The Musician's Daughter (11 page)

“To understand,” Zoltán said, “you must be made acquainted with matters that would put you in almost as much danger as your father faced, every day.”

“Danger? As a violinist? What do you mean?”

“Your father was not merely a violinist. Nor am I merely a musician. Once you know these things, you will no longer be merely a girl.”

A tingling sensation started somewhere in my middle and flowed quickly down to my fingertips and toes. What could he be saying? I had lied to him before when I said I wasn’t afraid. I was.

“Your father met my father among the Roma in Hungary, before he began to work for the prince.”

“Did he go to listen to music even then?”

“It started as that, but soon he became interested in our people, our difficulties.”

Our
people? What was he saying?

“I am part Gypsy. My sister is only my half-sister. Her mother died shortly after she was born. Our father met my mother when her tribe was camped near our village. She was beautiful.”

Zoltán—part Gypsy, and an orphan, too. I never knew, or thought about it. I never asked, I supposed.

“We are a baronial family, but when my father took a Gypsy wife, he was banished from court and his lands were confiscated. Only through the good offices of an uncle who is a bishop was he able to secure a position at court for Alida.”

With every word, Zoltán shocked me more and more deeply. Compared with his difficulties, my life seemed very safe and calm. I still didn’t see, though, how all this related to some danger to my father.

“When your father was hired by Kapellmeister Haydn, the maestro became more than his employer, he became a friend. They spoke about many things, including our family. Your father brought Haydn out to hear the musicians in their camp, and then Haydn acted as intermediary, hiring some of the Gypsy musicians to go with the prince’s guards when they marched to keep order. Others he engaged to entertain during carnival. These small gestures saved the entire community from starvation. They had been expelled from a place where they had made their camp and raised their livestock for generations.”

“Expelled? Why?”

“Someone falsely accused them of stealing.”

He did not need to say another word for me to feel the full force of the damage my actions might have done if I had shared my suspicions about the Gypsies with anyone else. Yet it appeared that they may well have stolen from my family after all, if someone took the medallion when I was at the camp the day before. I was afraid to mention my suspicion to Zoltán.

Instead, I changed the subject. “Why did my father never tell us any of this? He always did his best to be liberal with us, to give us a broad view of things—I was even permitted to read Voltaire.” Although I remember how horrified my mother had been. The English colonies were in a state of open revolt, and she was convinced that the world as we knew it would come to an end because of the radical teachings of such men.

“There was another side to his championing the Romany, and through them my family. Not long ago, the Hungarian nobles retained the right to treat their serfs as slaves, in direct contradiction to the reforms of the empress and Archduke Joseph II, now the Holy Roman Emperor and supposedly able to command such obedience from them. But the Hungarians called together all the noble families and the wealthy merchants for a meeting, and because they had standing armies that could have disrupted the peace of the region, they were not forced to comply with the new laws.”

“But still, we are Austrian, not Hungarian. And my father was neither a Gypsy nor a serf.”

By now our brisk walking had brought us to the Esterhazy palace. I wondered where the prince, whose title was Hungarian, stood with regard to reforms in favor of the serfs. He was very wealthy because of them. It was said he personally owned millions of souls. Yet who could own a soul? Wasn’t it God who had the rights to a soul?

“My father had compounded his so-called crimes by being on the side of reform and had intended to free his serfs, but his domain was taken from him before he had the chance. Out of friendship for him, I believe, your good father worked tirelessly to bring about these reforms in Hungary.”

That was the last thing Zoltán was able to say to me before we had to walk inside and thread our way through the corridors of the magnificent palace. I followed him without asking if it was all right for me to do so, believing that my godfather would not mind my attending the rehearsal.

When we arrived in the music room, all the other musicians in the orchestra were assembled, but Haydn was not there. Zoltán asked the concertmaster, Signore Torelli—who had recently taken over the first desk now that my father was no more—where he was.

“He will not come, Signor Varga. We cannot make him unlock the door of his study and bring the parts so that we may rehearse.”

In my preoccupation with matters concerning my father I had forgotten about Haydn’s difficulties with his eyes. Yet I had left him in a decent state of preparedness that morning, and no more than usually agitated about his immense workload. “I’ll go to him,” I said, and ran toward the anteroom where I knew I would find the maestro.

