The Musician's Daughter

by Susanne Dunlap

  “I need to know, Mama. Toby is to start his apprenticeship after Epiphany, and I must pay Herr Goldschmidt, the luthier.”

  Without the slightest indication that she understood what I had said, Mama turned her head slowly back so that she once more stared up at the ceiling. I found myself looking up to see what she was watching there, but it was nothing more unusual than a tiny spider hard at work on a web.

  “Mama, have you ever seen this before?” I drew the medallion out of its hiding place inside my bodice and dangled it before her. This time she did not look in my direction. I picked up her hand, which was smooth and cool. It lay in mine like something inanimate, a glove, there for ornament rather than use. I placed the medallion in her palm. She did not close her hand around it. Clearly there was no point in talking to her now. She had gone somewhere else. Her face looked serene. The faint lines that had begun to show had smoothed out and she appeared younger. Although she had passed her first youth, Mama was still very pretty, with large blue eyes and long lashes. And when she smiled, her whole face glowed. She had not gotten fat, just a little plump, and looked very elegant when she was all dressed to attend one of Papa’s concerts. Now, though, her big belly raised the blankets, and as I watched, I saw the lump shift slightly. The baby was still alive at least. If Mama did not eat, that state of affairs might not last long.

  I placed her hand back on top of the coverlet and crept out of the room. Toby’s plate was cleared away, so I assumed Greta had taken it down to the kitchen we shared with the other people in the building. Although Greta cooked our simplest meals on the stove in the dining room and we had our own pantry, the kitchen was where the water pump was located. And the cooks and kitchen maids from the other apartments spent many hours there peeling potatoes and turnips and gossiping. I could only imagine what they were saying about Papa. Perhaps I should ask them if they knew something—anything—that might explain why someone had murdered one of the kindest men in Vienna, who had never harmed anyone, as far as I knew.

  I took a candle and passed through the dining room to my own small nook. Normally I was happy to be in Vienna instead of at the prince’s court in Esterhaza. In Vienna we had this apartment, a real home with furniture that belonged to us. In the prince’s palace, we had two rooms, with an extra little alcove for Greta. Toby and I had to sleep in the same bed there. It wasn’t so bad when he was small, but now that he was older, he flailed his arms and took up all the space. He had nightmares, too, and sometimes woke up crying. And just this past summer I had started to bleed. Papa had said he would make Toby his own cot. I did not want to be sharing a bed with my brother when I was already a woman.

  In Esterhaza, we ate in the servants’ hall. It was grand enough, and the food was much better than Greta’s stews. Sometimes we had parties, at holidays and on the prince’s birthday, and would be served boar’s head and pheasant and everything the fine folks ate. Afterward, there was always music. I liked it best when we were allowed to sit in the corner of the private music room, while Haydn, my father, Zoltán, and the principal cellist, Herr Schnabl, played string quartets. There were usually only a few guests, and the playing would go on until very late at night. Toby sometimes fell asleep. I’d have to half carry, half drag him back to bed while my father was still playing. I’d go to sleep with the beautiful music ringing in my ears, and often I would dream about it all night. But still I preferred home.

  My room was small—Papa had carved two spaces out of a single one when we first moved in, so that there could at least be a thin wall between me and Toby. My part was just big enough for the bed with a chest for my clothes at its foot, and a table and stool so I could write. On the table lay the plain, wooden case that held my viola. Mr. Goldschmidt had made the viola for Papa many years ago, when he had to double up during a lean time for the prince. He was paid extra for playing both instruments, and I remember how happy Mama was. Now the court was wealthy, so he earned—or rather he used to earn—just the violinist’s stipend. He preferred to play the violin. I, too, would have preferred the violin, but the viola was better than nothing, and it was my own. I was determined one day to make music as my father did.

  I knew I was a good student. I had planned to continue being one. I practiced whenever I could, which was whenever I had no other chores and when Mama was either not at home or too busy to notice and complain. “Playing the viola will not get her a husband, and she cannot work for her keep,” she said so often I could hear her voice repeating it now. “At least, no daughter of mine will ever work. There is her dowry, you know. Her uncle Theobald will see that she gets it when the time comes.”

