for him, and waited for him to come home was gone; he would not see her again in this world. And what assurance had he been able to give her in her last hours that he would do better, he who was now left in life for better or worse; what assurance had he been able to provide of how deeply he had loved her?
The sisters drew closer, bringing him back to the present; they murmured, “Mozart, Mozart,” slipping their arms about him, but he did not move. Someone stroked his cheek, prickly with pale brown stubble. They were all one to him in that moment, but he couldn’t answer them. Words were impossible; only music might speak, and there was no music now.
He looked down and saw that Sophie’s fingers had moved within his. “They’re both in heaven,” she said, raising her pointed face to his. “Your mother and our father. They’re angels.”
“Yes,” echoed Constanze. “They’re angels.”
He burst out, looking from one to another of them, “Your good father! I couldn’t believe the letter when I received it; I can’t believe he’s not here. I still remember saying good-bye to him that cold morning last winter. ‘Soon we’ll drink wine again, Mozart!’ he said. He insisted I borrow his brown music portfolio. But your poor mother! How does she do?”
Constanze replied, “She stays in her room a great deal and weeps. Maybe she’ll come out for you.” The four sisters looked at one another, and then Sophie ran down the hall. After a time her bedchamber door opened, and they could hear shuffling. Frau Weber emerged, holding on to the wall. Mozart was weeping himself now, and he embraced her fiercely.
He looked over Frau Weber’s cap to Josefa, who stood stiffly, as if she were the sentinel of the house. Her face was pale and severe; her weight had dropped, her laced dress loose. She slipped from the room and returned shortly with a tray containing coffeepot, cups, cake plates, forks, and cake. There was already something of the spinster about her. Mozart remembered how when Aloysia had first sung his song the year before, Josefa had escaped to the hall and remained there a long time.
“Mozart, come have cake!”
They ate until the plates held only small crumbs, and their words fell away. Then, quietly, three of the sisters and their mother rose and retired from the room, bearing the coffeepot, the plates, and the forks, and letting fall the heavy curtains that pulled over the doors to keep drafts away, leaving Mozart and Aloysia alone.
The curtain had not yet fallen completely when he leapt at her, kissing her wrist, then up her woolen sleeve to her neck, her perfect ear, her slightly chapped lips. He drew her beside him on the red sofa, holding her so closely against him that he could feel her corset stiffening, and her breasts hidden beneath it. Her flesh smelled of apples and cinnamon.
“I thought of you always these months, Aloysia,” he murmured. “I reread every one of your letters ten, no, twelve times, and kissed them. A hundred times I wanted to throw the whole thing over and come back to you. Your letters ... I wish there had been more of you in them. I kept trying to find you in them. They seemed reserved, and I know you’re not reserved. I read between the lines to find you.” He kissed her face as he spoke, his mouth against her lips. “Sometimes, Christ help me, I couldn’t seem to touch you.”
She turned her face abruptly so that his lips missed her mouth. “What did you want me to write?” she said, wrinkling bits of her skirt in her hands and staring ahead of her at the desk, where Sophie’s pen was left to drip ink on her unfinished letter. “I told you about the music I was learning and about our days. If our days were dull, can you fault me for it? I have never been good at writing.”
Pulling her closer, he murmured, “But there was no passion in them. I know you’re passionate. Why don’t you kiss me? Didn’t you miss me, my love? Not at all? I was so alone.”
She brushed her lips across his, then jumped up to the desk, glancing at the letter. “I know, I know, and so were we alone, though we had one another. Still, Papa’s gone, and Mother has collapsed; for days she doesn’t come from her bed.” She turned from the