Mozart's Last Aria Part 23

"Men destroy women. They refuse to acknowledge our talents. They ruin our bodies and our health with their midnight attentions and the constant pregnancies they bring. I avoided such misery. That's why I've been able to have a successful career. I never sought the aid of any man in my success, because such support comes at the price almost of one's life," Paradies said. "No man ever held me back, either. Masonry? I need no Brotherhood."

"What of friendship?"

She waved her hand. "I'm blind. I'm accustomed to being alone, even when I'm surrounded by a crowd. That's why I come to this crypt. In the church up there, death is a show. A Requiem by Maestro Mozart, a fine send-off. Down here I see better than anyone else. This is the reality of our lives-each shut up in our coffins, brittle and powerless. Music fills me with beauty, and I don't care if people recoil from my spinning eyeb.a.l.l.s. The dead don't judge me the way living people do."

She dropped her chin. I sensed the isolation that led her to prefer such terrifying company.

"I have to go. I'm leaving for Berlin." Paradies seemed to debate whether to say something more.

I held my breath and waited.

"The Prussian amba.s.sador hired me to perform some pieces by Wolfgang. One of them, he says, is previously unknown. He has acquired it from the widow Mozart," she said.

Her powdered face twitched with indecision. Then she seemed to relax. "I was at the amba.s.sador's residence today. He gave me the commission and ordered me to depart for Berlin as soon as possible."

"I know the new piece. I played it myself this lunchtime."

"While I was there, someone else came into the room. He blurted out the words, 'Pergen knows.' "

I would've spoken, but Paradies raised her hand for silence.

"The amba.s.sador and the newcomer became still, as though perhaps by a gesture or a look the Prussian had signaled that he wasn't alone. There was something nervous and secretive in their quiet. I knew it was my presence that halted them. Then they remembered that I couldn't see them, and I sensed their tension release. The amba.s.sador rose and went to the door. The visitor whispered a few words to him. He said, 'I can't go on.' The amba.s.sador told him to wait in another room. He didn't ask him; he ordered him rather forcefully. Then he dismissed me, with payment in advance for my journey."

I frowned. " 'Pergen knows'? 'Can't go on'? What does it mean?"

"People behave as if I'm deaf as well as blind," she said. "They think that if they whisper I won't know who they are. But I recognized the voice quite clearly. I teach piano to his wife and I've played at his mother-in-law's salon many times."

"Who was it?"

"Prince Lichnowsky."

At the home of the man who had told me the prince was a scoundrel? What was Lichnowsky's connection to the Prussian amba.s.sador? And what did he believe Pergen knew?

Paradies reached out her hand. I caught it in my own. "You have to be careful, Nannerl. Wolfgang cherished you to the very end. For his sake, take care."

Paradies touched my cheek. My tears fell on her hand. She led me to the steps of the crypt and pushed me up ahead of her.

In the transept of the church, the gray evening light struggled through the windows.

"Wolfgang wrote a riddle," I said. "If it wasn't about you-?"

"I'm no good with riddles. I'm blind. I detest anything that makes it harder to see the truth."

In the first pew of the church, the Italian maid stood up. She faced the altar, crossed herself, and came to take the blind woman's arm.

When the door creaked shut behind them, I felt a draft against my back. It seemed to rise from the entrance to the crypt. I hurried down the aisle and out into the growing darkness.

Chapter 31.

All Vienna seemed as lifeless as the crypt beneath St. Michael's Church, as I went through the covered way before the Spanish Riding School. The Lipizzaners craned out of their stalls, their long heads gray and ghostly in the twilight. Market women stumbled home, catatonic with fatigue at the day's end. The air was still and freezing.

The fire blazed in the tall hearth at the porters' station of the Imperial Library. I hurried to the head of the stairs and crossed the hall to Baron van Swieten's chambers.

The baron rose from his dining table. He pulled a napkin from his neck and tightened the belt of his green silk chamber robe over his breeches. He took both my hands and brushed my knuckles with his lips. Only then did I realize that he might misinterpret my returning alone to him, the day after he had hinted at love.

