Victoria seemed to grow sad, but she said nothing. She sat down, placed her hands on the keyboard and her eyes on the staff, and timidly performed the passage from Bach. Nannerl stood next to her and began instructing her.
“Very good. You have to move ahead with your eyes. Ahead of the notes you’re playing. What you read has to be different from what you’re doing. Learn to let your thoughts run on two parallel lines, and yet with control over both. Continue like that. Now you are the master of the piece.”
While the girls nourished their souls on music, on the upper floors of the palace preparations were under way for the more earthly nourishment of His Excellency. On the table in the middle of the kitchen lay five loaves of crusty white bread, just taken from the oven; one of the chickens that had offered shelter to the two intruders had had its neck wrung, and the cook Claudia had plucked its feathers skillfully. The cook Gunther, her husband, was preparing to make the archbishop’s favorite soup, Gulaschsuppe, with beef, lard, onions, and spices. The boxes of vegetables were piled on the floor next to one wall, and he, a robust man, picked them up all together to place on the work surface, but the action had an unexpected result. Just behind the pile was a hole in the wall—not very big, a couple of inches or so across—and as soon as he removed the box the distant sound of a harpsichord could be heard through the hole.
Gunther stopped, speechless, staring at the strange phenomenon. Claudia, however, throwing out a handful of feathers, said nonchalantly, “What are you surprised at? It’s Major d’Ippold’s daughter, isn’t it?”
“Ah, yes,” the man said, hitting the palm of his hand against his forehead, and prepared to weep over the onions.
Suddenly the sound stopped. In the cellar Nannerl had exclaimed, “What are you doing? That’s an F-sharp!”
“It wasn’t bad,” Victoria answered. “In fact, it’s much better than the F-natural, in my view. Besides you said it: I’m the master of the piece.”
“I didn’t tell you to change the notes. You can’t allow yourself to alter the choices of the author. You haven’t the least right!”
“Let’s go on. It’s not so serious.”
“No, it’s fundamental. You’re an interpreter, no more. The value of your art is in rendering as best you can the art of someone else. That’s it.” Then she added, in a lower voice, “You don’t have the slightest idea what it means to compose.”
Victoria stared at her. “Why, do you?”
Fräulein Mozart didn’t answer. She indicated a point on the score and said darkly, “Start again here.”
Victoria insisted: “So, do you compose or not?”
“I said start again from here.”
XVIII.
For the shopping, Anna Maria gave Tresel some coins and with those demanded that she acquire smoked meat, sausage, and high-quality game. Most of the time the maid was forced to choose old chickens, which she masked as pheasant using a flood of spices. As she was filling her basket with chives, cumin, and paprika, she realized that she was being followed. A little hat crowned with a tuft of daisies emerged from the potato stall; and as soon as she turned in that direction the hat disappeared. Tresel wasn’t alarmed. She calmly chose a big head of garlic, added it to her basket, paid, and moved to another stall; then she thought again, turned back, asked for a sprig of marjoram, and when she raised her head from her purse, she found Victoria’s childish face before her.
“Nannerl composes. I know she composes. And you know something, too, don’t you?” the girl demanded.
The servant made a half turn around her and continued choosing carrots and onions.
“Do you understand? So, you have nothing to tell me?”
Tresel sniffed an onion to see if it was fresh.
“And then, why did she stop playing? Every time I ask her to let me hear something, she invents an excuse. Once she said it made her ankle hurt!”
The servant decided that the onion wasn’t fresh and moved on to another stall.
“Do you have a tongue? Answer me!”
And so it went, through the whole market, the whole way home. Victoria followed her, entreating, wheedling, and Tresel went straight on with the energetic step of a woman from the mountains, her arms filled with baskets.
“In my opinion she wrote it all, the music she makes me study. It’s true, right? She talks a bunch of big names—Eckard, Schobert, Bach. But in my opinion it’s all hers. Can you understand what I’m saying, or do you speak only the dialect of Sankt Gilgen? Tell me something, please, Tresel! I just want to understand, I want to help her!”
