Vienna Nocturne (32 page)

“So early?” Anna asked. She drew her morning gown around her. “Doesn’t Lord B realize I’m never at home before noon?”

Lidia glanced at Stephen and smiled. “It’s past noon.”

Anna looked at the clock in surprise. “So it is. Well, they’re friends. Show them in, then, Lidia.”

Barnard’s hair was dressed in a kind of puff and wave that ill became him but gave the impression that great care and expense had gone into its formation. As he entered the room he held a silver snuffbox to his nose and discreetly sniffed. Michael Kelly came behind him, jolly and red-faced, in his customary finery, and kissed Anna thrice on the cheeks. “Still in morning clothes?”

“And yet here you are,” said Anna. Lord Barnard brushed her knuckles with his soft lips.

“You
should
be dressed,” Michael said. “It’s nearly one.”

Mrs. Storace entered the room and greeted the visitors. “Not dressed?”

“I was finishing my breakfast.”

“Look, Mama,” said Stephen. “We’ve gotten a package from Mozart—the aria for Anna’s farewell concert.”

“Have you? How pleasant,” Mrs. Storace said. She smoothed her apron. “And then we return to London.”

“Let’s hear this aria, then,” said Michael. “Let’s hear the good-bye.”

“It’s not a good-bye,” said Anna. “It’s a farewell.”

Barnard lit up. “Dear Miss Storace, do sing for us. There’s nothing I like half so well as your singing, and you know how much I admire the music of Wolfgang Mozart.”

She felt herself grow dizzy. “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve not sung yet today.”

“Just a few bars,” Barnard pleaded. His hair bobbed and he spread his arms. “Just to give us the gist of the thing, as your friends.”

“I shan’t,” Anna said, “give you the gist of anything.” She sat by her mother. “I’ve had quite enough of all of you. Coming so early and treating me like someone to do tricks for you.”

“I’ll sing it, Barnard,” Michael said.

“You won’t,” cried Anna.

Michael looked at her in delicate puzzlement. “Come, dear, there’s no harm done, is there? You can spare your voice, and Barnard here can hear the tune. We’re all friends.”

“I must say, Kelly, yours is not the voice of my dreams,” said Barnard.

“Sir, I take no offense. You know only how to speak your mind. I may submit, however, that you’ve only heard me sing in comic melody, when I was distorting my voice for effect.” Michael went to Stephen, who was leafing through the manuscript. “My friend, shall we make a run of it?”

“We can try,” said Stephen doubtfully, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to leave out a few notes here and there. He wrote it for himself, you know.”

“Michael,” Anna said softly. “Please.”

“We would all be grateful to hear you,” said Mrs. Storace to Michael. “You always had such a lovely Irish tenor voice.”

“I thank you, madam.”

Stephen could barely play the solo lines, unpracticed as he was, but Michael read well and did himself credit. They jerked and careened, joked with themselves, remarked in passing about the plangency of this and the felicity of that. But Anna was quiet. She did not entertain Lord Barnard’s flirtations, nor smile at Michael’s jests. The aria was beautiful. It was beautiful and yet it was not sad. Rather it was a kind of rejoicing.
Do not fear, my love: I will never leave you, I will always be yours
.

Für Mlle Storace und mich
.

At last Mozart returned to the city. She had counted the days. She was nervous to see him again and yet he blanketed all her idle thoughts with soft contentment. Nothing was so right and good as to hold him in her mind and heart like a jewel. There he sat, all her waking and sleeping. She would wake before dawn and lie with her eyes closed in the warm dark, listening to the clock chime, holding the memory of him in her heart until it almost hurt. When she could no longer pretend to be asleep she would push back the bedclothes and watch the dawn spill across the city, violet and gray, whispering,
I love you, I love you, I love you
.

She saw him first at the Countess Thun’s Carnival party. All of Vienna was there. There was a press of people in all of the rooms, everyone masked, dancing, shouting, and singing. Anna recognized Mozart’s back, its straightness, the slightness of his shoulders. He was dressed as Zoroastro, and passed out amusing philosophical
riddles. Her own mask was from her days in Venice, golden, with a star the corner of the eye. Her gown was new, black and red.

She touched his shoulder. “Excuse me, sir,” she said in English. “I’ve no one to dance with.”

Beneath his feathered turban his eyes brightened. He bowed, the feathers bobbing and waving, and led her to the hall with the dancing. His thumb pressed into the top of her hand, circled there; pressed and circled again. For the whole dance there were only their hands, touching and releasing, first playfully and then with enough strength to cause a little ache, a brief stab; and saying, thus, with the only touch and pressure allowed them, and for which none there could fault them, how greatly, how ardently, they esteemed and admired each other.

How beautiful and terrible it was to be in the Mozart home again, to greet the lady of the house and the sturdy little boy who had grown so big and tall. Whatever Anna looked at, she would be leaving. This place, where she had been so happy, in such secrecy, which was hers and not hers, she would never see again. It became necessary to breathe more deeply, that she might remember everything as clearly as possible. She had left too many places carelessly.

