Aloha, Mozart

by Williams, Waimea

  At the creamery a friend mentioned seeing Karl with Maile in front of the Mozarteum. Frau Metzger replied in a bored tone that her beautiful tenant talked to ten men every day at the conservatory, and spent entire evenings with talented artists in the Mozarteum’s radio room. A minor rumor, she decided. More useful gossip could be counted on to wend its way from butcher to button seller to Frau Metzger’s ears. By three in the afternoon, news of her tenant speaking personally to the American consul reached her via the aunt of the diplomat’s chauffeur, a spinster who cooked for the priest at the cemetery outside town. Frau Metzger pretended she already knew the facts. She cut short her shopping and went into Skolaren Kirche.

  Settled in a front pew with her basket, Frau Metzger ordered her thoughts. All over the city, favors were owed to her, some going back years. As needed, she could collect three chickens from Herr Kohlhaus, plucked and greased for the oven, or five meters of cashmere from Weberei Justus in her choice of color, or an envelope and a stamp from the war veteran whose first name she could never recall. Even the silence she maintained to save a reputation had a price.

  At the altar, a boy knelt to dust scrolls carved into the marble base. She watched him absently, sorting out in her mind what she most wanted and needed. The Festival was eight months off. In the meantime, she had to be aware of competition from a certain foul little man, without revealing any knowledge of him, or any interest in the disgusting details about Prominenten that he fastened onto like a snail on glass.

  AT THE OTHER end of Getreidegasse, the Rosenkavalier was tucked away in the back of the kitchen at the Silver Fawn. Before dinner preparations began, he could count on being undisturbed. He lived off what he called “opportunities,” but with the Festival having concluded seven weeks ago, the lean months were upon him. He had calculated that his thriftily parceled-out earnings would only carry him to Twelfth Night. Which meant he had to continue working through winter to avoid cadging hot meals in February, and having his reputation slip.

  Out of sight on his cot, he adjusted the lumpy pillow under his head. It had been a profitable summer with the few divas and conductors he served, plus six Czech refugees with Western connections, an unexpected source of income. Now die Musiker had returned to Vienna, Berlin, London, New York, and the trickle of Czech asylum seekers would stop with the first snowfall. At least he had a warm place for the winter, behind the main oven in the city’s best restaurant—permanent residence because he once disposed of a baby for the owner’s daughter. Above him on a spike hung his green and silver hat and uniform. Under the cot was a box for his summer shoes, ice boots, nail clippers, an ear pick, a straight-edge razor and strop. His most valuable possession was a cluster of precisely knotted strings. These replaced a pencil and notebook and concealed his illiteracy. He had devised a system whereby he could finger the strings and recall names, events, and personal details.

  In a petulant mood he pulled out the string cluster and worried the knots. The fall crop of Mozarteum students was disappointing: the loud blonde too whorish for society, the Frenchman stingy as a rabbi, the Moor from the Pacific supposed to be quite a singer, but she should be dipped in a vat of bleach. The new knots he’d made for her and Edwin Casey would not be of use for some time, although any career diplomat bore watching. The Oklahoma oilman, advisor to President Johnson, had gotten himself kidnapped in Venezuela. For a year Herr Konsul was held hostage, tortured, then ransomed recently and given the post in Salzburg as a reward. Light duty. No armed rebels.

  Idly the Rosenkavalier wondered what kind of torture was used these days. Maybe it hadn’t changed that much. Now it was all done in private. Locally, nothing would ever equal the sight of the hanged violinists in back of the Mozarteum. The bodies had stayed there for a week, attracting gawkers. He could still picture the eyes and tongues bulging in death, the stained trousers. But torture and execution were not the same. Some blamed Herr Maestro von Wehlen for involvement in those hangings thirty-three years ago, which was ridiculous, traitorous. The SS had simply caught the Jew musicians fleeing and punished them according to law.

