by Carrie Lofty
A piano competition. What was he thinking?
Foremost, he was thinking of the four students he stood to lose in five months’ time, upon their graduation from the university. No matter his remaining pupils, he would run out of funds in short order. Hours spent battering and blasting new compositions into life consumed valuable hours—hours he should have been using to seek tutoring opportunities. And the Venners’ monthly stipend only reached so far.
Haydn’s fortuitous mention of a public piano competition thrilled Arie with the possibility of a financial reprieve. The promised purse might be enough to see him through Easter, especially if he behaved on fasting days. Summer would bring outdoor concerts and new commissions, but on that wintry eve, summer seemed a distant land.
On the second floor, glasses clinked and patrons negotiated wagers over a din of laughter and talk. He pushed past dozens of milling drinkers and wondered if it was too much to hope that Mathilda might attend. She had offered her assurances, but he did not trust her sense of obligation. When Arie had departed the Venners’ manor, she had still worn a dazed expression like a soldier recovering from the crash of cannon fire.
Her absence might be for the best, though, because he needed every shred of concentration to win the contest. She would distract him, and unwanted memories played cruel enough games within his brain.
He had not needed the ready cash of a piano competition since leaving Budapest. Since stealing Love and Freedom.
Anxiety flashed down his muscles. His fingers tingled as if recovering from exposure to the cold. But he was a master pianist—and had been even before deceiving his way to fame. Tetchy nerves and the sharp edge of doubt could not overwhelm that plain knowledge.
The reward purse was already in his possession. He knew.
He found the tight clump of musicians awaiting the contest’s commencement. Most of the contenders were nameless newcomers, but Arie identified Joseph Wölfl, a native Salzburger and pianist he had defeated during a competition in Nice.
The competition would not be as simple as he had imagined.
“Wölfl.”
“De Voss.”
“I thought you lived in Paris,” Arie said.
“I thought you were too accomplished for such a spectacle.”
Arie regarded his adversary, whose impressive height and enormous finger span served to intimidate his rivals. But for once, nothing would rumple his confidence. “The money is mine before we begin,” Arie said. “I see no reason not to claim what belongs to me.”
Wölfl laughed and slapped him on the back with more force than was amiable. “De Voss, I forgot how damned arrogant you are.”
Grinning through his dislike, Arie remembered Wölfl as a reckless, vain man with few markers of true musical genius. Although he had studied under Leopold Mozart and Kapellmeister Haydn in his youth, Wölfl never managed to play above the caliber of a stiff mechanicus. Akin to the best-trained animals in a Carnival exhibition, he lacked soul and originality.
In short, the man reflected everything Arie feared about his own deficiencies.
A fleshy barmaid passed him. She held two massive steins of strong ale in one sturdy hand and a platter of steaming Knödeln in the other. Although her arms strained and dampness stained her garments, she offered Arie a fresh, inviting smile. Neither the dumplings nor the overworked maid appealed to him, but the ale might calm his clammy nerves. He had not had a drink in almost three weeks.
He arranged his face into a mask of professional detachment. “And how is Paris?”
“Terrible.” Gripping the handle of his own stein with easy assurance, Wölfl downed a gulp of ale. “We must buy water because filth still clogs the Seine. Buildings collapse almost daily, like reminders of the Terror. And Bonaparte continues to close theaters. The bored merveilleuses can only sustain so many artists. The rest starve or flee.”
“I can see why your birthplace might hold a renewed appeal.”
“I never wanted to return to this backwater,” Wölfl said with a snort. “But such is life. Maybe I’ll try London…after I claim your winnings.”
Arie and his chief rival listened and waited for their turn at the instrument. Six other musicians competed by process of elimination. Playing for a handful of minutes, each man expanded on a ten-note motif that Hans Stüderl, the court’s Konzertmeister and first violinist, had jotted on a slip of paper. At the end of each piece, the crowd’s rowdy shouts determined whether the performer would remain in contention.
