Maria Caecilia Weber maneuvered her full skirts through the crowded room, refilling the coffee cups. She glanced briefly at the man with little white hands who played with such concentrated intimacy, noting that when a spoon she carried clattered to the floor, his shoulders stiffened slightly, and he did not lower them again for a few minutes.
The music ended as abruptly as it had begun, and both Alfonso and Heinemann rose to their feet clapping firmly. The young man’s face was still absorbed, as if he barely noticed the small parlor with its shadowy gathering. He said in his light tenor voice, “A fine instrument, Herr Weber. It reminds me of one I knew in London when I was there years ago as a boy. The Tschudi clavier. My sister and I played a duet on it; it had a remarkable mechanism for color and volume.”
“Sir, I thank you,” replied Fridolin, rubbing his hands. “If an instrument could have a soul, mine does. Yes, yes, whatever you all may say, we know it. We all know it. You’re a gifted player! With what piece have you favored us? One of your own, I trust?”
Mozart’s large eyes were now almost playful, and he kept a few fingers on the raised clavier lid as if unwilling to leave it. “The last movement of a sonata I wrote in Munich a few years back. I’ve some themes for another sonata for the daughter of Herr Cannabich, your orchestral director here. Though young, she’s gifted.”
“But you know Cannabich? We all play with him from time to time,” Fridolin said, while Alfonso poured another glass of wine and hooted loudly. Now by a sudden waver of candlelight Fridolin could see that the young man’s face was faintly scarred with smallpox, old marks likely from childhood. Fridolin glanced at Frau Mozart’s stolid expression, thinking how she must have worried and suffered! It was God’s mercy, he thought, that his own lovely girls had not been afflicted.
He cried, “Another cup of coffee, come!”
The last drop of coffee was sipped; the last piece of chamber music ended. Then the two older sisters, Josefa and Aloysia, wound their arms about each other’s waist and began a duet. Both voices were very high, but Josefa’s had darker tones. From the corner the two younger girls watched the rise and fall of their sisters’ full breasts, heard the quick fioritura, sighed at the higher notes that rang round and round the little room.
Heinemann shook his head with pleasure. “In such parlors all over Europe, young girls are singing,” he said. “It’s an art every cultivated woman learns, yet none I believe can do so with more grace than your daughters, dear Weber.”
“Sir, I thank you,” replied Weber in a low voice.
The chiming of a clock some streets away announced that the hour of eleven had come. The guests thanked their host several times and descended; Fridolin Weber, easily made gay with a little wine, held the stub of the candle for them. “Good night, good night!” he called as they went forth onto the streets of Mannheim.
Husband and wife cleared away the glasses and retreated, yawning, to their bedchamber, which was furnished with a large iron bedstead, some trunks, a wardrobe, and a dark portrait of Christ as a child. Maria Caecilia Weber sank down on the mattress edge, which sagged beneath her; she had already removed her corset and pulled on her wool sleeping gown. She was now winding her hair in rags, her swollen fingers deftly dipping each rag first in the warm, milky broth of a cracked cup. “You and your old friends,” she muttered. “Alfonso never returns the invitations; we never eat at his expense.”
“What does that matter?” replied Fridolin as he undressed. The last small candle flickered in the mirror, revealing his thin legs as he sighed a little to pull off his stockings.
“As far as the young man and his mother are concerned, they haven’t any money, that’s clear. ‘What else does he compose?’ I asked the good woman, and she puffed out her bosom and murmured, ‘Everything!’—as if we should welcome another composer when there are two to be found under every market stall. Did you notice how much cake and wine they consumed, as if they made their dinner from it? Can’t you find any better people to invite? Is this how you look out for the future of your poor girls? What will happen to them? How will they find husbands without dowries? Do you ever plan for the future? How can you provide for four girls on the salary of a music copyist and second tenor in the chapel choir?” Having finished her hair, she flopped heavily into a reclining position on the feather mattress that had been part of her own dowry long ago.
