CHAPTER 4

Cold ham and boiled potatoes. And a bit of blood sausage and cheese. That was all there was. Toby and I sat in the parlor eating with our hands. I couldn’t bear the thought of putting the food on the dining table just yet, even though Greta had scrubbed it thoroughly.

“Who will teach me my letters?” Toby asked. A bit of food dropped out of his mouth onto his lap.

I noticed that his knees looked bony through his breeches, and he had not buckled his shoes. His feet were already too big for his little body, just like Prince Nicholas’s wolfhound puppies. Toby was going to be tall, like Papa. “I will,” I answered. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and was too tired to scold him for being so messy.

The corners of his mouth puckered slightly, as they did when he used to cry as a baby. “Will Mama get up tomorrow?”

“She’ll get up when she’s well. Soon.” I knew I wasn’t doing a very good job of reassuring him. I truly did not want him to cry. Usually I could stop him by making a funny face or taking his attention away from what ever it was—a bee sting, once, in the country, or the time he had worked for weeks building a tiny, wooden table and chairs and Greta had stepped on them when he arranged them on the floor to show me.

“I think I’ll go fix that sailboat,” he said.

I nodded. It was our secret signal, or at least, his half of it. “I’m going to fix the sailboat” meant that he wanted to be alone for a while. If I said, “I’m going to write to cousin Regina,” then he knew not to disturb me. We had devised the system when he’d walked in on me nearly naked in the room we shared in Esterhaza, about a year before. I don’t know which of us had been more embarrassed. Toby wasn’t much like other boys I knew who were his age. The sons of the prince’s cooks were always sneaking around trying to pull the laces that held my skirts on. Toby played with the boys, but reluctantly. He usually ended up bruised and crying. Sometimes I wished he was a little more like them so that he would just run off and play and leave me to myself. But now, I was glad he was there, even when we didn’t say anything.

Toby turned before he left the room, his small child’s hand on the doorjamb. “You’re going to try to find out what happened to Papa, aren’t you,” he said, a statement instead of a question.

I didn’t say anything. How could I? He turned away and closed the door behind him.

Right now, I had to make sure we could survive, at least until I figured out something else to do. I braced myself to go in to see my mother, who as far as I knew had not uttered a coherent sentence from the moment she had collapsed the night they brought my father’s body home. Greta could do little else but tend to her. Mama was due to have the baby any day. I remembered her losing two other babies not long after calling us together to inform us that we would have a new sister or brother. Papa tried to tell us that we wouldn’t after all, but he couldn’t. Mama was stronger that way. She had wept and wept, but managed to squeeze out the words. It happened all the time, she said. God didn’t always want his little ones to suffer on earth, and took them directly to heaven instead.

I didn’t really mind so much, and I think Toby cried mainly because Mama was crying. It was hard to imagine a baby before it was born, and our apartment is small and I could not see how we would all fit anyway. Now, the thought of a baby that might look more like my father than Toby does, to remind me of him—I wasn’t sure whether that made me happy or sad.

I ate what I could, then knocked on Mama’s bedroom door.

“Come,” Greta called.

“I’ll sit with her,” I said, leaving the door open behind me. “See if you can persuade Toby to eat some more. He’s gone to his room.” Greta clearly didn’t want to leave Mama, but I was beginning to build up a mountain of questions, and some of them I wanted only my mother to hear. If she could hear them, that is.

My mother’s face was pale, but her eyes were open and she stared at the ceiling. On the table by her bed Herr Morgen had left a beaker of greenish liquid and a packet of powder. The black-letter script on it said laudanum. I didn’t know much about doctoring, but I knew that laudanum made people sleepy. I was surprised she was not fast asleep. “Mutter,” I said, perching on a stool next to her and whispering close to her ear. “Have we got any money?”

I know she heard me because she turned her head in my direction and smiled. I waited a bit, thinking she would answer, but she did not open her mouth.

“I need to know, Mama. Toby is to start his apprenticeship after Epiphany, and I must pay Herr Goldschmidt, the luthier.”

Without the slightest indication that she understood what I had said, Mama turned her head slowly back so that she once more stared up at the ceiling. I found myself looking up to see what she was watching there, but it was nothing more unusual than a tiny spider hard at work on a web.

“Mama, have you ever seen this before?” I drew the medallion out of its hiding place inside my bodice and dangled it before her. This time she did not look in my direction. I picked up her hand, which was smooth and cool. It lay in mine like something inanimate, a glove, there for ornament rather than use. I placed the medallion in her palm. She did not close her hand around it. Clearly there was no point in talking to her now. She had gone somewhere else. Her face looked serene. The faint lines that had begun to show had smoothed out and she appeared younger. Although she had passed her first youth, Mama was still very pretty, with large blue eyes and long lashes. And when she smiled, her whole face glowed. She had not gotten fat, just a little plump, and looked very elegant when she was all dressed to attend one of Papa’s concerts. Now, though, her big belly raised the blankets, and as I watched, I saw the lump shift slightly. The baby was still alive at least. If Mama did not eat, that state of affairs might not last long.

