Mozart's Last Aria

by Matt Rees

  One flight up, I pulled back the hood of my cloak and spread it over my shoulders. I heard a high voice within the apartment calling someone’s name and I knew it was my sister-in-law. I felt a twinge of anger toward the woman who had stolen my brother away from my family. I kicked my knuckle against the door and was answered by the high-pitched bark of a lapdog.

  A short, thick girl with red cheeks and black hair raked under a white Bohemian bonnet opened the door and curtseyed.

  ‘Grüss Gott. May you greet God,’ she said.

  ‘Grüss Gott. Please tell Frau Mozart her sister is here,’ I said.

  The girl led me through the kitchen, past the stove and a pair of metal bedsteads for the servants. We came into a living room with a half-dozen chairs upholstered in canvas and arranged around a sofa. She took my cloak and proceeded to the next room.

  A gilt-framed mirror hung on the wall. I looked into it, massaging my cheeks to bring some blood to my skin after the cold walk.

  My sister-in-law appeared in the glass. She stood in the doorway in a black woolen shawl and a loose black dress that gathered beneath her breasts. Her mouth gaped, and her bright teeth made her look ravenous and despairing. In her hands she held a short jacket she had been unraveling so that the wool might be reused.

  I came to her, laid aside the wool, and held her hands. Her black eyes were reddened with the despair of these last days.

  ‘Dearest Constanze.’ I pressed my lips to her cheek and found it cold. I touched my palm to the black curls dropping over her pale forehead. She was still only twenty-nine and even shorter than me, with a figure whose boyish slimness had been undiminished by her many pregnancies.

  A white spaniel brushed against my skirts, barking with excitement. Constanze bent to lift the dog. ‘Gaukerl,’ she whispered. She seemed to draw warmth and life from it. Smiling at me, she caught my hand. ‘Come, sister.’

  We entered the sitting room. Two plain lacquered cabinets stood against the walls. Behind a pair of divans, lemon-striped wallpaper decorated three large panels.

  In the corner a newborn baby wriggled in its crib. A boy of about seven hid behind his mother’s skirt. ‘Karl, greet your Aunt Nannerl,’ Constanze said. ‘She’s Papa’s sister.’

  The boy scuffed his foot against the floorboards and retreated to the next room, slamming the door. I thought of my Leopold, at home with my unruly stepchildren, and felt a flash of guilt for leaving him.

  Constanze smiled awkwardly at the boy’s behavior. She leaned over the cradle, rocking it with her foot.

  ‘This is Little Wolfgang,’ she said. ‘He’s not yet five months old. But of course you didn’t know—’ She covered her mouth with the back of her wrist. A small gold watch dangled about her thin forearm. I recognized it as the present Wolfgang had given her on their wedding day.

  ‘That’s true. I didn’t hear about Little Wolfgang’s birth,’ I said. ‘Is he healthy?’

  ‘He’s had a touch of the flour dog.’

  The infection that nearly killed my Leopold at two months. A white rash on his tongue and between his legs. Coughing, whining, never sleeping. I still carried the rosary I had bought to pray for his health – a string of dried nuts from the Holy Land which had imbibed Christ’s healing power as they grew from the soil near his tomb.

  I glanced at the baby. Constanze seemed to sense my anxiety.

  ‘The little thing’s all right now, as far as I can tell,’ she said. ‘Still, I’ve had four babies pass away within a few months of birth, God bless them every one. Each seemed sound to me and I did everything I could for them. But—’

  Another memory: Babette, the cramps and spasms that took her from me only half a year ago, while she was still a newborn. I squeezed at the rosary in my pocket. ‘I too—’

  Constanze didn’t notice that I had spoken. ‘I fed all the babies on water gruel to be sure that they didn’t contract the milk fever from my breast, and I followed the instructions of the doctors. But medicine was as much help to them as it was to my husband.’ She let the dog scramble to the floor. ‘Why did he leave us like this?’

  I came close to her. ‘Where did my brother die?’

  She leaned back against the door to open it and extended her arm into the next room.

  To save space, the chamber was used for entertaining guests and for sleeping. Two beds were pushed together against the wall. An iron stove with its pipe running toward the ceiling clicked and rattled in the corner. My sister-in-law braced herself against the billiard table at the center of the floor and shuddered, despite the heat.