Second only to Arie as the most famous of the evening’s competitors, Wölfl took a turn before the keyboard and produced no small murmur of talk from the audience. Arie concentrated on his performance because success depended on finding the giant Salzburger’s weakness.
Wölfl opened with the same ten-note theme each performer used, and from that uniform beginning, he produced a quick counterpoint below the original melody. The composition sounded intensely Viennese, piercing and oddly nasal, as his powerful hands roamed the keyboard with light, rapid touches. His long limbs worked the keys and pedals in an overwrought display of technical skill. A sheen of sweat formed on his brow.
The crowd loved him. Applause thundered through the building upon Wölfl’s conclusion, thrusting him to the forefront of the competitors.
Unimpressed, Arie found a renewed wellspring of confidence in the man’s excess. Agitated scales deserved no place in music of quality. Whereas Wölfl had not progressed since the last time they dueled, Arie had grown, accomplishing much since those days as a desperate, hungry, glory-bound lad. Although still desperate and occasionally hungry, he knew his craft.
Wölfl flashed prominent teeth, daring his Dutch rival to top the grandiose, crowd-winning display. He pantomimed dusting the piano bench, apparently confident of his triumph.
Arie strode to the top of the tiny stage, a raised platform just wide enough to support the petite pianoforte. The last of his debilitating nerves ebbed. Old memories vanished. He settled gingerly on the bench. Every thought and barrier fell away, leaving only the unpolluted joy of performance in their wake.
He knew.
He reached for the penciled jot of music and turned it upside down.
Four days on from another blizzard, with the restrictions of Lent in sight, Ingrid had insisted on jovial socializing. The piano competition proved the perfect event, and Mathilda became a willing participant in her friend’s happy scheme to entice Venner from his work.
Because Arie would be there.
He had almost kissed her. Not her lips, but perhaps her throat or earlobe. And she had wanted him to. The possibility terrified her, naturally, but only because she would have been obliged to reject him. Recollections of the half breath between their lips struck Mathilda with a powerful longing and a confusion she dared not contemplate.
She sought her Fraiskette, but the comforting weight of amber and silver did not hang from her neck. Sifting through the folds of her gown, she located a concealed pocket and the pendant. The panicky sensation of falling from a towering precipice receded, if only momentarily.
Her Morgengabe. The present Jürgen bestowed on their wedding night in honor of her virginity.
I should have liked to give it to you.
She clutched the charm and found no solace in the swirls of silver filigree worn smooth by troubled fingers, nor in the firm oval of the amber cabochon. De Voss had so altered the significance of the simple piece of jewelry that it no longer eased her anxieties.
At least she did not feel conspicuous in the Stadttrinkstube. The impressive multi-story building positively teemed with people of all ages, incomes and states of romantic attachment. One of the only social establishments in the city to welcome even an eligible Fräulein, the alehouse was a respectable place where men and women mingled freely, widows included.
Venner angled for a table, claiming seats for their party before signaling a serving girl for ale. Pressed to the back of the overcrowded second floor, Mathilda strained to see
the stage.
“Is he here?” Ingrid’s voice teased, both playful and knowing.
Mathilda frowned at her friend’s conspiratorial tone. How transparent had she become? Of late, Ingrid had been reading her moods and silences like words on a page. She could not decide if she had changed, or if Ingrid was simply maturing.
“By the stage. I saw him when we arrived.”
Ingrid stood on tiptoe. She gripped the back of her chair for balance in order to see De Voss and the other musicians. “Tilda, dearest, is he equally hard-faced in private too?”
Standing next to her friend, across an interminable distance, Mathilda caught sight of him again. A yawning valley of people separated them, preventing her from admiring the details of his face. “I admit, he is a grim character.”
Ingrid observed him with a more critical, detached eye. A scowl creased her forehead. “I would never look twice at him,” she said with a hint of apology. “He always manages to appear a fright. His hair, that frown. But when he plays—Tilda, I can understand your attraction.”
