Then she turned to him and confronted him with gentle firmness. “I can’t be a wife, a mother, and no more, all my life, Baptist. I need to do other things, too, and it’s no longer possible for me not to do them. I don’t know if I’ll be able to be involved with our family in the same way I’ve been until now, but I also know, on the other hand, that if I didn’t undertake this activity I still wouldn’t be able to: because I am not what I was yesterday. Today, Baptist, I am again Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart.”
XI.
“Children, get rid of all the guns, bows, arrows, and even the slingshots, if you have any: I do not want anyone shooting a feathered dart into my rear.”
Nannerl, absorbed in checking the manuscript of a fantasia for piano, looked up and saw the monumental grand piano entering, carried by four workmen on the orders of her husband, and meanwhile Vincent and Hermann were lifting up the big table and putting it in a corner, and Jeanette, incredibly, was picking all her dolls up off the floor and putting them in a basket.
“What? You’ve had it brought here?”
“Yes, as you see, and from what they tell me, time has helped it rather than damaged it. The action is in excellent condition, and before the move I called a tuner. In a couple of months it will need a light touch-up, but just so that it settles. Gently, men, it’s a precious object. Nannerl, where do you want it?”
“Oh…by the window, I would say.”
“Hear that? Do what my wife says. Where’s the stool? Ah, here it is. Nannerl, this is new. I allowed myself to choose it, but if for some reason it doesn’t go, you can change it even for a chair for a queen. Good, I’d say we’re good. Vincent, if you don’t mind, see the gentlemen to the door and take care of the last details. Thank you all.”
As the room emptied, Nannerl opened the lid and propped it up, then clapped her hands and listened to the resonance of that beat fade in a thousand ripples. Then she stroked the strings in all their length, feeling them scratch her fingertips pleasantly, and suddenly she rushed to sit on the stool beside Baptist.
“I didn’t remember that it was so marvelous,” she murmured.
“I’ve always known it, Nannerl.”
“What?”
“That sooner or later we’d come to this. And I’ve always waited for you—and the wait was so long that I had almost forgotten whom I married.”
She was silent while he gently slipped a hand under her dress to feel her skin, and yet he looked only at the ivory of the keys.
“I knew I didn’t have with me a woman like others, but a Mozart who had decided not to devote herself, for a while, to music. I knew that you would go back to it, and marrying you, I also married that certainty, and knowing you over the years, I understood that the depths I now see in you cannot be reached through joy alone. When I asked you to play this piano, and your only response was to shoot me in the buttocks, I was much more thoughtless and talkative than I am today, and also much more restless. Now, instead, I’m happy, so happy that you will stop punishing yourself, but at the same time I’m frightened: because you are about to set sail, and the truth is I don’t know where you’ll land. Yet I have to do my part, I have to stay beside you, of course, because to be with you is my greatest pleasure, but without weighing on you.”
He took her hand, brought it to his lips, and gallantly said, “Madame, jouez ce piano pour moi…je vous en prie.”
