Mozart's Last Aria Part 5

"I know who you are. It's obvious, to look at you. When he cut my face, my husband didn't take my eyes." Her voice was curt and bitter.

A suicide, her husband must surely have been d.a.m.ned forever. She winced, as though her speech had split the scab over one of her wounds, and I thought that it was she who had been condemned. I dropped my chin. Her stance softened and she reached a hand to my cheek, lifting my face.

"Excuse my ill manners." Her expression became strained and melancholy. "The pain of my wounds takes over and I forget myself."

She led me to a green linen sofa. She sat at its edge, very upright as though at a piano, and I remembered that she had been Wolfgang's student.

"The Stein. It's a beautiful instrument," I said.

"When I started my lessons with Wolfgang, he commented to my husband on the quality of Stein's pianos. My Franz insisted on purchasing one, though I told him it was too great an expense. It cost him three hundred gulden. That's how he was, my Franz. Generous, loving. He was the best of husbands before-all this."

Magdalena drew a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and touched it to her eyes. As she did so, she lowered the fan from her face and I noticed that she had been pretty, even beautiful, before her suicidal husband attacked her. Her brow was a little high, but her hair rolled away from it in brown ringlets. Her eyes were hazel and soft. She held her full, lower lip between teeth of such whiteness that I imagined they must be enchanting when exposed in a smile.

"Franz would sit where we are now and listen all night as I played the piano," she said. "I had some hopes of a concert career. But that's all at an end now."

I twitched a smile, as though someone had pinched the back of my hand. I had come to her because I wished to know the part her husband might have played in my brother's death. Now that I sat beside her, I could think of no way to approach the subject that wouldn't be like another cut to the skin of her damaged face.

I cleared my throat and looked for another way to approach her. "Did Wolfgang intend to perform with you?"

"With most of his pupils he did. He wasn't concerned with teaching young ladies to amuse their husbands' dinner guests. He wanted to bring us out before the public."

"So he was training you for that?"

"It's in my blood, after all. My father was the music master at St. Peter's Church in Brunn." She touched the back of her thumbnail to her lip. "But Franz wasn't interested in me performing."

"Yet he wanted you to have a fine piano, to take lessons with a great composer."

"Only so that I could play at soirees here in our home. Franz didn't pick Wolfgang for the social cachet of a famous teacher. He arranged for me to study with your brother because they already had a-a connection."

The Masons again, I thought. "Of what nature?"

The fan rose above her chin again and her eyes were wary. "They had business ties. Franz lent money to Wolfgang."

I recalled Constanze's talk of my brother's financial problems. "A loan? For what?"

"A trip Wolfgang made to Berlin. About two years ago. There was a position for him at the court of the Prussian king, but he returned disappointed."

Disappointed and indebted, I thought. "My sister-in-law reorganized Wolfgang's finances this last summer, I gather. Did he repay Franz then?"

"I believe not." Magdalena dropped her eyes behind the fan and sobbed. Her chest trembled, lifting and stretching her scars. "It's so dreadful, madame."

I blushed to consider it, but I imagined Wolfgang alone in Vienna with this sweet woman while his pregnant wife hobbled into the hot springs at Baden on her bad foot. It seemed quite possible that the teacher could've fallen into sin with his pupil and that, in turn, the wronged husband had taken his revenge.

"Why did-?"

The door opened. Magdalena's maid brought us each a cup of hot red wine. I inhaled the scent of cinnamon and cloves, listening to the maid shuffle back to the kitchen. I sipped the gluhwein before I spoke again, but I still found it hard to ask my question.

"Why did your husband- What reason had he to hurt you?"

"Must a man have a reason to hurt his wife?" Bitterness took over Magdalena's eyes.

"What spurred him?"

She closed her fan with a snap. The marks about her eyes and brow were little more than scratches compared to the parallel gashes I saw now across her neck. They were so deep they had been sewn. She ran her finger above the stiff, black st.i.tches.

