Mozart's Last Aria

by Matt Rees

  The door opened and Lenerl entered. ‘The boy’s on his way to the Baron, madame,’ she said.

  I looked down at my husband’s letter with a shock of remorse for the pleasure I had taken in the Baron’s attention. I thought of my religion and the vows I had made before God. I had always been devoted to Our Savior and the Virgin Mother. On Good Fridays I made a tour of Salzburg’s churches, praying in more than a dozen of them and climbing the steps to St Kajetan’s on my knees.

  Lenerl stared at the letter in my hand. Her face tightened with guilt.

  ‘Sorry, madame, I forgot all about that letter. It came last night,’ she said. ‘You returned so late and you were in such fine spirits. I didn’t want to spoil things.’

  ‘Why should this letter have spoiled my mood?’

  ‘Well, it’s from – you know.’ She wrung her apron in her hands. ‘Isn’t it? From him?’

  Servants had been a trouble to me all my life. My dear father always said I was too harsh on them. Perhaps it was so, but I couldn’t allow this affront to pass. I widened my eyes and pursed my lips to deliver a rebuke. Then I saw her eyes tearing, and I pitied her.

  But for some chance, it might have been me quaking before a displeased mistress. When Wolfgang left Salzburg for Vienna, I had collapsed into an emotional confusion and taken to my bed in tears. With my brother gone, I had feared I’d have no one to support me if my father passed away. Papa used to say that a woman left alone would be forced to enter domestic service. I wouldn’t have been a lady’s maid like Lenerl, but even as a child’s governess I’d have been miserable. I liked it little enough when compelled to care for my stepchildren. My character wasn’t given to servitude. My father knew that and was anxious about it until he found a husband for me.

  I folded the letter and made my voice forgiving. ‘My clothes, Lenerl.’

  She went to my traveling chest.

  ‘The mauve dress with the lace over the bodice,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, madame.’

  I slipped my husband’s letter into my writing case. Later I’d write to him of my invitation to the Baron’s Society of Associated Cavaliers. Berchtold would be pleased that I was received by a high Imperial official. He needn’t know that I hoped to learn more from Swieten about Wolfgang’s last days, nor that an emotion I preferred not to name moved in me when I first saw the Baron outside the Collalto Palace.

  Lenerl laid out the dress on my bed. She took my underwear from the drawer. The bones in my corset rattled when she held it up. I slipped off my nightgown and let her wrap the stays around me.

  ‘Have you seen a little of Vienna while I’ve been making my visits?’ I said.

  She tightened the laces. I breathed out and she pulled them harder.

  ‘I had a little walk up to the cathedral, madame,’ she said. ‘To pray there for my mother’s soul. Such a place.’

  ‘You like Vienna?’

  She took the dress from the bed and lifted it over my head. ‘It’s got a bit more going for it than St Gilgen, madame.’ Over my shoulder, she caught my eye in the mirror. She lowered her eyes to the laces at the back of my dress. ‘No barons back home, either.’

  She was right. No one in my village was like Baron van Swieten.

  11

  Ientered Library Square past the field-green façade of the Palffy Palace, where Wolfgang had often played for his aristocratic sponsors. I whispered a prayer for my brother and hummed one of his arias.

  Across the broad square, the monumental limestone of the Imperial Library shone in the crisp midday sunlight. My pulse sharpened, the old kick of excitement that used to come over me as a child whenever I entered a palace. I whistled Wolfgang’s aria through my teeth.

  The porter directed me to an alabaster staircase whose windows enhanced the golden light of the day, rather than filtering it. As I climbed, I didn’t merely leave behind the dirt and noise of the streets. I ascended to a place where it seemed everything might be illuminated.

  At the head of the stairs, a door of polished chestnut opened onto a breathtaking hall. Oak bookcases rose in two decks, high over the cream marble floor. Roman numerals in gold leaf designated their place in the library’s catalogue. Thick ivory-colored pillars reached up to a bright fresco on the ceiling.

  A librarian came down a stepladder with a pile of volumes under his arm. I asked him to lead me to Baron van Swieten. He shoved at the shelves behind his ladder. A segment of the bookcase pivoted, opening into a hidden room big enough for little more than a single desk.

