Mozart's Sister

by Nancy Moser

  “Well?” she said. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

  A part of me wanted to rip open the seal and absorb every word. But the other part sensed what it might say and knew the words would break my heart even further.

  “Go on,” the woman said. “I have knitting to do. I won’t bother you” She pulled out her needles and yarn and averted her eyes.

  I broke the seal and unfolded the single page. Franz’s lovely cursive graced the paper like artwork on a canvas. His words were just as eloquent: To my beloved Nannerl. I will always love you. Someday, in God’s providence, we will be together once again. Your loving Franz.

  I held the letter to my breast. And began to cry.

  What had I done?

  When I arrived at the home in St. Gilgen that had once been my mother’s, Johann helped me out of the carriage and kissed my cheek. “Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to your new home.”

  It was not my home. It was not my family.

  But like it or not, it was now my life.

  I willed myself to smile. “Thank you.”

  He pulled my hand into the crook of his elbow and patted it. “My city offices are on the main floor, but come upstairs to the living quarters and meet my children. Our children.”

  My body moved up the stairs, but my mind remained on the street, stunned by the finality of this truth. Tomorrow was my wedding day and I would become a mother-the mother-of five children.

  Then suddenly they were before me in the entrance hall, lined in a row, wiggling and squirming. Their eyes flitted over me, taking me in. Who was this new mama of theirs?

  “Hello, children,” I said. The oldest, named Maria Anna like me, was a girl of thirteen. Beside her stood four boys aged ten to two. The oldest boy was Wolfgang, Joseph was seven, then Johann Baptist the younger, aged four, and finally little Karl.

  They each bowed or curtsied and murmured a greeting, although my husband-to-be’s namesake looked me right in the eye and said, “My mother’s dead.”

  I glanced at Johann, expecting him to admonish the child. He did not.

  I noticed Maria’s face was dirty, there was a distinctly unclean odor in the air, and the boys’ clothes were rumpled and torn. Had they been left to run wild since their mother-mothers-had died? There was a certain caged-animal aura to the room….

  Joseph raised a hand. “Is the music thing that was delivered yours?”

  My heart leaped. As a wedding present Papa had promised me one of those new pianofortes. “It came?”

  “Yesterday,” Johann said. “Though we really don’t have room for-”

  “Where is it?” I asked. I immediately realized I’d been rude and offered Johann a smile. “Forgive my excitement. May I see it?”

  Maria said, “I’ll show you.”

  She led me into a front parlor, which was bathed in sunshine. The rugs on the floor were worn, the arm on one of the chairs was missing, and the pictures on the wall were cockeyed, but none of that mattered. There, in the corner, sat a new pianoforte. Not an old-fashioned clavichord or harpsichord like those I’d learned upon but a new invention with foot pedals to control the volume, and keys that offered a more pronounced and powerful sound.

  “It plays,” Joseph said.

  I put my hand on the back of his head. “I’m so glad.”

  “Why don’t you play something for us,” Johann said.

  I sat on the bench and took a moment to lightly stroke the lovely ivory keys. Then, as if they had a mind of their own, my fingers found their place and began. I played one of my brother’s pieces, one he’d written long ago for my name day. He’d said the lively movement of the eighth notes was his way of portraying the light in my eyes when I was happy.

  I closed my eyes to capture the memory of his words and let the music take over. The sound I received was deeper, more mellow than that of other instruments. And the way the pedals let me sustain a note beyond the pressing of finger to key …

  Too soon the song came to an end. The notes tried to linger in the air but were doomed to fall away. I opened my eyes and saw a dozen eyes looking back at me.

  “That was pretty,” Maria said.

  Joseph put a hand on top of the instrument. “I want to learn to play like that. You’ll teach me, won’t you?”

  I took my first deep breath of St. Gilgen air. “Yes, children. I will teach you all.”

  I was allowed private time to unpack. Although I would sleep in another room that night-the night before our wedding Johann had instructed me to unpack the bulk of my possessions in his bedchamber. Which would become our bedchamber.

  It was a lovely room, larger than even Papa’s room back in Salz burg. But as I ran my hand over the carving on the wardrobe that was to hold my dresses, as I picked up the porcelain figurine of a robin, as I admired the lace edging on a doily, I couldn’t help but remember that these things had been used by two other women before me. Johann had been married to Maria for ten years. She had borne him nine children, dying after the birth of the ninth. The four oldest surviving children were her doing. Fifteen months after her death he had married his beloved Jeanette, who had borne him one son, Karl, before dying at the birth of another.

  She’d died just sixteen months ago. Now it was my turn.

  I shivered. I was doing a lot of shivering lately, as if my body was trying to adapt to this odd combination of expectation and reality. I opened the satchel that had been placed on the bed. I removed a carefully wrapped packet. Three seashells fell onto the mattress.

  I picked them up one at a time and placed them in the palm of my hand as if they were precious gems. For they were precious to me. These were the shells I’d plucked from the ocean at Calais on our Grand Tour. I closed my eyes and remembered how the tide had teased my toes, forcing me to run away, only to be drawn back to its edge. In many ways the shells meant more to me than all the golden snuff boxes in the world, for they were symbolic of both my crossing over from one country to the next, and my crossing from childhood to young womanhood.

