Mozart's Sister: A Novel (20 page)

She then raised the gun aloft exultantly and declaimed:

“Baron, my heart may grieve

That my shot had success.

Take it as you would believe,

As anything but a yes.”

With a masculine gesture she tossed the gun randomly into the arms of one of the guests, reached the door, and fled.

XX.

The journey from the far south took place in an unbearable heat that made one’s clothes stick to one’s body. Leopold had decided to hire for himself and Wolfgang a light, half-open carriage, of a type widespread in Italy but uncomfortable for long journeys, the so-called
sedia.
It had only two wheels, was drawn by two horses, and could carry two passengers at most, sitting at the front and poorly protected by a folding top. It was, however, a fast carriage, and Herr Mozart hoped to cover the distance from Naples to Rome in a single day.

Exhausted by the heat, the horses galloped laboriously on the rough road, foaming with sweat, and the coachman whipped them without pity. The carriage swayed incessantly, the trunks anchored to the front bars jolted up and down, the noise was exasperating, and the air that beat on their faces, burning. The father was weary, the son nervous.

“Wouldn’t it be better to make the journey in stages, in a comfortable carriage?” Wolfgang said, raising his voice to be heard over the din.

“It would cost more,” Leopold answered.

“What?”

“It would cost much more!”

“Sometimes I don’t understand you, Papa. With all the money that comes from home, we still have these problems?”

He leaned back without answering. The boy took off his shirt and with it dried his forehead and chest.

“You are in danger of getting sick if you do that, Wolfgang. Try to relax and think of something pleasant.”

Pleasant? What was pleasant in Wolfgang’s life? All his habits had changed. He looked on life with arrogance, pushed by a father who devoted all his energies to him and demanded the same of others. He was getting used to thinking that this was right: that the entire world should revolve around his matchless talent. Yet apart from the applause and the praise he received, he couldn’t picture any particular pleasures.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked his father.

Leopold’s mind had turned to Anna Maria, but he didn’t want to divulge this, so that his own homesickness wouldn’t weigh on his son. “I’m thinking of when we arrive at the inn, of the good plate of rice and roast chicken we’ll have prepared for us, and the comfortable bed we’ll find.”

“That’s all?”

He lowered his head, ashamed, and his son understood his words from the movement of his lips. “I’m thinking of Mama, Wolfgang.”

A woman? In the life of young Mozart there was no woman as important as Anna Maria was for Leopold. His sister by now seemed lost to her own obstinacy, and the Italian girls who had introduced him to sensuality had been mere extras; as soon as he became close to one of them, he left that city for another. And then the singers were old, the nobles seldom interesting, the servants forbidden by his father.

Like a blow from Heaven, in an instant everything changed, and those thoughts ceased to make sense. All Wolfgang knew was that an enormous force was pushing him out of the carriage, and an opposing force, his father’s hand, was restraining him. The
sedia
was tilted frighteningly to one side, dragged downward by the collapse of one of the horses, who was neighing desperately and writhing in a powerful swell of muscles. One of the trunks crashed to the ground and fell open, the contents scattering in front of the carriage. The coachman tumbled onto the grass and disappeared in a ditch. And then silence.

His father’s terrified eyes, inches away, were examining him. “Are you hurt?” he asked. Wolfgang shook his head. Leopold, not satisfied, checked his son from head to toe, testing his limbs, but the boy wriggled free in irritation, jumped down, and reached the edge of the ditch. The coachman was a little banged up, but essentially unhurt. Cursing in his incomprehensible Italian, with its heavy Neapolitan accent, he climbed up toward the road. Wolfgang found a long branch and held it out to him, and grasping that, the man managed to climb out.

“Now what?” Wolfgang said, dazed, looking at the twisted coach with his father still inside, the horse striving to get up, the other horse pawing nervously, his trunk smashed open on the ground.

In response, the coachman yelled what must have been a series of insults at the animal, then he grabbed it by the bridle and helped it to its feet; luckily nothing seemed to be broken. Wolfgang began to gather clothes and objects and stick them in the trunk. He picked up the bag with his underwear, then his beautiful gilded tailcoat with polished buttons, all dusty (he noted with disappointment). He shook it out, folded it carefully, and put it in the trunk, and started to collect books and papers, which were lying within a radius of a few feet. But when he returned to the trunk he noticed something odd: on the gilded tailcoat there was now a dark stain. He realized that a sticky liquid was dripping from the carriage, looked up, and with horror saw his father trying to stanch a large wound on his shin.

“How did that happen?” he cried, and leaped to his father’s side, almost afraid to look at the cut, with its ragged, uneven edges, and so deep that the white of the bone was visible.

“It’s nothing, son; don’t worry,” Leopold answered. “Find the medicine bag.”

The coachman also came over, and shook his head grimly, as if looking at a man condemned to death. Wolfgang shoved him aside frantically, opened his father’s trunk, and took out the case that held ointments and bandages.

“Here it is! What should I do?”

“Nothing. Let me do it. Don’t be upset, really, Wolfgang. It’s not serious.” He took a white cloth, tore off a long strip, and bound his calf tightly with it. Immediately the strip became red.

Wolfgang couldn’t be still. “It’s my fault. If you hadn’t held on to me…”

“Let’s not talk foolishly, son. It’s fine. With this bandage I can get to Rome, and there we’ll find a doctor.”

“If we had taken a better carriage…”

“Enough now, Wolfgang. There’s no point in recriminations. Try to be practical, for once!” Then, more calmly, he spoke to the coachman in Italian. “Antonio, are you ready?”

The man nodded, but he was still scowling.

“Wolfgang, have you got everything?” Leopold asked again.

“Yes, everything,” he murmured submissively. Then he closed his father’s trunk and fastened his own to the front bars. Antonio took his seat, called to the horses, cracked the whip, and they started off again.

