Mozart's Sister (53 page)

I put it to my face intending to rub its softness against my cheek.
But instead I found myself inhaling his scent. I was hesitant to exhale
and did so only to inhale again. Musty, spicy, warm ... it was all I
had left of him yet was worth more than anything else listed in the
inventory.

I clutched the dressing gown to my chest and stumbled to the
chair by the window I had to move one of Leopoldl's toy horses
from the seat, and sank onto the cushion, clutching the toy in my
free hand. How could I live without him? How could my son live?

I heard the sound of tiny footsteps, then silence. A few seconds
later the door slowly edged open and little Leopoldl peered inside.

"Gampa?"

No. Grandpapa was gone.

I managed a smile and held out my arms to him. He ran to me
and, spotting his toy, took it happily. He started to climb into my
lap, so I moved the dressing gown to make room. Once settled, he
patted the green fabric and said, "Gampa."

I nodded and opened the dressing gown wide. Then I draped it
over us both, shrouding us in its meager comfort.

"Face it, Nannerl," Johann said, back in our home in St. Gilgen.
"Your brother does not want any of your father's possessions. He just
wants cash."

I shook my head and glanced over at ten-year-old Joseph as he helped Leopoldl build a tower with blocks. Maria, Joseph, and Karl
were also accepting their little brother quite well. Unfortunately, our
Wolfgang was still in and had had little chance to spend time with
his new brother. His joint sickness caused him much pain.

"But it doesn't make sense," I said, turning my thoughts back to
the other Wolfgang in my life. "When he and Constanze visited
Salzburg, Constanze made a point of asking Papa for some of
Wolfie's childhood souvenirs."

"Did Leopold give her some?"

No.

"Why not?"

"He didn't think they'd take care of them"

"And perhaps they wouldn't have. Perhaps your brother's disinterest in your father's possessions proves your father right"

"Or perhaps Wolfie's debt is forcing him to override sentiment."

Johann shrugged and sharpened a quill with a knife. "Yet perhaps it would do you well to take fewer of your father's thiti s and
bring us some cash."

I shook my head vehemently. "I can't do that. All his life Papa
stressed legacy Why else would he have urged us to keep the family
letters? I have done my best to keep every one"

"Do you really think your brother has done the same?"

I did not. Wolfie lived in the moment and gave little care for the
past or the future.

Johann set the quill down. "Do as you wish, Nannerl. It is not
my decision. Our marriage contract specifically states that any monies received from our families will remain our individual property. I
will honor that."

I knew he would. For despite my husband's penny-pinching
ways, he was an honorable man.

With Papa's passing, and the physical and often emotional distance between Wolfie's life and my own, Johann was all the male
family I had left.

Johann and my dear son ...

Would they be enough?

Growing older and wiser ...

Blessings and trials will do that to a person. Age them. And
make them wise.

If they are not broken first.

Just weeks after Papa's passing, our boy Wolfgang passed away.
He was in his thirteenth year. Dear Maria took it the hardest. She'd
tried so hard to make him better.

So once again I had five children in St. Gilgen.

After these deaths, I spent many months veering off course, as if
my life had no rudder. How sad that only death makes us see how
invaluable we are to one another. Death minimizes faults and petty
discord. It mocks us: Go ahead and complain about one another. I'll get
my due soon enough....

Papa had been my advisor, my encourager, and my organizer.
He'd been my greatest supporter yet my harshest critic. I'd trusted
him and had known he loved me and would die for me without
regret or hesitation. Yet perhaps the greatest lesson I'd learned from
Papa was how to approach life. For by watching him adapt, plan,
and handle victory as well as defeat, I'd learned that the best way to
deal with problems was to attack them one step at a time while
trusting in God's providence and care. It became an invaluable
process I heartily tried to employ.

A process I wished Wolfie would have learned. My biggest regret upon Papa's passing was not for myself and Papa but for my
brother. I knew Wolfie was busy. I knew he'd often chafed at Papa's
advice-even if it did prove wise. And I also knew my brother was
different from Papa and me. He dwelt in a place where it was imperative for his mind to be able to roam free and unencumbered. The
fact he didn't know how to suspend that abandon in order to deal
with the logistics of day-to-day living is what had disturbed Papa the
most. And me.

But then something happened that was almost ironic in its timing. Just six months after Papa died, after having freelanced in
Vienna for six years, Wolfie was finally offered a permanent position.
Christoph Gluck, the Imperial and Royal Chamber Composer for
Emperor Joseph, died. And though Gluck had been paid two thousand florins a year and Wolfie was only offered eight hundred, it was
still a position. I just hoped Wolfie's debts and spending habits would
not swallow the florins before they could land.

