Marrying Mozart

by Stephanie Cowell

  Two sentries stood before the palace. “Wait here,” Mozart said unsteadily to his friends. “I’ll be a short while. You wait.” He walked forward, looking over his shoulder at them as they stood with folded arms, shaking their heads.

  Inside the palace the chamberlain motioned him on up the great stairway and then down the hall. Count Arco was walking toward him, carrying a lamp and a goblet of wine in blue molded glass. “Where are you going, Mozart?”

  “His Princely Grace wishes to see me.”

  “He mentioned no such thing to me. Well, go on. He’ll be at his prayers.”

  The house was dark, for most of the candles had been extinguished. “No one comes now,” said the chamberlain, opening the bedchamber door and announcing the composer. There was a grunt and a muffled response, and Mozart was waved inside.

  The room was papered in red damask, with bed hangings of the same weighty material. The enormous dark wood canopy bed could have slept a workman’s family. The ceiling was high and parqueted with angels, who seemed ready to fall down to the carpet at any moment. His Holiness was already in his dressing gown and nightcap for the evening, drinking wine before a great roaring fire. His face seemed like a withered apple, his eyes even smaller. “Mozart, it’s you,” he said. “What’s so important that you must see me at this late hour?”

  “I wish to thank you for your kindness to me, and to say that, with much regret, I have decided to leave your service.”

  The Archbishop threw up his hands. “What,” he cried. “You interrupt my preparation for rest with such nonsense when you have eaten my bread this past year? You brat, you idiot! I have borne with you too long. One can see you’re not grateful to serve me. Where is your gratitude? Why did I let your father persuade me to hire you?”

  “Well then, Your Grace is not satisfied with me?”

  “Idiot, there is the door. Go.”

  “For Jesus sake, do not leave his service,” Mozart’s father had written weeks before when Mozart had confided to him his unhappiness. “The Archbishop has borne with your wanderings and mine own and took you back again only at my pleading. If you go once more, it will be the last time; I fear it. Where shall you go away from him? One cannot make a meal and roof of dreams, my son....”

  The words spilled from him over the crackling of the fire and into the seeping cold corners of the room. “Very good, my lord, the conditions suit us both, for as much as you want nothing to do with me, I want nothing to do with you either. If I never have to see your face again, it will be too soon.”

  At that the Archbishop rose, knocking over the wine by his side, and screamed, “Out, out.” The dark red liquid spilled down his robe and spread across the floor. The veins in the older man’s forehead stood out as he seized the bell and rang it violently. Several footmen came running; another door burst open, and Count Arco, also in his dressing gown, rushed in.

  “Remove this brat,” said the churchman.

  Count Arco cried, “What have you done now, you impudent puppy, you knave? What disturbance have you made?” He seized Mozart by the arm and shoved him from the ornate bedchamber. Followed by the pale footmen, composer and Count half-dragged each other down the stairs to the great palace doors. Mozart felt the Count’s kick from behind and tumbled into the street. He stumbled to his feet again with a cry of outrage and rushed back toward the footmen who stood between him and the figure of the retreating assailant, the nobleman’s pale satin dressing gown glimmering as he faded into the recesses of the round receiving hall. “What? Will you run off, you coward?” Mozart shouted into the echoing hall.

  Someone grabbed his arms from behind. Astonished, he turned to face his musician friends. “Leutgeb, you ass, let me go!” he shouted. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “No, you idiot!” Leutgeb cried, shaking his head. “Come away while you have a whole skin. We shouldn’t have let you go there. What did you say to your august employer? What could you have said?”

  “I told him to kiss my arse, in so many words.”

  “What? Actually said it, came near it? Don’t you know how dangerous that is? Why did you do it?”

  “I am Mozart,” he said hoarsely.

