Mozart's Last Aria (9 page)
I
n the baron’s apartment, thick, leather-bound volumes and musical scores weighted the lid of the clavichord. I glanced at some sheets of music propped before the keyboard. Incomplete and with many corrections, they had been scribbled beneath the title
The Lost Master
. Swieten grabbed them, shuffled them together, and hid them beneath a treatise on Hungarian agriculture.
“Your own composition?” I asked.
“I wished to express something of my feelings about Wolfgang’s death,” he said.
“May I see it?”
He shook his head. “Like all my music, it’s as stiff as I am.”
I thought of my husband, silent and upright at his accounts. “I’m used to searching for the softness beneath a rigid surface. I’d like to play it.”
His face grew open and vulnerable, then he grimaced. “It would offend your hands to touch such a combination of notes,” he said. “I’m content to perform as an amateur among friends. My compositions I must keep in this room. My guilty secrets.”
He traced his hand over a yellow arabesque painted on the dark green wall. With a shrug, he extended his arm and led me through the door to a dining room decorated in blue and white damask.
The chamberlain poured an emerald white wine. Swieten raised his glass. “A fine old Smaragd, from the Wachau, just along the Danube from Vienna,” he said. “About twenty years old. Very rich. Excellent.”
“I’ve grown unaccustomed to fine wine.”
“When you live in the mountains, it’s natural to drink the pure lake water. Here in Vienna the water’s so tainted it’d kill you in a week. You must choose between wine, beer, or the graveyard.” The mention of death halted the glass on its way to Swieten’s mouth. He rolled his lip as though offended by the bouquet.
I drank. “The wine’s very good, your Grace.”
“I apologize for my somber mood,” he said. “I shouldn’t have revealed my doubts about Wolfgang’s passing. They’re probably nothing more than the result of too many years in the palace. Conspiracies are everywhere here.”
“Don’t think that I came to Vienna merely to mourn at Wolfgang’s grave, sir. I, too, have my doubts about the way he died.”
“Do you?” He spoke with eagerness and relief.
“Indeed, I do.” I ran my finger around the lip of my glass. “I see that his passing affects you deeply.”
He tapped at the tabletop. “I found all my inspiration in Wolfgang’s music. Now he’s gone, I’m in despair. Not only personal despair, but despair for our entire Empire.”
The servant laid a bowl of beef broth before me.
“The Empire?” I said.
“New ideas of equality and freedom have transformed intellectual life across Europe. I persuaded the emperor to base his policies on this spirit of enlightenment.” Swieten circled his spoon through his broth, but ate nothing. “Then came the Revolution in France. Our emperor started to fear an uprising in the Austrian Lands.”
“Is a revolution really possible here?”
“The other great monarchs of Europe have faced the impossible. King George felt the sting of defeat in his American colonies less than two decades ago. King Louis was thrown out out of Versailles itself only a few months past. Still, I doubt it’ll happen here.”
“Thank God.”
“Of course, it’s easy for me to be so relaxed about it. I have less to lose than the emperor.” He stared at his spoon and laid it on the table. “Our monarch pays no heed to my reforms now. He fears my liberality might allow radical ideas to enter Austria. Have you finished your
Rindsuppe
? Take this away.”
The servant removed the dishes and brought a steaming ceramic pot from the sideboard.
“These days the emperor listens to the suspicions of Count Pergen, whom you met at the concert last night. The Minister of Police, as you may have noticed, is no liberal.”
From the pot, the servant drew out a slice of boiled beef with a thick band of fat and ladled some potatoes onto my plate.
Swieten watched the servant set a plate before him and frowned. “I’m losing my battle against Pergen. The battle to preserve a place in our society for progress and free thought.”
When I had entertained noblemen on the harpsichord as a child, I had known nothing of their struggles to promote their ideas and to make the state in the image of themselves. Listening to the baron, I felt foolish to have been so concerned with the color of my ribbons and the dressing of my hair. All around me had been conflict over issues of great importance, yet I had tinkled out a gavotte or a minuet.
“Wolfgang’s music allowed me to believe this battle would soon be over,” the baron said. “His art embraced these new ideas and gave me the feeling that they were unstoppable. Even Count Pergen would tap his foot to one of Wolfgang’s contredanses. Your brother’s compositions were irresistible in a way that my arguments in the emperor’s council could never be.”