I flinched.

"He didn't try to hurt me. He aimed to kill me." Her tears made the scars on her face damp and bright, as though they bled once more. "Franz believed he had slit my throat and that I would die. Only then did he do the same for himself. I watched him pull open his collar to ready himself. Hate in his eyes, where I had been used to such love. As though he detested me above all creatures in the world. Then he pulled his razor across his throat and I saw that it was himself that he hated most, and only then me."

Despite myself, I returned to the notion of Franz Hofdemel as a betrayed husband. What other reason could he have had for such butchery?

"I pleaded with Franz, begged for the sake of his soul," she said. "I told him that he'd go to h.e.l.l. Not, you understand, because I wished to chastise him. It was only that I feared for the immortal spirit of the man I loved."

"Even as he tried to murder you?"

"Even then."

"Didn't he fear h.e.l.l?"

"He said h.e.l.l was full of the foolishness he had committed before he gained wisdom, and neither I nor Satan could force him to live that way again." Magdalena slouched forward.

I touched her wrist. It was hard, like bone, as though she had willed her skin to such a thickness that it might never again be cut.

"I feel so guilty, Madame de Mozart. So very guilty." She sniffled into her handkerchief. "Don't think badly of my Franz. Though I never would've intended it, I'm sure I drove him to this."

"Did you? Did you really?"

She swallowed hard and tried to make her expression bright. "Wolfgang often spoke of your skill at the piano. He used to tell me that if I worked very hard I might be almost as good as you. Would you play for me? Something by your brother."

"He spoke of me?"

"Do play. It soothes me to listen to a fine pianist."

Until I played the opening triad, I hadn't known that I would give her Wolfgang's Adagio in B Minor. The piece ran through my fingers without any thought. Instantly I parted from the company of the woman with the scarred face. Instead, I was with Wolfgang. I became calm, savoring the symmetry of the music, even as I sensed the tension my brother had injected with its unexpected key transitions.

More tears lay on Magdalena's face. But they seemed now to be drawn from some happy recollection. She smiled at me.

As I reached the coda and the piece turned to B major, the door opened. A woman several years younger than me stood there in a thick fur, her hand supported by a squat, swarthy maid. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, the pupils swinging up into her skull, so that only the whites were visible.

I hesitated, and the blind woman sensed it. She rotated her hand, gesturing for me to continue. When she removed her fur hat and thrust it at the maid, I recognized her as Maria Theresia von Paradies, a virtuoso of the piano who had visited our family in Salzburg while on her way to perform in London and Paris.

Paradies listened to the silence after the final notes. Her nose lifted as though savoring the scent of the music. She shrugged her coat off her shoulders for Magdalena's house girl to catch. She turned her body toward the sofa, and the dark maid pulled her to Magdalena.

"My dear." Paradies leaned close to Magdalena and glided her fingers over the scars on the woman's neck. "Better?"

"Much better."

The maid stomped to the other side of the room and leaned against the window frame, staring into the evening darkness.

Magdalena took Paradies's arm and guided her onto the sofa beside her. "How did you know it was I who sat here on the sofa?" she said.

"Little one, there were two people breathing in this room when I entered. The one playing the piano was-I'm sorry to tell you-evidently not you." Paradies rubbed Magdalena's forearm. "Who's our performer?"

"It's Wolfgang's sister."

Paradies held out her hand until I grasped it. "It's been a long time," she said.

"Eight years," I replied.

"I've played hundreds of concerts since then and written a few operas. What've you been doing?"

I would've withdrawn my hand, but I knew better than to struggle against the powerful fingers of another pianist. "I married a district prefect. I live some way from Salzburg."

"It's clear that you continue to practice hard. You haven't lost your talent."

"You're too kind."

"But a concerto is no easy thing."

Her tone was sharp. I saw that Paradies was offended Stadler hadn't chosen her as the soloist for the benefit concert at the Academy. So here, I thought, was one person who'd be willing me to fail when I played Wolfgang's concerto.