The Mozarts’ rooms were warmer than Anna’s—tidier, brighter; aromatic of baking, wood smoke, and herbs; fuller of noises and of people. A home to be lived in and loved, a home too much for their means but theirs in every way save that. Anna and Constanze sat in the large main room where Mozart sometimes gave his chamber concerts. The chairs were jumbled and there were papers everywhere. A basket of darning rested by the fireplace and Karl’s toys were scattered across the floor. The coffee Constanze Mozart brought Anna was spiced with cinnamon. She apologized for the disorder of the rooms, a consequence of their late arrival from Prague, she said,
and herself and her servants being such flibbertigibbets. She kissed Anna on the cheeks. The little boy resembled her. He kept trotting over to Anna and handing her objects to admire: a spoon, a button, a piece of red ribbon.

“Thank you,” Anna said to him, over and over. She didn’t know how to behave with children. Constanze Mozart scooped him into her arms and hung him upside-down and he whooped in delight. When she put him down he fetched a rattle from the floor to give to Anna. She shook it for him and he took it back, smiling, as if she’d done a great trick.

Mozart was out, giving a lesson, but expected back soon. He had suggested they meet at his house to rehearse the farewell aria, because his own piano was there, and it had independent pedals, built for him specially by Anton Walter, the great piano maker.

Constanze Mozart had square hands, which she was always folding together as though she wished in that way to make them look more elegant. “My husband will miss you when you’re gone,” she said. “It’s so difficult to find good singers. Do you know what I mean? He is so particular. That is, he will write for anyone, as required, but he would prefer to write for someone like you. You are so musical. It is good of you to include him in your concert.”

The conversation dwindled. Anna smiled at the little boy and Constanze got up to straighten the chairs. Anna asked if she could help. Constanze politely declined. There seemed nothing to say.

Mozart was convinced that Constanze did not know.

At last they heard him in the foyer.

“Is Mademoiselle Storace there?” he called. “I’ve just run into my sister-in-law, she’d like to hear our aria. She says you invited her to tea, Constanze.”

“Don’t shout from the other room, my love,” said Constanze, going to the door.

“Is she here?” he bellowed.

“Yes, sitting patiently and listening to all my prating.”

Mozart bounded in, a high color in his face, and kissed his wife
and child. His hair stood out and his shoes were damp around the toes. Anna’s heart constricted. “Didn’t you find your slippers in the hall?” Constanze asked, frowning, and went to fetch them and bring little Karl to his nurse.

Anna rose. Mozart stopped short before her. “You’re here,” he said. He hesitated and studied her. “I’ve been looking forward to this all morning.”

“As have I,” said Aloysia Lange, rustling forward to greet Anna. “How good it is to see you. How do you do. We’re all so broken up about your leaving us. It is really too bad. Do you much mind me listening? I was coming to visit my sister and I would so much love to hear you. You’re so gracious, my dear. What a lovely frock this is! Just like a rose. How I wish I had your youth. My family is quite well, I thank you, the children in good health, by God’s grace. How pretty you are. Isn’t she pretty, brother? It must be months since I’ve seen you. Constanze, isn’t Fräulein Storace looking well? How we shall miss her.”

“We hope she’ll not be parted from us for long,” said Constanze, coming back into the room. She helped her husband with his slippers.

Anna stood smiling. He was here. Her friend. She must remind herself to breathe. The jewel in her heart had dropped to her belly and become grotesque and leaden. To smile, to speak a nicety, meant dragging the weight through a current of water, neck-deep. There was only the press of water and numbing cold. She had trouble attending to what was said and yet every instant was like a drop of dew on her skin, finely delineated. She was conscious of herself in the room, and of Mozart’s every gesture. Here he was, in plain daylight, with his wife and his wife’s sister. She recognized him—what he was, how dear and how right—with a certainty so serene and assured it would not be undermined. But she could not go to him. She was forbidden. She felt the heaviness, the water coming over her chin, the cold winter light reminding her that everything was comical, petty, implacable.

They all crowded into Mozart’s music room. The two sisters, one prettier, the other happier, sat side by side at the far end, their skirts overlapping and their hands entwined.

But Anna could not mind the sisters watching over them. She would have undergone many more discomforts for the exhilaration of singing with him again. The aria brought her joy, just as he had intended. There could be no greater gift. She could not help, once they’d gone through it, swinging to him with such open delight that it turned to laughter.

“You like it?” he said, pleased.

She draped herself across his instrument, her head on her arm, as if swooning there. “I adore it.”

He smiled. “Don’t break anything.”

“I’m very gentle,” she murmured.

“Is she all right?” Constanze asked. She and Aloysia were about eight feet away.

“I think my brother has made his favorite soprano faint,” Aloysia said. “She’ll recover in a moment if she’s not too far gone.”

“Why, you’ve made all three of us giddy, my love,” said Constanze. “You don’t know your powers.”

Anna drew herself up. “You do,” she said to Mozart. “You know very well.”

He shrugged, proud. “It’s a proper rondo.”

“As promised.”

“Anything for you,” he said in Italian. She gave him a sharp look.

“I think they’re talking about us,” observed Aloysia to Constanze.

“They’re talking about the music.”

“I wish he’d write music like that for me.”

“He did—don’t you remember?”

“Not like that, sister,” said Aloysia.

“Well, you’re not having a farewell concert.”

“Perhaps I should.”

“But where would you go away to?” asked Constanze blankly.

Aloysia snorted and dabbed at her nose with a handkerchief. “Why, nowhere. But that’s the point. My brother doesn’t want Mademoiselle Storace going away, so he writes her this. He knows I will never go anywhere, so he writes me nothing.”

“Hush. We’ll disturb them.”

Anna turned to the ladies and bowed graciously. “I’m so sorry. Herr Mozart’s playing overpowers me.”