The Musician's Daughter (6 page)

Despite the many questions I still had, we barely spoke all the way back to Vienna. I went over and over the events of the day. My head hurt with the effort to comprehend what they all meant. But I couldn’t help returning to one instant in particular.
Liebchen,
Zoltán had said. Beloved. I knew he’d done it so that it would appear that we were a young couple on a jaunt for the thrill of saying they had visited the Gypsy camp, but in the desolate landscape of my present life, I held that word in my heart and vowed I would never forget it.

CHAPTER 8

W
here have you been! Your mother is so worried!”

Greta’s bulk blocked my way into the apartment. All I wanted to do was lie down on my bed, close my eyes, and think, but clearly this would be impossible.

“Theresa Maria! Is that you?
Mach Schnell!
Come here this instant!”

Ever since I understood that I had been named after the empress of Austria, I had felt as if I carried a burden, as though I was expected somehow to be a humble version of the virtuous Maria Theresa, with her widow’s weeds and sixteen children. My full name called out from anywhere was a certain sign that punishment was to come because I had done something wrong—not completed my chores, been unkind to my brother, spent too many hours practicing the viola when I should have been sewing—something that made me unworthy of that name, and so the sound of it filled me with dread.

Yet hearing my mother call for me now was a relief. Never again would I be annoyed about it. Mama was sensible again. She had recovered. She would be her same, dear self, with all her worrying and fretting over nothing. I ran directly in to see her, desperate to talk to her about everything I’d been through in the past few days.

Toby sat in the corner of her bedroom with his slate on his knee. I saw that he had been working on a sum for a while—the edges of the slate were filled with doodlings of trees and flowers. Our mother sat up in bed, her eyes open wide and shining. Her pretty face was pale and she seemed thinner. I could see hollows below her cheekbones instead of the plump, rosy cheeks I remembered. When I kissed her, she still felt a trifle feverish.

“Why did you behave so badly? You know Uncle Theobald will not give you your dowry unless you are a good girl. And where is the money from your papa? He should have brought home his Christmas present from the prince. But Greta has solved that, and Toby will go to Herr Goldschmidt in a week.”

I couldn’t tell whether she expected me to answer her questions or not. I decided I’d best just try to calm her first. “Mama, I’m so glad you’re well now. As is Toby. You know about Papa, of course, but he is safe with the angels now.”

I instantly regretted mentioning Papa. A line appeared on Mama’s forehead between her deep blue eyes, and she looked at me with such yearning I had to turn away. “Yes,” she said, “Greta told me, but I didn’t want to believe it. What shall we do?”

She understands
. I was so relieved. “Kapellmeister Haydn is helping us. We won’t starve.”

“What can the maestro do? It was your papa who worked for him. I always told him he must take some measures to secure our future, get the prince to grant him an annuity, or a widow’s jointure for me. Otherwise we would be helpless without him. We must get you married. Your dowry is our only hope.”

I forced myself not to sound as cross as I felt. She could not know everything I did. “My godfather has every intention of being as helpful as he is able. And I don’t think that getting me married would solve our difficulties. Anyway, I went to visit Uncle Theobald.” I took hold of her hands. “I did not see him, but I saw enough to believe he will not take kindly to being asked for money. He’s a very great man now.”

A little of the fire of shrewdness she always possessed lit my mother’s eyes. “All the more reason for him to help us. He is still my brother. What’s necessary is simply that we find someone suitable for you. Greta has asked the matchmaker to come to visit me. I expect her tomorrow morning.”

“But, Mama—”

“Greta said you’d been willful while I have been ill. It’s unbecoming.” She reached out her hand to stroke the side of my face. She smiled, softening the reproach in her words. “You must return to your needlework and be a good girl. No man wants a wife who cannot keep house and is disobedient.”

I knew my mother did not mean what she said unkindly. We were her principal concern in life, and she’d never done anything to harm us. But I seethed at Greta’s treachery. How could she tell my mother such tales! If it were not for me, we might be unable to continue as we were, even for a little while. I was about to inform Mama of everything, of Haydn’s agreement to hire me as an assistant so that we could still receive our money from the prince, when Greta walked in.

“Herr Goldschmidt sent his lad with this.”

