“You’ve seen so much of the world, and I’ve mostly been at home. But where would we live? How? We haven’t any money. And besides, what will your father say? I know he doesn’t want you to marry for a long time; he’ll find some fault with me.” She looked straight ahead, her chin raised. “Yes, and then you’ll see it, too, and go away. I’m not greatly talented like Aloysia and Josefa, and I haven’t got Sophie’s wit and faith. I’m in the middle. I’ve made a shadow of myself, and now I don’t want to be a shadow anymore, and it frightens me. No one expects anything of a shadow, no one notices anything much ... my dreams are my own.
“What are your dreams? Would you trust me with one or two?”
“Oh, ordinary girls’ dreams: being greatly loved, being swept away.” She looked down at her fingers. “Being here I’ve thought of so many things, most of which I don’t understand. I want to be the young woman I was and yet someone new as well. I want to escape my dull place at home, and yet I want to remain there. That’s the problem. I want to go back to be with my sisters just the way we were when you first came up the stairs that Thursday night. Sometimes because I knew you then, I think I can be that way again ... the difficulty is sorting out all the things I want. Oh, if you could simply make this clear to me.”
They held each other, and kissed again and again. “But how will we get your father’s blessing?” she finally gasped.
His hair stood up on end, his lace was askew, and every time he tried to make a sentence, he laughed instead, as if everything was pure pleasure to him. “My father ...” Still laughing a little to himself, drumming some rhythm on her upper arm, he said, “Dearest, look there in the garden ... there’s a small bent gardener, and the wheelbarrow he pushes is bigger than he is.”
Then he took a deep breath, blew out his cheeks in expelling it, and turned back to her, rubbing his hands. “My father, yes,” he said more solemnly. “He’s coming to visit me soon. I’ll put it before him then. I want his blessing, of course. Once he sees you, you sweet girl, there will be no question.”
He took her hands and kissed each one several times. “As for me, I’ll be all good things to your family. Your mama will be like my own, and I’ll be a good brother-in-law to your sisters. My father will be entirely happy, believe me. I can manage everything. Now I must leave to give some lessons and see if more of the opera libretto is written. Constanze, trust me as I trust you. No one will ever be as happy as we’ll be together.”
After he left her, running back several times to kiss her, she returned to her room and began to pack her things. It was time to go home. She knew the Baroness was spending the afternoon with a man who used magnets and hypnotism to free the soul to travel to earlier lives, and Constanze didn’t wish to disturb her.
However, when she had just completed a letter of gratitude and laid the dressing gown she’d been using on the bed, she saw the Baroness standing, distracted and transformed, by the door. “Oh, my dear,” the Baroness whispered. “I have voyaged to the tombs of the pharaohs and found I was a princess then.... Are you going home? Dear child, come again—now Mozart must take very good care of you, and I will come to your wedding.”
In the boardinghouse her mother stumbled toward her weeping, arms open in reconciliation. Upstairs on her bed she found a letter from Sophie.
Dearest darling Constanze,
I have a small confession to make, which is weighing on my conscience. When I ran away so very quickly that early morning, I did something impulsively, which perhaps was not the wisest thing but it was done from a loving heart, and Father Paul says that if things are done lovingly, then much can be forgiven and overlooked. I don’t even have the courage to tell you now what I did, and likely it will blow over and nothing ever come of it. I couldn’t go away without some attempt at your happiness. Since a