Nightingale (16 page)

"And Venus?"

"We have several ideas, but have not talked to any of them yet."

"Let me know as soon as you can, for just as we have been talking, I've been having the most wonderful idea for a quartet of voices at the end. I must hear everyone sing to make it quite right."

***

"Well," Mozart sighed. "I can see that we'll get no more practicing out of either of you this afternoon."

The lovers had become less and less inclined to music as the time passed, more and more inclined to each other. Akos and Klara had been holding hands and at intervals he'd been raising her fingers to his lips and kissing them.

"Love is more than music for the two of you, although I find that an impossible notion. I intend, like you, Herr Almassy, to fall in love with a prima donna. That way I can always have my compositions beautifully sung to me, even at home. If you had not," and here he gave Klara a look in which despondence was incompletely hidden by a sparkle of sophistication, "stolen away the heart of this lady, I should have made an attempt upon it myself."

"Ah, but you have my heart, dear little Maestro." Klara came to kiss him on the cheek. "Your music
speaks to my soul."

"Your music is part of the problem." Almassy patted the youth’s blue velvet back. "Those love songs have made us yearn so that now we can’t rehearse properly."

"Well, then, get to your billing and cooing. I'll go downstairs and talk to your Signor about these bothersome words that none of us like. You have half an hour before Papa said he’d return from visiting Herr Doctor Mesmer. Be sure you are done by then."

Chapter
9

They had all gathered around the clavier. On this visit, Akos had brought several fellow musicians to create a small rehearsal band, so now they had a clarinet, a flute, a violin, and a viola to accompany the singers. Herr Adamberger, his daughter, Adele, Klara, and Madame Wieland, the principal roles were present. The small space was full of performers.

Klara leaned over Wolfgang's shoulder, rested a hand upon his shoulder where the fine curls straggled.

"Can you sing this?" He indicated a cadenza he'd just splashed down.

Klara studied the score. Manzoli joined her.

"Not really." Klara touched her throat. “Not with any kind of beauty of tone."

"Yes she can," Manzoli disagreed, nodding to Mozart. "Only she doesn't know it yet. It does lie a little high for her normal range."

"Dear heaven, Mozart!” Akos leaned over to scrutinize the notes. "Couldn't you get something similar by doing this?" He took up the pen and scattered notes into the margin.

"Similar, certainly, but the effect on the ear will not be so profound. What I have written is truly birdsong."

"Wolfgang, you are not
to tax Fraulein Silber, who is still recovering." Akos sighed and shook his head.

Such discussions often ended in a compromise. They were spending time in various places
, sometimes the Mozart's rooms, sometimes Klara's – to manage composition and rehearsal.

Papa Leopold wasn't always in attendance, for sometimes he was pursuing business. Manzoli was more often present, seated, leaning forward on his cane, an apple-headed bewigged doll who occasionally voiced an opinion. Rehearsal was squeezed in between Mozart's various performances at private houses, and in between Akos' duties. The most productive times came when it was just the three of them, working at music.

Akos played his violin, Mozart the harpsichord, and Klara would sing, trying this and that. Singer and violinist were amazed time and time again by how easily this thirteen year old could compose. Almost any change Klara asked for could be made in a matter of minutes.

"Wolfgang, how on earth do you do it?"

"Well, it's in my head, so it’s not hard to move the notes around. I can't remember a time when music wasn't always with me, although Papa made me and my sister study endlessly."

"Ah, your sister! I remember hearing that she played most beautifully,” said Klara. “Where is she now?"

"She's back in Salzburg. I do miss her. Papa, for some reason, won't let her travel with us anymore. I can't understand it, for she is an excellent musician and we used to have such fun together."

"Does she compose?"

"Some, of course, but she is a marvelous, marvelous clavier player. Better than almost everybody, though not better than me, of course."

Laughing, Akos and Klara together shook Mozart’s slight shoulders.

"Although you are just a bit too astonishing to be entirely real, Herr Amadeus." Klara blew him a kiss.

"I am good, aren't I?" Mozart’s grin flashed.

"Brat!" Akos said, shaking his head again. "You have no idea how daunting it is to the rest of us, those of us who have had to work six months for every half inch we gain."

"Well, I practiced too. I studied all day, every day, for years and years."

"He did, indeed, and I know because I set him to it." Leopold Mozart had just come in, back from whatever mission of diplomacy he'd been on. His aging, handsome, and eminently respectable black-suited figure filled the door. "Still, Wolfgang loved to work, didn't you, my boy? I tell you, Concertmaster, I often had to pick him and carry him outside into the garden and then lock the door on him, just so he'd get a little sunshine." The pride in his smile brightened his stern face.

Although the intimate tone of the rehearsal would change when he came in, musically the experience remained exciting. Leopold was an accomplished violinist, and the things he had to say about business were always insightful. Still, when it was just the three of them, it was so easy!

Wolfgang watched, with unabashed interest, as Akos' fingers moved against Klara's, as his arm encircled her slender waist and remained there, while, heads together, they leaned over the score.

"It's too bad you aren't a singer, Herr Almassy. Although I can't say that I'm partial to the male of the species." Mozart sometimes interrupted their concentration, after a long pause in which concertmaster and prima donna sat silently, simply holding hands.

"And why is that, little brother?"

"Because I could write you a love duet to sing with Fraulein Silber." Wolfgang smiled archly.

"Well, why don't you write us a duet for violin and voice, or clavier and voice, instead?"

Smiling hugely, he produced a score from behind a stack of paper on the klavier. "Already done, Concertmaster."

"Oh, heavens above! Thank you!"

"Prima Donna Silber." Mozart got up from his seat at the clavier to kiss her hand. "A present from an admirer who regrets that your heart is already engaged."

