are aware of the slowness between your words of love and your finalizing them in the blessed church, Herr Mozart. We should not wish a repetition of what occurred in my family between you and another.”
Thorwart nodded gravely. His jaw was so stiff with purpose that it looked as if it might shatter, loosing his teeth all over the carpet. Mozart took a deep breath. He raised his eyes, and there saw Sophie looking at him, deliberately cross-eyed, nose wiggling, looking all the world like a drunken rabbit. He felt his laughter rising, and then Leutgeb’s hand on his knee to restrain him.
“Your answer, Herr Mozart?”
“You know I’ve agreed. I’ll agree to anything to have her. Give me a pen; you’ll have my signature.” He put out his arms impulsively. “I’ll marry her within three months. Madame, if I could, it would be within three days. Where’s the ink and pen? Where’s the notary?”
“I am notary,” Thorwart said. “Maria Sophia is witness. Come.”
At once all in the room except Maria Caecilia stood and walked to the table. Outside they heard the kitchen maid screaming at someone, and a crash of crockery. Maria Caecilia ignored it, watching as the young composer signed, and then she stood up, sweating faintly.
Suddenly, Constanze pushed in among all of them and snatched the contract. “I need no contract from you,” she cried. “I believe your word. I believe it.” Turning to her mother, she cried, “Mama, it has nothing to do with you; it has only to do with Wolfgang and me.” The contract, now in many pieces, drifted down and settled under the clavier legs.
They escaped outside the house to the back of the church, where they held each other without speaking. Then Sophie came trotting toward them with a large umbrella. “It will rain, I think,” she said. Her eyes crossed, her nose wriggled, and there was the rabbit in spectacles again.
Later Constanze and Sophie locked themselves in the parlor while the boarders hurried up and down the stairs; outside the rain fell persistently over Vienna, over the linden walk and the opera houses and the imperial palace, streaming down the stone saints and angels of the churches, dampening organs and fortepianos, wetting the windows of the great shops of the marketplace with all their gorgeous apparel. The rain fell on the posters in front of the opera announcing the first performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail—The Abduction from the Seraglio.
One week later, Josefa returned from Prague.
She dropped her canvas bag by the front door of the boardinghouse, and took the steps two at a time to the room she had shared with her sisters. No one was there. She gazed at the hats, dresses, stockings, and books scattered about, then stooped to pick up one of Sophie’s flat, worn shoes, and held it against her heart. Her face contorted, and she shut her eyes hard. She would not cry now, not until it was over, and then maybe never again.
Why weren’t Constanze and Sophie here? She had thought of them all the carriage ride to Vienna, of the games they had played as children. She had often been the hero; she had slain dragons, led her sisters from burning castles, removed evil spells with the wave of a crooked stick that seemed to glitter as it cut the air like a sword. Now she needed her sisters more than she ever had in her life, but of course she had not told them she was coming. No one knew at all.
Josefa pulled the pins out of her hair, which fell halfway down her back, and with the pins clutched in her fingers, she descended the steps, slowing as she approached the parlor. “Papa,” she whispered. She opened the door, leaning against the frame. Maybe he would be there ... maybe! But he was not. There was his clavier, the fall board open, the overcast light from the window playing on the discolored and worn ivory keys. Hanging above it on the wall was his portrait, his slightly crooked and sweet smile. Fridolin Weber, second tenor in the chapel, violinist, generous host, throwing open the door as his guests mounted the Mannheim stairs. Come up, I long to embrace you! Playing scales as she stood before him learning to sing.
“What, are you leaving so suddenly?” the bass Hofer had asked after her last performance in the Prague Opera when she had come into his dressing room to say good-bye.