girl, and with her grace and charm she could likely have one. What had he to offer? And yet he was not half bad. He could have had his love affairs if he had wanted them, and yet he always drew back.
There was that confidential, drunken hour with Leutgeb in the beer cellar when the girls had come, and the hour after when he and the horn player had spoken so frankly of their hopes. Why hadn’t he told Leutgeb, whom he trusted, that he had never taken a woman to bed? “By Christ,” he murmured aloud in the room, “I couldn’t say that.” He was flushed even to think that the painted wallpaper of this pleasant room, the books, his coat thrown over a chair could have heard him.
He fell into his bed late that night, tossing his bedclothes to the floor. In the morning he sprang up naked from bed and stood shivering in the cold room; he threw on a dressing gown, uncorked the ink, and wrote hastily. “Mademoiselle Aloysia Weber, in all friendship, will you meet me at the Confectionery at three? Your servant in all respect, WA.M.” and sent it over by a boy.
She won’t come, he thought.
But she did.
Aloysia Weber floated across the Confectionery under the gold-and-white ceiling. In the mirrors around him, he saw her approaching in her dark cloak with the muddy hem, past the small marble tables and the sideboard heaped with cakes. She was so perfectly made he could have taken her under his arm and swept her away. By the time she reached him and made her curtsey, he was not sure who he had been before she entered the doors.
He bowed, and again she curtseyed; he seated her. Then he said as calmly as he had intended, “I have come up with a plan to solve your difficulties.”
“Tell me,” she said. “My father will be so grateful. No one helps us, no one, and here you are, yet a stranger to our family.” She leaned forward on the chair. In her throat, the unblemished flesh of an innocent girl not quite seventeen, was a hollow where her breath quivered. He could not take his eyes from it.
“We’ll give concerts together; we’ll tour all Europe.”
“Oh, could we? What are you saying? All Europe? With me singing and you playing as we did that evening in our rooms? Would we go to Paris? Oh Herr Mozart, would we give a concert even in Paris?” She could hardly speak the words; her white throat quivered. A loose thread from her dress lay against her collarbone.
“Yes,” he said, “Paris, of course. Why not? I’ve just begun to plan it in my mind. I’ll write many songs that show your voice off to the best effect. First we’ll tour Austria, and give a concert in Vienna; I have friends there who would help us. We would go to Venice, to Florence, to Rome, and then we would go to Versailles.”
“Versailles,” she murmured. The loose thread moved as she breathed. He could see her reflection in every mirror over the silver cake plates.
“Versailles,” he repeated. “Mademoiselle, I assure you on my honor that wherever you lift your voice in song, strangers will beg for tickets. I can do this, for my name’s known. I’ll take your father and Mademoiselle Josefa as well. We’ll return with so much gold your family will never have to worry again.” He spoke with deep assurance, though his heart beat strongly and he leaned so close across the table that he could see a few faint freckles across her cheeks. “And then, both the Viennese opera houses will want you to sing once they have heard you. There’s never been such a voice, they’ll say.”
“Paris,” she murmured. “Vienna. Can it be?”
“Without a doubt. Give me a few days, and I’ll come to lay plans more clearly.”
Aloysia could hardly find her voice, and when she did she put her hand on his. “We’ll all be so very glad,” she stammered. “My sister and I particularly. I will need a new concert dress, perhaps of pink brocade. Don’t you think a dress of that fabric and color would suit me particularly, Herr Mozart?”
After a few hours they emerged from the Confectionery, hands almost touching. She kissed his cheek and, in her dark cloak and little flat shoes, disappeared around the corner of a church, while he remained gazing after her, his hand to his face where her lips had touched it.