“I’m sure that only your grief for Wolfgang makes you see things so darkly.” I heard the emptiness of my words and so did the baron.
“Without him, my failures are highlighted rather too brightly,” he said. “Perhaps it’s because I miss Wolfgang’s inspiration that I’ve turned to desperate speculations about how he met his end. I beg you to put them aside.”
“In only three days in Vienna, I’ve learned some curious things about Wolfgang’s death. I don’t know what to make of them, but they’re more than mere speculations.”
I drew the paper from my pocket and unfolded it. I saw that Swieten recognized the handwriting as my brother’s even across the table. His features were instantly alert. He laid down his knife and fork, and reached for the page. I passed it to him.
“What was Wolfgang’s Grotto?” I asked.
The baron flicked his wrist for the servant to remove his plate. “Grotto?”
“He appeared to have in mind some new Masonic lodge at the time of his death.”
Swieten read over the two paragraphs of Wolfgang’s writing.
The servant hovered, waiting for the baron to remove his free hand from the rim of his plate. He stood back when he saw his master’s preoccupation.
“A new lodge?” the baron said. “How did you—?”
“Constanze found it among Wolfgang’s papers.”
He shoved his plate away. He whispered Wolfgang’s name, as though admonishing a child.
“Herr Stadler seems to believe that this put my brother in danger,” I said.
“You’d think that with so many aristocrats among the Masons, Wolfgang would see it as a pleasant debate club. You know, just a way to meet influential patrons,” Swieten said. “Indeed, it was—for a time. Until our emperor concluded that the Masons spread radical ideas, and placed restrictions on them.”
“So people are afraid to be known as Masons now?”
“Terrified. Most of the Masons simply resigned from their lodges. They’ve no wish to risk a confrontation with the emperor.”
I drew in my breath. I knew my brother’s dissident temperament. “But not Wolfgang.”
The baron stared at the paper I had given him. “Wolfgang became one of the most prominent men in the remaining Viennese lodges. He wrote music for their meetings.”
“And he allowed his participation to be widely known?”
“He didn’t hide it.”
“Did he put his life at risk?”
Swieten watched the sunlight, green through his wineglass. “You haven’t seen
The Magic Flute
yet?”
“With respect, my lord, is that the answer to my question? Did
The Magic Flute
endanger Wolfgang?”
“I’d be delighted to accompany you to a performance.”
“I heard that it’s full of the symbols used by Masons in their secret practices.”
“So it is.”
“Could Wolfgang have been threatened by Freemasons angry that their secrets were revealed?”
Swieten tipped his head. “I don’t know. But I’m sure Wolfgang only wanted to show the emperor that Masonry aims to create a brotherhood of mankind. That it’s no threat to his power as ruler.”
The naïveté of the project sounded true to my brother. “You believe another Mason murdered Wolfgang, don’t you?”
“The Masons live in a state of mutual suspicion,” he said. “They’re infiltrated by Pergen’s agents. They fear to be accused of treachery against the emperor so much that they become traitors to each other.”
He handed the Grotto note to me. I returned it to my pocket, as he went into his study. Through the door, I saw him draw a file from a pile of manuscripts and open it. He came back to the doorway.
“Listen to this. ‘The police are charged with observing what people are saying about the monarch and his government, what the general attitude of the people is concerning the government, whether there are any malcontents or even agitators at work among the upper or lower classes, all of which is to be regularly reported to headquarters.’ This is a secret decree of the emperor granting new powers to Pergen to employ agents at every level of society. No one may speak freely anymore.”
“But one may
sing
freely?”
He raised his finger. “Wolfgang believed so.”
“Was he wrong?”
“When people speak out against the state, only a few radicals on the fringe of society pay attention.”
“But when Wolfgang played his music—”
“Everybody listened.”
The bells sounded the Angelus, three strokes followed by a pause for prayer, repeated three times. I whispered a Hail Mary between each set of chimes.
When the chimes stopped, Swieten cleared his throat, as though prayer were an embarrassment. “My guests will be arriving. It’s almost time for your performance.”
T
wo dozen gentlemen of the Society of Associated Cavaliers chattered and swigged from their cups of hot wine, as the footmen lit the lamps in the Imperial Library. Across the courtyard, the lanterns of the emperor’s ceremonial apartments glimmered amber through the double-glazed windows.