“Soft, soft,” her husband said. “You see, pigeon, it’s not all that bad; what does it matter if we’re poor? We have music and friendship. And they sing beautifully.”
“What will that gain them?” came her voice from the pillow. She raised her head and looked at her husband intensely. “Fridolin, listen to me. You know what happened to my own two sisters, my beautiful sisters! Little Gretchen. You remember the story.”
“I can’t forget it; it means so much to you.”
“Youth doesn’t last forever; they must understand it. And the older two are certainly of an age to be betrothed.”
“Yes, yes, my love,” he said, pulling on his nightcap and stretching out next to her. “That’s wise and true. He plays well, that young man; I believe he has plans for an opera.”
Maria Caecilia had fallen silent, only vaguely aware of her husband’s callused fingertips on her breast and his yawns. She thought of the beauty of her four daughters as they stood by candlelight in the parlor. “Fridolin,” she whispered. “They aren’t ordinary girls; there is nothing ordinary about them. I have my plans for them. I have my plans.”
But her husband was asleep.
In the Webers’ apartment on the fifth story of the old stone house in Mannheim, there were, other than the tiny parlor and dining room, a kitchen and two sleeping chambers, each also small. In the second stood two more iron bed stands with torn hangings, each narrow enough for one girl yet, out of necessity, sleeping two. A print of Caecilia, the patron saint of music, eyes raised to heaven and delicately playing a viola, was hung on one wall, while chemises and petticoats dangled everywhere from hooks. To get to the door of the room, you had to climb over one of the beds.
Dawn was coming, creeping through the window over the four lovely girls, still in dreams, none yet twenty, half naked: nightdresses fallen from plump, clear shoulders, pulled up high on downy thighs. The warm scent of perspiration, of old gowns, of sensuality blossoming like a garden. Four girls trying to be beautiful on a few yards of good cloth, two pendants from their late, mourned grandmother, and an insufficient number of much mended white hose.
With the first light the eldest, Josefa, sat up, her brown hair in tangled curls. She climbed over Aloysia, making the bed groan with her plumpness, her bare thighs as soft as warm bread beneath her old nightdress, and then climbed even less carefully over the feet of the smaller girls. Six o’clock by the church clock, and they had not gone to bed until one. She stretched to her full height, which made her head nearly touch the sloping ceiling, arching back her full shoulders. Oh, why was it her turn to begin the day? The first clavier pupil came at seven, and father must have his coffee and an ironed shirt.
In the kitchen she coaxed a fire and put the heavy iron on the grate to heat. Outside the small window she could see the milk wagon. Little Sophie was to run down and make sure they had fresh milk for the day; if Sophie didn’t, Josefa wouldn’t for certain. Nothing woke her Sophie, the sloth. Well, they would have dry bread and no milk; it was not her concern. And it was the turn of Aloysia, who thought herself above such things, to trudge down to the common cistern to empty the chamber pots for the refuse collector.
Beyond the church spires, the sky was growing light.
Josefa spat on the iron to test its readiness, sprinkled the shirt with water from a bowl, and began to iron fiercely, the muscles in her firm arm working. What a life, she thought. Always having to pretend you have money when you don’t; isn’t that the way it is? How to bring them from their precarious existence where they were always late with the rent? It had concerned her the past few years since
she had begun to understand that none of her darling father’s musical endeavors had yet lifted them from the edge of poverty.
She pressed the iron’s nose firmly into the rough linen of the sleeve where it was set into the body, beginning to hum an aria from one of Piccinni’s popular operas, and then to sing more fully, her rich tones ringing through the small rooms.
From the half-open door of the bedroom came Aloysia’s more silvery voice. “Oh shut up, shut up, shut up. I need sleep.”
“You need sleep! You took up more than half of the bed last night; you always do. You’re always squeezing me out, and this morning there wasn’t any room, and I couldn’t move you, you lump, you cow.”
“No decent person should have to sleep with you, Josefa, the way you toss and turn and shout things in your dreams! I want a bed of my own.”