"Quite. No easy thing," I said.

"Still, it's easier than sitting down to write a simple letter to one's younger brother, apparently. One's only living relative."

Magdalena pulled at Paradies's skirt. "Theresia," she whispered.

Wolfgang, it seemed, had known these women with enough intimacy to have complained to them about me. After our father's death, there had been financial disputes. But more than that had come between us. Perhaps both of us had been cut adrift when Papa went, the commanding polestar of our lives was eclipsed. Certainly my emotions had spun in all directions. For some time I had thought only of my own loss. I had been unaware of the feelings of others.

"You're quite correct, Fraulein von Paradies," I said. "A concerto is difficult, but not impossible."

She let go of my hand. I sat in an upright chair beside the sofa.

"I've learned sixty concertos by heart," Paradies said, "but I'd forget them all before I would neglect one of Wolfgang's."

I was silent.

"What do you say to that?" She raised her voice.

"I agree," I said. "I'd consider it a dreadful burden to have neglected anything of Wolfgang's."

Paradies's eyeb.a.l.l.s twitched. "I shall be content to play one of his sonatas tomorrow night at the Academy." She lifted her hand to her powdered hair. It stood high, combed loosely back to her neck. "I remember telling your father he ought to send you to Vienna."

"Did you?"

"You played during my visit to Salzburg. I was struck by your technique."

I recalled that time well. My thirty-second birthday. Wolfgang had bought me ices in the afternoon after target shooting near the Mirabell Gate and served me punch in the evening. But he had been visiting with his new bride, while I was losing hope that I'd ever be wed. I had resented his cheeriness and pretended to choke on the ices. I didn't remember that I had played so well for Paradies, but I bowed in acknowledgment. "Thank you for this compliment."

"Your father didn't thank me. He said his daughter had no interest in travel or performance."

I pressed my thumbs against each other. My father had decided everything for me, just as he had attempted to do for Wolfgang. But he was long gone.

"Well, now you're here in Vienna, after all," Paradies said. "And with a major performance tomorrow."

I spoke softly. "Here I am."

Chapter 7.

On Jews' Square, lawyers and pet.i.tioners headed for the ma.s.sive Court Chancellery, where Magdalena Hofdemel's husband had worked. Its pink stone glistened in the morning rain like that poor woman's wounded skin. I crossed the square toward the private houses on its southern side.

A clarinet played somewhere before me. An aria of Wolfgang's composition. My brother had written the piece to showcase the virtuosity of his friend Stadler on the ba.s.s clarinet. As I listened, the melody dropped below the E at the bottom of the range of most clarinets, down to a low C.

The tone of the instrument was like the song of an enormous, magical bird. I followed the clarinet to a narrow house and up the stairs.

Stadler answered my knock himself. He wore a brown waistcoat and a rough blanket across his shoulders. He held his ba.s.s clarinet in one hand. His finger was still depressed on the key of the last note he had played.

He edged backward, hesitating to invite me inside but unable to turn me away.

"Guten Morgen, Herr Stadler." I pa.s.sed him, unlacing the neck of my cloak.

"You'd better keep it on," he mumbled.

I tipped my head. "Do you mean for me to leave, sir?"

"You're welcome, of course. I didn't intend to sound ungracious," he said. "It's a bit cold in here, I mean. The maid was too sick to come the last few days. I've had no fire and-"

"Never mind. We have work to do."

He shut the door, leaning against it and pus.h.i.+ng home the bolt, as though he was afraid someone might burst into his rooms behind me.

"Did you forget our rehearsal? For my performance for tonight," I said. "The concerto?"

"No, of course not. The C major."

I smiled. "Where shall we-?"

"I keep a clavichord in the studio. Please."

He led me to a high-ceilinged room overlooking the Court Chancellery. The walls were painted to resemble white marble.