The door opened and there stood Mrs. Storace in her nightcap and dressing gown. Her face went white and she rushed to Anna and told Fisher to call a doctor.
“I’m all right, Mama,” said Anna. “No doctor, no, no.” A doctor would tell Fisher it was five months and not three. “I’m all right, we were arguing and I fell. See? I’m perfectly all right. Just surprised.” Slowly and deliberately she got to her feet, to show how well she was. “But my poor gown! You had better send for the maid to undress me and then I think I’ll go to bed.” She tried to undo the velvet choker at her neck but her fingers were weak and she could not do it, and yet she had to keep trying so that they would believe she was well and not send for a doctor. She fumbled at the clasp. “Knocked myself over, so silly, I don’t know what happened, the poor table! It’s a wonder it didn’t break.” It was hard to fumble at the clasp and not to cry. “Mama, won’t you help me with my necklace? I can’t do it. It’s pulling on my neck, I’ve gotten fatter again.”
Mrs. Storace unfastened the clasp in one motion. The color had returned to her face. She glanced at Fisher coolly. “Forgive me, my dear,” she said to her daughter. “I worry for you. In your condition.”
“What condition?” asked Fisher.
Mrs. Storace pursed her lips. “Why, Mr. Fisher, I thought you had perceived. My daughter is carrying your child. It’s the usual course of events. You should be more careful. There must be no more arguments of this nature or the baby will be put at risk.”
“I didn’t know,” gasped Fisher. “My good woman, I swear I did not know.”
“Three months, if I’m not mistaken,” Mrs. Storace said, watching her daughter. “She did not wish to tell you until it was sure. Foolish girl. You must be more careful, Anna. You must not be so clumsy over dinner tables.”
Anna sank into a chair, holding a hand to her head to make it stop hurting. So in the end it had not been up to her to say it. She had not had to lie. And here was John Fisher embracing her, pulling her onto his lap, kissing frantically at her cheeks and hair, and calling her his little dove, his sweet dove. Her back ached and so did her head and the baby was probably dying but she was tired, and had no strength of will, and so she melted against his body as if strength might come from him, as if he could give her his power, rather than leaching hers away. “My darling,” he murmured, his lips and hands upon her. “My dove, my little fool, why didn’t you tell me?”
But the baby did not die. It kicked and bothered her and made it impossible to sleep. She started walking in the early morning, in humble clothes, like a servant. When she walked, the baby quieted and she felt better. She crept out. Sometimes someone recognized her, and turned to stare. It wasn’t proper for a lady to be out alone. In spite of this she felt less hunted, in the hectic streets of Vienna, with the snow and horses and pigs and running children. It was one of the largest cities in the world. She could disappear. If people looked at her curiously it was not with the probing, pitying concern that filled the eyes of her friends and made her feel as though she could not speak with them about anything, lest she be questioned and judged. Never could she be alone, unassailed. She felt her thoughts run riot and could not stop the panic. She built screens around her face. One could hardly see, through the slats, the roils of panic. Every attempt she made to free herself entangled her more.
She didn’t know anymore which part she was playing, or for whom. She didn’t know which face and character would please John Fisher and let her abide with him in peace. Sometimes when she was most short and angry with him he would swing her around the room and cover her with kisses and beg her not to frown anymore, and when he did that, she could almost not keep herself from liking him, from imagining what a fine father he would be and how the baby would make him happy and how happy they would be then. She actually laughed. Sometimes when she shrank into herself and cried like a little girl he would cradle her and say he was a brute, it was his Irish blood, his passion, and then she would stop crying and nearly forgive him. Sometimes when she was happy and laughing he was likewise. But for all these moments there were equally those when he would strike and slap her and push her down and yank her about. As an audience, a critic, he was unreliable. What pleased him once could not be guaranteed to please again. Everything had turned—it was impossible to say who she was and had been and would be, and what any of it mattered.
Though her performances grew progressively more uneven they also provided the only times she felt secure in herself. She got to the theater earlier than she needed to. She told no one about her condition and concealed it well with her clothes. If they suspected they said nothing.
“Are you quite in health?” asked Michael one day. He had come to accompany her to a luncheon at the Mozarts’. Michael and Mozart liked to play billiards together. He peered at her as though reading a coded manuscript. “Not ill again, I hope?”
She kissed him. “Just a little peaky—slept poorly. There was too much in my head, too much music.”
“I’ve got three tunes in my head at the moment,” Michael said. “At the same time. Isn’t your husband coming?”
She hesitated, then gave him a rueful look. “He’s in a bad mood today. He said he doesn’t like Mozart. I don’t know what got into him.”
“Doesn’t like Mozart?” Michael raised his brows. “Well, then. Each to his own. I’m glad to have you to myself.”
“Let’s walk,” Anna declared. “I want to be in the sunshine.”
He drew back. “In this frost?”
She shook her head. “I need to breathe, Michael.”
“If you say so,” he said doubtfully. “Got your muff? I’ll just send my carriage on its way, then. You’re sure you’re not going to freeze yourself into a faint?”
