Marrying Mozart

by Stephanie Cowell

  Josefa’s reply was sudden and severe. “Oh, there you go with your fantasies and great plans!” she said. “Tomorrow none of them will take down the family chamber pots and start the fire in the cold, but we will.” Her deep brown eyes darkened. She put one hand on her father’s arm, as if to comfort him, to say none of these wants were his fault. She sank back in the carriage shadows, drawing her cloak over her dress.

  But Weber cried cheerfully, “There, there, who can say what tomorrow may bring? I repeat the maxim often; my daughters hear it daily, to their boredom! Here’s your street, Herr Mozart. Yes, tomorrow, we would much enjoy the pleasure of your company. May I expect you at seven? Very good, very good.”

  The young composer climbed from the carriage and heard their voices as they drove away, “Good night, Mozart, good night, dear Mozart,” and then their laughter.

  Clocks striking over the city, rich, sonorous, the echo drifting over the houses, the roofs, the church spires. The good priests turned over on thick linen sheets in their beds; the merchants pulled their sleeping caps down over their ears. Musicians were snoring lightly: singers and flautists embraced their feather pillows. Outside the modest provincial theater the hand-lettered posters announcing the new performances were slightly stained with wet snow. The street cobbles smelled of horse dung, the alleys of sewage and old cooking. Later, before dawn, the maids would rise and light the fires and prepare the strong coffee and hot chocolate, then run into the street for fresh, warm bread from the baker’s boy. But now it was late, and the clocks each struck at a slightly different time, so that midnight in one street arrived some minutes before midnight several streets away.

  Mozart walked alone after the carriage had rolled away, a little tipsy, whistling to himself. He opened the door of the house and took off his shoes, mounted the creaking steps, unlocked the upper door, and passed into his ugly garret room, which served as parlor, dressing room, and bedchamber. There, waiting for him, was his narrow bed. The room was very cold, but at least he could feel the small fire from where his mother slept, paid for with money from home on the strength of what the flute commission and other work would bring. He took off his wig and set it on the table. He also took out the watch, grimacing slightly. He might sell it in another city, not here. Yes, he would sell it in a faraway city, where the prince’s valet would never come across it hanging in a jeweler’s window at a reduced price.

  “Wolfgang, is that you?” came his mother’s sleepy voice from the other room; she coughed once or twice. “Why did you come so late?”

  “They made me wait forever before they called me in to play. Are you better?” he asked, joining her in her room.

  “My chest aches; the landlady brought me a mustard plaster and a hot stone wrapped in flannel for under my feet. The fire’s such a comfort. But you have a clavier lesson for Mademoiselle Cannabich in the morning. Oh, what a shame they made you wait so long. Did you have the opportunity of speaking to His Highness about composing a new opera for Mannheim?”

  “There was no time; I’ll have to find another opportunity.”

  “Your father wrote that your old friend Padre Martini from Italy sends you his love and prayers; he wishes you’d write and tell him how you’re getting on.”

  Mozart listened somewhat anxiously to her coughing, and then heated some wine on her low fire and sat on her bed as she drank it, stroking her hand. A few more age spots had appeared there since last he had looked. After a time she fell asleep, and he kissed her cheek, then returned to his own room.

  There he lay on his bed in only his shirt, his arm beneath his head, thinking of the rolling ride home in the carriage, and the two girls’ hair powder, which flecked onto their dark cloaks. He thought of Josefa’s bitten nails and how she had retreated to the shadows of the carriage quite suddenly, and of Aloysia’s eyes as she spoke of Venice.

  Two of the clock. A song for soprano and keyboard had almost finished itself in his head. When dawn came into the room high above the houses, he would write it down from memory, and sign it W A. Mozart, with his usual flourish. It was yet many hours before seven in the evening when he was expected at the Webers.