He gestured toward the table. "Will you join me? I'm so happy you came. I lost you in the crowd after the funeral Ma.s.s. I'm having uccellini. It was one of-"

He hesitated, staring at the platter beside his candlestick. A sage leaf protruded from a roll of veal. Twisted within it, a spiral of prosciutto was like a wound in the pale meat.

"One of Wolfgang's favorites," I said.

He touched his thumb to his lip.

I glanced at the door. A page stood beside it with his eyes averted.

"That'll be all," the baron said.

The page clicked his heels and left the room.

"My dear baron," I said, "fear has brought me to you."

Not love? I saw the question run across his eyes as though it had been inscribed there. I couldn't be sure if my answer was written as clearly, but I read in his face the response he found. The light that had illuminated him when I entered his chambers faded. No, not love.

I told him what I had learned of the Prussian connection to Wolfgang's Grotto, and that the king in Berlin tried to use my brother to infiltrate Viennese society.

"I fear someone may've taken Wolfgang for a spy," I said.

"It's possible."

"But if such activities were discovered, who would've-who would've punished him? Count Pergen, whose job is to eliminate foreign agents? Or the king of Prussia, covering his tracks?"

He led me to his couch. When he sat beside me, he brought the scent of jasmine. I remembered the perfume on his handkerchief when I had dried my tears of joy at the conclusion of The Magic Flute. A log dropped in the fire, and I started.

"This information is very important, madame," he said.

"Your Grace, it seems to me that it's also very dangerous."

He grinned. "Nothing at the imperial court is important unless it's dangerous, too. That's the nature of palaces."

"Then I ought to change my negative opinion of the obscurity in which I've lived these last years at St. Gilgen. At least there's no danger there."

"One risks avalanches in your mountain village, and an unnoticed death. But, in a palace, when one takes a chance, it's like a daring throw at dice for the richest pot in the casino."

He stood and paced the floor, slow ruminative footsteps, each making two clear connections on the floorboards, toe following heel. "And the pot, madame, is Austria. The future of its freedoms. If we cast a winning throw, we may save the emperor's subjects from the oppression of Count Pergen. We may grant them the liberty to think and speak as they wish. To inquire into the deep truths of new sciences."

I sensed it might be I who would rattle in the baron's hands and tumble across the gaming table at the mercy of chance. "How?"

"Our Emperor Leopold trusts Pergen only so far."

Swieten tapped his forefinger on the medal adorning his jacket, the red and gold Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of St. Stephen. "In my capacity as imperial librarian and head of censorship, I allow limited freedoms to publishers of books and pamphlets. I adjust those limits all the time."

"On what basis?"

"My latest discussions with the emperor. I carry out his politics as much as my own beliefs will permit. The same is true of Pergen. He's allowed to run his network of spies, to arrest dissenters and to punish them. But he mustn't overstep the bounds of what Emperor Leopold considers civilized."

"Has he ever done so?"

The baron sat on the arm of the couch. "The emperor reprimanded Pergen earlier this year. A publisher had distributed some pamphlets critical of the government. Pergen engineered the absolute ruin of the poor man's business. But he had gone too far. The emperor forced him to rehabilitate the bankrupt fellow. What if he was proven to have done something that couldn't be withdrawn?"

The dice were in the baron's hands. The throw was coming. "Murder," I murmured.

"Exactly. If the emperor could be presented with proof that Pergen's agents murdered a prominent figure like Wolfgang, it'd force the emperor to dispose of his police minister."

Make your throw, I thought. I'm ready.

"Your Grace, I'm at your disposal. Whatever you wish me to do, I shall carry it out immediately and willingly. If you'd have me write a letter to the emperor detailing what I've learned-"

"A letter?" Swieten waved his hand and shook his head. "Put nothing in writing. Speak to no one of this."

I curtsied. "I'll await your advice at my inn."

He reached for my wrist. "No, you're right that this is dangerous. I can't allow you to sit alone in a public inn. You'd be too exposed."

"But I must-"

"You'll stay here. I a.s.sure you, I'll devise a way to reach the emperor with this information. To prove what Pergen has done. You shan't be detained here for long."

