Sophie’s best quality and her most perplexing was her honesty. She had to have everything said exactly, and in a household that was seldom exact, where the same story was told ten different ways, she fled to the church where things did not waver. A sin could be erased by confession and so many hours of mumbled rosary prayers; in fact, she so enjoyed the stillness of the church that she long ago had taken on the penance of all her sisters. She thought logically, though her logic was small of scope, for she was very young and had known little more than her family circle and those handful of warm artists who came within it.
Still her mother had accused her of ingratitude, which seemed the worse sin. She had believed all her life in self-sacrifice, which made her freely lend slippers, petticoats, books. She wanted to stand outside the circle of immediate attention, but be loved. She had tried to be kind to Mozart from time to time, was hurt and resentful by his coolness, and was sorry he was sad; that was all.
Would the sensual part be so bad? She couldn’t imagine it. What she understood of it seemed so ridiculous that the hardest part would be not to laugh when it was undertaken. Now she was astonished at the attention from her mother and the demands and plans. She had always escaped from them. In the household of girls, where each one had her own place and role, Sophie had always simply been herself—irritating when she wandered off only to return an hour late with the cheese, but placidly loved. She was not prepared to bend this way and that under the storm that blew over her neat life of house and church, and that blew harder over the next two weeks when no money came from Aloysia and not one word was heard from Josefa in Prague. She felt too ashamed to confide in Constanze, who was blissfully happy with her French cellist, and from whom every day Sophie dreaded to find a note on her pillow saying, “I have run off; feed the bird. I love you, C.”
No, she must manage this herself.
It was true her mother had always had strange and sudden ideas that no one in her right mind would follow, but of how this one had developed she was uncertain. She vaguely understood that this change had come about after a meeting with Thorwart, whom they all disliked more intensely every day.
“Seduce Mozart,” Maria Caecilia hissed when she cornered her youngest daughter in the kitchen, or under her breath as they carried in the platters for the lodgers to dine. “Once he’s compromised you, he’ll have to marry you. He needs taking by the hand. Hush, hush, listen to me. I know about these things. Men don’t know what they want until it’s plainly shown to them.”
After midday dinner, Sophie mounted the stairs to the door of the young composer and cautiously opened it. Strips of sunlight lay across the table full of music. She stood there, breathing quietly. There was something sacred to her about this room. Often she would wake in her room above and hear the click of his heels in the hall when he came home from a concert. She would hear him humming softly, catching only snatches of the melody. Sometimes if she passed him on the stair he had that withdrawn, bewildered look, which meant that only his body was here, and his soul was elsewhere. His little neat body rushed, as if he could not reach his destination fast enough.
But what of Mother? What of her mother, who sat in the kitchen after dinner surrounded by piles of greasy dishes and with her apron over her face? Didn’t love mean giving your life for others, and didn’t her mother want the best for her? All day the silence continued. When bedtime came, Sophie could not sleep but lay on her white sheets, her rosary entwined between her fingers, while all the shadows of the room seemed to say, You are nothing but a selfish girl, Sophie. Was her life her own? she wondered. Was anyone’s life their own? To sacrifice her life for her mother’s needs: yes, God would approve of that.
Sophie thought, At least I can talk to him.
She was alone that night; Constanze was staying with Aloysia.
Wrapped in her dressing gown, she went down to wait for him, but the hour chimed past twelve and he still hadn’t come. Determined not to miss him, she sat on the stairs for a time longer; at last she thought she would go up and rest for a while and come down later, but she was so tired she did not wake until two in the morning. Then she tiptoed down the one flight of stairs and stood outside his door. From inside she heard his breathing. He had come home and was asleep.
Gently she rapped and whispered his name, but there was no response. Finally, she creaked open the door. As softly as possible she tiptoed across the room and stood looking down at him. There was some light from the moon. She bent over him a little, and as she did her spectacles tumbled from her nose and fell across his chest. He woke, blinking, rather astonished. He gazed up at her, his hand half in front of his eyes. He moved to sit up, and the spectacles slipped off the bed to the floor. “What is it?” he said, not awake enough to speak clearly.
