Mozart's Sister: A Novel (31 page)

“I don’t know Latin, but I know that,” she said, offended.

“Then you also understand that no one on this earth can declare that I, and I alone, am the cause of your condition. And to look at you even now, dear Victoria, even now that your aversion toward me is clearly legible in your dark gaze, even now, I say, you are so pretty and pleasingly alluring that it’s hard to believe you aren’t available to anyone who asks.”

Her right hand flew out and delivered a strong and powerful slap, but he massaged his cheek with a composure that was more irritating than his insults.

“What do you want me to say?” he continued, disdainfully. “That I love you and wish to marry you? It’s not so, unfortunately. And in any case, even if I loved you, certainly at the moment I don’t intend to saddle myself with a wife and child—assuming it’s my child, which, I repeat, I don’t at all believe.”

“It is so, however, and you know it very well!”

“Are you telling the truth? Who in the world would confirm that there was a relationship between us? You say so, but, as I’ve already said, your word has no great value. Furthermore, I affirm the contrary, and I am, of course, more credible; besides, we have never been together in public.”

Not wanting him to see her cry, Victoria turned and ran breathlessly up the stairs, stumbling again and again on the damn lace of her dress. She heard him shouting after her, “Forget it; it’s completely pointless!”

Then, with the scores under his arm, Wolfgang started off again toward the Palace; but he no longer felt like laughing, and no more notes lodged in his mind. His step became irresolute, and as he parted from Victoria the guilty thought that he had abandoned her took shape in him. On the other hand (he made an effort to reflect), the idea of making official a bond that, while fun for them both, had been only a game without rules was completely ridiculous; and it was even more unacceptable that the consequences of a folly committed consciously by two should weigh upon him alone. It wasn’t impossible that that had been Victoria’s aim from the first moment: to snare him and then arrange things. That was not how Wolfgang imagined his life, certainly not as the prey of some calculating whore. Now on the threshold of adulthood, he had very different priorities: to assert his matchless art freely in the world; every interest or insincere affection or distorted and unhealthy sense of justice had to be sacrificed in this pursuit. This was the essence of the matter; and his father, besides, would unconditionally approve such reasoning. And so any vexing sensation of having committed an injustice was buried again in the place from which it had emerged unbidden, and Wolfgang’s walk became decisive again, and the road to the Palace appeared to him downhill.

XII.

Tresel opened the door and at that moment, at the sight of Victoria, guessed what had happened. Mute as always but, for once, less severe, she accompanied her to Nannerl, who was gathering up her scores in a large folder on which appeared, in swirling letters, the legend
The Gallant Officer.
Then she closed the door and disappeared.

Fräulein Mozart glanced carelessly at the sheets of paper. “Hello, Victoria. Would you mind, as soon as you can, delivering the folder to your father? I would have called a messenger, but since you’re here…And I, forgive me, I’m too tired to go out. I’ve been working every night, until last night, and now I’ve had enough—I’m really anxious to be free of this opera and move on to another. I’m already thinking of my next work, you know? Who can say if this man Alois Flatscher will be interested in publishing another. I am so curious to meet him, for I haven’t yet had the opportunity. Sometimes I try to imagine what sort of man he is, my patron, but I can’t imagine what he looks like or what he’s like. Have you ever seen him?”

The young woman stood silent, in the doorway, trembling and in tears. Nannerl looked at her finally, and in an instant her expression became surprised and pained. She ran to her: “Who hurt you?”

“Wolfgang.”

“What did he do to you?” she cried angrily. “Tell me!”

She was too upset to explain. So Nannerl made her sit down, called Tresel and asked her to prepare a tisane, then gave Victoria a handkerchief and waited patiently for her to calm down. Meanwhile she placed one hand on her knee and moved it back and forth, patting her lightly and affectionately as one quiets the crying of a child.

Victoria at last managed to unburden herself, and as she explained the reason for her suffering, and the injustice she felt had been inflicted and the sense of impotence that suffocated her, Nannerl observed her with a grieving and understanding look. Victoria told her everything: how the seduction between her and Wolfgang had developed, how he had both repelled and attracted her, and the series of secret rendezvous—whose very secrecy was exciting—they had had, reaching an intimacy that she had been unable to stop. And then the epilogue, and his indifference and scornful rejection.

When she finished, Nannerl said nothing but poured the warm tisane into the cup, handed it to her, and made her swallow it down to the last drop. Then she poured the other and sat with the cup in her hands, savoring the warmth it gave her, and without taking her gaze from the liquid, she said, “Victoria, for once I agree with Wolfgang. I don’t think, for your own good, that you should get married and have a family.”

To Victoria it seemed that the world was turning upside down. No, this was not reality.

“If you did,” she continued, very serious, “your career as a pianist would be dead. What goal have we worked for in all these years? To make you a good little wife? If I had known that was your aim, I certainly would not have devoted my energies to teaching you. If that was always your objective, in effect, you should have told me the first day.”

“Nannerl, I’m pregnant! Pregnant! By Wolfgang. Will you understand?”

“Maybe it’s you who won’t understand. Maybe it’s only a small female problem…It happens. It’s a very common thing.”

“Your brother and I have had a relationship!”

“Maybe. But it could also be—forgive me—that you exaggerated his interest.”

“But you saw us together! You saw us the evening of the masquerade. You opened the door and we were there and we were—”

“Why do you lie, Victoria? What is your purpose? I don’t know what you’re talking about, and frankly I’m tired of listening to all this nonsense.” She put the cup down and rose. “Now do me a favor: go home and play through the program for the wedding reception. Go over every piece carefully, and if you have questions, make a note of them. Then tomorrow at this time come back here, and after clearing up your questions we’ll try a rehearsal: just as if it were the day of the concert, without my interrupting you. Go on now and try to calm down.”

