of silk about her finger, and her embroidery of French court children held on her lap near her stomach where our real children, hers and mine, will one day grow. He had been walking about the city for some hours, starting for the house, then turning back again.
She sensed him then, and, jumping up at once, came toward him with open arms. “Is it true?” she murmured, looking at his bowed head. “C’est terrible! Mon Dieu! It can’t be; it can’t be.”
“But it is,” he said. “Idomeneo’s been withdrawn after three performances, and I’m told it won’t travel; it’s too difficult to perform with its orchestration and staging. And old-fashioned, not likely to catch on. ‘Too deep, too dark, too difficult. Too good,’ Cannabich said, ‘dear Mozart, you are too good.’ Can that be my fate, Aloysia, to be too good? To never quite be what people want?”
He gazed at Fridolin’s clavier, his fingers moving against his breeches; sighing, he hung his head. One of his side curls was badly rolled. He sagged against the doorjamb. “My love, I can’t hold any longer,” he said at last. “I can’t borrow any more money from home, and the opera fee must go to repay what I have already borrowed. I must return for a time to the Archbishop’s service in Salzburg. I would marry you now and take you with me, but you’d be as unhappy there as I will be. Stay here with your sisters.”
Her voice rose passionately. “I want to go with you!”
“Hush, I know. Oh God, to be an hour without you, my love!”
She lay her head against his shoulder, slowly stroking his ear. Once she shuddered; he felt it down her back. Her voice was unsteady as she put her words together. “It won’t be forever, Wolfgang. You’ll find a better position with an opera house where I can sing.”
“Yes, I will find it; I must. Within several months I’ll have obtained something else; all my friends are looking for me. Then we’ll be together as man and wife, and I’ll write great music for you. This I swear on my mother’s soul.”
“Don’t be uneasy on my behalf, Wolfgang! I’ll wait forever. Per sempre,” she repeated in Italian, standing up straight. Her small breasts heaved. For always ... mio tesoro, amore mio! My treasure, my love. He could hardly break away from her kisses then. He thought to take her on the sofa amid the dusty, soft, worn cushions; he thought to lock the doors and take her, pushing up her skirts. At least there was this simple thing between man and woman, so achievable and immediate. Desire rushed through him; he jerked his head back, grasping her hand so hard it whitened. She would allow it (every part of her body cried yes), but if she swelled with child before he had a good position, what would they do?
“Good-bye,” he said, kissing her many times.
“Wolfgang, don’t go.”
He ran down the stairs, but voices called from the window. He looked up to see Aloysia, Josefa, Sophie, and Constanze standing at the window, the curtains pushed back. The younger sisters were weeping; they likely had also heard about the operas cancellation and felt bad for him. Per sempre, she had said, and there had been tears in her eyes as well. Wolfgang, don’t go. He would never forget it.
His earliest memories were of his father lifting him into bed during some fever, and his father’s spare frame, bones hardy under his blue wool coat, holding him so that they almost melded. For years they had been inseparable as they journeyed from city to city all over Europe. His father placing him before harpsichords to play, watching from a short distance as he performed, carrying him away again—a little boy who was sometimes eager, sometimes curious, sometimes quiet. His father, leaning over him as he wrote his first childish compositions, later holding the splotched music paper to the light, breathing a sharp sigh. His father standing by a window in Vienna, combing his son’s small white wig, which caught the sunlight.
And now Leopold Mozart was waiting for him again, as he always had.
The rooms were not the ones where Mozart had been born—some years ago the family had moved across the river—but the furnishings were arranged in the same way. He’s near sixty, Mozart thought as he pressed his lips to the stark cheek. Still, his father was not much changed.
Mozart glanced about. On the wall was the portrait