  “Aacch,” the Rosenkavalier muttered, and rolled up the strings. Whatever good a mere consul and students might do for him in the distant future, it was a comedown after the Festival and getting so close to Herr Maestro’s new baritone. With reluctance he made the yearly decision. Until early summer, when tourists and Festival stars began flocking in, he would go out only three nights a week. Keeping his uniform spotless was expensive, but a man dealing in opportunities dared not have even a hint of riffraffery about him.

  8

  ICY RAIN POURED from a gray oval of clouds covering the Salzburg valley like a lid on an enormous kettle. Women in heavy clothes shopped under slick black umbrellas, men hunched under hat brims that dripped strings of water onto their loden coats. Karl didn’t own an umbrella and had gotten drenched going to another meeting about Czech asylum seekers. All the way up Hohensalzburg to hear old news: things are bad in Prague, they’ll get worse in spring. He hadn’t yet met a refugee.

  Too late to get a practice room, he entered the Mozarteum and shook himself like a dog pulled from the river. In the main hall Maile stood with other students waiting for classes to start. He cringed, remembering their last conversation in Mirabell Garten: during a break in the rain, she eating a little sandwich that fit into her purse while he chewed on a slab of black bread and cheese from his backpack. “New York has true politics,” he’d insisted, as if he knew anything about it. “Negro rallies in the streets!” And imagined the huge nation of America in magnificent uproar, unlike tiny Austria, trussed as tightly as a Sunday roast with ancient notions of church and aristocracy.

  “The police are vicious,” Maile had replied. “It’s a dangerous city.”

  “Did you protest? Get arrested?”

  “I hated all that.”

  “It gave you guts. Women here are afraid to travel great distances on their own. Their only weapons are charm and beauty.”

  She had laughed, a small annoyed sound. “Who’s the romantic now? You don’t dream about Fidel, you want to be Fidel.”

  Karl still hadn’t heard her sing except through a door on the day she auditioned. With his father ill since summer, during late afternoon student recitals Karl was invariably at home wrestling fence posts or burying runt piglets, work that threatened his fingers, hands, wrists. Not long ago he and Maile had shared wine with each other as Du. Now she seemed freshly distant, facing away from him as Maxi Chiemseer and Jean-Paul paraded opinions about a Vienna premiere to several violinists. Only Marie-Louise Stäbler had actually seen it; gone by private car while the rest were forced to content themselves with a broadcast in the Mozarteum’s radio room. Cautiously Karl eavesdropped.

  “Call me Marlise,” she reminded Maile, adding, “In a word, the performance was superb.”

  “Von Wehlen doesn’t let his singers breathe,” Maxi stated. His thick blond hair and mountain climber’s physique were destined for Lohengrin, but his thin tenor made it unlikely he’d get beyond the chorus of the provincial Landestheater down the street. “Herr Maestro is all orchestra.”

  Marlise dismissed him with a sniff. “Frankfurter Allegemeine said that five years ago. Now, the pharynx musculature . . .”

  Karl frowned as she seized control of the conversation with a schoolteacher’s authority, her thin lips so smug, something he hadn’t noticed last June when he took her up to the meadow. Brenda came up through the foyer, shaking out a large lavender umbrella and exclaiming, “Whooee!” Jean-Paul crept toward her on comic tiptoe. “Scram, Frenchie,” she said. His reply was drowned by string players quarreling over von Wehlen: he manages his first violinist perfectly, does not, you fool, the opening measures . . . Jean-Paul’s voice shot above the others. “. . . of incalculable importance, and we underestimate it at our peril! I name you one man: Che Guevara.” His bullying intensity produced silence and he harangued them on the dangers of being confined to their cocoons of oper
a, concerti. Because of Guevara’s assassination, the corpse displayed, governments will fall.

  “That rabid Communist,” Maxi shouted, “only the cells in Paris mourn!”

  Down the hall the registrar stalked out of his office and folded his arms like a librarian enforcing noise regulations. “Meine Herrschaften das geht schon zu weit!” Students stared, then groaned and picked up scores, instruments, purses, a half-eaten apple.