“I’ve lost my spectacles, that’s all.”
She dropped to her knees and felt around the side of the bed as well. “The problem with dropping my spectacles,” she said, “is that I can’t find them unless I’m wearing them.”
“Let me help you.” He rolled groggily to his side and felt down along the side of the bed. “I think I’ve got them,” he said. “Here, they’re too loose on you. I thought that last week when I saw you. You could lose them and someone could step on them. What time is it? What are you doing here? Are you sleepwalking? Is something wrong?”
“I must... speak with you.”
“Very well then, but keep your voice low. It wouldn’t do for anyone to know you were here. They’d think the worst. You’re shivering; take my extra cover. Give me your hands; they’re so cold. What on earth are you doing here? What do you need to speak to me about now? What time is it?”
“Some time past two.”
“It couldn’t wait until the morning?”
She shook her head.
“Then tell me, dear Sophie,” he said with his old affection.
She sat down in the chair, wrapped in the blanket. Pushing her glasses up, she sniffled a little. In the near darkness she could feel her face redden, and now he looked at her in a kindly, steady way. He had large eyes. Sometimes they were suspicious, but tonight they were tender. She didn’t care if Aloysia said his nose was much too big for any woman to take him seriously. She found his a good, comforting face, and he was strong enough, even though he was small for a man.
“My mother wants me to marry you,” she said simply. “She wants to make sure that no one seduces me and that she’s taken care of in the future. I suppose she doesn’t know anyone else she can marry me to. Everyone in Vienna is so lovely, and I’m plain, but I don’t mind that. I have always liked you. In fact, I love you with all my heart, but not that way. I want to renounce the world for God. I’m sure I’m not suitable for marriage. Still, she says we must marry, and I don’t particularly want to. I wanted to know what you felt about it. We could go to Father Paul together and ask him.”
He said nothing for a time. Some anger passed his face, and she cringed a little, for she knew from some musicians who had lived with them that Mozart could be touchy as gunpowder. Then he passed his hands over his lips, and his shoulders shook; she could see he was laughing. “It’s not so funny,” she cried, leaping up. “I’m not so bad that it’s funny.”
“Bad? Not at all; you’re a darling. Oh, my sweet Lord, do you really—”
“Hush, hush! Mozart, someone’s coming.”
They knew the singing, the slipping, the muttering, the cursing. It was Steiner, the theology student, who was coming home drunk again. His room was opposite Mozart’s, but he did not go into it. He seemed to have stumbled on the stairs and sat there muttering and singing to himself, blocking her possible escape from the room.
Mozart put his finger to his lips. “Be very still, you darling,” he whispered. “Let me see if I can get him to bed, and then you can slip upstairs; we’ll meet somewhere tomorrow in the daylight and speak about this.” At the thought he began laughing so hard he could hardly stand straight, but he took a deep breath, walked a
cross the room and through the doorway. His thick light brown hair stood almost perfectly upward from his sleep, giving him some several more inches in height. He looked ready to take flight. She sat down again on the chair with her hands in her lap.
She heard his stern whisper. “Steiner! Up now, man, to bed.”
“Can’t stand ... stay here ... stairs ... »
“Come, Steiner, you can do it.” Sophie held her breath. It sounded like Mozart was trying to help the drunken student stand, which would have had its difficulties, for Steiner was a hundred pounds heavier and half a foot taller. “Help me, Steiner,” she heard him say.
“Leave me alone, you bastard composer, you organ grinder ... sleep here.”
“Get up, Steiner.”
