by Nancy Moser
But now … no baby for Wolfie. And certainly no baby for me. Just three Mozarts growing ever older.
Old maid. Old maid Nannerl Mozart.
Feeling a sudden shiver, I hugged myself, then shivered again. If God was not merciful, if the Mozart line wasn’t blessed through my brother, there would be no one to hug a needy spinster in her old age.
I could think of no crueler fate.
Papa could be as obvious as red paint on a door.
We often had people join us for dinner. That was not unusual. Even the name of the guest that came to sup with us that November evening did not raise any concerns: Johann Baptist Berchtold von Sonnenburg. He’d been a friend of the family for many years and was the town manager of tiny St. Gilgen, thirty kilometers east. Our family was familiar with St. Gilgen because it had been Mama’s birthplace. Herr Berchtold had duties that ranged from managerial to pastoral to legal. He was married and had fathered eight or nine children-though I wasn’t sure how many were still living. My own dear mama had borne seven with only Wolfie and me left alive….
Which brought back thoughts of baby Raimund.
Setting aside my sadness, and armed with this simple knowledge of our guest, I found no significance when Papa said Herr Berchtold was coming to dinner. But as we sat down to table, with Papa grinning as if this man were the emperor himself, I became suspicious. I hadn’t seen Papa so delighted and charming in months.
As usual, I played the good hostess. I passed Herr Berchtold the turnips and innocently asked, “And how is your wife? And the children?”
Papa fumbled his spoon. “Oh. Nannerl. Here we must offer our condolences. For Herr Berchtold has recently lost his wife-his second wife. She died after the stillbirth of their second child.”
Herr Berchtold crossed himself. “May God rest their souls.”
Condolences mingled with anger as I suddenly saw a haze of conspiracy hanging above the dinner. “I’m so sorry,” I managed.
“Thank you,” Herr Berchtold said. “Jeanette was a jewel among women.” He dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “But in spite of my sorrows, I have been blessed with five living children.”
Where there had been many more.
“Do you like children, Fraulein Mozart?”
My heart stopped. I stood and collected the bowl of turnips. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll replenish these.”
When I entered the kitchen, Therese looked up. She saw the bowl. “I could have done that.”
“No,” I said, spooning more vegetables from the pot on the fire. “It’s fine. I’ll do it.”
“Are you all right?”
Not at all.
“Are you ill?”
Yes. That was it.
I set the bowl on the table. “Actually, I’m not feeling well. Headache. Yes, a headache. I think I’ll go to my room. Would you give Papa and Herr Berchtold my regrets?”
But when Therese scampered off to share the news, I did not go to my room. I grabbed my cloak and left the house via the back door. I walked around to the square. I had to talk to someone.
I had to talk to Franz.
I removed my hand from Franz’s arm, needing to express myself with movement as we walked and talked.
“I cannot believe Papa would do such a thing and be so blatant about it.” I took a seat on the stone edge of a fountain. “A man who’s been twice widowed. A man who has fathered a gaggle of children. A man who has five children now. A man who is so much old-”
I stopped that objection. Although Berchtold was at least fifteen years older than I, Franz was twenty. That could not be an issue.
“What does he do for a living?” Franz asked.
I didn’t see how that mattered but answered. “He’s the town administrator at St. Gilgen. He doesn’t even live here.”
Franz sat beside me. “St. Gilgen is not so far. Your father could visit.”
I sprang from my seat to face him. “So you have me married off already? So easily?”
Franz moved a pebble with the toe of his shoe. “He must be financially stable for your father to even consider-”
“I don’t care about his money!” A woman filling a pitcher with water looked up. I returned to my place beside Franz. “Five children. Two dead wives. St. Gilgen.” I shook my head vehemently. “No. It can never be. I won’t allow it.”
“But perhaps you must.”
“Must?”
He pressed his upper arm against mine and risked taking my hand. We burrowed our hands beneath the folds of my cloak, wedged in the space between his leg and mine. “You want children.”
“Of course, but I don’t need … If God does not will it, then I am prepared to accept His decision on the matter,” I whispered under my breath. “I have never wished to have just any children. And to have children by a man who’s already fathered so many …” I shivered. I was not a prude, and in truth, my objection went beyond his fatherhood to the simple fact of his manhood. I had not shared a bedchamber with my parents most of my life without knowing the essence of such things. Yet to be with a man I did not love …
“Then there is the issue of money,” he said.
“I deplore the issue of money.”
He squeezed my hand. “Your father’s original objections to our marriage was my lack of good income.”
“But he gave his permission-as long as the archbishop said it was all right so it’s not Papa’s-”
“Your Berchtold has money.”
“He’s not nay Berchtold.”
“Didn’t you tell me that you and your father have been struggling lately? Even with the student boarders you’ve taken in?”
“Yes, but-”
“And doesn’t your father want to retire?”
“He should retire. Daily, I see a new layer wearing thin.”
