Vienna Nocturne

by Vivien Shotwell

  Fisher looked around in embarrassment. The secretaries and ministers averted their eyes. “I beg your pardon, Your Excellency,”

  he said in his egregiously accented German. “When I received your summons I couldn’t imagine why—such an honor—”

  “Mr. Fisher, you have injured one of my most valuable servants. A woman, indeed, who represents my interests. Therefore you have injured me. I believe you know of whom I speak.”

  “I do not, Your Excellency,” Fisher said slowly. “I have never injured anyone.”

  “Then either you’re lying,” said the emperor, “or I wouldn’t like to see your idea of real injury. For some time I have heard how you mistreat your young wife, Madame Storace-Fisher, the crown jewel of my opera company, for whom I pay a pretty penny. I have hesitated to intervene because the business between a man and his wife is not to be meddled with. When it affects her professional conduct, however—when she is unable to sing as she used to, and her physical well-being is threatened—when the woman herself writes me in the most piteous tones how she’s driven mad by her oppressor—then can I only believe that I must act, as my conscience has urged these many months, before my people rebel, before the nightingale herself is maimed or killed. Do you understand? You make no answer but I see from your eyes that you do. Very well. I could arrest and charge you but it would create a spectacle, and none of us would like that. Therefore I ask you to leave my city this evening and never return. These guards of mine will escort you. Your bags are being packed this moment. You may use my transport, for a fee, as far as Augsburg. John Abraham Fisher, I hereby banish you from Vienna.”

  Following this speech there was a long pause. The man, astonishingly, did not move. Joseph grimaced and retrieved a chocolate drop from his pocket. He rolled it in his hand but did not unwrap it. “Is there something you don’t understand about banishment, Mr. Fisher? I could order the guards to take you out bodily.”

  Fisher shifted on his feet. He cleared his throat and seemed exceedingly uncomfortable. “Your Excellency. If you please. I have never played for you.”

  The emperor spread his hands, as if to say, “Well?” John Fisher shrugged his violin to his chin, with an air of apology, or sorrow, and began to play.

  The guards moved forward but Joseph stopped them with a motion of his hand. It would not do to interrupt Bach. An oddly intellectual choice for this moment of John Fisher’s public humiliation, although also, of course, being Bach, exquisitely old-fashioned and pleasant even in the most inopportune of moments. It was like one of those old Dutch paintings where the women are in peaked caps and the light and colors are so crisp and clear you think you could break them with a touch. One of the emperor’s brothers was a duke in the Austrian Netherlands; Joseph had seen those poised paintings with his own eyes. So he let Fisher play. With the detachment of a fellow musician he admired the man for not rushing the tempo, not even in his distress, and for keeping the clear sweetness of tone he had cultivated over many years. One could almost understand, hearing this music, seeing the physical and emotional obtuseness turn to grace, how Anna Storace had been convinced to dash herself against his crags.

  When the partita was finished, the emperor remarked, “You might have lived, sir, as you played.”

  Anna, surrounded by friends, waited for her husband. The emperor had said that he would send an escort but still she did not want to be caught alone. She had told Michael, and he had come to the house and had brought with him Benucci, Lidia, the Bussanis, and—of all couples—Aloysia Lange and her actor husband, Joseph. Mrs. Storace sat beside Anna with wet eyes, talking to Michael. Michael had said it would be better if there was a crowd when Fisher arrived, as he would be more apt to behave himself with so many watching. Anna was not convinced. Everyone had told her that she should be gone but she had told them that wouldn’t do—it would be better for her own soul to say good-bye and see him gone.

  Fisher, entering the drawing room, stopped short when he saw the assembly. They had heard him in the hall and gone quiet in anticipation. He had his violin case. His clothes fit him poorly, because he had been impatient with the tailor during their making. His face was red. The guards came behind him, looking sheepish.

  As always he had eyes only for Anna. “A party?” he asked. “For you or for me?”

  “John,” she said. “I’ve had Robert pack all your clothes and things and I’ve given you some money.”

