The door was unlocked, and when he pushed it open, he saw Sophie at the table, looking thin and pale. The room was strange to him. It was not the one he had known in Mannheim, but here was the clavier, which he so admired, and the music, and the youngest of the Weber girls.
She turned. “Oh, Mozart,” she gasped, balling her handkerchief in her hands. “Oh, it’s you, it’s you!” She leapt up and then hesitated, holding on to the edge of the desk. But she could not restrain herself for long; she ran across the room and jumped into his arms.
“Sophie,” he said.
She clung to him, her too-large gray frock showing evidence that a moth had had its way. There was an ink spot on her nose where she had rubbed it. “But what are you doing here?” she said, wiping more ink on her face. “We thought you were in Paris. You didn’t send word you were coming. Let me call Aloysia. You’ll want to see her right away. How many days was the journey? Was it awful? You must be hungry and thirsty. Are you staying in Munich? She’ll be so glad. Why don’t you answer me? Do hug me. You make me miss Father, and that makes me cry. What are you doing here? Not that I’m not very glad.”
Because he could not trust his voice, he only held her close, looking over the wild loose bits of her hair to the doorway, through which he heard voices and then footsteps. With a blur of dark dresses, the other three sisters rushed into the room. They were all about him; he felt their warmth and sweetness.
And there was his Aloysia, his beautiful Aloysia.
They pressed against him, hands on his sleeves and coat, stroking his arm. It was Josefa who took over her late father’s role as host. Lowering her voice, she said, “Oh, Mozart, welcome! We’re so glad you’ve come. But you look very tired. The journey must have exhausted you; they say it’s ten days at least. I’m not certain we have wine, but I can make coffee. But dear saints, are you ill?”
He lifted his gaze from the recollected worn spot on the rug to the blur of their faces. “I’m not sick, no,” he said, “but I have news as dark as yours. My own beloved mother fell ill when we were in Paris; the physicians could do nothing, and she passed from the earth. My journey was long; I couldn’t wait to come here to those who care for me. I’ve lost her; I’ve lost her.”
He stared ahead, his shapely mouth fixed. He saw his mother lying in death, the nose now very sharp, the waxen long hands clasped about her rosary. He saw the emptiness of their rooms after his return from the graveyard, how the floor had creaked as he walked across it. She who had nursed him, and fretted for him, and waited for him to come home was gone; he would not see her again in this world. And what assurance had he been able to give her in her last hours that he would do better, he who was now left in life for better or worse; what assurance had he been able to provide of how deeply he had loved her?
The sisters drew closer, bringing him back to the present; they murmured, “Mozart, Mozart,” slipping their arms about him, but he did not move. Someone stroked his cheek, prickly with pale brown stubble. They were all one to him in that moment, but he couldn’t answer them. Words were impossible; only music might speak, and there was no music now.
He looked down and saw that Sophie’s fingers had moved within his. “They’re both in heaven,” she said, raising her pointed face to his. “Your mother and our father. They’re angels.”
“Yes,” echoed Constanze. “They’re angels.”
He burst out, looking from one to another of them, “Your good father! I couldn’t believe the letter when I received it; I can’t believe he’s not here. I still remember saying good-bye to him that cold morning last winter. ‘Soon we’ll drink wine again, Mozart!’ he said. He insisted I borrow his brown music portfolio. But your poor mother! How does she do?”
Constanze replied, “She stays in her room a great deal and weeps. Maybe she’ll come out for you.” The four sisters looked at one another, and then Sophie ran down the hall. After a time her bedchamber door opened, and they could hear shuffling. Frau Weber emerged, holding on to the wall. Mozart was weeping himself now, and he embraced her fiercely.
He looked over Frau Weber’s cap to Josefa, who stood stiffly, as if she were the sentinel of the house. Her face was pale and severe; her weight had dropped, her laced dress loose. She slipped from the room and returned shortly with a tray containing coffeepot, cups, cake plates, forks, and cake. There was already something of the spinster about her. Mozart remembered how when Aloysia had first sung his song the year before, Josefa had escaped to the hall and remained there a long time.