“His health is also an issue. Yet how can he retire when he knows it will leave the two of you with only a pension-which is less than his salary. If you’re having trouble getting by now …”
I pulled my hand away. “Why are you talking me into this? I don’t want to marry Berchtold. I don’t want to marry anyone but you.”
He hesitated and cleared his throat. “But you can’t have me.”
I stood and faced him again, my cloak swinging with my movement. “You’re giving me up? Completely? Just like that?”
“It’s been two years, liebchen.”
“It can be twenty years and I wouldn’t care.”
“Oh, yes you would. And so would I” He sighed and ran his hands up and down his thighs. “You are still young, but I am old. And meek. And poor. Talk as we might, I am not one to take change easily, which means I am staying in Salzburg the rest of my days. You, who have traveled so much, will find a move to St. Gilgen an adventure.”
“A torture.”
“A new life, in your own home, with your own family.”
“His family, not mine.”
“You will have children one day. You will be a good mother. You will survive, Nan. You will thrive.”
I shook my head. I would not do either of these things.
Franz stood. “I must go. And so must you” He kissed my cheek and walked away.
Just like that.
I wanted to call after him. I wanted to run after him. But with the square full of people, I could not. Hang propriety! Hang gossip! Hang this horrid town!
Perhaps I should leave. It would serve them right.
I walked back to the house and went inside the way I’d left. I would sneak into my room and feign the headache that had set me free of the dinner withI started as I saw Papa sitting at the kitchen table. “Sneaking in and out does not become you, Nannerl.”
I’d been doing a lot of sneaking lately. Years of sneaking. For ever since Franz had received a no from the archbishop, my excuse for seeing him beyond social occasions had been gone. We’d often met at church…. How hard it was not to hold his hand in public. Yet if we’d been seen there would have been repercussions. For we wer
e hiding not only from the wrath of Papa but also from the wrath of Colloredo. If word got back to him that we were ignoring his wishes and still seeing each other … both Papa and Franz would have paid dearly.
I removed my cloak, my thoughts reeling. “I thought fresh air would be more advantageous to my headache than lying down.”
“A new remedy you’ve recently adopted?”
I hung my cloak on a peg. “I feel much better.”
“You ruined the dinner party, Nannerl. Soon after your departure, respectful of my concern for you, Johann took his leave.”
“You should not have been concerned. It was just a headache, and I’m fine now”
” Hmm.
I looked around the kitchen, hoping there was something with which to busy myself, but Therese had already cleaned up. I took down a hanging pan and wiped some water off its back.
“So,” Papa said, “did you like him?”
I nearly dropped the pan. I’d expected him to be more discreet, to at least pretend it was just a dinner. For him to blatantly reveal his matchmaking …
“Johann’s going to be a baron one day. So you would be a baroness.”
I hugged the pan to my chest. “I have no desire to be a baroness.”
“But if it is offered you. As a gift …”
I closed my eyes a moment, hoping this would prove to be a bad dream.
“He’s willing to marry you, Nannerl.”
Willing to marry me? I thought of another tack. “He just wants a mother for his five children. He needs a housekeeper.”
“And you want children and your own house.”
I showed him my back as I rehung the pot. “I teach plenty of children. I don’t need my own. And I have a house. Here. With you.” But my thoughts sped back to Wolfie’s dead child and the lingering fear that the Mozart line would die.
“He lives in the house where your dear mother was born,” Papa said.
“What?”
“In St. Gilgen. He lives in the house where your mother was born, where she spent the first four years of her life. If that is not a sign that God is behind all this ..
I knew the house. It was a nice house. Not the home of a baron, but nicer than our home here. Perhaps it was a sign. “You’re moving too fast, Papa. Has Herr Berchtold specifically asked-?”
“He has.”
I felt my jaw drop. “He barely knows me.”
“He’s been at the house many times, and at concerts we’ve attended. Surely you remember?”
Vaguely. He’d been one of a crowd and had not stood out in my mind. For one, he’d been married. For another, he was not a handsome man. His nose was even larger than the generous noses of our own Mozart line; his eyes were even wider set, and his mouth was oddly shaped, especially when he talked. His voice had a slightly nasal tone that made him sound as if he suffered perpetually from congestion. In his favor was the fact that his physique was not repulsive. At least he wasn’t fat.
I suddenly realized that my thoughts had entered a place of rationalization, as if I were truly considering … I put a hand to my head, feeling the onset of a real headache. “If that’s all this evening, I am feeling the need to lie down.”
He rose from the chair. “No more fresh air?”
I studied his face a moment, wondering how much he knew of my outing. “No. No more fresh air.”
With a hand to my arm, he leaned down and kissed my cheek. “You’ve always been the loyal one, dear girl. The one person who saw the larger picture. Sleep well.”
I would not. I could not.
I did not.
Johann Berchtold was a persistent man. After the first dinner party, he insinuated himself into our lives, in person when in Salzburg and through letters when he returned to St. Gilgen. He did write a wonderful letter…
Johann’s determination, along with Franz’s subtle withdrawal, wore down my defenses as well as my objections. Just as Papa had mentioned Wolfie’s persistence regarding his desire to marry Constanze, the combined efforts of Johann, Franz, and Papa had their desired effect.
