Mozart’s Blood

by Louise Marley

  She bought fruit and cheese, and sat on a bench in the central piazza to eat it. She begged the use of the vendor’s outhouse, and when she emerged, she saw that the nightly passeggiata had begun. Couples wandered arm in arm around the piazza. Families with children in tow called to each other. One or two single men eyed Teresa. She escaped their curious gazes by turning down a dark street lined with fine houses.

  On an impulse, she began testing the doors of outbuildings and shacks. People were coming and going on the street, but darkness hid her. Her old boots made no noise on the packed dirt, and she stayed in the shadows, out of the occasional lamplight that filtered through drawn curtains.

  When she found an unlocked door into a carriage house, she slipped through it and pulled the door closed behind her. The carriage house was dim, but she could see that a conveyance of some kind, a curricle or other light cart, rested with its shafts propped on blocks. Bits of tack and neatly coiled rope hung in orderly fashion on the walls. There were burlap sacks filled with something that smelled like oats or wheat, and empty sacks stacked beneath a small window. The whole place had the air of being ready to use at any moment. It was hot from the summer sun, but she supposed it would be chilly by morning.

  Teresa was too tired to worry about being discovered or to do anything about getting cold. She felt her way to the pile of burlap sacks. Hoping there were no vermin hiding beneath it, she lay down and pulled her shawl and her cloak over her. She slept nearly as soundly as she had above the trattoria the night before. She awoke to voices in the street outside her little haven. She rose hastily. She tidied the pile of burlap, then, cautiously, opened the door to scan the street. Two workmen carrying shovels were just passing. She shrank back and waited until they were out of sight. Then, trying to look as if she belonged there, she marched out into the road with her valise in her hand. She turned toward the piazza and went in search of the stop for the Milano coach.

  Once she found it, she spent a few precious lire for the privilege of sitting inside, away from the dirt thrown up by the horses’ heels. She stowed her valise in the carrier behind the coach and went around to the passenger door. The driver was helping a frock-coated gentleman and a lady in a wide-brimmed, many-veiled hat up the high step into the interior. When he stepped back down, he eyed Teresa’s dusty skirts and country hat, grinned, and turned away.

  Teresa pushed the string of her bag up her elbow, gripped the sides of the door, and clambered up, kicking her skirts free of the step with some difficulty. She stumbled slightly as she achieved the passenger compartment.

  The lady in the hat peered at her through her veils. She wore a traveling ensemble of muslin, with an exquisite quilted jacket topped with a ruffle of lace at the throat. Her feet, resting on a corduroy pillow, looked like those of a child. They were encased in soft pale leather with delicately pointed toes and a little sculpted heel. The scent of lavender surrounded her.

  Teresa said tentatively, “Buon giorno, signora.”

  For answer, the woman emitted a deliberate, audible sniff. Teresa flared her own nostrils and realized with a flood of embarrassment that her own perfume was that of Giulio’s load of fish. Her boots were spattered with the soil of the streets, and her cotton dress was hopelessly wrinkled. The lady’s eyes assessed Teresa, taking in her drooping dress, her worn boots, her cheap hat. The gentleman also stared at Teresa, as unabashedly as if she were a piece of goods for sale, until the lady elbowed him and hissed something, and he looked away.

  Teresa’s cheeks burned as she settled herself on the opposite seat and tucked her bag beneath her feet. She took off her hat and laid it on the seat beside her with a pang of shame. It did indeed look forlorn when contrasted with the lady’s confection of lace and satin. She did the best she could to smooth the long pale coils of her hair, her only wealth, then rested her head against the plush of the coach seat.

  Her eyelids grew heavy the moment the coach rumbled out into the road. She had had no breakfast. The coach was poorly sprung, and the seats smelled of mildew. Still, compared to the fishmonger’s cart and the bed of burlap, it felt like luxury. She folded her arms and let her chin drop to her chest. It had been a hard two days, full of uncertainty and discomfort. Teresa missed her father, and she missed the comforting splash of the waters of Lake Garda. Yet, despite her rumbling stomach and her loneliness, she fell asleep, and she dreamed.

