Mozart's Last Aria Part 24

"My father was alone. I couldn't leave him in Salzburg."

Swieten's voice was impatient, as though I were denying him, rather than denied to him. "For heaven's sake, that's what servants are for."

I whispered, "And daughters, it seems."

He took a long breath. "So it seems."

"Wolfgang always understood me. He wasn't enc.u.mbered by my duties, so he saw what was best for me more clearly than I did."

The baron grasped my hip as though he feared I might slip away from him and leave the room.

"I didn't realize how much I missed him, until I came to Vienna," I said. "In the mountains, without any letters for three years, I consoled myself for his absence by playing his music. It was all I could know of him, and so it seemed to be enough. But in this city he wasn't just a name on a composition. He was a performer, a man who ate dinner and played billiards and loved his wife, and died. Everyone was his friend-or his enemy."

"Do you regret coming?"

I heard a plea in the baron's question. I smiled to rea.s.sure him. "All my memories of Wolfgang have been reawakened by Vienna. The magic kingdom we invented to pa.s.s the time on our first coach journeys when I was twelve. The room we shared in our house on Getreide Lane-my bed had a curtain for privacy, which he little respected. The time I became sick with typhoid in Holland and was so ill I received the last rites. Wolfgang joked that I might've remained a prodigy forever if only I hadn't recovered."

"G.o.d forbid."

I laid Swieten's hand in my lap. "I recall, too, how he looked at me when Papa left with him for a tour of Italy, his excitement edged with just a little guilt that I was to be left behind. I hated him desperately and went to bed in tears for a week."

"Yet he wanted you to come to Vienna."

"It was our father who created this antagonism between us." I had to pause, to hold back a sob and to understand what I had at last said, though I had known it for so long. "Wolfgang only wished to compose and perform. But when he broke away from Papa, he wanted me with him. He wanted me to fulfill my musical potential, too. To be at his side when he wore his fine red suit and sat at the piano before an audience."

"Our loss when Wolfgang died would've been much harder to bear had we not discovered you."

An image came to me-I was beside Wolfgang on the piano stool, playing his Sonata in D for four hands. He wrote it for us to perform together at a single keyboard. His red sleeve crossed my left hand to play a higher note.

"I'm a poor replacement, Gottfried," I murmured, distracted.

Swieten dropped his eyes when I spoke his first name.

The four-hands sonata came to a close in my head. Wolfgang and I played the final chord and lifted our arms in unison.

As sharply as the chord brought the piece to an end, I snapped upright on the divan. "But I'm not," I cried out. "Not inferior at all. In fact, exactly alike."

I grabbed Swieten's face and kissed it. In spite of his usual formality, he laughed. "What's this?" he said.

I threw my arms wide. "Tomorrow Mozart shall perform for the emperor."

"Indeed?"

"You shall arrange it."

"As you wish, maestro. What'll you play?"

"I don't know yet. But I do know exactly what I'll wear."

Chapter 33.

From the window of the baron's carriage, I peered out at the maidservants walking to their work in gray shawls and white bonnets. Their faces were luminous and beautiful in the dawn. The clouds that had obscured the sky since my arrival in Vienna lifted. The morning sun lit the facades of the palaces, picking out all their elaborate detail.

The carriage crossed the Staff-in-Iron Square, rounding the stump at the center of the plaza where the apprentice had once chained an impregnable padlock. Satan claimed the young craftsman's soul in payment for this secret art. I reclined on the padded bench, shuddering across the cobbles, and smiled.

I knew then what I would play for the emperor.

Lenerl was on her knees preparing the fire in my room. She raised an eyebrow at my late arrival. I laughed with a freedom that, I believe, surprised her even more than the hour of my return.

Throwing my cloak on the bed, I dropped against the bolster. "Leave the fire for now, girl. Go to Baron van Swieten's chambers. He'll have a package for you to bring to me."

Lenerl dusted off the knees of her skirt.

