Three

by Shoshi

Spirit and image?”

  His wife looked at her, pursed her lips and said reluctantly: “A little, perhaps. A very little.”

  “Oh, I think a lot. And imagine, Carol plays the piano, too. She will play for me and put me to sleep. Will you do that, Carol?”

  Carol knew she wasn’t that good yet. She had only practiced the one Mozart sonata, and obviously she couldn’t play hip hop for him, not for the incomparable Mozart! He would be appalled. She was afraid he would be very disappointed in her playing. He was such a perfectionist, her dad said. She looked at Mathew and was on the verge of saying no.

  He shook his head vehemently. “Say yes!” he whispered in a panic. “If he’s asleep, maybe we can get a pill into his mouth.”

  Carol had almost forgotten about the antibiotics. This was to be Mozart’s last day. If they were going to save him so he could finish the Requiem, she realized it had to be now.

  • EIGHT •

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Carol said eagerly—but she was also scared out of her mind. “I want to play for you, but, Herr Mozart, I’m not at all skilled yet. I’m just starting.”

  “We must all begin,” said the great man. “Even I began. My father said I was three when I first picked out a tune on the piano. Come, what can you play?”

  “I’m learning a sonata,” she said.

  “Who is the composer?”

  Carol smiled. “You are.”

  “I am? Well, then, it must be wonderful.” He suddenly burst out laughing—that high-pitched crazy laugh that preceded his dancing around the room. He became serious. “I like to laugh,” he said. “I think it is good for me. People are too serious.”

  He started to cough violently---his body shaking with the effort. It was a sign of how sick he really was. He recovered himself and after a silence said: “Play for me now, Nannerl.” He smiled. “I knew that sooner or later I was going to call you Nannerl.” He looked away for a second or two. “I miss her.”

  Mathew could sense how nervous, even frightened, Carol was, but she sat down and began to play one of the movements from the Mozart sonata she was learning. She had expected him to stop her again and again and be critical, but instead he let her play on.

  At one point he leaned in to Mathew and said: “I love children. I am a child, too. I have always been one, Constanze says. Sometimes I try to compose as a child would. Do you know this?” He started quietly to hum what Mathew recognized was the nursery rhyme tune, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  “You wrote that?” he asked, quite surprised.

  “Of course,” said Mozart. He turned to Carol. “Forgive me, Carol. Please keep playing.”

  But by now she had finished. Mozart clapped loudly. “Smile for us, Carol.” Which she did. “The audience expects a smile.” He paused, thinking over what comment he would make. “Your skills are not yet---polished. I’m telling you what you know already. But you have feeling. Warmth. Most important of all—” He leaned forward from the bed and peered at her closely. “---you have taste. Not unlike Nannerl.” He leaned back again. “Nannerl should not have stopped playing, but our parents had other plans for her. A husband, a family, grandchildren for them.” He frowned slightly. “It is a choice women must make.”

  He leaned forward again. “You, too, can become a fine pianist. I am sure of it.” He waggled a finger at her. “Choose to keep playing, Carol. Do not stop.” He closed his eyes for a few moments. Opening them again, he said: “When I am well, I will give you lessons.”

  Carol was totally thrilled. This was Mozart talking---the absolute musical master of his age and, perhaps, of all ages—offering her piano lessons. It was almost beyond belief. At that moment she told herself she would practice day and night if necessary to meet his expectations.

  “Play for me, Carol. Lull me to sleep. I feel so hot. I am wet all over my body. Constanze says sleep is what I need till the doctor comes.”

  She began to play—as softly as she could. Mathew got up quietly and stood beside her at the piano. “How do you want me to give him the pills?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know how we’ve done any of this, Mathew, but we’ve done it. Maybe something else will just happen, something that will get him to take the pills.” She winced as she fumbled a chord.

  As if on cue---at least it seemed like that when they thought about it afterwards---Mozart began quietly to snore. And, then, as he snored more loudly, they saw him open his mouth slightly. “Carol, we’ve got to do it now!” Mathew said in a kind of shouting whisper.

