Mozart's Last Aria Part 19

Swieten swiveled toward the exclamation and withdrew his hand.

Before Tamino's first aria was over I was lost in the beauty of my brother's creation. Schikaneder had said the opera was intended to promote Masonic values, but to me it was full of Wolfgang's pure playfulness.

So entranced was I that when two men entered our box, I hardly noticed. At first Swieten, too, paid them no attention. They lingered in the doorway, irresolute and confused. With a sigh of irritation, the baron stared them down.

The men were ill-dressed and rough. They avoided the baron's glare, but didn't retreat.

He took a step toward them, pulling back his broad shoulders and lifting the heavy, jeweled end of his stick like a cudgel. The men touched the brims of their hats and left.

Swieten paced the box for several minutes before he returned to his seat.

Onstage, the Queen of the Night appeared on a throne gilded with stars. She sang of her lost child. Tears of pity came to my eyes. The diva was Constanze's sister, the voluble Josefa whom I had met at the Academy of Science. Her aria moved into G minor, which Wolfgang so often used to convey grief, as she recounted her daughter's kidnapping and beseeched Tamino to rescue the girl.

There was soon a respite from such tragic emotion with the low comedy of Schikaneder as the Bird Man, and the delightful Three Boys, young sopranos who swung over the action in a magical flying barge.

Gieseke strode across the stage with the rest of the priests. He had a minor role, but he spoke his lines well. His voice, which had seemed to rip through his throat when he stood before me in the box, was smooth and resonant.

In the finale to act one, he lurked among the ranks of the priests at the edge of the stage. My eyes happened to be upon him when the frightened Bird Man asked the kidnapped princess what he might say to explain himself to the approaching High Priest. "The truth, the truth!" she called. "Even if it be a crime." Gieseke spun and took two steps toward her. His movement on the crowded stage went unnoticed by the audience. But the girl who sang the role of the princess flinched, as though she had seen some threat in the advancing actor's eyes.

The intermission began. Wolfgang's music played on in my head. I experienced a rapture so powerful that I wanted to skip onto the stage and dance.

When Swieten stood to make his way to the royal party I grasped his hand and squeezed it in joy. He responded with a similar pressure from his fingers. The beads woven into his jacket glimmered like stars.

He descended to greet the n.o.bles who hovered about the emperor. The orchestra was tuning up for the second act when he returned.

Constanze's sister pulled off the high coloratura of her final aria with such accomplishment that it sounded more like a wind instrument than a human voice. Schikaneder played his magic bells to summon his beloved and sang a playful duet with her. I smiled through tears of delight.

Swieten brought a handkerchief from his sleeve. I held it close to my face longer than was necessary to dry my eyes. I breathed in the scent of his jasmine cologne on the lace.

Chapter 26.

The princess had been refused entry to the priesthood at first, insulted as a weak, gossiping woman. By the end of the opera, her determination and rect.i.tude won over the priests, who allowed her to enter their order. As the curtain came down, I spoke to Swieten above the applause. "All the most profound utterances were made by the princess."

He sucked his upper lip. "Quite so."

The prince and princess slipped through the curtain and accepted the ovation with Schikaneder and his bird-woman bride.

The door of our box opened. Stadler entered. His eyes signaled urgency, but he paused when he noticed me.

Swieten shifted in his seat to face the clarinetist. "Stadler, guten Abend."

Stadler ran his hand over his close-cropped hair and bowed to me. He hesitated in the doorway.

"It was a wonderful performance, Stadler," Swieten said. "Was it not?"

Another silence, before Stadler stammered: "Truly, most astonishing."

"It acts powerfully on the emotions," I said.

"What does?" Stadler's reply was quick this time.

"Wolfgang's opera." I inclined my head, curious at his agitation.

Constanze's sister joined the other four singers on the stage and brought the audience to its feet. She flounced down into a deep curtsy, her head almost bowed to the stage and her hand on her breast, as though she had been consumed and exhausted by her performance.

Stadler sat on the edge of a gilt chair behind Swieten. He rubbed his palms on his breeches.

In the first row of the theater, Emperor Leopold clapped delicately, but, it seemed to me, without enthusiasm.

"Can it be that the opera doesn't meet with the emperor's approval?" I asked.

Stadler craned over the baron's shoulder. His cheek twitched as he registered the reserve in the emperor's applause.

Swieten took Stadler's wrist between both his hands. "Dear Stadler, something is amiss?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's clear you came to see me with urgent news. Don't let Madame de Mozart's presence put you off. I can a.s.sure you, she's privy to everything I know."

"About what?"

"Come on." Swieten leaned close. "Wolfgang. His death."

On the stage, the singers started the encores. Schikaneder led them with a b.u.mptious reprise of his introductory aria, "The Birdcatcher am I."

With the ovation suspended for the singing, Stadler lowered his voice. "Gieseke has information."

Swieten raised his chin, as though the scent of unseen food had wafted by him.

"He knows who poisoned Wolfgang," Stadler said. "But he's scared. He'll reveal the name of the killer only to you. He wants your protection."

The baron shook his head. "G.o.d help him."

He went to the door. "I'll go and look for this poor fellow," he said to Stadler. "Stay with Madame de Mozart."

Stadler protested, but the baron gave a look of warning. "Don't leave her until I return," he said.

As the door shut, Stadler slumped into his chair.

Applause for Schikaneder. Then the princess took center stage for her encore. While the orchestra introduced her aria, I recalled a line of hers from act two. "A woman who does not fear night and death is worthy and will be initiated," I whispered.

Stadler stared at me with his jaw quivering. I had an idea now of the missing paragraphs from the page Wolfgang had written, which lay in the pocket of my skirt.

"The Grotto, Herr Stadler," I said. "Wolfgang shared the secret of that new Masonic lodge with you, did he not?"