  I’d been on the edge of a new experience then. And now I was at the edge of another.

  I carefully placed the shells on the bedside table where I could see them every morning when I woke.

  Beside my husband.

  Oh my.

  The wedding ceremony was a blur. The reception afterward was populated by many people I did not know I feared I would never remember their names.

  Only the smiling face of Papa got me through. He was the one constant, the one glue that linked my past, my present, and my future. To see him happy in the day made me seek happiness too.

  And I was happy. I was determined to be happy. For what good would come from regrets or could-have-beens? This path I’d chosen, I’d chosen. Although the circumstances of life had been instrumental in bringing me to this moment, I could have remained in my father’s house forever. I would have gotten by-even after his death. Yet to choose that life of utter loneliness when a life in a teeming home full of husband and children was available to me …

  It would have been foolhardy to choose the former. This was the better way. For in this choice lived hope and movement and a continuation of more eighth notes portraying the light in my eyes.

  I would make this work. I would.

  The wedding night was … difficult. Although I deserved the extra five hundred florins I’d received for being a virgin, I wasn’t totally ignorant. My married friends had shared some of their experiences. I knew the basics of how it should work.

  And Johann was kind. Very kind.

  But as I lay beside him my mind slipped back to Salzburg, back to Franz, back to dreams that had to remain dead and buried. This was my life now This was my husband.

  With God’s help it would get better. The Almighty would help me be a good wife.

  My life depended on it.

  I awakened with a start. Lying on my side I saw four-year-old Johann standing by the bed. From my place on the high mattress, our eyes were nearly lev
el. With a glance over my shoulder, I was mindful of my new husband asleep beside me. “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

  “I’m scared.”

  As my eyes focused in the moonlight, I saw the glisten of tears on his cheeks. I didn’t know the usual procedure in the Berchtold household regarding bad dreams and frightened children, but I did note little Johann had chosen to come to my side of the bed instead of the side of his father.

  While I was pondering all this, the boy snuggled his cheek against the mattress just inches away from my head. He smelled a little too much like busy boy. Tomorrow I would give instructions regarding baths and the washing of teeth. But until then …

  I lifted the covers. He looked at my eyes, asking permission. “Come in,” I said.

  He climbed onto the bed and I lowered the covers. He scooted toward me, pressing his back into my torso. I wrapped my arm around him, pulling him tight and safe, two spoons fitting one to another.

  Once he was settled and still, I whispered into his ear. “Better?”

  He nodded.

  And it was.

  K127~ C~4~-

  St. Gilgen was my wilderness, marriage my trap, and the children …

  I knew it wasn’t right that I often thought of my stepchildren as wild beasts, but that’s how they acted. Yet could one blame them? From the moment Maria was born until little Karl, death had occupied this house. Eleven children had been born. Six had died. The first mother died in childbirth (no doubt worn out from having nine babies in ten years), and then a few years later, the next passed away. Both women gave their lives in the quest to fulfill their duty to propagate the earth. The children’s father was often withdrawn and uninvolved, and I wondered if it was his way of dealing with grief. Or was he simply overwhelmed with the responsibilities of providing for such a troupe?

  My first order of business had to do with hygiene. The day after the wedding I made sure the children had baths and knew how to wash their teeth and comb their own hair. I swept through their bedchambers, gathering all their clothes, determining which ones needed mending and which should be assigned to the rag bin.

  “But that’s my favorite skirt,” Maria complained.

  “We’ll get you a new one,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Papa won’t approve.”

  Her comment ignited my doubts, for Johann and I had not gone over the household budget. Yet I maintained my resolve. “Don’t worry. I will convince him.”

  She continued to shake her head.

  At dinner that night, with five clean faces and fifty clean fingers at the table, I was faced with my next challenge.

  After grace was said in a quick murmur that defied translation, after I’d filled each plate with sauerbraten, bread, and potatoes, seven-year-old Joseph scooped some potatoes into his mouth-with his hand. And Wolfgang, aged ten, chewed his bread with his mouth completely open, making the most horrid sight and sound. My patience was sorely tested when Maria slurped her drink noisily and wiped the drip on her chin with the back of her hand.

  “Enough!” I said, putting my fork down.

  They all froze, including Johann. “There is a problem?” my husband asked.

  I covered the racing of my heart by adjusting the napkin in my lap. “There is.”

  “Can we eat?” little Johann asked.

  “No, you may not,” I said. “Not until you show some manners.”

  “Hun-gee!” yelled two-year-old Karl.

  “Let them eat, Nannerl,” Johann said. “I have work to do.”

  Identifying their father as their savior, the children all started whining and talking at once. Their cacophony was silenced when I pushed my chair back and stood. I looked at my husband. “May I speak with you in the other room, please?”

  Johann had the audacity to swipe his bread through the juice of his meat. “Not now, Nannerl, I-”

  “Now.”

