Vienna Nocturne (31 page)

Anna laughed. He took up one of her hands, his thumbs meeting at the joint of her wrist, his fingers pressing gently against the curve of her palm. “Do you know,” he remarked, smiling, “when you come into a room, I always feel you bring the sunshine. Even when you weren’t well, I felt that. It’s like that when you’re on the stage. I think we watch you for that. We bare our breasts to you and you lay on us your warmth and light.”

She stirred. “I couldn’t do anything without your music.”

He squeezed her hand. “My starling died,” he said. “Did I tell you? I was unaccountably broken up about it. I wrote him a funerary poem. I’ll send it to you. Such a winter this is—our poor baby, you know.” He looked toward the window, unblinking, and then shook his head. “I’m glad to be going to Prague. The air’s no warmer in Prague, but I think the people are.”

“And then you’ll come to London,” she said. She was crying again.

He sat up and made a show of kissing the tears away. “I had an idea,” he said, “that I could write an aria for your farewell concert. I have just the text. A rondo I set for my
Idomeneo
last year.”

She had not been to that concert, a private revival of his Munich
opera. “A proper rondo?” she asked. She took his cue and tried to perk up, tried not to think how long he would be gone; how long it would be, after he came back, before she saw him again.

“Yes, exactly,” he said. He squeezed her hand. “A proper rondo. The rondo I didn’t give you in
Figaro
. In E-flat. I mean to write a piano part for myself, just like in one of my concertos. Only you’ll be singing along with me, and I with you, the pair of us, with the orchestra. It will be a duet. The grandest kind of parting anyone has heard.”

“What’s the text?”

“
Don’t fear, my love, for you my heart will always be faithful.
” He gave her a rueful look and pulled her to him. “That sort of thing. It’s by Varesco. He’s no Da Ponte, but it will suit perfectly. You’ll be telling the people of Vienna you’re not abandoning us; that you’ll always hold us first in your heart; that you’ll come back, etcetera.”

She looked at him cheerfully, so he would feel better. “And you’ll play with the orchestra?”

“Yes,” he said, caressing her knee. “It will be for myself and you.”

Then they had to break apart, because Lidia came in to light the room. She rattled at the door before she entered, to give them time.

“Kind lady,” said Mozart to Lidia, “you come at just the right moment. We were about to play a game of backgammon and can hardly see the dice.”

“Indeed,” Lidia observed, “the sun has nearly set.”

“So it has.” Quickly he arranged the backgammon pieces, a familiar expression of gaiety and interest on his face, as though the black-and-red disks were the most engrossing collection of objects he had seen in his life. “Do you know it’s been years since I played? But I remember all the rules. I used to love hearing the thunk and clack of the men as you run them around the board.”

“Oh, Lidia,” Anna asked her, as if in passing, as the girl was leaving. “Will you see we’re not disturbed? We shan’t need anything else. No wine.”

“Yes, Anna.”

They finished the game and she beat him handily. “Ah,” he said. “You’re beautiful triumphant. Look at those black eyes trying to contain themselves—those hot cheeks. You’re like that when you’ve been singing something marvelous. On my lap. In your underclothes.”

“I hate to lose. You made silly mistakes.”

“I left too many blots. Next time I’ll do better. For now I rejoice in my losing, if it gives Mademoiselle Storace such eyes.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, laughing. “I should be more gracious.”

They were silent a while. Then he said, “It’s late,” and rose. And there it was: their parting. “Constanze will think I’ve been taken by highwaymen.”

“Oh, stay,” Anna whispered, rising, too. “Please don’t go yet. Stay a little longer.”

“A little longer,” he murmured. He rested his chin on her shoulder, as if willing his body to dissolve there.

“She knows you’re here. She’ll think we’re practicing our music.”

“We’ve no music to practice. She knows that very well.”

Anna pulled back, frowning and crying. Mozart watched her without speaking. She slipped off her shoes. She took off her stockings and put them down her bodice. Then she stood there trembling.

“Give me back my boots,” she whispered, in German. “Please. Please, Wolfgang.”

He lifted his hand and traced the line of her cheek with such tenderness she thought it would kill her. “Never,” he said. “Never in all my life. You’ll never have them.”

“Give them back,” she whispered, weeping. She let her head turn with the motion of his fingers. He kissed her neck where it met the jaw.

“Never, Anna.”

“And your debt to me,” she sobbed, rubbing her nose into his shirt, holding his slender, breathing, dearest back. “The kisses—”

“What debt?” he whispered. “What kisses?”

She tried to laugh, to pretend that none of it mattered, but all that came out were unrelenting tears. “Sing for me, Anna, and I will kiss your hands a hundred thousand times.”

“Oh,” he murmured. He bent his head and kissed her collarbone, kissed the space between her breasts. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “I’d forgotten. There’s two already. There’s three. And I love you. I love you.”

“My German’s wretched,” said Stephen. He helped Anna up the stairs. It was January and they were going to a party at the Thuns’. The Mozarts were in Prague. “It’s embarrassing. You’ll have to tell me if I make a faux-pas.”

Stephen was smiling and at ease. His new opera in Vienna had been a success, redeemed him completely, and he was looking forward to going back to London. He planned to write English operettas and pastiches, in the mode of Italian opera buffa.

Inside, the countess with all her graciousness was wearing the bracelet she had received as a favor from Anna’s birthday party last year. “I have someone here who especially wants to meet you, my dear,” she said to Anna.