  “I wonder why you never surprised me on my name day, my dear, with such talents for secrecy.”

  “You hate surprises,” Anna said.

  “Ah, you know that? I suppose a good wife should know such things about her husband. One wonders why you are doing such a thing to me now as this.”

  “Look here,” said Michael. “She’s doing it because you’re an ass, Fisher.”

  “And you, madam?” Fisher asked Mrs. Storace. “Will you renounce me, too?”

  “It was a mistake,” Mrs. Storace said. She gripped her daughter’s hand. “Each of us has been deceived about the other. Won’t you please go calmly and well?”

  Fisher surveyed the room. The non-English speakers—Benucci, Lidia, the Langes, the Bussanis, the two imperial guards—watched with a kind of interested blankness; they were an audience whose comprehension was limited to tone of voice and quality of aspect; rather like a German audience at an Italian opera. Lidia knew the most English of all of them, and understood a word or two, while Joseph Lange, the famous actor and portraitist who had won Aloysia’s heart from Mozart, could read their body language as if it had been written out for him in blocked letters. Benucci looked on edge. He leaned forward and asked in Italian if there was any trouble. Anna said there was not.

  Fisher snorted. “What will I tell people?”

  “What you like.”

  “Driven mad by your oppressor. Your oppressor! You were mad before you ever met me.”

  “Even so,” said Anna. She felt as though there were fingers clawing around her collarbone.

  Fisher rubbed his jaw. “And what about my child?” She looked at him with wide eyes and did not answer. He stood in front of them like someone to be judged. They had arranged themselves on Michael’s suggestion to face him all in a row. Aloysia Lange whispered something inaudible in her husband’s ear and Anna hated her for it. When she’d met the Langes at the door she hadn’t wanted to let them in. They weren’t friends of hers. If anything they were her rivals. But Michael had said that Fisher admired the Langes, Joseph especially, and would not want to create a scene in front of them.

  “Is that Frau and Herr Lange?” Fisher asked, switching into his halting but forceful German. “Herr Lange here to watch me and see me break?” He rubbed his jaw again and continued in English. “Yes, I can see him taking notes about me now in his mind. Very good. How red my face is, how I clutch my violin case as if for my life. Well. I’ll put it down.”

  “Good sir,” said Michael Kelly, “why prolong this show? We’re all of us quite ready to bid you Godspeed and farewell.”

  “Herr Lange is a great Hamlet,” Fisher said. “As great as they can be in German. Do you remember, Anna, how we used to read those scenes together? It was one of the first things I loved about you, that you would read aloud the great tragedies with me and not think me grim. What a refuge this house seemed to me then, and you in it. Didn’t you think we made a good pair of readers, madam?” he asked Mrs. Storace.

  It frightened Anna that he was acting so politely. He should have been more angry. He should have tried to hurt her.

  He crossed to one of the bookcases. “Come,” he said. “Come over here and read with me. You know the scene I mean.” He smiled with self-mockery and found the book on the shelf. “I’ll read Ophelia. I wouldn’t have you think I don’t know who is banishing whom.” No one offered a word of protest. Dorotea Bussani looked stricken. The room had a quality of helpless suspense and embarrassment. Outside, the day already seemed to be darkening, though it was not long past noon. Nobod
y had lunched and some of them—the singers and the actor—had been obliged to wake earlier than they were used to in order to be here for this scene. Fisher was like the worst kind of guest, one who made you feel at once bored and discomfited. Yet no one was ready to make the final push. They were all deferring to Anna. She seemed unwilling to end it. Instead it seemed she was setting down her crochet work and moving toward Fisher with all her gracefulness, her rounded belly, toward his mockery and his book; toward the performance he proposed.

  “My lord,” Fisher said to Anna, reciting fair Ophelia’s lines from memory. “I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to redeliver.” Casting down his eyes, he reached into his sleeve and retrieved a folded piece of paper. When had he put it there? What had he written on it? With a modest smile, he offered it to Anna. It was addressed, To My Wife.