  ‘These four walls where we now stand – it’s as though they sucked the life of the entire world away. Everything good that ever was, died in this room,’ she said. ‘For more than two weeks he lay here, until—’

  I approached the beds. My mouth was dry. Perspiration stood out on my scalp. For a moment I thought he still lay under the lumpy covers. I opened my mouth to excuse myself, to beg his absolution for the hurt I had caused him.

  But I halted. The bed was empty. If I was to find forgiveness, it would be elsewhere.

  ‘Before his illness,’ Constanze said, ‘this was a room of great happiness for him. He’d play billiards with other musicians and smoke a pipe. They’d joke about the pompous aristocrats they were required to entertain. And then, of course, this was where he and I passed our nights.’

  I thought it crude to refer to marital relations at such a time. Constanze registered the disapproval on my face. She put her hands to her stomach and wept.

  I wished I could have been alone with my imaginings of my brother’s final moments, to have listened to the traces of the last notes he might have played in this place. Instead I went to her and touched her cheek. ‘Let’s go to his study.’

  Constanze led me to the last room in the apartment. The gloom of the enclosed bedroom lifted. Winter light crossed white through two windows set in a double aspect. It flickered over Wolfgang’s piano as though ghostly hands played on its ivory keys.

  The instrument drew me toward it. Its polished chestnut wood was luscious, inscribed with the name of Anton Walter, the Viennese master keyboard-maker. I sat at the stool.

  I played a soft chord and closed my eyes. Something frozen seemed to breathe over my neck. My fingers trembled. I pressed them into my lap.

  Constanze leaned against a high desk. It was designed for a man to stand as he wrote. She picked up a cut-glass scent bottle from the inkwell shelf, pulled out the stopper, and held it beneath her nose. A hint of jasmine suffused the cold air.

  ‘Wolfgang’s eau de cologne,’ she said. ‘This room used to be like a busy workshop. At that table, his copyists would transcribe his scores. He’d pace between them and his composing desk and his piano, leaving traces of this perfume behind him. I used to cut the quill-pens for the copyists. Sometimes I’d help copy Wolfgang’s pages for the orchestra. There was such energy here. When he completed The Magic Flute, we were all industrious and happy. We knew it was a masterpiece.’

  Constanze’s speech was fast, overwrought, in a high, plaintive register. She had been like this on the only previous occasion we had met, when she had been anxious for the approval of my father. The loss of her husband had added a demented note to her ingratiating tone. I worried for her and for Wolfgang’s two boys.

  ‘The new opera has been a success?’ I asked.

  ‘The Magic Flute? It’s more acclaimed than any other of his works. Not only for the music, astonishing though that is.’

  ‘For what else?’

  ‘For its philosophy. That everyone should exist in peace and brotherhood. Wolfgang wrote it with his friend Schikaneder, the impresario of the Freihaus Theater. Well, really you should go and talk to Schikaneder about it, but it’s clear to me that The Magic Flute encapsulated Wolfgang’s belief in equality and brotherly love.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I don’t really understand these things, you know. But the opera’s about a princess who undergoes a
series of ordeals for the sake of her love for a prince. The priests say a woman won’t be able to endure the trials. Yet she succeeds. Ah, you should simply see the opera and make up your own mind.’

  ‘Schikaneder still gives performances?’

  ‘To packed houses.’

  A copy of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier lay on top of the piano. I brushed the dust from its cover. ‘In your letter,’ I said, ‘you wrote of Wolfgang’s – presentiments.’

  Constanze frowned, but her puzzlement seemed feigned.

  ‘His fear that his own death was imminent,’ I went on. ‘That he had been poisoned.’

  ‘Let’s not talk of this. I wrote that letter in a very emotional state. I wasn’t in my right mind.’

  At first I thought to tell her that I hadn’t come all the way to Vienna in the snow just to console her. Instead, I reached for her wrist. ‘I have to know, Constanze. I’m his sister. Tell me.’

  She stared at my hand for a long time, distant and engrossed. It was as though she reviewed the weeks in which her husband had been dying, reliving their pain and seeking different paths she may have taken to help him. I released her arm.