  The Baron perched on the window sill with a manuscript across his lap.

  ‘Madame de Mozart.’ Laying the manuscript on the desk with care, he dismissed the librarian. ‘Thank you, Strafinger.’

  He wore a black frock coat with mother-of-pearl buttons and an embroidered blue vest. He dropped into a bow, my hand to his lips.

  I glanced at the open manuscript. His eyes followed mine, and he smiled.

  ‘Parchment. A map of the Roman emperor’s postal system. Look here.’ He stepped to his desk and beckoned for me to come close. ‘See there, the tip of Italy. Here is Serbia, Albania, Greece.’

  The map was as long as my arm. Its irregular edges were a deep brown with age. ‘How old is it?’

  ‘It was copied some time around the fifth century.’

  I caught the scent of dry sweat that adheres to parchment.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ he said.

  ‘Truly.’

  ‘Beyond beautiful, really. Stunning.’ He gestured toward the door. ‘Let me show you something else.’

  From a desk in the library’s main hall, he pulled out a wide, shallow drawer. ‘As a native of Salzburg and a musician, you’ll enjoy this.’

  I looked down on a page of primitive musical notation, the red lines of the stave marked with crosses for the notes. A Latin text ran beneath the music.

  ‘Can you read it? Look.’ The Baron sang through the first line in a breathy baritone. ‘One of the privileges of heading the library is that no one may tell me to be quiet. This is the story of the death of St Benedict. It’s intended to be sung as part of the church liturgy. It was copied in your hometown six hundred years ago.’

  ‘Astonishing.’

  The Baron beamed like a proud parent. Absently he spun a globe almost as tall as me that charted the constellations. ‘Astonishing, yes. But also outdated and of little use to a musician today.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Unlike Wolfgang’s music. He’ll still be full of life to musicians born six hundred years from now.’

  The thought of Wolfgang’s work seemed to fill the Baron with energy. He swung his arms wide, catching his elbow on the stepladder. His librarian, on the highest step, grabbed a column for balance. Swieten glanced up at the startled man and moved along the hall.

  Under the grand fresco of the central cupola, he held his hands behind his back and spoke toward the polished marble of the floor.

  ‘Had I known you were coming to Vienna, I would have delayed the funeral, madame,’ he said.

  ‘Please don’t apologize. I understand that you organized and paid for the rites. I feel only gratitude to you, sir.’

  ‘You know the current custom – it was a simple funeral. An ordinary grave which will be ploughed over in ten years to save space.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s a little inhuman, perhaps,’ he said, ‘but the spirit of the departed is more important than his bones, don’t you think?’

  ‘Surely.’

  He brought his hands in front of his chest as though in prayer. ‘I would have you know, madame, that I examined Wolfgang’s body before his doctors took it away to the cathedral for his funeral service.’

  My fingers grew numb and cold, as if Wolfgang’s ghost reached out from Swieten’s palm to grip them now.

  ‘My father was physician to the Empress Maria Theresia,’ Swieten said. ‘Ever since my birth I’ve been surrounded by men of science. I still keep
up with the latest research. In medicine, too. So I consulted a doctor in whom I have some confidence. I told him I had – doubts about your brother’s death.’

  I seemed to suffocate with tension, as though the bones in my corset drew tighter over my ribs. ‘What did he tell you?’

  The Baron stared into the sunlight that shimmered through the high windows. ‘He disagreed with the diagnosis given by Wolfgang’s doctor.’

  I turned from him to hide the excitement and apprehension in my face. ‘But Wolfgang’s doctor discovered a rash on the skin that confirmed the cause of death as a fever.’

  ‘That same doctor opened Wolfgang’s veins to try to cure him, as if we still lived in medieval times. He ascribed Wolfgang’s sickness to an excess of black bile and phlegm.’ The Baron slapped his hands together. ‘The man is a fool.’

  ‘Then what killed my brother?’

  Swieten stroked his neck. ‘The doctor I consulted also attended Wolfgang at the end. His name’s Sallaba. I respect his research.’