The carriage moved along the road at a more prudent pace and slowly disappeared around a bend. But something was left behind: the transcriptions of songs for Nannerl, the folded sheets now mingling with dust.

XXI.

She had had a discussion with her mother that morning; that is, Frau Mozart had performed a polemical soliloquy and she had been silent, trying to let the reproaches slide over her. But the bad mood lingered. On the way to the Residenzplatz, she was thinking that this surprise visit to Victoria’s wasn’t a great idea after all. The procedure for secretly entering the Palace, which she was used to by now, suddenly seemed childish; and what purpose did it have, ultimately? To finally teach someone who was worthy of it? So what? At that moment she would have preferred to flee to the old tree, in the hope that her sense of oppression would evaporate in the fog or be dissolved by the rain. A downpour, a thunderous cloudburst was what it would take. And instead in the streets an irritating quiet reigned and the few passersby seemed to be walking on tiptoe, or on a gigantic mattress, and stamped on their faces were foolish smiles.

There was only the sound of heels clacking loudly behind her, a solitary pair, echoing up to the tops of the buildings. He or she who was moving with such determination had first appeared with a muted tolling, which had increased in volume and then opened up into a broad spectrum of resonances. By now the individual was close, and Nannerl was almost certain that it was a man, because of the compactness of the sound, which couldn’t be coming from the spool-like heel of a woman’s shoe. To find out, she turned, and her heart skipped a beat as she recognized Major d’Ippold.

Quickly she turned toward a shop window, pretending to be interested in the pastries on display, and waited for the oblivious man to pass her unobserved. As he came even with her, she stole a glance at him. In profile, his features seemed to be carved in marble, and over his shoulders he wore a cape that rippled as he walked, softening his gait. The uniform was laced tightly, emphasizing his powerful build; the buttons gleamed and so did the sword, which was partly hidden by the sash; the boots, whose broad, low heels had produced that resonant sound, shone as if just polished. The officer was clearly headed to his duties at the Palace.

Perhaps she wasn’t meant to see Victoria today. Perhaps it would be better to postpone it and run off to the woods; she had only to make a half turn and go up the hill. But that man who was walking in front of her, so erect and vigorous, provoked in her a feeling of spite: giving lessons to his daughter under his nose would be a sweet revenge, for Victoria and also for her.

She let Armand gain some distance and then she followed him through the narrow streets. At the corner of the Palace she stopped, cautiously, and waited until he went though the gateway; then, as if very naturally, she walked toward the center of the square, pretending to be in search of a cool spot near the fountain. She sat on the edge of the basin, half hidden by the grand sculptures, without losing sight of the entrance to the Palace.

Finally a sign of life: a boy approached the gateway pushing a wheelbarrow full of fruit. He was too small to hide behind, Nannerl thought; a coach with an escort of soldiers would have been better. She moved toward the boy anyway, following a diagonal that made her course less obvious and her face less recognizable to anyone strolling near the square. Meanwhile, the wheelbarrow was proceeding into the inner courtyard. Suddenly the boy clumsily, or perhaps tripping on a stone, let the cart tilt, and some fruit rolled onto the ground. With an effort, he tried to reverse the error by stretching out one hand, but that was worse: the wheelbarrow went off-balance completely and overturned, and the inner courtyard of the Prince-Archbishop’s Palace resembled the market square.

All the guards, not to mention Armand himself, turned toward the boy in irritation. Nannerl immediately took advantage of this and sneaked toward the warped door; but as she opened it, she was again invaded by a sense of spite and turned, recklessly, to look at Major d’Ippold.

Their eyes didn’t meet. He, in fact, was leaning over to pick up the fruit, as if it were the most obvious and normal thing. The guards observed him rather stiffly, but after a few instants, like good subordinates, they began to imitate him; and meanwhile he, tranquil, went on picking up apples and pears and putting them in the wheelbarrow and into the grateful hands of the incredulous boy, perhaps also saying a few kind words that Nannerl couldn’t catch. When the wheelbarrow was full again, Armand gave the boy a pat on the head and watched him go off, shaking his own head with a smile that made his features more pleasing. Then he said something to the guards, turned, and went into the Palace.

Continuing to challenge fate, Nannerl made no move to go through the door and remained in that position, her hand resting on the doorknob and her gaze on the courtyard. There was nothing more to observe, but the eyes of her imagination perceived a scene of such indecency that it made her sweat. She and the officer were alone in a room, not very big, maybe a kitchen, pleasantly cool, with a window divided in fourths by a wooden frame, and half closed. Armand was sitting on a straw seat and she was sitting on his lap, legs astride, with his arms around her. Her very soul was crushed by the contact between their two bodies, and her consciousness was free to expand and to vanish through an opening that had been created at the top of her skull; but she held on to him and, concentrating all her senses on him, was sure that he would keep her from exploding.

The daydream lasted less than a second. She immediately chased away the fantasy, opened the door, and ran along the corridor. From there she went down the flight of steps and arrived at the little room.

Oddly, she hesitated for a moment while deciding which direction to take; perhaps her senses were still in disarray. Then she made up her mind and descended a stair that in fact didn’t seem that familiar. But when she reached the bottom she thought she knew where she was; she walked decisively along a passage and down some stairs, yet finally had to conclude that she had never been there. She retraced her steps, or so she thought, but found herself in an equally unfamiliar place. There was no doubt: she was lost.

On one wall was a lighted torch stuck in a bracket. She took it out and tried to get back to where she had started, but suddenly, frighteningly, she came face-to-face with a man, his arms full of brooms: it was Gunther, the cook.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, already imagining herself dragged in chains before His Excellency. “I don’t…that is, I mean that…really I am here because…”