Marrying Mozart (4 page)

As their mother departed, Sophie stared down at the floor, the corner of her mouth beginning to twitch. “Our aunts,” she whispered. “I forgot to tell you before! A letter came today. They’re coming for Christmas.”

Constanze covered her own mouth with both hands. “Oh Sophie, when have they not come for Christmas? The ridiculous old things huffing up the stairs panting, ‘Blessed Saint Elizabeth!’ ‘Blessed Virgin Mary!’ ‘Blessed Saint Joseph!’ ”

They began to giggle, flinging themselves on the sofa and stuffing their faces against the pillows to smother the sound. Their mother’s sisters were old, had always been old; when the world was created they were old. There was Elizabeth with her contradictory stories, who kept holy relics in her purse and pressed them against her nieces’ foreheads. And Gretchen, who was simpleminded, though no one admitted it; they claimed it was merely bad memory brought on by some obscure sorrow. Both ate a great deal and were so fat that they did indeed have increasing difficulty in climbing the stairs, taking longer each year. Constanze had kept a record for the last three Christmastides.

Now from the depths of the pillow cushion Constanze gasped, “Oh what will they bring us this time! Dresses six years too small for us, moth-eaten shawls that stink of mildew! And they think bathing’s unhealthy so they never do it! Thank God we never have to go to their house.”

Sophie raised her shiny face and whispered, “No, they always come here; it’s been years since we went to Zell, where Mama and Papa lived and where they met. But it’s not nice to laugh at others. I’ll have to tell it in confession. I try not to, but you know, they’re ... so ...”

“... stupid ... and Papa says ...”

“... they smell like ...”

Now they were shrieking, and only their mother’s sharp call from down the hall made them stifle their laughter; but tears ran down their cheeks, and they careened into the pile of books, which finally tumbled onto the floor. Poking each other, they marched with contorted faces to fetch their quilts. When they could stop laughing but for a hiccup now and then, they knelt by the window, still not daring to look at each other, and shared a cup of cold, grainy coffee between them. The street wavered before Constanze’s eyes, and she lost track of how many times the sentry passed.

Hours later they were awoken as the two older sisters burst into the room and opened the wicker basket they carried. Fruits and little creamy chocolates rolled across the top of the music table by the ink pot, and their father happily cried, “A triumph, a triumph!”

H
igh among the roofs, chimneys, and church spires of Mannheim that very same evening, Wolfgang Mozart, the Webers’ guest from the night before, sat in the smaller of the two garret rooms he and his mother had rented, writing the closing rondeau of a flute concerto. Chewing his lip, he hunched forward, the edges of his fingers inky, humming, now and then tapping his feet. He was so utterly engrossed, he knew nothing but the rapid dancing of the solo flute that flowed out from his mind through his fingers. The solitary candle sloped from the draft. Quickly his pen moved up and down the lines of music, filling in all the instrumental parts. Though the room was cool, he was hot as he worked, and had thrown off his coat. His old shirt was open down his delicate neck.

“Wolfgang,” came the murmur from the other room. “Wolferl?”

He grasped the pen, the small black marks on the page rushing forth, ink seeping onto his fingertips and into the crevices of his nails. His mother’s voice called again. “Wolfgang, do you hear? Are you still working on that Dutchman’s commission?”

He flung the words over his shoulder: “I’m well into the last movement. ”

His mother coughed; and then, “You won’t make the flute part too difficult, will you, dear? He is an amateur, remember, and he does have pride.”

Mozart glanced down at the plethora of rapid notes. “Oh, he’ll manage to breathe somewhere,” he muttered, and for a moment he wondered where and how.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t catch a chill,” Frau Mozart called.

The rapid movement that had been inside his head was now slowly fading; it had flowed from his mind and now lay in cramped, rapid penmanship on the music staves before him. How many hours had he worked? He never remembered.
If only I could finish it all tonight,
he thought. The whole commission, second quartet, both concerti. If only my hand and eyes weren’t tired. He slumped slightly, one hand on the side of the newly dried ink markings, listening to the sound of late carriages and merrymakers rising up from the street.

After a time he drank some ale and began to gather the music pages. In the rooms below a girl was laughing. He recognized the strange quiet inside himself that always came after working for some hours.

In the next room, also by one candle, Frau Mozart sat up in bed with a portable desk across her knees; she looked up from her writing, her small eyes blinking. Then she closed her eyes for a moment, lips moving in relief, and returned to her letter home to Salzburg.

The rest of the sentence she wrote with the page half covered by her free hand, so that for a few days following her little finger was edged with ink. She finished the letter then and signed it,

 

Your loving and devoted Wife, who trusts in God’s mercy.

Maria Anna Mozart

M
any feet below the houses of the city lay one of the city’s beer cellars, which offered the local beer and plenty of it, in addition to plates of greasy chops so thick you could just fit your jaws around them, a sort of porridge, rich veined cheeses, large hocks of ham with knives stuck deeply in them to encourage the appetite, dishes of mustard and cabbage, and so on. It was a place where the hour and day were forgotten, for no light penetrated the vaulted, subterranean chambers that were inadequately lit by too few candles, enough to make a shapely buxom shadow of the hostess, and a lean knifelike shadow of the host. These shadows, and that of the resentful beer house boy, dipped and danced with their trays against the stone walls. The smell of beer was so great that one could imagine it rising in a flood beneath the flagstones, then seeping and leaking through the whole city, street by street, until it found its way to the river.

