep. “Well, Josefa, you might have sent word you were coming. Have you come trailing your lovers? What on earth do you want? Away for months and months and no letter to me, not a coin for me when I might need one. In and out of our lives, isn’t it?”