Mozart's Sister: A Novel (18 page)

Between the lines, her brother was accusing her of being without feeling, egotistical; and in relation to the barrier that had always existed between them and their father, he seemed to be shifting dangerously to the other side. This allusive manner was not like Wolfgang; his mocking joy had disappeared, replaced by resentment. What should she have done to keep his affection? Write boring letters telling him about her flat, dull existence, so that his should appear even more interesting, between a concert and a theatrical opening, a triumph in the press and the ecstatic reception by an audience? Maybe she could illustrate for him in minute detail the pedagogic progress of Barbara von Esser or tell him how her mother dragged her through salons full of empty-headed people, from whom he himself had fled without a second thought.

“Look, Nannerl: they are blue like your eyes. I chose them one by one, thinking of you.”

She started and almost fell off her branch. At the base of the trunk, standing in a ray of sun, with a smile on her lips and a necklace of gentians in her hands, was the girl of the white rose.

“How could you take the liberty of following me?” Nannerl said, as soon as she recovered from her astonishment.

The girl didn’t answer. With care, she arranged the flowers around her neck and then climbed the tree to deliver the gift personally; that is, she tried, for in fact she wasn’t very agile. She kept tripping on her lace skirt, and her delicate hands couldn’t get a grip on the bark. Nannerl’s irritation rose.

“Go away! Go away, I say.”

But the girl had decided not to move, and with an extreme effort managed to reach the base of the big branch on which her favorite music teacher was perched. There was no way of escape for Nannerl, so she slid along the branch and hazarded a long leap to the ground.

Too long. She landed awkwardly on a rock, twisting her right ankle outward, so that she fell and rolled over, moaning. She sat up, took off her boot, and touched the instep of her foot, her face contracting in a grimace of pain.

“It’s my fault,” the girl murmured, tumbling down out of the tree, with her dress dirty and slightly torn by her unusual adventure; but the necklace of flowers remained intact.

“Don’t worry; it’s nothing,” Nannerl said, and supporting herself with her hands, she stood up, keeping the injured foot raised. She tried to move a few steps, but it was a bad twist, and she found it impossible to put any weight on the leg. She stopped, exasperated.

The girl approached without saying anything. Gently she took Nannerl’s arm and put it around her own shoulders, then placed her arm around Nannerl’s waist. Nannerl didn’t resist.

“Lean on me. Come, let’s see if it works.”

The two took a few slow, cautious steps.

“What’s your name?” Nannerl asked.

“Victoria.”

“Victoria, you mustn’t pick gentians. They are precious flowers and should be left to grow in peace. Remember that.”

Holding on to each other, the two began their slow descent down the hill.

XVI.

The old harpsichord of the Mozart house seemed to groan with joy at the return of hands that could make it sing: impetuous and decisive, precise and passionate. At the keyboard, Victoria’s languid grace disappeared completely and she was transformed into a visionary being, in a rapture of creation. She played the First Sonata of Johann Gottfried Eckard, that sonata that only a fool would have put on a concert program, and Nannerl listened to her interpretation, so similar to her own of long ago, while sitting on the sofa with her ankle on a stool and her face relaxed in a radiant smile.

“Whom have you studied with?” she asked as the last chord faded in the air.

“With my mother.”

“I’d like to meet her.”

“She would also like it, you can be sure; but it’s impossible, unless you go and see her in Paradise.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, stricken.

“It happened a long time ago. I can speak of it easily now, though for my father it remains a taboo subject.” Victoria went over to the piano and caressed the polished wood as if she wanted to embrace it.

“We also had a harpsichord and a piano, but then Papa gave away everything. He said that the instruments reminded him too much of Mama. And that if she had not been so obsessed with music when she was alive he could have had more of her company.”

“How do you manage to practice?”