  Maile watched Kazuo Hitachi pass through the foyer, heading for the upstairs practice rooms. He never took part in raucous debates. She was eager to have even a contrived conversation with him: good day, how nice to see you. Among so many white people, his familiar features made her miss men from home, with their straight black hair, dark eyes, and smooth skin, except for a chest tuft and a dark line from the navel that disappeared under the waistband of swim shorts. Yet she had hesitated too long, and could not now approach Kazuo without hurrying up the stairs in a clumsy attempt to waylay him. And what would she say? His father was Japan’s ambassador to Germany. For sure, with the son of a diplomat it was no fool around, no make mistake. Main thing.

  PROFESSOR JANN WASN’T certain he had spotted that loathsome little man at the first Mozarteum student recital—a dark figure leaving the back of the balcony quick as a salamander. At the second recital, he got a clear look at the Rosenkavalier and knew that something was in the wind, if not for himself, then for a colleague, because the flower seller was no judge of music. Yet until something surfaced, it did no good to concern himself with the man’s rat-like behavior.

  In his studio Jann opened Das Brahms Liederbuch to the piece Maile had sung at the recital—just one rather than the traditional three. A deliberate choice on his part, a compliment she did not recognize. The apparently simple piece was in fact out of reach for most sopranos. Dun-kel, wie dun-kel im Wald und im Welt, a peasant girl about to meet her lover, a romantic figure given a powerful vocal line easily overwhelmed by the equally powerful piano line, thick chords that rolled up from the bass keys. Fräulein Manoa had led with both voice and emotion, not too much at first, keeping the delicate balance between the two, holding it steady through the midsection, increasing slightly, then on to the final, full-throated statement of love, love eternal. E-wig, e—wig . . . !

  What surprised Jann now was not her command of the music but her confidence on stage. It didn’t match a performance record of just a year and a half of recitals in New York. She had a professional edge that he sensed had come from somewhere else—the graceful walk to the piano, the relaxed expression that masked nervousness but had the right touch of emotion to reflect the mood of the piece before it started; the pause before beginning, the single glance at her accompanist. No coughing, throat clearing, artificial poses. What had she done during her years in Hawaii?

  Perhaps he was being rudely curious. Or improperly curious, something a teacher had to avoid with such an attractive student. He believed her description of an ambitious daily routine: an hour of vocal exercises first thing in the morning, followed by lieder and memory work; in the afternoon, opera roles with a coach, capped by a full-voice aria; classes in staging and Italian four times a week. If several singers at the Mozarteum were promising, so far none had given evidence of future superiority. At twenty-six a soprano could ripen quickly, sometimes in a matter of months. Fräulein Manoa’s volume, range, and vocal coloring were consistent. She might be about to break through to a career. The possibility excited him, but his wife feared the stress it could bring when he should be relaxing into retirement: too much time away from gardening, too much temptation to think hard and assist the process with a glass, or two, of cognac.

  He chided himself for masking his own ambition. Over the years he’d learned to perfection how sly and seductive an opera singer’s ego could be—and former singers were the least aware of their own vanity. How they all lusted to relive their glory days through someone younger! More to the point would be to make discreet inquiries about finding a patron for Fräulein Manoa—later, when she had proven herself, and if his suspicions that she needed money turned out to be true.

  Once he had watched her pick up a discarded bus transfer, examine it, and tuck it in her purse. At noon she sat in Mirabell Garten to eat an apple and cheese. Nothing about her personality suggested miserliness. He assumed that money was simply a constant problem, a usual state of affairs for young musicians, but no voice student ever admitted to being on the begging end of life. Singers had to believe they were aristocrats. Fortunately, a few noble families in Salzburg still felt obliged to support the arts. Baron von Gref was a possibility. He’d been a friend since Jann’s days as the leading bass at the Festival. They still played chess once a month, part of an ever-smaller circle of older men who addressed each other as Du; the thought of which reminded Jann that once he had also been per Du with Werner von Wehlen.

  A WEEK AFTER All Saints, a cold snap lengthened into the start of winter, and Karl began wearing his sheepskin jacket and heavy shoes. Outside the Mozarteum, he watched singers bundled against the chill as they walked toward the train station for a state-sponsored weekend of opera in Munich. They would stay at a youth hostel and have back-row or standingroom tickets, culture on the cheap, socialism at its best.