  I thought about Uncle Theobald as I unlaced my gown and let my skirt with its bone hoops drop to the floor. He lived in a grand house in the Graben, near Stephansplatz. I didn’t remember ever being inside it, but in the evening whenever we happened to pass by it, I could tell that the rooms were very large because the windows were tall and wide.

  I shivered. My chamber was too small for a stove, and in any case the one in the parlor had been left to go out by now. I pulled a shawl off my bed and tied it around my waist, then took another and tied it across my shoulders. I wanted to think a little before I went to sleep, and I was afraid if I lay down, fatigue would claim me instantly.

  Just a year ago I had started to wear stays. Mama noticed that my breasts had begun to bulge. Now, I felt naked without the boning that held me tight. My breasts weren’t much—still not enough to mound out over the top of my bodice—but like this, in my chemise, I could see them quite clearly. Standing in the near dark wearing loose clothes, I felt as free as one of the Gypsies who wandered the countryside near Esterhaza.

  I had once heard a Gypsy man play the violin. It was at carnival, when traveling players sometimes came to court. Puppeteers and acrobats, clowns and dancers all gathered to try to get a bit of money from the prince. There was a masked ball, and Toby and I and the other musicians’ children had been allowed to creep into the stairwell and see the grand ladies and gentlemen in their costumes.

  Some of the costumes were magnificent, all covered with jewels that caught the light of thousands of candles. Others were just funny. Two nobles had dressed like bears, clearly having used the same tailor to make their garments. They walked up to each other as if approaching a mirror, then turned with the same shrug and walked away, which only made the impression that they had stopped at an invisible looking glass all the more vivid.

  But everyone stepped back and cleared a path for a scruffy, dirty man in bare feet, wearing a bright yellow waistcoat trimmed in bits of lace that had been salvaged from other garments and carrying a violin, who had somehow managed to gain access to the ballroom. He walked right down the middle of the floor toward the prince with his head held high, a proud smile on his face. His teeth were beautiful and white in his dark skin. He made a low, courtly bow to Prince Paul Anton (the father of the one Papa had worked for), then without asking permission, began to play.

  The violin he put to his shoulder was very fine. I could see that even from where I stood. And the music he drew from it sounded like angels weeping. He played a simple folk melody, but with such passion that everyone in the ballroom attended to him. When he finished, the prince begged to hear more, but the Gypsy shook his head, bowed, and left. I could not take my eyes away from him, wondering if his face was dark because it was dirty or because his skin was naturally that color. He would have walked right away without even one Gulden had the prince’s steward not rushed up to him with a velvet bag of coins.

  I was tired from the events of the last few days, but thoughts and memories kept flooding my mind. I approached my viola and rested both my hands lightly atop the rough wooden case. I had not opened it since the day before Papa died. I let my fingers trail over the now splitting edges to the latches that held it closed. I opened first one, then the other, and lifted the lid. The viola was wrapped in linen cloths, hidden out of sight, but the bow lay temptingly on top. I picked it u
p, turning the screw on the end to tighten the horse hairs. From there it was natural to take the crumbling block of resin, hold the bow with the frog toward me, and run the resin up and down until the hairs were evenly covered. It had taken me a while to learn how much to use. Without it, the hairs would not grip the strings and the sound would be faint. Once I had finished, I replaced the resin and teased the protective cloths away from the viola so that it was exposed, like a baby in a cradle.

  At first I did not want to lift it. Instead I crooked my finger under the D string above the bridge and plucked it. Not quite a D, of course. It needed tuning. But it was late, and I would disturb my mother if I took up the viola to tune and then play.

