Mozart's Sister: A Novel (39 page)

In a large room with a pillar in the center a lively disorder reigned. Tables, sofas, and floor were littered with toys of every sort: a tricycle with a horse’s head; a dollhouse with furniture; various wax and porcelain dolls dressed up in brocade, muslin, and lace; a mechanical creature in the guise of a painter; and a giant marble chessboard, complete with pieces at least a foot tall. And yet there was not a single instrument, not a drum, not a bell, not even a fife.

“Who’s here?” a deep voice called down from the floor above.

“Are you presentable?” Vincent said. “Anyway, it’s a woman, don’t worry.”

With her heart in her throat, Victoria, standing at an angle at the foot of the stairs, listened to those impetuous footsteps without looking up; then they ceased, and an astonished silence forced her to turn. Nannerl gripped the banister with two bare arms, and her chest, fuller than Victoria remembered, was animated by anxious breathing. She was forty but seemed younger than Victoria, and her cheeks glowed like those of a girl interrupted in a game. Her hair had been hurriedly gathered up by two combs at the top of her head, and curls, still blond, fell to the soft curves of her neck and shoulders, rising and falling with her breath.

She said nothing. She descended the last steps, staring at Victoria with those blue eyes that no longer seemed severe, and as her lips parted in a smile, she embraced her warmly. Victoria was unable to yield to the embrace, and she wished not to be there, not now, not for this reason. Nannerl released her and caressed her face and kissed her and sought in her features the memory of too many years of separation, murmuring, “Victoria…dear Victoria…”

Victoria had to push her away brusquely. She cleared her throat and said, “Please, send the child away.”

A hint of fear then appeared on Nannerl’s face. She looked at Vincent, who went upstairs without a word, holding his sister by the hand.

“Let’s sit down, Nannerl,” Victoria said.

Nannerl took the doll clothes off the sofa and piled them on the floor. She sat on a pillow, restless, her hands on her knees—practical, rough hands, no longer the lords of her body. “Tell me, please.”

“It’s about Wolfgang.”

II.

The door opened and Nannerl, frantic, ran out. A strange lament came from her mouth, her throat, her chest, and her brain, a visceral sound of animal grief. The man with the wheel heard her, saw her, started, and stood with his hammer poised in midair. She ran along the drive, reached the gate, seized it, gripped it as if to break it, then opened it and went into the woods; she stumbled and sank in the snow, staring at the sky and wishing it would crash down on her head.

“Go after her!” Vincent cried, darting outside, followed by Victoria. “I’m going to call my father.” He got on his horse and went off at a desperate gallop, while Victoria struggled along the drive, picking up her skirts and her fur, and looked around for Nannerl. She saw her crouched at the foot of a tree and, reaching her, was about to grab her, but she jumped up and continued on with agitated steps. Victoria, trying to keep up, was gasping, “Nannerl, please, stop.”

“Tell me more. When did it happen?”

“December fifth. They buried him the following day.”

“How did you find out?”

“My father was on a mission to Vienna. He saw the bier coming out of the Palace.”

“How did it happen?”

“He’d been ill for a long time, but no one knows what it was. The doctors didn’t know.”

Suddenly Nannerl stopped and grabbed her by the shoulders. Shaking her, she cried, “I knew nothing, nothing, do you see? Does it seem to you possible?”

Her voice echoed among the mountain peaks and gradually faded. For a moment Victoria thought Nannerl would lose consciousness, but instead she ran off among the trees repeating, “Go away. Leave me alone.”

III.

“I’m sorry, Baron, but should someone go and look for Nannerl in the woods?”

“No, certainly not, Frau Paumgartner. If my wife doesn’t want company, no one should impose it on her.”

“But the cold is terrible.”

Playing a game of chess with himself, Baptist didn’t answer. For a good half hour he had been playing with those big pieces; he moved one after careful consideration, then, in no hurry, he rose, went to the other side, thought about it, and moved another, then returned. Victoria no longer knew what to think.

