A small fire barely licked the scant wood. He was writing so intently, tongue pushed against his lower teeth, that he did not notice for some time someone standing in the doorway; when he looked up, he saw Constanze Weber with some wood in her arms.
“It’s too cold in here,” she said. He was so much under the spell of his work that he only smiled vaguely at her.
Since Sophie’s departure, this quietest of the sisters had seemed to meld into the halls of the boardinghouse. She carried sheets and kneaded bread until the young woman she had been was slowly turning into nothing but a dull servant—a pity, because she was not much more than eighteen. Wasn’t she in love with a cellist, that pale fellow he had seen on the steps now and then? Hadn’t Sophie said that? Then why didn’t the man take her away from this wretched place? As soon as he had an advance on the opera commission he would go himself, as soon as he had a little of it done.
“You’ll want more wood,” she said.
“I added a bit before, and expect to bow my head before your mother. I don’t blame her: not wood, candles, wine, nor pork is free.”
She knelt and coaxed the flames to recognize the new log. He gazed without much thought at the delicate back of her neck and the few strands of hair that had escaped her cap. Her name was the same as the heroine of his opera, Constanze.
She stood up, dusting her hands. She said, “I interrupted your work.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Mama says you aren’t leaving us quite yet.”
“No, I have a possible opera commission. Right now it is possible, probably, likely, yet I believe it will be, it will be. I slept only a few hours since I began it; the music won’t leave my mind. Let me play the first chorus for you.”
She sat down by the music table as he moved to the clavier. The bright music sprang out with its evocation of a Turkish march and seemed to shake the curtains and the new log, which rolled slightly and fell. “There’ll be triangles and drums,” he said. He heard the march coming closer in his head, the sound of the pasha and his worshipful court approaching. “It’s harem music,” he added. “That’s where it’s set.”
She said, “Do you remember the first time you came to visit us on a Thursday?”
“I do.... I loved your father.”
She brushed the bits of bark off her apron into her hand, and closed her fingers on it, standing suddenly as her name was called from the kitchen below. Her eyes were dark in her serious face. “I have to begin dinner,” she murmured. “I’m glad about the commission; I’m very glad you aren’t going to England just yet.”
Much later he would recall that gesture of the closed hand, her sudden standing in her great apron. Something stirred in him, but it melted away before he could recognize it.
The trees blossomed. One day he saw the dog he had seen previously in the street, nosing hopefully in some garbage. He whistled and put out his hand, but the animal, having understood the young man had no food for it, trotted away with dignity.
Mozart seldom saw Constanze in the house to speak more than a few words to her. She moved past him like a shadow, then was gone as if she had never been there at all. She’s lonely, he thought suddenly. Poor girl, when I first saw her amid all the others, I didn’t think it would come to this. And where the devil is this French cellist of hers? He never heard the man’s voice in the hall anymore.
One day as he was coming from his music publisher, he saw her walking before him, weaving between the carts and people of the crowded and elegant market, with a leather portfolio under her arm. The sky was heavy white, and it looked as though rain would come soon. “Mademoiselle Weber,” he called, catching up with her. “Where do you go?”
“I’ve delivered some music I copied,” she said. She stood very still, though people pushed about her. Just then a woman with two small, yapping dogs passed them, and her mouth opened with delight. “Oh, the darlings,” she cried. “Oh look, oh I wish I had one of my own.”
“I recall you love them, and having one’s an easy enough wish to grant.”