Vienna Nocturne (25 page)

He loved his wife. She made him laugh. She took care of him. When he was stuck in his work he would go out and chat with her or play with their son and that would revive him. He loved her breasts and her rump, loved taking her to bed. When she looked at other men or behaved with immodesty he became jealous and enraged. But she was so ordinary and uncomplicated. She was like a lamb. Lower-class, simply taught. He was sometimes afraid she would say something ill-bred and then he was ashamed of himself. That was his father in him, his father who could be proud and stubborn. And Constanze—it could be that he had been rushed into marrying her. He had been boarding in her home, still in love with her sister. All he’d wanted was some nice companion, someone to kiss and squeeze and do all manner of delicious things with. After all, he’d been just a boy. It was true that after he and Constanze were engaged, her mother had made him sign a contract, with witnesses,
stating that if he did not marry Constanze he would pay her mother as settlement a large annual stipend for the rest of her life. He hadn’t minded; he’d been sure he would marry Constanze. He would have signed anything. And when she had found out about the contract, Constanze in a fine fury had made them rip it up. But still. It had been there. He had perhaps been rushed. And he had not known, then, how much he would change.

That night he’d stolen Anna’s slippers he’d been angry with the world and restless. He had worked himself nearly to death that week. He’d longed for playfulness and release. And when he saw the new Italian company perform Salieri’s opera it was as if his soul caught fire. A hundred ideas crowded into his brain at once. And at the center was the pretty soprano who knew everything to do and yet made her every word and action seem spontaneous and new. Her voice captivated him. The sound held simplicity and beauty and a quality of being direct, crystalline, unadorned. She could create all manner of colors and moods, as if she were one of those acrobats whose strong and flexible bodies defied the rest of human experience, yet the voice at its core was clear, truthful, only hers. She achieved such acoustic resonance and subtlety of tone, and had access to such ranges of dynamic and emotion, that Mozart felt it almost physically. She was perfectly in tune. Her voice in all its clarity and honesty, in its precise, direct skill, cut him to the quick. Listening to her he remembered everything he aspired for in his music. The human voice at its best had no companion nor rival. All other arts fell abject before it. A baby’s cry, a lover’s vows, a sob of grief, touched the heart more readily than any crafted instrument. While Anna was singing he could not move, nor think of anything else. He almost shouted out, like an animal. He had wanted to possess her. He, with his wife beside him, wanted to do such things!

But that, too, his insensible lust, testified to Anna’s voice and ability, and he laughed at himself as if he had been a character in a bawdy story. He vowed to write for this remarkable soprano. To fit
his music to her voice so perfectly that when she sang it, she became her best self.

What he had felt that night when he’d first heard her had been the product of a fevered imagination. He’d known nothing about her. If anything the desire and frustration had arisen from the fact that this new company was here and Salieri got to write for them, and any other man got to write for them as long as he was Italian, as long as he was not Mozart—the German, the small fellow, the one whom everyone still thought of as a seven-year-old boy. Mozart could not write for them. Mozart must sit stewing in the audience, lusting after the exquisite, incomparable new soprano … but he loved his wife …

At the reception he’d had to talk to that windbag Herr Gosta and a hundred other windbags who knew nothing of what he did, who had no life in them and no souls, who cared only for what mattered least. He’d escaped to the courtyard, where there was nothing and no one, no fear, no lust, no wife, only himself and his frustration and the trees and the darkness. Then he’d turned and seen her, on the bench, the very girl he’d been longing for all evening. She’d followed him out. She had not seen him. He’d watched her take off the slippers. He’d said to himself that if he lost this chance he did not deserve to live.

He had not expected her to accept his kiss. It was as if they were in a romance, exchanging the requisite motions and words. She could not speak German then but her Italian had been beautiful, and her speaking voice more melodious than he had even imagined. She had hesitated in his arms and then leaned against him.

After they’d gone inside that night and he’d seen his honest wife—he loved his wife—he had wanted to feel ashamed for what he had done but he had not. It had felt nothing but a game then, a game he had won. Salieri would never have done anything so bold. Salieri was too stodgy. He had not the necessary recklessness.

Mozart should have been a Kapellmeister by now, rich as Gluck.
All of them knew it. He was almost thirty and had nothing. He should have had more time for composing if he hadn’t had to do everything else. What? Did they think he’d stay forever? He’d go to London and they’d never see him again, no matter how they begged and implored.

Anna’s voice came to him in dreams. Sometimes he imagined another life, in which they lived together in London and he could hear her in the next room, and anytime he wished he could talk with her, tell her something that had happened or interested him, laugh with her, press his face into her shoulder. When he was with her he was happy and lively, and the time sped along without his noticing, as it did when he was in the middle of a good composition.

Until that day when he’d played for Anna in her illness, he’d thought he was safe. He had cared for her, had worried for her, but had not allowed himself to love.

That day, he sat at Anna’s fine instrument and imagined her upstairs, in the bed he had never seen. He could almost pretend he was alone with her in the house, as he’d imagined them being alone in London. He did not like to think of her upstairs lying there as if waiting to die. The piano was perpendicular to the door. Along the wall were the chaise-longue and various side tables and chairs. Books lay about and flowers drooped in vases on the mantel. The sun flooded in and made everything hot. Mozart had to remove his jacket.

Exploring a fine piano with no aim or ending point was one of his greatest pleasures. Every worry abandoned him. His concentration was so steady, and yet so abstracted, that he could have no thought of the past or the future. He became loose and calm. He had a sensation of watching himself from afar, of admiring his hands and fingers and wondering how they managed it, and what might come next. Musical convention made some turns more likely, even required, but even so there was always an element of randomness and play. He would watch himself running toward a certain corner and at the last minute turn the opposite direction. Or he
would send himself deliberately somewhere hazardous and strange just to see if he could get out.