  He dug into his pocket for two of the antibiotic pills and rushed over to the bed. “He has to take two pills to start the treatment,” he said. “That’s what the doctor told me to do.” As Mozart continued to sleep, Mathew reached his hand over the illustrious man’s open mouth and let go of the pills.

  But he wasn’t quick enough. Mozart’s mouth closed just as the pills dropped down. They bounced off his lips and slid off his face into a crease in the bedclothes. He reached up a hand in his sleep, rubbed it across his mouth and made a loud, snorting sound---but he did not wake up. Mathew retrieved the pills.

  Carol’s heart thumped wildly against her ribs. Should they try it again? What if he choked on them? How did they know he would safely swallow them? They didn’t, but she knew it was their only chance to save him. She made a circling motion with her hand to tell Mathew they must try it a second time. By now she had stopped playing the piano.

  But something had changed. Mozart was no longer snoring, no longer sleeping with his mouth agape. What could they do now?

  At that moment, Mathew had a tremendous inspiration. “Get ready with the pills,” he said urgently, putting them into her hand. Now Carol would be the one to drop them into Mozart’s mouth.

  Mathew reached over gingerly with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and clamped them gently around Mozart’s sizable nose. After a moment, unable to breathe, the giant of classical music opened his mouth wide to take a gasping breath. The two pills dropped from Carol’s hand and disappeared between his lips.

  Mozart jerked up suddenly from the bed coughing and coughing.

  “Water, water!” he sputtered. Carol was ready with a glass of it.

  “Drink it down,” she commanded.

  “Something went down my throat,” he whispered. “What was it?”

  Mathew was emphatic. “A fly,” he said. “I saw it buzzing around.” In fact, there were a number of insects flying around Mozart’s sick room.

  “Yes,” said Carol. Then, hesitantly: “Herr Mozart, I must tell you. You snore—a little.”

  “I know,” he said. “Constanze has told me. And when I snore, my mouth opens as wide as a stable door.”

  “It’s true,” said Mathew. “My father’s the same.” Though he didn’t really know for sure. He started to smile, but Mozart wasn’t smiling. He was laughing, and in a moment they were laughing and giggling along with him. Laughing because he hadn’t choked to death, thank God, laughing because he hadn’t coughed the pills back up, laughing because he had swallowed them right down—the one thing that only they knew could cure him.

  “You must sleep,” Carol said to Mozart.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, closing his eyes. “Sleep, more sleep.” He was already beginning to doze as though the thought of sleeping was having its own effect. “Play, Nannerl, please,” he mumbled. Carol did as he wished, and after he had fallen truly asleep, she, too began to doze. The piano rumbled a long, deep chord as she lay her head down on her arms on the keys.

  Mathew sat on the floor and wondered what the heck he would do for ten or more hours, the time he had been told it took for the pills to take effect. He didn’t feel the least bit sleepy. One thing he did know: they must wait this out. And what would they do if this Mozart guy woke up as sick as ever? They had to figure out a way to get an
other pill into him. A full antibiotic pill cycle meant tricking him into swallowing four more pills, each one a day apart. That’s what the doctor had told him. Four more days! Come on, they’d never be able to do it. It was tough enough getting the first two pills down his throat.

  He thought about the last couple of hours and all that had happened. It was incredible---but he had to admit something. Maybe this Mozart was a genius, but that wasn’t his fault. The fact is he was kind of a likable dude. Mathew especially liked his laugh. He had the right attitude and seemed like he was one of them.

  He could definitely get along well in the 21st century. He wondered--if it looked like he wasn’t getting cured fast enough--could they do the really impossible and take him back with them, get him to a doctor back home and fix him up for good?

  How would they do it? For that matter how were they themselves going to get back? He had no clear idea how they’d gotten here to begin with.

  While he mused, he felt a familiar urge. He was hungry. Maybe Constanze could give him something to eat. He got up off the floor where he’d been squatting and tentatively pushed open the door she had come through. He found himself in what had to be their kitchen. One side of it was given over to a black elephant of a stove in which chunks of wood were fiercely burning. Well-worn ladles and spatulas trailed down like black fingers from a bar along the top of it. Perched on a