Her words were muffled. “Are you truly, Mozart? Or are you still too angry?”
“A child is dead. How can I not be sorry? Her child. It wasn’t mine. I can’t begin to understand what I feel.”
“I found out this afternoon. When my papa died, I sang, but I can’t do that now. I can’t do anything but cry; I can’t stop, and I hate it. Since I was small I have never wanted to cry.”
Her long face was streaked with tears, and he felt for his handkerchief in his coat, but she shook her head, refusing it. “And why should it hurt so?” she said, beginning to sob again. “Children die of so many things. Papa and Mama had two who died after I was born. But it doesn’t matter if much of the world has the same suffering.”
“I also never want to cry again,” he said. “And yet I know I will. My priest friend told me when I was a boy that if I felt deeply in one area, I must in all.”
She bent down again, her head almost to the floor. She murmured, “Why do we love the people we can’t have? When Aloysia was a baby, she was my own, my own. I was jealous but for a time, she was my very own. She’s nobody’s now. She wouldn’t understand my sorrow. And her child, her Maria, was to me ... not much to her, but all to me ... and that’s gone.”
“You’ll have children of your own.”
“Will I? Don’t you know, Mozart? No one will love me that way, and you’re cold to all of us now.”
“I must be to go on. Don’t you know that?”
His hand came from his knee, hesitated, and then rested on her hair. For a moment she was still. Then she sat up entirely, shaking him off, staring ahead of her. “Don’t touch me; I would much prefer that you didn’t touch me.”
“Josefa, do you dislike me so?”
“No, it’s just that I can’t bear it. Will you go away now, please, and leave me alone? Oh, my little child, my little love.”
He went heavily up the stairs and into his room, where a bit of snow had blown under the window and onto the sill. On the table was his music for the sonata for two pianos and the horn serenade in E flat. He stood without moving for some time in the dark room; then he covered his face with both his small, supple hands.
Sophie Weber, June 1842
MONSIEUR NOVELLO AND I HAD BEEN TALKING ALL afternoon, and now evening had come and the light was fading. I rambled a great deal because remembering the death of my little niece brought those few weeks back to me. We sat together, and he took my hand; together we mourned for the dead.
He asked, “Did the grief bring your family closer?” He had not taken out his writing implements that day, but only listened.
“Yes, Aloysia and Mother had a tearful reconciliation. It didn’t last very long; within two weeks they were shouting at each other again. It broke my heart, but I should have expected it. Josefa had gone on her own several times to see the child. It was as if she were the mother. She could not speak for tears; we hadn’t expected this of her. But you never knew what she would say or do about anything.”
“Where did she go that night after Mozart left her alone? I think you said she later ran out into the snow.”
“We never knew where she went; perhaps to those strange friends of hers, those mannish women. She had no luck rising in music in Vienna at that time; that pretty English soprano rose before her. But what did any of this matter next to the child who was gone? And then a few days after we heard of the baby’s death, she left us. My little heart was truly broken.”
“Who left you?”
“Josefa.”
PART FIVE
Vienna and Constanze
My most beloved Sophie and Constanze,This is my tenth day in Prague, and I have already sung twice at the opera. Alfonso and his wife, who traveled with me (you know he was engaged to play here), have found me a good place to live. I am miserable to be away from both of you, but I had to go. Oh sisters, will you visit our niece’s grave and bring flowers as soon as they bloom?