“Mozart, come have cake!”
They ate until the plates held only small crumbs, and their words fell away. Then, quietly, three of the sisters and their mother rose and retired from the room, bearing the coffeepot, the plates, and the forks, and letting fall the heavy curtains that pulled over the doors to keep drafts away, leaving Mozart and Aloysia alone.
The curtain had not yet fallen completely when he leapt at her, kissing her wrist, then up her woolen sleeve to her neck, her perfect ear, her slightly chapped lips. He drew her beside him on the red sofa, holding her so closely against him that he could feel her corset stiffening, and her breasts hidden beneath it. Her flesh smelled of apples and cinnamon.
“I thought of you always these months, Aloysia,” he murmured. “I reread every one of your letters ten, no, twelve times, and kissed them. A hundred times I wanted to throw the whole thing over and come back to you. Your letters ... I wish there had been more of you in them. I kept trying to find you in them. They seemed reserved, and I know you’re not reserved. I read between the lines to find you.” He kissed her face as he spoke, his mouth against her lips. “Sometimes, Christ help me, I couldn’t seem to touch you.”
She turned her face abruptly so that his lips missed her mouth. “What did you want me to write?” she said, wrinkling bits of her skirt in her hands and staring ahead of her at the desk, where Sophie’s pen was left to drip ink on her unfinished letter. “I told you about the music I was learning and about our days. If our days were dull, can you fault me for it? I have never been good at writing.”
Pulling her closer, he murmured, “But there was no passion in them. I know you’re passionate. Why don’t you kiss me? Didn’t you miss me, my love? Not at all? I was so alone.”
She brushed her lips across his, then jumped up to the desk, glancing at the letter. “I know, I know, and so were we alone, though we had one another. Still, Papa’s gone, and Mother has collapsed; for days she doesn’t come from her bed.” She turned from the desk to him, tears in her eyes, the letter now folded in her hand. Then, distractedly, she slipped it in the desk drawer. “Of course I missed you!” she said. “I have deep, deep feelings. I do love you.”
She began to walk up and down the room. “But you’re the one who went away,” she said. “You went away. Can you know what it is just to wait? I admit my letters were a little reserved after a time. Very well, I’ll tell you why. I suppose you ought to know.” She paused by the window. “Early on you wrote (do you remember?) ... you wrote that you could likely send for me to sing in Paris in the Concert Spirituel or the Concert des Amateurs, but then you wrote that it wasn’t possible. Do you know how disappointed I was?”
Her words stammered over one another, and then she ran from the window to sit beside him, her voice rising. “You said you’d help me. And then, and then. Then you wrote that you were offered the position of organist at Versailles. Oh, Mozart, Versailles! You could have sent for me.... We would have been married, and I would have sung there and curtseyed daily to Marie Antoinette, the most regal Queen, a true Viennese princess, the daughter of the late Emperor of Austria. Can you imagine what I felt, stuck here in my grief without Papa, without prospects, with my dreary sisters and my mother’s weeping, and knowing I might have a chance to live at Versailles itself, in Paris, the center of fashion and good taste. Yet instead I was to remain in provincial Munich, while my gifts and youth fade unseen, obscure, unwanted ... and you refused the position.”
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He stared at her, bewildered, not touching her, though she sat so close. “But don’t you understand, the very last thing I want is to be a French court organist?” he said. “And the salary wasn’t so great. I couldn’t afford to dress you as you like, and they’d have put me in livery. The household musicians are lucky to eat at table below the lackeys and before the cooks. That’s my father’s life; I grew up with it. Do you think I want that? Is it the life I’m meant to have? No Aloysia, dearest. I wanted an opera commission. You mustn’t want me to settle on something less than I could be. I would write great roles for you—just for you. That’s a much better life.”
“But now you have nothing.”
His voice rose to the garland of dry, fragile leaves around the portrait of her late father. “It’s true I have nothing now,” he cried, “but that won’t always be so. I need you to have faith in me. My father writes one angry letter after another. I’m not the darling little boy anymore, and I can’t be obsequious. Dearest, my composing deepened while there. I’ll show you the symphony I wrote in Paris, and the concerto for harp and flute.”