  “And you’ll be Mozart in a prison getting a good beating, believe me! Didn’t you hear what happened to that fellow who struck a nobleman? Nobility has all the privileges to behave badly; we have none. Disgusting, and this with a reforming Emperor on the throne. ”

  Mozart shook them off, his voice gruff and ashamed. “Well then, go home, fool, idiot, ass. I’ll do as I like.” The three wind players had half-dragged him around the corner, where they slapped some cold fountain water at him and then dipped his face in it. “That’s it,” Leutgeb said. “I’ve got a horn lesson to give at dawn, and so do the rest of us. Keep your temper, Wolfgang. Don’t you know now’s not the time to let it out? Go to sleep and think about mending your bridges; you’re meant to walk across them, not burn them down. Will you now?”

  “Yes, good night,” he said, for the water had sobered him, and he walked, dripping, back toward the cathedral square by the light of the still-burning lamps. But when he returned to the palace door, he saw that his trunks had been brought down and set on the street. All his clothing and his music lay in a heap, the symphony he had written in Paris folded up into his wind band music. Out of curiosity, a few people from houses nearby had opened their windows, only to see a servant fling down onto the pile a single shoe and two books. Impudent puppy and knave, the Count had called him. He would have liked to go back and beat him. “My God, the bastard, the bastard,” he muttered again and again. “To set me loose like this, as if I were some felon ... my God, my God. So this is what it comes to....”

  “Do not leave his service for God’s sake,” his father had concluded the letter. “What security have you? You don’t know how to scrape; you don’t know how to bow. I have never doubted your gifts, but without these other attributes you are lost.”

  “Dearest Father,” he thought now, composing his reply. “You’ve made me what I am, and I must be what I am. If I starve, sell what music I’ve written, but I must try, I must try. I can’t believe that God has created me to be a second-rate church composer, only doing what this small-minded clergyman wishes. I’ll write masses, great masses, great symphonies, and I shall write opera.”

  But for now, at eleven o’clock at night, Mozart sat on one of his two trunks near Stephansdom, its one exquisite high spire reaching to heaven. He had no place in the city to go.

  Sophie Weber, May 1842

  ON SPRING DAYS LIKE THIS I FEEL A PALPABLE SENSE OF all the old keepsakes in my room, as if they want somehow to shake off their dust and rise from their boxes. People say the aged are inclined to live in their memories. Why shouldn’t that be? There is an irreplaceable world within me.

  And then Monsieur Vincent Novello comes, carrying his walking stick or umbrella, always deferential, always hopeful. Sometimes I’m not feeling well and send him away, but today I pinned on my false curls and welcomed him, eager to tell him the things I once thought to withhold so that they will not fade away.

  “I found something I thought was lost, monsieur!” I said. “Constanze’s letters, journals, and keepsakes, dating from her childhood until about the time Aloysia married. She kept the box under our bed, away from Mama’s prying eyes. Mama was too stout to look under there by then, as stout as I am now.”

  We pushed aside the sweets, and opened the small box, with real flowers preserved forever under the lacquered top. “I feel as if I’m prying,” he said. “Is there anything as secret or personal as a young girl’s dreams and thoughts? I am so sorry to have waited these years to come, and not to have known your sisters.”

  “They’re always present for me.”

  “They are here indeed,” he said after a time, respectfully putting his hand over mine. “May I?” At my nod of permission, he began to remove the contents of the box. There were folded letters, some dried flowers, some words writ
ten on the back of a piece of music, the announcement for a concert. “Who are the letters from?”

  “Some from someone she loved; others are hers to someone she loved in spite of herself, most unsent.”

  “You didn’t tell me she had such a love.”

  “Constanze was secretive. She was the most secretive of us, though I knew her best. Sometimes I didn’t know which thoughts were hers and which were mine. We had to join together, with the older two gone their own ways, and perhaps we always had. We were the two young girls waiting for the others. I dreamed of her last night, the way we slept with arms and legs all entwined, the way I sometimes mistook my breathing for hers, her heartbeat for mine. Will you ring for coffee? I feel the need of it.”