CHAPTER 13

P
lease, Godfather, let me in!” At first I only knocked, but then I started to pound on the door. I was about to give up when I heard footsteps approach on the other side, and after that a bolt slid back with a clunk. The door opened a crack and I pushed it open just far enough so that I could squeeze through. My body was thin, but the quilted winter petticoats I wore to stay warm made the operation more difficult than it should have been. As soon as I passed through, Haydn shut the door and bolted it again.

“What in heaven …” I looked around at the normally tidy room, where I had seen manuscripts carefully organized and filed in cubbyholes with labels, where a desk that looked hardly used was the main furniture, and where it was clear that the Kapellmeister didn’t really do much of his creative work. Today, there was not a square of floor visible beneath the piles of disordered music. Sheets were mixed together haphazardly—I picked up two lying one on top of the other, and found a violin part from a symphony in one hand and a soprano aria from an opera in the other. “How did this happen?” I asked.

Haydn himself mirrored the chaos in the room. His bob wig was on crooked, the lace of his cuffs was tucked partly into his sleeves, and he had misbuttoned the row of buttons on his cutaway coat so that not only were the tails of uneven lengths, but the coat was so tight on him I could see the seams straining to burst.

“I did it, all myself. You see, I cannot find them. I prayed first, which has always worked before, but the parts I need are nowhere to be found.”

And now not likely to be found by anyone else, either. “Did I not write them down for you this morning?”

“Yes indeed,” he said, “and I brought them here in a folio. But I left the room to go to the water closet, and when I returned, the folio had vanished.”

“Had the maids been in to clean?”

“They never come during the day. The prince has directed them not to, so that I would not accidentally be disturbed.”

“Could you not have asked for help to find them?”

He did not answer, but stopped his frantic, half-blind searching for a moment. “I cannot. No one must know of my difficulties. It will destroy everything I have worked toward.”

I did not know whether it was pride or stubbornness that made the maestro so unwilling to seek help—other than from me, with my limited ability to notate his work for him. It seemed an altogether inadequate solution for his failing eyesight. “Why can you not seek a physician? The prince must know the finest men in Vienna.”

“It is not the prince I am worried about. It’s Artaria.”

“Who is Artaria?” I was beginning to think my godfather was losing his mind as well as his eyesight.

“He is a publisher. Most recently he has branched into the realm of music, and my dear prince has finally permitted me to lay before the public some of the works I have composed for him in recent years. Artaria will publish them.” As he spoke, Haydn wandered around kicking scores here and there, picking up pages randomly, holding them close to his face to inspect them and then dropping them on the floor again.

I began collecting the music and reassembling it in piles, beginning with types of compositions—chamber music here, arias there, symphonies in another place. “But that is wonderful news, is it not?”

“It would be, were it not for the precise terms of the contract.” He stopped his aimless picking up and putting down and flopped into a chair, watching me as I tried to put some order into the reams of music he had scattered around the room. “I did not realize when I read it that my eyes were so poor, and thought I had agreed only to give him new works. But it seems I committed myself to letting him publish everything I have produced in the last five years. If I do not surrender all such manuscripts to him by the fifteenth of January this coming year, I shall owe him all the money he paid me at the start of the contract.”

The fifteenth was less than three weeks away. “Would it not be worth the purchase price of some time so that you could decide for yourself what you wish to give him?”

He sighed. “The money is long gone on gowns and gloves for my wife.”

I had never met Frau Haydn, only seeing her occasionally from a distance. She came to court as little as possible and refused to be friendly with the musicians and their families. She was quite beautiful, but aloof. I wondered how such a warm, affectionate person like my godfather could ever have chosen to marry her. “There must be a way to remedy the situation. But what will you perform for the prince to night, if you cannot find the parts for the symphony?”

I worked in silence for a while, and soon succeeded in placing most of the scattered music into neat stacks. Haydn stood from his chair and approached, I thought to examine my handiwork. As I watched, an impish smile spread over his face. He picked up the orchestral music and shuffled through the pages. “My dear, do you think you could find all the ones in the key of G for me? I’ll look, too. I think I can see the signature well enough.”

He handed me about half the pile. By now the musicians waiting in the other room to rehearse must have been truly puzzled, wondering what could be keeping their director. But none of them would be more so than I was at that moment. I commenced sorting, with no idea of what the eventual purpose would be.