I placed her hand back on top of the coverlet and crept out of the room. Toby’s plate was cleared away, so I assumed Greta had taken it down to the kitchen we shared with the other people in the building. Although Greta cooked our simplest meals on the stove in the dining room and we had our own pantry, the kitchen was where the water pump was located. And the cooks and kitchen maids from the other apartments spent many hours there peeling potatoes and turnips and gossiping. I could only imagine what they were saying about Papa. Perhaps I should ask them if they knew something—anything—that might explain why someone had murdered one of the kindest men in Vienna, who had never harmed anyone, as far as I knew.

I took a candle and passed through the dining room to my own small nook. Normally I was happy to be in Vienna instead of at the prince’s court in Esterhaza. In Vienna we had this apartment, a real home with furniture that belonged to us. In the prince’s palace, we had two rooms, with an extra little alcove for Greta. Toby and I had to sleep in the same bed there. It wasn’t so bad when he was small, but now that he was older, he flailed his arms and took up all the space. He had nightmares, too, and sometimes woke up crying. And just this past summer I had started to bleed. Papa had said he would make Toby his own cot. I did not want to be sharing a bed with my brother when I was already a woman.

In Esterhaza, we ate in the servants’ hall. It was grand enough, and the food was much better than Greta’s stews. Sometimes we had parties, at holidays and on the prince’s birthday, and would be served boar’s head and pheasant and everything the fine folks ate. Afterward, there was always music. I liked it best when we were allowed to sit in the corner of the private music room, while Haydn, my father, Zoltán, and the principal cellist, Herr Schnabl, played string quartets. There were usually only a few guests, and the playing would go on until very late at night. Toby sometimes fell asleep. I’d have to half carry, half drag him back to bed while my father was still playing. I’d go to sleep with the beautiful music ringing in my ears, and often I would dream about it all night. But still I preferred home.

My room was small—Papa had carved two spaces out of a single one when we first moved in, so that there could at least be a thin wall between me and Toby. My part was just big enough for the bed with a chest for my clothes at its foot, and a table and stool so I could write. On the table lay the plain, wooden case that held my viola. Mr. Goldschmidt had made the viola for Papa many years ago, when he had to double up during a lean time for the prince. He was paid extra for playing both instruments, and I remember how happy Mama was. Now the court was wealthy, so he earned—or rather he used to earn—just the violinist’s stipend. He preferred to play the violin. I, too, would have preferred the violin, but the viola was better than nothing, and it was my own. I was determined one day to make music as my father did.

I knew I was a good student. I had planned to continue being one. I practiced whenever I could, which was whenever I had no other chores and when Mama was either not at home or too busy to notice and complain. “Playing the viola will not get her a husband, and she cannot work for her keep,” she said so often I could hear her voice repeating it now. “At least, no daughter of mine will ever work. There is her dowry, you know. Her uncle Theobald will see that she gets it when the time comes.”

I thought about Uncle Theobald as I unlaced my gown and let my skirt with its bone hoops drop to the floor. He lived in a grand house in the Graben, near Stephansplatz. I didn’t remember ever being inside it, but in the evening whenever we happened to pass by it, I could tell that the rooms were very large because the windows were tall and wide.

I shivered. My chamber was too small for a stove, and in any case the one in the parlor had been left to go out by now. I pulled a shawl off my bed and tied it around my waist, then took another and tied it across my shoulders. I wanted to think a little before I went to sleep, and I was afraid if I lay down, fatigue would claim me instantly.

Just a year ago I had started to wear stays. Mama noticed that my breasts had begun to bulge. Now, I felt naked without the boning that held me tight. My breasts weren’t much—still not enough to mound out over the top of my bodice—but like this, in my chemise, I could see them quite clearly. Standing in the near dark wearing loose clothes, I felt as free as one of the Gypsies who wandered the countryside near Esterhaza.

I had once heard a Gypsy man play the violin. It was at carnival, when traveling players sometimes came to court. Puppeteers and acrobats, clowns and dancers all gathered to try to get a bit of money from the prince. There was a masked ball, and Toby and I and the other musicians’ children had been allowed to creep into the stairwell and see the grand ladies and gentlemen in their costumes.

Some of the costumes were magnificent, all covered with jewels that caught the light of thousands of candles. Others were just funny. Two nobles had dressed like bears, clearly having used the same tailor to make their garments. They walked up to each other as if approaching a mirror, then turned with the same shrug and walked away, which only made the impression that they had stopped at an invisible looking glass all the more vivid.

