Longing (46 page)

So she had chosen the Erard. Upon it she taught her three students, whose payments were not sufficient to support her in a city as expensive as Paris, as neither were the sums she earned from her concerts. At these she played everything, it seemed, but Robert's music, which she reserved for the occasional private soirée where she hoped at least some of the guests would be of sufficient sophistication to appreciate the challenge of his work, though after she had played some of his
Carnaval
at two in the morning at the home of Countess Perthuis, and the guests had looked quite puzzled when she had finished, she wrote to Robert begging him to send her some new work that would be easy to understand, not too long, not too short, without a confusing title, in short something that might be suitable for the general public, demeaning as it might be for a genius to have to fashion work that was as far beneath him and his abilities as it was accessible to the common ear. It was, she said, simply too painful for her to play his work for people who did not begin to understand it. And while he was at it, would he please change the title of the “Corpse Fantasy” simply to “Nocturne,” so that people would not be so bothered by the title that they would never be able to listen to the music. Well, he explained, it was true that each of the pieces in
Carnaval
cancels out the one before, and not everyone can adjust to such aesthetic purification; it is a cleansing, like that of death, that offends. And he
had
changed the title of the “Corpse Fantasy,” though in doing so he had warned her that they might be wide apart in their understanding of what it meant to be an artist and expressed his hope that this would not bring them bitter times in the future.

There was no bitterness now between them. They were alone in the world, it seemed, on the first floor of a hotel in Altenburg, and no one but Dr. Reuter knew they were there. He, who had once told Robert to take a wife, had sent them into one another's arms as a way for them to gather strength for the battle before them.

Robert had petitioned the Appeals Court in Leipzig for permission to marry Clara Wieck without her father's consent. Clara, in Paris—trembling as she took the pen from Monsieur Delapalm, her lawyer (that she should need a lawyer! for the purpose of suing her own father!)—had signed the petition. She and Robert had been summoned to appear, together with her father, in court.

How different, she wondered, was this from what marriage would be? To lie awake in the middle of the night in a small hotel room in a small city that would mean nothing to her—she could not imagine being booked to perform here—had it not been the site of her being given over, as she saw it, to music. Her father had recognized her. Not merely her gift, but
her
. It was as if, when she used to climb to her dead brother Adelheid's room to listen to her mother play the piano, her father had been there with her, seeing in her the birth of her great secret, that music could pass through her body on its way from the living to the dead. He had chosen her because he knew her. He was her teacher. Like all great teachers, he was divine: not for his knowledge but for how he spread it through her, expanding it within her from enlightenment to expression. How could she not adore him, who adored her so much that he had lost himself within her? Perhaps he recognized her too well. It was too much to expect him to approve of this. That she was profligate in passion, wholly given over, when she gave herself, to such pleasure as was blinding, such feeling that, when she had mounted it and thrown herself off the very edge of life itself, she ceased feeling entirely and lay here waiting for the feeling to return.

“Robert,” she whispered.

He was asleep.

“My husband.”

Leipzig

DECEMBER 18, 1839

She is an immoral girl who has been seduced by a miserable wretch
.

Friedrich Wieck

We, the undersigned, have for several years harbored a shared and genuine wish to be joined in marriage. But there has always been a hindrance to the fulfillment of our wish. Although it gives us deepest pain, we have no choice but to take measures against this hindrance. The father of Clara Wieck, the cosignatory, in defiance of our repeated and respectful requests, withholds his consent. We are unable to understand his reasons: we are conscious of no failings; we have sufficient means to support ourselves now and in the future. Therefore, Herr Wieck must hold a feeling of personal animosity toward the other signatory, who nonetheless believes that he has fulfilled every duty a man owes to the father of the woman he desires as his companion for the rest of his life. Consequently, we approach the High Court with a most humble request: that your worships will cause Herr Wieck to give his consent to our marriage or, if it better suits the court, that you will give your consent in place of his.

Robert Schumann

Clara Wieck

“I will never give my consent,” said Wieck. “Never!”

“Would you care to tell us why.”

Friedrich Wieck found the words of Archdeacon Rudolf Fischer, who presided over the court, confusing. He sat up there between his comagistrates, who said nothing but always nodded in perfect synchronism whenever Pastor Fischer said anything, when he so much as cleared his throat, and uttered such equivocal statements as “Would you care to tell us why.”

“Are you asking me if I would
care
to or are you asking me if I
will
?”

“As you wish,” said Pastor Fischer.

“I do not care to,” said Wieck.

“Then you needn't,” said Pastor Fischer.

“But I will.”

Now it was Pastor Fischer who was confused. He said so, with more impatience than Wieck felt was granted to himself to express in this court. “I am confused, Herr Wieck. Either
tell
the court why you will never give your consent to your daughter's marriage or do
not
tell the court.”

“If the court agrees to rule in my favor, then I will not tell the court. I do not, as I said, care to tell the court, for by so doing I shall ruin the life of my daughter when my purpose is to save it.”

“Challenge,” said Wilhelm Einert, Clara and Schumann's lawyer, who was so short in stature and shrill in voice that Wieck felt his very attendance in court gave himself, who was his own lawyer, a distinct advantage.

“The opposing attorney is required to stand when issuing a challenge,” said Wieck.

“I
am
standing.” Einert glanced down at himself and then, having verified this information, rose on tiptoe to further make his point.

“You are not in the ballet,” said Wieck.

“I am in court,” said Einert.

“I should have thought that would be apparent without your having to say so.”

“Your challenge?” Pastor Fischer addressed Einert, his intentions much clearer, noticed Wieck, than when addressing him.

“I challenge the defendant's request that the court rule in his favor without his even explaining why he objects to the marriage of his daughter to Herr Schumann. For the court to so rule would be to reject all evidence and provide summary judgment when nothing has been presented to summarize.”

