Vienna Nocturne (9 page)

It was good, Anna told herself, to be in Vienna. Everything was so brisk and orderly. Venice had been a city of passion. Vienna would school and restore her. Though she would be seeing Francesco Benucci nearly every day, at least she would be somewhere new; at least she would be learning German. She had already been complimented on her pronunciation.

Following the opening night’s performance there was a party in one of Joseph II’s ballrooms. Everyone of consequence was invited, and the emperor himself could be seen pouring out wine to his guests.

Anna had slept poorly the night before, from her nervousness. She had been afraid she would not be in good voice, but she supposed everything had gone well. In a corner of the ballroom Benucci flirted with some chorus girls. His face was damp and flushed and he let out great booming laughs. One of the girls had her arms around his neck.

Anna had sent Lidia to find a glass of punch but she could not bear to stand there waiting while Benucci made love to chorus girls. She bowed to the gentleman whom she had been talking to and fled
past the tables of faro and whist, past the diligent chamber orchestra, through some glass doors, and onto a terrace.

There was a garden arranged in geometrical shapes with a small orchard. It was a clear evening, although cooler than she was used to. She felt herself reviving to the coolness. With light steps she ran down the path to the end of the garden, where she found a bench and a statue by a tree. She would just sit here a moment, hidden away, she thought, and rest her feet. Then she might return to all of those strangers with a calm spirit and genuine smiles.

She had actually removed her shoes and was stretching her toes in the air when she noticed a gentleman standing in the shadow by the statue. He had been so still, and she so self-pitying, she had not noticed him. She let out a small exclamation.

He darted forward, caught up her shoes, and ran off with them.

“Oh, you wretch!” she cried.

He’d gone behind some bushes. She glanced back at the lights of the palace and bit her lip. Perhaps he was a murderer. But she could not appear before the emperor without shoes on.

Her stockings were new and they were silk. With a whispered curse she slipped them off and stuffed them down her bodice, and went after the villain.

The ground was wet and soft, cool to her feet. She lifted her skirts so as not to get them damp. He was waiting by a fountain, grinning, his hands behind his back.

“My boots!” she said in German, not remembering, in her agitation, the precise word for “slipper” or “shoe.”

“What boots?” he asked softly.

“Mine!” she cried. She opened her mouth to say more, but the horrible language betrayed her. “Oh, you wretch!” she exclaimed again in English, and stomped her foot.

He was a slight man, perhaps thirty, with a profusion of hair and a big, sharp nose. His clothes were fine—she could tell even in the dark: a nobleman making heartless sport with her.

“I know Italian,” he offered in that language. He had an elegant, well-produced tenor voice. She lunged after him and he took off around the fountain, a shoe in each hand, laughing. But the pebbles were painful beneath her feet and she did not have enough breath to continue. He backed his way toward the high bushes, laughing at her. With her eyes fixed on the slippers she followed slowly, relieved to be moving out of sight of the palace.

“Why do you know Italian?”

“I spent some time there.”

“Your accent is impeccable.”

“So’s yours.”

“Thank you.”

She darted at him again and he lifted the shoes out of her reach. He was just that much taller.

“I’ll scream,” she said.

“Please don’t, mademoiselle. Everyone would think we’d been having a liaison.”

“You’re a brute and a thief.”

He seemed startled at that. “I’m not a brute. I haven’t touched you.”

“You spied on me and stole my shoes.”

“I did not
spy
. I was
there
and you intruded.”

“Please give them back.”

He looked down. They were pretty slippers with a gold trim and pointed toes and had cost a fortune. “I’d give them back for a kiss,” he said thoughtfully.

Now she really should scream. Her heart pounded enough to break.

“All right,” she said.

He looked up quickly. They were standing quite close now.

“For the shoes,” she added, blushing.

He gave her a wondering smile. “Is that so?” he said, in a low voice. “For the shoes?”

