Vienna Nocturne (22 page)

As Lidia eased open the door on this morning she was surprised to find the room already light. The curtains had been drawn. The bed was empty and the coverlet feebly dragged across it, one end still trailing to the ground.

In the window seat sat Anna, quite upright, dressed in a white morning gown—the laces at the back undone—with a red satin sash about her waist. Her hands were clasped in her lap; her pretty feet were bare, resting on a velvet stool. The gaze she turned to Lidia was transparent and calm. “I’ve grown so thin,” she remarked quietly. “My dress doesn’t fit properly. I wonder if you could bring me some hot porridge with honey and dried currants and butter and cream? And a little pot of coffee with chocolate? Would you be so good, dear Lidia?”

And though she looked at Lidia with a clear, level expression, behind it lay a flicker of pride, as if she had pulled off a great trick. Lidia stood for half a moment with her mouth agape and then turned and bolted downstairs.

Anna had been up since daybreak. She had woken and felt a sudden desire to open the curtains before Lidia got there. So she had
done it, one two three four five six, and had only got a bit out of breath. To anyone else this action would be as nothing. She watched the sky brighten and the people on the street begin their work and play. Then it had seemed necessary that she dress herself, although she was not used to dressing herself. She pried open the wardrobe and selected a likely looking gown, one of the loose modern ones that had light skirts and nothing rigid or heavy in the bodice. With painstaking care she changed into a clean chemise and pulled the dress over it. Since she could not do the laces she tied up the waist with a sash. Stockings were beyond her—she was afraid of ripping them. She kept laughing at her own weakness, how fumbling and timid she’d become. Even this act of dressing seemed so bold it made her afraid someone would find and scold her before she was ready. She combed out her hair and pinned it in a sort of bun and washed her face in the basin and was seated in the window, panting with exertion, by the time Lidia came to wake her. And the look on Lidia’s face was worth all the effort in the world.

Yesterday she had seen Mesmer. Everyone would think he had cured her. When she had woken this morning and decided to open the curtains she had been dreaming of music—a delicious, calming dream, the details of which had instantly escaped her, though for a moment, a remembered melody had brushed her thoughts and lingered there like a trail of smoke. She’d had a feeling of wonderment, unstained, without remorse, to think that her life could contain this music. And in that moment of remembering her dream she’d realized, as if seeing herself from afar, that what she was doing was not what she wanted.

It seemed she had never been so hungry. When Lidia came in with the porridge and the coffee she almost could have wept but she did not want Lidia to think she was sad. She set the bowl in her lap and the warmth spread through her legs and the porridgy steam wafted up into her face. The bowl was a white ceramic. Her hand quavered as she took the first spoonful, the porridge and the cream
and the black currants and the thick golden strands of honey that had been made from sun and bees and flowers. And when she put it to her mouth it seemed there was nothing so beautiful and good as this, so sweet, so filling, and she felt her mind which had been clouded revive and thrill, and her throat glisten, and her stomach, in one motion, unknot and welcome. And the coffee—the coffee was the nectar of the gods, bitter and warm, and rang awake all the hunger for life that had been sleeping in her core.

“Could you help me with my dress?” she asked Lidia. “Is my brother home? Would he like to go driving with me in the country? I’d like some air. Perhaps we might be able to walk a bit if he would lend me his arm.”

And Lidia, who could hardly speak, lest she break the spell, said that all this would be done; and she went outside to report the news to everyone who was waiting in the hall.

The sky was a hazy blue, as though draped with gauze, and the tall magnificent trees backed with sunlight, their leaves bright and some of them in flower. She had not been outside in a long time. She kept turning her head to some flickering of light, or new smell, some breath of mossy air, some animal’s movement or call. Stephen beside her was at his very best, in his thoughtful, painterly aspect, pretending that all this was normal.

She’d suggested he bring his sketch paper and his watercolors. When they found a likely spot on the bank, they spread themselves out and he sketched the Danube, and then, against her protestations, Anna, leaning on one thin arm in her red sash, the spring light about her, her gaze on the great river, with its boats large and small, its people, its diving birds and nibbling fish, her straw hat thrown onto the ground beside her. She had not gotten Lidia to fix her hair. The bun listed to the side and threatened to unfurl; one or two curls fell down her neck.

“Stephen,” she asked him. She was still not used to speaking. Her voice was hesitant but it was still hers. “If I don’t sing again, will you hate me?”

He put down his brush to consider. “Yes,” he said. “I believe I shall. I’ll cast you off. You’ll be no sister of mine.”

She leaned toward him smiling. “Don’t!” she cried. “You must tell me. You must swear truthfully.”

He touched her arm. “Sweet Anna. I love you no matter what you do or don’t do.”

“Even though I ruined your opera?”

“You did not ruin my opera.”

“Say I did.”

He shook his head. “Never. You did nothing wrong.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed, a light, high sound that was itself almost singing, and lay back on the ground, to keep herself from weeping. “I don’t believe you. Look at the sky. Look at the leaves tossing.”

“You can’t lie down,” he said. “I’m not finished.”

“But I’m tired. And the sky, look at it,” she said, pointing. “That’s vastness. Nothing was ever so vast.”

“Sit up,” he laughed. “Look at the river again. I’m not finished.”

“Ah,” she said, propping herself up again. She wiped her cheeks and her hair fell down. “The river is also vast. And look how it runs and runs.”