"Hurry, girl, hurry," I said, with a laugh.

She smiled at my good humor, took her shawl, and left the room. I listened to her clogs clipping over the cobbles in the square.

The scent of jasmine lay on my clothes from Swieten's embrace. Wolfgang's perfume. I went to the mirror on the dressing table.

I untied my hair and combed it down over my shoulder. It dropped almost to my waist. I twisted it into a single braid and gripped it in one hand. I picked up a pair of scissors.

Long and blond, always tied with colorful ribbons, this hair had been my pride. It had consumed so much of my attention that perhaps I had sometimes failed to consider what went on inside the head from which it hung. I lifted the scissors and cut with slow strokes.

As I laid the braid on the dressing table, my head felt light.

I pulled my remaining hair back to my neck and tied it with a single black ribbon. I was him again, as I had been when I stood before the mirror in St. Gilgen with the letter in my hand informing me of his pa.s.sing. This wasn't the death mask reflecting his final sufferings back at me. In the gla.s.s, I saw all the creativity and joy I shared with Wolfgang. One stroke of the scissors freed me of the weight of womanhood. No one would've commanded this face to renounce such talent as I had, to tend an aging father and marry a bureaucrat in a tiny village. This face might enter the palace. This face might walk beside Baron van Swieten and greet the emperor.

I smiled at the mirror. "Maestro," I said.

Lenerl returned with the package, opened it, and laid out the contents on the bed. She gasped when she noticed the length of hair on the dressing table.

I ran my hand across Wolfgang's red frock coat. One of his hairs adhered to the shoulder. I left it there. I turned over his hat and saw the traces of his sweat where it had stained the band. The inseam of his scarlet pants was worn from the motion of his legs. The suit was alive with my brother.

"Undress me, Lenerl."

Chapter 34.

In the barroom, the innkeeper whistled a tune from Wolfgang's Figaro.

Lenerl crept to the foot of the stairs. She held up her hand for me to wait. "Joachim," she called, "let me have a bottle of your delicious Steinfeder."

"An early lunch, Lenerl?" he said. "I'll bring it up from the cellar for you right away, my dear." He descended the steps to his bas.e.m.e.nt, singing. "If you want to dance, Little Count, I'll play the guitar for you."

Lenerl gestured for me to hurry. I trotted past her, out to the baron's carriage.

I climbed inside. "How do I look?" I removed my hat and set it on the seat beside me.

Swieten rested his chin on the silver k.n.o.b of his cane, shaking his head. "You look like-like Wolfgang." He reached over and touched the blond hair knotted at the nape of my neck.

I opened my hand. In my palm, tied with a thin ribbon, lay a lock of the hair I had cut away. "Wolfgang used to wear his hair long for a man, but I still had to hack off quite a lot. It seems a shame that it should be used only to stuff a pillow."

The baron put the lock to his lips and slipped it into the pocket of his vest.

I rubbed at my red breeches and slapped my thighs. "I don't know how you gentlemen wear such trousers. They chafe terribly."

"We're excused whale-bone corsets and stays designed to lift our b.r.e.a.s.t.s. We don't suffer as much as women, despite the restriction imposed by our leg wear. How does the hat fit?"

I pushed the three-cornered black hat with its gold trim onto my head.

Swieten adjusted it. "Wear it like this, a little to the side. Otherwise it sits too low on your brow." He sat back to take me in. "It's remarkable, remarkable."

"Did my sister-in-law suspect anything?"

He shook his head. "I insisted that I wished to buy Wolfgang's suit for my own use. Constanze knew this to be ridiculous. I'm more than a head taller than he was. The suit would never fit me. She took my purchase for a donation to my friend's widow which I disguised to preserve her dignity."

"And the emperor?"

"We'll await his pleasure shortly. He was reluctant at first."

"How did you convince him?"

"I told him that if he went along with our plan he'd discover something that'd truly astound him. He agreed. But he warned me that-" He halted and grimaced.

