CHAPTER 8

Where have you been! Your mother is so worried!”

Greta’s bulk blocked my way into the apartment. All I wanted to do was lie down on my bed, close my eyes, and think, but clearly this would be impossible.

“Theresa Maria! Is that you? Mach Schnell! Come here this instant!”

Ever since I understood that I had been named after the empress of Austria, I had felt as if I carried a burden, as though I was expected somehow to be a humble version of the virtuous Maria Theresa, with her widow’s weeds and sixteen children. My full name called out from anywhere was a certain sign that punishment was to come because I had done something wrong—not completed my chores, been unkind to my brother, spent too many hours practicing the viola when I should have been sewing—something that made me unworthy of that name, and so the sound of it filled me with dread.

Yet hearing my mother call for me now was a relief. Never again would I be annoyed about it. Mama was sensible again. She had recovered. She would be her same, dear self, with all her worrying and fretting over nothing. I ran directly in to see her, desperate to talk to her about everything I’d been through in the past few days.

Toby sat in the corner of her bedroom with his slate on his knee. I saw that he had been working on a sum for a while—the edges of the slate were filled with doodlings of trees and flowers. Our mother sat up in bed, her eyes open wide and shining. Her pretty face was pale and she seemed thinner. I could see hollows below her cheekbones instead of the plump, rosy cheeks I remembered. When I kissed her, she still felt a trifle feverish.

“Why did you behave so badly? You know Uncle Theobald will not give you your dowry unless you are a good girl. And where is the money from your papa? He should have brought home his Christmas present from the prince. But Greta has solved that, and Toby will go to Herr Goldschmidt in a week.”

I couldn’t tell whether she expected me to answer her questions or not. I decided I’d best just try to calm her first. “Mama, I’m so glad you’re well now. As is Toby. You know about Papa, of course, but he is safe with the angels now.”

I instantly regretted mentioning Papa. A line appeared on Mama’s forehead between her deep blue eyes, and she looked at me with such yearning I had to turn away. “Yes,” she said, “Greta told me, but I didn’t want to believe it. What shall we do?”

She understands. I was so relieved. “Kapellmeister Haydn is helping us. We won’t starve.”

“What can the maestro do? It was your papa who worked for him. I always told him he must take some measures to secure our future, get the prince to grant him an annuity, or a widow’s jointure for me. Otherwise we would be helpless without him. We must get you married. Your dowry is our only hope.”

I forced myself not to sound as cross as I felt. She could not know everything I did. “My godfather has every intention of being as helpful as he is able. And I don’t think that getting me married would solve our difficulties. Anyway, I went to visit Uncle Theobald.” I took hold of her hands. “I did not see him, but I saw enough to believe he will not take kindly to being asked for money. He’s a very great man now.”

A little of the fire of shrewdness she always possessed lit my mother’s eyes. “All the more reason for him to help us. He is still my brother. What’s necessary is simply that we find someone suitable for you. Greta has asked the matchmaker to come to visit me. I expect her tomorrow morning.”

“But, Mama—”

“Greta said you’d been willful while I have been ill. It’s unbecoming.” She reached out her hand to stroke the side of my face. She smiled, softening the reproach in her words. “You must return to your needlework and be a good girl. No man wants a wife who cannot keep house and is disobedient.”

I knew my mother did not mean what she said unkindly. We were her principal concern in life, and she’d never done anything to harm us. But I seethed at Greta’s treachery. How could she tell my mother such tales! If it were not for me, we might be unable to continue as we were, even for a little while. I was about to inform Mama of everything, of Haydn’s agreement to hire me as an assistant so that we could still receive our money from the prince, when Greta walked in.

“Herr Goldschmidt sent his lad with this.”

She handed Mama a piece of paper, folded but not sealed. Mama opened it and read. “Thank you, Greta,” Mama said, nodding in a way that sent the cook reluctantly out of the room. “You see, Liebchen, all is arranged. You must not take it too badly. I only did it because I knew it was for the best.” She gave the paper to me.