“Don’t be so motherly,” she said. “I never walk anymore—doesn’t that seem unnatural? We used to walk everywhere in Italy.”
“Only poor people walk. With no shoes on.”
“I don’t move,” she exclaimed, flinging out her arms. “I want to breathe cold air and walk for hours.”
His face darkened. He was going to say something about Fisher. If he came out with it directly she was not sure how she would answer. At last he asked, “Are you sure you’re all right? You seem wan, Anna.”
Her answer came without thinking, like her smile. It was the truth. “Mozart will cheer me. Come.”
She finished fastening her boots and they went out. There was snow on the street and some sun shone weakly through the clouds. She strode along as if there was some marvelous treasure around the corner—she made herself imagine there was—with the air harsh in her throat and her eyes stinging from the vigorous chill. Michael Kelly, used to taking an easy pace in everything he did, found himself having to hurry to keep up with her. At the Mozarts’ everyone was in high spirits, loud and raucous, a kind of madness in the air. Some of his instrumentalist friends were there, a flautist and a bassoonist, and they played something, and everyone sang bawdy songs, and there was dancing, and Mozart beat Michael at billiards. Then he recited some nonsense verse and Anna laughed so hard that tears came to her eyes. Then there was another game of billiards and she browsed the books in his library—Ovid, Molière.
“Do you like to read?” asked Constanze. “My husband carries a book in his pocket wherever he goes.”
“I used to,” said Anna. She touched a hand nervously to her face. She was sure Constanze could tell that she was pregnant. “I’m so busy now.”
“So am I,” Constanze said. She smiled.
Then there was shouting from the billiards room and they rejoined the rest of the gathering. Anna could almost imagine that this was all there was—that she lived here, too, in this jovial house, with these warm, boisterous friends.
She found other pockets of respite and they kept her in sound mind, and reminded her that all was not lost, although sometimes it seemed so. On nights she wasn’t singing, she watched the theater troupe perform Shakespeare in German, sometimes with F
isher but more often alone. She liked the comedies because they did not require anything of her. She could remain calm through even the most fraught of narratives, knowing it would end well. She understood, more and more, why people loved her opera buffa—why they found reassurance there, in that she always played the same stock role; in that the plots, the music, were all the same.
One needed sameness. One needed a feeling of order and reliability—of knowing that what was prophesied would come to pass, that those who were meant to love would love, that evil and good would be accounted for. There was reassurance in repetition, in familiar sounds and faces, as there had been from infancy. It was like walking slowly with her mother in the Stephansplatz, a large square in the center of the city, to the same rhythm of the same music in her head, past people and shops she had seen every day, knowing that the sky would not buckle, the earth not heave up its contents, the young soldier on his horse not give her a bruised knee or a bloody nose because she had moved in a way that seemed to him wanton.
All the Words She Could Spill
As she was walking one morning—too early; she had hardly slept—Anna saw a tall, familiar figure stooping over some vegetables on display in an alley.
“Lidia,” she said.
The other girl turned in surprise. “Oh, my dear one.” She embraced Anna with all her strength.
They had not seen each other in some time. Anna had always been too engaged. “I thought I’d buy some bread,” she explained now to Lidia.
Lidia looked her up and down. “Don’t you have someone to do that for you? Why are you alone? In your condition?”
“Oh, yes, but sometimes they get the wrong kind, and I do like the fresh air. The walking is good for me.”
Lidia observed that the air was not so fresh in town as in the country and it was not proper for her to be out alone. “You must have been up late singing last night,” she added. “You should be in bed.”
“I don’t need as much sleep as I used to,” Anna said. “Since my marriage. I’m entirely different now. It’s extraordinary. You must try it, Lidia. You must marry.”
“Only a widower with ten children would want me.”
“Don’t say that,” Anna said. “I swear you are lovelier than when I met you.” She pressed her arms together. “I’m only up early this morning because of some uneasiness in my humors.”
“I never knew you to have uneasy humors,” Lidia said.
“That I did not, because I had my dear Lidia with me.”
Lidia looked at the ground, as though shrouding some pain. And there, in that flicker of pain, Anna saw the concern, the reproof, the solicitude that was every day in the eyes of her friends, and it came to her that Lidia knew. Someone had told her, or she had overheard some rumor. Madame Fisher’s wicked husband was beating her.
“Tell me,” Lidia said. “Would you like me to come back to you? To be your companion again?”
“Oh,” Anna laughed, a laugh like a glaze, smoothing her entire aspect, “and face the wrath of my mother?”
“I don’t think she would have anything to object to now that you’re wed. I doubt she’d even notice me. I’d be quiet as a mouse.”
Anna swayed on her feet. Last night after she’d sung, someone had given her a small silver watch. She wore the watch now around her neck. Beneath her cloak and scarf it was warm against her skin, where first it had been icy cold. She could feel the high tick of its heartbeat against her own, dividing the day into time, measuring out her breaths. It must be nearly eight. The sky, twilight-blue when she’d left the house, was bright and clear. How many sunrises she had missed. Last night while she’d slept the watch had ticked in its smooth purse on the table where a few weeks ago her husband had dropped her.
