Marrying Mozart (21 page)

Mozart walked the city for an hour, circling near and about Petersplatz, where the Webers lived under the shadow of the green-domed church. Every girl he saw he thought was her, every small woman who turned around to smile at him. He was coming down the walk under the trees in the public gardens when he saw Sophie Weber, sun glinting on her spectacles, eating a coffee ice near an ice stand. It took a moment for him to understand that the woman with her—so swollen with child that she looked like a stalk bending for the weight of its pod—was Aloysia.

He came forward, bowing stiffly. Curtseys were returned, eyes lowered. Aloysias pretty mouth was like a slit, and she had the exhausted, sallow look women have at times when their growing unborn child is consuming their very bones. Six months now, he thought, calculating back to the time in late spring when her letters had become scant and then faded away altogether with excuses of her busyness and little time.

He said coldly, “God’s greetings; you’re well?”

“I’m well enough, as you can see,” replied Aloysia languidly.

I’m withholding my feelings, he thought with some pride, yet the next moment he could not be silent. His small hands twitched at his side. “How could you; how could you? I loved you more than any man has ever loved. Don’t you know that you have broken my heart forever?”

“What did you want of me?” she whispered, stamping her foot. A group of families with children turned around to stare at her, making her lower her voice even more. “Waiting and waiting for you to do better. I do quite well enough myself now. Once my baby is born, I’ll sing again, and earn more money than before, while you’re only one of many composers. You can blame only yourself. How long did you expect me to live on your letters?”

He nodded grimly, thinking how two years before Leutgeb had warned him about any involvement with the Webers. Now Leutgeb was married, whereas he, Mozart ... what had he made of himself? And to think the child might have been his! He could hardly make his last bow.

After walking swiftly away, he paused on a small bridge and looked down. Why not simply leap? Cold water choking his lungs. Death comes, death comes. But is not death the best friend of man?

He did not know how long he stood there before he heard his name called, and looked about to see Sophie rushing toward him, freckles all the way down her neck to her bodice top. “You walked so fast, and I was following behind,” she panted, “but there was a horse parade and a marching band that divided us.”

Coldly, he asked, “Why did you come after me?” Vaguely, he recalled how much they had had together during their time in Munich, crawling around the floor in games, sitting side by side at the clavier playing together (she with two fingers), making up nonsense words.

“Because,” she said, shaking his limp hand, “you’re our friend. She’s sorry, you know, but she’ll never say it. I can see your heart’s broken. Aloysia doesn’t have a heart as you do. Many people go about the world without hearts as we know them, and we never realize until too late. She has a different sort of heart, which, of course, we love her for. Grandmother understood her, but grandmother’s gone to heaven with Papa. Of course she’s beautiful. Angels are beautiful and filled with love, though it must be a different sort of beauty; but then you wouldn’t fall in love with an angel, would you, since they’re not corporeal? And do we have the sense and wisdom of angels? Can we, while in this mortal place ...” She went on and on in one of her long speeches, her words not entirely comprehensible. He stared at her.

A wind band some distance from them burst out with popular tunes.

She said, “I’m praying to God to give you courage. I swear, I know, that your life will be happy. No one’s life here is always happy, but you will have some. I am sure you have read
The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Goethe. Josefa knows it by heart, as did our father. Lost love. But what can we expect? It’s a fallen world.” Then she took off her spectacles, rubbed them with her sleeve, and said, “At least come pray and then have a lemonade. It’s October, and they won’t keep the stands open much longer.”

His eyes filled with tears, and he waited a while until he was able to control himself. Then he followed her back toward Stephansdom, where they entered the great ornate Gothic edifice, which was one of the musical centers of the city as well as the repository of some remains from hundreds of years of Habsburg emperors. They genuflected, then knelt and prayed together as he had done when in thanksgiving for a composition well received. Opening his eyes, he saw her beside him with her hands clasped.