  The bottles of wine had arrived from the vintner by late Thursday afternoon; the scent of apple cake was rising from the kitchen; and the hour was just a little past six, which meant the guests would not climb the five flights of steep stairs for another hour. Aloysia Weber had shut herself in the narrow chamber that she shared with her three sisters, its two beds chastely hidden behind cheap white cotton hangings, its wardrobe, its dozens of hooks full of dresses, its scattered shoes, and its large jewelry box whose contents were mostly imitation. When Sophie was six years old, she had emptied the box to make it into a house for her pet white mice. (“They have feelings, too, you know. How would you like to live in a nasty hole in the wall?”) It had been restored, though it was never quite the same; it now always held a strange scent, and one corner of the dark velvet lining had been nibbled.

  Aloysia had just finished unwinding the rags from her hair, and one never knew just how they would hang until that was done. Would the thick curls at the back of the neck be crooked? No, they were perfect, much better than last night. But she had been lovely enough then; her father and others had said it. “Such a delicious girl,” she could hear one of the men murmuring after she had concluded her aria at the palace. The way one or two of them looked at her! Not that they interested her very much, but they were, as her mother said, possibilities, their names to be added to a list in a little book, discussed over many hours of coffee. It was a leather-bound book tooled in flowers that her mother kept hidden in secret places (lastly behind the flour canister), which none of them had ever been allowed to look in or touch. Last night, however, Aloysia had been given permission for the first time to come to the kitchen and list a few men who had heard her sing. Most she could only describe; she did not exactly know their names. She also did not know if they were already married.

  Some years ago, when Josefa had first started to have a shape beneath her chemise, her mother had gathered her two older daughters together and had begun to discuss the subject of marriage with them. To be an old maid was a terrible thing: no fate could be worse than that. To be unchosen was horrid! Was not even death preferable? They could not begin, their mother said, to think of their futures too soon. Now and then a girl trained to music could eke out a precarious existence. The occasional woman wrote for her bread, or was a clever dressmaker, but even with these things her true goal was to marry as well as she could. Aloysia remembered that evening in the kitchen, both girls sitting close to their mother, listening to her every word.

  At first the names of suitors were modest prospects: printers, a furniture upholsterer with a small workshop, a schoolmaster. Then two years later Frau Caecilia Weber had looked at her newly blooming second child and, smacking her lips gently, observed, “An old school friend of mine has a daughter without dowry who has just married a Count, and she is not nearly as beautiful as you. Oh no, my sweet, not nearly as lovely. If such a blessing could occur, you could have all the pretty things you deserve, my Aloysia, my own little flea.” That was the day everything changed. It was a spring day, and she had run up the steps with her nose buried in sprigs of linden blossoms. She could hear her mother’s voice. “I know how you long for fine things, my Aloysia.”

  Today on her way back from delivering a pile of copied music, she stood for a long time in front of a French dressmaker’s shop window, where she could make out, behind the small panes, a length of pale pink brocade. Pressing her forehead against the cold glass, Aloysia almost felt her soul leave her body and wind itself in the cloth. She so wanted first a dress from that cloth, and then another in milkmaid style made of the finest white muslin, with a wide, pale pink silk sash that would tie around her waist and bow so extravagantly at the small of her back that the ends would flutter down the skirt. She had seen a drawing of such a dress worn in the court of France.

  “
Aloysia, are you coming? Have you polished the candle sconces? It is Thursday, you know!”

  Why must the world stop for Thursdays? Must they all be rallied weekly to this running about so, tidying the parlor, finding enough candles, always making sacrifices when no one in particular ever came, whereas last night at the Elector’s palace there had been the women with little dark beauty marks shaped like stars or moons. How could Josefa laugh at it? They had fought about it this morning while studying a new duet. And didn’t it matter to Josefa that she was nineteen and not yet betrothed? Just like the younger ones, who never gave it a thought.

  “Aloysia!” called her sisters and mother.

  At least she could wear her pink silk hose, embroidered at the ankle with small scarlet flowers, which her father had bought her the first time she sang in public. If by chance her skirt pulled up an inch or so above her shoes, Leutgeb would notice. The blustering horn player was in love with her, and, though his name had never been mentioned by her mother, she found that when he looked at her, her body grew warm all over.