"He-he did." Stadler spoke as though with his final breath.

"He left the essay unfinished in which he described his plans for the Grotto. But this opera completes the scheme as clearly as if he were to have written it out himself in plain prose."

On the stage, the princess took her bow.

"Wolfgang intended to allow women to join his lodge," I said. "Look how this princess is tested and given membership of the priesthood. That's what Wolfgang wanted to do-to accord the same rights to women as to men. No doubt he saw it as the natural development of his ideas of equality, his belief in the new Enlightenment. Correct, Herr Stadler?"

He gave the slightest of nods, as the Queen of the Night opened her aria. Vengeance, she sang again, boiled in her heart.

"But his ideas were dangerous?" I said.

Stadler grabbed at his face and doubled over, rocking on his seat. "We take fearful oaths when we join the Brotherhood. There're dreadful punishments for those who break the rules."

"I heard the oath."

"So you did, when you-"

"Wolfgang tried to break the rule that excludes women from the Masons. He's dead. But who else is at risk, Herr Stadler?" I said. "Who else was involved in the new lodge? You? Gieseke?"

He groaned his acknowledgment. "Lichnowsky, too. He backed Wolfgang in founding the new lodge."

I wondered why Lichnowsky had ventured into so hazardous a project. I looked across the theater to the prince's seats. The woman with the piano-playing fingers leaned her head against the edge of the box, enraptured. Lichnowsky's face was as empty of emotion as hers was awash with it.

The encores of the primary singers were at an end. The heavy scarlet curtains drew back. The entire cast appeared on- stage among the cla.s.sical columns of the set for a curtain call. I couldn't see Gieseke among the white-robed priests.

The door of the box opened. The baron entered.

"Gieseke?" I asked.

"Not a sign of him," he said. "Perhaps he'll come to me if I wait here."

Gieseke had only to have spoken a single word to me, the guilty name. But he had fled. It was as if the ident.i.ty of the killer had been written out in water, plain before my eyes and yet elusive. I rose to my feet in confusion.

From backstage came a loud crack, like a heavy rope severed.

The barge from which the Three Boys had sung their advice to the Bird Man swung out under the proscenium. As it rocked back and forth, a gasp spread through the audience. A man dangled headfirst from the boat, high above the stage.

Something spattered down from the barge onto Schikaneder. He wiped it from the shoulders of his feathery costume.

As the barge swung back, its motion dislodged the hanging man. He plunged to the stage. Schikaneder pulled the screaming Queen of the Night out of the way.

The body lay twisted on the boards, blood spreading over its white robes. Schikaneder lifted the prostrate man's head.

"My G.o.d," he cried, in the penetrating baritone that we had applauded moments before. "It's Gieseke. He's dead."

In his box across the theater, Lichnowsky came to his feet. The pretty young woman spun in horror and pressed her face to his midriff. He looked toward Swieten's seats. The baron stared at the stage, his hands closed into fists. Lichnowsky went quickly from his box, and the sobbing woman hurried after him.

Chapter 27.

I mounted the stairway to Jahn's coffeehouse. Ahead of me, I heard the click of billiard b.a.l.l.s and two voices. One said, "Well played, Prince." The other: "Pure luck, Lichnowsky, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

As I reached the head of the stairs, I saw the tall figure of Prince Lichnowsky, his arm extended and his palm held out. A stout man, dressed in the fashionable simplicity of the English style, pulled his wallet from his coat and slid out two banknotes. He slapped them into Lichnowsky's hand with a grimace.

"You're lucky that you're of a lower cla.s.s than me, Hoffmann," the prince said, as he put the money away. "Otherwise I'd demand satisfaction for your insults."

"I'd be happy to take you on. Choose your weapons."

"I wouldn't dignify you with the honor of a duel. But you'd better watch your mouth, or I'll thrash you in the Graben outside my house like an insolent servant."

When the third man rose from his table, I saw that it was Stadler. He imposed himself between the two men, a hand on each of their chests, and laughed. "Neither a duel nor a brawl would bring much honor to either of you," he said.

The loser of the game dropped onto a sofa. Hoffmann waved his hand toward a man in a white ap.r.o.n, who nodded and drew a pot of coffee from a bra.s.s urn.

Lichnowsky pinched some snuff beneath his nose. "It's early in the day for the coffee to have made you so quarrelsome, Hoffmann," he said. "Usually you don't challenge me to a duel before lunchtime."

"Most of the people who know you for a scoundrel are the kind to lie in bed until late, so ordinarily the field is mine until noon." He lifted a shaky hand toward me. "Today I had to beat the rush."

The prince spun on the heel of his boot with an expression of shock. When he saw me, his face turned to anger, but he composed himself. "Hoffmann, you dishonor this lady."

"Not before you did, surely."

"This is Madame de Mozart."

"Wolfgang's sister?"

The pot of coffee arrived. The seated man busied himself with pouring from it, trying to cover his embarra.s.sment. Stadler hid behind a news sheet.

Lichnowsky took my hand. He led me to a table in the corner of the room.

"You told that man your home is on the Graben, my prince. The meeting of the Masonic lodge. It was held at your house, wasn't it?"

He covered his mouth with his hand and coughed. He held up two fingers to the man in the ap.r.o.n.

Jahn's was one of the most popular coffeehouses in Vienna, but at midmorning Lichnowsky's companions at the billiard table had it to themselves. It was comfortably furnished with snug booths of red velvet along the walls. The news sheets hung on wooden rails beside the bar. The air was charged with the aroma of crushed coffee beans.

Lichnowsky lit a long Sevilla. His breath shivered between his lips as he blew out the smoke. "Wolfgang played many of his public concerts here," he said. "Financially your brother did quite well in this place."