Then she said, “Come on,” and they went out into the square in the still warm autumn day to the lemonade stand, and each had two glassfuls. After that Sophie went home, and Mozart walked across the square once more to the Palace of the Teutonic Knights, which was flying the Archbishop’s flag to signal his residence. Climbing to his bleak room, he brushed off his coat for the Archbishop’s concert that night, which was to be held at the house of Prince Galitzen. That he had missed the rehearsal was remarked upon by a few colleagues.

C
arnival time came to Vienna just before Lent, as it did each year, with its glittery masks, wild costumes, extravagant feasts, the parading whores, who revealed as much of their bodies as they dared to by law, the banging of drums, the playing of horns, and much dancing until dawn—all to frighten winter away. It was an old custom that he recalled from Venice and Rome as well; the city flaunted gaiety before the austerities that would come.

Mozart had dragged himself through Christmas, and the cold months which followed, seeing his lost love in every petite woman, feeling that the whole thing must have been a mistake and that any day Aloysia would appear at his door, eyes cast down, modestly dressed. He saw her dressed like his mother, in a gray-flocked gown as plain as a nun’s. He saw how he would take her to his bed, losing at last his wretched and unwanted sexual innocence. He went to sleep in the room he shared with the cellist thinking of it, and woke to find it was not so. Here he was in Vienna, where Haydn had sung as a chorister, where Gluck had the performance of his radiant
Orfeo and Euridice
, where the Emperor walked daily in the parks, but he made little of the music he wished to make and seldom performed where he wished to perform.

He saw none of the Webers. Sophie had sent him a handkerchief that had been her father’s, with the initials FFW embroidered on it. He looked at it from time to time with distant tenderness, but he had no desire to see her, even to thank her for her kindness. He was too ashamed, and he was in no mood for Carnival.

One day as he was drinking coffee and reading the news journal at a coffee and pastry house, Leutgeb, with his round, youthful face, slipped into the empty chair beside him. “We never see you,” he said. “My wife hardly believes you exist; my baby is sure you do not.”

“I do exist.”

“But not well?”

“Not very well. How are you, my friend?”

“Why, married life suits me! I sell a great deal of cheese, and play my horn wherever I can. Sometimes I wonder where are the concerti my friend Wolfgang promised me. Then when I find I am covered with cobwebs from standing so long contemplating this question, I look him up in a Viennese pastry and coffee house to find out. Where are the concerti, my friend?”

Mozart shrugged and looked down into the coffee grounds.

“Never mind, I’ll wait a bit longer. Look! Some old friends are here, and we’re going to the puppet show at Madame Godl’s
krippenspiel.
If you can get away, come with us. They’re longing to go. It’s crowded, but the puppets are a marvel. Come on.”

The theater was long, with an intricate puppet stage at one end. The four friends crammed into the narrow, hard benches like schoolboys. Mozart gazed at the three-dimensional backdrop of Jerusalem. The harpsichordist who banged away in a corner was a poor musician Mozart had met as a boy. He heard one of his own divertimento tunes and sat straight up. “That’s yours, you ass,” Leutgeb said. “Don’t you know how much of your music is played? They steal it before you sneeze.”

They spoke loudly above the noise of housewives, a few ladies in masks to conceal their identity at such a low form of entertainment, and many stomping schoolboys waiting for the performance. “What have you been doing here besides playing His Grace’s church music and mourning, Mozart? Are you writing music of any sort, since you are not doing so for me?”

“Yes I am!” he burst out. “But what good does it do? I wanted to perform something of mine at Countess Thun’s the other evening (the Emperor was there), but my Archbishop needed me to play for his convalescing father, so I gave a piano/violin sonata for the dismal old man, and that was that. And I dare not even let him see my anger.”

“And so you shut yourself up.”

Mozart did not reply; he gazed at the marionettes that he could make out from his seat, so large and lifelike, but wooden. How odd the way they jerked and danced when their strings were pulled! Could they feel in their own way? I am one of them, he thought suddenly. Slowly, beginning with the fingertips, I am turning to wood.