The noise had awoken another lodger, a traveling financier from Seville, who opened his door and called down in his Spanish accent, “Damn you, you drunken lout, get up and into bed.” Sophie sank deeper into the chair. She held her breath again. The other lodger had pounded down the steps and was also trying to lift the drunken man. Between them, they got Steiner into his room. After several minutes Mozart returned. He closed and locked the door behind him, then began laughing so hard he could scarcely contain himself. He threw the pillows across the bed and buried his face in them. Sophie was laughing, too. He caught her in his arms and laughed with her. Tears ran down his face.
They sat down finally on opposite chairs, listening to Steiner snoring from the room across the way. “Now,” Mozart gasped, wiping his eyes, “tell me again. We’ve got to marry. Can it wait until the morning? They don’t make marriages at this hour, for all the witnesses are asleep. You dear, lovely child, your family’s quite mad, except you and Constanze, of course. But there’s a problem. We don’t love each other. Let’s both stay single, and now you should go back to bed.”
“I ought to wait until the Spaniard upstairs is asleep again. If he finds me he’ll leer at me. I hate him.”
“Yes, you would of course. You saved my life once; you’re the dearest girl. Please forgive me if I was ever cold to you.”
“Forgiven then. But ... Mozart.”
“Sophie.”
“Do you believe we are meant to find happiness with each other in this life? Constanze and I aren’t sure of it. People are either very lonely, or are unhappy together. Do you think it’s easier to find it just with God?”
“Perhaps, but I have no inclination to that. I have a very dear friend, an Italian monk, visiting here from Bologna. He says that contentment’s as hard to find within religious orders as without, that we humans take our natures with us wherever we go. I’m going to meet with him tomorrow. He would like you, but he’d want you to become a holy sister, and I prefer you remain in the world to save me when I’m in despair.”
“Are you in despair now?”
“I was, a little, but you’ve made me laugh. You know, we might have a happy marriage when you’re a little older, but perhaps we’re better friends. I do believe in falling in love. Perhaps it’s like believing in angels; you hope they’ll come. I think perhaps you can go upstairs now to your room. Your sister must miss you.”
“She’s not home. She’s gone to visit Aloy—”
“Never mind, I should be able to bear to hear that name now. Good night, dear Sophie. Once more you stumbled upon me in a bad time and cheered me. Now go up before your reputation’s compromised.” He kissed her cheek and hands, then opened the door for her, and she slipped up the stairs.
Her disappearance was discovered the next morning. Maria Caecilia and Constanze, back from Aloysia’s, hurried through the rooms calling her name, reading and rereading her note in astonishment. They never really believed Sophie would return to Mannheim to join the beloved convent of sisters there, as she always said she would. Later they learned that Father Paul had been departing to that city; Sophie had confided everything to him that morning before daylight, and he had taken her with him.
The Franciscan monk was waiting for Mozart in a priest’s study in the rectory of Stephansdom. A forlorn Christ of old German wood hung from its cracking though polished Cross, and shelves held antique books, some handwritten, in worn, plain, thick vellum bindings. It had snowed six days after Easter; heaps of it lay piled on the cold windowsills, and in the cathedral yard.
Mozart stood by the window looking at a dog that barked below, then whined as an old bent woman shuffled toward it with a bowl of scraps. He heard the soft slippered feet of a servant closing the heavy, creaking door.
“But is there truly no chance for an opera of yours to be presented here?” asked Padre Martini. “It’s difficult to believe what Haydn told me before he left the city with the Prince, that someone else’s will be given for certain. He said it’s a loss to music. He thought this Thorwart might have spoken for you, and now Haydn tells me Thorwart stopped by Prince Esterházy’s mansion and said there was nothing he could do for you.”
Mozart sank into one of the high-backed, leather-upholstered chairs. “What can we do?” he murmured, his hands to his lips. “No libretto I found was good enough, and while I tried somehow, in the past few days, my chance eroded. I still live from hand to mouth. I can’t remain in Vienna; I’m going to London. The soprano Nancy Storace and her brother said they’d write me introductions to musical circles there, and some people they know recall my name. I speak enough English to do it, and I learn quickly. Georg Händel did well there. Perhaps I would have been better to wear some prince’s livery like that great and kind Joseph Haydn instead of insisting on my freedom.”