Carefully she placed the fantasia on the stand. Wolfgang had designed a passage simple to execute but revolutionary. It began with a broad arpeggio in D minor, establishing a melancholy nocturnal atmosphere, which seemed to clearly presage a dramatic outcome. Instead, after an interminable pause, a little melody arose, rich in half tones, light, tortuous, transporting the thoughts of both player and listener into some watery realm, to be suddenly undermined by those heavy, terrible chords, like sudden stabs of pain. Then a frenetic fragment, accelerating, preparing for a conflict—you wait for it, you know you have to reach it, and instead the music returns to that light melody. How could Wolfgang have had such intuition? How many disparate musical cells does this piece contain? How many intangible, superior visions? Suddenly a violent cascade of sound invades the entire space, and the hands speed along the keyboard, from one end to the other, crossing, and then two spaced-out chords, and an unlikely finale, which overturns every premise. It’s a game, barefoot children chasing a ball who stick out their tongue at you, or a carillon that enjoys its own insolence and hammers you with those sharp sounds: and you think, before the piece ends, we’ll have to go back to the beginning. We’ll have to return to sorrow and, so, close the circle. But no, instead that game repeats with childish insolence, and the children end it with a light laugh that is a gay mockery. This piece is the confounding of expectations. Perhaps Wolfgang felt that and wanted to communicate it: each of us lives in expectation of something, but reality is always different from every conjecture and even every aim; in reality, an accident always happens that the most imaginative mind wouldn’t have conceived of, and it’s pointless to torture oneself about what hasn’t happened, which can obscure what actually has. And while she played and thought all this, Nannerl seemed to see her brother beside her, in a gold jacket carefully buttoned, and he was happy that his sister had understood. And behind him she seemed to feel Frau Mozart tightening her corset, and she felt the contact with her soft, welcoming body, and her instinctive and boundless love, and opposite her was Herr Mozart, with his violin, and he—he was playing with her! He touched the strings lightly with the bow, supported only by the sounds his daughter produced, and like those who make music in ensemble, he exchanged with her rapid glances, and that silent contact canceled out every trace of the difficult past and let only affection emerge, and Music. She imagined that Victoria, too, was sitting in a corner, her attentive listener, in a flowered skirt, and on her face the pleasure of one who is gaining personal success; even Armand was present, in a brilliant general’s uniform, mute and distant, and then there was Tresel, and Martin, and between one note and the next she seemed to hear Ebony’s angry neighing…
After she played the last chord, Nannerl rose without even thinking and made a deep bow. There was a burst of applause, she closed her eyes, and tears flowed down her face slowly. Ever since she had rediscovered tears, she gave in to them easily; her eyes were a generous fountain whose waters streamed at the snap of a finger. Could tears, like the piano, be a matter of practice? Nannerl laughed and cried, happy in her tears, and when she opened her eyes she saw only Baptist near her, her only spectator, who observed her in silence with his beautiful eyes, in loving acceptance.
Finale: Scherzo
I.
Tightening the knot of the foulard that the wind was threatening to steal, the old woman approached a man muffled in a cape and tapped his shoulder with one hand. “Hello, sir. I’m here. Tell me what the problem is, please.”
“Here,” said the engineer. “As you see, we’ve dug a hole five feet deep exactly, because a part of the pedestal had to be sunk in the ground. The statue, as you know, is very heavy. And the deeper we went, the clearer it became that the soil is very loose and probably full of holes. Would you like to look from close up?”
“I trust you, I trust you. But tell me, what are those workers doing?”
“Surveys, Baroness. If the ground really is unstable, I’m sorry, but…the statue of Mozart can’t be put up. Too risky.”
“Oh, good Lord! And what will I do with it?”
The statue, suspended high up on a pulley, grimaced, but didn’t seem offended.
“I imagine you’ll have to find another square. But in Salzburg there are many beautiful squares.”
“Yes, but imagine! We would have to start the whole process over again. To get the permission has taken me a lifetime. And I don’t have much time left. I’m sixty years old, did you know?”
“Actually, I did, but believe me, you look ten years younger. Even fifteen, easily.”
“May I remind
you,” she said, raising an eyebrow, “that I’m not the one paying you for this work.”
He laughed. “I know, I know. It was a free compliment!”
“I’m grateful. So, how long will it take to finish the surveys?”
“Not long. If you like, you can stay here and wait. In fact, I would be delighted to offer you a hot drink in that café beyond the square. I looked in this morning, quickly, and they have some very inviting pastries.”
“Thank you, but I can’t. I have so many things to do. Would you be so kind, instead, as to come and tell me at home? It’s not far.”
“It will be an honor, Baroness.”
“Then I’ll wait for you,” she said, and went off.
Nannerl’s pace was not that of a sixty-year-old. She cleaved the air with the decision of a prow and passed the French soldiers who guarded the streets without bowing her head; in fact, they greeted her with respect. She went as far as the café beyond the square, entered, shook hands, smiled kindly at the citizens for whom Mozart, and his sister, had for years been glory and pride. She had the counterman bring her a bag of the pastries that had tempted the engineer, then, at the flower seller, she bought a bunch of violets and one of daisies, and took the road to the cemetery.
She loved the holy quiet of that place, and the slow steps of the grieving mourners, and it seemed to her that she heard the voices of those who observed human events from a distant land. She reached a graceful tomb, and around the name of the dead man scattered the violets as if on a meadow, then she sat on the bench opposite the stone and spoke in a low voice.
“Today I rose in a strange fit of restlessness, with the fear that what I have done up to now is not yet enough. The more I immerse myself in the endless mass of works that Wolfgang left to this world, the more I pledge to spread his marvelous musical soul, the closer I feel to that soul. And yet, my love, from time to time I find myself fighting with people who want to make it a commodity, who want to get rich off Mozart, something that never occurred to us.”
She interrupted herself, realizing that a woman was looking at her curiously. She made a polite gesture indicating that she didn’t wish to be disturbed, and the woman immediately went off.
“I know what you would say, Baptist. It’s natural that certain people want to take advantage of the name of someone who has been successful; it’s inevitable, and the intention itself constitutes the testimony and proof of that success. Therefore, my actions are good and just, and I shouldn’t be afraid; and yet sometimes I wonder what Wolfgang would think, if he would approve the direction I’ve chosen, or if he would consider it mistaken. Because I don’t know what he would say to me.”
She rose and tenderly caressed the high-sounding name of the baron, her husband. She placed a kiss on her fingers, then touched the cross and slowly left.
The other grave that awaited her care was modest but no longer bare: for Nannerl was not the only one to dedicate floral homages to Leopold Mozart.
“Do you know, Father, that in a published anthology of Wolfgang’s compositions for the piano, four spurious pieces were inserted? You would be horrified, certainly, but I find it enormously funny. First of all, let me tell you that I couldn’t prevent it, and it isn’t my fault: clear? Second, the idea that some innocent doesn’t know Mozart’s handwriting and takes someone else’s mess for it makes me laugh. Who knows how long it will be before the knowledge of the centuries traces a clear line between what is his and what isn’t. So, for the moment, dear Father, we have to resign ourselves and wait.”
She took a few steps toward the gate, then turned back, chose a daisy, and set it at the top of the cross, murmuring, “I love you, Father.” And, at peace, she went home.
II.
Sebastian, having exchanged the duties of a coachman for those of impeccable butler, was waiting for her at the door. “Baroness,” he said in a complicitous whisper, “that Italian has come back.”
“Oh, no—why did you let him come in?” she asked, scrutinizing a man with a large build lounging on a chair.
“Even I don’t know how he managed it. One minute he was on the landing, the next in the middle of the study.”
“He hasn’t touched the scores?”
“Heavens! I haven’t let him out of my sight for a moment.”
“Good. Come with me, please,” she said, and went through the archway declaring, “Your perseverance is admirable, Signor Bencini.”
He wouldn’t let her continue. He began to revolve around her like a top, babbling, “My dear, dear Baroness, I see you looking even better than usual today—do you know, blue becomes you? It makes the color of your eyes even more intense and alluring.”
“Spare the compliments or I’ll begin to fear you’re asking for my hand.”
He laughed nervously, and his belly quivered. “Think of it! The baroness is witty as well. Oh, oh, oh.”
“You wouldn’t marry me? I’m a little past my prime, but still presentable, they tell me.”
“Well, of course, naturally,” he stammered, “you are even today a grand, a beautiful woman, and without a doubt, I—”
“Bencini, why have you come again? I am not selling Mozart’s manuscripts. Have you got the idea? I am not selling any manuscripts,” she repeated, unruffled yet severe. “Must I tell you in your own language for you to understand?”
