by L. L. Holt
“Often, I have cursed the Creator and my existence; Plutarch has taught me resignation, if that is possible in my situation. Otherwise, I will defy my fate. There will be moments in my life in which I will consider myself to be the most unhappy of God's creatures.
“I ask you not to tell anyone of my condition, not even Lorchen (Eleanor). I am only confiding it to you as a secret…Resignation: what a wretched refuge. And yet, it is the only one that is left to me…”
Wegeler was stunned, and barely noticed as Eleanor came into the room, and took the letter that he had placed beside him on the couch. Forgetting Luis’s injunction not to tell her anything, Wegeler was lost in thought. But Eleanor read, tight-lipped, only her welling eyes revealing a passionate concern.
“Oh, Franz,” she said, stifling a sob, “What are we going to do? You must help him!”
Wegeler shook his head. “I fear there is no help,” he said. “We can only offer our friendship and support.” He placed his hand on hers, and she sat beside him, her head on his shoulder, the tears silently falling.
Chapter 18
About a week later in Latvia, another friend was opening the mail, and smiled warmly to see the hand of his dearest friend on the envelope. Karl excused himself from his mother’s presence, and quickly went up to his room. His heart was light, and a summer day had never been more glorious in the rough but pleasant countryside known as Courland.
Unlike his letter to Wegeler, Luis gushed right into an almost incoherent torrent of words about his deafness in a long stream of disjointed phrases, and the sensitive Amenda, fell back onto a chair as though he had just taken a blow to the chin.
“You are one of those whom my heart has chosen,” he wrote, and again: “…I appeal to you to leave all else and come to me...You must be my companion!
“My heart beats as tenderly as ever for you,” the impassioned narrative continued, “If by any chance I can serve you here, I need not say that you have only to command me.”
Theological training may prepare one for clashes between God and man, but does little to protect the pastor from the greatest stirrings of his own heart. Amenda could not repress a cry, alerting the sharp ears of his mother who tapped on his door to ask what was wrong.
“It’s all right, Mother,” he said, trying to sound steady, “it’s just a letter from a friend. I’ll be all right. He had some disturbing news.”
“All right, dear,” the Mother’s voice came through in a muffled way. “You need to have all your wits about you when we visit the Benoits later this morning. I am certain no fair lady wants a mawkish husband with red eyes!” He could hear her kindly laugh; she had a way of saying the most dreadful things in the most engaging manner.
Karl took a deep breath. His betrothal. The marriage. It would happen directly following his installation as pastor in Talsen. Jeanette was in love with him, and she truly was a dear girl, innocent and good. The families were completely in agreement, and the date was about to be set. And now this.
Karl took up the letter, wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and poured a glass of water. And to think they had spoken of meeting in a dozen years at the very latest. That would be too late. He would need to return to Vienna immediately. He would need to surrender everything: family, destiny, responsibility for the beloved who needed him so desperately. “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love,” wrote the Apostle Paul. “But the greatest of these is love.” That was the proof of love, to go to the beloved when needed regardless of circumstances.
Karl removed some writing paper from his table, and dipped his quill into the inkwell.
“My dearest Friend,
“How sweet your words are to me, yet how distraught I am over the news of your affliction. Have you no one to help you at this difficult time, no one who loves you and can at least attempt to ease a suffering I can barely imagine? Dearest One, let me be that person. No one loves you as I do, beloved Friend, and no one would be happier than to give up everything for you.
“My family here will do well without me, my presence here is a mere formality, and I have fulfilled my duty. As for my impending marriage, my heart is not in it, you know that. My ministry? What better vocation than loving and serving so great an Immortal Soul. That would be perfect happiness and my destiny.
“You must do this for me, and do it immediately: send me an affirmation, a note, any sign that you would welcome me to your home and that I could live with you, as a friend, an assistant, to help you find the best physicians, follow through with treatments, organize information, and even serve as your personal secretary. I know your brother is invaluable, but how much better to have two, including one whose love surpasses that of fraternal affection. I ask no income: I can resume my teaching, for I love the Mozart family and the Count assured me I would always be welcome.
“Dearest and sweetest of all Friends, true Beloved, reply to me, even a word on a scrap of paper will do, and I will leave immediately to be by your side. I will never leave you. And that is my solemn promise before God. I shall look for your reply each day. My life is entirely at your disposal and your command, and I can find no peace or happiness until I am with you.
“With most sincere affection and wishes for your recovery, Karl A”
Karl was trembling by the time he finished writing, with barely a drop of ink left in the inkwell. He placed the letter down for the ink to dry, and wrote Luis’s summer address on the envelope, hoping his friend would not have moved again. When he had composed himself, Karl took the letter into town, a small settlement on the rough Latvian coast, and with a final moment gazing at the envelope, he took it inside the general store and handed it to the postmaster, who without so much as a “Good afternoon,” took the envelope and put it to the side. Karl gave it one more look, whispered, “Good day,” and left the shop, his heart much lighter. It would be a while before he could expect a reply. But a reply would come.
