desk to him, tears in her eyes, the letter now folded in her hand. Then, distractedly, she slipped it in the desk drawer. “Of course I missed you!” she said. “I have deep, deep feelings. I do love you.”
She began to walk up and down the room. “But you’re the one who went away,” she said. “You went away. Can you know what it is just to wait? I admit my letters were a little reserved after a time. Very well, I’ll tell you why. I suppose you ought to know.” She paused by the window. “Early on you wrote (do you remember?) ... you wrote that you could likely send for me to sing in Paris in the Concert Spirituel or the Concert des Amateurs, but then you wrote that it wasn’t possible. Do you know how disappointed I was?”
Her words stammered over one another, and then she ran from the window to sit beside him, her voice rising. “You said you’d help me. And then, and then. Then you wrote that you were offered the position of organist at Versailles. Oh, Mozart, Versailles! You could have sent for me.... We would have been married, and I would have sung there and curtseyed daily to Marie Antoinette, the most regal Queen, a true Viennese princess, the daughter of the late Emperor of Austria. Can you imagine what I felt, stuck here in my grief without Papa, without prospects, with my dreary sisters and my mother’s weeping, and knowing I might have a chance to live at Versailles itself, in Paris, the center of fashion and good taste. Yet instead I was to remain in provincial Munich, while my gifts and youth fade unseen, obscure, unwanted ... and you refused the position.”
He stared at her, bewildered, not touching her, though she sat so close. “But don’t you understand, the very last thing I want is to be a French court organist?” he said. “And the salary wasn’t so great. I couldn’t afford to dress you as you like, and they’d have put me in livery. The household musicians are lucky to eat at table below the lackeys and before the cooks. That’s my father’s life; I grew up with it. Do you think I want that? Is it the life I’m meant to have? No Aloysia, dearest. I wanted an opera commission. You mustn’t want me to settle on something less than I could be. I would write great roles for you—just for you. That’s a much better life.”
“But now you have nothing.”
His voice rose to the garland of dry, fragile leaves around the portrait of her late father. “It’s true I have nothing now,” he cried, “but that won’t always be so. I need you to have faith in me. My father writes one angry letter after another. I’m not the darling little boy anymore, and I can’t be obsequious. Dearest, my composing deepened while there. I’ll show you the symphony I wrote in Paris, and the concerto for harp and flute.”
She clenched her hands on her knees. “But you could have had the protection of the Queen.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to be a household organist, so I came back to my own country. You idolize the French; I can’t and won’t. At the opera the Italian composer Cambini stood in my way, jealous. I waited weeks for appointments that brought promises which were not kept. Could you really expect me to stay?”
She was flushed and imperious. “And do you expect me to be pleased that you return empty-handed? I’ve waited faithfully for you. You must succeed for me. You owe it to me. Your influence could open my voice to the world. You know, you know how well I sing and play. It is your fault that you didn’t, that you turned down Versailles! You threw away our happiness! How can I forgive you?”
She was sobbing, and jerked her shawl closer around her sharp shoulders. Her delicate face was in profile to him; even without any rouge or curls, she was beautiful, her lower lip extended ruefully and tears rushing down her face to her chin. He gently took her by the shoulders and kissed the tears away, kissed the wet, resentful lips that still protested. “I could have had hats made by the Queen’s woman, at least a modest one. Then you would truly love me!”
He seized her more firmly then, kissing her wherever his lips could reach. He could feel her little nipples, and her