Mozart's Sister: A Novel (13 page)

What sense did it make to buy a pianoforte on the eve of the sojourn in Italy? Nannerl searched her brother’s gaze, but he seemed very interested in the mechanics and had stuck his head inside the piano case. The lanky man rushed over and kissed her hand. “Would you try it, Fräulein Mozart? Please, now, while I’m here?”

“Why don’t
you
try it?” Leopold said suddenly.

“I, Herr Mozart? But I’m not a pianist. I’ve hardly studied. I’m a dilettante.”

“Perhaps you know some of my son’s easy pieces.”

“Well, yes, actually. There is one, in particular. My poor grandmother loved it and was always wanting me to play it. But I don’t know if I remember it.”

While the movers went off, surely to down a beer in some tavern, the young man placed two long, squarish hands on the keyboard and started a sonatina of Wolfgang’s, which, however, he seemed to be playing with his feet. Wolfgang’s expression was one of the most scornful in his repertoire, and Nannerl went up to her father timidly: “I’m grateful for the gift, but I don’t understand.”

He turned quickly toward the piano. “No, here it goes into the minor, you don’t remember? Wolfgang, get the score so he can repeat the passage. It’s in the third cupboard.”

“I know…Where is that score,” he said, opening the doors. He took out a folder that read in an elegant script “Pieces Composed at the Age of Eight” and quickly pulled out the right one.

“Do you mean that this is the original manuscript?” the skinny man asked, handling the page as if it were gold. “Would you sell it to me, Herr Mozart?”

“Why not, if you really want it. Give me a discount on the price of the instrument and we’ll be set.”

The man, intoxicated with joy, began to massacre the sonatina again, and Wolfgang couldn’t keep himself from correcting at least the most glaring errors. Amid the repeating of notes, suffocated exclamations, and murmured excuses, Nannerl went back to her father: “Won’t you explain to me what’s the point of this?”

“Quiet, daughter—not now. Now I would like to listen to our friend.”

“What is the point of a pianoforte?” she cried. “Certainly we can’t bring it to Italy with us. Why have you bought it just at this moment?”

“You are not going to see Italy, daughter. You will stay in Salzburg with your mother and give piano lessons.” He gave her a thin smile. “Haven’t you always liked the piano?”

IV.

“Ask five florins a lesson, not one less, and insist on payment in advance. Look for pupils among the aristocracy and do it so that the word will spread as widely as possible. Every two weeks you will go to the posting station and send the money to me at the address that I will provide.”

While Leopold dictated instructions to his wife, Nannerl, slicing cabbage on an old wooden board with a sharp knife, imagined that she was slicing up her father.

“Ah, and you had better find a servant. A presentable woman who can greet the pupils at the door and serve refreshments during the lessons. There has to be an aura of elegance and prosperity, because—remember this well, my dear—money calls forth money. Write that down, too.”

Beside his sister, Wolfgang was contrite. “I’m sorry, Nannerl. I’m so sorry,” he said in an undertone.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

“No, I swear—”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“Please, Anna Maria, don’t make a mess of this,” Herr Mozart concluded, then he turned magnanimously to his daughter. “Let’s understand each other: you can keep part of the money you earn. Maybe you can buy yourself some pretty clothes.”

Turning her back to him, she threw the cabbage on a plate and spat on it. Then she left the kitchen.

“Where in the world are you going, now that it’s ready?” her mother cried.

“Leave her alone,” Leopold said with an air of superiority. “She is stubborn, but at heart she isn’t bad: it will pass.”

He grabbed a fork, put a large forkful of cabbage in his mouth, and chewed energetically.

V.

For entire days she didn’t move from her bed. Her hair loose on the pillow, her gaze dim, and her breath slow, she was like a wild creature in hibernation.

“Look at what I found,” Wolfgang said, holding up under her nose an old parchment covered with scribbles. It showed a meadow with two trees, a castle with a crenellated tower, the sun partly concealed behind a cloud, a little lake populated by geese, and two human figures, one male, one female, with giant crowns on their heads. The whole picture was surmounted by a legend written in the uncertain hand of a child: “The Kingdom of Back.”

