Marrying Mozart (5 page)

And the girls rushed shrieking at them, feathers in their tangled hair, moist sweat beneath clustered powder on the skin visible above their low-cut dresses, one showing the edge of a hard, brown nipple. Beneath the smoke the two musicians and the girls in their faded dresses caught fingers. It was a dark, hot, secret world here, Mozart thought. One could be another man.

Twenty or thirty feet up in the street the constables walked, and some men and women made their way home from a lecture about freedom of thought and free love.

T
hat very moment in her narrow bedroom in the garret rooms in Mannheim, with the portrait of Christ on the dresser as well as a miniature of her husband and daughter, Mozart’s mother sat in her dressing gown and evening cap, blowing her inflamed nose now and then, her feet resting on a stool, rereading for the third time the letter that had come that day from her husband.

Maria Anna Mozart glanced at the enclosed letter with its code. Wise, she thought, nodding. Who could trust anything in the world indeed, and in Salzburg the Archbishop had his spies everywhere.

 

Taking a new sheet of paper, she replied,

She dusted the letter with sand to dry the ink, and folded it. Her long face, with its look of concern, was tired. She folded her hands, coughed several times, and began her evening prayers.

W
olfgang Amadeus Mozart sat before the looking glass in his garret room on a cold November twilight a week after the meeting with Leutgeb in the beer cellar. He was dressing for his first and long-hoped-for appearance at the palace at a gala celebrating the Elector’s name day, the Feast of Saint Carlo Borromeo.

Mozart was already several men, perhaps more than he realized, but the ones he knew well he kept strictly divided. The man who caroused in the cellar and closed his fingers around the whore’s brown nipple was worlds away from the serious young musician who meticulously put the finishing touches on his dress. As carelessly as he had eaten the beer hall chops, he now just as carefully buttoned on his shirt with the great lace, and his embroidered coat and breeches, each item of clothing unwrapped from under the more common cloth that protected it from the smut of the parlor fire and dust of the street. On his cheeks he dabbed the smallest amount of rouge. The white periwig had been newly brushed that afternoon. On top of that he placed his three-cornered hat, then descended the many dark flights of stairs to set off by foot for the palace, his low-heeled shoes tapping rapidly on the cobbles. A few flakes of snow were beginning to fall.

At the palace gates he made his way through the many arriving guests until a footman took him to a little room that was without any manner of fire. After a time he began to walk up and down, rubbing his hands together to keep them flexible enough to play. When he pushed back the heavy draperies, he could see the snow drifting outside the window and resting on the tops of the gates.

Rooms away he heard bright laughter; one servant rushed by with a basket of pale candles, and another wheeled a cart full of wines. Over the halls came the smell of hot food. By this time his hands were so cold he could hardly feel them. Then another footman poked his head about the corner and gave an exclamation of disgust. “Are you the music maker?” he snapped. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have the sense to go where the others wait?”

And you wait the very first in the line of the worse fools, Mozart thought. He clasped his icy hands behind him and followed the footman, who flung open a door to another small antechamber.

It was already occupied. An unusually tall young woman clutching a fan was striding up and down in a wide blue dress that she kicked out of her way as she went. In spite of her powdered-white hair, which was mounted over pads on her head, he recognized her as one of the Weber daughters who had sung duets a few weeks before in the little parlor. Below the low bodice, her waist was tightly corseted, and every now and then she took a deep furious breath, as if she could not get enough air.

He remembered how after his evening at her house she had run down the steps two at a time to return his mother’s purse, which she had left behind, then bolted up the same way. Tonight she seemed a great, wild creature imprisoned in whalebone and satin. Her powdered hair smelled of lavender and orange blossoms.

He bowed formally, and she curtseyed, keeping her head erect so as not to topple her hair. “I’ve forgotten which Weber sister you are,” he said.

“I’m the eldest, Josefa. My younger sister Aloysia and I are singing tonight. She’s talking to someone with our father in another room now. It’s our first time here ... and you?”

“My first time in many years.” He lowered his voice and inclined his head to the sound of chatter from the nearby assembly hall and the scrape of chairs over the music of a string trio. “Tell me, did they listen when you sang, or did they talk the whole while?”

“Ah, you know how it is!” she whispered. “They ignore me, and I ignore them. There’s a great deal of food in there, and we haven’t been offered any. We left the house in such a hurry we forgot the basket my youngest sister packed for us. But this is only our fourth concert. They always talk, says my father, and they hardly ever consider that we might like to have a sip of wine or a bite of chicken.” They both became aware of the footman who stood by the door like a wax figure, wearing his shiny white wig and the trimmed livery of the Elector, and they lowered their voices.

When Josefa was called again, Mozart stationed himself by the crack of the door and looked over the brilliantly lit room filled with people seated on gilded chairs. The sisters stood as close together as their great skirts allowed. The candlelight shining through the few loose strands of powder-dusted hair made those tendrils look like white fire. At the clavier he could also see their father, the copyist Weber, bobbing up and down as he accompanied them in an Italian love duet. Their voices rose higher and higher. Aloysia moved her tiny hands; Josefa clutched her closed fan tightly. One voice was brighter and took the highest notes, which rang small and pure over the heads of the audience. Aloysia.
Aloysia
,
Aloysia
, the mother had called her, lovingly, chiding. He recalled the warmth and laughter of the large family.

