Vienna Nocturne (29 page)

They gave three more performances of
Figaro
in May, and as the listeners and singers became familiar with the work, its worth began to show. The little duet between Susanna and Cherubino was encored countless times. The emperor ordered a special performance of
Figaro
that summer, at his pleasure palace in Laxenburg, and Mozart was confident there would be many more performances come autumn. The press, after some initial hesitation, had declared his opera a masterpiece.

And all through the summer Anna and Mozart were lovers. As nearly as they could be. Once his opera opened, and then after it had closed, they had little excuse to be alone, with her so busy at the Burgtheater and Mozart putting on concerts and composing everything he could. He was always tired. He felt guilty and was afraid his wife suspected. He felt he could not give Anna everything she needed. He talked of moving to the outskirts of the city, where the rents were cheaper. If he moved there, Anna would see him even less.

The only times she ever felt at peace now were at his concerts. Then she could sit quietly, watching him, and sate her heart. In his music was where he lived and revived, and where she’d first loved him. And she knew, always, always when she was there, that he played for her. That he had always been playing for her. He had told her so. But she would have known it, even if he had not told her.

The touch of his hands was like nothing she had ever felt from a man. It was wholly gentle. His fingers did not demand. They did not coarsen or insist. She could have devoted her life to the memory of a single caress. When she saw him play, she wanted to laugh, for he touched her in the same way that he touched the keys.

It was as though the world was a dream and they the only real ones in it. Sometimes she would meet his eyes across the room, and only they would know, and no one else, and it would seem unutterably awful that she could not go to him, and tell everyone her love, her joy that was like an open wound. For it could not last. Even this, this watching and being watched by him, in crowded rooms, while the nonsense of dream-world conversation rang about them—this stealing of kisses and caresses whenever they safely might, which was hardly ever, which was almost never—could not last. She feared it would wreak him. He was always getting sick and never had enough money. He borrowed from others but refused to accept anything from Anna, no matter how she begged him. His face was tired. Sometimes when he looked at her, behind the cheer, behind the jokes and teasing, there was distress in his eyes. And what right did she have to do this to him, to take him from his work? What was the good, if they could never be alone? What, must they wait for the next opera? Must they scheme and suffer that long? He already had a wife. They had been happy, he and his wife—they might be happy still. Anna was nothing but a lonely girl whose baby had died, whose husband had beaten her. She had no right. She tried to express this to him, and at first he brushed it away. He said he loved her and that was that. He said he would be happy just to see her, kiss her cheek, hear her sing.

He would not leave his wife. Nor could Anna ask him to. At times she found herself almost wishing for some harm to come to Constanze, and this frightened her more than anything. This secrecy, this fear, this selfish need, were what she had become.

One could not live forever in a dream. Dreams never reached their promised end.

They performed
The Marriage of Figaro
at Schönbrunn Palace near the end of August. The singers stayed a week there, in resplendent luxury. Mozart came to conduct the last two nights, and the evening before the performance he and Anna arranged to meet on the grounds. They had not been alone in nearly two weeks.

There was a gazebo at the edge of a long lawn. She was late. As she hurried across the lawn she saw his slight figure leaning against one of the posts, regarding her. The day had been hot but it had rained briefly tonight, and the air smelled wet and green and there was a soothing breeze. It was after midnight. A few of the emperor’s guests still gathered outside the palace, drinking and dancing in the open air—this was why Anna was late—but they would not come as far as the gazebo.

“There you are,” he said, and she fell into his arms with a sigh. She always forgot how dear he was. But as soon as she remembered she became so afraid of losing him that it seemed better to forget.

They rested awhile, hidden in the dark, facing the wood. The tops of the trees swayed and rustled in the gentle breeze.

“Anna,” he said. He grasped her hand. She tried to think of something else, of the trees and the sky. The trees were alive but unthinking, they knew nothing and everything. The stars were clear. But she knew by the way he said her name what would come next. Francesco Benucci had sounded just the same, the day he’d said he didn’t love her.

Mozart told her that his wife was going to have another child in the autumn. The deception and anxiety were killing him. He was
not himself. He could not work and could hardly sleep. He was afraid that if they went on like this, everything would fall apart, and he would hate Anna. It could not go on, not in Vienna, not now.

His voice was high and strained. He clasped and reclasped her hand. She wiped her tears on her sleeve. Then she said, “I know, I know, Wolfgang,” and he turned and held her and they stayed like that for a long time while the noise of the party filtered to them from a distance and the tops of the trees swayed like great sails.

When they drew apart she said quietly, “Stephen wants us to go back to London when my contract is up next spring. He thinks his operas would do well and I could sing at the King’s Theatre or Drury Lane.” She took a deep breath. “He says once we’re there, we could get you a commission. It’s almost a sure thing.”

“Next spring,” he said. He looked at the woods.

“Maybe it would be best. You wouldn’t—I wouldn’t trouble you so, if I were away.”

“But for how long?” he asked, like a child.

She smiled, tearily. “Oh! A year. Just a year. Then we’ll come back. Or you’ll come to London. And we’ll have gotten used to being apart by then. We’ll have forgotten each other. You’ll have your pretty babies. We’ll just be friends, the best of friends, in London.”

