The Enchanted Sonata

by Heather Dixon Wallwork

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prelude

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  THE ENCHANTED SONATA

  Copyright © 2018 by Heather Dixon Wallwork

  Published by The Wallworkshop

  Salt Lake City, UT

  Cover and interior graphics designed by Heather Dixon Wallwork.

  Interior formatting by Key of Heart Designs.

  ISBN (Hardcover): 978-1-7328315-0-6

  ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-7328315-1-3

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-7328315-2-0

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Edition.

  For Katie

  The best pianist and bravest person I ever will know.

  What makes music...magic?

  A mother’s lullaby sings a child to sleep; the rat-a-tat-tat of a snare drum lifts knees higher, inspires courage. A love song pulls one into deeper endearment. A song is played, and people sing. It was almost expected.

  Lights chords, staccato piano, or pizzicato strings, could lighten the heart. Minor, legato melodies could depress and darken one’s soul.

  Music, he thought, had such power.

  Strange that no one had ever tamed and harnessed this power. Oh yes, there were composers that had come close. Kuznetsov, Vasiliev, and Yelchin had all composed brilliant songs and operettas and orchestrations that had fascinated and enthralled audiences. They were almost there. But no composer had been as good as he was.

  He could, he knew, twist and forge melodies so strong they could draw light from the clouds, create visions of dearest hopes, and—very soon—destroy an Imperian prince.

  When Clara played the piano, it wasn’t magic. It didn’t charm birds from the sky or pull the sun from the clouds. It didn’t stop time or brighten the moon.

  But it did make people listen. When she played, people stopped. Some even removed their hats and quietly said, Ah!

  It wasn’t magic.

  But it was close.

  Clara had been born with pianist fingers, her father had told her, and she could find middle C before she could even walk.

  Her father had been a pianist, too. Clara remembered sitting on his lap at the piano, picking out a melody on the keys. Her father’s hands played on either side of her, a duet that transformed her simple notes into a concert piece.

  Those were happy days of endless song. Her father had taught her the piano until she was good enough to take from a professor at the Conservatory at age nine. Clara practiced in the mornings, she practiced at night, and the house was filled with music.

  “One day, maus,” her father had told her, “you will be good enough to play in the Conservatory’s Christmas concert. How proud I will be of you then!”

  That was three years ago. Two years ago, her father had passed away, and the only music in the house was Clara’s. She played and played to fill the aching hole left by her father, and had become accomplished enough that now, December of 1892, she would perform in the annual Christmas concert. It made her happy and sad both.

  On Christmas Eve, the day before the concert, Clara practiced her piece on the stage of the city’s symphony hall. It was a song she’d composed herself, one of longing and happy arpeggios and hope. Clara had poured herself into its creation. She called it Christmas Sonata in A. At least, that’s what she called it out loud. In her heart, she called it something much different. She called it Johann Kahler’s Sonata.

  Among the empty audience chairs, her piano instructor, Professor Schonemann, listened to Christmas Sonata in A with his fingers steepled. His spectacles reflected the dim stage lights. Clara hardly noticed him, the song consumed her. The grand piano keys sprang to her touch. Her reflection swept the polished black fallboard. And when Clara finished the song in a flurry of notes, she exhaled slowly, letting the chords echo to the eaves. Only then did she turn and look at Professor Schonemann.

  He, too, was silent for a moment, his face lined with a thoughtful expression. Finally, he said:

  “You will be excellent tomorrow, Miss Stahlbaum.”

  Clara smiled, allowing the praise to warm her hands and face. Her piano instructor was very strict, and when he gave a compliment, he meant it.

  “Thank you, Professor,” said Clara. She inhaled the smell of the concert hall—polished wood, kerosene from the stage lamps, the slight whiff of starch—and imagined it full of people. Ladies in fine silk dresses and feathered hats, gentlemen in white gloves and pressed suit coats. Mother would be there, and Clara’s younger brother, Fritz, smiling up at her from the audience, applauding the song they had heard over and over and over every hour of every day (bless them).

  And there would be someone else, too. Just the thought of him made Clara’s face flush and her throat dry. He would be the most important audience of all.

  “I beg your forgiveness—”

  A voice sounded behind Clara from the wings of the stage, jolting her back to the present, and suddenly her face did blush and her throat did become dry. She recognized that dark, melodious voice immediately. She’d heard snatches of it echoing through the Conservatory halls and emanating from the stage before piano concerts.

  Johann Kahler.

  “Ah, Master Kahler,” said Professor Schonemann, standing to greet him.

  Johann Kahler was here. Here! Behind her! On the stage with her! She had seen him dozens of times, but he had never seen her. The great pianist, Johann Kahler.

