Marrying Mozart (29 page)

“Never mind, I should be able to bear to hear that name now. Good night, dear Sophie. Once more you stumbled upon me in a bad time and cheered me. Now go up before your reputation’s compromised.” He kissed her cheek and hands, then opened the door for her, and she slipped up the stairs.

 

Her disappearance was discovered the next morning. Maria Caecilia and Constanze, back from Aloysia’s, hurried through the rooms calling her name, reading and rereading her note in astonishment. They never really believed Sophie would return to Mannheim to join the beloved convent of sisters there, as she always said she would. Later they learned that Father Paul had been departing to that city; Sophie had confided everything to him that morning before daylight, and he had taken her with him.

T
he Franciscan monk was waiting for Mozart in a priest’s study in the rectory of Stephansdom. A forlorn Christ of old German wood hung from its cracking though polished Cross, and shelves held antique books, some handwritten, in worn, plain, thick vellum bindings. It had snowed six days after Easter; heaps of it lay piled on the cold windowsills, and in the cathedral yard.

Mozart stood by the window looking at a dog that barked below, then whined as an old bent woman shuffled toward it with a bowl of scraps. He heard the soft slippered feet of a servant closing the heavy, creaking door.

“But is there truly no chance for an opera of yours to be presented here?” asked Padre Martini. “It’s difficult to believe what Haydn told me before he left the city with the Prince, that someone else’s will be given for certain. He said it’s a loss to music. He thought this Thorwart might have spoken for you, and now Haydn tells me Thorwart stopped by Prince Esterházy’s mansion and said there was nothing he could do for you.”

Mozart sank into one of the high-backed, leather-upholstered chairs. “What can we do?” he murmured, his hands to his lips. “No libretto I found was good enough, and while I tried somehow, in the past few days, my chance eroded. I still live from hand to mouth. I can’t remain in Vienna; I’m going to London. The soprano Nancy Storace and her brother said they’d write me introductions to musical circles there, and some people they know recall my name. I speak enough English to do it, and I learn quickly. Georg Händel did well there. Perhaps I would have been better to wear some prince’s livery like that great and kind Joseph Haydn instead of insisting on my freedom.”

He looked up, biting his lip, left hand drumming some melody fragment on his knee. “You will not ever tell him I have said this? My thanks. I’m not sorry I left the Archbishop, but I’m sorry my father and sister, who depend on me, have been made to suffer. I must do better for them. I must put all my own hopes aside until that’s done.”

“When do you leave Austria?”

“I’ll stay here a few weeks more, and then be off.”

“Amadé, is there no way to persuade Orsini-Rosenberg to give you the opera commission?”

“He hasn’t answered my letter, and when I went there this morning they said he was out, but I heard his voice. What more can I say? My hopes were too high for an opportunity that was not meant to be mine. You’re returning to Bologna soon? Then I would have been without your company even if I had remained. Give me your blessing, Father.”

The cathedral loomed above him when he left sometime later, and a few men were clearing the snow from the courtyard with large, scraping brooms. There was no sign of the empty bowl or the dog in that white afternoon, only a small river of yellow piss around the area where it had prowled, and some paw-prints in the snow.

 

Climbing to his room later he passed near the kitchen, and heard the murmur of voices. With a friend Frau Weber sat near the fire, her swollen legs on a stool. She was eating thick slices of bread and cheese. Dinner was done and supper not begun.

“I shall be going away soon to England, madame,” he said coldly.

The reply was a curt nod as she stared at him, her mouth full of bread. He turned and continued up the stairs.

M
ozart was on his way out the boardinghouse door three days later, off to give one of the final lessons of his tenure in Vienna, when he noticed a letter on the crooked round table by the door under the leaves of the potted plant. Opening it, he stepped out into Petersplatz, the sun shining on all the surrounding houses; he recalled the man whose signature was scrawled at the letter’s end. He was the actor and playwright Gottlieb Stephanie, with whom Mozart had had an intense evening of conversation (he did not recall about what) in a wine cellar. The letter described a libretto the actor was writing about Englishwomen abducted into a Turkish harem, which Gottlieb Stephanie thought might be turned into an opera. Several pages of the libretto in draft were enclosed.

