The Mozart Girl

by Barbara Nickel

  Nannerl could see flickering lights ahead. She began to walk as she turned a corner and neared a building with many stories. Carriages slowed to a stop in front of the huge front doors. Ladies and gentlemen in evening finery alighted with the assistance of footmen. Nannerl saw the name Hôtel above the door. She wanted to stop for a rest and peer through the windows at all the silk dresses and food and tinkling glass bathed in candlelight, but she rushed on. The doorman seemed to be staring straight at her!

  Nannerl hurried away from the hotel and ran to a street lamp, where she could check the map again. Now she must cross a bridge—the pont Nôtre Dame. She looked up from the map and saw it arch like a great black cat in the mist that hovered over the Seine River. What if—no, she must stop scaring herself with questions about what might happen. She took a deep breath and walked over to where the stone bridge began. There was a wide walkway. Nannerl could hear the foaming, swirling mass of black water beneath her, washing up against the bank. She forced herself not to look down over the railing until she was safely over on the other side.

  Now she was in the square of the Nôtre Dame cathedral. She looked up to see the spires reach into the mist like slender fingers. As she got closer, she could hear the thundering organ and the voices of the choir. What if the Mass finished and Wolfi and Papa got home before she could? But no, Papa had said it would last for hours. Still, she should hurry. She tried to run but her legs ached and she could only keep up a kind of walking trot.

  Suddenly, Nannerl felt a sharp tug at the bottom of her cape. Her heart beat harder, throbbed fast through her arms and legs and face as she looked down. There, crouched up against the side of the church, was a woman reaching a hand toward her. Nannerl wanted to run but she couldn’t move.

  The woman leaned forward in the darkness. “A sou, Mademoiselle, a few sous for some bread,” her raspy voice rose. Though she couldn’t have been older than Mama, the woman’s eyes were ancient. Another bony hand reached for her dress, and Nannerl saw people crouched all along the cathedral wall; their cries for bread, a sou, and shelter from the cold drifted through the mist. Nannerl caught the sharp stench of urine.

  She found a coin in her pocket and placed it in the woman’s hand. “Bless you, Mademoiselle,” a voice said. Nannerl didn’t answer. She ran as fast as she could, away from the smell and the quavery hands. Her legs felt like the stubs of candles but she didn’t care. She ran on and on, past street lamp after street lamp.

  She stopped to catch her breath. In her hurry to get away from the beggars she hadn’t paid attention to the street signs. She tried to smooth out her map and see where she was. Her hands were still shaking with fright and cold, and the lines on the map seemed to crisscross at the wrong places. Where was the rue de Sèvres, the one she needed in order to find the rue François? Had she turned the wrong way at Nôtre Dame?

  Two dogs came sniffing around her heels. She wanted to run away from them, but knew she should stay and figure out where she was. They circled and sniffed. She told herself that they wouldn’t bite; they were just ordinary dogs like Bimberl. She looked up and saw an old man with a cane hobbling toward her.

  “Excuse me, I wonder if you could tell me where the rue de Sèvres is?” she asked in her best French. He just looked at her, frowned, motioned with his arms somewhere in the direction she had come, and hobbled on, the dogs barking and following on his heels. She sat down on a nearby bench. As the mist drew in closer, she realized that she was lost in the middle of Paris. She wanted to just sit and rest and hope for help, but she forced herself up from the bench and back in the direction of the church.

  She started to run, the tears on her cheeks mixing with the mud and the mist. Then, after blocks and blocks of darkness she spotted the Abbey of St Germain des Prés. Charlotte had said the rue de Sèvres was nearby! She saw the street sign—rue de Sèvres! She turned left and ran on, feeling new energy in her legs. She peered at each sign, hoping it would be the rue François. Maybe Charlotte had given the wrong directions. She had said fifteen blocks and Nannerl had already counted eighteen since turning onto the rue de Sèvres.