“Rezia? Maestro?” Zoltán called to us from the other side of the door and knocked politely every now and then.

“I’ll be there directly!” Haydn shouted. “Quickly!” he whispered to me.

Soon we had amassed a respectable mound, about enough for a complete symphony. “Now, you find all the allegro sheets in those we’ve just sorted, and I’ll look for the slow movements.”

This process took a little less time. When we had finished, he turned to me with his mouth pressed in a smirk of glee. “Kindly go and tell the members of the orchestra that I will be with them in a moment. Just a little more sorting will do the trick.”

He took hold of my elbow and steered me determinedly toward the door, unbolting it and opening it just far enough and long enough to thrust me out and directly into Zoltán, who caught hold of me. I righted myself as quickly as I could. I knew I was blushing, even as I knew that he must hate me now for going to the Gypsy camp. “The maestro says he will come as soon as he has refreshed himself. The orchestra is to wait.”

“They could hardly do otherwise.”

I walked with Zoltán back to the music room. The musicians waited, indeed, but not impatiently. They talked and laughed, and I saw more than one deck of cards spread out on the floor to play, with copper coins changing hands quickly. Heinrich, whom I had not seen since Christmas Eve when he helped to bring Papa’s body to us, waved to me and smiled from his place among the brass at the back. Zoltán frowned and cleared his throat. Everyone looked up at him but hardly paused in their conversations and games. “The maestro is coming,” he said, not loudly enough so that it would cut through the general turmoil. I think he did it purposely. One or two violinists nearby sat back in their seats and started retuning their strings. This got the attention of a few others, and by the time Haydn made his stately way in, his wig righted and coat rebuttoned, all but the percussionists had reassumed their respectful poses.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Haydn said.

There was a horrible crash as the cymbals fell off their stand when Jakob, the timpanist who had helped Heinrich and Zoltán a week ago, tried to scoop the playing cards off the floor too quickly. Everyone started to laugh, but Haydn’s serious face brought a quick stop to any merriment. I stood over to the side, and from where I was could see just the faintest twitch of amusement in my godfather’s cheek. What game was he playing?

“Herr Varga, would you please distribute these parts?”

He handed the pile of music we’d assembled from bits and pieces to Zoltán, who separated it into smaller piles and gave them to the men sitting in the first positions of each section. It was not long before the players were peering at the music on their desks and scratching their heads, looking at each other with puzzled expressions.

“I have decided to make an experiment with a new kind of music. Since we are still in the Christmas season, I thought a bit of originality was called for.”

“But Maestro,” said the youngest flute player, a pimple-faced fellow from Salzburg who had just joined the orchestra, “this is simply the Menuet from the symphony we played last week.”

A cellist stood. “No, you are mistaken. We have the allegro of the serenade from last night.”

Soon everyone was talking and disputing.

“Gentlemen!” Haydn’s voice rang out. I couldn’t wait to see what he had in mind. “I shall set the tempo. We are all in the same key. I’ll give you one measure, and then you are to play what is before you.”

They started as he said, and I didn’t know whether to be more surprised that there weren’t more violent clashes or more desperate to hold in the convulsive laughter that such absurd music provoked. Haydn maintained his composure—he was notorious at playing straight-faced jokes on any unsuspecting victim—but it took about sixteen measures for the wind players to lose complete control of their mouths, and once they started laughing, the entire orchestra was soon reduced to fits.

“Gut, Freunden!”
Haydn beamed. “Now get it out of your system so you can perform it as if you are serious about it this evening. What a joke that will be for His Highness!”

I heard a distant clock chime the hour of five.
I’m to meet my uncle at the dressmaker’s before vespers!
I thought with a panic. The rehearsal was now well under way and I could not interrupt it. I tried to catch Zoltán’s eye, but he was concentrating too hard on playing without laughing and did not look up from the sheet of music before him. I crept out of the palace into the dark, running as best I could among the evening crowds to reach Mademoiselle Helene’s before the gentry would retire to dress for dinner and the shops close for the evening. I had almost forgotten to notice whether or not Schnabl had been at the rehearsal, but my impression was that he was absent. I made a mental note to tell Zoltán about it another time. I had no proof, since I could not look at the music he had taken to my uncle, but I did wonder if the folio Schnabl had been carrying was the one Haydn was missing.