Mozart's Sister: A Novel (32 page)

“Go on,” he urged her kindly.

“At that moment, Armand, at that exact moment I understood that our marriage was in danger—that what I had longed for my entire life had been destroyed in an instant. And I felt as I did when I was a girl, when my brother left for Italy, or even earlier, when my father forbade me to play the violin. Yes, I felt just the way I did then: prevented from grasping happiness by someone else’s actions. But this time it was worse, because with all my soul I had hoped to redeem that pain in a life with you. And then—I don’t know how it could happen, Armand, but I swear it happened—then I forgot it completely. And now…now there’s another memory that is coming out.”

She sat up. She was no longer trembling. She looked her betrothed right in the face and murmured, “You paid to publish my opera. You paid a fortune—is that true, Armand?”

He assented, bowing his head.

“I met that man, and he told me. I had also forgotten that.”

“I shouldn’t have done it. It was a foolish mistake.”

“Oh, I felt so humiliated.”

“Not only for that reason, Nannerl. Because being with you, in time, I entered into a game that was completely wrong, in which only your fulfillment counted.”

“But I wrote the opera about you, for you.”

“Exactly. You wrote it for me, and I wanted to publish it for you. But together, in common, we made nothing, and never could have.”

“You still don’t want to marry me?” she cried. “But I’m not guilty. I had truly forgotten everything, truly.”

“You think that I don’t want to marry you to punish you? It’s not that, Nannerl. Now, rather, it seems definitively clear that we have nothing, absolutely nothing in common.”

“How can you say that? We have loved each other for years.”

“I came to you with the intention of saving you, of perhaps making up for the mistakes I made with my first wife. But I’m unable to; it’s evident. And you, for your part, came to me in the hope that I would save you. We have failed, Nannerl. We have to accept it. Now we are two strangers, nothing else. And I cannot have a stranger near my daughter. You understand, don’t you?”

He seemed to her suddenly a different person, and in anguish she tried to see again the Armand she knew and the self that had been together with him. But he was not willing to go back.

“Perhaps you don’t understand,” he continued in an affectionate tone. “No, maybe it’s impossible, unfortunately. Because you, dearest Nannerl, have never created anything. You have no children and you brutally killed your musical soul. You don’t have a solid moral center, and it’s perfectly logical that you don’t, since you’ve had no models to help you. I couldn’t have saved you, ever—only you could, if only you had wanted to. But in this effort no one, not even the next man I hope you love, can replace yourself.”

Nannerl felt her body become vapor and disappear, and in its place she felt a void, a black, empty void that sucked in and swallowed up everything around her and turned her to dust.

“I will ask for a transfer to Munich, far from these troubles, and I will take Victoria with me. As soon as possible, she will go back to giving concerts, and perhaps lessons, too, like the ones you gave her. She will be grateful to you for that teaching; and I am, too, Nannerl, with all my heart. Let us part now.”

XV.

Salzburg had never seemed so alien to her. No longer did any corner of those streets belong to her, those buildings made opaque by the cloudy, cold day, as if they had been soaked in a dense, sticky liquid. The idea of returning to the wood, to seek the comfort of her tree, didn’t even occur to her. She headed toward home, but her steps, with a will of their own, followed a convoluted, tangled route, so that more than once she found herself at the same intersection vainly trying to figure out where she was. Finally, without knowing how, she reached the street door, and then the foot of the stairs; but halfway up, she had to sit down on the steps to quiet her breathing. Her legs hurt as if she had run for miles uphill, and when she opened the door she wished only to sink into her bed and remain there for the rest of her life.

In the music room she found her father and brother. They were engaged in a serious conversation. Herr Mozart was dictating, and Wolfgang diligently took notes. A mirage of resolve drew out her last ray of energy.

“It’s all ready,” she said from the doorway in a distant voice. “Everything is set: the church, the new home…But the marriage that must be celebrated will not be mine. It will be Wolfgang who marries, and he will marry Victoria.”

The two men were silent. She went to her father, sitting in the chair with the old blanket over his legs; she arranged it carefully, knelt, took his gnarled hands, and said, “Wolfgang seduced her. You perhaps will not believe it, but I know for certain, because I saw them together. And now he must repair the evil done, as soon as possible, before the news spreads—”

He said gravely, “It has already happened, Nannerl. The rumors have just reached this house.”

“What have you heard, then?”

“Many things about your dear Fräulein d’Ippold and her promiscuous ways.”

Then Nannerl hid her face in the fleshless legs of her father and abandoned herself to grief. She became a knot of suffering, clinging to the man who should have been with her, on her side, she was sure of it; and she implored him to show his love, at least this one time, when it seemed most important. “Please,” she sobbed, “don’t you, too, give in to this deception.”

He was embarrassed. “Daughter, stop it. You know what I think about tears.”

“You must help me—what is right must happen. Wolfgang behaved terribly with Victoria, with Armand, and with me, too, and he cannot escape unharmed.”

“Wolfgang will leave tomorrow for Vienna. I have arranged all the details. He must get away from this nasty little scandal and find his way in a capital of great Europe, where finally his music will be able to take flight.”

“Enough of this! Enough, father! You push Wolfgang to seek success only so that you will be able to redeem your own mediocrity!”

They were all struck dumb, and suddenly Nannerl noticed the ticking of the clock and the aching of her knees on the floor, but she couldn’t get up. Herr Mozart slowly turned his head, his mouth twisted in disgust. Then he moved the blanket to one side, rose, pushing himself up with his arms, and walked to the door, leaning on his cane. There he stopped.

“You have taken down all my instructions, Wolfgang?” he asked, impassive.

“Yes, Papa.”

“Very good,” he answered, and disappeared through the doorway.