After the lovers had studied the piece, Akos picked up his violin and tuned it. Soon they were trying it, while the young composer sat at the harpsichord, his skinny legs crossed, for once playing the role of audience. Klara and Akos felt rewarded when, after a while, Wolfgang's blue eyes closed and he sat, chin lifted, concentrating upon their sound, as the shining lines of voice and violin wound passionately together.

***

One day, waiting for the Adambergers to return to their apartment, the lovers found themselves waiting for the others, but for once, except for the cook in the kitchen and a maid who showed them to the parlor and left, they were quite alone. It was easy to be patient under those circumstances, for every stolen moment, every private conversation, was so precious! They both had so much to say to each other. They settled into a sofa and straight away began.

"What do you want to know?" Akos smiled indulgently, his miraculous eyes shining.

Klara bit her lip, for suddenly she wondered if he would think her rude. "You – you – don't look like the grandson of an apothecary. You carry yourself like an aristocrat.”

“I hope you do not think badly of me when you know the story of my birth."

"Should I dare to think badly of anyone? Me, a child abandoned in a nightingale cage? The nuns told me that my father was a poor young musician who said his wife had been a singer, a story often told when they were handed a young child born out of wedlock. The man who left me at the convent gave me the name I still bear, although he told them that my name was simply ‘a name as good as any other’."

"Pure Silver, like your heavenly voice."

"You have spoken with so much affection of your grandfather. It always makes me a little jealous to when people talk about their families. I wish I had one."

"Weren't the sisters good to you?"

"Some were and some weren't. Sister Maria Beate taught me to sing and she loved me, but there was pride in that love, for I was her pupil. The one who loved most was Sister Anna Maria. I think she would have been a mother had this world been a kinder place. She was warm and comfortable and we little ones always fled to her lap if we had been punished.No matter how bad we'd been, she always was ready with a hug and to say that the Blessed Mother would forgive us. I remember, though, the day when I went to her and she was holding a new babe. She gave me a kiss and a kind word, but she told me that I was too big to climb on her lap anymore. I remember how sad I was and how jealous I was of that little one."

"Ah, poor Klara! That was something my good
Matichka
– that's 'little mother' in my tongue – denied, that anyone could ever get too big for hugs." Akos gathered her close and when she leaned her head against him, he dropped a kiss on the fair back of her neck, where the auburn tendrils curled.

"Dear Akos, do tell me your story. Let us have no secrets
….” Klara's voice trailed away, for she had resolved to keep so many of her own. She had such terrible fear that if he knew it all – all and everything – that he wouldn’t love her anymore.

"Well, voice of an angel, since you ask, I shall tell you a story that is like an Italian romance, but which, unfortunately for me, is the truth of my beginning. Some would call my parent's story a scandal and a disgrace, but I believe it was a tragedy. As I’ve said, I am the grandson of an apothecary, but that is only half my pedigree. Grandfather Almassy had an only son, Miklas, who had a musical gift. I am like him, I am told, in that he played both harpsichord and fiddle well. He was taken from grandfather and trained to be a house musician. My mother
, and, Klara, this is the heart of the secret, was Judit, a daughter of Prince Vehnsky. She was the youngest child of his second wife, whose name was Edit. My father Miklas used to play for these ladies, sometimes within Princess Edit’s chambers, for she had a disturbed mind and frequently couldn't sleep. Sometimes, Grandfather Almassy has told me, my father would play all night in a room full of women, because Princess Edit had a deep horror of ever being alone. She had several beds kept in her chambers, shared by daughters and ladies in waiting. My father's duty was to play them to sleep."

"A weary task, to play all night while others sleep."

"Indeed! And because of this odd arrangement, my father became familiar with these royal ladies. They and Lady Edit treated him kindly, almost like one of the family. To make a long story short, Lady Judit and my father fell in love. With the assistance of Princess Edit, they were married by a sympathetic priest. They intended to go to a farm in Moravia which was a part of her mother’s dowry and live there, for that the Princess believed she could protect them. As they crossed the Danube, they were overtaken by one of my mother's half-brothers, Count Laszlo. Laszlo killed my father and threw him into the river. He intended to kill my mother, too, but another nobleman, horrified that his friend would shed the blood of a sister, even such an errant one, rescued her. He found her safe haven inside the gates of a closed nunnery north of the river in the land of the Slovacs.”

"
Gott in Himmel!
"

Akos nodded. "Prince Vehnsky soon knew all of it. He arranged with the Abbess to keep my mother permanently, for she had disgraced herself and her family. No aristocrat would ever want her in marriage now. I was born there, at the Convent of the Fountains, along the road to Komaron."

"And the Prince did nothing, I suppose, to punish his son for a murder?"

"Of a trespassing servant?" Akos lifted an ironic black brow. "Still, there is One who may command even princes. When I was a year old, that same intemperate Lazlo met his end in a duel, one which his own pride had provoked. God himself may be said to have dealt justice
."

"Did you live long in the abbey?"

"When I was five, my Grandfather Vehnsky ordered that I be sent back to his estate. Perhaps it was at the request of Princess Edit, whose mind now afflicted her so painfully that she had been confined to a few rooms in the palace. I remember being taken to see her, a woman with long white hair which she incessantly combed. She hugged me and wept. I would cry, too, for her strange way of talking frightened me."

"Poor lady! But why did she encourage your father and mother to run away? Surely she knew what must happen."

"She, I think, had been forced to marry Vehnsky. She was young. He was much older. Perhaps she wanted my mother's life to be different, even against all the odds. You know," Akos ended, "a plan is only called 'foolish' when it fails."