  Teresa’s dreams had always, since her earliest childhood, been intense. Often she had difficulty knowing which was dream and which was real. The night her mother died, Teresa had been in the middle of a dream of being lost in a crowd of people when her father’s wails woke her. She struggled up from sleep to realize that her little house was full of people—her uncles, their wives, the physician, and the priest. When she staggered through the dark into the light of the kitchen, she felt as if she were still in a nightmare.

  For days afterward she couldn’t shake the feeling that if she could only wake up, all of these people would go away and her mother would be alive again. She was eleven, and though she knew her mother had been ill, she had not expected this. She wandered through the house, expecting her mother’s voice, her mother’s willowy form, a glimpse of her unbound blond hair falling to her apron strings.

  When she had been younger, dreaming strange and sometimes wonderful things, she tried to convince her mother they were real. Nuncia Saporiti laughed and tweaked her little daughter’s braids. “Dreams!” she would say. “Trust your mamma, I learned the hard way. Dreams are never real. They have no meaning!”

  The young Teresa frowned and wandered away. Surely Mamma could never be wrong—but perhaps Mamma didn’t have the same dreams Teresa did. Perhaps because Mamma came from the Casentino, and not from Limone, and she didn’t have the waters of Lake Garda in her blood….

  And now, drowsing in the coach from Brescia to Milano, with an unfriendly lady and a hungry-eyed man for companions, with the shocks of ruts and rocks jarring her spine, Teresa dreamed. She saw again her father’s stricken face as she left, and in her dream she reached for him, but he turned away. She found herself on a wide stage, in a strange gown, a garment even more elegant than that of the veiled lady sitting across from her. Her hair felt heavy, piled on her head in loops and curls. There were other people, singers, wearing gowns and frock coats. Lights glared on their rouged cheeks and reddened lips.

  The dream changed, and she heard her mother singing as she swept the stone floor of the house beside Lake Garda. Teresa, outside the house, leaned across the balustrade to take a peach from laden branches that hung low over the water. The fruit was soft and ripe, fragrant with sugar and sunshine. She parted her lips and sank her teeth into its flesh.

  But it was not a peach she tasted. It was hot, and salty, with a bitter iron tint. She put her fingers to her lips, and they came away red with blood.

  With a shudder, she woke. The lady opposite her snored gently, her veils lifting and falling with her breath. Her companion, however, was wide awake. He had lifted Teresa’s skirts with the toe of his smooth leather boot and was gazing at her exposed leg. His parted lips gleamed with saliva.

  Teresa jerked her leg away. “Basta!” she exclaimed. She bent to smooth her skirt back down over her ankles.

  The lady awoke with a start and glared at both of them. “What’s happening?” she demanded.

  Her husband, for such he must be, Teresa thought, soothed her with quiet words, avoiding Teresa’s eyes. But the lady sat stiffly, wakeful now, staring at Teresa through her swathes of silk.

  Teresa turned her head away and gazed out the carriage window at passing fields of wheat. The ripe seed heads nodded in the hot sun as if bowing to the girl watching them. She put her fingers to her lips, remembering her dream. It was always good when Mamma came to visit her in her sleep. It was good to dream of singing, of what might be. But a peach full of blood…what did that mean? What was real?

  Teresa Saporiti’s first sight of Milano was of the lacework spires of the D
uomo rising above the city center. The coach stopped in Via Mengoni, short of the Duomo’s wide stone plaza. The driver opened the door. Teresa could hardly wait to be out, to drink in the sights and sounds of the fabled city, but she waited politely for the older couple to alight first.

  The man stepped down. The lady stood up to adjust her ample skirts before leaving the carriage. While her husband was turned away, speaking with the driver, she faced Teresa.

  “A word of advice, signorina,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

  Teresa got up from her seat, but she couldn’t straighten in the cramped coach. She stood awkwardly, her shoulders hunched, her head against the roof. “Yes, signora?”

  “Stay away from married men,” the woman said. “People will think you’re a tart.”

  Teresa, hot and hungry and tired, lost her temper. “A word of advice for you, then, signora,” she said. She didn’t whisper. She let her clear, strong voice carry outside the carriage.

