Now that he is rich, Mesmer can give free rein to philanthropic pursuits. He expresses his sincere curiosity in regard to the arts and artists with pomp. His address—261 Landstrasse, the imposing home of the late Secretary of Finance—has become a hub of Viennese intellectual and cultural life. A sort of small Versailles on the Danube, the sumptuous property offers two guesthouses overlooking a garden. You can walk down shaded paths lined with antique statues and fountains. On the far side of a grove are a dovecote and an aviary. And if you venture further, you reach a gazebo that overlooks the Prater and affords an unobstructed view of the city. But what delights Mesmer most is an enchanting open-air theater with a bandstand on each side. Actors and musicians, professional and amateur, perform on the outdoor stage. Mesmer himself often plays in the orchestra. His entertaining and eloquent dinner conversation is as popular as the shows and the concerts. He fascinates and intrigues the aristocracy. He has quickly become all the rage.
It was at this small theater on October 1, 1768, that Mozart, who had just been refused a commission on which his father Leopold was counting, first performed Bastien and Bastienne, which Mesmer had sponsored.
As the story goes, at the end of the performance, a nine-year-old blind pianist offered the composer a bouquet of flowers. There was only a three-year age difference between them. They would become friends—he would later dedicate a concerto to her. That evening, unbeknownst to both of them, Mesmer and Maria Theresia crossed paths without meeting.
Chapter 4
HER FATHER HAD PROMISED TO PUT AN END TO ALL attempts to cure her. It was on May 15, 1776, the day she turned seventeen. She was fiddling with the gift he had placed on her napkin during lunch: a small sack, silky and rough like her heavy bedroom curtains—a material called velvet. She felt its weight without undoing the drawstring. She guessed what might be inside: a ring, a broach, a pair of earrings, a necklace—one of those gifts she called “selfish presents”: finery that is pleasing to the eye, for those who can see. Her father’s way of showing his daughter off and compensating for the handicap that so distressed him. She took no pleasure in bedecking herself with these objects designed to make those who wear them sparkle. Why shine a light on a young woman whose eyes are dead to the world? She would have preferred a bouquet of peonies with their intoxicating smell, or a pair of thin gloves for her constantly cold fingertips, or even a fur muff.
She could sense her father’s impatience by his breathing, which always grew heavier when he tried to contain himself.
She put down the sack without attempting to open it.
“Thank you for the generous gift. I’ll open it when I’m alone. I can best appreciate things in silence and solitude.”
She paused to let her mother try, unsuccessfully, to restrain an exasperated sigh. Then turning to her father, she picked up where she had left off.
“The gift I want most won’t cost you a thing. On the contrary, it will allow you to cut back on the enormous expenses my health has caused you. What I wish more than anything is to stop having to see all these different specialists. Not one of them has been able to explain what stopped my eyes from seeing. But instead of admitting defeat, they’ve taken it out on my body. They’ve assaulted my brain and left me a bundle of nerves. Incessant migraines; burning eyelids, as if salt’s been thrown on them; eczema gnawing at my scalp, making me lash out like a pony shaking off flies—the doctors have brought illness upon illness on me but have never treated the one they were originally called in for. So I’ll say it once and for all: I am satisfied with my lot. I enjoy flattering you by wearing the jewelry you’ve chosen for me. But I beg of you: Think of me and not yourself.”
A silver platter crashed to the floor, startling them and interrupting a tirade embarrassing for her parents but not for her. The noise brought a smile to Maria Theresia’s lips. Dear Nina, trying as always to restore peace and to keep up the appearances of a festive lunch. A quartet of violinists were waiting in the kitchen, preparing to celebrate the birthday joyfully. Maria Theresia heard them tuning their instruments and thought she could make out the overture to Le donne letterate, the opera buffa by Salieri, her singing and composition professor. She raised her glass of white wine in their direction as they were walking across the immense living room to the podium set up under the crystal chandelier.
“To the peace of my body and mind!”
She then took her father by his hand when he came to stroke hers. She squeezed it with all her strength until he murmured:
“You have my word.”
Chapter 5
A FEW WEEKS LATER THE THREE OF THEM ATTENDED a concert at the house in the Landstrasse. In June Franz Anton Mesmer had acquired a little-known instrument composed of glass bowls that were filled to various levels with water and with which musical tones were created by means of friction. He excelled at playing his glass-harmonica, which was considered one of the most beautiful of its kind. The word spread like wildfire in the capital: One simply had to hear the sound that Mesmer called “the source of harmony among men.” The Viennese prided themselves on their ear for music, and Mesmer’s solo variations became the must-see show of the summer.
Although perfectly devoid of any artistic curiosity herself, Nina was thrilled that Maria Theresia was going. For the host of the evening inspired in Nina the kind of irrational admiration that a celebrity can in someone pure of heart. Simply because a man is handsome and basks in the flattering glow of his era, people project onto him qualities that he does not necessarily possess but which nonetheless justify the superlatives used to describe him. So Nina saw to it that her mistress’s low bun softened the sliver of her profile, that the mauve in her dress enhanced her pearl-white complexion and the bodice accented her slim waist, and that her feet were perfectly arched. It was like playing with dolls, creating a woman able to attract a man of Mesmer’s caliber. Nina was not worried about Maria Theresia’s blindness. As she explained to her mistress, a woman’s vulnerabilities render her all the more attractive. That evening Maria Theresia started to grasp some of the nuances of the word “femininity.”