  But now, rummaging through boxes and under the bed, she could not find the embroidered hose. Dropping to her knees, she searched the bottom of the wardrobe, hurling things out. “Someone borrowed them, likely,” she muttered. “Will I ever have anything not borrowed, remade, or lent?”

  Blessed saints, could it be true? There, stuffed under the shoes, wrapped in canvas, was the fan cousin Alfonso’s wife had given her, which Josefa had begged to borrow again last night, because she said she could not sing without a fan. Obviously, after they had finished singing, Josefa had hidden it somewhere because it was broken. From under it, Aloysia pulled out the hose with the flowers, splattered with street muck.

  She leapt up in her shift and petticoat and rushed into the hall where she collided with Josefa, who was carrying table draping. “You farmer’s daughter—you ruined it, you mauled it, look!” She opened the fan with its silk portrait of Venice, gesturing at the few cracked slats. “You ruin everything, everything! There’s a split in the Grand Canal. I don’t know who brought you into this family, Josefa Weber, what ugly gypsy brought you in his cart and sold you for two kreuzers, but you’re here to ruin my life, and I wish to the Blessed Virgin we could sell you back again.”

  “I never broke the fan; you stuffed it away yourself,” cried Josefa, throwing down the linen. “You hid it under the shoes so you wouldn’t have to share it anymore, and that broke it. What’s a fan supposed to do under twenty shoes?”

  Aloysia slapped her, and Josefa took her by the hair and pulled her a few feet down the hall. The harder Aloysia tried to shake her off, the more her elder sister continued to drag her toward the parlor by the curls. Aloysia shrieked, her piercing, light voice ringing from room to room, and was about to dig her teeth into her sister’s arm when their father, half shaven, his bare chest dusted with gray hair, rushed toward them shouting, “Josy, let go!”

  Thrown off suddenly, Aloysia stumbled against a parlor chair and a pile of music. “You did take it; you did!” she sobbed. “And now you made me scream, and I’ve hurt my voice, you ugly bitch. You can’t wait for me to hurt my voice, can you?” Her hands flew to her ragged hair and aching head, and tears spilled from her blue eyes. Her voice was shaking. “And you’ve ruined the curl. I won’t come out of our room tonight; that’s it. I have no voice; it’s gone, it’s gone.”

  Sophie, who had heard the shouting from the kitchen, bolted out like a weed driven by wind; seeing her father already held the girls apart, she retrieved the fan from under the table. “Oh, Aly,” she murmured, stammering a little as she did when there was a quarrel, “look, it’s only two slats that need replacing. Why must you go into such passions for things that can be mended, things that are inconsequential?” She fished for her wrinkled handkerchief and wiped Aloysia’s face.

  Aloysia sobbed, “There’s a tiny tear in the silk; it goes all the way from the canal to the base of San Marco.”

  “I’ll take it to the second floor to Hoffman; he repairs fans and umbrellas. He’ll do us a favor since I found his lost dog. Don’t cry. Hush, hush, darling,” pleaded Sophie, just as Constanze also rushed from the kitchen holding her father’s ironed shirt like a banner, its arms floating behind.

  “Girls!” she commanded. “Mama says you must all be quiet or she’ll come with her wooden spoon and then the cakes will never be finished! Look at the mantel clock; it’s nearly seven, and people will be arriving in ten minutes. Not one of us is dressed. Papa, here’s your shirt. You have soap on your nose. What will people think of us? It will be all over Mannheim.”

  But Aloysia stood stubbornly by the chair. “The fan isn’t inconsequential ,” she sobbed, the balled handkerchief in her hand. “It’s inconsequential to all of you because you don’t care. Some of us might care, some of us might want to be at our best. Mon Dieu, c’est terrible! And the stockings are filthy; Stanzi, you promised to wash them after I wore them last time when I gave you ten kreuzers of my singing money. None of you care about me, and I haven’t any hose. I couldn’t find any.”

  “There’s some in the kitchen. Be still: Mama says.”