  She felt as if she were accepting a curse. She opened the letter and read: Forgive me. I love you. John.

  Revulsion crossed her face. She slid the letter into the pages of the book. She read Hamlet’s lines, his tirade against Ophelia, his orders to “get thee to a nunnery.” Fisher tottered. Really he was a magnificent actor. It was as if her every word scorched him. He wanted her to feel like a torturer. He wanted her to know how it had felt to push her down, to grasp her hips and pin her, to lift her up and let her drop. How powerful it felt and how cruel. But she would never know that.

  He was on his knees now, facing front, his hands at his chest. Hamlet had made his exit and Ophelia was alone. He looked up. “Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” His cheeks were wet with tears. The words, clad in his Irish accent, flirting with falsetto, were as beautiful and tender to hear as they would have been on any formal stage, and as wretched. “The observed of all of observers, quite, quite down!” Anna stood beside him, implacable. Benucci shifted nervously in place, as if waiting for a good moment to defend her honor. The rest stayed as they were, almost without breathing, a gravity on their faces of the kind usually reserved for the sickbed.

  “I say, Fisher,” said Kelly, “this is beyond batty. Have pity.”

  Fisher stretched a hand before him. “And I,” he whispered, “of ladies most deject and wretched, that sucked the honey of his music vows, now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells, jangled out of tune and harsh …”

  The rest of the speech seemed to wilt in the air. There was no applause. Fisher retrieved his violin and went outside to wait while the rest of his possessions were loaded into the carriage. Anna retired to her room with Lidia. The rest of the guests, sober and strained, helped themselves to the generous tea provided by Mrs. Storace, who thanked them for their company and remarked upon the weather.

  Stephen’s Return

  Stephen arrived from London one night in February while Anna was at a party. When she came home she felt the change instantly. The atmosphere was alive with it. Her body knew the fact of it before her mind did and she laughed and cried out before she knew why, before she heard English voices and strong, loud steps coming toward her from the parlor, before she saw the traveling trunk in the hall, the draped cloak, and all the wrapped parcels. There was Stephen, tall and bright-eyed and scruffy-bearded, taking her into his arms with great caution because he had never had occasion, until now, to embrace a woman who was with child.

  Such a shock! They had been waiting for him for so long—so much had happened—and now here he was!

  “Hasn’t he grown?” asked Mrs. Storace. “Doesn’t he look like your father? I thought I’d seen a ghost.”

  “Look at you,” Stephen said to Anna, standing back to take in her belly.

  She smiled shyly. “I’m sorry. I tried to stay smaller. We’ll find a good costume.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  They sat in the parlor, and all three were at a loss, unsure where they had left off or where to resume. Anna, after her first rush of joy, had come under the sway of more creeping emotions. Stephen asked for some wine.

  “Did you get my last letter?” he asked at last.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Storace, “but we didn’t write back because you were just a few days hence.”

  “I half feel I should be writing a letter now,” Anna said.

  “What would you say?” he asked, turning to her with such encouraging imprecation that she knew she must seem lost and awkward indeed.

  “Let’s see,” she said. She looked at the ceiling. “I would write that my dear brother has arrived safely and I am now the happiest girl in all of Vienna, because he is good and strong and embraces me even in my uncomfortable condition. I would implore him in my letter to keep warm and wear booties when traveling at night. I’d say we have no news.”

  “And here I am!” Stephen exclaimed, looking around him. “I have not seen much of it yet, but I love Vienna.”

  “Anna is admired here,” said Mrs. Storace. “She can hardly take a step but someone is soliciting her or offering her his elbow.”

  “All the better for me and my opera,” Stephen said with a smile.

  “She’s the only reason the emperor agreed to do your opera.”

  “Mama,” Anna said.

  Stephen shook his head. “It’s all right—I’m not ashamed.”

  “Nor am I.” She took his hand. “I need your music. Yours. Only yours. Everything else is so dull, I can’t tell you how dull—it has no relation to me, my heart is elsewhere, there’s nothing anymore to sing for—”

  “Good gracious,” Stephen exclaimed. “Who is this changeling? What have they done with my butterfly sister? Where has your joy gone?”