“Well, you’ll never have one. You’ll be married soon enough to some brute who’ll never let you sleep.”
Josefa put down the iron and ran to the bedroom door, where now both Aloysia and Constanze had raised their heads from their pillows, and were looking bewildered at their angry eldest sister. Sitting up, arms half covering her naked little breast where her gown had slipped away, the delicate Aloysia declared, “I’d rather sleep with Constanze; let’s change. She’ll come to me; you sleep with Sophie.”
The iron sizzled, and Josefa rushed back, but it was only the cloth of the board. She began to iron again while Aloysia entered the kitchen and opened the cupboard for bread, her feet bare and her hair tumbled down her back. By this time only Sophie was still in bed, for she was seldom disturbed by anything.
Aloysia began to grind the coffee beans.
“I know something you don‘t,” she said airily. “We’re singing this evening. Father told me last night after the guests left. We’re singing at the Countess’s, two duets and then a solo each. Constanze must let me have her lace.”
“Are you sure we’re engaged to sing?” asked Josefa, at once practical. “How much will they pay us?”
“The saints alone know. If they think you’re pretty, maybe they’ll give extra. Don’t let any of the men feel you. Mama says they will try for sure in those places, so you must be careful, for you don’t want to be damaged.”
The remainder of the household began to stir. Fridolin came out with moderately hairy legs showing under his shirt and said he was so weary he could die. The last up was Maria Caecilia, the bed creaking as she rose to her hasty breakfast. At seven the pupil, an impoverished lawyer in a threadbare coat, arrived, and as the sound of his excruciating mistakes echoed through the fifth-story rooms, the four sisters disappeared to their bedchamber to discuss what the eldest two could wear that night.
Somewhat before the hour of nine, fourteen-year-old Constanze, having lent her lace and pearl pin, leaned out the parlor window to watch her father and older sisters rattle down the dark street in a hired carriage. The excitement rose from the dust of the wheels and floated up and through her. It was her sisters’ third time to sing before good Mannheim society; on the last occasion a kind butler had sent them home with napkins full of sweet cakes and oranges, and Aloysia and Josefa had sat up by candlelight until past two describing the chandeliers, the livery of footmen, the rich wide gowns of the women, and all the faces staring stupidly at them.
Constanze looked about the room, which smelled of burned candles.
Papa had given them all lessons. As early as she could recall, he had lined them up by the clavier according to age, his sharp, stubbly chin nodding, the worn white lacing of his shirt trembling, his fragile veined left hand conducting the air while his right hand played the ivory keys, which were tuned regularly and almost always in perfect pitch. They sang in Italian, the language in which almost all fashionable songs were written. When Fridolin was drunk, however, he sang bawdy songs in German, gathered her squealing to his lap, and told her she was his cabbage, his dumpling.
She remembered standing there all little and chubby, barely reaching the clavier, while her two older sisters, still little girls themselves, pushed and shoved each other under the portrait of the Virgin and Child near high dusty windows that overlooked the street. Sophie was then only a mewling infant; but Josefa had put forth her voice boldly, and Aloysia sang like a lark. Aloysia never had to work at singing, whereas Constanze always struggled. Her notes came tentatively as she gazed from under her lashes at her beloved Papa. She didn’t want to sing; she wanted to please him.
Recently, Josefa and Aloysia had sung without her.
Something rustled, and she heard bare feet on the squeaking floorboards. Turning, she could see Sophie, who at nearly twelve was still quite shapeless, heading toward her across the room past the many chairs and piles of music. The edges of the girl’s nose were red, and her eyes watery, but her face bore the same freckled, unperturbed look she had worn since the age of two. Even now as always Constanze could hear the homey click of Sophie’s wood rosary beads, which the girl kept in her pocket. Sophie was devout. She had at least ten saints to whom she lisped prayers in a litany at bedtime, lulling the others to sleep; she had the hierarchy of saints and angels and cherubim in her head, and could draw you a picture (the figures blurred and clumsy) on the back of a discarded sheet of music of the throne of God if you wanted to know exactly what it looked like.
