can mean so many different things, something I learned quite young. I suppose I never seriously intended to stop my stories; I am ashamed to believe that I wanted to know once more how much he longed to hear them.
I said, “What lovely chocolates you brought today! Did I tell you how much my sisters and I loved chocolates? We would have given our souls for a box.”
“Then you will continue?”
“As memory allows me.”
“I thank you from the bottom of my heart!” he cried.
I ate two pieces and wiped my fingers on the monogrammed linen handkerchief he offered, though if I had been alone, I would have licked them clean. It irked me a little to see the morsels folded in the linen and tucked away.
“Your mother,” he urged gently.
“Ah, yes. Nothing would have turned out as it did if it weren’t for our mama. She pushed us firmly one way, and we went firmly in the other. No, if it weren’t for her, everything would have been different.”
I raised my cane and pointed to the wall. “Look: there’s her silhouette to the right of the fireplace. A family friend made it one night when he finally got her from her baking and planning. She was a big woman, but her arms were delicate and her skin very fresh, very sweet-smelling.”
“She had a complicated nature.”
“From what you have heard of her elsewhere or from my stories?”
“Both indeed, madame.”
He studied the picture for some time, then returned to his writing, his pen scratching the page. After a few moments, he looked up at me. “So, all that occurred was much from her influence?”
I opened my eyes wide and brought up my hands. “In one way or another. Everything was of the greatest seriousness to her. She believed in signs, as do I, and she knew in her heart at least one of her daughters was destined for greatness. That is how we lived our ordinary days, expecting something far more wonderful would fling open the door....”
PART TWO
Munich and Aloysia, 1778
Late spring came, and the sisters hurried about Mannheim, saying good-bye to old friends, exchanging locks of hair and trinkets, and promising to write. The Webers were moving to Munich. The Elector there had died, and Mannheim’s Elector Carl Theodor and his court had already moved to the palatial Residenz there. Alfonso and Heinemann had gone with them. They expected there would be even more opportunities for music in Munich.
At the last hour Sophie walked through the empty rooms looking for things they might have left behind. How odd! What life was left here when every chair and wardrobe was gone, when the hooks were empty of clothing, when not one pot in the kitchen remained? There was the dark stain on the kitchen wall where Josefa, at the age of twelve, had bled copiously after slicing her thumb while cutting apples. The floorboards of the bedroom bore the gouged marks of the iron bed feet.
She noticed a pen and some ink left on a windowsill and, finding a paper scrap, leaned over to write a note. “Dear friends, we have gone to Munich by God’s grace for a more prosperous life. Come see us there. We are as always altogether, and altogether we wait for you.” This she stuck on a nail on their door, hoping the new residents would not take it down right away. She was about to run down the stairs to where her family was waiting when she remembered the book of suitors, but her mother had taken it from its latest hiding place. Would that she had left it there, Sophie thought with a grimace, for she had secretly looked into it some days before and had not been pleased with what she had seen. What could she do about it now, though? Later, surely, she could do something.
She blessed the empty rooms, and hurried down to the street.
And then within weeks it was as if they had never lived anyplace else but beautiful Munich. Their new rooms, on a floor one story lower than their Mannheim residence, made it slightly easier to bring up firewood and bring down chamber pots. They were also fairly close to the great church, the Frauenkirche, with its two tall round towers rising over other buildings against the bright sky. They settled in their old careless way, everything scattered about, musicians coming on Thursdays to play and often on other nights dropping by for supper, wine, or talk. For the