  ‘It was he who differed as to the diagnosis?’

  ‘It was.’

  Swieten hadn’t been the only one of Wolfgang’s friends to doubt the cause of death. Yet while the others were terrified of the truth, the Baron had sought it out. His love for my brother and his belief in justice drew me to him more strongly even than the sympathy he had shown for my nervousness at the Academy the previous night.

  He went to a stone spiral of stairs. I followed him up to a gallery along the second level of bookshelves. Behind a pink marble bust of an old emperor with a long flowing wig and empty eyes, he waited for me. Below us, the library was silent, except for the pacing of Strafinger as he replaced some volumes from a trolley.

  ‘Early in the year, when Maestro Haydn departed to give some concerts in London,’ Swieten whispered, ‘Wolfgang embraced him and said that he feared they would never see each other again. Haydn’s getting on a bit. I assumed at the time that Wolfgang meant the journey or the effects of the London rain might kill the old fellow. I now think I misread his comment.’

  ‘You believe Wolfgang expected to be the one to die?’

  Swieten grasped the base of the bust. His fingernails whitened with the force of his hold. He drew a heavy volume in light brown leather from the nearest shelf. He leafed through the book, turned it toward me, and jabbed at the page with his finger. ‘Acqua toffana.’

  The poison Wolfgang believed had been administered to him.

  The Italian text described a poison developed by a Sicilian lady named Signora Toffana in the sixteenth century. She sold it to women who wished to dispose of their husbands without leaving traces.

  ‘A blend of arsenic, deadly nightshade and lead,’ Swieten said. ‘It’s colorless and has no taste.’

  I glanced down the page. The symptoms of the poison were hallucinations and delusions, agitation and obsession with death, stomach pains, failure of the kidneys, swelling and—I came to a halt. ‘Skin rashes.’ Swieten bit at his lip. ‘Each of those symptoms was manifested in Wolfgang.’

  ‘Delusions?’

  ‘He saw enemies everywhere. When I came upon him in the street not long ago, he lifted a finger to his lips to quiet me, looking around as though someone dangerous were tracking him.’ Swieten took back the book. ‘But perhaps it was no delusion.’

  ‘Wolfgang’s letters to me never mentioned that he was threatened by anyone.’

  ‘Vienna has changed in the last few years, madame. Years when – you’ll forgive me for mentioning it – you and Wolfgang weren’t in touch. Viennese artists used to be free to express themselves. People conversed without restraint, even about politics.’

  ‘But now?’

  At the end of the gallery a door opened. A page in a red jerkin stepped through. ‘Lunch is ready, my lord,’ he said.

  Swieten slipped the book back into its shelf. ‘These days nobody can afford to make a mistake.’

  I followed him along the gallery. As the page shut the door behind me, I thought I caught the sound of whispering in the library. I paused, but I heard nothing more. I decided it had been merely the brushing of my skirts against the bookshelves.

  12

  In the Baron’s apartment, thick leatherbound volumes and musical scores weighted the lid of the clavichord. I glanced at some sheets of music propped before the keyboard. Incomplete and with many corrections, they had been scribbled beneath the title The Lost Master. Swieten grabbed them, shuffled them together, and hid them beneath a treatise on Hungarian agriculture.

  ‘Your own composition?’ I asked.

  ‘I wished to express something of my feelings about Wolfgang’s death,’ he said.

  ‘May I see it?’

  He shook his head. ‘Like all my music, it’s as stiff as I am.’

  I thought of my husband, silent and upright at his accounts. ‘I’m used to searching for the softness beneath a rigid surface. I’d like to play it.’

  His face grew open and vulnerable, then he grimaced. ‘It would offend your hands to touch such a combination of notes,’ he said. ‘I’m content to perform as an amateur among friends. My compositions I must keep in this room. My guilty secrets.’

  He traced his hand over a yellow arabesque painted on the dark green wall. With a shrug, he extended his arm and led me through the door to a dining room decorated in blue and white damask.