  “So you see it was all for my own sake,” she said, smiling helplessly. “And now I fear I’ve only made things worse—your prima buffa should not look like a ship at sea. I’ll ruin everything.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. The opera will be nothing without you. Nobody has heard of me.”

  “Yet,” she said.

  He laughed. “Yet! Soon the whole world will know, thanks to you. I always said we were going to be a team, didn’t I?”

  “John Fisher,” Mrs. Storace said abruptly. She fixed her gaze on the ground. “It was John Fisher took the joy out of her, and I could do nothing to stop it. How many days and nights I wished you to come, Stephen, but she wouldn’t write you.”

  “There was nothing to say!” Anna cried. “It’s all over now and I’ll have none of this about losing my joy, whatever in the world that means. How could I lose my joy when Stephen is here and it’s almost springtime and I have a new Storace opera to present to everyone? I’ve never been happier. I don’t know how I’ll sleep tonight.”

  “Neither do I,” Stephen said. “Oh, Anna. To have an opera of my own performed—on such a stage, with such singers, with you! To think I almost gave this up.” He sprang to his feet and paced the room, glancing at himself in the mirror above the fireplace. “It’s what I was born to do, just like Papa said. I’ve been denying God’s will, denying my nature. Even the air is different here. It hums. One can feel the music in it. But wait until you hear my opera. It will be like nothing anyone has ever heard. I can’t help but think that this is the pinnacle—this, right here, this itself, or at least the beginning of the pinnacle, the pinnacle at the foot of some more majestic, higher pinnacle. Can’t you help it, either? This moment is ours at last, just as Papa imagined us, ourselves united in the most beautiful, the most perfect art in the world, your voice and my music!”

  “Stephen,” Anna said, “you mustn’t dream so hard. It makes me nervous.”

  “No matter! All you have to do is sing the thing before the emperor and all the great plush regatta of his court and concubines. That alone will be more than I have dared let myself dream even in my hours of greatest self-intoxication.” And he looked at her kindly and patted her hand, as if he felt that all this would reassure her rather than make her feel more apprehensive.

  Even with her husband gone she was still not herself. Her voice had lost its freshness.
Rauzzini would have noticed the vocal strain that she battled in private but could not determine how to resolve.

  Watching Swallows

  Stephen found his sister more subdued than he remembered her. Her expression would sometimes sadden when she thought no one was looking, and she moved more slowly because of the baby. But her cheeks had a good color. Her eyes were as bright as ever. She had written to him after Christmas to say that her husband had been sent away because he hadn’t been a good man. For a girl like his sister, who was all amiability and affection, to have married wrongly—married, perhaps, a scoundrel—was beyond bearing. There was no man on earth who deserved her love. But the evening of his arrival when he tried in his fumbling way to ask after her health, she smiled as if amused and passed on to easier subjects.

  “This is my Lidia,” she said. “She’s my lady’s maid and my true friend. You must get her to sing for you sometime, Stephen. She has a lovely voice.”

  “It would be my great pleasure,” he said with interest, bowing to the girl. She was tall and brown, and had firm, honest features. He thought immediately that he would like to draw her.

  “She’s from Naples,” Anna said. “She grew up in one of the girls’ conservatories. But she’s about to sink into the floor from embarrassment so we’ll say no more. Come, let me show you your room.”

  His mother, too, seemed diminished. He felt he did not know her and had little to say.

  Anna introduced Stephen to Mozart a few days later. She helped lay out the luncheon and was all aflutter that Stephen should meet her friend. She and her mother had a gracious dining area with a long table and rich paneling. Stephen could not believe how they lived here, in such luxury. He had taken John Fisher’s old quarters, next door to Anna’s, and it gave him satisfaction to paper over the impression and smell of the man. He spread his possessions all over. He rearranged the desk and bed and put up a few of his watercolor sketches, landscapes of England.