  Then I realized that Mama was in a state where nothing would disturb her, and Toby was deep in his sound sleep. Before I could change my mind, I grasped the instrument by the neck and raised it out of its cloth nest, settling it in the crook of my left arm, just below my shoulder. The viola was almost too big for me, and my arm was close to straight when I reached for the tuning pins. I started with the lowest, the C string, the one the violin didn’t have, and worked my way up to the sweet A. I longed to have that higher string, the E, to play the most pungent notes, but the viola has a melancholy quality of its own that the violin cannot match. Papa used to say that a violist has to be stronger and gentler than a violinist, and that once you master the viola, the violin is easy. But I think he just said that so I wouldn’t yearn so for a violin.

  Violin or viola, playing is not easy. But I love to do it more than anything in the world. I cannot imagine my life without the sensation of holding a delicate, living piece of hollowed-out wood strung with catgut in one hand, and drawing a perfectly balanced bow across the strings with the other. The viola, resting just below my throat and against my upper arm, becomes my other, deeper voice.

  I closed my eyes, at first only thinking the sounds, but soon I knew my hands and arms had taken up the melody inside me and made it spill out to fill the room. When I play, everything except the music disappears. That night, until the candle started to sputter, there was no Papa in his grave, no Mama so sick she was insensible, no money lacking—and no missing violin.

  But playing the viola forever would be like diving under water and never coming up again. I was not ready to bid the world farewell, and so when my left arm became tired, I laid the viola down, wrapped it up well, placed the bow on top of it, and latched the case closed. Whether I wanted to or not, I had to think, or what was left of our world would crash around our ears.

  Before I took off my shawls and climbed between the sheets, I opened the pouch Godfather Haydn had given me in the café. Five silver Thaler spilled out into my hand. It was a great deal of money, perhaps more than my father had received from the prince as a Christmas gift. Why did Haydn make this gesture? How would I ever repay him? For I was certain that Papa had received his bonus along with everyone else, and that his murderer had stolen it—or if not his murderer, then some waiting vagrant, a scavenger. Yet if the money had been stolen, and the violin as well, why not the gold medallion, which now hung around my neck like a burden?

  Someone must know something. There was nothing to be done about it that night, though. I turned my thoughts to what I should do in the morning to begin finding out what had really happened on Christmas Eve. All Zoltán had said was that Papa had left his friends in the tavern, a little drunk but still in possession of his wits. He had said he was going home—or so Zoltán told me. He didn’t look in my eyes when he said it. Maybe Zoltán was lying. But why would he? It did not make sense.

  And then there was the matter of our daily life. I would have to talk to Greta and ask her to tell me what credit we had with the grocer and the butcher. I would visit Uncle Theobald and beg him for my dowry early. I did not care if I never married. After that, I would go to the prince’s palace and wait for Zoltán to finish his rehearsal, so that he would take me to the place where they had discovered Papa. Once I’d done all that, I couldn’t begin to imagine what would happen next.

  CHAPTER 5

  Persuading Greta to give me any information about our house hold accounts felt like trying to pry the secret to a magic trick from a magician.

  “Your mama is in charge.”

  “But Mama is not speaking, and we must have money to buy food.”

  Greta had laid half a loaf of yesterday’s bread and some cold sausage on the table. Toby was clearly ravenous, and did not blink at the idea of what had occupied the table only the day before, which surprised me. Usually he was so sensitive about things. In truth, I knew I had to overcome my own revulsion and let life return to normal, but I could not take a seat in my usual chair. Instead I clutched a crust and walked up and down as I ate.

  Greta folded her stout arms across her bosom and clamped her lips together.

  “If you will not tell me exactly our state of affairs, I shall simply go to the butcher myself and ask. Then everyone will know our difficulties and we will all be turned out on the street.” The Viennese merchants were not known for their compassion. They would go to the magistrates without delay and force us to sell our possessions to pay them what they were owed. I needed exact information before I could make a plan.

  I saw the fear in Greta’s eyes, which she shifted in Toby’s direction.

  “Toby, there’s a good fellow, take a plate into the parlor so Greta and I can clear things up.” I didn’t expect him not to hear or at least to guess what we were saying—he was too smart for that—but I thought that making him leave might give Greta an excuse to be honest with me.