  Then the sign for the rue François rose from the mist and Nannerl wanted to shout with triumph. She turned and ran down the street, searching for Sopherl’s house. She spotted a tiny sign hidden behind a bush in front of a long, winding driveway—No. 68! Her stomach grew tight as she approached the mansion. It wasn’t like the van Eyck Palace, where her family was staying, but it had a large garden with rows of trees lining the front walk. Nannerl breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the lights that burned inside. She must hurry…in a few hours Mass would be over and she still had to walk back!

  She grabbed the large front knocker and gave three loud raps. The door finally creaked open and a thin man with a sour face stood before her. He frowned as he looked her over. Nannerl realized how ragged she must look with her face and cape all splotched with mud.

  “May I help you?” he asked in a voice that was as thin as himself.

  “I’m looking for So—I mean Frau Wenzel,” said Nannerl.

  The butler just stared at her.

  “I…I’ve met Frau Wenzel before, at her brother’s palace at Nymphenburg,” she said. “I need to see her.” Now that she had stopped running, the moisture on Nannerl’s skin turned cold and she began to shiver. The butler motioned for her to come inside.

  “Wait here,” he said and disappeared up a long flight of stairs. The front hall seemed starched and unused, like a museum. She peered around the corner to investigate the sitting room. A large clavier painted with intricate designs stood in the corner.

  She looked up at the sound of light footsteps. Sopherl was coming down the stairs, slowly, one at a time, until she stood on the bottom stair and looked at Nannerl with the strange, sad eyes that Nannerl remembered from the dinner. She noticed the tiny wrinkles around Sopherl’s eyes and mouth and saw how she always seemed to be twisting her hands. Somehow, she had expected Sopherl to make everything all right, to wave a wand and make her symphony published, to help her not be scared to say what she really thought to Papa and to make people notice her instead of Wolfi all the time. But now there was just this old woman standing before her, nervous and silent.

  “My name is Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart, well, actually most people just call me Nannerl. We met at your brother’s palace at Nymphenburg,” Nannerl whispered, afraid she would break something if she spoke any louder. “I…I’m sorry if I’ve come at such an odd hour and without an invitation…I…um…well, I ran here alone. My Mama’s at home asleep and my brother and Papa are at Mass…” Her voice began to break and she felt that any moment she would start crying again.

  Sopherl patted her on the shoulder and took her cape. “Of course I remember you. Nannerl—how could I ever forget your improvisations on that Bach sonata? I was hoping to meet you again. Follow me to the kitchen,” the older woman said. Her voice was creaky with disuse, like an old door hinge. In the kitchen, a bright fire flickered and Sopherl motioned for Nannerl to sit by it. She told the cook to bring them tea, sat down by Nannerl, and looked into the fire.

  “After that dinner…I…I kept wondering about you. And your brother—he, he said we could help each other,” Nannerl tried to explain again. “He said…he told me never to stop playing. Never. That my music reminded him of you and that I should visit you.” Nannerl’s voice died, and then the only sound was the fire and the rattle of the cook preparing the tea and the distant tick of a grandfather clock. “I’ve written a symphony,” she continued, determined to fill the silence. “A symphony. I did. It used to be huge with lots of instruments, but now I’ve decided to make it the right size to be performed. I took out the choirs. Too many violins. I kept having to change different parts, to fit the new way I was thinking about it—”

  Sopherl nodded. “Change,” she said, and rocked a bit in her chair. “Not easy, I should think, to change one’s
ideas and then do something about them.” She was silent for a while, then looked at Nannerl. “But if anyone can do it, it’s you,” she said, and her voice suddenly gained force. “Your long trill in that Bach sonata pulled me into rooms with brilliant colors and shapes I’d never seen. I knew then that you are one who is not afraid of change….” Her voice trailed off.

  “You’re right, about it not being easy,” said Nannerl, settling in her chair. She was starting to like this kitchen, the distant ticking of the clock. “I heard a flautist in the Mannheim orchestra, and had an idea and worked and worked to change the flute part, and then Charlotte heard it and thought maybe something else should change, and my friend Katherl—well, she just thinks the whole thing should be played! I wanted Johann Christian Bach to see it but he had to hurry off to the hotel and only laughed. I have it here. Do you think I could possibly show it to you? That is, only if you want…”

  “I am not accustomed to music anymore,” said Sopherl, looking down at her lap. “But I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to listen….”