Then, with extreme care, as if afraid she would panic, he set the
slippers on the ground beside her. She was breathing quite fast. He straightened and glanced around. “Just one?”

“Well,” she murmured, amazed at her boldness. “The rest depends on if I like the first.”

He laughed again. “My God,” he said. “I’ve been longing for this all evening. And here it is.”

He put a hand to her waist and touched her cheek and looked closely into her eyes, though it was very dark, and then he kissed her lips, gently and softly and long.

It made Benucci’s kisses seem like hard, hasty fumblings.

“Oh,” she breathed.

“One more?”

“You’re a brute.”

“All evening,” he said. “And then you come running after me.” And he kissed her again.

She didn’t want to know who he was. She didn’t want to go inside. But everyone would be wondering. She pulled her stockings from her bodice and he helped her put them on and fasten them with her garters, then helped her with her shoes. His fingers circled her knees and wanted to go higher. She laughed and wriggled away.

“Go on,” he whispered, and gave her a light push.

With cautious steps she eased back into the bustling hall. The crowd seemed larger than when she’d left it. She could not contain her smile. At length she found Lidia with the punch. Lidia gave Anna a reproachful look. “I’m parched,” Anna exclaimed, and drank down half the glass. Her eyes searched the crowd for the gentleman from the garden. She did not know what she would do when she saw him. But he must surely have come in after her.

“There you are,” said Benucci, approaching with a lady on each arm. “We’ve been looking all over. This is Madame Aloysia Lange. She’s a marvelous soprano. She doesn’t have much Italian so we’ll have to make do as best we can with our German.”

“How do you do,” Aloysia said daintily. “You sang very prettily tonight, everyone thought so.” Her voice was sweet and high as a
child’s. “This is my sister, Madame Constanze Mozart; I don’t believe you’ve met.”

“Hello,” said Constanze. “How nice to meet you. I enjoyed your singing very much. My husband was in ecstasies. He’s a composer. We can’t find him, but he was so impatient to meet you and Signor Benucci and he has such excellent Italian—he’d be able to translate for us.”

“You’re the wife of Herr Mozart?” Anna asked. She felt a hint of apprehension. But there must be many gentlemen among the party who spoke excellent Italian.

“That is my fortune,” Constanze observed placidly. She was taller and plumper than her sister—perhaps with child. Her face had a certain lack of expression, as though she were either shy or dispassionate. Her form and complexion were good, but hers was an ordinary sort of prettiness—she did not have Aloysia’s lips or cheekbones or waist.

“I would love to meet your husband,” Anna said, still in German, though she hardly knew if she was being intelligible. But Constanze smiled encouragingly. “I’ve heard so much about him.”

“He’s like nobody else,” Aloysia said. “Here he comes now.”

Anna turned, and begged heaven to help her. It was he. Indeed it was he. Wolfgang Mozart had stolen her shoes.

“Where have you been?” Aloysia asked. “You abandoned us completely. We were forsaken utterly.”

A hint of irritation crossed his face. “You were talking to that Herr Gosta. I can’t stand Herr Gosta.”

“But where did you
go
?”

“Oh, here and there. I have to spread myself about and remind them all I’m still alive. I talked with this person and that person and then I went for some air out on that terrace. I think I may have seen this lady there,” and he nodded kindly to Anna. “Though she went in before I had a chance to introduce myself.”

“You weren’t out all alone?” Aloysia asked Anna. “But how very modern of you. I suppose you don’t care what people think.”

“Not really, no,” Anna said pleasantly. Aloysia smiled.

“You all sang splendidly tonight,” Mozart said to Benucci in Italian. He turned to Anna and gave her a determined smile. “Are you enjoying Vienna, mademoiselle?”

“Yes, quite well, thank you.”

