The Musician's Daughter (3 page)

We entered, and suddenly the normality of the world that no longer contained my father hit me hard. People were talking loudly and laughing. Smoke from the men’s pipes collected in a cloud near the ceiling. Someone plunked out a popular melody on the spinet in the corner. It was the day after Christmas, and everyone looked happy. A few heads turned as we entered, but mostly no one paid us any heed. Zoltán moved me gently aside and led the way to a table at the back.

“Drei Schokoladen,”
he said to the fellow hovering nearby, and I realized I had no money in my purse to pay for tea, let alone hot chocolate. I didn’t remove my cloak or my gloves.

None of us said a thing until the three steaming glasses were set on the table that was barely big enough to hold them. Toby was first to break the silence, with “Thank you” as he wrapped his hands around his glass and brought it to his lips. I had knitted the mitts he wore and given them to him for Christmas. What a strange Christmas it was, with no ceremony. The stockings we had carefully arranged at the ends of our beds on Christmas Eve were not filled with sweets when we awoke on Christmas morning to a world that would never be the same for us.

I watched Toby drink his chocolate with deep concentration, as if it were the most important thing in the world to him right then. I knew I should thank Zoltán as well and drink my own cup of cocoa, but I was still so full of bitterness and anger that I didn’t think I would ever be thankful for anything again.

“I spoke to Kapellmeister Haydn,” said Zoltan. “He would have come, you know.”

I twisted my gloves in my hands. Zoltán knew my reasons for keeping our group of mourners small. “Later. When Mama has recovered …” I couldn’t summon the strength to finish the thought.

“Well, in any case he still wishes to see you,” Zoltán said.

I nodded to let him know that I had heard what he said. I had been dreading this. We lived on Papa’s stipend from the prince. No Papa, no income. Herr Haydn was my godfather, so he probably just wanted to tell me this grim news himself.

“He is here.” Zoltán turned in his chair, and only then did I notice the familiar, wiry figure of Kapellmeister Haydn. He did not wear the blue-and-gold livery he was normally required to wear as a house hold officer of the prince. Instead he was dressed just like the other men in the tavern: a brown, cutaway coat with lace ruffles sticking out from the shirt underneath at the wrists and the neck. He had on black silk breeches with buckles, and white hose. As soon as he turned our way, though, I recognized his profile, and the kind light in his blue eyes.

“I was sorry to hear about Antonius,” he said. “He was a fine violinist.” Herr Haydn reached out and took my hand. His was warm and large. He placed something in my palm when he did so, and at first I thought he was playing one of his jokes on me. When we were little, he often made bits of paper appear from behind our ears, or pretended to find his pocket watch in our bowls of soup. But this was no joke. I could feel the coins through the soft leather of a bag. I looked up at him, puzzled.

“Your papa forgot to take his bonus away with him. I don’t know why. He was in such good spirits after the concert.”

I could not look at Godfather Haydn’s face, or I knew all my efforts to be strong would be destroyed.

“If there is anything you need—anything at all—you must come to me. We stay in Vienna until Easter. Although without your father …” His tone made me raise my eyes. A shadow had passed across his face, but it vanished in a moment. He stood and patted Toby on the head. “Anything at all. Remember.”

I watched him thread his way through the revelers and noticed then that his shoulders sagged and his chin sank down toward his chest. I had never seen him sad before.
He must be thinking about my father,
I thought.

“Finish your chocolate. You should be home,” Zoltán said.

I had hardly tasted my treat, and in truth I didn’t want it. But Zoltán stared at me. Perhaps I should pay, with the money Kapellmeister Haydn had given me? I started to open the pouch. Before I could tease apart the first knot in the cord, Zoltán’s hand clamped down around mine. “Not here,” he whispered. He reached into the pouch dangling from his own belt and tossed a copper Kreutzer on the table. I sipped the cocoa. It was bitter and sweet, and although I didn’t think I would be able to finish it, I drank until the last drop was gone. “That’s better,” he said, and smiled. We all stood and left the café.

The gnawing anger I felt had abated somewhat, and I began to emerge from the fog that had prevented me from noticing my surroundings very much. “Was that why you brought us here? To meet with Kapellmeister Haydn?” I asked.

“Yes,” Zoltán said. I expected him to elaborate, but he said nothing more.

“Do you rehearse tomorrow?” I asked again.

“Yes,” he again replied.

Now that Papa was buried and Haydn had discharged more than his duty to us, I expected Zoltán, too, would return to his own life and not come around anymore. There was really nothing to bind us to anyone in the prince’s court. Yet the idea of being so completely alone with my very pregnant mother and Toby, with only morose Greta as company, suddenly filled me with panic. I wanted to see Zoltán again, I wanted to keep some tie with my father’s life, and thought quickly for what I could say that would allow that to happen without making an outright request. Besides, how else was I to find out any more information about the thief who had attacked my father?

“I want to go to the place where you found him.” The words just leapt out of my mouth before I understood what I was asking. I immediately wished them unsaid.

“Tomorrow then, after rehearsal.”