  “You will then? You’ll listen to it?” Nannerl opened Papa’s carrying case and grabbed the pages of her symphony. She followed Sopherl to the sitting room, ran to the clavier, and propped up the pages. She looked over at Sopherl, standing like a statue in the doorway. Then she played what she could, finding the main melodies and filling in the rest of the parts. She was at the end of the first movement when she saw out of the corner of her eye that Sopherl had come over to stand behind her.

  Nannerl sang the violin melody of the slow second movement, wanting Sopherl to hear about Wolfi’s fever, his steady groans in the darkness. She played the flute melody in the last movement, trying to remember the sound Charlotte had made. She frowned when she came to the finale, the violin duet, because it was almost impossible to play two lines on the clavier and capture the spirit of it.

  Then a real violin played the part for her. She turned and saw Sopherl with a violin under her chin, her eyes fixed on the music, her fingers flying over the fingerboard like Wolfi’s. Sopherl played the violin! The sound was a bit squeaky at first, like Sopherl’s voice. But it grew rich and full as the symphony drew to a close.

  When they were finished, Sopherl sat down on the bench next to Nannerl and sighed. “Thank you, Nannerl,” she whispered in her soft, rusty voice. “People don’t remember the way I used to play the violin. Some might remember the clavier and my voice, but it was the violin that I loved to play. My brother and I used to play duets late into those summer nights at Nymphenburg Palace. My father didn’t mind. Of course, I never performed the violin in public, but the rest of the time, my violin was here.” She pointed to a tiny faded scar just under her chin, where the violin must have rubbed against her skin.

  “That was what you meant with your left hand, when you changed it from a fist to a violinist’s hand!” Nannerl rounded the fingers of her left hand like a violinist and held it out toward Sopherl. “At the dinner, you were answering my question! You played the violin!” Sopherl smiled and nodded.

  “But why did you stop?” asked Nannerl.

  Sopherl twisted her hands for a long time before she answered, and Nannerl was scared she would turn silent again. “My husband, Herr Wenzel, didn’t like it that I played so many instruments,” she finally said. “He got especially angry when I played the violin. Maybe he eventually forbade me to play it because I preferred to spend more time with it than with him!” Her little laugh was like bitter coffee. “Why did I ever obey him? All those years…” She shook her head. “But that day, after I closed my case for the last time, it seemed as if my own voice and laughter and everything that I loved to do was trapped inside the case with the violin…. I’ve thought about opening it again, since he died. But I don’t think I had the courage…it’s been twenty-five years since I played.” She took a sheet of Nannerl’s symphony and studied it. “But you…you and your beautiful music helped me to play and speak again.” Sopherl’s voice seemed to brighten like the tone of her violin.

  “Would you like to learn how to play?” Sopherl got up from the bench with her violin. “This will be too large for you, but I’m afraid that my smaller violin is at Nymphenburg Palace, locked up in a closet somewhere.”

  Would she like to play! Nannerl let Sopherl place the instrument on her left shoulder. “There’s a story I’ve been told so many times,” she said as Sopherl helped to curl her fingers around the bow. “When Wolfi was just little, about four, Papa and his friends were sight-reading some trios and Wolfi begged to join. ‘You don’t need to take lessons to play second violin!’ he’d said. He hadn’t had any instruction on the violin and Papa said no, but one of the players let Wolfi play with him and soon tears were running down Papa’s cheeks, he was so amazed at Wolfi.”

  “Now you’ll be able to do the same thing!” said Sopherl. Nannerl nodded and practiced moving the bow in the air. Of course, she’d sneaked Wolfi’s violin and bow a few times to try. But most of the time she’d just watched—very closely—whenever Wolfi or Papa played. She’d memorized how to hold the bow, how to work the left fingers.