Then the play began, and they saw the capture of Jerusalem. The walls fell. Cannons sparked real sparks and smoke filled the theater; in the haze marionette citizens jerked to their deaths, and marionette Romans jerked to their victory. He had seen puppets as a boy, and not particularly liked them, but the banging on the floor and the shouting and everyone choking on the smoke and weeping over the fall of Jerusalem was infectious, and he leapt up, shouting with the rest, suddenly flooded with happiness.
To write theater pieces, to write operas,
he thought. To write the sort of music he wanted to write, to be free.

The schoolboys trod on his toes going out, and the harpsichordist ran after him, and cried, “Give my regards to your dear sister.” Jerusalem had fallen, and the assistants were cleaning up for the next performance, for which a line was already forming.

The four young men stood in the street. From every direction came the sound of Carnival. “Let’s have a beer and supper,” Leutgeb said.

In the beer cellar a flautist was trying in vain to play above the talking. Now Mozart felt his sadness return, drank a great deal of beer, and was silent. “Idiot,” Leutgeb said to him. “Arsehole. I’ve spoken to you twice, and you don’t reply. We’ve been here for two hours; now it’s time to go, and you’ve never been such tedious company.”

Mozart replied, “Sorry, I’m turning to wood. My heart’s gone already. There you have it. At the next performance of the
krippenspiel,
look, and you’ll find me hanging with the other marionettes.” He stood up in a sudden fury. “That’s it,” he cried, “that’s it.”

The flautist stopped for a moment to see who was shouting, then resumed. “Sit down,” someone called, “are you going to make a speech? Are you going to drink the Emperor’s health?”

But Mozart continued, “I am turning to wood. I must go and speak to my saintly employer. You’ll excuse me. I’m going now before it’s too late.”

Leutgeb cried, “Tonight, on the eve before Lent? Tonight, past the hour of nine?”

“Nevertheless.” He pulled his friends to their feet, and Leutgeb ran back to pay the bill, then hurried up the steps two at a time to join the others. They stood a street away from Michaelerkirche, with its sandstone fallen angels, and turned toward the palace by the cathedral. The winds from the river and woodlands rose, blowing through the town. “Madman, madman ...” the others cried to Mozart. A guard looked at them carefully, then motioned them on with disgust. The gaslights shone on the stone work of the elegant houses.

Two sentries stood before the palace. “Wait here,” Mozart said unsteadily to his friends. “I’ll be a short while. You wait.” He walked forward, looking over his shoulder at them as they stood with folded arms, shaking their heads.

Inside the palace the chamberlain motioned him on up the great stairway and then down the hall. Count Arco was walking toward him, carrying a lamp and a goblet of wine in blue molded glass. “Where are you going, Mozart?”

“His Princely Grace wishes to see me.”

“He mentioned no such thing to me. Well, go on. He’ll be at his prayers.”

The house was dark, for most of the candles had been extinguished. “No one comes now,” said the chamberlain, opening the bedchamber door and announcing the composer. There was a grunt and a muffled response, and Mozart was waved inside.

The room was papered in red damask, with bed hangings of the same weighty material. The enormous dark wood canopy bed could have slept a workman’s family. The ceiling was high and parqueted with angels, who seemed ready to fall down to the carpet at any moment. His Holiness was already in his dressing gown and nightcap for the evening, drinking wine before a great roaring fire. His face seemed like a withered apple, his eyes even smaller. “Mozart, it’s you,” he said. “What’s so important that you must see me at this late hour?”

“I wish to thank you for your kindness to me, and to say that, with much regret, I have decided to leave your service.”

The Archbishop threw up his hands. “What,” he cried. “You interrupt my preparation for rest with such nonsense when you have eaten my bread this past year? You brat, you idiot! I have borne with you too long. One can see you’re not grateful to serve me. Where is your gratitude? Why did I let your father persuade me to hire you?”

“Well then, Your Grace is not satisfied with me?”

“Idiot, there is the door. Go.”

“For Jesus sake, do not leave his service,” Mozart’s father had written weeks before when Mozart had confided to him his unhappiness. “The Archbishop has borne with your wanderings and mine own and took you back again only at my pleading. If you go once more, it will be the last time; I fear it. Where shall you go away from him? One cannot make a meal and roof of dreams, my son....”