  Toby scooped up what was left of the bread and skittered off to the next room—leaving the door slightly ajar. Greta reached into her pocket and pulled out her key ring, then opened the strongbox that contained the family plate and a few pieces of silver jewelry, as well as what ever currency we had in the house. Since we were not completely destitute, I did not tell her about the money from Kapellmeister Haydn or the gold medallion. Something told me I would need my own resources for other things.

  Aside from a few paper Banco-Zettel, which I knew the local merchants preferred not to take, we possessed only twelve Gulden and twenty Kreutzer—enough to purchase bread for a few weeks, a ham, and two dozen eggs, and perhaps some poultry. The money I had from Herr Haydn would last a month if we were very careful. “What have we in the larder?” I asked.

  Without a word, Greta led me down to the kitchen below, unlocked our larder door, and showed me a dressed fowl, twenty sausage links, eight eggs, a tun of beer, and a sack each of potatoes and turnips. We would not starve—yet. Upstairs we had a box of tallow candles and a gallon of lamp oil, and I knew Papa had got in wood for the stoves that should last the winter. I hoped that he had paid the rent for January at least. That would give me a month to figure out how to get fifteen Gulden to pay the next month’s rent. If only we had father’s violin to sell, we could buy Toby’s apprenticeship and live for a year at least, which would give me time to figure out how to gain a more secure income.

  I thanked Greta, put on my cap and cloak, and walked out into the cold streets. I thought at first I might visit the grocer. The idea that we could possibly have an unsettled account there disturbed my peace about my reckoning with Greta, and I longed to know that we were out of debt. But if I went, and the account was very much past due, I could be forced to pay him and deplete our supply of emergency cash. Better to see if other sources of funds could be secured first. I turned my steps toward Uncle Theobald’s grand house.

  The day was cold but sunny. The brightness cheered everyone, and shop keepers nodded to me as I passed by their windows, still decorated with fir branches and holly boughs for the Christmas season. I loved the way the city smelled at that time of year. The scent of pine and wood smoke created a fragrance that I forever associated with holidays.

  The door of Uncle Theobald’s mansion was garlanded with fir branches, and candles illuminated all twelve of the street-facing windows—an in
comparable luxury at that time of day. Surely someone who could afford such a display of wealth could spare something for his ill, widowed sister and her children?

  I lifted the brass knocker and let it fall from my hand against the shiny plate. My breath puffed out in white clouds while I waited. I didn’t realize I had been walking so fast, and now I was a little winded. After what seemed like a long time I heard footsteps approaching on the other side of the door. Three bolts were drawn, and the door opened just a crack. I saw a young face—a serving girl perhaps my age—peek out through the opening. I suppose if I had been a liveried attendant announcing the arrival of a carriage she would have thrown the door wide to welcome my masters. But instead she kept it nearly closed.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Fräulein Theresa Maria Schurman,” I said, “come to visit my uncle Theobald Wolkenstein.”

  She stared at me blankly. We had not visited Uncle Theobald since I was a babe in my mother’s arms. Mama’s family was distressed that she had married only a poor musician, and to punish her had turned their backs on her completely. It was Papa who told me about her visit to them to inform them of her husband’s prestigious court appointment, proudly carrying me, thinking they would regret their harsh treatment of her and welcome us as family. But the only result was that Uncle Theobald had agreed to furnish me a dowry—so long as we never darkened their door again. Mother only ever mentioned the dowry part of the story, but I knew the complete truth. Standing there returning the maid’s puzzled look made me wonder what could have possessed me to think I should come to Uncle Theobald for help when it was obvious that he wished we did not exist. I was getting cold. “He’s expecting me,” I lied, and stepped forward. The maid, whose eyes were set deep in her head and whose chin jutted unattractively, had no choice but to let me in.

  She ushered me into a large front parlor, then hurried off to find someone else, I hoped my uncle. I had seen him only from a distance, and although I thought I would recognize him because he must resemble my mother in some way, I was not confident that I would know to greet him if he came upon me by surprise.