Mozart's Sister: A Novel (30 page)

Meanwhile the ancient Roman was alone amid the crowd, and uneasily she observed Wolfgang and Thekla, shepherd and peasant girl, transform the
contredanse
into a ballet of rustic seduction and disappear laughing through an archway. Armand had been taken off by a captain, and Nannerl’s father was reclining on a sofa, among the cushions, a look of annoyance on his face. She decided to get him something to drink and, passing a trio of red-faced men, approached the refreshment table.

“You’re getting all that money for a copper-plate printing?” said one of the three. “My dear Flatscher, you make me think I’m in the wrong business!”

“With all due respect,” the other answered caustically, “you continue to work in fabrics, and I will stay in publishing. It will be better for us both.”

Nannerl quickly turned back. “Excuse me, are you Herr Flatscher? Alois Flatscher, the publisher?”

“You are not only rich but famous, too, it seems,” the dry goods merchant said, giving him a pat on the stomach. “So, am I right or not, to say I’ve done the wrong thing in life?”

“Stop it and go to hell!” Flatscher exclaimed. Then, politely, he kissed the hand of the unknown woman. “Alois Flatscher in person, at your service. Compliments on your costume, Fräulein, I would say that it is scrupulously faithful to the images that have been handed down to us.”

“Compliments to you…that is, I meant…thank you. I am Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart. I was so eager to meet you.”

“I am almost…almost beginning to envy you, too, Flatscher,” said the third man, with a sneering laugh.

The publisher seemed not to understand why that girl was giving him such a radiant smile.

“You don’t know who I am?” Nannerl asked. “And if I say to you
The Gallant Officer,
nothing comes to mind?”

“Please forgive me, Fräulein, but I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But how is it possible? Colonel d’Ippold says that you are eager to see the manuscript.” She looked around. “He was here himself, a moment ago.”

“Ah, the colonel. Of course. Frankly, what I am eager to see is the last installment of the money he owes me.”

Nannerl was speechless.

“Quite a man, that army officer,” Flatscher said to the other two. “He spends a fortune to publish the first opera of his dear fiancée. He’s bankrupting himself, literally, I’d say, eh?”

“Now I’m beginning to find you repellent,” the merchant said. “You publish amateurs for a high price?”

Suddenly the noise of the room became painful to Nannerl’s ears and her ego. She left the three businessmen and leaned against the back of a divan, then looked around, in every direction, in search of her fiancé he wasn’t there, nor could she see anyone of her family, only a formless herd of multicolored strangers, a crowd that was diverse yet all the same, which made her feel more alone than if she had been in a cell. There he was! She made her way, pushing and shoving. She wanted to speak to him right away, but as she drew closer, she saw that the officer was short with white hair—he was another colonel, not he, not her man. Suddenly a group of revelers carried her away into a new room, and then another; a girl in an Oriental costume took her by the hand and dragged her, laughing and shouting, and she was too weak or too defeated to resist, and suddenly she was in an empty room and didn’t know where they had all gone; she couldn’t even hear the music of the orchestra that would indicate the way back. She wandered through deserted rooms filled with furniture, pictures, and carpets, all different; she opened door after door—how could she be lost? There—a corridor with a door at the end, and that door will lead to the ballroom, directly or not. It must be so. She opened it…

A man and a woman were making love. Or something like that, something she imagined was making love. He was almost completely dressed. A shepherd. It was Wolfgang.

Too caught up, neither he nor the girl—Thekla, certainly—noticed her, and she stood on the threshold, disturbed and fascinated, curious and horrified, and hadn’t the courage to leave or to make her presence known. This was sex? It seemed something clandestine, rapid and stolen. The two were lying on a chaise longue. Thekla’s face wasn’t visible. Nothing of her was visible, for he was on top of her and covered her with his body and his cloak. Only her voice could be heard. They were not words but sighs that were exactly in time with the thrusts of her brother’s groin. But they were strange sighs—were they pain or pleasure? They seemed muffled—could he possibly be covering her lips with his hand? That would be cruel! He wasn’t sighing, no; he wasn’t emitting sounds, but the fascinating movement of his buttocks and thighs continued, an impetuous motion, a desirable motion. Enough. This is morbid. She had to go right away. And as she was thinking that she had to go, she went in, whispering, “Wolfgang, Thekla…”

It wasn’t Thekla’s face beneath Wolfgang’s, or the costume of a peasant girl partly covering the body. The costume was that of an Amazon, and the face was Victoria’s.