I was a little surprised that Zoltán didn’t argue, or even refuse. Perhaps he had wanted me to ask. The last two days he had certainly seemed at times on the verge of telling me something, and then stopped himself. Perhaps he didn’t know how much to say.

We continued in silence until we arrived at our apartment. Zoltán left us at the street. I watched him walk away. He was not bowed like Haydn, but straight, and there was music in his gait. “Come, Toby,” I said, and pulled my brother upstairs. I hoped Greta had thought about dinner. If not, it would be up to me to see what we had.

CHAPTER 4

C
old ham and boiled potatoes. And a bit of blood sausage and cheese. That was all there was. Toby and I sat in the parlor eating with our hands. I couldn’t bear the thought of putting the food on the dining table just yet, even though Greta had scrubbed it thoroughly.

“Who will teach me my letters?” Toby asked. A bit of food dropped out of his mouth onto his lap.

I noticed that his knees looked bony through his breeches, and he had not buckled his shoes. His feet were already too big for his little body, just like Prince Nicholas’s wolfhound puppies. Toby was going to be tall, like Papa. “I will,” I answered. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and was too tired to scold him for being so messy.

The corners of his mouth puckered slightly, as they did when he used to cry as a baby. “Will Mama get up tomorrow?”

“She’ll get up when she’s well. Soon.” I knew I wasn’t doing a very good job of reassuring him. I truly did not want him to cry. Usually I could stop him by making a funny face or taking his attention away from what ever it was—a bee sting, once, in the country, or the time he had worked for weeks building a tiny, wooden table and chairs and Greta had stepped on them when he arranged them on the floor to show me.

“I think I’ll go fix that sailboat,” he said.

I nodded. It was our secret signal, or at least, his half of it. “I’m going to fix the sailboat” meant that he wanted to be alone for a while. If I said, “I’m going to write to cousin Regina,” then he knew not to disturb me. We had devised the system when he’d walked in on me nearly naked in the room we shared in Esterhaza, about a year before. I don’t know which of us had been more embarrassed. Toby wasn’t much like other boys I knew who were his age. The sons of the prince’s cooks were always sneaking around trying to pull the laces that held my skirts on. Toby played with the boys, but reluctantly. He usually ended up bruised and crying. Sometimes I wished he was a little more like them so that he would just run off and play and leave me to myself. But now, I was glad he was there, even when we didn’t say anything.

Toby turned before he left the room, his small child’s hand on the doorjamb. “You’re going to try to find out what happened to Papa, aren’t you,” he said, a statement instead of a question.

I didn’t say anything. How could I? He turned away and closed the door behind him.

Right now, I had to make sure we could survive, at least until I figured out something else to do. I braced myself to go in to see my mother, who as far as I knew had not uttered a coherent sentence from the moment she had collapsed the night they brought my father’s body home. Greta could do little else but tend to her. Mama was due to have the baby any day. I remembered her losing two other babies not long after calling us together to inform us that we would have a new sister or brother. Papa tried to tell us that we wouldn’t after all, but he couldn’t. Mama was stronger that way. She had wept and wept, but managed to squeeze out the words. It happened all the time, she said. God didn’t always want his little ones to suffer on earth, and took them directly to heaven instead.

I didn’t really mind so much, and I think Toby cried mainly because Mama was crying. It was hard to imagine a baby before it was born, and our apartment is small and I could not see how we would all fit anyway. Now, the thought of a baby that might look more like my father than Toby does, to remind me of him—I wasn’t sure whether that made me happy or sad.

I ate what I could, then knocked on Mama’s bedroom door.

“Come,” Greta called.

“I’ll sit with her,” I said, leaving the door open behind me. “See if you can persuade Toby to eat some more. He’s gone to his room.” Greta clearly didn’t want to leave Mama, but I was beginning to build up a mountain of questions, and some of them I wanted only my mother to hear. If she could hear them, that is.

My mother’s face was pale, but her eyes were open and she stared at the ceiling. On the table by her bed Herr Morgen had left a beaker of greenish liquid and a packet of powder. The black-letter script on it said
laudanum.
I didn’t know much about doctoring, but I knew that laudanum made people sleepy. I was surprised she was not fast asleep.
“Mutter,”
I said, perching on a stool next to her and whispering close to her ear. “Have we got any money?”

I know she heard me because she turned her head in my direction and smiled. I waited a bit, thinking she would answer, but she did not open her mouth.

“I need to know, Mama. Toby is to start his apprenticeship after Epiphany, and I must pay Herr Goldschmidt, the luthier.”

Without the slightest indication that she understood what I had said, Mama turned her head slowly back so that she once more stared up at the ceiling. I found myself looking up to see what she was watching there, but it was nothing more unusual than a tiny spider hard at work on a web.