A few months later, when Johann proposed, my defenses had long been chipped away and were held together by only the thinnest splinter. My reasons for saying no had shown themselves to be selfcentered. If I married Johann, he would gain a wife, his children would gain a mother, I would gain security as well as a chance to bear my own children for the Mozart line, and my father would gain peace of mind, knowing I would be taken care of after he was gone. If I said no simply because I did not love the man … It seemed a petty reason, all in all.
If anything, it angered me that I’d even been put in such a position. To be forced into marriage for survival’s sake had to be against God’s intentions to love one another.
But what if there was no love?
Through our extended travels I’d witnessed countless members of royalty who’d endured arranged marriages for the sake of king and country. Although patently unfair, I could understand that process. It was the price of the crown.
But for us of lesser rank … sometimes I wished I were really poor, a farmer’s daughter working in the field. A washerwoman at the pump. From my observations these people often managed to marry for love. Their choice of a mate was limited to those of like standing-it was rare for them to marry “up”-but when they did unite, genuine happiness was present. Perhaps because they were more resigned to their lot and not so concerned about attaining any improvement in status, they could capture and hold on to a state of contentment.
As the months passed during Johann’s courtship, I too became resigned to the idea that contentment-of some measure-was the ultimate goal. And if one had to achieve that state by giving up a few previously held dreams, or by adjusting one’s expectations of bliss and utter happiness, then so be it. I was no longer a child. I knew the world was a pragmatic place. Romance lived in the borderland. Romance was the stuff of fairy tales.
And so, when Johann proposed, I accepted.
May God be with us all.
Things moved quickly-at my request. I was fearful I would change my mind, so once the marriage contract was signed (Papa scraped together five hundred florins for me to bring into the marriage, and Johann promised a thousand florins, with an additional five hundred as Morgengabe-my monetary reward for being a virgin), Papa made an application with the archbishop to speed everything up. Which he did. We planned to be married on August 23, 1784.
As good a day as any.
I knew I shouldn’t feel that way. But as I stood before the mirror in the hall and tied my bonnet I could feel nothing else. Tying that bonnet was likely my last act as a single woman in our home on Hannibalplatz, for I was just moments away from getting into the carriage that would take me to St. Gilgen and the rest of my life. Previously, Franz had said he didn’t take change well and had intimated that I did.
I did not.
I’d lived in Salzburg thirty-three years. I knew how the looming fortress on the hill looked in all four seasons and with every kind of sunlight or cloud cover God could provide. I had watched the ice come and go on the Salzach River and loved the way it crunched and broke to be swept away in the current; I enjoyed the curved plantings of red begonias in the Mirabel Gardens and loved walking around the fountains with my friends. I knew the shortcuts to church, and which coffeehouse served the best cake. There was not a day that went by where I did not stop and chat with someone on the street as if we’d known each other our entire lives.
Which we had.
I was rejuvenated by the smell of fresh grass and greenery when I’d seek solace in the mountains nearby. And while coming back from an errand, I loved hearing music emanating from both our home and from Holy Trinity in the square across the way.
Holy Trinity. Where Franz worked.
I shook my head, willing the thought away. I had to stop thinking of him.
It would be a daily battle.
Papa appeared in the opened front door. “The coach is waiting, Nannerl.
”
I nodded once and moved to join him. But at the last moment, I hesitated in the arched doorway leading to this home I loved. I would return, but things would never be the same.
Unable to speak, I whispered good-bye to the walls, then hurried away.
A few minutes later Papa held my hands through the window of the carriage. “I will see you tomorrow at the wedding. So many of your friends are coming to join you, Nannerl. You should be very pleased.”
“Any word from Wolfie?” I asked.
“He’s busy, dear one. You know that.”
I knew that. Although my brother’s letter writing had deteriorated to a deplorable infrequency, last we’d heard he was working on a string quartet. He had more important things to do than attend a wedding. We’d grown apart through distance, busyness, his marriage, and our different attitudes about life in general. It grieved me.
Papa spoke to the driver. “Carry on.” To me he said, “Safe journey.”
I withdrew into the compartment. Although I knew I should probably remain at the window in order to take in every detail of Salzburg as I left it for the final time as Nannerl Mozart, I could not.
But suddenly … “Whoa!”
The carriage stopped abruptly.
Franz appeared at my window. “Franz? What are you doing?”
He pushed an envelope through the window and into my hands. Then he took a step back and waved the driver on. I leaned out the window, needing to see him. He stood by the side of the square, staring after me. Then he kissed his fingers and raised them in a wave.
I returned the gesture and held my hand erect-as did he-until the carriage pulled us away from each other’s sight.
No, no, no, no, no. Go back! I can’t do this!
“Are you all right, Fraulein?” asked the woman in the seat across from me.
No, I wasn’t. But I managed a nod and sat back in my seat, seeking the shadows.
“Someone obviously cares for you very much,” she said, nodding at the letter.
“Yes.” It was all I could say.