“He’s my music teacher.”
“I know.” Her smile was angelic. Her green eyes laughed and laughed.
She would have enjoyed playing Ingrid’s happy game, finding romantic intrigue within every stray glance, but Mathilda did not have the heart. She was not asking to love the maestro; she simply wanted to believe in him. And he made that task maddeningly difficult.
A maid arrived with ale. Venner and Ingrid took their seats and chatted. Despite her attempts to follow their conversation, Mathilda could not look away from the stage. She watched De Voss talk with another, taller musician and read tension in her maestro’s posture, in the angle of his neck. And Ingrid was right—goodness, his hair. Did the man even own a mirror? Although impeccably dressed in that same black suit, his hair remained a tousled fright of nervous energy.
The taller musician took his vigorous, furious turn at the piano. Hypnotized patrons swelled in number, jamming into the corners of the massive room. Several women and even a few men stood on chairs to secure a better view. Mathilda and Ingrid joined them, balancing and straining to see over hundreds of heads.
The man named Wölfl concluded his performance with a repulsively ornate flourish of scales and superfluous ornamentation, winning the affection of the crowd despite his lack of finesse. De Voss remained poised at the edge of the stage, his face an impassive mask of concentration. Absentmindedly, he picked at the fine lace trim poking out of a coat sleeve, his cerulean gaze turned inward. Mathilda could almost see his mind working, dissecting his rival’s uninspired improvisation. Although motionless and unassuming, he was hard at work.
Ingrid caught her eye. “Do we have our winner?”
Mathilda could not answer. If he proved the musician—the man—she had believed him to be, she would gladly foretell his triumph like an oracle. But certainty escaped her.
“Wait and see,” she whispered.
With the gravity of a condemned man to the scaffolds, he took the stage and settled on the bench. Then he turned the scrap of paper upside down.
“What’s he doing?” Ingrid voiced the question shooting through countless minds.
Into the hushed anticipation, Mathilda answered with an inarticulate, gleeful sound. She understood his intention immediately. Her solitary laugh drew stares from faces near and far.
Arie’s included.
Across the expanse of humanity separating their bodies, he grinned. She became his conspirator.
Upside-down, that scribbled motif stood backward and flipped on its staff, with soprano notes sinking down and the low notes rising high. He intended to violate the spirit of the competition’s rules but not the letter. As had every other competitor, he would base his improvisation on the same basic string of tones, transforming the motif into a radical mirror of a now-tired theme.
They regarded each other in a wordless exchange. Yearning and admiration seared Mathilda’s lungs, as if she were breathing in the midst of a bonfire. She wanted to hold fast to time and freeze that instant of understanding and terror, of resignation and joy. The moment she devoted herself to him. The moment she knew him.
Half of the continent believed him a smug, haughty fool, while the other half thought him disagreeable and ill-humored. A recluse. An uncivil renegade. Mathilda knew differently. He was a lonesome and unfathomably apprehensive man with a sense of humor so well hidden that it was as good as invisible. She laughed because she understood the playful, subtle boastfulness of his game. He smiled in recognition of the one soul who saw him—insecurities, temper, disheveled hair and all.
She blinked.
And he began.
Using those black and white keys and his devilish vision, Arie slowly coaxed his mirrored theme into life. A parade of ten individual tones resonated through the wide, crowded, expectant alehouse. He repeated those notes once and again before inducing a flood of variations in tempo rubato, a rhythmic configuration where the tones of the melody fell offbeat to the underlying bass line he created spontaneously.
Still gentle and without the hurried, flaunting displays of speed upon which other musicians relied, Arie pulled from that tinny, abused pianoforte a sonorous, almost percussive sound of deep, primal impulses. His harmonies threatened the limits of the tonal system, challenging his listeners to dare with him, to claim a world scarcely beyond their sight.