I read it through three times before I allowed myself to believe what it said. Mama had sold him my viola! “How could you?” I asked. “The viola belonged to me!”

“It was your father’s, and he wanted Toby to have this apprenticeship. Herr Goldschmidt must be paid, or your brother will have no future. We owned nothing else of enough value.”

I tried to pull away, but she grabbed my hand and held onto it with strength that surprised me. “It is for the best. The viola will not help you get a husband. And we must all make sacrifices.” She squeezed my hand before letting it go and resting both of hers on her bulging belly. She looked down with a soft smile. The infant inside seemed to sense her attention and shifted beneath her hands. When she looked up again, there was just a hint of happy tears in her eyes.

Mama was right. It was selfish of me to stand in the way of Toby’s advancement. Toby, who would need a lucrative trade if he ever hoped to marry and have a family of his own. Toby, who was still so young I could not imagine him living somewhere else, let alone working long hours each day.

Yet I knew I would never quite forgive her for it. Because no matter what she said, practical as it was and effective at solving our most immediate difficulties, it proved to me that she did not understand how I felt about playing the viola. She had never understood that, and therefore she could have no knowledge of who I truly was. Only Papa knew how important it was to me to make music, and Papa was gone.

Although at first I felt only anger, I soon realized that her actions, insensitive as they were, freed me in a way. I need no longer feel guilty about pursuing my own plans, no matter how much they interfered with what ever schemes she concocted for me.

“Yes, of course, Mama,” I forced myself to say, putting on my most submissive expression. “Perhaps Godfather Haydn will have an instrument I can practice on when I go to assist him each morning after breakfast, to earn money for our keep.” My words were calculated to achieve the greatest effect. It was cruel of me to anger her; her health was still delicate despite her improvement since yesterday. But at that moment, I didn’t care.

“You will do nothing of the kind! I expect the matchmaker tomorrow. You must stay here so that she can examine you and make a judgment about whom you should marry.”

“I cannot disappoint the Kapellmeister,” I said as I kissed Mama. She could not rise from her bed and come to fetch me, and I avoided her for the rest of the evening.

My stomach growled as I prepared for bed that night. I was too angry to eat the supper Greta had placed in front of me. I realized that now, with Papa’s violin gone and my viola sold, we had no musical instruments in the house. I didn’t remember a time when that was true. Toby had followed me into my room, his eyes dark with shared sadness. “I’ll make you a viola as soon as I am able,” he whispered. I hugged him close and felt him return the embrace before squirming away. No doubt he would cry himself to sleep as he had every night since Christmas.

Once I was alone again, all I could think of was that day when Papa first helped me draw a bow across a string. I don’t know how old I was, maybe five. At first, all I could do was make a scratchy, squeaky noise. I couldn’t understand how he could coax such a glorious sound from the violin. Haydn had lent him a half-size fiddle that he had had made, thinking he would have his own children to teach, so Papa said, but the children never came. At the time, I remember wondering how his children could stay away from him when he was such a kind man, not understanding that Papa meant he had none.

“Gently, gently—let the string do the work. Don’t press down.” I could hear his voice, feel his comforting arms supporting mine. And eventually, I did it. I felt the vibration all down my hands and arms, and it tickled and made me laugh. After that, we spent time every day, and gradually I was able to make the sound on my own. And he taught me how to read music, too.

Mama was a little jealous, I think, although she claimed only to be concerned that I was learning to play an instrument generally considered unsuitable for girls.

“Let her be. She has talent. Who knows, by the time she is grown, perhaps she could give lessons,” my father would say.