I took my seat at the piano. Baron van Swieten stared at the men until they quieted like guilty schoolboys on their gilded chairs.
“Madame de Mozart,” he said, with a bow.
For the occasion, I had practiced one of Wolfgang’s fugues, because I remembered he had written of Swieten’s liking for that style of composition. It was a complex piece by a mature musician. But these men already knew that Wolfgang. I wished to show them the Wolfgang I had known. I closed my eyes and recalled a room at an inn in Amsterdam when I was fifteen.
Wolfgang would’ve been ten years old. My mother was reading a new English novel, though she managed to learn little of that language despite our year in London. Our father was writing another of his letters to our landlord in Salzburg enumerating our many successes. I was at the piano, while Wolfgang scratched his quill over the notebook he used for composing, humming a bland little melody.
Even as I lifted my hands to the keyboard in the Imperial Library, I recalled the way my brother and I had laughed as he forced his way onto the piano stool, bumping his hip against mine, so that he might try out the set of variations he had written. They were based on a song by the prince of Orange’s court composer.
So, instead of the fugue, I went into that trilling Dutch theme. I continued through the syncopated variation, the triplets, the shorter notes, the Adagio.
I became that fifteen-year-old girl once more, happy and playful, her family around her. Within the music I created a fantasy life in which I hadn’t lost touch with my brother. In this fiction, I had spoken to my mother and father as I had wished to speak, rather than as I thought they’d prefer to hear me. These fictional parents duly consented that I should follow a musical career, like Wolfgang.
While I played his music, I imagined that he hadn’t died.
Then the variations were at an end. I was in the Imperial Library once more. The cupola resounded to the applause of some of the most powerful men in Vienna.
And Wolfgang was dead.
The florid faces around me beamed at one another in enjoyment. Anger tightened my hands into fists. When I played Wolfgang’s music it was as though he were alive. How could they hear the piece reach its end without experiencing once more the tragedy of his death?
Baron van Swieten’s lips were firm, not smiling. I saw that for him, too, Wolfgang died every time he heard his music. We watched each other until the applause ended.
Someone cleared his throat as if in embarrassment. Swieten collected himself. “Herr Gieseke, please.”
I hadn’t noticed the actor when I entered. He came to stand before the piano. I gave him a smile of surprise and recognition, which he didn’t return. He wore the same black coat I had seen on him in the pavilion at the Freihaus Theater. He had scrubbed the milky stain from its hem. His cravat was high around his neck and he had brushed his thinning hair into a romantic sweep back from his brow. I took a chair beside Swieten.
Gieseke declaimed the opening lines of an ode by the scandalous poet Schiller. I had heard that it portrayed ordinary men as equal in station to their monarchs. Yet the aristocrats smiled approval as they listened to the actor.
“Anger and revenge shall be forgotten. Our deadly enemy shall be forgiven.”
The strength of Gieseke’s voice surprised me. When I met him, he had been sneering and shrill. I wondered if an actor speaking lines might be transformed as I was when I sat before the keyboard.
“Delivery from the chains of tyrants.”
Swieten’s chin quivered, moved by the poem.
“A serene hour of farewell. Sweet rest in the shroud.”
Gieseke paused.
In the silence, he caught his breath with a hiss and lifted his eyes, expectant and fearful, toward the cherubs and sages painted in the dome above.
He raised his arms high. “Brothers, a mild sentence from the mouth of the final judge.”
“Bravo.” Swieten shot to his feet and applauded.
As the other cavaliers followed the baron, Gieseke dropped into a brief bow. A tightness across his brow looked like doubt. Was he unsure that his own sentence would be as forgiving as the poet suggested?
Swieten clapped Gieseke on the shoulder and thanked him. The actor shuffled toward the punch bowl.
“More music,” the baron called.
Maestro Salieri took the piano, Swieten and two others the vocal parts, to perform an oratorio by Handel.
A heavy man in a blue coat with gold edging and white breeches settled on the chair beside me. His brows were low, and his face gave the impression of an eager wolf dog, jocular and predatory.
“Your performance was excellent, madame,” he said, straightening his short, white wig.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I had the pleasure of a close brotherhood with Maestro Mozart.” He smiled in the direction of the singers and spoke without moving his lips. He glanced to the side to take me in. Though he was at home in the palace, his eyes had a feral meanness that belonged in the slums.