Mozart pondered it that day in the odd way he had of doing one thing while thinking of several others. He had a meal in an eating house rather than return to the boardinghouse, then walked over to the Burgtheater. A rehearsal was in progress. He had been turned away here the other day, but now with Stephanie’s letter in his pocket, he walked up the steps again to the offices. The door to the director’s room was open, and he knocked.

Orsini-Rosenberg looked up warily. On the wall behind him was a portrait of the Emperor and, arranged in shelves, several dozen opera scores.

Mozart bowed. “I came to see you yesterday, sir, but you were out.”

“Yes, most unfortunately. I do believe someone said you were here.”

“I came at an inopportune moment.”

“Yes, I had just been called away.”

“I ventured to return, you see, concerning the opera commission.
^»

Orsini-Rosenberg rubbed the bridge of his nose and flung back his head. He had a way of speaking directly to someone with his face absolutely open, yet you never knew whether he spoke the truth or not. “Most unfortunately, I had spoken to Thorwart about you. I told him we had some interest, but he came to me yesterday and said you couldn’t have an opera for us, that you had no good ideas. Your music is, of course, quite extraordinary. I’ve told Haydn, who has all my respect, that I am aware of your talents, but
Idomeneo
was a very serious opera, dear Mozart, for all its beauty.”

“I have found a libretto you will like on a Turkish theme set in a harem.”

“That’s most interesting. Things Turkish are very appealing. Women sometimes have themselves painted in harem garb, though where they actually wear such things I can’t know. A harem, you say? That might please the Grand Duke. A good libretto’s hard to come by though. Who’s the writer?”

“The actor Gottlieb Stephanie; he described the piece to me. It’s comical with many serious moments. It’s about faithful love and an enlightened ruler.”

“That would please both our Emperor and our visitor. But I know Stephanie, and he makes more promises than he can keep. If I was able to pave the way for this opera, Mozart, how do I know he’ll keep his part of the bargain?”

Mozart gazed at him steadily.

“Very well then, let me propose a plan.” The Count folded his arms over his chest, returning Mozart’s gaze. “If you can show me a fair-sized portion of this opera, I might arrange for the commission to be yours. Shall we say within a few months? I will then arrange for the design of the production and costumes and the engagement of the singers. How fortunate you found me here this time, Mozart. The opera I planned to commission had nothing so exciting as a plot in a harem.”

 

The young composer rushed back to his room and began to work at once; the next morning he took his several pages of new music down to the parlor near Fridolin Weber’s beloved clavier to continue working at the music table there. A small fire barely licked the scant wood. He was writing so intently, tongue pushed against his lower teeth, that he did not notice for some time someone standing in the doorway; when he looked up, he saw Constanze Weber with some wood in her arms.

“It’s too cold in here,” she said. He was so much under the spell of his work that he only smiled vaguely at her.

Since Sophie’s departure, this quietest of the sisters had seemed to meld into the halls of the boardinghouse. She carried sheets and kneaded bread until the young woman she had been was slowly turning into nothing but a dull servant—a pity, because she was not much more than eighteen. Wasn’t she in love with a cellist, that pale fellow he had seen on the steps now and then? Hadn’t Sophie said that? Then why didn’t the man take her away from this wretched place? As soon as he had an advance on the opera commission he would go himself, as soon as he had a little of it done.

“You’ll want more wood,” she said.

“I added a bit before, and expect to bow my head before your mother. I don’t blame her: not wood, candles, wine, nor pork is free.”

She knelt and coaxed the flames to recognize the new log. He gazed without much thought at the delicate back of her neck and the few strands of hair that had escaped her cap. Her name was the same as the heroine of his opera, Constanze.

She stood up, dusting her hands. She said, “I interrupted your work.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Mama says you aren’t leaving us quite yet.”