XIII.

The church was cool and smelled of incense, and the few faithful prayed silently, kneeling before sacred images and gazing at them in yearning and fear, or hunched in meditation on the wooden benches. Victoria alone was speaking. She had burst into the confessional and a river of tears and words flooded that wooden cage; she herself was in danger of drowning, but she held on to the priest as if to a raft. Her eyelids were swollen blisters, the skin thin, reddened, and they seemed to have swallowed up her eyebrows. The tear ducts, exhausted, released a burning liquid, and her shoulders heaved as she strangled her sobs.

She told him everything, without reserve, from the evening of the fête; of the betrayal of Wolfgang and even worse that of Nannerl, who knew everything but persisted in an absurd, incredible lie. He imposed on her fifty Our Fathers, fifty Ave Marias, and a week’s fasting, then let her go; she flung herself onto a bench, not at all relieved, and kneeling amid the veiled women recited prayers. She didn’t realize that she had been observed.

Katharina von Esser had gone to church to deliver a generous offering (in exchange, certainly, for a prominent plaque that would make her generosity known). She stopped to observe Victoria with malicious interest, then, when the priest came out of the confessional, went over to him with a broad smile. It wasn’t Reverend Bullinger, who was too old now to practice, but the acid-tongued priest who was to celebrate the marriage: Father Jakob.

XIV.

“Hello, my love,” Nannerl said with a playful lightness that was reminiscent of her mother. In the small room with the floral walls she settled the scores on the shelves and carefully ran a cloth over the white keys of her old harpsichord. No longer empty of furniture, and smelling now of wood, wax, and fresh laundry, the apartment on the Salzach was ready, and awaited only the wedding day, when the new family would go and live there.

From the doorway, Armand stared at her strangely, as if trying to grasp some meaning in a gesture, in the tone of her voice. Then, silently, he sat down at the instrument.

“Would you like me to give you a lesson?” she asked, smiling.

For a few moments he kept his eyes lowered on his own hands as he picked at the nails, which he had long ago stopped biting for love of her. So, as she continued to putter, he looked at her again and said, “Last night Katharina von Esser came to see me at the Palace.”

“Oh, really? Why in the world? What did she want?”

“The truth is, to tell me something that she had learned in various indirect, not entirely clear ways. In any case, what she said concerns you and me personally.” He jumped to his feet and went toward the door, as if in search of light; the small room had only a little window, high up and facing west.

“What is that scheming woman sticking her nose in now?”

“You’re right, she is a disagreeable woman, and I assure you that I long to keep my distance from her. But the fact is, in a difficult situation, the countess, without even intending to, has done me a great service.”

She started to say something, but he, with a curt gesture, put a finger on her mouth: “Be quiet and listen.”

She stood beside the harpsichord, speechless.

“At this moment I find myself, dear Nannerl,” he said darkly, weighing his words, “with a daughter who is pregnant by someone who doesn’t want to marry her and, what is perhaps worse, with a betrothed who knew that she had been seduced and was silent.”

“What do you mean?” she murmured, in dismay.

“Do you want me to repeat everything? I see no need for that. You have got the idea—of that I’m sure. What I urgently need to know is if what the countess says is true.”

“It’s all false!”

“You don’t know how I hope you are being honest, Nannerl. On the one hand, I think, it’s plausible that Countess von Esser has invented everything for some malicious purpose of her own; but why, explain to me if you will—why would Victoria support her hypothesis?”

“What does Victoria say?”

“That you saw her with him. That—just to be absolutely clear—the night of a masked ball that I don’t even remember the details of, you surprised my daughter as the victim of the lustful desires of a certain man…”

“It’s not true!”

“And you have behaved as if it were nothing; and what is more serious, what I cannot accept, Nannerl, is that you didn’t tell me, her father! You should have informed me instantly.”

“But none of it’s true, I swear!” she cried desperately.

“Why do you insist?”

“I’m not lying, Armand!”

“So it’s Victoria who’s lying? And why do you think she would do that?”

“I don’t know. There must be a reason, yet I don’t see it…”

Nannerl was agitated, like a windup toy whose mechanism is slowing down. Flailing, she flattened herself against the wall, just opposite her old harpsichord, and suddenly Armand went to her and took her face in his hands. With immense gentleness he whispered, “Nannerl, please, enough. Don’t you understand yet that we have to rewrite everything, you and I? My daughter, my own daughter, is in danger of ending up in a convent, or worse; and I can’t let that happen. I have to devote my life to her, dear Nannerl, and her alone. Because, distracted by my love for you, by my egoism, I didn’t protect her as I should have. And now how can I even think of having a new family with you when I have to take care of the one I have and have always had?”

He took his hands from her face slowly, as if in a last caress, and said, “I didn’t come to tell you that we can no longer marry, because that’s obvious—beyond discussion. I’m here because, my sweet Nannerl, I want to keep a good memory of you. More than anything now I want to know why you said nothing to me.”

The mechanism suddenly wound down, in a convulsive shudder that shook her limbs. She turned red and began sweating, and an infinite weariness took possession of her so that her legs gave way and she crumpled to the floor, sliding along the wall.

He took her in his arms and carried her, trembling and weeping, to the bedroom and laid her lovingly on the bridal bed. Then he closed the curtains, and a restful shadowy light filled the room. For a long time Nannerl lay curled up, and her lips let out only a long sob, while her closed eyes, little by little, saw again an unacceptable memory. And meanwhile Armand held her in his arms, and slowly the ice inside her melted.

“Yes, it’s true,” she murmured finally, finding words again. “It’s so—it happened. There was a long corridor,” she continued laboriously, “with hunting scenes on the walls, it seems to me, and a door at the end. I opened it and found Wolfgang and Victoria…in a situation that I would never have expected to find them in.”