I trusted him to take my part in this risky affair. But I also wondered if he didn't have another reason for keeping me at the palace. I knew him for a gentleman, but thoughts that are not absolutely guilty may not necessarily be without fault. The longer I spent with him, the more I feared that my own pleasure in his company might develop beyond the power of my shame to restrain me.

He led me through a high gilt door to his salon. The room was lit only by the fire and the evening moonlight. He left me in the shadows by the window and walked through the orange beam of the hearth.

Shoving aside a pile of papers on his desk, he slid open a small drawer. Then for a long time he was motionless.

When he turned, the fire flared and caught his eyes. He approached me soundlessly. The blaze was behind him then, and his stare was filled with the moon.

He lifted a cross on a delicate chain. "When my father brought her to Vienna from the Netherlands," he said, "he gave this to my mother, rest her soul."

The baron dangled the cross above my hand, so that it tickled at my palm. It was half the length of my smallest finger, gold inset with squares of amber. He let go of the chain. I caught it between my knuckles before it slid to the floor.

"I want you to have it," he said.

I followed the moonlight into his eyes. I unclasped the chain and fastened it at my neck. The cross lay over my collarbone. I knew I had its protection.

The crackling of the fire died down. I heard the baron's breath, then mine, short and urgent.

A song sounded in my head. The aria of love my brother wrote in Cos fan tutte for Ferrando. A loving breath from our treasured one brings the heart sweet solace. My respirations joined the slow saraband rhythm of the aria. The heart that's nourished by hope and love needs no better enticement.

The cross glinted in the glow of the fire, quivering with each of my inhalations to the song's triple meter. The baron watched his gift, enraptured, as though he, too, heard the music.

He lifted his hand toward the cross. I took his fingers in mine. I thought to hold them back, but instead I placed them over the jewel he had given me. I went onto my toes. His other hand circled my waist.

When I kissed him the tiny hairs of his beard seemed so rough and sharp that I felt they might draw blood. I pushed my cheek harder against him.

Chapter 32.

I reclined on the divan in the baron's chamber. The fire warmed my legs. My head lay on his chest, lifting with the soft motion of his breathing. His fingers moved through the heaviness of my hair and found my scalp. I let him ma.s.sage me there.

With his toes, he stroked at my foot until I laughed. I rolled onto him for a slow kiss. His shirt was loose and I moved my hand inside it. "Are you cold?" I rubbed his firm shoulder.

"You're getting all the warmth of the fire." He smiled. "Move over."

"Is my body not sufficient to warm you?"

He pushed his face against my neck and breathed in. Then his head dropped back against the divan and he frowned at the dark ceiling.

I tickled at his chin with my nose. "What is it?"

"To see us together would've made Wolfgang very happy," he said.

Since the moment he had placed the cross around my neck, I had felt no guilt. I had sensed that I might've rushed to the palace not out of fear, after all, but out of l.u.s.t, yet I hadn't reproved myself. When he touched me, I had thought of no one but the baron. I had experienced the same absolute absorption that came over me when I sat at the keyboard. With the mention of my brother's name I was overwhelmed by all the complications from which music-and now love-had been my refuge.

It was as if my father, my husband, and my confessor from the Church of Mariaplain jostled through the door, shocked and enraged by the position in which they found me. I pulled the thin muslin of my shift around my neck to cover myself from their disapproving glares. I watched the logs consumed by the fire.

"Forgive me." The baron touched my cheek. His hand left a trace of cologne in the air before my face like a screen. "I shouldn't have mentioned his name."

My sight blurred with tears, but not because of the baron's indelicacy. I had recalled where I had smelled the scent Swieten wore. It was the delicate blossom fragrance Constanze had savored when she unstoppered the bottle on Wolfgang's desk.

I had grown so far from my brother that I hadn't known his perfume. I wondered with what accuracy I remembered anything about him, his voice or his laughter. Would he be erased from my memory entirely in a decade, or even a year?

"He was the only one who wanted me to be fulfilled," I said. "When he came to Vienna, he wrote to tell me I should follow him. He was sure I could make a living here as a performer and a teacher."

"You were still unmarried?" The baron's face was stilled by what might have been, had we met then.