  The chamberlain poured an emerald white wine. Swieten raised his glass. ‘A fine old Smaragd, from the Wachau, just along the Danube from Vienna,’ he said. ‘About twenty years old. Very rich. Excellent.’

  ‘I’ve grown unaccustomed to fine wine.’

  ‘When you live in the mountains, it’s natural to drink the pure lake-water. Here in Vienna the water’s so tainted it’d kill you in a week. You must choose between wine, beer, or the graveyard.’ The mention of death halted the glass on its way to Swieten’s mouth. He rolled his lip as though offended by the bouquet.

  I drank. ‘The wine’s very good, your Grace.’

  ‘I apologize for my somber mood,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have revealed my doubts about Wolfgang’s passing. They’re probably nothing more than the result of too many years in the palace. Conspiracies are everywhere here.’

  ‘Don’t think that I came to Vienna merely to mourn at Wolfgang’s grave, sir. I, too, have my doubts about the way he died.’

  ‘Do you?’ He spoke with eagerness and relief.

  ‘Indeed, I do.’ I ran my finger around the lip of my glass. ‘I see that his passing affects you deeply.’

  He tapped at the tabletop. ‘I found all my inspiration in Wolfgang’s music. Now he’s gone, I’m in despair. Not only personal despair, but despair for our entire empire.’

  The servant laid a bowl of beef broth before me.

  ‘The empire?’ I said.

  ‘New ideas of equality and freedom have transformed intellectual life across Europe. I persuaded the Emperor to base his policies on this spirit of enlightenment.’ Swieten circled his spoon through his broth, but ate nothing. ‘Then came the Revolution in France. Our Emperor started to fear an uprising in the Austrian Lands.’

  ‘Is a revolution really possible here?’

  ‘The other great monarchs of Europe have faced the impossible. King George felt the sting of defeat in his American colonies less than two decades ago. King Louis was turfed out of Versailles itself only a few months past. Still I doubt it’ll happen here.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Of course, it’s easy for me to be so relaxed about it. I have less to lose than the Emperor.’ He stared at his spoon and laid it on the table. ‘Our monarch pays no heed to my reforms now. He fears my liberality might allow radical ideas to enter Austria. Have you finished your Rindsuppe? Take this away.’

  The servant removed the dishes and brought a steaming ceramic pot from the sideboard.

  ‘These days the Emperor listens to the suspicions of Count Pergen, whom you met at the concert last night. The Minister of Polic
e, as you may have noticed, is no liberal.’

  From the pot, the servant drew out a slice of boiled beef with a thick band of fat and ladled some potatoes onto my plate.

  Swieten watched the servant set a plate before him and frowned. ‘I’m losing my battle against Pergen. The battle to preserve a place in our society for progress and free thought.’

  When I had entertained noblemen on the harpsichord as a child, I had known nothing of their struggles to promote their ideas and to make the state in the image of themselves. Listening to the Baron, I felt foolish to have been so concerned with the color of my ribbons and the dressing of my hair. All around me had been conflict over issues of great importance, yet I had tinkled out a gavotte or a minuet.

  ‘Wolfgang’s music allowed me to believe this battle would soon be over,’ the Baron said. ‘His art embraced these new ideas and gave me the feeling that they were unstoppable. Even Count Pergen would tap his foot to one of Wolfgang’s contredanses. Your brother’s compositions were irresistible in a way that my arguments in the Emperor’s council could never be.’

  ‘I’m sure that only your grief for Wolfgang makes you see things so darkly.’ I heard the emptiness of my words and so did the Baron.

  ‘Without him, my failures are highlighted rather too brightly,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s because I miss Wolfgang’s inspiration that I’ve turned to desperate speculations about how he met his end. I beg you to put them aside.’

  ‘In only three days in Vienna, I’ve learned some curious things about Wolfgang’s death. I don’t know what to make of them, but they’re more than mere speculations.’

  I drew the paper from my pocket and unfolded it. I saw that Swieten recognized the handwriting as my brother’s even across the table. His features were instantly alert. He laid down his knife and fork, and reached for the page. I passed it to him.

  ‘What was Wolfgang’s Grotto?’ I asked.