  Clara was suddenly very aware of everything. The pins in her hair. The cinch of her corset. The cuffs on her blouse. Don’t do anything stupid, she warned herself. Don’t even breathe.

  Clara slowly stood and turned, her skirts twisting around her, letting Johann take her in for the first time. Her blond hair pulled into soft ringlets. Her dark blue
eyes and rosy cheeks and lips that sort of curved into a smile and her waist that could be cinched tightly enough to give her more of a figure than she really had. Clara inwardly thanked herself for wearing her dark blue skirt that day and not the green dress, which made her sort of look like a topiary. Please notice how pretty I am, Clara thought, if I am.

  Before she could buckle, Clara transformed her weak-kneed moment into a deep, graceful curtsy. The hem of her skirt brushed the floor. When she straightened, lifting her chin, her eyes met Johann’s.

  He stood a length away, but Clara knew every detail of him. His long, straight nose. His perfectly combed jet hair. His strong jaw, which always tightened as he played the piano. Tonight, his gloves stood brilliant white against his dark suit jacket, as though piano keys were the only thing he ever touched. They probably were, too.

  Clara had read every newspaper article and book with the name Johann Kahler in it. Where he was born (Regensburg, 1871), when he had started to play the piano (two years old), how many brothers and sisters he had (four), and even how wealthy he was (very). His favorite composers. His past concerts. His favorite music. These details flitted through Clara’s mind, and then fled as he spoke to her:

  “Forgive me,” he said, “but I heard your composition across the lobby. Only the last few measures, but I told myself, I must see who is playing. Naturally, I expected an old, crusty musician. Certainly not you.”

  Clara lifted her chin with a slight smile, flirtatiously defiant. Her heart beat faster and faster as Johann strode to her with a click click click.

  “You have met Miss Clara Stahlbaum, of course?” said Professor Schonemann.

  “Stahlbaum?” said Johann, brows furrowed with consideration.

  “Her father was the pianist, Otto Stahlbaum.”

  “Ah!” said Johann, turning to Clara with a smile. “I knew that name sounded familiar. And you take after your father, I see.”

  Clara’s face burned, and she couldn’t help but smile back. He knew her family. He thought he took after her father! It was the kindest compliment anyone could have paid her.

  “Miss Stahlbaum will be performing in our concert tomorrow,” Professor Schonemann was saying. “A piece of her own composition.”

  “What! The Christmas concert? But you are so young!”

  “Miss Stahlbaum is excellent. And she works very hard. Last year she performed for the Chancellor, when she was just fourteen.” Professor Schonemann’s voice had harmonies of pride that Clara rarely heard.

  “Ah! A pianist’s rite of passage. I was but eleven when I played for the Chancellor, of course. Prelude in A Minor. Where are you on the program, Miss Clara?”

  “Just before you.”

  Johann’s brows rose, but he smiled. Clara suddenly felt weak-kneed again.

  “Well,” he said, motioning offstage. “I will be just there, in the wings. I very much look forward to hearing you tomorrow.”

  Clara’s blush could have lit candles.

  * * *

  Clara’s blush followed her all the way home. She practically skipped out the theater and symphony hall lobby, out the doors and down the marble steps, and into the city streets, passing shoppers with their bundles, the clop of hooves on the cobblestones, everyone hurrying home before sunset. The whirling snowflakes burned as they touched Clara’s cheeks. She was embarrassed and thrilled and anxious and overwhelmed and delighted all at once. Her first introduction to Johann Kahler.

  She hadn’t expected it to happen like that. She thought he would first see her tomorrow, in her concert dress, her hair in ringlets, her solo flawless. Still, it had been...all right. He had smiled when he’d seen her. And he had promised to listen tomorrow. That was all Clara needed.

  She was so close.

  Two years before, not long after her father had passed away—but long enough to not cry whenever she heard a piano—Clara had heard Johann play. She had been walking through the Conservatory after a lesson, and halted outside the theater stage door. The most sublime piano music emanated from it. She dared slip inside. There sat Johann Kahler at the piano, teasing it, weaving the arpeggios together and cradling the dynamics just so, and for the first time in a long time, Clara felt the thrill of music in the soul. It was more than just a piano melody. It was...heaven, filling the hole inside her that the loss of her father had left, and Clara fell in love.

  She had slipped out of the stage just as quickly as she had come, knowing that he couldn’t see her like that, a little thirteen-year-old nobody. But if she practiced enough, hard enough, long enough, if he could only hear her play, then she knew: he would fall in love with her, too.

  The Stahlbaum flat on the end of Dieter Street smelled of scrubbed lye and hot bread and the hint of a sooty, slightly-stuffed flue. Tonight, however, it smelled of pine and cinnamon and wafts of clove, and the air fizzed with Christmas Eve excitement.