“But I—I have come purposely from Florence. It’s a long, difficult journey, days and days in a coach, in severe weather—it’s not a joke, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” she answered distractedly, placing the bag of pastries on the piano and picking up a package of proofs.
“Have you ever visited my country, Baroness?”
“I, no, but my brother and my father traveled all over Italy.”
“Then if you ever decide to undertake a journey to the land of opera, you must be my guest. And I warn you: I accept no excuses. I will welcome you to my abode in the hills like a true sovereign, or, rather, more like an empress! I will put my maid at your disposal. You will taste the prized Tuscan cuisine, and one beautiful sunny afternoon I will take you through the streets of the city and you will admire the baptistry in its imposing, shining elegance. Oh, I beg you, bestow on me that honor.”
“Spare your entreaties, Bencini—at my age, it certainly isn’t the thing to start on a journey,” she said, sitting down at the desk and preparing paper and ink. “Now, kindly let me work. Sebastian, please, accompany him to the door.”
“But I,” Bencini said, looking at the servant with a somewhat fearful air, “I promised that I would bring back at least one manuscript. Please, Baroness, put yourself in my shoes.”
“I have an idea they would be very big on me.”
“Hear me, oh most dear lady!” he cried, near desperation. “Consider my request, which isn’t excessive: one score! Only one. Only one tiny little manuscript of dear Mozart’s. Ultimately what does it cost you to lose one bit of paper? And, furthermore, I assure you,” he added in a conspiratorial tone, “that I can pay well.”
“It’s not a matter of money,” Nannerl said, giving him an icy look. “I won’t sell them, and that’s it. Go and don’t ever come back again.”
“No-o-o! I won’t go!” he shouted passionately. “I will not go unless you, cruel creature, let me look with my own eyes at the precious papers, at least for a moment!” And he fell on his knees at Nannerl’s feet.
“Should I throw him out, Baroness?” Sebastian said. “I fear I can’t manage it alone.”
She sighed. “All right, Bencini. I will let you look at the manuscripts, as you wish.”
“Oh yes! Thank you, adored Baroness!”
“Look and that’s all, clear? Get rid of any idea of buying even one. And while you’re looking, I don’t want to hear a word. And now promise me that as soon as you go out of that door you will disappear from my life forever.”
“I swear it,” he said, kissing the hem of her dress.
“We are agreed. You can exami
ne this shelf. Handle every piece of paper with religious care. Now let me see your hands.”
He showed her his palms, which were fat but clean.
“Perfect. But if you dare to make even just a tiny crease, I warn you, Bencini, I will send you flying out the window.”
“I won’t, I promise. You will find the scores more beautiful and tidy and clean and smooth than when you handed them to me.”
“I hope so,” Nannerl said, then whispered to Sebastian, “Make sure he doesn’t take anything.”
While he was looking, she returned to the desk and began passing the pen from one hand to the other, wondering how to begin the letter.
Most esteemed Herr Krabbe,
With great delight I received your edition, and I much admired the quality of the paper, not to speak of the leather binding, which has been beautifully stamped. What bewildered me was the surprising insertion of those four Minuets, which, alas, do not seem to me to be by Mozart. Their structure is too simple to belong to his last period, and if Wolfgang had composed them in his youth I would know them. You must have inserted them certainly thanks to a zeal for which one can only praise you, my conscientious friend; but I wonder where you found the manuscripts, and if it’s not too much trouble, I would be grateful if I could examine them, if only out of curiosity. In any case I would advise you not to insert those pieces in the next printing.
“What in the world is the Kingdom of Back?”
Jumping to her feet she upset the inkwell. Bencini was staring at a score with a skeptical expression.
“No, that no! You weren’t supposed to look at the other shelves! That music is not my brother’s. Sebastian, weren’t you checking on him?”
Mozart's Sister: A Novel Page 31