  “Go ahead, draw the bow across the string quite quickly, so it won’t make the sound crunch,” instructed Sopherl. There were a few squawks at first, but after a few minutes Nannerl felt easy with the violin, as if she had always played. So this was what Wolfi had felt that time! It was as if she were going back inside that story, only this time Papa and his friends weren’t here to listen and cry and marvel in amazement.

  “That’s fine!” said Sopherl. “Here, try the second violin part from the duet in your symphony.” It was a bit tricky trying to make her fingers fall exactly where she heard the pitch, but soon she got the hang of it. Nannerl looked over at Sopherl. She would perform this at Versailles before King Louis XV on Christmas Day! All she needed was somehow to get the Kerpens to help! But what would Papa and everybody else say? She tried not to think of that as she finished the duet part and put the violin down.

  “That was fine, Nannerl,” said Sopherl. “You just need to practice a little every day. But tell me, how did you ever find me? You said my brother gave you the address, but the directions…”

  “It was the Kerpen family, from Coblenz. Charlotte said that you used to be neighbors.”

  “The Kerpens! Do you know that they’re here in Paris now?” asked Sopherl. “They’re staying at a hotel because their poor old grandmother is too weak and tired to have the whole clan at her house.”

  Nannerl nodded. “The instruments they play just about match the ones in my symphony!” She squeezed her hands in excitement. “They can help me perform my symphony at Versailles on Christmas Day…and maybe you can play the first violin part in the duet at the end!”

  “A splendid idea!” said Sopherl. “Except the part about me playing.” She lifted the violin, brushed some rosin dust off the fingerboard, and then put it down again. “Franz Kerpen can play,” she said. “He’s very gifted and I’m too old to play for people. I’ll play my violin at home now, thanks to you—but not for the king and all the musicians of Paris!”

  Nannerl wanted Sopherl to play, but she saw from the taut line of Sopherl’s mouth that it was useless to beg. “Do you really think I could ask the Kerpen family to play? I remember, Charlotte said it was a family tradition for them to attend the Christmas Day concert at Versailles. But how can I plan it?”

  “I’ll make sure they get the message to bring their instruments to Versailles and help you! I can deliver it myself to their hotel. It will be good for me to get out.”

  “Can you tell them what instruments I need?”

  “Here—why don’t you write them a message and then list the instruments.” Sopherl handed her a quill pen and paper and Nannerl sat down and began to write.

  Dear Kerpen Family,

  My name is Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart and I met you in September at your home in Coblenz. I
have written a symphony and would like to perform it at Versailles on Christmas Day. Could you please bring your instruments? It shouldn’t be too difficult to sight-read. I would be very grateful if you could help me perform my work. With many thanks,

  Yours truly,

  Maria Anna Walburga

  Ignatia Mozart (Nannerl)

  Nannerl listed the instruments. Maybe the Baron could play the flute, if he’d brought it with him to Paris. But who could play the organ? Well, she’d think about that later.

  She handed the message to Sopherl. “They’ll do it,” Sopherl said. “This is a wonderful symphony. It deserves to be heard. I wish you much luck, my friend.” She kissed Nannerl on the forehead.

  Suddenly Nannerl remembered what time it was. What if Mass were finished and Papa had come home and found her bed empty! “Thank you so much for everything,” she said. “But now I really must be going. You see, I left the house without anyone knowing—”

  “Of course, poor child. Where did you come from?”

  “The van Eyck Palace. You see, the Countess is a friend of Mama and Papa’s, from Salzburg—”

  “You’ll catch a deathly chill before you play one note of your symphony if you walk back tonight. And it’s almost eleven o’clock! Here, I’ll get my coachman to hitch up the horses and take you home!”

  Nannerl gathered the pages of her symphony and packed them in Papa’s case. Then she sat in a chair to wait, her heart pounding hard. She couldn’t stop planning the performance of her symphony.

  Sopherl returned with a fur muff and some cookies. “Here. You must be starved. The driver is waiting in the front with the carriage.”

  “Thank you again,” said Nannerl, waving good-bye to Sopherl as she walked into the chill mist. “Will you come to hear my symphony, even if you don’t play?”