  Maile disappeared past the tall ornamental bushes in Mirabell Garten, now clumps of dull gray-green under their winter shrouds of pine branches. Her singing of Brahms at the last recital was still with him: the somber opening as her voice began to rise up the scale, Dark, how dark in the forest and the meadow; the womanly richness of her sound, the hour of solitude, the world is silent. She gave the short piece the gravity of immortal love. He’d noticed that she ate only inexpensive food. Never went to a café. Did not buy a daily paper, or have scores bound in leather, like Marlise, whose name was stamped on the covers in gold. Except for a big-city wardrobe of dresses, hats, and high heels—like a Viennese or a Milanese or a Parisian—Maile seemed to own nothing that suggested a rich family. Which relieved him. He hated luxury, the wealth of the Church, and aristocrats—except for Baron von Gref, although they’d never met.

  Since age fourteen Karl had stubbornly hacked out a path of his own—self-taught on six different instruments, playing in beer halls after the harvest was over, repairing the roof at Carl Orff Institute in exchange for lessons, entering the conservatory assured of his potent gift for piano and horn, then four years of punishing work to absorb the finer techniques of scales, embellishments, ensemble pieces. Another three years had put him into a small group of students who professors agreed were destined for outstanding careers.

  Karl considered finding Jean-Paul to claim a beer the Frenchman had owed him for weeks. That would mean putting up with whatever maniacal mood the pianist was in.

  Going straight home on the bus to the end of the line meant shoring up fences with his father on their steep meadowland. His sister had taken the family bicycle to deliver the last autumn squash to the kitchen at the Silver Fawn. Maile had seen him peddling away on the rusty old Puch a few times, but hadn’t teased him about it like local women did. She didn’t flirt, either. Did she ever imagine kissing him? Was her maidenhair curly or straight, like Oriental girls were rumored to have? An impulse won out: simply to walk home alone in the invigorating cold, collar up around his ears, fists curled in his pockets.

  Approaching the riverbank, soon the train station was behind him, then the railroad bridge, and the tracks leading west and east. He imagined himself a soloist under contract, part of that fabulous group of exiles from all classes of society, their worth determined by excellence alone. His parents rejected such goals; a peasant who got himself educated brought enough problems down on his head. If he became an artist and crossed class lines he was doomed, would never again be satisfied with the life he’d been born into. Artists were surrounded by beautiful women. They made bad marriages. They went mad.

  The flat center of the valley led deeper into the countryside—the whine of highway trucks repl
aced by birdcalls, sheep bleating, the squeals of hungry pigs in a distant pen—but Karl felt no stir of loyalty to the land. He planned to some day return only as an occasional visitor. More than the grimness of physical labor in a harsh climate, he wanted to escape the noon Angelus that made farmers stop for prayers, the mistrust of education and rejection of the new, even something as harmless as banana-flavored candy. The girls he had grown up with all flirted in the same way, and it made him squirm: ritualized pouts, fluttering eyelashes, bosom-heaving sighs, all copied from movie versions of Austro-Hungarian operettas. As adults they picked their teeth or noses during conversations, showed off scabs and scars no matter where they were located, and squatted beside a rural path to relieve themselves while continuing to pass on neighborhood gossip. Yet he’d had no success with town women. They were not interested in his opinions on music as an economic force, a crushing weight, something glorious that must still be regarded with suspicion.

  He entered a pear orchard where faded green ribbons hung from a black branch. Tied there in summer by a new bride; green for growth, for babies. Back then he had wished Marlise would do the same for him. Now she snubbed him as if to erase all memory of the sweet grass meadow below Mönchsberg, where she had lain on her back while he lifted her skirts and pulled off her soft white panties. His hard plunge into her maidenly warmth was cut short by a shriek, a sound so terrible he’d withdrawn in fear of injuring her, then had to listen to bitter sobs that he’d taken her purity, she the daughter of an apothecary, the granddaughter of a railroad accountant, while Karl’s ancestors were unlettered peasants.