  ‘In his quiet moments,’ she said, ‘he was more and more consumed – not by music, but by black thoughts. He told me, “Stanzerl, I can’t shake them.” He claimed he had been poisoned with acqua toffana.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Some mixture of different venoms.’ Constanze sobbed. ‘I can’t believe he was poisoned. So many other things might have been responsible for his melancholy mood. He was overworked. He owed a great deal of money – much of it on my account.’

  ‘How so? Surely his compositions paid well?’

  ‘My last pregnancy caused some trouble with my feet. Bad circulation. He sent me to Baden to take the waters. I was away from him for some weeks. The hotel at the spa was expensive.’

  ‘Could he have been so embarrassed by his debts that he became depressed? Enough to convince himself that someone wished him dead?’

  ‘It can’t be. The only men who even knew of his troubles were Prince Lichnowsky and poor Hofdemel. Both of them were brothers of Wolfgang in the lodge.’

  ‘You mean, they were Freemasons?’

  Constanze settled in an old damask chair. ‘Wolfgang often said that among the Masons there was no inequality. Merchants, nobility, tradesmen, and musicians all attended meetings of the lodge wearing the spurs and dress-sword of a gentleman.’

  I understood the attraction to Wolfgang of such an egalitarian brotherhood. He had always hated rank. In the service of the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, he had been treated as a lackey, dining with the valets and writing only the music his master considered suitable. It was to escape this servile position that my brother ran off to Vienna.

  ‘The high regard in which the Masonic Brothers held him was of the utmost importance to Wolfgang.’ Constanze clasped her hands at her chest. ‘He had a great need to be loved.’

  I recognized the truth in this. It was a craving born in his childhood, when he received the adulation of the most important people in Europe. No matter how he matured, he required admiration and acclaim.

  ‘He didn’t always get the love he needed from—’ She halted.

  ‘His family.’ I turned fully toward Constanze. ‘Sister, Wolfgang used to refer to me in his letters and conversation as a prudish, affected girl. I can’t deny that I was too concerned with ribbons and hairstyles and the latest fashion in hats. Marriage and motherhood have matured me. He’d find me a different person now, and so shall you.’

  Constanze’s smile, a wavering turn of the lips, was at odds with the tension in her eyes. ‘He spoke of you often,’ she said. ‘At the end. You were much on his mind.’

  I pondered that. ‘Was I? Yet I had neglected my relationship with him.’

  ‘For three years at least.’

  ‘At least.’ I wondered at the anger hiding beneath her fragile features. ‘I beg your forgiveness for that, just as I pray to his spirit that he’ll absolve me of the guilt I feel. I always thought we’d be together again. But now that it’ll never happen, I wish to know how he lived his life during our separation. Did he leave no record of his thoughts in that time?’

  ‘Only his music.’

  ‘No writings? No diary?’

  ‘No, but I—’ Constanze sucked at her lip. She went to a roll-top bureau beneath the window and folded back the lid. ‘I was organizing his papers this week. I thought of putting together a biography of Wolfgang for publication. To earn some money while—’

  ‘While there’s still interest in his life?’

  She rocked her head side to side. ‘His debts have to be paid. For the future of the boys.’

  ‘I understand. Of course.’

  She drew a single page from one of the cubbyholes in the bureau. ‘I found this in his desk.’

  I took the sheet and read it. ‘It’s an idea for a new Masonic body.’

  ‘Written in Wolfgang’s hand.’

  ‘He writes that he wished to set up a lodge named The Grotto. What a strange name.’

  ‘Isn’t it? There are just those few paragraphs about his intentions. Then he leaves the page incomplete. He must’ve been writing it when he was taken ill.’

  ‘He suggests that his lodge would “break new ground”. How so, I wonder?’ My brother had always liked secret languages known only to him and a few friends, inventing imaginary countries of which he might be the king. Evidently he had wished to rule at least a branch of the secret society of Freemasons. ‘He never mentioned it to you?’

  ‘He kept the Masons to himself. If only he had shared his idea with me—’ Constanze shrugged.

  ‘You might ask one of his Brothers in the Masons if Wolfgang explained this Grotto to them,’ I said. ‘They could complete his outline, describe the purpose of the lodge.’