Yet Papa would have been proud, and the salaried position gave
me hope that Wolfie would be all right. Plus, the timing was excellent because his wife, Constanze, was expecting their fourth child.
Unfortunately only one had lived. Risky business, childbearing.

I tried to keep in touch with Wolfie, but his letters were few,
yet he did usually remember my name day. And though he always
sounded genuinely pleased at my effort to reach him and begged for
many, many more letters, he also matter-of-factly warned me that
his responses would not increase. Whether due to busyness or his
lifelong dislike for letter writing, it was a fact I learned to accept.

In truth, we had grown apart because we lived worlds apart.
Wolfie lived in a world of his own choosing in Vienna, and I lived
in a world of my own choosing in St. Gilgen.

And indeed, it was a world of my own choosing.

At the beginning I had voiced many complaints about life in St.
Gilgen. Most were valid. I had even gone so far as to resist being
happy there. As long as Papa was the tether that held me connected
to Salzburg, I never allowed myself to see St. Gilgen as my true
home. In short, his death forced me to grow up. Until his passing I
had no real reason to discover the real Nannerl Mozart Berchtold. I
was always first and foremost Papa's daughter and Wolfie's sister. And though now I was someone's wife and someone's mother, I was also
just me. And the odd consequence of this attitude was that the
stronger I became in myself, the stronger the children became.

There were more children added to our family. Nearly two years
after Papa's death, at midnight between March twenty-second and
March twenty-third, 1789, I bore a daughter. My husband named
her Johanna after himself, but everyone always called her Jeanettethe name of Johann's second wife. Some thought this odd. Yet
somehow I'd always felt a kinship with that woman, for she too had
been brought into a family of many children, had added one of her
own, only to die in her attempt to bring a second child to life.

No matter what she was called, the other children welcomed
Jeanette into the household, especially dear Maria, who said upon
her birth, "We needed another girl around here!" It was Maria who
took her new sister to be christened on her very first day of life.

Yet amidst our joy was tragedy. Twenty months after Jeanette's
birth, in November 1790, I bore another daughter, Babette. But this
dear baby did not live past her fifth month and died of the same
intestinal complications that had claimed Wolfie's firstborn. We buried her next to her older brother, little Wolfgang.

Birth, death, day, night. Life went on. And I with it.

Yet it seemed that once I allowed myself to be in St. Gilgen body
and soul, the conditions of our family improved. Eventually, I even
got Johann to agree to send the three oldest boys to Salzburg for a
proper education. Elated at my triumph, I personally brought them
to the school, got them settled, and kissed them good-bye with all
my hopes and prayers they would thrive and prosper in the atmosphere of learning.

The next morning, before heading back to St. Gilgen, I capped
off the victorious trip by having coffee with Franz. He was still a
very good friend.

"You should be very proud of what you've accomplished, Nan,"
he said as we waited for our rolls.

I knew he meant the boys. My cheeks were still warm with
pride from seeing them off. "They have come so far. All of them
have. You should see how Maria has grown into a fine young
woman.

He smiled. "The dirty face is gone?"

"Scrubbed and shining. You know what she told me the other
day when I gave her a compliment on how far she'd progressed? She
said she'd changed because she'd wanted to become a lady . . ." My
throat tightened. "A lady just like me."

"She could have no higher aspiration."

I felt myself blush. "Now she is the one who gets after Jeanette
and Leopoldl for their dirty faces."

He laughed, then let his smile turn wistful. "How I miss that
boy."

I slapped a hand to my forehead. "Of course! I should have
brought him with me so you ... I was just so consumed with making sure the other three had their things and-"

He raised a hand, stopping my defense. "It's fine, Nan. You have
more to think about than an old schoolteacher."

He was looking rather old of late. "I will always think of you,
Franz. You have been a dear friend for ever so long"

He took my hand across the table, squeezed it quickly, then let
it go. "For ever so long," he said.

After coffee we parted. Walking in opposite directions, I paused
to watch him go. My romantic side would have had him turn so we
could exchange a final smile.

But he did not. And so I watched him disappear around the
corner and continued on my way. On my way home.

As a child I always thought the milestones of life would come
with some notion of premonition-that you would feel their presence looming, that on the day of their declaration you would feel
differently and suspect that something extraordinary was about to
occur.

But without all that many years under my sash, I learned this
was not so. The extraordinary events that fill a life-both good and
bad-slip in the door unannounced, until you look up from what
you were doing, and they introduce themselves.

It happened just this way on a cold December morning, 1791. Quite unexpectedly-and uncharacteristically Johann appeared in
the living quarters in the middle of the afternoon. I looked up from
giving Leopoldl his piano lesson and knew immediately by the
pulled look on my husband's face and the letter in his hand that it
was bad news making a call.