by Shoshi
Oh, we were off visiting Mr. Mozart. Yeah, he’s better, thanks. Took a round of antibiotics and finished his Reckie. It’s great stuff. Why isn’t all this in the history books, Mathew? Good question. Glad you asked. You see, it’s like this---
Now he was hearing footfalls on the stairway up to her dad’s library and apartment. “Jumpinjackrabbits!” he said aloud to himself, remembering something his own dad sometimes said. “The guy’s coming up. He’ll catch me in here. What’lI I tell him? I can’t tell him anything. I shouldn’t even be in here. They’ll think I broke in. They’ll think I’m here to steal something. He looked desperately around the library and saw no place to hide. No closets. Nothing.
Then, he saw a way out. Someone had left a window open. Just outside it he sort of remembered seeing a sloping roof when he and Carol were here before. Hoping he was right, he ran to the window and plunged through it, scraping his back on the lower part of the frame as he dove out. He wanted with all his heart and mind to cry out the pain was so great---but he didn’t. He lay still just below the window where the roof met the wall of the house and heard the doctor reach the top of the stairs.
“Hello? Who’s in here? Carol?” She didn’t answer, of course.
“I swear I heard someone moving about,” he mumbled to himself.
He poked around, opening and closing cabinet doors and even looked out Mathew’s window. He didn’t see him. “Got to put a lock on that door,” he said---obviously referring to the hidden door that led up the stairs to their apartment. What did they expect? thought Mathew. Carol had said patients often walked through it into their apartment by mistake. She called it the secret door—except it wasn’t secret enough.
Now the doctor opened a drawer in the desk and dropped into it what sounded to Mathew like several small boxes and pill bottles. He slammed it shut and went back down stairs. Mathew waited a few minutes to be sure he wasn’t coming back up and, then, squeezed himself through the window into the apartment again. His back still hurt so he pulled up his shirt and checked it in a mirror that hung on one wall. It was red all right where he’d hit the lower part of the window frame, but thankfully he hadn’t broken the skin.
He sat down at the desk, leaned his elbows on it with his head in his hands and wondered what the heck was he going to do next? Who could he talk to about this? There was really no one. His friends wouldn’t believe him. Neither would his mom. Anyway how could they advise him about what to do about Carol? One thing he did know. She couldn’t just stay there. She couldn’t do that to her mom and dad or her friends—or to him either. He was beginning to realize he missed her more and more. It meant he had to get this loony Reckie-writing dude out of her head though he wasn’t sure how he could do it. And another thing: he had to get a hold of that dumb Reckie and give it to her dad.
He finally did come to one big conclusion. He couldn’t do anything about rescuing her sitting here hundreds of years and thousands of miles away from her. He needed to go back and get her. And that’s when he had an inspiration. She might not like the idea of walking out on old Motzie if he was still in bad shape. The best way to deal with that would be to bring along a pile of antibiotics and keep feeding them to him until he was well.
All he had to do was get his hands on some. Which was when he remembered the drawer in the desk and the nickernock clatter of small boxes and pill bottles being dropped into it. That was the last thing the doctor did before going back down stairs. It was right next to him. He opened it slowly and gingerly and was astonished to find it jammed full of medicines. It took him back to the doctor he’d gone to for antibiotic pills to cure the strep throat he’d had a month ago.
“What’s this gonna cost us?” he’d asked him.
The guy looked at him, especially at that grubby old T-shirt Carol couldn’t stand, and realized this was a kid who was definitely under-financed. “Yeah, it won’t be cheap, Mathew,” he said. Then, he opened a drawer he had in his desk, fiddled around in it a bit and pulled out some pills embedded in a card. “I probably shouldn’t do this, but doctors get free samples all year long. Good luck, son.”
Mathew wasted no time. He scrounged through the drawer pulling out boxes and vials. Sure enough, a bunch of them had labels that said “antibiotics” on them. Kind of old, he said to himself, noting some of the dates. Guess he doesn’t like to throw things out. He also remembered how his thrifty mother shopped for food.