“Mama, have you ever seen this before?” I drew the medallion out of its hiding place inside my bodice and dangled it before her. This time she did not look in my direction. I picked up her hand, which was smooth and cool. It lay in mine like something inanimate, a glove, there for ornament rather than use. I placed the medallion in her palm. She did not close her hand around it. Clearly there was no point in talking to her now. She had gone somewhere else. Her face looked serene. The faint lines that had begun to show had smoothed out and she appeared younger. Although she had passed her first youth, Mama was still very pretty, with large blue eyes and long lashes. And when she smiled, her whole face glowed. She had not gotten fat, just a little plump, and looked very elegant when she was all dressed to attend one of Papa’s concerts. Now, though, her big belly raised the blankets, and as I watched, I saw the lump shift slightly. The baby was still alive at least. If Mama did not eat, that state of affairs might not last long.

I placed her hand back on top of the coverlet and crept out of the room. Toby’s plate was cleared away, so I assumed Greta had taken it down to the kitchen we shared with the other people in the building. Although Greta cooked our simplest meals on the stove in the dining room and we had our own pantry, the kitchen was where the water pump was located. And the cooks and kitchen maids from the other apartments spent many hours there peeling potatoes and turnips and gossiping. I could only imagine what they were saying about Papa. Perhaps I should ask them if they knew something—anything—that might explain why someone had murdered one of the kindest men in Vienna, who had never harmed anyone, as far as I knew.

I took a candle and passed through the dining room to my own small nook. Normally I was happy to be in Vienna instead of at the prince’s court in Esterhaza. In Vienna we had this apartment, a real home with furniture that belonged to us. In the prince’s palace, we had two rooms, with an extra little alcove for Greta. Toby and I had to sleep in the same bed there. It wasn’t so bad when he was small, but now that he was older, he flailed his arms and took up all the space. He had nightmares, too, and sometimes woke up crying. And just this past summer I had started to bleed. Papa had said he would make Toby his own cot. I did not want to be sharing a bed with my brother when I was already a woman.

In Esterhaza, we ate in the servants’ hall. It was grand enough, and the food was much better than Greta’s stews. Sometimes we had parties, at holidays and on the prince’s birthday, and would be served boar’s head and pheasant and everything the fine folks ate. Afterward, there was always music. I liked it best when we were allowed to sit in the corner of the private music room, while Haydn, my father, Zoltán, and the principal cellist, Herr Schnabl, played string quartets. There were usually only a few guests, and the playing would go on until very late at night. Toby sometimes fell asleep. I’d have to half carry, half drag him back to bed while my father was still playing. I’d go to sleep with the beautiful music ringing in my ears, and often I would dream about it all night. But still I preferred home.

My room was small—Papa had carved two spaces out of a single one when we first moved in, so that there could at least be a thin wall between me and Toby. My part was just big enough for the bed with a chest for my clothes at its foot, and a table and stool so I could write. On the table lay the plain, wooden case that held my viola. Mr. Goldschmidt had made the viola for Papa many years ago, when he had to double up during a lean time for the prince. He was paid extra for playing both instruments, and I remember how happy Mama was. Now the court was wealthy, so he earned—or rather he used to earn—just the violinist’s stipend. He preferred to play the violin. I, too, would have preferred the violin, but the viola was better than nothing, and it was my own. I was determined one day to make music as my father did.

I knew I was a good student. I had planned to continue being one. I practiced whenever I could, which was whenever I had no other chores and when Mama was either not at home or too busy to notice and complain. “Playing the viola will not get her a husband, and she cannot work for her keep,” she said so often I could hear her voice repeating it now. “At least, no daughter of mine will ever work. There is her dowry, you know. Her uncle Theobald will see that she gets it when the time comes.”

I thought about Uncle Theobald as I unlaced my gown and let my skirt with its bone hoops drop to the floor. He lived in a grand house in the Graben, near Stephansplatz. I didn’t remember ever being inside it, but in the evening whenever we happened to pass by it, I could tell that the rooms were very large because the windows were tall and wide.

I shivered. My chamber was too small for a stove, and in any case the one in the parlor had been left to go out by now. I pulled a shawl off my bed and tied it around my waist, then took another and tied it across my shoulders. I wanted to think a little before I went to sleep, and I was afraid if I lay down, fatigue would claim me instantly.

Just a year ago I had started to wear stays. Mama noticed that my breasts had begun to bulge. Now, I felt naked without the boning that held me tight. My breasts weren’t much—still not enough to mound out over the top of my bodice—but like this, in my chemise, I could see them quite clearly. Standing in the near dark wearing loose clothes, I felt as free as one of the Gypsies who wandered the countryside near Esterhaza.

I had once heard a Gypsy man play the violin. It was at carnival, when traveling players sometimes came to court. Puppeteers and acrobats, clowns and dancers all gathered to try to get a bit of money from the prince. There was a masked ball, and Toby and I and the other musicians’ children had been allowed to creep into the stairwell and see the grand ladies and gentlemen in their costumes.

Some of the costumes were magnificent, all covered with jewels that caught the light of thousands of candles. Others were just funny. Two nobles had dressed like bears, clearly having used the same tailor to make their garments. They walked up to each other as if approaching a mirror, then turned with the same shrug and walked away, which only made the impression that they had stopped at an invisible looking glass all the more vivid.