He was certainly not thirty. Later she would learn he was twenty-seven. He carried himself proudly and easily, like a magician or a dancer. There was a mixture of lightness and strength about him; how he spoke, how he held himself, how he used his hands. His face was softly rounded and quite pale. He had a strong nose and full lips. His smile was ready and catching. Most of all she noticed his eyes, unusually large and slightly protruding, a pale hazel which in some lights looked blue-green and in others almost dark. He wore his natural hair—a light brown that hinted at red, abundant and somewhat untidy—tied back in a pigtail.

Aloysia and Constanze, bored by the Italian, moved to a different party of friends along with Benucci, who still had Aloysia’s arm. Lidia, who disliked large crowds and was embarrassed, retired to the side of the room and sat on a chair.

“You
wretch
,” Anna whispered to Mozart.

“I was beside myself, hearing you tonight,” he said, stepping closer. “I nearly went out of my mind. I don’t want you to think—you see, these things mean so much to me, obviously they do, I mean they are things I think about and that have direct bearing on my life and all my dreams—and by things I mean I heard and saw you and went out of my mind—with excitement, you know, and joy. A man spends all his life dreaming about a certain kind of singer—but then to see you, to almost be able to touch you!”

Then he looked at her with wide eyes and she knew they were both remembering about the stockings. “Oh, God!” he cried. “What I wouldn’t
give
to write an opera buffa for a singer like you. I’d cut off my own foot. Not my hands. My hands I need.”

“You knew Thomas Linley,” she said. “I was in love with Thomas Linley when I was a girl.”

Linley, a brilliant young English composer, had met Mozart on tour in Italy when they were boys of the same age. He had drowned a few years ago on a lake at Grimsthorpe Castle, all his finest music unwritten.

“Were you?” Mozart asked, with a soft look. “He was my friend. He was a true genius.”

She was sober, suddenly, and sad. “It was very wrong of you, signor. You shouldn’t do such careless things. If it were a play you could have marked me for life.”

He raised his brows, interested. “I wish it were a play.”

“Plays only ever end badly.”

“Not if they’re comedies.”

She frowned and looked away. “It’s not a comedy when Thomas Linley drowns.”

“But that was the last play. Now you’re in Vienna.”

“I’m in Vienna and you’re married,” she said.

“Indeed,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m, ah—I can be impulsive, especially when I’ve been working hard.” He glanced around the party, smoothing his hand on his thigh. His clothes were the finest cut and material; they made him handsomer than he was.

The emperor has been to visit us at home
, Anna wrote to her brother.
He stayed half an hour and played with the dogs. Mama was beside herself. When he left he kissed my hand! This should tell you something of how I am esteemed here
.

Stephen replied:
I can’t think but you exaggerate about the hand kissing. Have you met Wolfgang Mozart?

Yes
, she wrote,
I met Mozart. He’s rather arrogant for someone who’s not done much
.

Anna
, Stephen answered,
he has reason
.

In June, the Italian company gave its last performances before the emperor retired to his summer palace. Since coming to Vienna they had put on four new operas. They had been joined most recently by Mozart’s sister-in-law, Aloysia, who had sung with the old German singspiel company and now took second lady to Anna’s first.

She was five years Anna’s senior, with striking cheekbones and rosebud lips. The men of the company loved her hesitant, broken Italian, which they declared the sweetest attempts at their language to ever have endeared them. They all endeavored to give her Italian lessons and declared she would be one of them in no time at all. She was married to a well-regarded actor and painter, Joseph Lange.

“I never felt more secure,” she told Anna prettily, “than in the cherished moment when my dear handsome husband made me his wife.”

They were sitting at an outdoor garden café, Café Hugelmann, on an island in the middle of the Danube. One bridge led to the
festivities of the Prater, another back into the city. Boats floated at speed down the deep-running river. The garden was filled with flowers and birds. The two sopranos sat in the shade of a wide parasol, eating cream cakes and drinking from small cups of coffee. They spoke in German, and Anna, still far from comfortable in that language, fit in a word or two where she could. It put her in the position of a child.