A little later she asked, “Can I see?” and he showed her the picture. She studied it, tucking back her hair. “There I am,” she whispered. She drew a finger down the page. “How good you are. Just think, there might have been a baby with me.” When he did not reply she looked up with a sad smile. “I wish you could paint the baby in. Then I could keep it with me to remember her by. Did you ever see her? Before she died? I sometimes wonder if I imagined her. I never believed she was real, anyway. Perhaps she wasn’t. But then I don’t know why I’m so sad.”

“Don’t be sad anymore,” he said impulsively. “The baby is in Heaven. The baby wouldn’t want you to be sad.”

She smiled again, looking before her. “No,” she said. “I will be sad. I did everything wrong. Everything until now and even now I’m still sad, and afraid I’ll do wrong again. I never thought of her, Stephen. I tried very hard to believe she was not there and would never exist. And now I will think of her for as long as I live. How old she would have been, how she would have looked, whether she’d have liked me to teach her singing.” She paused for a long moment and then added, “I think she would have been a fine singer.”

“Yes,” he said.

She smiled and looked down. “I don’t think Mama wanted her to live. I don’t think I did, either. In my heart. Deep in my secret heart. But then I should be happy now, and not sad.” She turned to him again, with her wan, thinned face, her cloud of dark hair. “Do you think we killed her? With wishing?”

“Never,” he said again. “I don’t believe you wished anything of the sort.”

She looked at the painting. “But of course you say that. You couldn’t very well say the other thing.”

“She’s in Heaven,” he said again, helplessly.

Anna shook her head. “A little baby all alone in Heaven? But who would take care of her?” She handed the picture back to him. “You don’t believe in Heaven any more than I do.”

“I suppose not,” he admitted, flustered.

She lay down again. “Nor in Hell.”

“No, I don’t suppose I do.”

“There’s a comfort.” She laughed. “I haven’t talked so much in months. Let me lie here quietly awhile and then we’ll go home.”

She told herself that it did not matter if she sang. The important thing was to live, as well as she could. But when she started to feel strong enough, she thought she might try. She had to play all sorts of tricks on her mind so that she would not get too anxious, or hope too much. It was best not to hope for anything at all.

She stood alone and imagined Rauzzini beside her. His gait, his voice, his flashing rings. She murmured to herself his familiar phrases and admonishments. She watched herself in the mirror with his eye, watched her head and torso and the intake of her breath. She remembered his breathing exercises as she remembered her name and yet it was as though she were performing them for the first time. For days she did nothing but breathe. Then she decided it was time to sing.

She chose an F, not too high and not too low. When she struck it on the keyboard—though she knew what an F was, felt it in her body, just as she knew C and A and G—it seemed that everyone in the house, everyone in the city, must have heard it. She had to wait a moment
for the panic to subside. Then she took a good breath and struck the F again and hummed it. Her lips rested together and her throat was open and the breath caught and spun. The sound of F rang inside her. Then she took another good breath, before she could have time to think, and sang “
Ah
,” as Rauzzini had taught her, with a small
messa di voce
, from soft to loud to soft, and the voice was clear, and it was strong, and it had not left her, and she burst into tears and collapsed to the ground as if a weight of iron had been lifted from her lungs.

At first she sang only for ten minutes at a time, then twenty, then thirty. She sang with Rauzzini’s method, a regimented sequence of scales, arpeggios, staccati, and vowel exercises. She was firm with herself and strict. She pretended there was no one listening, though they were all listening. Let them.

She remembered Mozart’s kiss like a child might take out a delicate toy, which must not be played with too much, or too roughly, lest the paint chip or the fur get matted. If she did not think of it too much, it would not grow old, it would not tarnish. She would not indulge in fevered dreams, as she had done with Benucci, until everything was distorted and confused. She would not allow her thoughts to drift to a hopeful or anxious future. All she could do was take the memory out and look at it, when she was safe and alone, and then quickly put it aside. How he had played for her and kissed her when she had been so pitiable, kissed her as though he couldn’t help it, drawing her face down with both his hands. When she thought of the kiss, it seemed in her memory that both of them had been surprised and neither of them had wanted it to end, and that she had felt all this in his body, the surprise and the pleasure and the longing. It had not been so on the night in the terrace garden. That in comparison to this had been children playing. This other was shocking and strange. She really had wished for it not to end. She had felt almost dissolved of her own person.

But she could not remember the kiss too long or she would not be able to act normally when next she saw him. She must tidy her dreams away.

“My dear,” said Salieri to Anna. “My heart reposes to see you so well. We cannot tell you how great has been the scope of our anguish.” The corners of his mouth lifted in a kindly smile and then dropped down again.

“Madame,” murmured Lorenzo Da Ponte, squeezing Anna’s hands.

“Abbate,” said Anna warmly. “Thank you for your poetry.”

“There’s no effort in writing,” he said, leaning his head cozily against hers, “when it’s for darling you. How we’ve missed you, my dear. You gave everyone such a fright.”

Da Ponte, the court poet, a Venetian, had been born a Jew under a different name, and had converted in childhood for the sake of patronage. Then he had gone on, somewhat improbably, to become an ordained priest. Thus was he known as the Abbate, but laughingly so, for he was a priest who liked rude verses better than scripture, who gambled and kept mistresses, who engaged in love affairs with the wives of his patrons, and who was in short more suited to
the theater than anyone in the world. He had a large chin and large, limpid eyes. When he spoke it was softly and disjointedly, with a lisp and a broad Venetian accent, a gentleness in his tone that implied sympathy and sensuality and disguised a pointed wit.