now; you’re cold. I know some people, and I have some influence. Perhaps I can do something to help you.”
Mozart took his midday meal of large veal chops and soup a few hours later in a smoky eating house with the orchestra director, Cannabich, and other musician friends who were passing through the city. They spoke of symphonies, of chamber music, of masses, of where work was; they spoke of good livings to be made that someone else always seemed just to have taken. They gathered around the table looking out at the muddy street that, in the dim light, retained the history of those who had passed this hour: the surly indentation of wheels left for a time until swept over by a beggar’s broom or the trailing, ragged skirts of a half-drunken whore.
Mozart had managed some weeks before to move with his mother to the comfortable house of the privy counselor, where she was warm and happy, and coughing less. She was treated as a family member, gossiping at table, and was altogether less (he arched his shoulders to think of it) of a burden on him. Still, they needed money, and, as he had not yet completed the second concerto and flute quartets of the Dutchman’s commission, he had not received any payment. In his pocket even now was a letter from his father that had arrived yesterday. “My dressing gown is in tatters. If someone had told me two years ago that I would have to wear woolen stockings and your old felt shoes over my old ones to warm myself ...” And he had written back rapidly just that morning: “But you know, my dearest Papa, this is not my fault.” Was it? It haunted him.
The clavier player and violinist who had played in a corner of the eating house had left, and Mozart scraped back his chair to go sit down at the instrument. Yesterday afternoon he had gone with friends to hear Holsbauer’s opera Günther von Schwarzburg, and now he began to play some of the beautiful music from memory. Cannabich listened for a time, and then came to stand beside him. His hair, pulled simply back in a ribbon, here and there showed traces of white, lavender-scented powder from his recent performance. He was a family man, with three gifted children.
“Enough of that opera!” he cried stoutly. “Let’s have a better tune.” Leaning over the small composer, he began to play with his right hand, clenching his pipe between his teeth. “La finta giardiniera, ” he said, words and smoke rising with the music. “You wrote it three years ago for a Munich performance. I recall parts from memory. How old were you then, you gray beard? Eighteen? And how old when you penned that gorgeous little singspiel Bastien? Twelve in God’s name?”
Mozart said, “Nothing’s better than opera for me—music, drama, poetry. Play that bit again. Use both hands; I’ll sing it.”
Cannabich drew up another chair and they played competitively, crossing hands. “Here come the strings. Ah, that’s a nice tenor! What is happening, Wolfgang? No word on the position here?”
“Nothing, and more of nothing. I managed to corner the Elector himself on his way from chapel in a hall of the palace and asked him again about the position. ‘I am sorry, my dear child,’ he said solemnly, ‘but there is no position.’ My dear child—those words.” Mozart played more intensely, leaning forward, and began to sing again.
“That’s the girl’s aria. You’ll rival the women the way you sing! I met Joseph Haydn last year, you know; he has the patronage of Esterházy in Hungary. He much admires your work. Didn’t his sister-in-law sing in Finta? ”
“Yes, and his brother is konzertmeister at Salzburg. I’ve never met Joseph Haydn. Here’s the tempo change.”
“You know his quartets?”
“I admire them deeply. The tempo’s slower here. I can’t sing and play at once! What do you think opera should be, Cannabich, eh? Comic and serious, common and heavenly?”
In the early winter dusk Mozart returned to his new rooms in the comfortable house of the privy counselor. He looked at the score of another of his unfinished operas; then, putting it aside with a sigh, he began to work again on the second flute quartet. When he put down his pen, he did not know if the church bells were signaling the last service of the night or the first of the new morning.
Mozart stood up, stretched his aching back, and began to walk up