  “Oh, her spoon, of course!” Aloysia cried. “Does she think we are children to threaten with a spoon? I earned fifteen silver florins last night and pay for the bread on the table, and she thinks I’m no more than a child!” And she rushed off without a glance at Josefa, who, with an angry shrug, marched off to retrieve the table linen from the hall floor.

  Now alone for the moment, Sophie stood by the window, untying her apron and looking down at the approaching evening. Her heart still beat fast from the quarrel. Few carriages passed. Squinting hard, she saw the shapes of what looked like two men walking toward the street door of their house; it was all she could make out with her nearsightedness, but when they opened the front door below, she cried, “Someone’s come early; Stanzi, help me!”

  From the kitchen her mother called out threats, prayers, and directions. The gingerbread was not ready. Constanze hurried out with her dress half fastened, her fingers lacing as fast as they could, and began to light the candles. Aloysia emerged fully dressed. I have never belonged in this family, she thought severely, suppressing her last sob.

  Still, she felt simultaneously the old pride that had brought them all through much. They were the daughters of the musician Fridolin Weber, from a family of Webers. It was Thursday, and, as her father once told her, tickling her and rubbing his unshaven face against hers, on this night in this house, no one is unhappy. So she moved closer to her sisters, and they all stood as one, hands touching, smelling of clean brushed clothes perfumed with lavender, hair drawn plainly back for two younger girls, still curled for Aloysia, and pushed under a cap for Josefa, who had stayed too late at the book shop and had not had time to fuss.

  Constanze in her plain dark dress looked at the door.

  Sophie unlatched it.

  Leutgeb strode forward to kiss the hands of the girls; by his side was the smaller Mozart, large, kind eyes looking about at all of them. In his bass voice, Leutgeb boomed, “We’re too early, but perhaps we’ll be forgiven when you see the nice cakes and wine we have for you.”

  Sophie rushed forward to look at the basket placed on the table. “Oh, chocolate cake with cherries,” she cried, jumping up and down a little. “And sweet wine ... Father loves sweet wine.” Her freckled face brimmed with gratitude as she squinted at both musicians.

  From her parents’ bedchamber, she heard her father curse in the name of Saint Elizabeth as he dropped something on the floor. He would bend, groaning, to pick it up, his back curving. Her mother was still in the kitchen banging pots, wiping off dishes.

  Mozart held a narrow paper portfolio in both his arms. “I’ve brought something as well,” he said.

  “What, more cakes?” asked Sophie.

  “No, not cakes. A challenge. I am come to set a challenge for Mademoiselle Aloysia.”

  “What? What?” cried the girls all at
once, clamoring about him, but he shook his head. Suddenly he was not shy at all; instead, his face was full of mischief. “But you’ll have to wait a time until all the guests come.”

  Within the half hour the room was crowded, a pupil of their father’s had arrived, and a church musician, then a few members of a horn band, followed by dear Heinemann and Alfonso with violin and cello, as always, by their sides. The younger girls ran back to find extra wineglasses and plates, and the cake was set among the music, the glazed cherries nestled among the chocolate thick as fine velvet. Sophie gazed at all with relief as the guests consumed the cake and her father grew visibly merrier. And at last there was their parents’ oldest friend, honest Uncle Thorwart, whom they had known from childhood; this heavy man who panted from the stairs winked at them. He had brought from the best chocolatier in town a painted wood box of chocolates, likely filled with sweet nuts, drops of blackberry liqueur, and marzipan, whose sugared-almond taste lingered for hours on the tongue. It was a generous box of at least four layers. If the guests mostly addressed themselves to their mother’s gingerbread with cream and the several additional bottles of wine that remained, there would be enough chocolate to enjoy in secret later on.

  Thorwart, meticulously dressed, placed his ringed hand over his heart. “Those stairs! My breath! Girls, come kiss your old uncle.”

  The room’s configuration changed: chairs were rearranged, people moved about. Mozart had taken his place at the clavier and drew several pages of music from his portfolio. Fridolin demanded quiet, and the parlor became so still that the only sounds were the crackling fire in the fireplace and the rousing November wind outside the window.