How well I remembered her response. “No mother would allow her son to be taught by a girl! At least, not taught a trade.” That’s all it ever was to Mama—a trade—although I knew it wasn’t her fault that she had no real appreciation. She smiled and tapped her foot when she listened because that’s what she thought was expected, but the tapping was never in time. Yet she was able to dance and move her head and hands prettily in a minuet, and everyone admired her. I remember once thinking as I watched her at some holiday festivity, when the servants and musicians were allowed to have their own ball with a small orchestra made up of Gypsies and apprentices, that she was the most beautiful lady I had ever seen. Even more beautiful than the nobles who danced stiffly in their tight stays and panniers.

There was no use thinking about times gone by. It would not help me find out what had really happened to Papa. I was beginning to realize that the task I had undertaken would be even more difficult than I thought, especially with Mama so bent on finding me a husband.

I lay awake in the dark and reviewed my circumstances. Clearly I would have to adjust my plans. First, I must not let Mama settle my marriage too quickly. Aside from the fact that it would make it hard for me to wander about the city on my own or with Zoltán piecing together my father’s movements on the night he died, I was not ready to marry. I had no doubt that I could run a house hold as well as the next girl, but to do only that, and have babies until it was one childbirth too many and I died from it—surely life held more for me. I could not have been born with the ear and the hands I possessed only to use them to listen for an infant’s cry and to knit stockings.

I looked with longing at the empty table in my room. Only Papa would understand how I felt, the emptiness that engulfed me when I realized I no longer had an instrument to act as my voice. “Oh, Papa!” I said aloud to my room. “What happened? Why did you leave us?”

I soaked my pillow with tears that night, and dreamt of my father, smiling and playing in an orchestra that poured out glorious music. But the music was not in Prince Nicholas’s palace; it was outdoors, in the countryside. And the orchestra was not the one in which he occupied the first chair. All the musicians looked dark and wore tattered clothes, like the Gypsies, and all of them wore gold medallions around their necks, similar to the one the apothecary’s wife had found on my father’s body. The concert was magnificent, and the brilliant green leaves and bright flowers rustled and nodded in time to the music. I could smell the sweet fragrance of the country in my sleep. I awoke feeling cleansed, and more determined than ever. What could my mother do, after all? I had money from Haydn so I would not starve even if she refused to feed me, which I knew she would not. She could talk to the matchmaker, and once I had satisfied myself concerning what had befallen my father, I would sit with her and go over the list of candidates, no doubt old widowers who wanted a young bride to keep them company and nurse them in their dotage. For no one else would take me without a dowry. Even though I had not met him, I knew that Uncle Theobald would never come through and fulfill his promise.

Still, I wondered about my wealthy uncle. His actions did not seem very honorable to me. Just because my mother’s family could claim ties generations back with minor nobility seemed no reason to cut off a sister who married beneath her. She could see what her brother could not, that a musician who entered the right circles with a wife who was capable of looking and acting the part might rise and achieve more than any other tradesman, the fashion for music being such a craze among the nobility and royalty. Mama was an impressive sight when she dressed in her finest open gown and ribbon-trimmed petticoat, put on her one miniver-trimmed mantelet, and had her hair piled high into a sugar-water-stiffened mountain with bits of lace and velvet ribbon. We were none of us as good as Mama at appearances. I wondered how long it would be until she rose from her bed and made her own dignified way to the house in the Graben where her important brother lived. I hoped I could see it. I feared that she would be unable to manage it until after the baby was born, and I did not know how long it would take her to recover from the birth.

I tried to imagine myself turning my back on Toby because he had chosen a bride I did not approve of. Apart from the fact that the idea of little Toby married was so absurd it made me smile, I could never see it. If he needed something from me, he would have it no matter whom he married.

After devouring two fresh rolls Greta had baked because Mama was eating again, I put on my long wool cloak and mitts, readying myself for the long walk to my godfather’s apartment in the Marienhilf suburb, outside the city wall. That morning it snowed halfheartedly; heavy, wet flakes that soaked into my cloak and chilled me through. By the time I arrived, my teeth chattered.