To enter this establishment you opened a heavy door in an alley behind a group of stables and made your way at your peril down the steep, worn, centuries-old steps. Women were here, shrieking in laughter, sometimes suddenly throwing up their skirts to their knees, and in the dim light their white hose glimmered. Law students came, as did actors and poor musicians. Here Mozart came with his friend, the horn player Leutgeb, one week following the completion of the first flute concerto.

They had taken possession of part of a long table in the rear, where the air was thick with pipe smoke. Mozart’s shirt was open, and Leutgeb was pouring more beer. Leutgeb was also a native of Salzburg, where he played horn for the chapel orchestra; he was twenty-five, pleasantly fat and big, with a booming, raucous laugh that shook his whole body. His face was fleshy and never well shaven, as if to say to the world, See what an easy-going fellow I am!

“So you had your cousin with her drawers half down, you dog,” he cried above the noise of music and voices. “My God, Mozart, I’ll make you drunk until you tell me all of it. How much did you have of her?”

“Near to all, by heaven.”

“You were on the sofa at your uncle’s, and her hand was ...”

“Where I’d have it, friend, where I’d have it; but the story ends ridiculously. We heard the door open, and I raised my head over the sofa back; standing there was
my own blessed mother.
The high sofa back was between us; I’m sure she didn’t know how close we’d come. I thought she was out having her hat trimmed, by God, but there she stood.”

Leutgeb roared. “Devil take it, my cock would have fallen off like the handle of a cracked china cup if my mother had stumbled on such a thing.”

Mozart dosed his small hands slowly, as if the girl’s flesh was within them, and leaned back like a prince leisurely surveying his domain. He said, “I won’t mince words with you; I won’t tell you anything but the truth. I could have had her all, I know I could have had her all, but my mother and I were leaving within the hour to come here, so I can’t sleep contemplating it.” He gazed intensely into the smoky air. “If letter writing were copulating, my cousin and I would have done it a dozen times. I tell you it was the best part of our stay in Augsberg! The orchestra there, my friend, could bring on cramps.”

Now he turned his head to study a few noisy students, and slowly leaned forward, arms on the table. “I mustn’t think about her,” he said seriously. “You led me on, you dog. I can’t become involved with a woman for a long time. They don’t want me to marry until I’m thirty. I must secure a decent income for my father, for without my earnings they’ll live wretchedly. I have to make good on the promise of my childhood.” He selected a bone with some meat left on it, and resumed eating.

“What promise?” the horn player asked, wiping his greasy mouth with a large white handkerchief. He thrust back his fair hair, which was already receding slightly.

“You know, you crazed shit! Here I am at one and twenty trying to live up to what I was as a little boy. My good, honorable father thought to make a future with me and my sister by taking us on tour all over Europe.” Mozart took Leutgeb’s handkerchief and wiped his own mouth broadly. “I was five years old when we began to tour, the protégé in a little white wig. Let me have that vinegar.”

Leutgeb slid the bottle adroitly down the table.

Mozart sprinkled it on the bone. “I’m told Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna took me on her knee and kissed me; I don’t much remember. Now my sister’s grown, and my father is back once more in Salzburg licking the arse of the Archbishop, in whose dismal employment he has earned his bread as church musician these many years. He hints I must return there and play organ for his Arch Grossness’s chapel for a pitiful stipend and eat at table with the cooks if I can’t do well here. What a fate; hang me first for a bastard thief.”

Leutgeb offered a bowl of onions. “We won’t have to hang you. I’ve found some work here; you will as well.”

Mozart shook his head. “Some work, but not enough. I’ve this flute commission, and maybe a mass for the court chapel. Unfortunately, I’ve grown up, and people still expect the darling prodigy. They don’t know what to do with a man below middle height whose nose is too big. I’m to play at the Elector’s palace in a week. God willing, he won’t present me with another gold watch, as Princes are inclined to do. I speak lightly, but I tell you, old friend, there’s a sense of urgency in me.”

Mozart began piling up the bones, absorbed, for a moment, as if it were a complicated game of chess he was playing for some great wager. Delicately balancing the top one, he drew in his breath as they all fell to a heap beside the onions, then turned away from them to face his old friend with a wry smile. “I’m much afraid if I don’t make enough money, my father will insist I return to Salzburg where I was born and beg the Archbishop to employ me as His Holiness employs him, when the truth is His Holiness loathes the sight of me and knows I despise that mangy, provincial town. I may go to Paris; I may remain here. In any case, I must succeed for my family. My parents and sister have always given their lives for me. Leutgeb, old friend, what a thing to have to repay.”

Leutgeb whistled for the boy to bring beer. Leaning on the table, he patted the young composer’s hand. “Come!” he said happily. “We’re young, why worry? Look, if music fails us, we can both retreat to my grandfather’s cheese shop in Vienna, and live on great mounds of the stuff, then invite the cousin and both share her. She seems to have enough to go round. Vienna is the most marvelous place in the world; this town is dung compared to it.” He thrust his arm around Mozart’s shoulders, and shook him lightly. “Does your family really expect you to live like a monk for the best years of your life? At least enjoy the society of women if you must keep your breeches buttoned for nine more years. I know some sweet girls here. I believe you said you’ve been to the Webers for one of their musical Thursdays. Two are little girls, but I tell you, Aloysia, the second eldest, is the loveliest apple cake with cream you ever saw; you could eat her in two bites and lick your fingers. But of course they’re good girls, and a decent man wouldn’t—” Leutgeb stood up suddenly. “By God, look!” he said, peering through the smoky room. “There’s a couple of pretty tarts coming this way. Don’t go home with them; they’ll make you sick (by God! I knew a fellow who lost his nose to syphilis!). Still, let’s buy them beer.”