  He looked across the table at me, and it took all my will not to sit back down and accept the piggish condition of my new familyor run from the room in total defeat. I hesitated, but in that hesitation realized that my next action would determine much more than a civil dinner table.

  To my surprise, Johann stood. “I find this ridiculous.”

  He could find it whatever he pleased, as long as I had his ear. As I walked into the parlor, I felt a nervous tingle up my spine. Would he follow?

  He did. “I don’t have time for this.”

  I hid my shaking hands in the folds of my skirt. “I know you don’t. That’s one reason I’m here. Yes?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose-”

  I took strength in his concession. “As their mother, it is my job to teach the children the basics of life, from bathing to proper ways of addressing one another to being able to eat with table manners that would be acceptable in anyone’s home-in the home of the emperor himself.”

  Johann snickered. “I doubt my children will ever-”

  “Our children.”

  He blinked. And in that blink, I knew I’d won.

  “May I have free rein?” I asked.

  Johann turned back toward the dining room. “Do what you need to do.”

  The children did not particularly like me those first few months. The poor dears. Yet as we addressed the niceties of life one by one, as we turned chaos into order, they came to respect me. The love would come later.

  I hoped.

  It was no wonder Johann had wanted to marry me. I could do something of the utmost importance: I could help. Yet any good woman could have done what I attempted to do. At first I wondered why Johann didn’t simply hire a governess to help the cook, chambermaid, and undermaid. But as time passed, as I observed the failings and severe limitations of these three servants, as I met the people who populated the work force in the area, I realized that finding a wife was probably easier than finding good help. In their defense, the people of St. Gilgen were salt-of-the-earth people who fished on the lake-the Aberseeor worked in the salt industry or in the glassworks, or catered to the pilgrimage trade that came through on their way to St. Wolfgang’s a few kilometers away. But I could also recognize that the main reason they were a coarse people had to do with education, which they sorely lacked-and for which they showed little respect.

  St. Gilgen did not even have a real school. Twenty-some children met in the cobbler’s home and in the upper floor of the house next door: boys in one location, girls in the other. They were taught only the most elementary level of catechism, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

  The biggest hurdle to getting them a decent education was the absence of a full-time teacher. The man who held the job of sexton taught when he had time. Which he didn’t have much of because his duties of caring for the devotional vessels of the church and selling religious artifacts took priority. As a result, the classes were unreliable. Often when the teacher was available, the children were scattered. It was a shameful arrangement.

  Yet what teacher in their right mind would accept the position? Who would want to live in tiny St. Gilgen with its one church, three inns, public bathhouse (where blood was let and teeth pulled), and a Saturday market that only offered the basic essentials?

  I was constantly having to write to Papa, begging him to shop for me in Salzburg. We kept the woman who traveled between our towns selling glassware busy with our weekly letters and trade. And despite what Johann said, I was never extravagant in my requests. I truly needed mustard, vegetables, books, lemons, candles, lard, and various items of clothing. The children’s shoes were deplorable, and I traced their feet and had some felt shoes made in Salzburg. Papa did his best to spend our money wisely, but one kreuzer was one too many kreuzers to Johann, and I hated having to question Papa about the costs on my husband’s behalf. The entire financial process did nothing to increase Johann’s reputation in my father’s eyes.

  As far as my reputation in the eyes of my children? The littlest one, Karl, was always on my hip. To him, I was instantly Mama. The other three boys were
more concerned with wrestling one another and with what was being served for dinner to take much mind of me. The one I best hoped to befriend was the oldest, Maria, who was just thirteen. Perhaps I felt a kinship with her because we shared the same given name; perhaps I felt an empathy for her because I knew she, like myself, had been forced to assume too much responsibility too soon. So it was Maria whom I first invited to partake of keyboard lessons.

  One afternoon, after being there four months, I made sure the boys were occupied elsewhere. It was an exceptionally warm winter day, and I told them to go play in the garden near the lake right outside our door. Only then did I call Maria into the front room, to the pianoforte. I closed the doors behind us, turned, and smiled at her. “So,” I said.

  “Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

  I blinked but understood the precedent in her question. “Not at all. I simply wondered if you would like to begin your lessons.”

  She looked at the piano as if it could reach out and grab her. “On that?”

  That was my savior here in the wilderness. If I had not gotten into the habit of playing its lovely keys for a few hours every day, I would surely have jumped into the lake and willingly sunk to its bottom. My hope was that I could teach the children how to play well enough to perform duets. I simply had to create some kind of musical community here. I’d already discovered that most of the local musicians who played at weddings and dances had learned the folk tunes by rote and were incapable of reading a note. They would do me no good whatsoever.

  I put my hands on her shoulders and moved her to the bench, pressing her to sit. “This is a very lovely instrument that can open the world to you.”

  She looked up at me, her brow furrowed. As if she didn’t understand the term “world”?

  “At your age I was playing in London and Paris for royalty. I played for kings, queens, and emperors, and spoke to them as I am speaking to you now”

  “Where’s London?”

  I tried to contain my shock. “In England.”

  Her face remained blank.

  “Northwest of here.” I pointed out the window

  She nodded. “Oh.”