  He took up the bell to ring.

  “I’m going to tell you about the things in this box,” I said to him. “But I want to get things in order so as not to confuse you. Let me tell you what happened to our Mozart when he found himself with his trunks in Stephansplatz before the palace of the knights.”

  “Ah yes, tell me,” my visitor said, sitting back so that his coat opened and his vest with its watch chain seemed to expand in anticipation. I could see from the amusement in his eyes that he already knew where the proud, strong-headed composer went to lay his head.

  PART FOUR

  Vienna and Maria Sophia, 1781

  Dearest Father,

  My “Paris” symphony was played at the benefit concert and well received. Meanwhile, I have money from the publisher of the quartets, and I am giving another recital at the house of the Baroness von Waldstätten, who is very good to me, and who has an excellent new fortepiano. I am sending on some money so you see I have begun to do a little better. For the love of God, buy yourself some undergarments and good food and a new dress for my sister. It breaks my heart that you should stint yourselves. I have two new suits (one red with silver lace), which I bought only from necessity, for you know I have no vanity, but one cannot appear looking shabby, and the tailor will wait for the balance of the money. I dine at others’ expense as much as possible. My heart is steadfast, this I swear before God; I want nothing but work. (I send six, no twenty, no ninety-three kisses to my sister’s nose.)

  But dearest Father, now I must explain how I managed since that dreadful night. Leutgeb had gone home to his rooms above his cheese shop before he knew what had happened, and the drunken man whom I sent took two hours to bang on his door, and my exhausted friend came at once and took me with him, but there was no room there to remain, of course. His wife’s family is there, and there was no place for me. On my life, I did not know what I would do, for I am but a poor wretch left in lodgings alone. You know I can write a movement of a symphony easier than arranging for a laundress to wash my things, and last night for the concert I could find only white hose already splattered with Viennese street muck. Yes, this is a trial. (I send fifty-nine embraces to you, and I embrace faster than I shit, which is fast enough I assure you.)

  Now my story. Can you imagine my fortune? I met the widow of that excellent musician Weber while buying bread and ink, and she said she had an empty room for rent, and would welcome me. This is truly all I need to continue to make my success in Vienna. I am sure you will not mind. The two younger sisters, Constanze and Sophie, are sweet; they copy music, keep the household accounts, and cook. They could sew on my coat buttons when they come loose and mend my wretched hose. You know I can’t manage those things myself as my music takes all my time. The older sister scowls at me; we were friendly, I thought, but she’s discontent and doesn’t like anyone. They say it is from a disappointment in love. Oh, if I ever found fault with the Weber sisters for the fault of the one who treated me so poorly, I beg their pardon, for they are good, chaste girls, or at least the younger two are ... what the eldest is, heaven knows. I assure you I am quite safe from romantic intrigue. The thought of marriage now repels me. I want only to work, as work I must.

  I am ever your most obedient son,

  W A. Mozart

  The reply came, written rapidly.

  My dearest Son

  I am most happy to hear of your success and have gratefully received the money you sent me, though, alas, it must go for old debts, and the underthings must wait.

  One thing in your letter distressed me to my soul, and you know what it is. I do not like the idea of your living with the Webers. Did they not play about with you enough with their daughter; did you not lose your head over her? And what did she do but make herself the loose woman? But all of that family’s perfidy comes from the mother, whom your own darling, sainted mother felt to be untrustworthy. I must warn you, they will cheat you or entrap you in some way. They know the softness of your heart, which you wear on your sleeve. Adieu. I am going now to settle some debts. Send me a copy of the symphony if you can. And go regularly to confession and to mass. You used to go almost every day, I recall.

