Mozart's Sister (36 page)

"Holy Trinity is in our square," I said. "We are practically
neighbors."

"I know" He sipped his coffee.

I thought of the unspoken implications.

"You go to mass every morning, you walk your dog multiple
times a day, and I hear lovely music coming from the windows of
your home-day and night."

I was pleased. "You have the advantage, Captain."

He winked above his coffee cup. "As intended, Fraulein Mozart.
As intended."

Getting ready for bed that night, I took pause at the mirror and
found myself smiling. And present with the smile was a look of
youthfulness. I was not old yet. Nor done. The world had revealed
new promise.

And his name was Captain Franz d'Ippold.

I hated being the bearer of bad tidings.

Papa looked up from his work, his eyes expectant.

"No," I Said. "No mail."

Papa slammed his hand on the table, making the inkwell surrender some of its contents. "Why can't that boy write? How can I give
him advice if I don't hear from him?"

"It's hard to give advice anyway, Papa. The mail to Mannheim
is so slow-six days. By the time a letter gets here and you respond
to it-"

He pushed away from the table and began to pace. "Last we
heard he'd only been paid with a gold watch instead of cash. And
his offer to write a German opera to break through Europe's insipid
fascination with all things Italian caused interest but no real commission. I could have pushed it through. I know it."

"But there's the Kapellmeister position opening up there," I said.
"The man is old and Wolfie was hoping-"

"Apparently the Kapellmeister is not doing the polite thing by
dying so Wolfgang can take his place. And then there's your brother's
habit of leaving your mother in her room while he goes gallivanting about town." Papa pointed a finger at me. "It's not healthy for her.
If she gets sick . . ." He shook his head and I filled in the rest of the
threat on my own.

So much rode on the shoulders of my little brother. I wasn't sure
they were strong enough. And though I was always Wolfie's advocate, he was testing even my patience. His handling of money, for
instance. Papa had arranged for letters of credit to be available in
Munich and Augsburg. When Mama and Wolfie moved on to
Mannheim, Wolfie should have thought ahead to the money he
would need there and arranged with our contact in Augsburg to
have the letter transferred. But in Augsburg they'd had enough
money, so Wolfie hadn't thought of it until it was too late and they
were in dire need. Papa had been forced to step in, but with the
slow mail ...

Wolfie's flippant attitude was also a concern. He made a joke of
every situation, as if his pockets were lined with gold and all he had
to do to get his way was play a few notes on a keyboard. I'd seen a
change in my brother I didn't like. Where he used to affect some
level of humility, now, on his own and away from Papa, he was getting as cocky as a rooster strutting his colors. They seem to think that
because of my small size and youth I possess no importance or maturity.
They will soon learn. Though I wasn't sure if people reacted badly to
his attitude or simply because they did not know him, Wolfie
seemed to believe Genius was stamped on his brow.

Of all people, we believed in his talent, but the rest of the world
had their own concerns. England was at war with America, which
had declared its independence; a future czar had just been born to
the Russian Czarina Catherine II; Spain and Portugal were having
issues about their colonies in South America; and the daughter of
our beloved Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette-who'd been called
Marie Antonie when she was just a young archduchess who'd
helped my brother up when he tripped after playing at Schon-
brunn-was the reigning queen of France, having married the man
who became Louis XVI. The world was a busy place. So in spite of
what my brother would have liked to believe, he was not the center
of the universe.

Papa continued his ranting. "I owe three hundred florins to Bul finger, two hundred to Weiser, forty to Kerschbaumer, some more
to Hagenauer, and another hundred and fifty to the lenders on the
road. Plus, we have bills of our own to be paid" He stopped in front
of me, his hand to his chest. "Good God! Solely on his account I
am in debt, and he thinks he can coax me into good humor with a
hundred stupid jokes? I owe over a year's salary! Doesn't your
brother realize that? Doesn't he care?"

I moved to calm him, but he stepped away from my reach. "He's
trying, Papa. It's just that he's never had to deal with practical issues
before, and-"

"Which proves I was right in not wanting him to travel alone."

Or ii ifli inc. "But Mama's with him...."

"And she should know how to handle these details. After all,
while Wolfgang and I were gone, she handled the business side of
life here just fine."

With my help she may have handled it, but she had not enjoyed
it. Too many times I'd found Mama anxious about such issues.

There was a knock on the door. I moved to answer it, leaving
Papa to mumble further complaints without me. But when I found
that our visitor was the postman, I ran back to Papa, waving the
letter. "News! We have news!"

Papa grabbed it away and started to read. But then he scanned
the pages faster and faster, his head shaking.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

He tossed the letter at me and the pages floated to the floor.
"Your brother sends greetings to all his friends in Salzburg--listing
one for each letter of the alphabet. Useless! He's useless."