“No!” Nannerl cried. “No, Wolfgang!”

Wolfgang jumped up, away from his lover, and as she stood up, they both awkwardly adjusted their clothes. That silence, that tragic silence was more deafening than a full orchestra. Nannerl was transformed into a statue of wax; Victoria and Wolfgang waited for a reaction from her, a terrible reaction, which inexplicably didn’t come. She was trembling, her lips parted, but her gaze, fixed on them, didn’t see them, because she no longer saw anything around her.

Then, light as a leaf, she turned and went out of the room. She closed the door carefully, until the latch clicked, and with her open hand she lightly caressed the knob. Then she smoothed her ancient Roman costume with delicate touches and began walking. When she was halfway down the corridor she saw a butler passing. “Excuse me,” she said. Her voice was that of a child. “Could you show me the way out, please? I was following an engaged couple, but I lost them.”

The butler led her, and she went straight home, without saying good-bye to anyone. She fell into her bed, stunned, and fell into a long, heavy sleep, which left her bewildered in the morning, and in the grip of a strange anxiety.

X.

Victoria, too, crept home that night, tore off her dress, and crushed it in the bottom of a drawer. She took a cloth, dipped it in the basin, and scrubbed her chest, arms, and legs; the rough gestures scratched the skin and turned it red. She got in bed and a moment later heard her father returning from the party. His steps, his movements, were hesitant. His silhouette appeared in the doorway.

“What happened, Victoria?”

“I don’t feel well, I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“You all disappeared suddenly.”

“Nannerl brought me home, then she left.”

“She came with you here alone?”

“Yes…My head is splitting…I can’t even speak. Every sound is like thunder.”

He approached on tiptoe and said gently, “Can I do something?”

“No, thank you. I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Rest, then,” he said, and closed the door.

She didn’t rest at all. To say that she was sorry is to say nothing; Victoria was filled with shame, imagining a grim future in which Nannerl would never speak to her and, on the other hand, would tell Armand everything. He would be furious and would insist on a reparatory marriage…Marry Wolfgang? Would it be a good thing for her to marry a man of his type? Faithful he would never be, nor stable, and she strongly doubted that he would be able to guarantee her a solid future. The foolish thing she had done was taking up space inside her, invading her; her whole self was one with that foolishness, and in anguish she brooded that nothing in her life would have meaning from that moment on, neither her affections nor her music.

The following morning she waited until Wolfgang went to his work at the Palace, then she knocked at the door of the Mozart house, trembling and confused from her sleepless night. Nannerl was in her room trying on her wedding dress, and greeted her with a meek smile.

“Oh Victoria! What did you do in the end, last night? I didn’t see you. Did you go home early?”

She was silent, uncertain. She looked around. There was no one there but the two of them. So she said, “What do you mean? You know perfectly well where I was hiding, and with whom.”

That happy and childish expression didn’t leave Nannerl’s face. “Do you like the dress? It’s pretty, isn’t it? The flower pattern must be to your taste, I imagine. And also the color: it’s a beautiful shade of green, just as you would like,” she said. She spun in a circle, and the train twined around her feet. With an air of amusement she bent down to disentangle it, while Victoria couldn’t understand if she preferred to be silent or was making fun of her.

“Nannerl, I have to talk to you,” she murmured.

Nannerl looked at her in silence, with an air of momentousness, and sat down on the bed, taking care not to muss the dress. “And I need to talk to you, in fact. I’ve already discussed the matter with Wolfgang, which is proper; but, apart from him, with no one else. At the moment I would prefer that only you, my brother, and I know about it, since the matter concerns us three most of all, and only we can understand it fully; your father is also involved, by force of circumstance, but only indirectly.”