He looked up, biting his lip, left hand drumming some melody fragment on his knee. “You will not ever tell him I have said this? My thanks. I’m not sorry I left the Archbishop, but I’m sorry my father and sister, who depend on me, have been made to suffer. I must do better for them. I must put all my own hopes aside until that’s done.”
“When do you leave Austria?”
“I’ll stay here a few weeks more, and then be off.”
“Amadé, is there no way to persuade Orsini-Rosenberg to give you the opera commission?”
“He hasn’t answered my letter, and when I went there this morning they said he was out, but I heard his voice. What more can I say? My hopes were too high for an opportunity that was not meant to be mine. You’re returning to Bologna soon? Then I would have been without your company even if I had remained. Give me your blessing, Father.”
The cathedral loomed above him when he left sometime later, and a few men were clearing the snow from the courtyard with large, scraping brooms. There was no sign of the empty bowl or the dog in that white afternoon, only a small river of yellow piss around the area where it had prowled, and some paw-prints in the snow.
Climbing to his room later he passed near the kitchen, and heard the murmur of voices. With a friend Frau Weber sat near the fire, her swollen legs on a stool. She was eating thick slices of bread and cheese. Dinner was done and supper not begun.
“I shall be going away soon to England, madame,” he said coldly.
The reply was a curt nod as she stared at him, her mouth full of bread. He turned and continued up the stairs.
Mozart was on his way out the boardinghouse door three days later, off to give one of the final lessons of his tenure in Vienna, when he noticed a letter on the crooked round table by the door under the leaves of the potted plant. Opening it, he stepped out into Petersplatz, the sun shining on all the surrounding houses; he recalled the man whose signature was scrawled at the letter’s end. He was the actor and playwright Gottlieb Stephanie, with whom Mozart had had an intense evening of conversation (he did not recall about what) in a wine cellar. The letter described a libretto the actor was writing about Englishwomen abducted into a Turkish harem, which Gottlieb Stephanie thought might be turned into an opera. Several pages of the libretto in draft were enclosed.
Mozart pondered it that day in the odd way he had of doing one thing while thinking of several others. He had a meal in an eating hous
e rather than return to the boardinghouse, then walked over to the Burgtheater. A rehearsal was in progress. He had been turned away here the other day, but now with Stephanie’s letter in his pocket, he walked up the steps again to the offices. The door to the director’s room was open, and he knocked.
Orsini-Rosenberg looked up warily. On the wall behind him was a portrait of the Emperor and, arranged in shelves, several dozen opera scores.
Mozart bowed. “I came to see you yesterday, sir, but you were out.”
“Yes, most unfortunately. I do believe someone said you were here.”
“I came at an inopportune moment.”
“Yes, I had just been called away.”
“I ventured to return, you see, concerning the opera commission. »
Orsini-Rosenberg rubbed the bridge of his nose and flung back his head. He had a way of speaking directly to someone with his face absolutely open, yet you never knew whether he spoke the truth or not. “Most unfortunately, I had spoken to Thorwart about you. I told him we had some interest, but he came to me yesterday and said you couldn’t have an opera for us, that you had no good ideas. Your music is, of course, quite extraordinary. I’ve told Haydn, who has all my respect, that I am aware of your talents, but Idomeneo was a very serious opera, dear Mozart, for all its beauty.”
“I have found a libretto you will like on a Turkish theme set in a harem.”
“That’s most interesting. Things Turkish are very appealing. Women sometimes have themselves painted in harem garb, though where they actually wear such things I can’t know. A harem, you say? That might please the Grand Duke. A good libretto’s hard to come by though. Who’s the writer?”
Marrying Mozart Page 22