They had now reached the house. “Come,” Tresel said, finally. Then she went in and disappeared up the stairs.
Victoria looked around: there was no one nearby, apart from a young woman walking on the other side of the street with a newborn sleeping in her arms. Her father wouldn’t find out. So she hurried up the stairs.
From the ground floor the labored sound of the piano could be heard. Tresel gestured to her to be quiet, and she opened the door without making any noise; she put down the shopping baskets and went along the hall on tiptoe, making sure every so often that Victoria was following with the same caution. The door of the music room was closed; Nannerl was giving a lesson to some aristocratic young lady, and on a sofa outside, a lady and a little girl were waiting their turn. The child looked at Victoria and smiled.
The journey ended in a room so small that it barely contained a bed shorter than normal and a night table, nothing else. Tresel opened the drawer and from a false bottom took out a sheet of music paper inscribed with handwritten notes. The paper was smoke-stained and the edges were scorched.
“It’s true, Nannerl wrote music,” she admitted. “But then she burned all her music. Only this was left.” And she showed it to Victoria, who held it breathlessly: it was an aria for a soprano. The title said: “Vane son tue parole, vano il pianto”—“Vain are your words, vain your tears.”
Tresel immediately, jealously, took it back. “You didn’t see it,” she said sharply. “You know nothing. And if you really want to help her, don’t torture her anymore!”
She put the score back in the drawer and, with her head, invited Victoria to get out of the way.
XIX.
The target was large, and it showed a rather risqué scene, painted in bright colors. In the middle of a lovely grove of trees, a man had been caught by the painter in the act of preparing to take care of his needs: his pants were half down and his pink buttocks were in evidence; his face, turned back toward the observer, was immobilized in a slightly embarrassed yet jolly expression. The players passed the guns back and forth and took shots, and the feathered darts stuck in the canvas; those who hit the buttocks got the highest score.
Fräulein Mozart made one bull’s-eye after another, and the assembly of aristocrats was delighted, whereas she, without a word to anyone, continued to shoot, aiming at the target with great concentration. The other guests were gossiping, as usual. What else could one do? Three boys between four and six were romping about in a game of war, totally ignored by the company, while a fourth fair-haired child, barely a year old, slept in his nurse’s arms. The buffet was abundant, worthy of the villa of a baron: cooks, waiters, designers had worked for weeks on the preparations for this little party, whose purpose was for the baron to see Nannerl again.
“You have no idea what I had to do to get her here,” Anna Maria whispered to Katharina, with a beleaguered air. “I dragged her by force.”
“My dear, the important thing is that she came. You’ll see, our friend will succeed in making some progress, sooner or later…It just takes a little patience.”
A small round of applause broke out in Nannerl’s direction as she hit the pink buttocks yet again. She acknowledged the applause with a small bow and loaded the gun again, while the baron moved to her side, assumed a pose, and began his jesterlike recitation:
“The huntress Diana took aim!
And like her target my heart
>
Is pierced, and for her longs, aflame!
Alas, cruel maid…”
Here the font of inspiration dried up, perhaps because of a sudden self-critical impulse, and he stopped. The guests took it as a pause for effect and stood with bated breath; Nannerl, however, appeared completely uninterested in the poetic act and continued to hit one bull’s-eye after another. Anna Maria poked her with an elbow, then with great affectation pleaded: “Herr Baron, continue, please! Your poetry is so delightful.”
Immediately Katharina echoed her, smiling at the guests: “These marvelous verses—you know he improvises them? He pulls them as if by magic from his wonderful mind. Isn’t it astonishing?”
“Oh yes, everything here is astonishing,” Frau Mozart said, hinting as she eyed the rich furnishings of the salon. Then she poked her daughter again with her elbow and growled, “Will you stop it?”