“I would have to ask John if you could come back,” she said.
Lidia cocked her head. “Does he bother with your servants?”
Anna touched the base of her throat. “Please don’t pity me. In truth I am fortunate. When I think of my life, of all I’ve done, all I’ve loved, it amazes me. Look, it makes me cry. I’ve always been so weak and softhearted.”
“Openhearted, my dear one,” Lidia exclaimed.
“And you mustn’t—you must simply ignore John. Don’t argue with him or he won’t have you. He’s very moody. He loves me in mountains and chasms. It’s because of his genius—all geniuses are moody. And love isn’t worth anything without storms and tempests, you know! But when he loves me best in the world it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever known or felt and you mustn’t get in the way of that, Lidia, only be as you are and just for me so that I might feel your calm, dear loving presence again when I’m lonely. I do get lonely, even now that I’m married and so fearfully busy. You were my only friend. My only true friend. Sometimes when I’m alone in the morning in bed and there’s no Lidia to draw the curtains and wake me, the emptiness—the silence in my head, you see—I get so frightened! You can’t believe what it’s like!”
They walked on together, Anna leaning on the other girl’s arm and talking as if all this could make up for their time apart, could disperse the isolation she felt, even here, with dear Lidia once again obediently listening and murmuring at her side, and all the words she could spill not doing anything to vanquish the silence, the reproach, the loneliness, of those horrifying mornings.
Dear Anna,
Your last letter troubled me greatly. I wish I could see you. These are not the words of the girl I remember, the brave girl who was my best Cupid. What has happened? What can I do?
Ah, I am so far away.
There is no shame in sadness, my dear. Do remember how you are loved. You are the most remarkable young lady I know. You are quick-witted and strong. You uplift our souls. Isn’t that good? Doesn’t that bring comfort? I believe in you, and in your purpose. You must not give up. I don’t know what is happening there but you must find courage and not give up. Do you still have my phoenix pin? Then you have me. You may carry me in your pocket or at your breast. And not only me but yourself, your courage, all our hours together. You mustn’t forget, my Anna. Why do you think I gave it to you?
You say little of your husband. Let me tell you that there are times in life when everything seems darkness. When the way becomes unclear. There is only a piling-on of blankets. Then the littlest things seem difficult. But there is a way out. There is always a way, if only in our minds. Remember who you are. You are Anna Storace and you have everything you need. If I was there I would show you. Well, I’m there in that pin. Write me and let me know you are better. You don’t know how I worry. Of all young ladies, you must know joy—it’s all I ever wished for you.
Ever yours,
Venanzio Rauzzini
It occurred to Anna early one morning, John sleeping beside her, that her husband might as well have been miles away, farther away than Stephen, dead like her father, or unborn like her child, for all that she was in any degree close to him. She sat up and looked at his square face and the thought came to her that this was no less true of anyone else she loved or knew; that it wasn’t just because John was her husband or because he mistreated her. If he had not been her husband, if he had been kind, she would have been alone in the world all the same.
Rising from the bed she went to the window and looked outside. The glass was thick and dirty. She could see nothing but a few shadowy figures who might have been ghosts. She felt as though she were regarding her own death.
“What are you doing?” John asked from the bed.
She turned. “I was thinking how alone I am.”
His face in the dim light was unreadable. “You’re not alone. I’m right here. I may be an old man but I’m certainly here. Come to bed. You have to sing later.”
With a rustle of bedclothes he was asleep again. He spoke like that now and then—as if he cared for her. Anna looked at him for a few minutes. Then quietly she put on her dressing gown, the one with the peacocks and the French lace, and bound back her hair in a loose braid
. She went to her writing desk and triggered the secret panel that contained her letters and treasures. In the gray light of morning she read Rauzzini’s letter again. The part about how he believed in her, how she was remarkable. She took out the phoenix pin and turned it in her hands and pressed it to her cheek, as she had done a hundred times. John Fisher stirred and kept sleeping. The room brightened with morning. Anna took out some paper and her inkwell and wrote a letter to the emperor and had Lidia send it before her husband arose.
It was wonderful to have Lidia home. She was not afraid of Fisher and she gave Anna courage.
Sweet Bells Jangled
Joseph II received petitioners and meted out petty justice every morning at ten. Each appointment took between three and five minutes and was also attended by a number of secretaries and ministers. There was no music at these proceedings, although it might have made them pleasanter.
John Fisher entered the audience room in his finest clothes, with his violin tucked under his arm and the swaybacked bow dangling from his hand as if in lieu of a sword. It had snowed this morning and his boots were wet. There was something tender and melancholy about seeing him with the instrument under his arm, an instrument built so finely that it was as if the wood had been melted and suspended into shape.
The emperor cleared his throat, feeling put out. Why hadn’t the men outside stopped him? “My dear sir. I did not ask you here for a concert.”
Vienna Nocturne Page 11