What Karl did not see, was his sister, Corinna, who had followed him to the post office at her mother’s command. Corinna had slipped into the dark room, filled with bolts of coarse fabric, notions, and other dry goods, and a variety of scales and weights, unseen by her brother. Karl was barely out the door before her hand was on the letter, and a precious coin was left on the postmaster’s counter.
“My mother’s order,” she said quickly, and since this was not an unknown practice, and in fact, a source of income that the postmaster looked forward to, he did not demure. Corinna, a light-footed slender girl, took a circuitous route back home, noting her unsuspecting brother in the distance. Such an innocent, she thought wryly, partly in disgust, but also envying him for not having her sly personality. She would certainly win points with her mother for bringing back this treasure, which she did not so much as glance at.
Karl took a different turn, and seemed to be walking toward the coastline, rather than returning home. It was a mild day, so welcome in this northern Baltic climate. Karl’s turn toward the shore inspired Corinna to break into a run, and she was home in no time, and entered the kitchen, where her mother looked up from her accounting book.
“And?” she asked. Corinna smiled, and held the letter high. “Give that to me,” the mother said. “Good girl. You left the coin?” Corinna nodded. “I won’t forget this, my dear,” the mother said, “now be off.”
Once the door closed behind her daughter, Mrs. Amenda opened the letter and read it heartlessly. As I expected, she thought, though I was certain it was a fancy woman in that city of sin. She pressed her thin lips tightly, and squinted her eyes as she read through the note again. This will have no effect, she thought to herself. The family would continue pressing his suit of Jeanette, though it was more Jeanette’s suit of Karl, and he would stay home and teach until a pastor’s position became available. He was a good boy, now a good man, and this lapse would be corrected promptly. She would be sure to intercept any letters from Vienna in the future.
She held the letter in her hand a while and then
crushed it in her fist. She threw it into the kitchen fire, and watched until it blackened and turned to ash. When Karl returned home, he was in a lighter mood, and spoke cheerfully to his mother, sister, and the maid. Mrs. Amenda smiled ingratiatingly and reminded him that they were to meet the Benoits in an hour. Karl smiled, a kind of far-away, knowing smile, and assented without protest. Why not, he thought. In a few weeks, I will have his reply, and I know it will be affirmative.
And Mrs. Amenda thought, “You fool. You will do exactly what I say.”
Chapter 19
Despite his public proclamations of support for the General, Luis did not know what to think about Napoleon. On the one hand, he admired his brilliant audacity and energy in quashing the excesses of post-Revolutionary France. On the other, what did he really stand for? Luis’s hatred of authority figures warred with his admiration for the idea of the heroic individual. Wasn’t he such an individual himself? Then there was the issue of slavery. Years before, Zmeskall had teased Luis that if he returned to Bonn, the French might turn him into a slave. It was Luis’s turn to laugh when Napoleon banished slavery in French colonies. However, in this new year, it would be Zmeskall’s turn to say “I told you so!” when Napoleon reinstated slavery and tried to suppress the revolt of enslaved people in the Haitian Revolution. Now Austria was part of Napoleon’s growing empire, but peace, at least for a few years, prevailed.
Politics was not, however, the only distraction. Luis’s good friend from Bonn, Anton Reicha, a talented composer and ambitious musician just Luis’s age, arrived in Vienna, and the two became close companions once again in the early months, as Luis completed his Second Symphony and other works. He was gravely disappointed when the theater director refused to allow him another benefit concert in April, which would result in a significant loss of income.
At this time another blow fell as he learned that on March 28, his dear friend Wegeler and the great love of his youth, Eleanor von Breuning, were married, as though affirming their separation from him forever. Political unrest, a significant loss of income from the concert, his growing deafness, the marriage of his two childhood friends: these elements put Luis into a spirit of gloom that no one, not even the pretty piano students, could dispel.
Various physicians attempted to provide solutions for Luis’s worsening hearing, and more treatments and remedies, some laughable in their predictable futility, were prescribed. But all the doctors agreed it was time for Luis to get away again from the noise and bustle of the city, and retreat to the country for rest, quiet, and possible recuperation. In April, the essentials of the Beethoven flat were packed up and relocated a few miles to the north in the community known as “the holy city,” Heiligenstadt.
Heiligenstadt was a bucolic retreat located at the foot of terraces of vineyards. Some of the finest Austrian wines came from this region, dotted with little Heurige (intimate wine taverns), picturesque peasant cottages with orange roofs casting stark geometric shadows across the narrow walkways, and simple white-washed churches. A hot spring and health-conscious restaurant drew hundreds of visitors, but not enough to spoil the town’s secluded charm. The small town was surrounded by other villages with bell-like names: Grinzing, Nussdorf, Doebling. The clean, fresh air, the sight of workers on the hillside planting and tending the vines, an untrammeled view of the broad sky, all these things never failed to bring joy to Luis’s heart, and this spring was no exception.