Nannerl turned away. Wolfgang sat on the bed and placed a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t react. Then, resigned, he rolled up the parchment and placed it on the night table.

“I tried to persuade him,” he murmured after a long sigh, “but you know perfectly well it’s impossible. What was I to do? Refuse to go myself?”

He seemed to perceive in her a sign of assent, but it was only his imagination, because Nannerl did not move.

“I thought about it, but then I concluded that no one, in my shoes, would have done that. Think about it: Should I give up an opportunity so great for my career, for my very life? Not even you, in my place, would have—come on, admit it.”

She rolled over, creating an abyss between herself and those words.

The boy then decided to be more honest. “I can’t stay in this provincial place, Nannerl. Truly, I can’t. Life here is nothing but a repetition of tired ballets for a crowd of stupid rich people. There is so much new music inside me—and I know that I’ll only be able to pour it out in the freedom of the wider world.”

Perhaps she had made herself temporarily deaf.

“Then there are some practical matters,” Wolfgang continued, with a hint of shame. “The archbishop has refused to pay Papa for the whole time he’s gone. And for my work at court I’ve never seen a florin, as you know. Italy is an expensive country, and absurd as it sounds, it seems that you don’t get paid for concerts. Even if I were able to perform one of my works, I would get less than some ordinary tenor. In other words, Nannerl, we can’t all four of us go. We wouldn’t have enough to live on. In fact, the truth is that…that without the money you earn from lessons, Papa and I couldn’t go, either.”

What was all that talk of money? Nannerl seemed to be made of stone. If she was still breathing, it wasn’t visible.

“Now I will confess something to you. If I revealed that those arias were yours—the ones that Paulina sang—I did it because I knew what would happen. I did it for you, Nannerl.”

This time she turned abruptly and stared at him with wide-open eyes: this was a good one!

“It’s true, believe me,” he continued. “You have to stop hiding in my shadow. You have to become autonomous, compose in the light of day, have the satisfaction of hearing someone else interpret your notes. Ultimately, our leaving is a stroke of luck for you. From a distance, Papa won’t have any way of controlling you; and now that the ice is broken, you can look for some nobleman to support you. Surely you’ll find one.”

Finally Nannerl opened her mouth, and her deep voice fell like lead on her brother’s head: “So in effect you are going to Italy to do me a favor. Thank you, Wolfgang. Now I would like to be alone.”

He rose in silence and went to the door. A moment before leaving he turned to look at her. “I’ll miss you very much,” he said with a catch in his throat. “I’ll think of you at every moment. And I hope you’ll think of me.”

As soon as the door closed, she took from under the covers her scores wrapped in their shreds of fabric and hugged them to her.

VI.

Wolfgang wandered through the house. His hands were stuffed in his pockets and he proceeded slowly, looking down, kicking one foot with the other. His steps brought him to the kitchen; he leaned on the doorpost, not daring to go in, because his mother was busy taking little pastries out of the oven with the help of the servant she had just hired.

“Don’t just stand there, Wolfgang,” she called as soon as she saw him. “Come in! Look how well they turned out! Do you want to taste one?”

He shook his head and wearily went to the window that looked onto the courtyard.

“What is it, my angel: Are you sad? I know, you’re thinking of your sister. Don’t worry about her; in time she’ll understand. Unfortunately, she has always been an egotist, that’s the trouble.”

“Egotist?” he repeated, bewildered.

“Of course, and not only that, she’s as stubborn as a mule! Papa says it will be good for both of you to be separated for a while. And then, with Tresel’s help, I will be able to teach Nannerl some housekeeping. Isn’t it true, my dear, that you will give me a hand?”

The servant nodded with a kind of grunt while she tasted one of the pastries. She was a middle-aged woman of few words and of brusque manners; her smile was unknown.