“Come, come, come!” Haydn said, leading me into a small parlor with a blazing fire in the grate. His house-keeper took my cloak and spread it over two chairs to dry. “Please forgive my wife for not being here to greet you. She could not delay a previous appointment.”

I had heard rumors in the kitchens of the Esterhazy palaces about Haydn’s bitter and unfaithful wife. It was said they never slept in the same bed, and that she visited an old witch who gave her an elixir that prevented pregnancy. Everyone felt sorry for Haydn, and never criticized him when he had occasional trysts with kitchen maids, or for the affair he was said to have had with the widow of one of his musicians.

“Forgive me for not giving you time to settle properly, but I must be at the palace in an hour.” He pulled a silver pocket watch out of his waistcoat and shook his head at it. I knew that watch well. It was the one he used to let us listen to ticking away, and that he would produce from the oddest places to make us laugh—a flowerpot, our ears, his own mouth. “Do you prefer to sit or stand when you write?”

I saw that the desk was a high one, like those used by clerks in offices, and although I was not accustomed to standing up and writing, I told him that was what I preferred. When I took my place, I noticed that six or seven sheets of paper had already been lined, and the clefs for a string quartet had been mapped out. I still couldn’t quite see what I would have to do. I had no trouble hearing—my pitch was perfect—but I had never actually tried to write down notes as I heard them. The maestro must have sensed my doubt, because he spoke to me quietly and reassuringly.

“Your papa used to dash in just the heads of the notes first as I sang, then go back later and add the stems. I still seem able to fix the rhythm. The flags don’t jump around as much as the staves and the dots for me.”

He started with the lowest line, the cello. He did not sing it all, but more often simply called out the harmonies. My father had schooled me in figures, so I knew how to sketch in the bass that would hold the upper parts together and give them depth. The first movement was a lively allegro, and as we continued with the first-violin part, I could anticipate what was coming. Or at least, I thought I could. Every once in a while Haydn sang a note or a phrase that took me by surprise. I would look up questioningly, and he would say, “Yes, yes, that’s just what I mean, there’s a good girl.”

When we got to the upper parts, the ones in the range where he could sing, I sometimes thought the maestro simply forgot I was there. He wandered around the room, swaying to the music he heard in his head and singing so fast at times that I could hardly keep up. Although I had to glue my eyes to the page most of the time, every once in a while he would pause and I could look up. Then I would see him gazing off into the distance, eyes sometimes misting over as though the idea of music was too powerful to bear, and then they would brighten and he would start to sing again, and I would have to focus on the lines and spaces and write as fast as I could.

By the time the mantel clock chimed the next hour, my hand was in a cramp and I realized I had bitten the inside of my lip and could taste the salty blood. Haydn approached to look at my handiwork. I trembled with fear that he would find it unsatisfactory.

He picked up the sheets, scanned the lines, brought them close to his eyes, and held them at arm’s length and sighed. “In truth, I will not know how well you have done until after the rehearsal. But in general it looks as though you have written everything down. Accuracy is the issue.”

“Will you refine the movement tomorrow?” I asked.

“Oh dear me, no, there isn’t time for that. It’s first time or nothing, you see, at this time of year. You may as well come tomorrow for the other movements, which won’t be as long as this one.”

I wanted to ask him if he had the notes all in his head already, or if they simply came to him as he paced around the room, but in spite of his kindness and consideration, I was a little afraid of my godfather. He could end the stipend at any moment, tell my mother to keep me at home where I belonged, and put a stop to my inquiries to discover what had happened to my father. I didn’t really think he would, but decided that the fewer questions I asked him the better it would be for everyone.

“Your cloak is dry, I see!” He held it out to me. “Stop in the kitchen for some cakes to take to your mama.”

He put on his own cloak, a splendid, blue-satin-lined affair that went with his court uniform, bowed to me, and left. I had no idea where the kitchen was, but the maid who had showed me in soon appeared with a basket full of treats. “The master said to give you these.”

I thanked her and began the long walk home.