“I agree,” said Pastor Fischer, thus inspiring the agreement of his comagistrates, who bobbed sagely.

“Are you therefore telling me that I
must
tell the court why I will never consent to the marriage of my daughter?” Wieck addressed himself both to Pastor Fischer and to Advocate Einert.

Pastor Fischer, no fool he, looked to Einert for the answer.

“You
must
!” squeaked the lawyer.

“Let it be on record, then, that it is not through my wishes but through those of the advocate for the very two people who have sued me that I read my declaration.”

“What declaration?” Einert rose, though he was not required to, as if to get a better view of a document that had thus far not been produced.

“
This
declaration!” Wieck reached into the leather satchel in which he had carried to court the various papers whose disclosure would, once and for all, rescue his daughter from a lifetime of penurious unhappiness with a dissolute madman. From the folder he withdrew the pages, bound by a ribbon, into which he had poured such feelings that, were he a composer and this his magnum opus, he would become immortal for the very unleashed fury of the truth told through his art, much like his old friend Beethoven himself. With one hand he held the pages out before him, toward the court, and with the other he untied the ribbon. The moment the papers were released from their gentle girdle, they began to quiver in his hand, though with his passion or their own no one, including himself, could discern.

“That appears to be quite a lengthy document.” Pastor Fischer was watching the pages wave with the look of a man who realizes at the end of a heavy meal that his host is about to read his own poetry.

“It is only as long as it needs to be, your worship. Would that the same could be said for Herr Schumann's compositions.”

“Challenge,” said Einert. “We are here to discuss people, not music.”

“If one could tell the singer from the song,” scoffed Wieck. “If you know as little about law as you seem to about music, sir, then perhaps I shall not even have to read my declaration.”

“You plan to read all that?” Now Pastor Fischer pointed at the papers, which caused them immediately to stop shaking in Wieck's hand. He used this dramatic turn of events to bring the papers before his eyes.

“I have spent what seems to be a lifetime preparing this document. True, it has been only eleven years since Herr Schumann first appeared at my door and began his seduction of my daughter. But eleven years is a long time in anyone's life these days of railroad trains and magazines from Boston, Massachusetts, and particularly in the life of a girl who is barely past nineteen and thus is, by the law over which you rule with such authority, still under my control. Therefore, while I would, as I told the court, care not to read these pages, I shall, as demanded by my very adversary, read them. I
must
read them. For they contain the truth.”

“And what do they say?” asked Pastor Fischer.

Friedrich Wieck put on his spectacles and began to read. “‘This is the declaration, for all to hear, of Friedrich Wieck, born on the eighteenth of August, seventeen eighty-five, in Pretzsch, fifty miles from this very—'”

“We know where Pretzsch is, Herr Wieck,” Pastor Fischer said with an impatience that could have been born only of prejudice against his case. “I trust you are not about to declare the names and occupations of your parents and the location and curriculum of your gymnasium.”

Wieck put his free hand over the text, to shield it from eyes that had apparently already managed to read it. He wondered if Pastor Fischer or, more likely, the lackeys who were his comagistrates had somehow managed to go through his locked desk as he had gone so profitably through Clara's.

“I should think my education would be of extreme importance here since it has resulted in the genius of my daughter.”

For the first time in these proceedings, he allowed himself the luxury of looking toward Clara. He expected he would see her smile at this preposterous remark of his. He had told her often enough that he was the custodian of her genius, not its creator. Of all the people in this cold, vast room, she would be the only one to appreciate the wit and cunning of his statement. It was important she realize he was willing to falsify his own beliefs in order to save her from disaster.

Indeed, she was looking at him. But, like the girl he had apparently trained too well to hide an expression of her feelings so that, when she performed, her music alone would express them, she did not now display her amusement or even her understanding of this secret, among all the many secrets they shared. Her huge eyes looked at him deadly, so restrained in their admiration of his guile that he found himself admiring her ability to conceal her feelings even as he resented her for so doing and thus making him feel he had no allies whatsoever in this court. Aside from Clementine, that is, from whom he was always forced to hide the depth of his love for his one daughter not her own, and aside from his two witnesses, whose self-interest was no secret to him and whom he would banish from his life and most assuredly from Clara's once he won his case.

“This court is in no position to argue, or to hear arguments, concerning the origins of genius,” said Pastor Fischer. “To do so would be to condemn ourselves to a procedure even more lengthy than that threatened by this declaration of yours. Please move on, Herr Wieck, and do so into some territory of your life that has some relevance to your defense of your position.”

“I should think that my marriage—my marriage to the mother of Fräulein Wieck, that is—would meet your requirements of relevance. To continue”—and he moved ahead several pages into the document—“‘On June twenty-third, eighteen sixteen, I married Marianne Tromlitz of Plauen, a town in the southeastern part of Saxony, some sixty miles from…' But let me once more dispense with the geography,” he said, as he saw Pastor Fischer about to interrupt him yet again. “‘It was a marriage that began in the bliss of conjugal morn and ended in the nightmare of treachery. Marianne Wieck became the mother of Clara Josephine Wieck on September thirteenth, eighteen nineteen. Less than five years later, after burdening me with three useless sons, she showed herself as wanton and debauched in her behavior as her daughter has proved herself to be in her relations with Herr Schumann.'”

For the first time, Pastor Fischer seemed genuinely interested in this case before him. “I beg your pardon!” he nearly bellowed.

“That is correct, your honor. Wanton and debauched. The woman took up with her own piano teacher and before my very eyes, as it were, in my very home, proceeded to seduce him and to be seduced by him—as you know, it takes two to allemande—with the result that I was betrayed in the most—”