But everyone stepped back and cleared a path for a scruffy, dirty man in bare feet, wearing a bright yellow waistcoat trimmed in bits of lace that had been salvaged from other garments and carrying a violin, who had somehow managed to gain access to the ballroom. He walked right down the middle of the floor toward the prince with his head held high, a proud smile on his face. His teeth were beautiful and white in his dark skin. He made a low, courtly bow to Prince Paul Anton (the father of the one Papa had worked for), then without asking permission, began to play.

The violin he put to his shoulder was very fine. I could see that even from where I stood. And the music he drew from it sounded like angels weeping. He played a simple folk melody, but with such passion that everyone in the ballroom attended to him. When he finished, the prince begged to hear more, but the Gypsy shook his head, bowed, and left. I could not take my eyes away from him, wondering if his face was dark because it was dirty or because his skin was naturally that color. He would have walked right away without even one Gulden had the prince’s steward not rushed up to him with a velvet bag of coins.

I was tired from the events of the last few days, but thoughts and memories kept flooding my mind. I approached my viola and rested both my hands lightly atop the rough wooden case. I had not opened it since the day before Papa died. I let my fingers trail over the now splitting edges to the latches that held it closed. I opened first one, then the other, and lifted the lid. The viola was wrapped in linen cloths, hidden out of sight, but the bow lay temptingly on top. I picked it up, turning the screw on the end to tighten the horse hairs. From there it was natural to take the crumbling block of resin, hold the bow with the frog toward me, and run the resin up and down until the hairs were evenly covered. It had taken me a while to learn how much to use. Without it, the hairs would not grip the strings and the sound would be faint. Once I had finished, I replaced the resin and teased the protective cloths away from the viola so that it was exposed, like a baby in a cradle.

At first I did not want to lift it. Instead I crooked my finger under the D string above the bridge and plucked it. Not quite a D, of course. It needed tuning. But it was late, and I would disturb my mother if I took up the viola to tune and then play.

Then I realized that Mama was in a state where nothing would disturb her, and Toby was deep in his sound sleep. Before I could change my mind, I grasped the instrument by the neck and raised it out of its cloth nest, settling it in the crook of my left arm, just below my shoulder. The viola was almost too big for me, and my arm was close to straight when I reached for the tuning pins. I started with the lowest, the C string, the one the violin didn’t have, and worked my way up to the sweet A. I longed to have that higher string, the E, to play the most pungent notes, but the viola has a melancholy quality of its own that the violin cannot match. Papa used to say that a violist has to be stronger and gentler than a violinist, and that once you master the viola, the violin is easy. But I think he just said that so I wouldn’t yearn so for a violin.

Violin or viola, playing is not easy. But I love to do it more than anything in the world. I cannot imagine my life without the sensation of holding a delicate, living piece of hollowed-out wood strung with catgut in one hand, and drawing a perfectly balanced bow across the strings with the other. The viola, resting just below my throat and against my upper arm, becomes my other, deeper voice.

I closed my eyes, at first only thinking the sounds, but soon I knew my hands and arms had taken up the melody inside me and made it spill out to fill the room. When I play, everything except the music disappears. That night, until the candle started to sputter, there was no Papa in his grave, no Mama so sick she was insensible, no money lacking—and no missing violin.

But playing the viola forever would be like diving under water and never coming up again. I was not ready to bid the world farewell, and so when my left arm became tired, I laid the viola down, wrapped it up well, placed the bow on top of it, and latched the case closed. Whether I wanted to or not, I had to think, or what was left of our world would crash around our ears.

Before I took off my shawls and climbed between the sheets, I opened the pouch Godfather Haydn had given me in the café. Five silver Thaler spilled out into my hand. It was a great deal of money, perhaps more than my father had received from the prince as a Christmas gift. Why did Haydn make this gesture? How would I ever repay him? For I was certain that Papa had received his bonus along with everyone else, and that his murderer had stolen it—or if not his murderer, then some waiting vagrant, a scavenger. Yet if the money had been stolen, and the violin as well, why not the gold medallion, which now hung around my neck like a burden?

Someone must know something. There was nothing to be done about it that night, though. I turned my thoughts to what I should do in the morning to begin finding out what had really happened on Christmas Eve. All Zoltán had said was that Papa had left his friends in the tavern, a little drunk but still in possession of his wits. He had said he was going home—or so Zoltán told me. He didn’t look in my eyes when he said it. Maybe Zoltán was lying. But why would he? It did not make sense.

And then there was the matter of our daily life. I would have to talk to Greta and ask her to tell me what credit we had with the grocer and the butcher. I would visit Uncle Theobald and beg him for my dowry early. I did not care if I never married. After that, I would go to the prince’s palace and wait for Zoltán to finish his rehearsal, so that he would take me to the place where they had discovered Papa. Once I’d done all that, I couldn’t begin to imagine what would happen next.