be absolutely plain. Swallowing before she spoke, Aloysia whispered, “It was terrible, terrible. I didn’t want her to lose to me. I wanted to win, but I didn’t want her to lose. She sang after me, and her voice just rang out; it’s so big and rich and dark and high, but then they had me sing two more songs. Cousin Alfonso said later they wanted a small soprano with a lighter voice. She sang very well; Father would have been so proud.”
She leaned against the table. “I tried to console her, but she wouldn’t allow it. This morning since the inn she would hardly speak to me, and just before when we came to Munich she insisted on getting down from the coach. She walked off I don’t know where. She says she won’t move to Vienna and I can go to the devil. And it’s not my fault; it isn’t my fault!” She dropped her head onto her arm, which rested on the table.
Maria Caecilia now sat down as well, so heavily the chair creaked. “The best joys come with difficulties,” she murmured. “What can we say to her when she comes in?” She looked about, her blue eyes bewildered. They all were silent. There was very little their mother could say to her oldest daughter these past months. Since their father’s funeral, Sophie felt she had been holding together by sheer will the last of the love between Josefa and their mother, smoothing differences, telling each one varying versions of the same story until she felt exhausted. Now, perhaps, she couldn’t do it anymore. She polished her spectacles, then excused herself to stand by the parlor window and watch over the cold winter street.
Josefa arrived home after dark and went at once to her bed in the farthest place by the wall, her shoulders turned to them. If they tried to reach out to her, she seemed to move even farther away. Exhausted, they all slept late the next morning. As they woke one by one and tiptoed to the kitchen in their dressing gowns, Josefa slept on, her long reddish brown hair loose on the pillow. Sophie touched the warm shoulder before she went, and then posted a notice on their apartment door that they were not well and no copied music would be ready today. The traveling bags of both sisters stood, still packed, just inside their door.
In the kitchen Aloysia, arms bare and dressed only in her smock, was bent over a bowl of warm water, washing her hair. As quietly as they could they opened cupboard doors to take out dishes and cheese and bread. Someone had lain Aloysia’s new letters from Salzburg by the ale pitcher. Their mother entered; she rolled her eyes when they shook their heads at her silent question. Aloysia knelt by the fire to dry her hair.
They had gathered around the table when they heard the bed creak from their room. Then the door opened, and bare feet approached them. Josefa appeared at the kitchen door. There was a sense of voluptuousness about her—her large breasts and shoulders under the half-closed dressing gown, her hair tumbled about her shoulders—though her face was sullen and withdrawn. Sophie hardly breathed, but she nudged Constanze’s knee with her own. “Where’re your slippers, Josy?” she said tenderly. “You’ll catch cold.”
Josefa nodded, and returned a few moments later with their father’s old slippers on her feet, shuffling across the floor. She sat down moodily, reached for the bread; then, feeling them all looking quietly at her, she crumbled a bit of crust and said, “I suppose Aloysia has told you what I said yesterday. Well, I meant it. I’m not going to Vienna.” She tipped her head to one side, her full lower lip extended, one shoulder raised slightly under the nappy blue wool gown.
She added, “I suppose I should tell you why. It’s not just disappointment. Cousin Alfonso said he’d help me find singing work there. There’s another opera house, and concerts given all the time, ten times more than there are here. So it’s not just that.” She crumbled the crust smaller and smaller. They sensed her emotion pressing and pressing until it would burst forth. “I might not have been able to go even if I had won the place.”
She looked up. “I don’t always tell the truth; I’ll admit it. I like to keep people guessing, and I haven’t told you the truth about myself, none of you. The