“There’s a worthless old instrument in the cellar of the archbishop’s palace. A broken harpsichord, with a couple of missing keys; but it can still get out the notes.” Then she lighted up with enthusiasm. “This piano is something else completely, of course. It’s new, isn’t it?” She turned the key, raised the cover, took off the cloth, and eagerly looked at the keyboard. “I’m sure it has a splendid tone. May I hear something?”

“I don’t play anymore.”

The cold statement seemed absurd to Victoria. “What do you mean? Why?”

“You play it.”

It was an order, and welcome. The girl sat down and immediately started Eckard’s sonata, which on that malleable instrument assumed a completely new character; inexperience led her to “pound” a little where there was no need to, however, so, with a patient sigh, Nannerl rose and, hopping on her good leg, joined her and, while she played, began to instruct her with increasing passion.

“Don’t move suddenly to the forte. You have to increase the intensity little by little…again, Victoria…not too much. Don’t lose the character of the piece. Very good. Now lighter…Do you hear how the harmony changes? You have to bring it out.”

The two didn’t hear an imperious knock at the door. When Tresel opened it, standing before her was an imposing man of around forty wearing an impeccable uniform and highly polished boots; a large sword hung from his belt and, as was customary among military men, he didn’t wear a wig, but his long hair was gathered at the nape and held by a tie. He wasn’t handsome yet he had a shadowy attractiveness that might be fascinating to women. Not to Frau Mozart, however, who, arriving, looked at him in bewilderment: What in the world did the man want? Was he there to arrest her?

“Good morning, Madame,” he declared firmly. “I have come to get my daughter.”

“Would you introduce yourself, Herr…?”

“D’Ippold. Major Franz Armand d’Ippold, in service at the Court of His Excellency the Prince Archbishop. I have reason to believe that my daughter is in this house without my permission.”

“Really?” Frau Mozart answered, with some irony. “If you would like to make a tour of inspection, go ahead. I give you permission.”

Armand heard the sound of the piano from the music room and marched in that direction.

“But really! Sir, Major! Where are you going? I wasn’t serious. Tresel, do something!” She hurried along the corridor, followed by the maid. “Listen to me—my daughter mustn’t be disturbed when she’s working!”

The officer opened the door, and as soon as she saw him, Victoria took her hands off the keyboard. “All right, let’s go!” he ordered, as if he were speaking to a recruit.

For an instant they were all silent. Victoria started to get up, but Nannerl stopped her. “Excuse me, but why do you want to take her away?” she asked the unknown man, defensively.

“It’s a question that is no concern of yours, don’t you think?” he answered coldly.

“You don’t want Victoria to play?”

“It has nothing to do with you, I repeat. And in any case I have no intention of wasting money on music lessons.”

“I don’t want money to teach Victoria.”

“That will be something to discuss later,” Anna Maria put in, but no one paid attention. In the silence Armand stared at Nannerl, impenetrable and fierce. Then he said, “And why, may I ask, would you give my daughter lessons for nothing?”

“Because she has talent! A rare, genuine talent! And not to develop it would be a real crime,” she said, approaching him, limping, supporting herself on the lid of the harpsichord. “You don’t know what it means to have talent and not be able to express it. You haven’t the least idea! You can’t let your daughter become an unsatisfied woman who destroys her soul in silence, in bitterness, in senseless obligations, who ends up hating herself and whoever comes near her. You mustn’t do that, do you understand? It would be worse than a crime, it would be a sacrilege!”

This passionate outburst left the women astonished, while the officer curled his lip in a sneer of sarcasm.

“A sacrilege, you say? An act against God? Well, God has taken away from my daughter something much more precious than ‘talent’!”

His gaze darkened, and pain was clearly legible on his face; but immediately he shook himself and, ending the matter, said, “Victoria, let’s go. Out of here.”

This time Nannerl didn’t have the energy to restrain her, and she went to her father with downcast eyes. “Please forgive me for the disturbance, Frau Mozart,” Armand said coldly. “I guarantee you, in any case, that my daughter will never set foot in this house again. Never. Good day.”

