Mozart's Sister: A Novel (40 page)

Her sick brother did not have compresses on his forehead or arms wounded by bloodletting or strange equipment and tubes around him. He seemed only enormously tired, barely reacting to or interested in the world. He was lying on one side with the sheet twisted to cover his mouth, and his eyes, bulging, stared at the walls. Nannerl was sure that he could hear and understand in every detail what was happening but did not wish to influence the course of events. Around him appeared other personages, somewhat obscured: Herr Mozart, above all, who, seated in a corner, observed the scene as if it were merely a plot of his devising; and then there was Constanze, Wolfgang’s wife, who, wearing something loose-fitting, was sitting on the edge of the bed caressing him with inappropriately sensual gestures. A doctor hovered in the room as well, and, like a bad actor, kept repeating the same line, in search of the proper tone: “The poor young man is done for, and we must hurry the end, so as to keep him from needless suffering.” And he poured a beverage into a cup: a fast-acting poison.

Wolfgang downed the liquid, as if obeying fate, as if resigning himself to an unjust punishment that he was too tired to defend against; but at that exact moment, Nannerl knew, with utter certainty, that it wasn’t the end and that his condition wasn’t irrevocable. He was merely oppressed by a deep melancholy, which every man, if he wants to, has the power to survive; but perhaps this perception had arrived too late, and the hidden director had already brought the drama to its end.

She approached the head of the bed: Wolfgang was still lying on his side, with a veiled gaze. And he was alive. Was it possible that the poison had not taken effect? Possible that the father, having figured out the trick, had exchanged the liquid for a glass of water? She grabbed her brother’s hands and uttered the ancient formula for harmony, but he made no response, and Nannerl couldn’t guess his thoughts.

“I’m ready, Sebastian,” she said, shaking herself. She felt extremely weak. The cold air didn’t revive her but made her long to get back in the carriage and go home. What a macabre idea to go and see Wolfgang’s tomb. Why had she asked the coachman to take her here? Once she found the stone, was she going to try to talk to a marble plaque? Her brother was not in this place; no trace of his consciousness could be found on this earth. What remained of him? To what purpose had he been born, lived, and died, at only thirty-five?

“Would you like me to accompany you, Baroness?”

She shook her head and held out an arm to keep him away. The gate squeaked as she opened it, and she was in the cemetery of Sankt Marx, as if following the will of someone else.

A dense fog had lodged in her mind. A void made of too many thoughts, which led her to wander aimlessly among the iron crosses arranged in neat rows, the bunches of frozen flowers in opaque, dirty jars, until she saw a caretaker shoveling snow, and dragging her feet, she approached him.

“Excuse me, could you please tell me where I might find the grave of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?”

“Wolfgang who?” he asked, sticking the shovel in the snow and resting an armpit on it.

“Mozart! You don’t know him?”

The man snapped his fingers. “Oh yes, that poor musician. They dumped him in a pauper’s grave.”

“A pauper’s grave?” she repeated, breathless.

The caretaker played with the shovel, observing Nannerl cynically; he seemed struck above all by her expensive clothes. “Why—do you want to go there?” he said, sneering, and without waiting for a response, he set off. “You know, at the moment I didn’t understand, but now I remember clearly. The wife didn’t have money for a private grave, and so, you understand…”

“But there’s nothing to remember him by? Not even a stone?”

“What does that have to do with it—you can always put up a stone. You can do anything, even a statue if you want. Whatever you like. If you have the money you can do anything; am I right or not, ma’am?”

Near the grave a solitary visitor was walking back and forth along the path with short, quick steps, talking to himself.

“That man is a musician,” the caretaker exclaimed. “He comes every single day. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t have the slightest idea.”

“What’s his name?”

“Antonio Salieri.”

Nannerl felt her energy revive. “You can go now. Thank you.”

“It’s nothing. And let me know about the plaque!”

VI.

“Herr Salieri?” she said, approaching very slowly.

He had an unassuming appearance: slender, typically Italian, in a tight jacket covered with decorations of which he was evidently very proud. Observing her, he arched his eyebrows in a mask of restraint; his lips, in the shadow of an aquiline nose, were almost nonexistent.

“Who are you?” he asked suspiciously.

“Mozart’s sister.”

He said nothing, evidently much affected, then he stated, “I didn’t know he had a sister.”

“I’m not surprised,” she murmured, putting her hands in the pockets of her coat. “I don’t imagine he ever spoke of me.”

“Did you have a good relationship with him?”

Were these proper questions? “And you, if I may ask?”

Marvelously, the faint line on the face of the little man opened into a smile of utter kindness. “I would have liked to have a pupil like Mozart. That was the first thing I thought as soon as I met him. He had no need of a maestro by then, but when he was a boy—oh when he was a boy it would have been so exalting to confront such a genius! Do you know anything about music, madam?”

“I would say so.”

“And have you had good teachers?”

“In fact I was a piano teacher myself.”

“Oh, really? That’s very interesting. Have any of your pupils had a successful career?”

“Only one, as far as I know.”

“That is already a great deal, don’t you think? I will confess to you one thing: for me it would be a greater satisfaction to be remembered as a teacher rather than as a court composer. Glory for oneself is never intoxicating the way a relationship with an evolving talent is. And the applause we may receive personally is not as satisfying as that which is addressed to our students. And I consider myself fortunate, for one of my boys is beginning to give me satisfaction: young Ludwig van Beethoven is undoubtedly the best, yes…” And he walked off along the path, mumbling to himself again.

“But where are you going? I need to talk to you!”

He turned, with his eyebrows so arched with surprise that they practically reached his hairline. “About what, may I ask?”