He was the last to play.

He heard his name murmured, and then the sound of his heeled shoes on the floor. There were candles everywhere, and the smell of perfumed clothing and hair powder, and under it always the stink of perspiration. How accustomed he was to this walk, having entered such palace rooms all over Europe when he was so small he had to be lifted to the chair before the keyboard to play, legs clad in white silk stockings dangling.

They were looking at him now as they had then, quieter than they had been for the Weber sisters. Some remembered who he was, perhaps. And there in the center, in two high-back armchairs cushioned in red velvet, were the somber Elector of Mannheim, Carl Theodor, with his long, middle-aged face heavy from years of good eating, and his wife, Electress Maria Elizabeth, leaning her head on her hand slightly so as not to disturb her high cascade of powdered hair. Hand over his heart, he bowed. The majordomo stared straight ahead of him. “Herr Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from Salzburg,” he intoned.

Mozart bowed again.
“Si son Excellence daigne le permettre!”
If his Excellence deigns to permit it! “Graciously begging your indulgence, I am most honored to present you with my new composition, a sonata in four movements in C major.”

A few more who had been speaking turned to gaze curiously at him. He seated himself at the clavier keyboard, gazing at the familiar length of black naturals and the white accidentals. Candles glittered in the wood sconces carved with roses. What was the instrument like? You never knew until you tried it; then, if keys stuck, or the action was slow, it seemed like your fault. Fridolin Weber’s playing had been stiff, and he had not been able to judge.

He rubbed his hands to warm them, then began.

Under his hands the instrument was responsive, and during the andante he could feel the two sisters watching him from the crack in the door. Someone was talking; he bit his lip and finished the last movement a little more quickly than he would have liked, then stood, bowing.

Elector Carl Theodor and his wife beckoned to him, and at once he went forward, kissing their perfumed, limp hands in turn. “Has it been truly fifteen years since you were here, Mozart?” the Elector said. “I recall you as a child with your ceremonial sword and your elegant court dress, hardly to my wife’s knee! Don’t you recall the little fellow, my dear?”

From a chair near them the Elector’s daughter stammered,
“On ne peut pas jouer mieux!”
No one is able to play better. She then added, “You told me of him, Papa!” Mozart smiled at her good nature, and kissed her freckled hand.

“Do you play yourself, my lady?”

“
Un peu.
Perhaps if you were remaining a time in Mannheim, you could give me lessons.”

That will get me closer to an appointment, he thought, and kissed her hand again between the jeweled rings. “That would be a great honor, Gracious Princess!” Then the majordomo pressed a small velvet bag in his hands, and he bowed again, hand to his heart.

Just as a great silver tray of cakes was carried into the room he was shown out, his mind filled with the possibility of the lessons and the certainty of moving closer to a position. Still deep in thought, he saw the Weber sisters and their father had not yet left but were just now fastening their cloaks.

“Ah, young Mozart!” Fridolin Weber cried. “A pleasure to see you again. A fine piece, beautifully played. The guests seemed suitably impressed, as they should have been. Now, have you a carriage? No? We hired one to save my daughters’ dresses from the weather. Let us take you to your lodging. Where’s your music?”

“In my head, Herr Weber.” Through the window he could see how the snow was piling in the yard. “I gratefully accept your offer.”

“Come, my dears.”

The four of them ran through the snow and climbed into the carriage, squeezing together on the facing cushioned seats, for the width of the dresses took up a great amount of room. Both girls had to struggle to keep their heads erect. Slowly the small carriage, drawn by a weary horse, began to nudge its way through the many grander ones of departing guests; the air was filled with cries of “Make way, make way, make way for the Bishop, for the Countess!” A few hot bricks, surrounded by bundles of straw, lay on the coach floor to warm their feet.

Josefa reached behind her, tugged, and then sighed. “I hate and despise tight corsets,” she exclaimed. “If it were up to me, I’d sing in my dressing gown. Stupid, pretentious people! One man kept gaping at me until I thought his wooden teeth would fall in his wineglass. Hasn’t he ever seen a tall woman before? Now I’m truly starving—where’s the basket they gave us, Papa? If they hadn’t, I swear I would have slipped half a dozen chicken legs in with my music.”

“They have paid us, dear; we can’t ask for more.”

“Yes, darling Papa, and you played so well for us. Now, be the table chamberlain and serve us food.”

Fridolin Weber removed the linen covering from the basket and, holding it in the air like a waiter at the finest table, said, “We can’t eat if you won’t join us, Mozart. Will you? Good. Yes, when people make music, they must eat soon after. Come, reach in; there’s no ceremony here.”

Hurled against one another with every jerk of the carriage, the four of them pulled forth fowl, fish, and cakes, and sat back to eat as neatly as they could, sharing the linen basket covering as a napkin. The horses clopped slowly, and the road was crowded, rumors circulated of a carriage broken down a little ahead. Fridolin reached below the food and pulled out a few bottles of wine that they passed about, having no cups; outside the snow fell softly over the city and drifted in through the slightly open window to their laps.