  Your loving old father,

  Leopold Mozart

  Two days later he moved into a third-story room in the house, his windows looking out on the green dome of Peterskirche. Frau Weber welcomed him warmly. “That hussy, that treasonous girl!” she exclaimed as she unlocked his door with a large brass key. “That she behaved so poorly to me, to you, poor, dear Mozart. Well, you never know what treachery can lie in the hearts of the children we suckle.” She stood there with her jangling keys at her waist, smelling of baking. Her skirt hem was dusted with flour. His heart melted with gratitude as he unpacked his clothing and possessions, laying out on the table a small stack of paper to rule for music staves. It was a light room, with a bed, a washstand, and a pitcher for hot water, on which were painted alpine flowers and the words FROM OUR WANDERINGS, DEAR LORD, BRING US HOME.

  Thus began his life in that house, a boarder among a handful of others. Constanze and Sophie looked at him, sometimes smiling as if they hoped some friendship between them might resume, yet he did little more than smile distantly in return. There were no more songs or games. He had neither the inclination nor the time for them.

  He heard them whisper their sister’s name, though the rash young soprano herself never set foot within the doors. He knew when, a few months later, she gave birth, and that she had sent the little girl child to the country to be raised by a wet nurse, then returned to her singing with much success. He hurried through the rooms of the house as if rushing from her ghost, which he felt standing here and there, looking at him, mocking him. For a time he felt he could not remain, but to leave the house meant to leave the sound of her name, which he still craved; and so he stayed.

  Constanze and Sophie could smell linseed oil and paint as they climbed the steps to their sister’s marital apartment, several streets from their own. It was a few months later, a bright June day. Aloysia’s husband, Joseph Lange, opened the door swiftly, as if he had been waiting behind it. He was a tall man in his middle twenties, with small teeth and a strong jaw, who now and then also acted in the theaters.

  Shyly, the girls looked around the room. There was an air of sensuality about the carelessly squashed sofa pillows; a book thrown facedown on the floor; the easel, with its half-finished portrait of their sister in some operatic role, head tilted to the side, great eyes gazing intensely at the viewer. Behind a slightly ajar door, they could see the rumpled unmade bed; emerging from that door came Aloysia, also rumpled, wearing her husband’s dressing gown, which she had to hold up, for it was so long it seemed like the regal train of a monarch. Her hair was down about her shoulders, as if she had just risen from that bed, where the sheets still held the warm scent of man and wife. She smelled of it as she leaned forward to kiss them, her tangled hair brushing their cheeks.

  Constanze and Sophie embraced her. How odd to have her apart from them; it was a crack in their lives that did not mend.

  Aloysia stretched out on the sofa pillows. On her feet dangled Sophie’s slippers, which she had taken months ago when she had rushed home for her possessions, her face flushed with anger and tea
rs, throwing randomly in her portmanteau someone’s chemise, someone’s hairbrush, her broken rosary, and many other things. Now, lying on the sofa in her own rooms, all rushing was gone. She yawned, and said idly, “How are things at home?”

  “The same,” said Sophie with a sigh. “Five boarders, including Steiner, who studies theology and never pays on time. How’s the baby? Oh I wish she were here to hold; I love babies.”

  “You’ve always loved little things, but you mightn’t if you knew what trouble she gave me being born; I thought I was dying. I suppose she’s well; her wet nurse in the country seems like an honest woman. We’re going to drive out tomorrow to see her; someone who likes my singing is lending his carriage. You can come if you like. She’s an odd little thing. My husband says she looks like me, but I can’t see it.”

  Aloysia stretched and glanced at Joseph Lange, who had again taken up his paintbrush. He felt it and returned the look. The two younger sisters reached for each other’s hands. Come back, they wanted to cry. When would she be coming home? Would she ever now?

  Aloysia reached for the pitcher to pour some beer; at that moment something silver glittered at her throat. Sophie squinted and leaned forward. “Why, that’s Josefa’s locket,” she cried, instantly proprietary on behalf of her older sister. She could see Josefa on her knees, feeling under the bed, crying, “Where’s my locket? Where’s my locket?”