  The woman already had her gloved hand out the door for assistance down the step. “I hardly think I need advice from someone like you,” she began.

  Teresa interrupted. “Your husband wants watching, signora. He has a wandering foot.”

  The lady froze, and her veils rippled as her head swiveled back toward Teresa. Teresa said icily, “Could you step down? I’m weary of standing here, bent over like an old woman.”

  With a hiss of fury, the woman whirled, nearly stumbling over the high step. Her feet landed heavily on the ground, and she grunted at the shock of it.

  Teresa gathered her things and followed. The last she saw of the couple was the lady marching into a nearby hotel with her husband scurrying after her. The driver followed with their bags, leaving Teresa to retrieve her own. She pulled it down from the luggage carrier and stood with her hat in one hand, her valise in the other, looking about at the bustle of the great city.

  The Duomo’s majestic spires pierced the blue sky, huge beyond anything she could have imagined. Workmen, looking no larger than birds, crawled over the cathedral’s enormous roof. After three centuries, the huge church dedicated to Maria Nascente was still not finished, but still its glories were more than the girl from Limone could take in. She couldn’t count the buttresses, the spires, the statues that adorned every surface. The structure dwarfed every other building she could see.

  She turned in a circle, tasting the city’s shape and flavor. Palazzi stood with churches at either shoulder. Most streets were wide enough for carriages to pass, with room on either side for pedestrians. Here and there were shops, fruit stands, a trattoria or two.

  In the distance, the two stone towers of the old fortress, the Castello Sforzesco, loomed over the surrounding countryside. And much closer, just a brief walk north in Via Mengoni, she could see the square roof of the new theater, La Scala, completed just two years before. The old theater had burned to nothing, but the wealthy patrons of Milano had seen to it that the new one went up as quickly as possible.

  She stood gazing at it, trying to absorb the fact that she was actually here. She had reached Milano, and La Scala was only a few steps away. Her goal was within her grasp.

  6

  …m’innamori, o crudele…

  …you make me love you, cruel one…

  —Donna Elvira, Act One, Scene Two, Don Giovanni

  When Octavia’s dinner arrived she ate everything. Sometimes during the rehearsal period she had little appetite, but she knew she would need her strength. She drank a half-bottle of Tuscan wine, finishing her second glass as she soaked in the tub, bubbles frothing beneath her chin. She welcomed the wave of fatigue that swept over her as she climbed out, and she tumbled into bed with a sigh of complete exhaustion. Surely Ugo would be waiting for her when she woke.

  Tired as she was, sleep still did not come quickly. The melodies of the opera ran through her head, maddeningly. As usual they were not her own, but those of the other rôles, Zerlina’s and Donna Elvira’s and even Leporello’s “Catalogo.” When her eyes closed at last, the music was still playing in her brain, like a radio with no off button. She dreamed, and it was, again, of Teresa Saporiti.

  Teresa and Mozart, panting, tumbled together onto a pile of cushions in the salon of the Countess Milosch. Teresa’s head spun as much with giddiness over the success of the opera as with the wine she had drunk. She had laughed until she could hardly stand, had danced while Mozart played the Countess’s excellent harpsichord, had dined on roast pigeon with new potatoes and sweet dumplings. She had stayed close to Mozart, longing to be near him, to possess this plump little genius of a man. She would not have dared to go further. But the Countess, with her burnished black hair and hard, knowing eyes, had managed to seduce them both together.

  Zdenka was on Mozart’s other side, pressing her lips to his throat. Teresa would not be outdone, but slid forward until her body covered Mozart’s. Emboldened, she found his mouth with hers, tasting wine and tobacco and an oddly pungent flavor that was all his. She reveled in the kiss, in the movement of his lips against hers, in the thrill that ran from her toes to her throat. She was thoroughly drunk on success and excitement, and she felt at that moment she could have anything she desired.

  Distantly, she suspected that it was the Countess’s hand, not Mozart’s, that crept beneath her skirts, that tore away her smallclothes to find her hot, yearning center. In a remote way, she understood this was a shared moment, that it was not only she, but Countess Milosch, joined with Mozart, possessing him, taking him in this moment of passion.