“Oh yes, you’ll see. Nannerl will become a fine housekeeper! Just like her mother, in all modesty.”

“Madame,” Tresel said, putting down the pastry with a look of disgust. “Is it possible that you added salt instead of sugar?”

“What?”

At that moment Wolfgang happened to look out the window and into the courtyard, the ancient seat of the Kingdom of Back, and gradually his eyes focused on his sister, who was intent on burning a pile of papers. She had lighted her pyre right in the center, where once the king’s throne had been, and she was burning one page after another.

It was the manuscripts of her music. Methodically, and with implacable slowness, she took each page, set fire to one corner, and observed the flames as they licked the notes, colored them an irreversible brown, and transformed them into an intangible black dust. Only at the final instant, so as not to burn herself, she dropped the last corner onto the burning coals. Then she began again with a new page.

Wolfgang went down the stairs at breakneck speed. “What are you doing? Are you mad?”

“This is for Florence,” she announced, throwing a sheet into the fire. “This is for Venice,” she said, and tossed another. “And this is for Rome. Give my greetings to the Pope!” She threw the last pages onto the fire all together, so that the flames leaped up scarily. Wolfgang hurled himself at the pyre, trying to save what was salvageable, but the damage was done. He managed to pull out only one score; he threw it on the ground and stamped out the fire with his feet; the margins had been burned, but it was still legible.

“This one’s safe!” he announced wearily. “The others I’ll rewrite for you. I remember all of them.”

“Don’t bother. I would burn them again.” On her face appeared a smile a million years away. “I will never compose again. Never, Wolfgang. I will be a provincial music teacher. Enjoy that money I’ll be sending you.”

And she sat down to observe the hypnotic dance of flames, as her brother watched in dismay. Tresel’s impenetrable face appeared at the window, while the only surviving sheet of paper was tossed here and there by the wind.

VII.

Getreidegasse was paved with mud and ice, and mounds of snow were massed along the sides.

A carriage piled with baggage was at the door, and the coachman rubbed his hands, blowing on them with short puffs of breath, in a vain hope of warmth. Herr and Frau Mozart couldn’t make up their minds to part from each other, and the Reverend Joseph Bullinger, who had already said a great deal, had nothing else to add and confined himself to looking at them affectionately. Wolfgang was inside the carriage; his nose and cheek were crushed against the window, making the expression of his melancholy unconsciously grotesque. His gaze was turned to the window on the third floor, his mind hoping that, behind the glass, his sister might appear, perhaps at the last moment consenting to say good-bye, with a gesture if not with words.

In the music room, Nannerl was far from the window. Shut up in a solitude that was to become her companion, she observed the shining piano as if it were an object whose value was insulting. She sat on the stool, arranged the folds of her dress, raised the lid of the keyboard, and pressed her fingers onto the keys.

She improvised, moving within a fertile land of fantasy where, guided by harmonic laws, she traveled naturally. Through rapid runs, frenetic yet orderly, and moments of stillness, through impalpable flights and long, dark decelerations; after a few phrases, she spontaneously added her voice, too. She didn’t pronounce words; rather, she used her vocal cords like another instrument, which, in harmony with the one that her hands played but also in contrast, cried, breathed, and bent with the malleability that belongs only to flesh.

Her brother listened from the carriage, wishing he could reach the window and struggling not to cry, while the others paid no attention; only the reverend gave a sharp glance upward, a moment before pronouncing his blessing. And, meanwhile, Nannerl moved over the keyboard, eyes closed and mouth half open in a whisper, or half closed in furious vocalizing. It was as if she were playing a thousand times at once. It was her farewell to Wolfgang, and to music.

Leopold got in, the coachman cracked his whip, and the carriage, with a lurch, set off. It moved slowly down the street, and the boy, defying the cold, stuck his head out the window to listen as long as he could, but as the carriage moved away the volume grew fainter, until it became a weak echo that was suddenly, as the coach turned the corner, extinguished. And in the deserted street there was silence.