He could always get out. This was a point of pride, even when there was no one there to hear him. He never felt so full of power as when he was at the piano. So potent, so calm, expert and whole. If he had only time in a day to practice, to compose, then he was happy, then he found his life’s meaning and equilibrium. So he was almost always happy, and his life almost always had meaning. He thought of this now when he played for Anna, because her meaning had left her.

After a while she appeared at the door, in the corner of his vision, and it was all he could do not to go to her. He had not seen her in ages. But he must not startle her nor imply that there was anything strange. So he smiled a little and pretended to be slightly bored. She wore a shimmering robe, blue and green and gold. Her hair was down. Sweat dampened his brow. She stood in the doorway and he played as if she were not there and yet every nerve was tuned to hers.

At last she closed the door and came in. Her gown like water around her, her face thin and pale, unadorned, her eyes dark pools of yearning and regret. Until that day he had been safe.

“The winner is Salieri,” the judge declared, and the hall broke into polite applause. They were in the orangery of the emperor’s pleasure palace at Schönbrunn, transformed for the occasion into a double theater and banquet hall. It was bleakest February, almost a year after Anna’s crisis, and the emperor’s brother was visiting from the Netherlands. The emperor had decided to welcome him with summer. The humid air smelled heavily of hothouse flowers; the guests had left their hats and furs piled in the hall. They were seated at a long table overflowing with a royal feast. The vaulted glass ceiling seemed to touch the stars. The orange trees rose about them and made them feel in a fairy grove. Here could be no thought of snow.

On each end of the hall was set a miniature stage, ringed with lights, and on each of these stages this night had been fought a mock battle between German singspiel and Italian opera buffa; between Mozart and Salieri. Each had written a one-act opera satirizing his respective genre. And Salieri had won.

“It isn’t fair!” cried Aloysia Lange. She had sung in Mozart’s contribution,
The Impresario
, along with the rest of the new German company from the Kärtnertortheater. The Italian company, from the Burgtheater, with Anna and Benucci and the rest, had put on Salieri’s
First the Music, Then the Words
. Both offerings were comedies about the backstage politics of the opera theater. Mozart’s music was superior, anyone could tell, but Salieri outranked him, Salieri was Italian, and Salieri had better singers.

“Well,” Mozart said in a low voice, smiling quickly at Aloysia and applauding with the rest, “we couldn’t expect otherwise.”

Aloysia watched the Italian company rejoice. They didn’t even have the courtesy to act surprised. She had sung well. She was not as good an actress as Anna Storace, but she had sung well and been unafraid of making fun of herself. But she was not Anna. Anna with her perfect breasts and beguiling eyes and velvety low notes. Anna with her unshakeable legato, her naturalness, her charm.

“Pig,” said Mozart genially to Salieri. “What’s the prize, another watch?”

“Mozart, my boy!” laughed Salieri, striking him roundly on the back. “My child! You actually had me worried for a moment.”

Mozart winced and rubbed his shoulder. “A dainty opera,” he said. “It reminded me of all your others.”

“And yours,” chortled Salieri, “had so many notes it reminded me of none.” He patted Mozart’s cheek. “And the words! God bless you, my boy, for thinking anyone can sing German without foaming at the mouth.”

Mozart smiled tightly. He had long been a proponent of German opera for German-speaking people, and his greatest success on the stage to date had been another singspiel,
The Abduction from the Seraglio
. But Italian opera still had its hold. The aristocracy, perhaps, did not wish to hear its own language.

He went to Anna. He could not help himself. But there was no harm in going to her, surely. He had every reason.

Months had passed since the Ophelia concert to mark her return
to the Burgtheater. They had seen each other since then on many occasions, dinners and salons and such, and each time it seemed to Mozart he was more nervous, could speak to her even less, yet also that he was more filled with joy. He was composing an opera for her with Da Ponte, based on the second Beaumarchais play,
The Marriage of Figaro
, even though it was banned for being politically subversive. But Da Ponte would take out the politics and leave the comedy, and then there could be no objection. Mozart and Da Ponte wished for the new soprano, Luisa Laschi, to play the Countess Rosina. Luisa had more stateliness. But Anna was famous for her Rosina in
The Barber of Seville
—she might be displeased, think that Susanna was the second to Rosina. But the opera was Susanna’s. They would make her see that. It should have been called
The Marriage of Susanna
.

Every morning when he sat at his desk to compose, it was as if he were engaged in a private dance with Anna. But whenever he saw her in the flesh, she was not as he had remembered her, at once plainer and more beautiful, because she was real.

Impulsively she gave him a hug, and touching his shoulder exclaimed, “Oh, I wish you’d won! It isn’t fair.”

“That’s what my sister-in-law said,” he replied, smiling into her eyes. “I am happy you won. You sang beautifully.”

She shook her head. “I meant to sing awfully, so that you’d win. But then I couldn’t do it.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. It was rigged from the start.”

She looked back at him. In her eyes there was still a shadow of that sorrow that had made him love her, veiled in that bright good humor that had made him love her more. Then she kissed his cheek and moved on to talk to some patrons. He laughed and watched her go.

“What were you talking of with Frau Storace?” Aloysia asked Mozart, coming to his elbow. “I fear we’ll lose you to our enemies.”

He smiled, still looking after Anna. “Oh, this and that.”

“I was just having a tête-à-tête with Benucci,” said Aloysia in a disinterested tone. “He’s madly in love with her.”