others had said it. “Such a delicious girl,” she could hear one of the men murmuring after she had concluded her aria at the palace. The way one or two of them looked at her! Not that they interested her very much, but they were, as her mother said, possibilities, their names to be added to a list in a little book, discussed over many hours of coffee. It was a leather-bound book tooled in flowers that her mother kept hidden in secret places (lastly behind the flour canister), which none of them had ever been allowed to look in or touch. Last night, however, Aloysia had been given permission for the first time to come to the kitchen and list a few men who had heard her sing. Most she could only describe; she did not exactly know their names. She also did not know if they were already married.
Some years ago, when Josefa had first started to have a shape beneath her chemise, her mother had gathered her two older daughters together and had begun to discuss the subject of marriage with them. To be an old maid was a terrible thing: no fate could be worse than that. To be unchosen was horrid! Was not even death preferable? They could not begin, their mother said, to think of their futures too soon. Now and then a girl trained to music could eke out a precarious existence. The occasional woman wrote for her bread, or was a clever dressmaker, but even with these things her true goal was to marry as well as she could. Aloysia remembered that evening in the kitchen, both girls sitting close to their mother, listening to her every word.
At first the names of suitors were modest prospects: printers, a furniture upholsterer with a small workshop, a schoolmaster. Then two years later Frau Caecilia Weber had looked at her newly blooming second child and, smacking her lips gently, observed, “An old school friend of mine has a daughter without dowry who has just married a Count, and she is not nearly as beautiful as you. Oh no, my sweet, not nearly as lovely. If such a blessing could occur, you could have all the pretty things you deserve, my Aloysia, my own little flea.” That was the day everything changed. It was a spring day, and she had run up the steps with her nose buried in sprigs of linden blossoms. She could hear her mother’s voice. “I know how you long for fine things, my Aloysia.”
Today on her way back from delivering a pile of copied music, she stood for a long time in front of a French dressmaker’s shop window, where she could make out, behind the small panes, a length of pale pink brocade. Pressing her forehead against the cold glass, Aloysia almost felt her soul leave her body and wind itself in the cloth. She so wanted first a dress from that cloth, and then another in milkmaid style made of the finest white muslin, with a wide, pale pink silk sash that would tie around her waist and bow so extravagantly at the small of her back that the ends would flutter down the skirt. She had seen a drawing of such a dress worn in the court of France.
“Aloysia, are you coming? Have you polished the candle sconces? It is Thursday, you know!”
Why must the world stop for Thursdays? Must they all be rallied weekly to this running about so, tidying the parlor, finding enough candles, always making sacrifices when no one in particular ever came, whereas last night at the Elector’s palace there had been the women with little dark beauty marks shaped like stars or moons. How could Josefa laugh at it? They had fought about it this morning while studying a new duet. And didn’t it matter to Josefa that she was nineteen and not yet betrothed? Just like the younger ones, who never gave it a thought.
“Aloysia!” called her sisters and mother.
At least she could wear her pink silk hose, embroidered at the ankle with small scarlet flowers, which her father had bought her the first time she sang in public. If by chance her skirt pulled up an inch or so above her shoes, Leutgeb would notice. The blustering horn player was in love with her, and, though his name had never been mentioned by her mother, she found that when he looked at her, her body grew warm all over.