“Oh, thank goodness. Then you don’t intend to tell him?”

“Well, he will have to know necessarily: it was his initiative.”

Confused, she stammered, “What are you talking about? What initiative, Nannerl?”

“Publishing my opera!” she said, radiant. “I’ve finished it—finished—and I really am satisfied with it! I still have to revise many parts, of course, and I suspect that the last part, in particular, will need quite a few corrections, because I worked on it with less intensity.”

“Nannerl, please! Why do you pretend not to understand?”

She seemed wounded. She sighed, a short, deep sigh, and asked, “Aren’t you happy for me? I hadn’t written a note in ten years, and you have been insisting, all of you, and finally you convinced me, and now that I’ve done something, won’t you enjoy it with me, and Wolfgang, and your father?”

“Of course. This isn’t what we have to talk about now, you and I, but about last night. About what happened.”

“Why, what happened last night?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

“You know very well!”

“No, I have no idea. What should I know?”

“Stop this! You saw it yourself!” Victoria cried, exasperated, seizing her by the shoulders and shaking her.

Nannerl freed herself with a look of annoyance. “Don’t wrinkle my dress,” she said, and smoothed the sleeves. “I really don’t understand you. Why are you being so rude? Why do you have to make me worry, anyway?” Then she called Tresel to help her undress, and the girl left the house, more bewildered than when she arrived.

XI.

It wasn’t long before she discovered that she was pregnant, or, rather, that she became certain, since from the beginning she had felt it, or feared it, or thought she deserved punishment. And yet in that moment a sense of hope took possession of her, and in her thoughts the punishment was transformed into a sweet reward. The family that for her was Music, that had changed her, made her an artist, would welcome her into it through a bond of blood; now it belonged to her, on her own account, that family, and not only through the second marriage of her father. She would give Wolfgang a son and Nannerl a nephew, living proof of the creative capacity she had acquired, and a marvelous exchange for the supreme gifts she had received from them.

In this state of mind Victoria waited for Wolfgang at the door of the Mozart house. It was a luminous morning, and when he appeared at the exact center of the arched doorway, his redingote carefully buttoned, a bundle of scores under his arm, the sun struck his slightly protruding blue eyes, and he stopped for an instant to adjust the brim of his hat. To marry him, at that moment, seemed to Fräulein d’Ippold more than desirable. She would be able, surely, to transform his barbaric impulses and direct them toward the good; she would tolerate his excesses, in the knowledge that with the passage of time they would diminish; she would understand his lofty soul and enable him to express, for the joy of all, the best of himself…

He set off along the sidewalk, concentrating on some melody that he was revolving in his mind, and as soon as he saw her, he stopped. He didn’t seem pleased. “What do you want?” he murmured warily.

Victoria gestured to him to be quiet and persuaded him to retrace his steps; the two young people went back through the entrance, into the courtyard, and stopped at the base of the grand stairway. The vaults above them amplified every sound, and she had to lower her voice to a faint breeze that she blew into his ear so that the news would not rise to the top floor of the building.

His reaction, however, was thunderous. Wolfgang burst out laughing. Victoria felt ill treated by his raucousness, multiplied as it was a hundred times by the reverberation; he made no attempt to stop but seemed amused by his own laughter, and its echo. Gradually, his hilarity subsided, and he looked at her, finally still.

“I understand, and I feel for you,” he said. “But why, may I ask, are you telling me?”

And he burst out laughing again, but this was a lighter and more circumspect laugh. He kept staring at her, sneering, waiting for some response, shielded by his amusement. Since Victoria couldn’t find the words, he continued, “I mean, my friend—we both know perfectly well that we are not the first, for each other, and not the last; what I mean is, in essence,
mater semper certa, pater incertus
—oh, sorry, maybe you don’t know what that means.”