  Clara’s two favorite people greeted her in the warmth of the drawing room: her mother—slender build, hair twisted up into a gentle bun and eyes that brightened at everything—and Fritz, who was only nine but who worked as a courier, and had even found a Christmas tree as scrubby and small and tough as he was. Clara embraced them and laughed at Fritz’s excitement—“What took you so long? We’ve been waiting and there’s stollen!”—and she grinned as she helped decorate the tree, all accolades—“The size of this tree, Fritz! Did you really drag it all the way from the gartenpark? Why, it’s as large as you are!” until Fritz beamed with pride.

  Clara was warm all over still from meeting Johann. She didn’t tell Mother or Fritz about her encounter, of course. Clara had never told anyone about her feelings for Johann. It wasn’t something, really, that you could tell anyone. Not even your mother. Not until he felt them, too.

  The night progressed like a dance, with Christmas pastries and a merry fire in the hearth and carols, Clara playing on the spinet in the drawing room corner. And when Fritz couldn’t stand it any longer, they opened presents.

  They couldn’t afford anything grand or large, as money was tight, but gifts were exchanged: wooden combs for Mother, a second-hand telescope and pocket knife for Fritz, and sheet music for Clara. She played the first page of it on the piano, because Father would have liked that, and she and Mother cried a little. Christmas hadn’t been the same without him.

  All the presents had been opened and the wrapping folded and ribbons balled, and Clara was yawning and thinking about practicing her Johann Kahler Sonata a little longer, when Fritz cried aloud. There was another present under the tree at the very back, buried in the small boughs. They hadn’t noticed it until now.

  It seemed impossible to miss, however. It lustered. The red paper gleamed, the silver ribbon shone.

  “I don’t remember seeing that one,” said Mother, frowning as Fritz pulled it from the scrubby tree. He read the tag.

  “It’s for you, Clara,” he said, showing the tag with calligraphic words: To Miss Clara Stahlbaum.

  Clara took the gift, which fit in her arms but was substantially heavy.

  “Who could have sent it?” she said, looking from Mother to Fritz.

  They both looked as confused as she was. Or at least, Mother did. Fritz was already tugging at the ribbon. “Open it!” he said.

  Clara obliged, careful to not tear the beautiful wrapping. It unfolded open in her arms. Fritz helped her remove the box lid, then peered over her shoulder.

  Inside the satin-lined box lay a nutcracker. A fine wooden figure, painted like a soldier. The red uniform had buttons and gallooning that shone gold. Long white legs, tall black boots and hat. He held a gleaming sword in his hand that looked surprisingly sharp for a toy.

  Clara blinked, even more confused. A soldier toy would be something more for Fritz, not her. Her brows creased, examining the nutcracker a bit closer. Such a wide, toothy grin! It made her want to smile. A black little mustache and eyebrows. Rosy circles were painted on each cheek. He had no neck, just a long tufted white rectangle of a beard.
It fluffed down to his chest, and matched the unruly white hair under his tall hat. Still, he didn’t look old. Perhaps it was his eyes. A striking, merry green.

  “It’s broken,” said Fritz.

  He was right. The Nutcracker’s left arm had come apart at the shoulder. It lay next to him in the satin.

  “It was probably just shaken apart in the box. These are delicate, you know.” Clara removed the nutcracker and worked to assemble his arm into the divot of the shoulder. It was a little like a puzzle; the arm needed to be inserted a certain way and twisted just so. Clara twisted it into place with a tock.

  The nutcracker’s eyes twinkled at Clara.

  Clara fumbled, nearly dropping the doll.

  “It’s a very fine nutcracker,” said Mother.

  “It doesn’t have a lever,” said Fritz.

  Clara squinted her eyes, peering closer at it, and the Nutcracker only toothily grinned back. The dim lamplight was playing tricks on her.

  “It’s just a toy, I think,” said Clara.

  “It’s ugly,” said Fritz.

  “How dare you,” said Clara, cradling the nutcracker in her arms. “I think he’s handsome!”

  “Ugly,” Fritz disagreed, then quickly switched tone. “Wait—there is something more in the box!”

  And indeed there was. Nestled at the bottom of the satin lay a book. Clara curiously—and carefully—pulled it out, for the cover was so delicate it appeared to be made of pressed fall leaves all different bright reds and purples. She could even see the veins. And the title? Swooping gold letters, tiny and intricate, read: Clara and the Nutcracker Prince.

  Clara.

  Clara’s heart went eeeeerk!

  “It has my name!” she said, in a higher voice than her normal one.

  Mother had gone a little pale. Fritz was practically hopping behind her.

  “Read it!” said Fritz, deciding for her.

  Clara dared open the cover and turn to the first page of the book. It was so delicate it was almost transparent, the pages lined with an old-fashioned font. With a deep breath, Clara read aloud: