Longing (10 page)

At that moment Agnes noticed them gathered at her piano and quite unashamedly gestured that they come around to join her. Clara was disappointed to see that Agnes's beautiful green eyes had sought out her father's and not her own, a feeling only somewhat mitigated by the fact that the blue eyes of the pianist settled within her own. Poor Clementine. Clara saw her quite deliberately take the arm of her intended as they walked from behind the piano toward their hostess.

Agnes had turned her attention back to the pianist, who had reciprocated in kind, so that by the time the trio reached them, the two were once again engrossed in the most obvious flirtation, she still sipping her champagne and he seeming to watch every bubble as it danced and died upon her bottom lip.

Agnes spoke to the boy: “Allow me to introduce Herr Friedrich Wieck, his bride-to-be, Fräulein Clementine Fechner, and his brilliant daughter, Clara. And this, my good friends, is”—she took the young man's arm so enthusiastically that her breasts came in intimate contact with one another—“my good friend also, Herr Robert Schumann, though I call him Fridolin.”

“Ah, Schiller,” said Wieck, clearly delighted to have caught the reference from the work of another Friedrich, who until the time of his death some twenty years before had been Goethe's sole rival as a playwright.

“It is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom,” Robert quoted with no acknowledgment to Schiller but more than enough to Agnes, to whose beauty he most obviously referred in what was clearly his attempt to flatter his way toward some as-yet-undeclared compass of freedom with its fleshly divulgence.

“Who is Fridolin?” asked Clementine.

Agnes looked at her gravely and answered, “Fridolin was a young page so utterly devoted to his mistress that she gave herself to him”—here Agnes broke into the most seductive laughter—“that is to say, she gave her
heart
to him. As I have mine to Robert.” She laid her head upon Robert Schumann's shoulder, which looked both powerful and inviting in the snug sleeve of his coat.

Herr Schumann blushed and to cover his embarrassment drank from the glass of champagne on the piano.

“You see,” said Agnes, “we even drink from the same glass.”

Herr Schumann realized what he had done and, putting down the glass, blushed even more.

“What brings you to Leipzig, Herr Schumann?” asked Wieck, though Clara knew it was not the question foremost in her father's mind.

“I am a lowly
studiosus juris,”
he answered, in a voice both shy and charming. “I have been here but two days. I enrolled at the law school and the next thing I did was to look up my old friends the Caruses in their Leipzig abode.”

Law school! Clara thought he looked like a gymnasium student.

Agnes shook her head. “Law school! You have as much reason to be at law school as I have to be in a convent. It's his mother's doing,” she explained, before addressing herself once again to her young page. “You may go to law school from now until you're eighty—by which time you will still not have passed your exams, I am sure—and you will remain a musician and not a lawyer. Fridolin and I have been singing and playing together for over a year now. He writes songs for me, you know. One of them was based on Ernst Schultze's ‘Transformation,' the title of which speaks for itself, does it not, Fridolin? And another is to his own lovely poem, ‘Light as Quivering Sylphs,' which describes both myself in his presence and the very trembling called for in the voice of the soprano. What you were just listening to, however, was by Schubert, not Schumann. You are familiar with Schubert, I am sure?”

“Of course,” said Wieck.

Clara nodded.

Clementine also nodded, though unconvincingly.

“So it was music that brought you together?” asked Wieck, closing in on his prey.

“Not music,” said Herr Schumann.

“No?” questioned Wieck.

“Illness,” said Herr Schumann.

“Robert is a patient of my husband.”

Her husband knew this man! Clara would have thought the two of them would go to any length to avoid her husband. She would have thought Agnes would deny being married (though she had let her wedding ring bob on her young man's back, where Clara was sure he could feel it through his coat and shirt). Poor Dr. Carus. He must be going through what her father had gone through. But her mother had never behaved like this. Her mother had shown her smile of joy in the presence of her lover only to her daughter, and even then she had always tried to hide it with her hands before her face.

“But you look so…robust,” Clementine said to Herr Schumann.

“Madness,” he responded.

“I beg your pardon.” Clementine was immediately flustered. “How dare you…I meant only…Forgive me if…”

“No no no no no.” Herr Schumann reached out his hand toward Clementine, only to have it grasped, though not withdrawn, by Agnes. “I didn't
mean you
are mad. I meant I went to see Dr. Carus for madness.
Mine
, Fräulein Fechner.”

Agnes now took Herr Schumann's hand as far out of the vicinity of Clementine as possible, by pressing it to the chaste but ravishing landscape of freckle and shadow that lay naked between her throat and her bosom.

“My Fridolin isn't really mad,” she said, though it was quite clear to Clara that if he was, it was Agnes who was making him so. “Not mad, but disturbed perhaps.”

“What are your symptoms?” asked Clementine.

“Insomnia,” he answered. “Dreams. Night sweats.”

“Oh, my!” responded Clementine, who appeared unprepared for such specifics. Her eyes went in search of a new glass of champagne but found instead the far-less-bubbly countenance of her husband-to-be, who was concerned, Clara knew, that his fiancée's prying would deprive him of a potential paying, and in this case potentially brilliant, customer.

“Well, you'd have them too,” said Herr Schumann, clearly trying to thaw poor Fräulein Fechner from the icy gaze of her paramour, “if you were to stay even one night with the Caruses in their castle in Colditz.”
*

It was all Clara could do to keep from shaking her head. Dr. Carus not only treated his wife's lover but invited him to stay—to sleep!—in one of their homes. Such intrigues made her wish to grow up as quickly as possible, not so she might emulate such behavior, she told herself, but that she might understand it. In the meantime, it was disturbingly enjoyable simply to observe it.

“Oh, castle,” sighed Clementine.

“It's not what you might expect,” countered Herr Schumann.

“Don't you make fun of our castle,” chided Agnes, clearly inviting him to do so.

“How old is it?” asked Clementine. “I love old castles.”

“Not so old,” he said. He looked to Agnes for corroboration: “Perhaps four hundred years?”

She kissed his hand. “Precisely.”

“And do you live in it all alone?” Clementine asked Agnes.

“Well, there's my husband and our baby.”

Herr Schumann laughed.

“Do you live there too?” Clementine's desire for gossip seemed to have overcome her sense of propriety.

“Oh, not I. I lived in Zwickau until two days ago. Now I live here in Leipzig. But four hundred others do live in the Caruses' castle.”

“Four hundred!” Clementine was aghast.

“Precisely.” It was Herr Schumann who said it this time, though this did not keep Agnes from kissing his hand once again.

“Four hundred
servants
?”

“Not servants,” answered Herr Schumann. “In——”

“Robert,” cautioned Agnes, putting a finger to his lips.

“Inmates.” Herr Schumann at once pronounced the word and kissed his mistress's finger.

“Inmates!” For Clementine this seemed to have gone beyond gossip into the repellent. “You live in a prison?”

“Asylum,” answered Herr Schumann. “Dr. Carus is the medical director.”

“We call them patients,” said Agnes.

They are inmates,” said Herr Schumann forcefully, in a way that made him seem no longer quite such a boy. “It's not the Caruses' fault, but these ‘patients' live in filth and squalor. They don't bathe in a month and, while they are not beaten, they are punished by being told that their suffering is itself a punishment for some defect in their souls. The soul! I believe in the soul as much as the next man…and I don't believe in the next man at all.”

Clara laughed. No one else did.

“Thank you,” Herr Schumann said to her. “At least somebody here has a sense of humor.”

“I have a sense of humor,” said Clementine.

“May the Lord spare us,” said her husband-to-be.

“So you must picture it,” continued Herr Schumann. “Frau Carus and her husband live surrounded by four hundred madmen—and soon to be many more, because the Sonnenstein asylum at Maxen is going to be transferring those it releases right to the castle in Colditz instead of to prison, as they have done heretofore. This is evidence to the American doctor Pliny Earle of the rising of the morning sun of a new day in the treatment of insanity in Germany—sending people to Colditz instead of to prison!”

“You seem to know a great deal about this,” said Clementine. “I should think you would be in doctor school and not lawyer school.”

“It's because I am frightened, Fräulein Fechner.”

“Of medical school?” she asked.

“Of madness,” responded Herr Schumann.

“Oh, you don't seem mad to me,” said Clementine.

“How would you know?” Clara's father apparently couldn't resist asking.

To Clara's relief, her stepmother-to-be smiled sweetly at her future husband and said, “Why, thank you, Friedrich.”

Clara's father must have decided that the time was right to change the subject to music; specifically, to music lessons.

“You play the piano well,” he said to Herr Schumann. “You are, I assume, self-taught?”

“No.” Herr Schumann looked around for something. When he couldn't find it, he put his fingers to his lips and seemed to begin blowing kisses at Agnes. Clara wondered if Agnes would respond in kind until Agnes reached over to the edge of the piano and produced for her lover what was left of his cigar, which he put hungrily between his lips and upon which he began to suck, and upon which he continued to suck though the cigar was clearly extinguished and nothing was produced from its end but a few airborne flakes of dry gray ash.

Herr Schumann seemed quite content to smoke in this fashion, rather than talk, when Clara's father, as she had guessed he would, pushed stubbornly on. “Are you saying, Herr Schumann, that you do not play the piano well or that you are not self-taught?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Her father had the sense not to ask which but to say simply, “Would you like me to teach you?”

“What a splendid idea,” said Agnes.

“Why?” asked Herr Schumann.

Her father was confused. “I'm sorry. To which one of us are you speaking?”

“Neither,” answered Herr Schumann.

“You really are quite mad,” said Clementine.

“If I am, it's not because I ask the question ‘Why?'”

“Are you asking it of the universe?” asked Clara's father.

“Now
that would
be mad!” Herr Schumann looked right at Clara and said, “I ask it of
you
—why have you not said a word?”

“She is not comfortable speaking,” her father said.

“Is anyone?” asked Herr Schumann.

Is
anyone? What a splendid question. Clara felt she spoke constantly. But rarely within hearing.

“Most people never stop talking,” said Clementine.

“Exactly!” exclaimed Herr Schumann, who added, “That's the first intelligent thing you've said this evening.”

“Thank you.” Clementine actually appeared to curtsy.

“So you like Schubert?” asked Clara's father, as if to take attention from both his girls.

“Oh, yes.”

“And Goethe?”

“Of course. But you know that Goethe does not like the songs Schubert has written to his verse. Or Beethoven. He prefers Zelter's settings.”

Her father ignored that embarrassing information and said, “I am planning to take Clara to play for Goethe.”

“How old are you?” Herr Schumann asked her.

“She is eight years old.”

“Too late,” said Herr Schumann sarcastically.

“What do you mean, ‘too late'?” boomed her father, who did not like anyone to question anything having to do with his teaching her.

“Goethe saw Mozart when Mozart was seven,” said Herr Schumann.

“Mozart!” said her father, leaving it unclear whether he meant to deify or demean his example.

“Goethe explained Mozart's genius by saying that music must be instinctive, innate. He said it requires almost nothing from the world, from experience, from life. So much for teaching,” added Herr Schumann.

“I am the greatest teacher in the world, and Clara will become the world's greatest pianist! And when she does, it will be because of my teaching!”

Poor Herr Schumann. He had touched upon the one subject, along with money, that made her father grow loud and swollen and quite mad himself.

Clara saw Agnes catch her eye and start to gesture that she should sit down at the piano when Herr Schumann, apparently unmoved by her father's outburst, said, “I'm glad you liked the song we played. It was, you know, one of the first songs Schubert wrote. He wrote it for a girl named Theresa Grob. Her voice was as pretty as she was homely, for she was said to be one of the ugliest girls in Vienna. Her face was pitted and she was as wide as a cow. But he loved her more than he'd loved anyone else. So he asked her to marry him.”

With that, Herr Schumann stopped talking and started to suck once more on his dry, dead cigar. He looked into her eyes again with his blue eyes. She knew what he wanted. She knew why he had stopped telling his story at its moment of greatest suspense. He wanted to hear her voice.