She was also nearsighted; yesterday, returning from the candle and soap shop, she had mistook a tall nun for a priest, curtseying and murmuring, “Good day, Father,” to the suppressed laughter of her three older sisters. Plans to purchase her spectacles had been discussed.
“Are you waiting up?” she whispered to Constanze. “The bed’s cold without you.” She slid her arm around her sister. “I’m glad I don’t have to go sing; I sound like a sick frog. But you don’t mind not going, Stanzi?”
“No, I don’t like strange people staring at me.”
They huddled closer, peering down at the dark street, Sophie rubbing her bare feet against each other for warmth, for the fire had long gone out.
Sophie said, “It’s so cold for October! I heard Papa say it’s going to be a snowy winter; I love snow falling. It makes me feel safe to be here when it falls. The butcher told Aloysia we’d have our first snow long before Christmas.”
“He’s always telling her things as he wraps the sausages. He can’t keep his eyes from her. I think I saw her reading a note this morning on the scrap paper; maybe it was from him.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t a love note,” said Sophie. “Perhaps it was a list of the dresses she’d like; she’s always making those. She looks in shop windows and writes them down.”
“No, I’m certain it was a love note, but we don’t have to worry. Aly won’t marry a butcher: never. She just likes to flirt.” Constanze peered out into the night at a single horse trotting by. “You know Mama doesn’t want us to marry anyone in trade and live a plain life, as she puts it, with only one good dress for church and that not trimmed. She wants us to marry as high as we can, or at least she hopes Aly will. She hopes she’ll marry someone who is at least asked to dine in the Elector’s palace, maybe even a baron. I heard her and Father in the kitchen earlier today, speaking about it the way they do. She says such a marriage could be made even if the girl has no dowry, if she has charm and beauty.”
Sophie propped her elbows on the windowsill, her face serious. “Yes, and she was also quarreling with Papa earlier about Aloysia and Josefa’s going out to sing at all. She says it cheapens a woman to sing in public. You know, of course, what Papa answered! Serious and sad, looking off as he does when he’s crossing her. He said that it’s only until our fortunes increase, that they are safe as holy sisters and no man dares come within ten feet of them!”
Constanze stroked the long window draperies reflectively. As long as she could remember, she had lived in a house full of girls who loved to chatter and bicker. Her mother held opinions about everything, whether she knew that subject or not; and her father’s philosophical friends weekly set
tled the world’s problems over a few bottles of wine, shouting and waving their hands. In the midst of all this she seldom offered an opinion but to Sophie, who had been placed in her arms smelling of milk when she was but a day old, and to whom, even then, she told everything.
Now they snuggled close, rubbing their feet together. Constanze knew every angle of Sophie’s little body, having slept with her since the age of five. They shared secrets; she never told her mother about the mangy neighborhood cats and dogs Sophie fed, hiding food in her apron and slipping down the stairs.
Staring out into the street, along which only an old sentry walked, swinging his lantern, she said thoughtfully, “I suppose Aloysia might end up marrying a prince; she’s so beautiful. Even Uncle Thorwart, who’s been in and out of the best houses, says it.”
“Beauty’s a temporal gift,” replied Sophie, “whereas the real treasures are of the soul.”
“Beauty’s more useful in the world. I wish I had it, and I know Josefa does.”
“Josefa’s soul is beautiful.” Sophie raised her freckled face, her nearsighted expression making her look as if she had a clear insight into life. An old soul, her paternal grandmother had once called her.
Constanze sighed. “You’re right, but our Josy stands inches over almost every man, and she doesn’t keep quiet; she blurts things out. She loves books, not people, and she breaks all the nice things she has. The fan she holds when she sings tonight will be in splinters because she’ll twist it and twist it during the hard parts of the songs. I hope not, because Cousin Alfonso’s wife gave it to Aloysia last New Year’s. There will be a fight again, and they’ll be at each other’s throats. I hate that, and it kills Papa.”
Marrying Mozart Page 2