He clicked his heels and crossed the hall with measured steps. Tresel opened the door, and just before Victoria went out Tresel took Victoria’s hand and for a fleeting instant held it.

There is no need, my love, to tell you what happened after our first meeting, since you know already in every detail; but by now I would find it hard to give up this habit of telling you my story, and also myself. It doesn’t take more than a couple of hours away from my sleep each night, don’t worry; and it adds so much to my waking hours, in terms of understanding and tranquillity. It’s a place that’s mine alone, ours alone, a place that I guard jealously and that sometimes reminds me of the old imaginary kingdom that you, too, through my thoughts, have visited. It’s the only expedient that allows me, right now, to preserve my closeness to you; for even if I shouldn’t say it, Armand, my love, my dearest, I miss you, I miss you tremendously and wish only for your return.

Every one of your departures provokes in me the same violent cycle of emotions. First, I have a strange jolt of pride that leads me to think: basically I have no great need of him. I can do without him from time to time; indeed, this is a precious chance to practice my autonomy; and it will make me appreciate even more the moment when, at last, we will be together again. Then five days pass, inevitably five days exactly (and I always realize this afterward), and I am assailed by a dark dissatisfaction that has a single cure: your presence.

As if that were not enough, the approach of another separation increases my sense of abandonment. My mother and brother will soon be setting off on tour, and God knows when I will see them again. It will be a long journey, which my father has organized in every detail and which will take them first to Munich, then to Augsburg (where they will stay with my uncle and my cousin Thekla), Mannheim, and, finally, Paris. Oddly, both of them embark on the new endeavor unwillingly, as if they had some idea of calamity. Wolfgang is eager for the opportunity, but he would like to travel alone; imagine, to avoid having Mama with him, he proposed that I should accompany him! She, on the other hand, is not sure she can replace my father in the practical matters, nor does she know how to manage her headstrong son. But so it is: Herr Mozart arranges and the rest of us can only submit.

I will therefore continue, my beloved Armand, to fill the physical space between us with paper, and characters, and ink stains, and some tears, and with warm laughter at my awkwardness—mine, not yours—since I’ve begun to suspect that I am a master not of music but of insecurity and embarrassment.

XVII.

Nannerl was completely hunched over behind a cart piled with caged chickens. She was crouching down, her shoulders bent and her head low; she clutched a score in one hand and with the other pulled Victoria by the skirt. “Look out; they’ll see you.”

Victoria was beside her, also partly hidden by the cart, but she was peeking out perilously to check the doorway. “Don’t worry, Nannerl. Do you think this is the first time I’ve done it?”

“If they discover you, they’ll also discover me; and what will I say to them?”

“They won’t discover us,” she declared arrogantly, then she saw something and shuddered. “Now!” And she sneaked in front of the cart.

Nannerl hesitated. The chickens cheeped.

“What are you doing? Come on!” Victoria grabbed Nannerl and pushed her toward the gateway; at that moment a grand carriage was entering, distracting the guards. Rapidly they slipped inside and crossed the inner courtyard, straight to a small warped door that opened onto a corridor; this ended in a flight of stairs, which descended into a dark, cool chamber. Nannerl followed Victoria, her heart in her throat.

“See how easy it is?”

Leaning against a wall, Victoria was laughing, while Nannerl struggled to compose herself. “I would never have thought of entering the palace this way.”

“Want to say hello to the archbishop? Maybe he’ll invite us to stay for dinner.”

“Don’t be silly, Victoria. Where’s the cellar?”

“And you relax. What a bore you are. Over here, come on.”

The palace basement was a maze of tunnels. The two passed through an archway and descended a narrow spiral staircase; Nannerl had to be careful not to hit her head. They traversed a long corridor, went through a doorway to a straight, steep flight of stairs, and finally arrived at a door that Victoria opened with a solemn air.