“I wonder how you can be so calm.”

“I could not be,” he said, and at that exact moment the door banged and Nannerl burst in, crying, “Baptist, I’ve decided: tomorrow I’m going to Vienna.”

Seeing her, Victoria felt her heart contract with pity. She was trembling, and her teeth chattered, and it seemed that her body was drawn toward an abyss that she was desperately trying to avoid. Her wild stare had nothing human in it; she was no longer herself, neither the loving woman Victoria had just had time to see, nor the inflexible girl whom years before she had loved. From her wet, snow-stained skirt, spots dripped onto the floor, and she crossed her arms over her chest, gripping herself with pale fingers. She had a swelling on her cheek, as if she had run into a tree or as if, unable to bear the pain of her soul, she had hit it.

“I’m going to Vienna,” she repeated. “I have to understand, Baptist. You will tell me it’s useless to ask painful questions and search for answers, but I must try. You will tell me I should resign myself to fate, but I cannot! You will tell me that those who are responsible don’t exist, but I must understand if somewhere, in fact, they do.”

As she spoke, from the upper floors came Vincent, and then three more young men, and beside one of them a young woman with an infant in her arms, and then the girl Jeanette, and a boy a little older. Vincent carried a blanket, which he unfolded and placed around Nannerl’s shoulders, and then he gently drew her to the hearth.

“I have to go alone, Baptist,” she continued. “You will tell me that someone should come with me, but this concerns me more than all of you, and I must face it in solitude. You will tell me that now I should go to bed and weep until I cannot anymore, and then begin to live again, but you know perfectly well that I am not capable of that! You will tell me that it’s hard for me to leave here, that I do not go willingly even to Salzburg—imagine Vienna. But now I feel, I feel it, that I must force myself. I must come to an understanding of what has happened. And it’s not a punishment. I need it, Baptist!”

He had remained sitting at the chessboard, and Victoria seemed to see a tear shine in those special eyes of his. Then he rose and in a clear voice said, “I will go and give the orders to the coachman.” As he passed Nannerl, he caressed her swollen cheek, and went out.

IV.

By late evening Nannerl had calmed a little. Wrapped in a blanket and sipping hot broth from a cup, she let Victoria rub her legs with aromatic oil.

“When I heard that Wolfgang was getting married, I was completely indifferent,” she said, “as he was, I imagine, at the announcement of my marriage. For some time our father functioned as a go-between, through those long-winded letters of his, telling Wolfgang about my family life, I suppose, and me of his successes. He also sent me some copies of his scores, which I haven’t even looked at.”

“You never play?”

She gave a tired smile. “Have you seen a piano in the house?”

“No—and I wonder how it is that you feel no desire to touch a keyboard, at least once in a while.”

“And yet it’s so, Victoria. And it’s not a bitter renunciation, I assure you. I would need too much practice by now to recover from that inactivity. Besides, I doubt whether I would entirely regain the agility that distinguished me, or my precision of touch. Sometimes it occurs to me that I could play again, and we’d only have to bring in a piano that is in one of our apartments in Salzburg. But it would be a lot of trouble; and then I forget about it, and so I’ve let it go completely.”

Victoria compared her own well-cared-for hands with Nannerl’s. “But, then, what do you do with your days?”

She smiled more openly. “With this house, with my husband, with his children and ours—don’t you think that’s more than enough? Jeanette is a special child. I’m having her study Latin, and then she teaches me, can you imagine! And my little boy is lovable and brilliant.”

“Then you haven’t introduced music to your children, either?”

She sighed. “Stop, Victoria, please. Long ago I stopped feeling tormented because certain people urged me to do something that they considered right for me, and that I really didn’t want to do. You, and your father, and Wolfgang—more than anyone, Wolfgang.” She interrupted herself and again whispered the name of her brother, then suddenly hid her face and burst into sobs.

Victoria felt completely impotent. She placed a hand on Nannerl’s head, but it went unnoticed while she moaned, “I never met his children, nor he mine. I never saw his house in Vienna, nor did he ever come to this place. I have used every ounce of my energy in hating the memory of him.”

“When were you last in touch?”

“Five years and five months ago. Wolfgang sent me good wishes for my name day. I wrote to thank him—and then nothing.” She dried her tears on the blanket. “The intensity of my grief is disconcerting to me, because when our father died I felt nothing.”

“Is that possible?”

“Nothing, I swear to you. Neither regret nor a sense of loss. Rather, perhaps, a trace of satisfaction—though it’s cruel that I say it and even crueler that I felt it.” She put on her woolen stockings, ending the massage. “You know what my father said just before he died? He begged me to reconcile with Wolfgang. And I didn’t. And now I know it was just to contradict him. Oh Victoria, I can’t wait to go. I must mend this break.”

“Excuse me…”

Baptist was at the foot of the stairs with a book under his arm and a lamp in his hand. “I would like to remind my gracious consort,” he said with a slight smile, “that this is our last night together for who knows how long, and it might be polite on her part not to let me sleep in solitude.”

She smiled at him in return. “I’ll join you soon.”

“Good. Good night, Frau Paumgartner,” and he vanished into the darkness of the staircase.

For a few moments the women were silent, both wondering if it was the moment to end the conversation. Then Nannerl said, with a certain hesitation, “You, too, are married.”

“Yes, to a musician.”

“Really? That must be a wonderful union. And the child,” she added, looking away, “well, you know what I mean…is well, is in good health?”

“It’s a girl. Yes, she’s well. And my husband is an excellent father to her.”

Nannerl nodded, deeply comforted. Then she asked, “Have you had other children?”

“We would have liked to, but it didn’t happen unfortunately. In any case, it would be difficult to reconcile my concerts, and above all the lessons, with a houseful of children.”

“How many students do you have?”

“Twenty-six.”

“My goodness. So you must teach every day, for at least five hours.”

“Every morning I practice myself, and afternoons are for the students. Two of them,” she continued with tender pride, “have already performed in public.”

“It seems that teaching is satisfying for you,” Nannerl considered, with some surprise.

“I try to be a teacher worthy of what I had.”

Another long silence fell, then Victoria murmured timidly, “We could go part of the way together tomorrow.”

“A brief part, of course, before separating.”

“How long do you think you’ll stay in Vienna?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Nunnerl answered, getting up and wrapping the blanket around her legs. Then she went to a window that looked onto the back and with a sort of reverence opened it, defying the cold. “Come,” she said, and pointed out to Victoria the snowy hills illuminated by the moon, and meanwhile she murmured, “A thousand times I have leaned on this windowsill wondering which direction Vienna was, in which direction I should turn my gaze, to imagine being close to my brother. I indulged in the certainty of a common feeling, that he thought of, and sometimes even dreamed of, me. And I was sure that in the end we would find each other, that, as in our childhood, a rhyme would be enough for us to be in harmony again.”

She stopped speaking, sensing a presence behind her; it was a child in a nightgown. “Jeanette! What are you doing awake? Come upstairs right now!” Nannerl exclaimed, quickly closing the window and freeing herself from the blanket. “I’m sorry, Victoria, I really must go. Do you know how to find your room again?”

“Of course; don’t worry.” As she watched Nannerl go toward the stairs with the child, she said, “I like the name Jeanette. You chose well.”

She turned, smiling. “Oh, thank you. Baptist chose it, in fact. And what is your daughter’s name?”

“Nannerl.”

V.

“Baroness, we’ve arrived!”

The coachman had to call her again. She was lying amid the cushions that she had arranged on the seats so that they made a kind of lap in which she could curl up, huddle; she heard that male voice and the tapping on the window, but they did not seem to be addressed to her. In her mind she was elsewhere, in a dark room, at Wolfgang’s deathbed.