“I draw the line at a year,” she said. “If it’s older than that, I won’t touch it. But anything up to a year, believe me, it’s good to eat. It’s stupid being fussy about that.” Then, she paused. “Well, maybe not fish. Might be okay for soup---if it cooks long enough.” They’d never gotten any food poisoning that he could remember.
He filled all his pockets, then, sat down to think about how to get back to Vienna. It had crossed his mind that both times he and Carol had time-traveled it was Carol who had worked the talisman. He just hoped he wouldn’t have any trouble doing it by himself---but he wasn’t all that sure.
• TWELVE •
So Mathew was gone. Carol stood there with the sheaf of handwritten music pages of the finished Requiem clasped to her chest. She had almost caught him. Would her dad ever get to see the last movement of the thing, which Mozart had just written out? Maybe not, she realized.
She paused as another sad thought crept in on her. What if she never saw Mathew again? It was coming over her just how much she truly did like him—in spite of his dirty T-shirt and what her mom called his hobo ways.
Just then Constanze came into Mozart’s bedroom. She was back to being her usual bustling, stern mom self. “I don’t know what’s keeping Bene. It’s high time he should be fetching you,” she said.
“Is he expected?” asked Carol.
“Well, of course,” said Constanze. “Didn’t he say anything to you about it? We can’t have you in the way here much longer. This is a sick room.” She was now straightening out the bedclothes and fluffing pillows. “I have another doctor coming soon. We will never get Dr. Closset to come back after what your brother put him through.”
Carol decided not to say anything about her not being Mathew’s sister. What worried her far more was what to say to Constanze when Mathew didn’t show up at all---which, of course, he wasn’t going to do. And if they made her leave, it meant she would probably never be able to have any piano lessons with Mozart. After all, wasn’t that the main reason she had stayed behind in Vienna?
“By the way, where is your brother?” asked Constanze. “What is that name you call him? Mathew? You English have such peculiar names.”
“I’m not sure,” said Carol. “He went out. He’ll be back very soon, I’m sure.” She was also starting to realize how very alone she was---with no one in Vienna she could call a friend to whom she could turn.
Overwhelmed by the thought of it all and the badgering sound of Constanze’s voice in her ears, Carol---who prided herself on her cool---began to cry.
It had a magical effect on Constanze. She was, after all, a mom, who had had six children, and Mozart probably ranked as a seventh. She put her arm around Carol. “I am expecting too much. I can see you are only a child,” she said. “And your brother is a child, too. I do not understand how your mother could leave you like this in a foreign country. Bene Schack is a good friend to us, but he is hardly a proper chaperone for children.” She gave Carol a reassuring kiss on the cheek. “I wish I knew when he was coming back for you. But I suppose it will be soon.”
Carol felt herself panicking all over again. What would happen to her when he did return? He would say he did not know her or Mathew and had no idea why they were there. He had assumed they were visiting Constanze. How could she explain any of this to her? She couldn’t. Constanze might toss her out on the street and who could blame her?
Carol was in the Mozarts’ kitchen when she heard
a loud rapping on the front door. Loud and threatening. Carol didn’t know it, but she was about to find herself in even deeper trouble. A gruff voice shouted through the door. “Open up!” it said. “In the name of the Emperor!”
Emperor? Did Austria have an emperor? Was that like a king? Carol didn’t know, but clearly the voice was not kidding around. It almost had to be a cop. She heard two male voices talking at once, one of which she thought she recognized. It was almost certainly Doctor Closset. Had they come to arrest Mozart? she wondered. Whatever for? For not letting Dr. Closset bleed him to death?
“Wait up!” she shouted back without opening the door, and she ran to find Constanze. Why would they want to arrest a sick man? Then, it hit her. They had come for Mathew, not Mozart, because he was the one who had stolen the doctor’s black bag.
“Thank God he isn’t here,” she said to herself. She also realized that she would be seen as his accomplice, the stranger from England who must be in on Mathew’s plot to rob the doctor. They would arrest her instead.
What would happen then? Would they interrogate her? Maybe even torture her? She thought back to the history of Europe she had read in school. In the 18th century there was no such thing as