"What?"

"That if things don't work out as I told him they would, my position at court shall be forfeit."

"No, Gottfried." I reached for his hand.

"Don't fret about it. The emperor has given his agreement. He wishes to see evidence of the crime about which I spoke to him. It's up to us to provide it."

"And our most important invitee?"

"The emperor has commanded his attendance. He'll be there."

The coach went under the archway of the imperial ballrooms and pulled up in the Swiss Courtyard at the steps to the oldest part of the Hofburg. When the footman opened the door to the carriage, Swieten descended and held out his hand to me. I shook my head. "No need to be chivalrous now," I said.

He pulled his mouth tight at his error.

Schikaneder came through the ornate Swiss Gate and bowed to the baron. I reached up to slap his shoulder.

"Emanuel, old fellow, thank you for coming," I said.

If he flinched, it was only a flicker deep in his eyes. After his lifetime of dissembling, I could count on the actor not to give me away. He inclined his head. "Lead on, my dear sirs," he said.

We entered a staircase of white marble. A scarlet carpet covered the steps. The three of us went side by side up the long flight, each doubtless carrying a private dread. No matter how much of the spirit of my brother I had absorbed with his clothing, I waited for the palace guards to step forward and unmask me.

The chamberlain led us through the palace. Its corridors seemed measureless. The ma.s.sive building represented sovereignty, as though no smaller palace could house the immense prestige of the emperor. But authority is never infinite. If it were, Pergen and his secret agents would be of no use. The greater a power, the more it advertises its tiny weaknesses.

I listened to the reverent murmur of our feet on the carpet. The whisper of distant doors. Clocks ticking in closed rooms as if they were the very pulse of the palace. Underlying it all, a silence like waiting itself, so that I wanted to stop at every keyhole to see who crouched behind it.

Wolfgang's clothes were comfortable now that I was accustomed to them. I followed the baron's step, matching my breathing to his steady rhythm. He caught my glance and winked.

The chamberlain showed us into a small concert salon. Its wall panels were carved with sh.e.l.ls and cl.u.s.ters of leaves. A piano stood before a semicircle of chairs. Mute and still, it beckoned to me.

The piano was a Stein, like the one in Wolfgang's study. I laid my hat on top of it, and played an arpeggio. As the notes trailed into silence, I heard people approaching. The chamberlain bowed in readiness. Swieten stiffened.

The emperor swept into the chamber with a group of courtiers behind him. Tall and pouchy-eyed, he wore a short wig and an autumnal velvet suit that matched the rosewood on the walls. Across his chest he had a red sash.

Swieten bowed low, his arm stretching gracefully to his side. "Your Majesty," he said.

Schikaneder threw himself into a hurried bow.

I would've curtsied had Swieten not caught my eye in time. My bow was all the more formal because it was the first time I had practiced one.

"Herr Mozart," the emperor said.

I flushed, nervous now the deception was under way. Leopold ran his tongue over his teeth, watching me.

I hoped Swieten had briefed the emperor correctly. I coughed to disguise my voice. "Your Majesty." I prayed that I'd be required to speak no further-it would surely reveal me to be a woman.

The emperor took one of the chairs before the piano. The men who accompanied him went to their seats, too.

Except for one.

Count Pergen stood at the center of the room, staring at me. I saw the shock and indecision in his pale eyes. Usually so shrewd, they were gleaming and wide.

Swieten took the police minister's elbow. He shoved him to a chair tapestried with peasants dancing at a spring festival. Pergen dropped into it, his mouth falling open.

The emperor blinked slowly so that we knew it was his pleasure for us to begin.

Gathering myself, I played the melodious Allegro of Wolfgang's most difficult sonata, the F major. He had composed it during his visit to Salzburg with his new bride. I recalled the coldness I had shown Constanze then. I knew it had hurt my brother. I sensed his suffering in the music.