The gentleman pushed himself forward. “Oh,” Anna exclaimed. “Lord Barnard.”

“Miss Storace remembers my name,” the young man said in a voice of low rapture, closing his eyes.

“Now, Lord Barnard,” Anna said lightly, glancing at their hostess.
“You mustn’t speak English like that in mixed company. If you insist on being so rude, you and Stephen may retire to a corner and talk between yourselves.”

The young man shook his head and said in rather broken German that he would speak any language to stay by Miss Storace’s side.

“Oh, dear,” Anna said into the countess’s ear. “Either he doesn’t know what he’s saying or he’s a fool.”

The countess smiled genially at the young gentleman. “Yes,” she said in a low voice, “but there is a place for puppies, if they have wealth.”

Barnard was an English lord of twenty-three on his first European tour. His hair was russet gold, his eyes wide and watery. He had a booming voice and would not have made a bad singer, if he’d had more art and less fortune. He was handsome in the rich, well-fed way of his class. Lord Barnard got what he wanted. His youth merely added to his confidence. And he was besotted with Anna.

The spell had been cast last May. He had come to the opening of
Figaro
, had heard Anna sing, with such exquisite sensuality, “
Deh, vieni.
” Although Barnard possessed little Italian, he had a romantic soul, and he had fallen deeply in love with Anna that night. She had been singing to him, he felt. The sense of recognition was no trick of drunkenness or fancy. She was his to worship in whatever capacity she would let him. He was young, clever, and rich. He did not doubt that these charms would prevail.

Anna that night had not been in any mood to receive him, so he had attended every subsequent performance until she had. Then he had left Vienna to continue on his European tour. He had returned yesterday evening.

“I meant to spend more days in Rome,” he said, “but something pulled me back to Vienna.” He gazed at her and began again speaking in English: so frail was his German. “You, mademoiselle, if I may be so bold, called me to this place, this city exquisite in my
memory, not for its spires and vistas but for something—someone—who shall, when she leaves it, render the poor city drab and dark. For a pair of eyes, mademoiselle, as rich and promising as velvet. For lips, cheeks, as soft and pink as new roses. For a voice that has made me wish to renounce my place in heaven.”

“Dear Lord Barnard,” she said laughingly in German, “you have many words and nothing to put them in. That must be very hard.” She took Stephen’s arm and left him.

But after that meeting he called on her nearly every day. Sometimes she was not at home. On those occasions he left behind some token of his presence, a flower, a fine piece of ribbon, a lace fan, a jar of perfumed ointment. Now and then there might be a curiosity from the Orient, a hair ornament of wrought ivory, exotic earrings, silk.

“He thinks I can be bought,” Anna observed to Lidia.

“Then he’s a fool,” Lidia said. Anna tossed the earrings into a drawer.

A package arrived from Prague with the aria Mozart had written for her farewell concert. There was a letter, as well. She read it in the dining room over her breakfast. Morning frost sparked at the windows. It was now the end of January. Mozart had been gone a month. He would mark his thirty-first birthday in Prague. He apologized for his handwriting and his spelling. They were having a tremendous success. He could not describe his satisfaction. He was certain she would like the aria and he longed to hear her voice again. The Prague Susanna was nothing compared to Anna. She need not be envious. The Prague Susanna was as stiff as a board. He kept saying to everyone, if only they could hear Mademoiselle Storace sing it,
then
he’d be content,
then
he’d know his opera was being shown to its best.

The aria he’d sent her was in his own hand, a clean copy that yet gave an impression of haste. He had a strong, careless script. Across the top he’d written,
für Mlle Storace und mich
—“for Mademoiselle Storace and myself.”

“The famous rondo?” Stephen asked. He snapped the package from Anna’s hands and went into the music room and sat at the piano. She scrambled after him but it was too late; he was already playing it.

“What does he say?” he asked.

“Hm?”

He glanced at her. “In that long letter you read so quickly and blushingly.”

The music distracted her. Stephen, sight-reading, still half asleep, played feebly and inaccurately and yet it was beautiful, it was perfect.

“I didn’t blush,” she said. “I was warm from my coffee.”

Stephen laughed. “You were not. He was teasing you about something, the devil.” He leaned his chin in his hand, searching the manuscript. “This is a good piece. I don’t do it justice. One can tell he wrote the piano part with himself in mind.”

Anna moved to lie on the carpet, on her stomach, her cheek on her arm and her legs crossed at the ankles. Stephen cast her a dubious look and started to play again. “Are you quite all right?” he asked. She didn’t answer. He continued to play. She heard the click of the instrument’s mechanism and felt the light tap of his foot against the floorboards. There were dog hairs on the carpet, brown and white. The air down here was cooler. She felt her chest pressing against the floor, her heart beating into it. When she closed her eyes she could hear one of the maids in the next room singing a tune from
A Rare Thing
. Stephen fumbled and hummed along with Mozart’s aria. Whenever he came to a particularly interesting or difficult passage he played it over slowly, breaking it into segments, talking to himself. Anna, listening, breathed against the floor. One of the dogs ventured to join her and she scratched its belly. When Stephen finally paused, she got up and went to the sideboard in the dining room to get more coffee.

“A proper rondo,” she called back, forcing herself to be light, to smile.

“Just as he promised,” said Stephen.

Lidia came in to announce Lord Barnard and Michael Kelly.