She clenched her hands on her knees. “But you could have had the protection of the Queen.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to be a household organist, so I came back to my own country. You idolize the French; I can’t and won’t. At the opera the Italian composer Cambini stood in my way, jealous. I waited weeks for appointments that brought promises which were not kept. Could you really expect me to stay?”
She was flushed and imperious. “And do you expect me to be pleased that you return empty-handed? I’ve waited faithfully for you. You must succeed for me. You owe it to me. Your influence could open my voice to the world. You know, you know how well I sing and play. It is your fault that you didn’t, that you turned down Versailles! You threw away our happiness! How can I forgive you?”
She was sobbing, and jerked her shawl closer around her sharp shoulders. Her delicate face was in profile to him; even without any rouge or curls, she was beautiful, her lower lip extended ruefully and tears rushing down her face to her chin. He gently took her by the shoulders and kissed the tears away, kissed the wet, resentful lips that still protested. “I could have had hats made by the Queen’s woman, at least a modest one. Then you would truly love me!”
He seized her more firmly then, kissing her wherever his lips could reach. He could feel her little nipples, and her tiny body, which he could not hold close enough, seemed worth all the riches of the courts of Europe.
“I don’t want to quarrel with you,” he said into her neck. “Don’t cry, don’t cry, I beg you. I’ll become a great success for you. Aloysia, what do I have but you? I’ve disappointed my father and my sister; I’ve lost my beloved mother; and I’ve failed you. Isn’t this enough? Dearest, you must believe in me. You must believe that there’s reason for what I do. Aloysia, what do I have without you? Every hope I had was swept away, but I thought of your family and you, and it was my whole comfort.”
“You must understand why I was angry with you.”
“You won’t have further cause.” He wiped her tears with his handkerchief; he was trembling so his hands shook. “Listen, listen, dearest,” he said. “But I come with good news, too, not only terrible. Very good news. How oddly the best things come hand in hand with tragedy. I have an opera commission for the Residenztheater. His Excellency has sponsored it.”
“What? Here in Munich? For our exquisite theater?”
“I thought about writing you but decided to wait to tell you in person. So you see, I have not come back empty-handed. It’s an opera seria, my best work to date. It’s called Idomeneo. I have a chance to succeed and begin to make a great deal of money, and then we can marry at once, my Aloysia, and never be parted again. Don’t cry anymore, my beloved. Trust me.”
She stroked his face gently, looking at him; she had become suddenly very still. “You are very tired,” she said. “You are very tired, my love.”
For three days he slept and slept in the small room behind their kitchen. He would awake startled, thinking himself in Paris or in some inn, overwhelmed with sadness when he recalled his loss and theirs. Sometimes he felt he could hardly stand. Still, outside that room there was life; he heard the sisters’ chatter as they drank their morning coffee. Even in their recent grief they chattered. A knock would come at his door; a cup would be handed to him through the crack. They were there in their dressing gowns, he just behind the door in his shirt. Once, coming from his small room unexpectedly, he saw them all flee down the hall, laughing in their white smocks and bare feet, leaving behind them a drip of washing water on the floor and the smell of lavender. They surrounded him every hour of the day; they were in every corner of the rooms, asking him questions and telling him stories. In between them, Maria Caecilia moved languidly, always smiling at him when he entered the room. Sensuality hung so heavily in the air that he felt he could not breathe. Not only Aloysia but all the sisters. Even Josefa’s bare long legs, visible when her dressing gown opened, haunted him. Even Sophie’s chapped lips, her flat little body. He was drunk and distracted and could not compose a note.
He moved to the Cannabich house, for the famous Mannheim orchestra was now in Munich. There he wrote until his eyes could no longer focus; then he jumped up and, along with a few orchestra musicians, rushed over to the Weber rooms. With their arms full of cheeses and sausages wrapped in old news journals, the musicians bolted up the steps three at a time.