The silent challenge caused Baptist to return to his Muse. He came so close to Nannerl that she could smell the odor of his body and, in a low voice, uttered in her ear:
“This dark scowl, alas, escapes me
But the lion’s heart that roars so fiercely
has gentle depths, I know…
And there we will go…”
The baron took a deep breath, readying himself for the coup de théâtre he had arranged, and offered:
“A sole desire from my heart flows:
That in counterpoint to my verses may
Celestial music be made, and so…
And so…”
“The rhyme’s not coming—too bad,” he mumbled, smiling under his mustache at the situation and at himself. He went to the other end of the salon, which was bigger than the Mozarts’ entire apartment, and under the fascinated gaze of his guests grabbed the corner of a cloth draped over a large object and pulled it, uncovering a pianoforte. For an instant he was silent, wondering how Nannerl would take this provocation, and then, like a gallant courtier, he called upon her: “Mademoiselle Mozart, jouez ce petit piano pour moi! Je vous en prie.”
Among the guests rose a murmur of surprise, a rush of fans and oblique smiles. Katharina exclaimed, “Oh yes, dear Nannerl, play for the baron, do be good.” Then she turned to the others haughtily: “She is my daughter’s teacher, did you know? An exceptional teacher. Under her guidance, Barbara has made great progress.”
Anna Maria addressed Nannerl with less benevolence. She kicked her in the shins and hissed: “Put down that dreadful gun and go and play!”
Finally Fräulein Mozart stopped aiming at the painted buttocks and turned to face the room; but she kept the gun balanced on her shoulder, so that through its sight passed an array of the nobility of Salzburg, who amid little laughs and murmurs of fear tried to get out of the way. Then, rapidly and silently, like a goddess of the hunt, she crossed the room, reaching the baron, who was raising the lid of the piano; in a flash, she shot and hit him right in the buttocks. The feathered dart remained fixed in his redingote, to the silent dismay of all present and above all Anna Maria, who thought she would die.
She then raised the gun aloft exultantly and declaimed:
“Baron, my heart may grieve
That my shot had success.
Take it as you would believe,
As anything but a yes.”
With a masculine gesture she tossed the gun randomly into the arms of one of the guests, reached the door, and fled.
XX.
The journey from the far south took place in an unbearable heat that made one’s clothes stick to one’s body. Leopold had decided to hire for himself and Wolfgang a light, half-open carriage, of a type widespread in Italy but uncomfortable for long journeys, the so-called sedia. It had only two wheels, was drawn by two horses, and could carry two passengers at most, sitting at the front and poorly protected by a folding top. It was, however, a fast carriage, and Herr Mozart hoped to cover the distance from Naples to Rome in a single day.
Exhausted by the heat, the horses galloped laboriously on the rough road, foaming with sweat, and the coachman whipped them without pity. The carriage swayed incessantly, the trunks anchored to the front bars jolted up and down, the noise was exasperating, and the air that beat on their faces, burning. The father was weary, the son nervous.
“Wouldn’t it be better to make the journey in stages, in a comfortable carriage?” Wolfgang said, raising his voice to be heard over the din.
“It would cost more,” Leopold answered.
“What?”
“It would cost much more!”
“Sometimes I don’t understand you, Papa. With all the money that comes from home, we still have these problems?”
He leaned back without answering. The boy took off his shirt and with it dried his forehead and chest.
“You are in danger of getting sick if you do that, Wolfgang. Try to relax and think of something pleasant.”
Pleasant? What was pleasant in Wolfgang’s life? All his habits had changed. He looked on life with arrogance, pushed by a father who devoted all his energies to him and demanded the same of others. He was getting used to thinking that this was right: that the entire world should revolve around his matchless talent. Yet apart from the applause and the praise he received, he couldn’t picture any particular pleasures.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked his father.
Leopold’s mind had turned to Anna Maria, but he didn’t want to divulge this, so that his own homesickness wouldn’t weigh on his son. “I’m thinking of when we arrive at the inn, of the good plate of rice and roast chicken we’ll have prepared for us, and the comfortable bed we’ll find.”