Stunned, Nannerl rose from the floor and sank into the same chair. Her brother shook his head in her direction: “My compliments. If you want him to hate you to the end of his days you have achieved your purpose.”

He went to sit beside her, and she felt her heart beating very slowly, a tired piston in time with the pendulum of the clock. After a moment she said hoarsely, “How could you do this to me, Wolfgang?”

“If you’re referring to your Victoria, I assure you that I didn’t mean to harm her or you.”

“But you did, and now you abandon us—how can you?”

“My music needs other horizons, Nannerl. Haven’t you understood that yet? I have to free myself, finish something grand, I have to say everything I still haven’t been able to say because I haven’t had the opportunity. Otherwise, dear sister, I am in danger of coming to the same end as you.”

“And what is that? Tell me, please.”

“Poor in spirit, a slave of your victimhood, and forgetful of your talent. The queen I loved is lost.”

He rose, took a folder of scores, and held it out to her. “Your
Gallant Officer
is the mirror of what you have become. The music is just decent, in fact, neither good nor bad. I would have preferred it to be worse rather than of such mediocrity. But the text! Oh, the text, Nannerl. The text is an outrage. With an irrational faith in your abilities, which alternates with the low opinion you have of yourself, you wanted to tell the story, too. And what has come out is a shapeless construction without the least spark of humanity. You intended to tell the story of your life, I imagine; but of life you know absolutely nothing because you have never lived, and you don’t even know it. You could have done great things, but you weren’t capable of them.”

“Then go, go to Vienna!” she cried, tearing the folder from his hands. “Go on, try to get free of us. But one thing is certain: you’ll never succeed. You’ll never have lasting success. You’ll be surpassed by mediocre people. You’ll never even earn a living, and you’ll die poor and alone!”

XVI.

With a wild light in her eyes, she walked, staggering, hampered by her skirt, her shoes, the cobblestones; the people she met made a wide circle around her as if she were mad. And perhaps she really was—or was about to do a mad thing.

She reached the bridge over the Salzach and stopped in the middle. There was no longer anyone around, so she leaned over the parapet and watched the water flowing, like life, which flowed around her, she who had always been unmoved. She lifted her skirt and with a great effort, hugging to her breast the folder containing
The Gallant Officer,
climbed up on the balustrade.

She stood there a long time, eyes closed, hanging on to a pillar, letting the breeze run over her skin and blow through her thoughts as well, emptying her mind. Then, with a resolute gesture, she untied the ribbon around the folder, opened it, and turned it upside down into the river.

The pages made a sinuous flight, like lazy birds pleased with their own wings; they scattered like confetti and, like confetti, gained meaning by being thrown. They landed on the water, floated there for a while, became soaked, and then disappeared, forever, amid the waves.

One score only Nannerl could not bring herself to throw away, and she kept it in her arms, folding it against her chest. It was the only aria that Wolfgang had not despised: “I am grateful for your hand.”

I Am Grateful for Your Hand

I.

“What in the world is she doing in there all the time?”

“Nothing, Herr Mozart.”

“What do you mean, nothing? Try to be a little clearer, Tresel!”

“It seems to me that I have been. She does nothing. She lies on her bed all day, she doesn’t speak, and she never moves.”

Nannerl’s anguish spread through the Mozart house like a silent shadow, which Herr Mozart could no longer ignore. He had imagined that sooner or later his daughter would take up the ordinary activities of any individual, but that moment was slow in arriving. Thus he sometimes found himself pacing near her room, trying to catch some sound from inside, and finally even putting his ear to the keyhole; but he heard absolutely nothing, not a cough, not a rustle of limbs amid bedclothes.

He rose from the table, irritated, and, even forgetting to lean on his cane, he reached the small room that led to Nannerl’s. On the floor outside sat a tray of food, almost untouched, which he moved aside nervously with his foot. The idea of opening that door repelled him slightly, but curiosity and some ancient trace of responsibility dominated. So he placed his clawlike hand on the knob, turned it, and pushed, but nothing happened.

“Tresel!” he shouted. “She’s locked herself in!”

“What can I do about it?” the maid said, joining him.

“Bring me the big key ring.”

“But if the key is in the lock on the other side, Herr Mozart, surely you won’t—”

“Bring me the keys before I kick you.”

Sighing, the servant returned with a bunch of keys on a large ring. “Here, see if there’s one that works.”

He grabbed the bunch, chose one, stuck it in the lock, and met resistance.

“Herr Mozart, I told you—”

“Be quiet. If you open your mouth you’re making a big mistake.”

Angrily Leopold attacked the lock, sticking in one key after another and twisting the knob, and from time to time he pounded his fist on the door and yelled, “Nannerl, do you hear me or not? What do you think you’re doing? Nannerl! Open the door immediately or I’ll have to call a locksmith.” And just then he heard, on the other side of the door, the ricochet of a metal object on the floor. “You see?” he said with a victorious air. “I’ve got the key out!”

“And I’m pleased,” Tresel commented, impassive.

“Now let’s see if I can…make the lock turn. There, I’ve done it, we’re there!”

He opened the door and saw nothing, because the room was darker than a moonless night, but a stink of airlessness and sweat and excrement in a chamber pot somewhere in the room hit his sensitive nostrils and went to his head.

“Good God, Tresel! Don’t you clean this room? Don’t you ever change the sheets?”

“She won’t let me,” she answered tonelessly.

Cautiously, Leopold walked to the window and opened it, and thus he could see what remained of his daughter: lying on the bed on one side, unmoving, with the covers pulled up over her head, wrapped up as if in a cocoon.

“She’s alive, Herr Mozart, don’t worry. Of course, she’s not very well.”