His refuge was a simple white-washed cottage with a wing and a courtyard that included a tree with an undulating trunk and grey pavers. Luis loved trees, and was surrounded by them in this natural place, which rekindled the love of nature he so often forgot in his daily struggles and creative efforts. But the physicians’ advice was only partly true. He did benefit from the proximity to the natural world, the slower pace, the lack of interruptions. What he did not benefit from was the sense of isolation. The humming and buzzing in his ears on some days was almost unbearable, and on others, he craved even that sound in a prison of silence. Birds everywhere, but no songs reached his ears. The music continued in his head, and he composed much (his Triple Concerto and three additional Piano Sonatas, including the passionate “The Tempest,” were among the works completed that year). But music, like steam in a kettle, must escape, and not merely by writing it out on paper.
Luis took long walks out of town, exploring the stream that led past the vine terraces, and spent more time than he should have in the Heurige, sampling the vineyards’ bounty. But he became increasingly morose. One summer day, pounding on the piano with all his strength, alarming the landlord enough to have him rush over to observe, then be too frightened to approach the composer, Luis collapsed on the keyboard as he had as a small child in Bonn, tortured as he was then beyond endurance. This time it was not a cruel father, unless…the thought crossed his mind…God Himself was the cruel parent laughing at his tragic misfortune.
To lift his low spirits, Luis walked frequently along the brook, up toward the lowest vineyards and over a rolling hill to the next town. The sun beat hot on his face and over the summer lightened his hair, grown long with neglect. There were still groves and forests along the edges of the small agricultural communities, filled with quail, nightingales, badgers, and small deer. Luis carried his sketchbook with him, frequently stopping to record an idea or complete a musical thought. Sometimes he would get caught in a sudden rainstorm, seeking shelter beneath a stand of trees or in a church, one of the few times he would enter one as an adult, though in truth he loved the dark, cool sanctuaries of peace and stillness.
However, as the year wore on, he fell from moroseness into a deep abyss of depression. His thoughts drifted to family, always a loaded topic with Luis, which brought to mind his two younger brothers, the only close family members he had. Luis sat by the open window, day after day, obsessing with little fluctuations in his hearing, abandoning the herbal treatments and the oil. The music still pounded chaotically within his brain, like a flock of frantic, captive birds, screaming to get out.
In this black mood, unable even to compose or play, he began to write his will. But more than that, he needed to convey in the precise language of words the level of suffering that had nearly driven him to suicide.
He addressed the document to his brothers, and, after many false starts, the words flowed, as though he were taking dictation from the deepest recesses of his broken heart:
“Oh, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me! You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you. From childhood on, my heart and soul have been full of the tender feeling of goodwill, and I was ever inclined to accomplish great things.
He wrote passionately of his naturally fiery temperament, his craving for society and camaraderie. Yet, his affliction forced him further from the world’s inhabitants and into unwanted solitude.
“…it was impossible for me to say to people, ‘Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf!’ Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed...”
His mind drifted back to his childhood in Bonn. In many ways, those years were the best for his intellectual development, far richer in depth, currency of knowledge, and abiding friendships than anything he had encountered in light-hearted Vienna. He recalled the long conversations with Neefe, the secret knowledge of the Illuminati, the philosophy lectures at the University, which he attended with his eager, articulate friends, the long dinnertime discussions at the von Breunings, and the books shared through the Reading Society.
These experiences informed his entire worldview and enriched his heart and mind, forming the context in which unparalleled musical expression would be shaped. Without his hearing, without the lively interaction with intelligent peers, his mind and spirit would shrivel into dust. “I live alone, almost as one w
ho has been banished,” he wrote, the quill digging deep into the vellum. He described the “hot terror” of meeting others and perhaps having them discover his condition.
“But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance, and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing and, again, I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended my life. It was only my art that held me back…it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me…Divine One, You see my inmost soul. You know that therein dwells the love of mankind and the desire to do good…”
He then provided instructions for dividing his estate between his two brothers. “It is my wish,” he wrote, “that you may have a better and freer life than I have had.” Speaking to his brothers, he continued,
“Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience; this was what upheld me in time of misery. Thanks to it and to my art, I did not end my life by suicide…”
The document was completed in early October, just as the leaves resigned themselves to the coming frost and gave off a splendor of crimson and gold before they sank dead to the earth. Scrawled on the last page, several days later, was a parting cry from the heart:
“Thus I take leave of you, and that sadly; yes, the cherished hope which I took here with me, to at least be cured to a certain degree, it must leave me now entirely…even the high courage which dwelt in my soul during the beautiful summer days has vanished. O Providence, let once appear to me a pure day of joy; for so long, it has been alien to me! O when, o when, o Godhead, can I feel it again in the temple of Nature and of Men? Never? No, that would be too cruel…”