Not even their weeks together had prepared Mathilda for what he played. She could not believe the music emanating from his hands, so different from his previous compositions. Celebratory cantatas, sacred Masses, and the courtly, romantic themes of Love and Freedom all scattered. Forgotten. He twisted wicked need into melody. Bare footfalls on hard-packed ground. Supernatural ceremonies. Life and death, bittersweet, all under a wide and watchful sky.
He invited her into a heathenish place she had not the vocabulary to describe. Hot color flowered across her skin. Her balance tilted as she strained to comprehend and keep hold of every note.
Somewhere along the wide and fathomless river of sensation, Ingrid took her hand. Mathilda clasped those grounding fingers, pulled to earth after a wondrous flight across imagination. Arie concluded his performance with a clap of melodic thunder followed by the gentlest repetition of his mirrored theme, just ten little notes filing one by one into silence.
An awed hush erupted into the dissonant cry of a thousand hands wildly applauding their victor. Shouts. Whistles. The room went mad for him. Mathilda’s own hands throbbed from the exertion of her manic applause, a release to the tense fire he had built to such heights.
Hans Stüderl raised his hands to catch the attention of the crowd. He cried into the din. “May I present your victor, Arie De Voss!”
Past upraised arms and bobbing heads, Mathilda caught sight of Arie. He stood and bowed in humble gratitude.
As the applause subsided to a manageable noise, Joseph Wölfl protested Arie’s trick. His frustrated plea sounded across the room. Some booed. Stüderl intervened with a stifled half grin. “Stand down, Wölfl. He only played what was on the paper, and he certainly outplayed you.”
Wölfl stormed off the stage, brooding, but Arie stayed his flight.
“My colleague is right in his anger,” he said. Confused whispers roamed across the audience. “I will not take the prize unless I prove the best musician here. I do not believe I am.”
His unyielding gaze snared Mathilda, appealing to her across the multitude. “Frau Heidel, Konzertmeister Stüderl brought his violin.”
“But you won, De Voss,” Stüderl said. “The money is yours.”
Arie ignored the man and spoke directly to Mathilda. “I will give the prize to Wölfl unless you accept my challenge.”
She froze, violently shaken by his words. The luxury of a simple breath became a hazy memory. The world tilted and swam. Colorful shots of light crossed her field of vision, blinding her to countless questioning stares. A rush of sound, her own blood pooling and pulsing in her ears,
drowned the noise of disbelieving murmurs.
But she could hear Arie just fine. “Come and play,” he said.
Ingrid pinched her upper arm until Mathilda jerked from her stupor. She caught her friend’s wide, disbelieving eyes. Within the disbelief, she found an audacious excitement.
Mouthing the word go, Ingrid urged her on.
To step off the sheer precipice of her chair was Mathilda’s first challenge. Numb with the effort of keeping her balance, her legs refused to support her weight. Touching her feet to the sticky wooden floor, she stumbled. Nearby patrons steadied her before shuffling aside. Bodies receded to create a serpentine path between tables and chairs and people.
Mathilda floated to the stage, to Arie’s side.
Arie watched his brilliant, unexpected student emerge from the crowd like a queen among peasants. She wore mourning black trimmed with drapes of pearl gray silk. A wide ribbon banded her body below the gown’s square neckline, accenting both her bust and the regal tilt of her neck. Piled in artless curls atop her head, her hair tinted red in the flash and dance of candlelight.
And her expression…Mathilda’s face appeared a curious blank.
Only when she reached his side, joining him on stage, did Arie understand the emotions she struggled to curb. He wanted to step back, to flee from the fury he had sparked within her, but he held fast. Beneath her obstinate resolve to hide her gift, Mathilda needed to perform. Arie knew it. She merely required an indelicate push to reveal that gift to the world.
In front of innumerable onlookers, they sparred in a private skirmish. Her furious whisper hissed the opening volley. “Why do this?”
Arie drew strength from the playfulness they had shared only minutes ago, in those moments before his solo. He grinned. “Tonight is a night as good as any for your debut.”
“I hate what you’ve done to me.”