“I’m at the disadvantage of not hearing your name, sir,” I said.
“The Baron Konstant von Jacobi, madame.” His accent was harsh and clipped, northern German.
A close brotherhood with Wolfgang. I recalled his name and the triangles he had signed after it in Stadler’s souvenir book. Another Freemason.
“A pleasure to meet your Honor. I detect by your voice that you’re not Viennese. What brings you to this city?”
“Duty. I’m the ambassador of the Prussian king.”
“Had you shared your—your brotherhood with Wolfgang a long time?”
“Since his visit to Berlin two years ago. We renewed our acquaintance soon after, when I took up my post here.”
“In Berlin. So you first saw him with the Prince Lichnowsky?”
The prince sat across the room, stiff and upright, his back not touching the support of the chair.
“Yes, with that scoundrel.” The ambassador flicked his hand in dismissal in the direction of Lichnowsky.
I found myself offended by this attack on a friend of Wolfgang. “He seems to me a fine gentleman.”
“You think so? He’s like one of the barges floating down the Danube toward Hungary. He travels well in the direction of the current, but he can’t make the return journey against the tide. A trimmer, you understand, who follows other men. Without principle.” The Prussian licked his lips and grinned. “He ought to be broken up for firewood, as those barges are when they reach their destination. Quite a scoundrel.”
“But also a brother, is he not?”
He saw the inference and watched me as though amused by my deduction. “One can never be sure of escaping wickedness, even in the most brotherly of circles.”
I had no wish to debate Lichnowsky’s character. I returned to Wolfgang. “On your first meeting with Wolfgang, he sought a position at the court in Berlin.”
Jacobi puffed out his cheeks. “The king wished to employ him and, therefore, extended the invitation. But there were cabals in the king’s service opposed to Maestro Mozart. Threatened by his talent, no doubt. It was, in the end, beyond my lord’s power.”
“He decided not to impose his will?”
“Political matters extend beyond the drawing of borders and the deployment of troops, madame. Those who covet important jobs at court are much given to maneuvering. Musicians are no exception, although your brother was naïve in such things.”
I knew this to be true enough. On our travels, our father had always taken care of the flattery that gained our entrance to palaces and salons. Perhaps Wolfgang never learned the skill.
“I’ve been commanded to buy certain of Maestro Mozart’s manuscripts for shipment to Berlin,” Jacobi said. “You’ll understand this is a sign of the esteem in which your brother was held by the king. I’ll visit the widow soon to make my selection.”
I didn’t question that Constanze would be willing to sell. I thought I might go through Wolfgang’s scores first to claim a few of my favorites. I also recalled that he often wrote notes to himself in the margins of his compositions—reminders of issues and ideas unconnected to music. Having received no letter from him since shortly after our father’s death, I wished to search in those scribblings for some of what he might have experienced in the years that were lost to me.
The singing concluded. Maestro Salieri conversed with Baron van Swieten while he improvised on a tune with a Turkish flavor.
Prince Lichnowsky bowed before me. Rising, the Prussian ambassador shook the hand of the man he deemed a scoundrel. He sauntered to the punch bowl, where I noticed Gieseke putting away a goblet of wine in a single draft. The actor glared at me, his eyes and skin shining as they had when I first met him.
Prince Lichnowsky’s Tokay swirled, scarlet and amber, in his glass as he perched on the next chair.
“A fine performance, madame. I always admired the classical symmetry of Wolfgang’s music.”
“I’d call that a surface appearance,” I said. “Wolfgang creates a strain in each piece. Our pleasure is in his inspired resolution of that tension.”
The prince rolled the Tokay in his mouth. I saw that I had contradicted him too frankly.
“It’s not in looks alone that you resemble your brother. He, too, couldn’t let a foolish remark pass on the subject of music.”
“I didn’t say it was foolish, just—”
“Wrong.”
Fast footsteps approached and Gieseke stood over my chair. Close enough that I picked out the remnants of the stain he had tried to scrub from his coat.
“The Baron van Swieten urges that I accompany you to your lodging, madame.” His voice was louder than necessary, as though he intended to quash any objection by the prince.
As Gieseke extended his hand to me, Lichnowsky shrugged and swallowed the last of his Tokay.