  She didn’t care. Her body flared, melted against Mozart, against the Countess’s hand. When she cried out, she didn’t know whose laugh it was that throbbed in her ear. She didn’t know whose breath warmed her cheek, whose groan vibrated against her breastbone. But she knew, a moment later, that it was the Countess’s teeth she felt breaking her skin.

  The bite flooded her with feeling, a second orgasm of heat and pain and surrender. She felt faint, and at the same time exquisitely aware of every smallest part of her flesh, lips swollen with lust, eyes blind with it, skin tingling with shock even as her bones ached for more.

  The Countess’s teeth released her, and Teresa fell back against the pile of cushions, spent and shuddering. She turned her head to Mozart. His eyes were closed, his mouth open in a sated smile. His neck was bleeding, but there was so little blood that it hardly seemed significant. Teresa put a shaking hand to her own throat. Her fingers came away smeared with red, but there wasn’t enough even to trickle down into the fall of lace over her low-cut bodice.

  The Countess chuckled. Teresa realized it was her voice she had heard. “Lucky little signorina,” Countess Milosch murmured, her hand caressing Teresa’s hip. Her voice throbbed with spent passion. “Lucky to have shared the tooth with Mozart.”

  Teresa sighed, and her eyes, like Mozart’s, fluttered closed. She fumbled to find his hand, and clutched it. The Countess rose, shook her skirts back into place, and left them. Teresa pillowed her cheek on Mozart’s shoulder.

  It was Constanze’s voice that woke her. Teresa struggled to open her eyes. The lids were gluey and resistant. Pale dawn light through damask curtains striped the rugs and polished floors of the salon. Constanze was shaking Mozart’s shoulder, saying, “Wolfgang! Wake up! You’re due at the theater!”

  Teresa rubbed her eyes with her fingers, and Constanze glared at her, her small face rigid with anger. Teresa shrank back against the pillows.

  “How could you let him fall asleep here?” Constanze demanded. She shook Mozart again. “He’s supposed to conduct a rehearsal! And there’s another commission that came in last night, the moment the opera was over, and he doesn’t even know yet….”

  Mozart stirred at last, groaning, and Constanze tugged at him until he sat up, one leg still propped on a silk cushion, the other stretched out, toes caught beneath the legs of a French love seat. He pried his eyelids open with his fingers, and when he saw his wife, his infectious laugh bubbled out into the quiet salo
n. “Stanzie!” he cried. “Oh, Stanzie, wasn’t it marvelous? The best yet. I could compose a dozen more Giovannis!”

  “Oh, Wolfgang, I could just kill you!” his little wife shrieked.

  Octavia Voss startled awake with the remembered sound of Constanze Mozart’s furious voice in her ears.

  She sat up, confused for an instant. No. She was not in Prague, but in Milan. Milan of the twenty-first century, with the wintry sun spilling through the drapes. Il Principe. Don Giovanni. She was Octavia, not Teresa.

  Ugo!

  She threw back the covers and snatched up the thick robe from the foot of the bed. She hurried out into the suite and across to Ugo’s door.

  It stood open, as she had left it the night before. He had not returned.

  7

  …m’abbandoni, mi fuggi,

  e lasci in preda al rimorso ed al pianto…

  …you abandon me, you flee from me,

  and leave me prey to remorse and to grief…

  —Donna Elvira, Act One, Scene Two, Don Giovanni

  Ughetto woke naked and shivering, curled beneath an orange tree’s drooping branches. He didn’t know how he had gotten there. He remembered only Nonna’s sour wine, and Luigi’s strong arms carrying him toward the tub. Now the smell of oranges filled his nostrils, and the ground scratched his bare buttocks as he struggled to sit up. His thighs felt sticky, and when he looked down, there was something dark drying on his skin. It flaked off when he rubbed at it. Dark crescents had appeared beneath his fingernails. The perfume of orange blossoms mixed with some earthier scent he could not identify, though it seemed to come from his own body. He hugged himself against the chill. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know where he was.