probably shortened his life to do so. Thorwart’s also promised some. We’ll manage for a time.”
Sophie nodded. “It will all come out for the best,” she said.
“Perhaps, but which way is that, darling? How do we know what’s best? How do any of us know?”
Below, through the rain, Sophie heard the sound of the bread wagon’s bells, and there, under the music table, as if they had been contently waiting for her, were her new wool slippers. Gratefully wriggling her feet into them, and borrowing a dressing gown that someone had left draped over the clavier, she hurried down the stairs. In the gray rain the wretched dripping horse stood waiting, water glistening on its brass bells, which were tied with bright, soaking ribbons. The street was slowly coming to life. As the girl took the two warm loaves and ran upstairs, to be greeted by the smell of newly ground coffee beans, she wished that the events of this early morning had been nothing but a dream, and that she were still asleep, warm and dry in her lumpy bed.
Sophie Weber, March 1842
YESTERDAY MONSIEUR NOVELLO CLIMBED THE STAIRS of my Salzburg rooms once more to gather stories for his biography of Mozart. I had only just enough time before he knocked to reach for the cluster of curls that I pin on my hair. I don’t put my hair in rags anymore; I haven’t in years. Then I sat back, cane near my hand, looking at this genial, balding musicologist who had come so far to meet me and who always brought me chocolates. I suppose the happy eating of them over many years has brought me to my considerable weight, but as a girl I was thin as a twig.
“So you and your wife live in London, monsieur?”
“We do, and gather many musicians for concerts there.”
“I hear the city is damp.”
“It is indeed.”
He looked about at the clutter of books, garments, letters, a violin without strings, piles of papers—some tied, some loose. Sometimes I feel all the lives of my sisters and I, which went such different ways, have come home together here. There are my grandmother’s oval cameo, Mother’s black silk bonnet, the handwritten manuscript of Mozart’s first song for Aloysia, and, of course, in the bottom of the wardrobe, the hatbox with its letters tied by a lavender ribbon.
Monsieur Novello took out a bound notebook, and his small, portable writing desk, which he balanced on his narrow knees. “Last time,” he said, “you had stopped when Mozart had pledged himself to your sister Aloysia and was rushing off to triumph in Paris.”
I turned my face. “I was indiscreet; I said too much.”
“My dear madame, how could you say too much?”
But my conscience had nagged me on and off since his last visit. “Mama urged us not to speak too much of ourselves to others,” I said sternly, looking at him over my spectacles and smoothing my capacious skirt. “She would not have liked me to reveal certain things. Alas, Monsieur Novello! Perhaps we ought to put aside the personal stories, and I’ll tell you of his music instead, about how he composed. He created it all in his head, then wrote it near perfectly on paper. It’s true; I saw it.”
Monsieur Novello tried to conceal his distress. “Yes, madame,” he said carefully, “but that is known; others have told me a great deal about that. What you can tell me I can find nowhere else in the world, nowhere. It’s truly extraordinary the depth and subtlety he has put into the female characters in his operas; no one could do it half as well as he. From where did he draw them? They’re so human, so fallible, and yet so playful and sensual. I believe understanding how his life entwined with yours and your sisters’ while he was in his early twenties, when he was so impressionable, can shed some light on this.”
“Mama would be unhappy that I’ve spoken.”
“But I beg you, I beg you! You must tell me what you know. You must tell me about his life with all of you in the years leading to his marriage.”
He even put his hand respectfully on my knee.
“On the other hand,” I said, “Papa always told us to be open-hearted, and that there was nothing we should ever want to hide.” I smiled in my old way. Strange, after all these years, and even in my old age, I can still smile in a way that