He embraced her again without answering. She pressed her face into his shoulder, trying to hold and remember every part of him. He had not answered yes, but neither had he asked her to stay.

Late in October Anna held a party for her twenty-first birthday. She rented a hall and there was dinner and dancing. Benucci and Bussani put Anna on their shoulders and marched her around the room while she shrieked and nearly collided with a chandelier. The guests were made to wear paper hats. A cherubic child was led around on a miniature pony distributing party favors to the guests.

“Who are you supposed to be?” asked the Countess Thun as she bent down—steadying her paper hat—to accept a charm bracelet the child offered her.

“I’m Cupid,” the little girl recited in a high voice. “I come from heaven to pierce your heart and then you fall in love.”

“Oh?” said the countess. “Then I should be frightened of you. But you are too pretty. Will you kiss my cheek?”

The child nodded and raised her face to oblige, and with a rustle of silks the good lady momentarily enveloped her. When she rose, her face sparkled with the gold powder with which the child had
been dusted. The pony jingled its bells and the procession moved to the next guests.

Mozart was there without his wife, who was nearing her confinement. Anna had brought in a billiards table, at great expense, for him to enjoy, and he did so with relish, beating Mandini out of several florins. But he and Anna had hardly spoken to each other all evening.

She made her way to the table to stand beside him. He missed the shot and Mandini took his turn.

“I hear you’re leaving soon,” he said.

“I thought you knew.” She shook her head and played nervously with a rose that Michael had tucked into her bodice.

He nodded. His expression was neutral. “When? If there’s any chance of reviving
Figaro
I must be sure I have a Susanna.”

“After Lent, when my contract is up. The end of February.”

“Ah,” he said.

It was his turn to play. Fidgeting with the flower, Anna smiled at her well-wishers. Mozart was steadier now, regained his concentration, and won the match. Mandini declined to play another.

“Will you play?” Mozart asked Anna. He was just the same. It was all she could do not to cry.

“I don’t know how.”

“Why do you have a table, then?”

“I had it brought for you.”

He tilted his head. “For me? You should do better things with your money.”

“It’s my birthday. I can do anything I like.”

He looked at her and shook his head. She sighed, took his arm, and leaned against him. She felt him relax. “You,” he murmured, “can always do what you like.”

“Not always. Not now.”

“We must teach you billiards.”

“Billiards is not a game for ladies. I couldn’t hold the stick properly.
My bodice is too tight. I couldn’t raise my arms. And when I bent over everyone would be scandalized.”

“Then we should play when we’re all alone and you’re able to move in comfort.”

“If you’d show me how.”

“I think you’d be a fine student.”

“We’ll see each other soon,” she said. “It won’t be long—a year, no more. Stephen and I will bring you to London. Once I’m there it will be so simple to gain influence and find someone to invite you. They have so much thirst and they’ve never heard anyone like you. They’re not so stodgy as the Viennese. Everything will work out for the best. We’ll revive
Figaro
before I leave. Or you’ll find another soprano.”

“Another soprano will make me change the last aria.”

She smiled. “That’s good. I don’t want anyone else singing it.”

He shook his head, wincing. “I’ll miss you. I hadn’t realized how much.”

The little girl playing Cupid came up to them on her pony, led by Lidia. The pony had a wreath of hothouse flowers around its neck. The little girl listed complacently from side to side, clutching the pommel of the saddle. Goose-feather wings were fastened to her dress and a gold ribbon bound back her curls. A bow and arrow bumped gently at her side.

“Would you like a party favor?” she asked Mozart in a loud voice. He smiled and said he’d like one very much.

“My first role,” Anna explained, “was Cupid.”

“Were you as young as this little one? She’s not much older than my Karl.”

“I was thirteen—a good deal older. I felt already grown.”

Lidia helped the child pick out the favor that had been chosen for Mozart, a ceramic whistle in the shape of a bird. “Listen to that,” he exclaimed, delighted, after he opened the box and blew upon the toy. “Wolfgang Mozart whistles at last!” It was a long-standing
joke between him and Anna that he could not whistle. He bent down to the little girl and thanked her warmly.

“You’re welcome, sir,” said the girl, who had been well trained. She proceeded along to the next guests.

“Were you on a pony, too?” Mozart asked Anna.

“Oh no, but the child insisted. We should never have convinced her, otherwise. I want to take her with me. She could order everyone about.”

“When I was ten I was in Paris,” he said, watching the child. “I went back later with my mother and she died, so I can’t think of it without sadness. But I’ve never seen a more beautiful city. You must stop there on your way home. You belong in such a place.”

“A sad one?”

“No, a beautiful one.”

Da Ponte came up to them. “My dear Mozart,” he said, “did our muse tell you she’s leaving us? I mean to follow her. Without Mademoiselle Storace, I don’t know how I’m supposed to live.”

“She did tell me,” Mozart said. He spread his hands. “I’m completely distraught.”

“I’ll see you again,” Anna cried. “You act as if I’m joining a convent.”

“I can’t imagine you in a convent,” said Da Ponte. “I have a very particular idea of nuns and you are nothing like them. And I am an ordained priest.”