I retrieved the pages and saw the evidence for myself. How I
wished I would have read the letter first and kept it from Papa's eyes.
No letter was better than a frivolous one. Yet near the end I noted
something that was of interest. "Wolfie says he and Mama have
moved into rooms at the elector's residence, where he is giving lessons. Mama is happy because she is included for all meals and has
companionship throughout the day."

Papa stood still, his breath going in, then out. "At least there is
soave income.

"At least there is free lodging," I added.

With a flip of his hand, he asked for the letter back. I pointed
to where I had left off. After reading, he offered an exaggerated
sigh. "Wolfie has been told he is getting a two-hundred-florin
commission for a flute quartet. He also states that he and three other
musicians are planning to go to Paris before Lent"

"See, Papa? Surely shared expenses will be reduced expenses. All
is going well."

"Better. It's going better, not well." He folded the letter and put
it on the desk. "I don't suppose your brother has received an advance
on the conmiission. I don't suppose he's thought to ask for that."

Probably not. "But Paris ... I never dreamed he would have to
go so far."

"It's too far for your mother. When Wolfgang leaves for Paris,
we will arrange to have Mama come home"

I touched his arm. "Do you miss her, Papa?"

His eyes met mine for but a second. "It's the prudent thing to
do." He sat back at his desk. "Now go. Practice. Your improvement
is evident, but it must continue. Two hours a day, Nannerl. At least

two hours a day."

I took my leave and did as I was told. At least one of us could
please Papa.

Another month passed. Papa and I endured Christmas alone as
Mania and I had done multiple times. We'd had so many holidays
apart from one another. Yet in a way, the Christmas of 1777 was
easier to tolerate because Papa and I both knew that Manua would
be coming home in the spring. We both missed her for our own
reasons. I, because she was my mother but also because I was more
than ready to let her share some of the housekeeping duties. Papa
wanted Mania back for other reasons-and I wasn't sure if any of
them were directly related to love. Yes, he loved her, but Papa
needed her for more than that. In the months since she'd left, I'd
seen a deterioration in his entire being.

It didn't help that some of his friends had died. The main organ ist at the cathedral, Aldgasser-a mere forty-eight years old-had
suffered a seizure while playing the organ during Vespers. I'd been
there that day listening to the concert when I'd heard the organ part
falter. At first, Papa and I thought the man was drunk, as was his
occasional habit, but when the music decayed even more and began
to sound as though a dog were running over the organ, we ran to
the box and found him trying to play the psalm melodies with his
right hand, while his left was clenched in a fist. Papa lifted his left
hand out of the way, and a tenor, Spitzeder, played the bass line
while Aldgasser continued to play with his right hand.

Aldgasser's eyes rolled back, he vomited, and it was quite horrible, because in his cramped quarters above the nave we could barely
move to help him. The service somehow managed to go on, and
we got him home. But he died the next day.

With Aldgasser's death, and the death of a few other friends,
Papa was never the same. It was as if his own mortality had come
calling, and he realized the futility of fighting it. Added to that was
the stress about what Wolfie was doing (or not doing) and his concern for Mama's well-being. Mama had written about not feeling
well, asking for more of the black powder we usually used for fever,
and Papa had reminded her of the importance of being bled. These
worries caused my father to become an old man who simply wanted
his wife close for comfort. He continued to fall into times of deep
melancholy, and it took all my energy to pull him out of it.

And then, just eight days after Aldgasser's death, the elector of
Bavaria, Maximilian III Joseph, died in Mannheim. The man in
whose house Wolfie and Mama had been staying, the man for
whom Wolfie and I had played at the Nymphenburg Palace a lifetime ago, the man whose children Wolfie had been teaching, the
man whom Wolfie had been trying to woo into offering him a position, was gone. Without an heir. Within hours his successor was
announced-his cousin, the elector palatine, Karl Theodor-thus
uniting two branches of the family that had been separate for centuries. Yet this choice was not looked upon with complete joy. The
new elector was not friendly with the old elector's people, and he
added insult by closing up the court in Mannheim and moving it to
Munich. So instead of having two courts that had musical positions available, now there was one. What were we going to do?

There were, of course, repercussions beyond our family. The
threat of war loomed large over all of Germany because the emperor
(being German in descent) had always been rather annoyed at the
independent Munich in Bavaria and now saw an opening to move
in. He promised the new elector, Karl Theodor, that if he agreed to
bow to his control, the emperor would make all of Karl Theodor's
children legitimate heirs of the larger empire. To our surprise, Karl
agreed. But then King Frederick of Prussia decided Bavaria would
look nice on his plate too, and he came in pretending he was the
champion of the Bavarian people and would fight for their independence. It was very confusing, and we all wished everything could
go back to the way it had been.