The Paradises were not accustomed to visiting Mesmer’s house. Over the years their host had established his reputation as musician/patron of the arts to such an extent that Mozart, before setting off for Paris, had asked him for a letter of introduction to Marie Antoinette, and Mesmer had mentioned this request to Joseph Anton, whose amicable relationship with the Empress Maria Theresia was well-known. The two men thus began to meet. The doctor never missed an opportunity to ask about the Secretary’s daughter. At first it was to flatter Paradis by showing interest in the person most dear to him. But by dint of questioning him about the treatments his daughter was receiving and learning of their harmful effects on her physical and mental health, Mesmer ended up offering to treat her himself.
Mesmer had recently succeeded in strengthening his reputation as a visionary in the field of medicine thanks to the care he had administered to a twenty-seven-year-old woman, a friend of his wife’s. Franziska von Osterlin suffered from various ills, ranging from violent vomiting to spells of paralysis that variously affected her limbs. She sojourned frequently with the Mesmers. The doctor identified approximately fifteen ills afflicting her and, over the years, managed to cure her of all of them. Gossipmongers claimed that her case interested him only because he hoped to marry her to his wife’s son, whom he wanted out of the house. But facts were facts: Fraülein Franziska claimed she was cured, and rumor had it that a happy event would bring her cure to completion.
Since advancing his thesis on celestial bodies, Mesmer had become convinced that a mutual influence existed among the stars, the earth, and human beings. According to him, this influence was transmitted via a fluid that restored the nerves to health.
In 1772, following in the footsteps of Father Hell, a Jesuit astrology professor who prided himself on curing people with magnets, Mesmer adapted his procedure of magnetic healing but soon clashed with the priest. He then pre
tended to have discovered the method himself and accused Hell of plagiarism.
The following year, when he met a Swiss priest, Father Gassner, who practiced exorcism, Mesmer decided to give up magnets and apply his own hands instead. The former water diviner/healer determined that his body itself was a conduit of the curative fluid, of the energy that relieved the pain engendered by nervous ills.
The case of Maria Theresia arrived at the perfect time. The specialists maintained that her eyes suffered from no scientifically evident disorder. She thus must be unconsciously inflicting the disease on herself. Had the treatments subsequently plunged her further into a melancholia to which she had never before been subject, then? Nervous disorder, no doubt about it.
Mesmer was able to appear persuasive. Such arguments coming from a friend of Mozart’s could only be trustworthy. The city was swarming with rumors about him, claiming, for example, that Father Hell’s discovery had got stolen—but wasn’t this proof of the fascination that Mesmer aroused? Joseph Anton, as a man of influence, was not ignorant of the process that leads from admiration to envy only to materialize in malicious gossip.
Not knowing what to make of this new medicine, Paradis spoke with the Empress’s physician, the Baron von Stoerck. Von Stoerck knew Mesmer well. They both came from the same area of Germany and spoke the same dialect. He had had Mesmer as a student and had even agreed to be a witness at his wedding. The well-meaning advice Paradis received was tinged with the famous Professor’s customary irony:
“Mesmer’s treatments couldn’t harm a fly.”
The presence of the Paradis family at Mesmer’s concert in his house on Landstrasse owed nothing to chance. But because the young woman’s father could not go back on his birthday promise, the offer had to come from Mesmer himself. It was imperative that, upon being introduced to her, he be seized by sudden inspiration.
Chapter 6
MARIA THERESIA WAS UNAWARE OF FRANZ ANTON Mesmer’s medical ambitions. All she knew about him was his reputation as a patron of the arts. She had heard him play with orchestras and remembered him as being a mediocre pianist.
But that evening, sitting between her parents on the bandstand near the gazebo at the left side of the garden, she could only admire the quality of his improvisations on the glass-harmonica.
Was the instrument responsible for the trembling sonority, or was it his way of playing it? A sense of peace emanated from that assembly of air, glass, and water.
Maria Theresia lifted her head, offering her senses a well-deserved pause. She lost the panicky stiffness she felt when surrounded by strangers whose gazes seemed to pierce through her. She no longer felt weighed down by the baubles that encumbered her neck and earlobes. She felt dizzy, as if a wind had risen and blown right through her. Her hands were quivering as they did sometimes at church when prayers overlapped, as if they were taking a shortcut to heaven.
The concert was over, but she was shaking too much to applaud.
She asked her parents to bring her some cold water.
Her temples were moist. She was shivering.
“I was hoping you might take comfort in the music.”
She sensed a figure leaning over. The chairs next to her were empty.
He pulled one toward him and sat facing her.
“Your body’s reaction to the sounds of the glass-harmonica is intense. This music affects you because your body torments you. You suffer because you are not in harmony with yourself. The body is an instrument. It needs to be tuned, like piano keys.”
His voice was insistent, enveloping. The more he spoke, the more she leaned back, as if he represented a force she couldn’t resist.