  ‘What use would that be?’

  ‘Perhaps when you come to compile your biography—’

  Her eyes became shrewd and conspiratorial. The maid came to the door.

  ‘Yes, Sabine,’ Constanze said.

  The girl curtseyed. ‘Herr Stadler is here.’

  3

  Anton Stadler greeted Constanze with a kiss on the hand and the fragile joviality of a nervous mourner. When she introduced me, his thin lips tensed into a flat smile.

  ‘My brother wrote to me about your friendship and talent, Herr Stadler,’ I said. ‘He valued both greatly.’

  His eyes were pained and wistful, as though I had leveled an accusation that he couldn’t deny. Wolfgang had often enthused in his letters that Stadler was able to recreate human speech in the tones of his clarinet. The virtuoso’s own voice deserted him before me, however.

  He lifted my hand and bowed.

  Constanze led him to the couch. ‘Nannerl arrived today, Anton,’ she said, perching beside him on the edge of the seat.

  ‘I very much wish to attend The Magic Flute. I came just for that.’ I didn’t want to talk poisons with Stadler. Not yet. ‘I wanted a last opportunity to see my brother’s work on the stage.’

  ‘Last opportunity?’ He spoke with an unwarranted aggression that I found curious. ‘Madame, do you have such little faith in the future popularity of his work? It’ll survive longer even than this city of ours.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. But I travel very little. I doubt there’ll be a performance in my remote village, no matter how long Wolfgang’s fame persists.’

  Stadler folded his arms. ‘Constanze, I came to discuss the concert for tomorrow night. I’ve booked the hall at the Academy of Science.’

  ‘Perfect. It’s so good of you to organize the benefit for my children, Anton. I’ll sing an aria, and so shall my sister Josefa.’

  ‘I have an orchestra of no less than thirty-six musicians for the performance,’ he said. ‘We’ll give Wolfgang’s last symphony. Maestro Salieri agrees to conduct. We’d also like to do one of Wolfgang’s piano concertos. As the solois
t, I had thought of Fräulein von Paradies.’

  Constanze grabbed his hand. ‘Paradies is exceptional, of course. But you’re forgetting what talent has fallen into our laps today.’

  I flushed, nervous and excited. I hadn’t performed in years.

  Stadler pushed a knuckle against his teeth, and frowned at me. ‘Do you think you can—?’

  It had been a long time. But thirty-six musicians? There would be such a contrast between the great, stately volume when the orchestra played and the delicacy of the piano in its solos. In a single moment I experienced an urgent fear of failure and a rush of exhilaration at the thought that I might be allowed to exhibit my skills in Vienna. ‘I’d be honored, sir.’

  He hesitated. Perhaps Stadler doubted my musical capabilities after my long seclusion in the mountains. So did I. But he didn’t wish to disappoint Constanze. ‘His concerto in C, then.’

  ‘In C?’ I said. ‘There are four. Which one?’

  Stadler hummed the theme of the concerto’s second movement, gliding his hand through the air as though he were conducting the music. ‘The most beautiful one, of course.’

  ‘The most beautiful, yes,’ I said. I heard the andante in my head and moved my fingers along my leg as though picking out its lilting melody. It was so lovely I felt tears in my eyes. I raised my hand to disguise them.

  ‘Shall we rehearse tomorrow morning? At my house. Jews’ Square, number three.’

  ‘I’ll be ready.’

  Constanze clapped. ‘How perfect. Wolfgang’s joy would’ve been complete.’

  ‘I’m content to see you so happy, Constanze.’ Stadler’s face was grim. He seemed to resent the ascription of happiness to his friend, as though Wolfgang’s death had been so tragic it had forever erased all the pleasures of his life.

  ‘Then perhaps you’ll complete something else of Wolfgang’s,’ my sister-in-law said. She beckoned for the page Wolfgang had written about his Grotto. I handed it to her and she passed it to Stadler. ‘What can you tell me about this?’

  Stadler read.

  ‘Anton, you were the closest of Wolfgang’s Masonic brothers,’ Constanze said. ‘He shared everything with you. You must know what he intended. Perhaps I’ll need it when I come to prepare his biography. Tell me what it’s about?’