“No, I have a possible opera commission. Right now it is possible, probably, likely, yet I believe it will be, it will be. I slept only a few hours since I began it; the music won’t leave my mind. Let me play the first chorus for you.”

She sat down by the music table as he moved to the clavier. The bright music sprang out with its evocation of a Turkish march and seemed to shake the curtains and the new log, which rolled slightly and fell. “There’ll be triangles and drums,” he said. He heard the march coming closer in his head, the sound of the pasha and his worshipful court approaching. “It’s harem music,” he added. “That’s where it’s set.”

She said, “Do you remember the first time you came to visit us on a Thursday?”

“I do.... I loved your father.”

She brushed the bits of bark off her apron into her hand, and closed her fingers on it, standing suddenly as her name was called from the kitchen below. Her eyes were dark in her serious face. “I have to begin dinner,” she murmured. “I’m glad about the commission; I’m very glad you aren’t going to England just yet.”

M
uch later he would recall that gesture of the closed hand, her sudden standing in her great apron. Something stirred in him, but it melted away before he could recognize it.

The trees blossomed. One day he saw the dog he had seen previously in the street, nosing hopefully in some garbage. He whistled and put out his hand, but the animal, having understood the young man had no food for it, trotted away with dignity.

Mozart seldom saw Constanze in the house to speak more than a few words to her. She moved past him like a shadow, then was gone as if she had never been there at all. She’s lonely, he thought suddenly. Poor girl, when I first saw her amid all the others, I didn’t think it would come to this. And where the devil is this French cellist of hers? He never heard the man’s voice in the hall anymore.

One day as he was coming from his music publisher, he saw her walking before him, weaving between the carts and people of the crowded and elegant market, with a leather portfolio under her arm. The sky was heavy white, and it looked as though rain would come soon. “Mademoiselle Weber,” he called, catching up with her. “Where do you go?”

“I’ve delivered some music I copied,” she said. She stood very still, though people pushed about her. Just then a woman with two small, yapping dogs passed them, and her mouth opened with delight. “Oh, the darlings,” she cried. “Oh look, oh I wish I had one of my own.”

“I recall you love them, and having one’s an easy enough wish to grant.”

She had bent over to let their wet tongues lick her outstretched hands, and didn’t answer him until she had straightened and the dogs had scampered away, following their mistress about a corner. “No,” she said. “Mama doesn’t like them. We had one when we were very young. It piddled under our beds and made her furious. Once it piddled on our shoes, and we couldn’t get the scent out when we walked to church.”

“When you live away from her you’ll have one.”

“But I’ll never live away from her.” Constanze looked down the street past all the shops and stalls as if someone had called to her. “I thought I would for a time,” she said hesitantly. “I thought I’d move to Paris, but I can’t leave her alone, not with Sophie gone. I wanted to, and I couldn’t do it. You only see how bad-tempered she is, but I see another side of her. I do see more than one side of people. That’s a strength and a failing, isn’t it? So I’m not going away.”

So that was it. Her cellist has gone without her. Mozart suddenly offered her his arm. “Let me walk with you,” he said. “I was going for a walk in the Augarten. Come with me,” and they turned toward the public gardens, which had groves of linden trees and concert gazebos and stalls for ice and lemonade. He said, “I think we can walk a time and still get back to Petersplatz before the rain comes.”

They walked in silence, and then gradually he began to whistle. Glancing at her, he saw her smiling slightly.

“You like that melody?”

“I do.”

“It’s the second aria for the maid from the opera. You’re always working, running here and there. I think sometimes how much you must miss your sisters.”

“Yes, I do. I didn’t think Sophie would go. I can’t imagine why she did it so quickly.”

“When I am away from my sister, Nannerl, I miss her so. My family is very close, perhaps because there aren’t many of us.”

Now that they had entered the Augarten the sky was darkening even more, and people were hurrying past them into the streets. He thought to offer her a coffee and wondered if she would refuse. She withholds herself from me, he thought, concerned. Why should she? Have I ever offended her? I used to hear her laughing with others, but she only smiled a little before. I wish I could make her laugh.