“Let me take care of you. I’m asking you to allow me this chance. A pianist of your caliber needs peace and quiet. Allow me to offer you a few days’ rest from your daily life. You need to breathe without being told how to do so.”
She started to shake again, but it was contained within—a muffled vibration that made her heart skip a beat.
“But my parents ...”
“Your parents want your well-being. I’ll be able to persuade them.”
She dared lean into the warmth of his breath.
“Are you a magician?”
He let out a hearty laugh.
“No, but I observe you, I see you.”
She bit her lips and put her hand on her face so he couldn’t read anything into it.
He stood up.
“So it’s decided. I’ll call on your father tomorrow and ask his permission to have you be my guest for a short time. Mademoiselle ...”
He disappeared without a sound. She heard only her mother’s footsteps as she came to cover her daughter with a shawl.
“Shall we go? This garden is too humid.”
“Where is Father?”
“I don’t see him. Ah, yes, he’s by the fountain speaking with Herr Mesmer.”
Maria Theresia stumbled to get up. She felt numb.
Her mother took her by the arm.
“Do you not feel well?”
“I feel ... lost.”
Maria Theresia’s lips broke into a slight smile that her mother did not notice.
“But it is not unpleasant.”
Chapter 7
WHILE MESMER’S OFFER WAS BEING DISCUSSED—that is, the time it took for Joseph Anton to convince his wife to listen to reason—and while Mesmer was preparing the apartments for his future patient, Maria Theresia had plenty of time to take full measure of what she was in for.
She had instructed Nina to keep her ears open and now understood that she had fallen into a trap: Mesmer intended to cure her. She couldn’t bring herself to be angry at him. He had read her so perspicaciously! She sensed in his interest for her a truth, an integrity that she never questioned for an instant. She was used to trusting only herself, that is, her own instinct. She had developed an almost nearly perfect ear and a remarkable memory. She could hear in the inflection of a voice whether a person was sincere or affected, and she detected in Mesmer’s voice true honesty. Whatever his deeper intentions, she had no reason to doubt the sincerity with which he addressed her.
On the other hand, she didn’t trust herself. His rapid insightfulness left her feeling highly emotional. She feared that once she was in his home, the vulnerability to which she had formerly been accustomed would take hold of her again.
Whatever others might think—blinded by a pity that paralyzed them to the point of seeming to be unfeeling—she had managed to transform her handicap into a strength, even a weapon. People became so uncomfortable around the blind that they overdid everything. They spoke too loud, shook hands too forcefully, thrust their faces too close, as if she were deaf as well as blind. They chose their words similarly: too many adjectives, too many superlatives, too many words, too many sentences—all in their uncontrollable need to fill the void into which her absent gaze plunged them. She took advantage of their vulnerability, and behind the mask of her bright smile that had become her trademark (since she was a child Nina had always told her that her full lips and white teeth were her best asset), she would laugh at the signals sent out by these creatures in distress. She could tell by someone’s footstep that his hand would be clammy. She learned to what extent the world opens up to you if you know how to listen. She had now forgotten those early years when her eyes were open to the world. She’d felt frail only during the first few weeks after the darkness, when she could still remember what it was like to see. But years of appalling treatments had made her lose all trace of that. Since then she had garnered strength from her assumed weakness.
Mesmer was different. He had detected in her a personality as proud as it was unsettling. Above all, he could tell how much she wanted to leave the family home. That he was able to pierce this secret so easily made her impatient to be his guest, but she also worried about the power he had over her. She recalled every second of their brief encounter yet failed to locate the crack in her mask, the breach into which he could have peered
in order to figure her out so well. She had brought up the subject with no one. Her parents were as much her protection as her tombstone. Her home was her haven, her wooden piano her compass. But she breathed freely only when her parents went out.
Everything about those early sighted days may have been erased from her memory, but her sense of smell clung to one thing still. Whenever she thought about that night when her gaze had been banished to the realm of darkness, the smell of amber and tobacco sprung to her mind. Her room bore the scent of her father.
Chapter 8
SHE LET THE SEASONS RUN THEIR COURSE, WAITED FOR the winter, and chose a Friday. One day to settle in, another to check out the place, and a third to get used to it.
This would give her three days before being alone with him, face-to-face. Him. He in whom her father wanted to believe. He in whom Mozart had put his trust. He whom even the Empress had allowed to treat her.
Her father had tried to explain to her that the kind of medicine practiced by Mesmer could in no way make her suffer. She refused to listen to him. She could now afford to bear a real grudge toward her father. It was official, out in the open, and she took shameless advantage of it. She felt love for this man. She was aware that she was the woman of his life, in a way her mother had probably never been, even before Maria Theresia was born.
He called her “my life’s joy,” and when she felt sad, which was often, she would answer, “You mean your life’s sorrow.” It goes without saying that he was her eyes, her anchoring. He never lost his temper or his patience with her.
He taught her the names of the colors and the trees. He had her smell the most exotic fragrances and the rarest flowers, encouraged her to taste the most unforgettable dishes. He obtained the goodwill of the Empress, brought together the city’s greatest musicians.
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