“That’s all?”
He lowered his head, ashamed, and his son understood his words from the movement of his lips. “I’m thinking of Mama, Wolfgang.”
A woman? In the life of young Mozart there was no woman as important as Anna Maria was for Leopold. His sister by now seemed lost to her own obstinacy, and the Italian girls who had introduced him to sensuality had been mere extras; as soon as he became close to one of them, he left that city for another. And then the singers were old, the nobles seldom interesting, the servants forbidden by his father.
Like a blow from Heaven, in an instant everything changed, and those thoughts ceased to make sense. All Wolfgang knew was that an enormous force was pushing him out of the carriage, and an opposing force, his father’s hand, was restraining him. The sedia was tilted frighteningly to one side, dragged downward by the collapse of one of the horses, who was neighing desperately and writhing in a powerful swell of muscles. One of the trunks crashed to the ground and fell open, the contents scattering in front of the carriage. The coachman tumbled onto the grass and disappeared in a ditch. And then silence.
His father’s terrified eyes, inches away, were examining him. “Are you hurt?” he asked. Wolfgang shook his head. Leopold, not satisfied, checked his son from head to toe, testing his limbs, but the boy wriggled free in irritation, jumped down, and reached the edge of the ditch. The coachman was a little banged up, but essentially unhurt. Cursing in his incomprehensible Italian, with its heavy Neapolitan accent, he climbed up toward the road. Wolfgang found a long branch and held it out to him, and grasping that, the man managed to climb out.
“Now what?” Wolfgang said, dazed, looking at the twisted coach with his father still inside, the horse striving to get up, the other horse pawing nervously, his trunk smashed open on the ground.
In response, the coachman yelled what must have been a series of insults at the animal, then he grabbed it by the bridle and helped it to its feet; luckily nothing seemed to be broken. Wolfgang began to gather clothes and objects and stick them in the trunk. He picked up the bag with his underwear, then his beautiful gilded tailcoat with polished buttons, all dusty (he noted with disappointment). He shook it out, folded it carefully, and put it in the trunk, and started to collect books and papers, which were lying within a radius of a few feet. But when he returned to the trunk he noticed something odd: o
n the gilded tailcoat there was now a dark stain. He realized that a sticky liquid was dripping from the carriage, looked up, and with horror saw his father trying to stanch a large wound on his shin.
“How did that happen?” he cried, and leaped to his father’s side, almost afraid to look at the cut, with its ragged, uneven edges, and so deep that the white of the bone was visible.
“It’s nothing, son; don’t worry,” Leopold answered. “Find the medicine bag.”
The coachman also came over, and shook his head grimly, as if looking at a man condemned to death. Wolfgang shoved him aside frantically, opened his father’s trunk, and took out the case that held ointments and bandages.
“Here it is! What should I do?”
“Nothing. Let me do it. Don’t be upset, really, Wolfgang. It’s not serious.” He took a white cloth, tore off a long strip, and bound his calf tightly with it. Immediately the strip became red.
Wolfgang couldn’t be still. “It’s my fault. If you hadn’t held on to me…”
“Let’s not talk foolishly, son. It’s fine. With this bandage I can get to Rome, and there we’ll find a doctor.”
“If we had taken a better carriage…”
“Enough now, Wolfgang. There’s no point in recriminations. Try to be practical, for once!” Then, more calmly, he spoke to the coachman in Italian. “Antonio, are you ready?”
The man nodded, but he was still scowling.
“Wolfgang, have you got everything?” Leopold asked again.
“Yes, everything,” he murmured submissively. Then he closed his father’s trunk and fastened his own to the front bars. Antonio took his seat, called to the horses, cracked the whip, and they started off again.
The carriage moved along the road at a more prudent pace and slowly disappeared around a bend. But something was left behind: the transcriptions of songs for Nannerl, the folded sheets now mingling with dust.
Mozart's Sister: A Novel Page 14