“About my brother, obviously, and also music.”

“Regarding your brother, I haven’t much to tell.”

“But you knew him!”

“Yes, of course, but our personal relations were very limited. Forgive me, madam, I have to go now.”

“Then why do you come here?”

Salieri gave her a strange look. A gust of wind lifted his gray hair and the lapel of his jacket.

“Why do you come here, if you hardly knew him?” Nannerl insisted.

The man took a deep breath, and in a low voice said, “Do you believe that terror can be colored by lightness?”

Nannerl didn’t know how to respond.

“Madam,” he insisted, “try to think of Tamino and Pamina, when they go through the waterfall and the flames: only a moment before, we were trembling with them before the gate of terror; and then those ethereal notes rise from the flute, floating over a little march that is like a fable. The test that has been passed consists of hovering fear, of odorless sweat. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

She nodded, even though by now she was convinced that the man was raving.

He continued, with a veiled melancholy: “Here in this place I still hear echoes of
The Magic Flute
—that sublime synthesis of every human passion and every operatic style, filtered by a delightful levity. Nothing redundant, that’s certain; rather, a complex, marvelous delicacy, an apparent innocence that leaves the most capable of performers lost, since the least mistake, a single one, even just the shadowy shadow of a mistake, is enough so that the entire passage rolls disastrously over him.”

“Forgive me, Herr Salieri. But why are you telling me these things?”

“Didn’t you ask me to speak to you of music? And is it possible to speak of Mozart without speaking of his incomparable music?” He had closed his eyes, and was directing an imaginary orchestra. He reopened them and seemed transformed into an ascetic. “The soul of Mozart remains near his body, for it can’t detach itself from life, which he so loved. For that reason, in this place, I can still hear his music. Outside, it died with him.”

“But it’s not true! His music is anything but mortal. It will last for all time.”

“Do you know
Don Giovanni
?”

“Yes…,” she answered, hesitantly.

“Never have notes so dark and cruel been heard, as if saturated in an odor of putrefaction. The hereafter looms, invades, and leaves no hope. Do you follow me, madam? Death is dissolution, for Mozart. It is the irremediable loss of what is created in life. This is what your brother believed, and what is inexorably verified.”

Then he looked at Nannerl with extreme attention and his eyebrows descended, knitting together over his eyes, which lost every trace of good nature. “You do not share my thoughts!”

“To tell you the truth, I have to admit I don’t fully understand them. I don’t know either
The Magic Flute
or
Don Giovanni
thoroughly.”

“Is that possible?”

“For a long time I had lost contact with Wolfgang,” she confessed in a small voice. “So I did not have access to his last creations. Or his last thoughts.”

Salieri’s expression turned uglier. In an instant she forgot his slight build: the man seemed suddenly aggressive, possessed of a twisted, dark, and violent nature.

“Were you envious of him?”

“Never!”

“Are you sure? There would be nothing strange: being related to a genius can’t be easy.”

“I wasn’t envious of Wolfgang. And I won’t let you suggest it.”

Her protests fell into a void. “Envy is an effective poison, don’t you know, madam.”

“Envy kills only the heart of the one who feels it.”

“You think? I don’t believe that: it can also have a harmful effect on its object. And I mean a slow, subtle action that develops through the years.”

“I have never been envious of my brother. Is that clear?”

The caretaker, too, shoveling snow again, must have heard this passionate declaration. And in the same instant, Salieri stepped out of the role of ambiguous accuser and became again the gentle, affected little man he had been a moment earlier. He looked at Nannerl with childish candor while he murmured, “Then show it.”

“I still don’t understand you.”

“His manuscripts are in the hands of the widow. And that woman certainly cannot grasp their value. They are in danger of becoming wastepaper. The children will make them into confetti, they will be sold to some traveling dealer or, worse, will sit in a corner to get dusty and rot!”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“Get them! Steal them from that woman, if necessary. You, as his sister, can assert your rights. Then promote the compositions of Mozart, have all the works published, or his genius will remain unknown. So that at least our descendants may know his miraculous melodies, their formal perfection, their simple complexity. So that the men and women who come will be passionate about music through the music of Mozart. So that your brother’s brief life has had meaning—for that, if nothing else!”

Then he came close to her and warily added, “In any case, be on your guard, madam: your brother had many enemies. There is a rumor circulating that he was poisoned.”

And he went off along the path with his short steps, no longer muttering to himself.

VII.

She couldn’t take her eyes off it, a thing immersed in a bluish liquid, a small thing, barely human, that had nevertheless once lived inside a woman. A grayish being perhaps born dead, or perhaps dead as soon as it was born, with tiny curled-up limbs and eyes so tightly closed that they appeared pasted; but there were four eyes, because the thing had two heads. The corresponding ears were fused, like two candles too close to the fire of the hearth and to each other. There were two noses, two mouths, and two foreheads, and the neck was a sort of forked branch, and so wide in relation to the shoulders that it took up almost their entire breadth. What was the purpose of preserving such a freak of nature?

“The object of the scholar is knowledge, and knowledge of the abnormal improves that of the normal.” The man appeared to have heard her internal question and had answered as if reciting from memory. “But these sights are not suitable for a lady. Shall we move to the study? Matthias von Sallaba is expecting you.”

Nannerl followed him, passing a table on which stood the trunk of a man without its front wall, so that heart, liver, and lungs were on display; it was a plaster cast, conscientiously painted in shades of purple, pink, and pale blue.

“Sit down, please. Here, I was just looking up for you the working of acqua toffana. Have a look, if you’d like.”