In the rooms he whirled Aloysia in his arms. “A whole day without the sight of you!” he cried. “This is more than heaven should ask of me.”
After supper they all played games, dancing and chasing one another around the furniture. The sisters fled from him and he caught them, leaping over the furniture and growling. Shrieking, they ran from room to room. When he was panting too hard to run anymore, he sat down at the clavier and cried, “One of you cover my eyes with your hands, and I’ll play any song you know backward.”
Fluttering his covered eyelids for a moment, he saw little fingers with dry skin and guessed it was one of the younger sisters whose hands were pressed against his face. He played faster, rocking more violently as he did so, to all their shrieks. Finally, he tipped himself entirely off the chair, dragging the girl with him. “Constanze,” he cried, opening his eyes. “I never thought it was you! Come, tell me what you like; I’ll make a nonsense song out of it for you. Tell me or I’ll tickle you!” At his tugging, Constanze rolled on top of him. Her fingernails were bitten, and there was a cut on her hand. “I’ll tickle you,” he said, edging his hand so that he could feel the place where her corset ended and her under petticoat tied in a knot.
She shrieked and squirmed. “Ah no, don’t, don’t!”
“She likes puppies,” cried Sophie, jumping up and down on the sofa. “Tickle her, tickle her! She likes puppies.”
“Puppies!” he cried. “Of course! I’ll write a concerto for mutt and orchestra in D major with a strong wind section. I’ll begin auditions for the best dog all over Munich at once.”
Constanze struggled away, her hair losing its large ivory pins. He handed one to her as she stood up and tried to catch her breath. “It’s like our old Thursdays,” she said. “It’s like Papa’s Thursdays when everyone came to play.” Tears filled her eyes, and it moved him. He looked about the room at all of them and breathed deeply, amazed, happy. The sensuality of all the sisters melded, blended into a single blurred sensation of youth and white cotton.
The date for the first rehearsals grew near, and he ceased to come to the Webers. Instead he sent effusive notes written on the back of music paper, filled with grotesque little drawings scratched from his fierce pen. He wrote apologetically that the opera was cast already and there were no roles for them; the light soprano had once been mistress of the Elector. She was a good singer and must remain; the other soprano role was also taken. He was working intensely, he wrote, trying to please those many men who could push the
opera on the boards of the Residenztheater or jerk it away.
Cannabich brought him more music paper and also meat and soup, which often went untouched until the fat had congealed in white blobs. He wrote, ceasing only when he had to. He wrote at a desk by the window, hearing the music in his head, the words and feelings forming under his rapidly moving hand: regret; jealousy; fate; the father, Idomeneo, who for his rescue from danger at sea promised Neptune, the god of the sea, to sacrifice the first person he met when his ship returned home. The work grew on the pages with its arias and ensembles, its military marches and shipwrecks, its storms and coronation, its monster arising from the depths of seawaters.
Cannabich stood by, one hand on the hip of his silk breeches, turning over the pages. “It’s longer than they expected,” he said, “but the Elector heard us at rehearsal and said the music was so very moving.”
Mozart pulled the pages toward him. “Good, then he will want to keep me! Did he once again call me his ‘dear child’? Let the fool say what he will. My friend, if he’s pleased, he’ll surely grant me a position in his court, and then I can bring my father and sister here and marry.”
“The little Weber girl?”
“Indeed.”
Applause broke out as he stepped into the orchestra pit of the Residenztheater, surely a jewel, set around with rows of boxes, all of the most brilliant red and heavily embellished with gold. Cannabich had given over the premiere for him to conduct from the clavier.
In the back of the hall he could see the four Weber sisters. Oh, the winds: the flute, the oboe, the bassoon, and the horn riding over the stringed instruments. Onstage the monster would shortly rise from the deep to destroy the people because the King had broken his vow to sacrifice the first to greet him on land, his son, the Prince Idamante. The choruses echoed, and the old tenor sang of the sea now within him, more unrelenting than that sea that had sought to drag him to its depths.
Marrying Mozart Page 12