the court because of Papa’s service for so many years as musician under Elector Carl Theodor. By law we women must have a male guardian, and Thorwart has been appointed, though he interferes rather a lot. I can’t like him as much as I did, though I must pretend it. Constanze says he brushes against her breasts all the time, and then says, “Pardon, pardon!” We have not yet told Mother.
Sophie studied the last few sentences, then carefully inked them out (certain truths must be withheld for a time for prudency), blinked back her tears, and continued:We go bravely forward as Papa would have wished. I am certain that God will see us through.
She put aside the paper then, because she was crying and didn’t want her tears to splotch her words, and because, to her horror, for the first time in her life she was not at all certain that God would help them through.
He came slowly down their Munich street that same blustery day, papers and dry leaves blowing about his feet, and began to climb their stairs, resting his heavy luggage full of music once, staring unseeingly at the grooves the bag handles had worn into his palm. Tentatively, he knocked on the wrong door, and a tipsy unshaven man grumbled at him and pointed upward to “where the ladies live.” His legs, under black breeches buckled at the knee, ached as he climbed the last flight, walking toward the paper sign posted on the door: THE MESDEMOISELLES WEBER: LESSONS IN CLAVIER AND SINGING AVAILABLE. PLEASE KNOCK.
The door was unlocked, and when he pushed it open, he saw Sophie at the table, looking thin and pale. The room was strange to him. It was not the one he had known in Mannheim, but here was the clavier, which he so admired, and the music, and the youngest of the Weber girls.
She turned. “Oh, Mozart,” she gasped, balling her handkerchief in her hands. “Oh, it’s you, it’s you!” She leapt up and then hesitated, holding on to the edge of the desk. But she could not restrain herself for long; she ran across the room and jumped into his arms.
“Sophie,” he said.
She clung to him, her too-large gray frock showing evidence that a moth had had its way. There was an ink spot on her nose where she had rubbed it. “But what are you doing here?” she said, wiping more ink on her face. “We thought you were in Paris. You didn’t send word you were coming. Let me call Aloysia. You’ll want to see her right away. How many days was the journey? Was it awful? You must be hungry and thirsty. Are you staying in Munich? She’ll be so glad. Why don’t you answer me? Do hug me. You make me miss Father, and that makes me cry. What are you doing here? Not that I’m not very glad.”
Because he could not trust his voice, he only held her close, looking over the wild loose bits of her hair to the doorway, through which he heard voices and then footsteps. With a blur of dark dresses, the other three sisters rushed into the room. They were all about him; he felt their warmth and sweetness.
And there was his Aloysia, his beautiful Aloysia.
They pressed against him, hands on his sleeves and coat, stroking his arm. It was Josefa who took over her late father’s role as host. Lowering her voice, she said, “Oh, Mozart, welcome! We’re so glad you’ve come. But you look very tired. The journey must have exhausted you; they say it’s ten days at least. I’m not certain we have wine, but I can make coffee. But dear saints, are you ill?”
He lifted his gaze from the recollected worn spot on the rug to the blur of their faces. “I’m not sick, no,” he said, “but I have news as dark as yours. My own beloved mother fell ill when we were in Paris; the physicians could do nothing, and she passed from the earth. My journey was long; I couldn’t wait to come here to those who care for me. I’ve lost her; I’ve lost her.”
He stared ahead, his shapely mouth fixed. He saw his mother lying in death, the nose now very sharp, the waxen long hands clasped about her rosary. He saw the emptiness of their rooms after his return from the graveyard, how the floor had creaked as he walked across it. She who had nursed him, and fretted