She handed Mama a piece of paper, folded but not sealed. Mama opened it and read. “Thank you, Greta,” Mama said, nodding in a way that sent the cook reluctantly out of the room. “You see,
Liebchen,
all is arranged. You must not take it too badly. I only did it because I knew it was for the best.” She gave the paper to me.

I read it through three times before I allowed myself to believe what it said. Mama had sold him my viola! “How could you?” I asked. “The viola belonged to me!”

“It was your father’s, and he wanted Toby to have this apprenticeship. Herr Goldschmidt must be paid, or your brother will have no future. We owned nothing else of enough value.”

I tried to pull away, but she grabbed my hand and held onto it with strength that surprised me. “It is for the best. The viola will not help you get a husband. And we must all make sacrifices.” She squeezed my hand before letting it go and resting both of hers on her bulging belly. She looked down with a soft smile. The infant inside seemed to sense her attention and shifted beneath her hands. When she looked up again, there was just a hint of happy tears in her eyes.

Mama was right. It was selfish of me to stand in the way of Toby’s advancement. Toby, who would need a lucrative trade if he ever hoped to marry and have a family of his own. Toby, who was still so young I could not imagine him living somewhere else, let alone working long hours each day.

Yet I knew I would never quite forgive her for it. Because no matter what she said, practical as it was and effective at solving our most immediate difficulties, it proved to me that she did not understand how I felt about playing the viola. She had never understood that, and therefore she could have no knowledge of who I truly was. Only Papa knew how important it was to me to make music, and Papa was gone.

Although at first I felt only anger, I soon realized that her actions, insensitive as they were, freed me in a way. I need no longer feel guilty about pursuing my own plans, no matter how much they interfered with what ever schemes she concocted for me.

“Yes, of course, Mama,” I forced myself to say, putting on my most submissive expression. “Perhaps Godfather Haydn will have an instrument I can practice on when I go to assist him each morning after breakfast, to earn money for our keep.” My words were calculated to achieve the greatest effect. It was cruel of me to anger her; her health was still delicate despite her improvement since yesterday. But at that moment, I didn’t care.

“You will do nothing of the kind! I expect the matchmaker tomorrow. You must stay here so that she can examine you and make a judgment about whom you should marry.”

“I cannot disappoint the Kapellmeister,” I said as I kissed Mama. She could not rise from her bed and come to fetch me, and I avoided her for the rest of the evening.

My stomach growled as I prepared for bed that night. I was too angry to eat the supper Greta had placed in front of me. I realized that now, with Papa’s violin gone and my viola sold, we had no musical instruments in the house. I didn’t remember a time when that was true. Toby had followed me into my room, his eyes dark with shared sadness. “I’ll make you a viola as soon as I am able,” he whispered. I hugged him close and felt him return the embrace before squirming away. No doubt he would cry himself to sleep as he had every night since Christmas.

Once I was alone again, all I could think of was that day when Papa first helped me draw a bow across a string. I don’t know how old I was, maybe five. At first, all I could do was make a scratchy, squeaky noise. I couldn’t understand how he could coax such a glorious sound from the violin. Haydn had lent him a half-size fiddle that he had had made, thinking he would have his own children to teach, so Papa said, but the children never came. At the time, I remember wondering how his children could stay away from him when he was such a kind man, not understanding that Papa meant he had none.

“Gently, gently—let the string do the work. Don’t press down.” I could hear his voice, feel his comforting arms supporting mine. And eventually, I did it. I felt the vibration all down my hands and arms, and it tickled and made me laugh. After that, we spent time every day, and gradually I was able to make the sound on my own. And he taught me how to read music, too.

Mama was a little jealous, I think, although she claimed only to be concerned that I was learning to play an instrument generally considered unsuitable for girls.

“Let her be. She has talent. Who knows, by the time she is grown, perhaps she could give lessons,” my father would say.

How well I remembered her response. “No mother would allow her son to be taught by a girl! At least, not taught a trade.” That’s all it ever was to Mama—a trade—although I knew it wasn’t her fault that she had no real appreciation. She smiled and tapped her foot when she listened because that’s what she thought was expected, but the tapping was never in time. Yet she was able to dance and move her head and hands prettily in a minuet, and everyone admired her. I remember once thinking as I watched her at some holiday festivity, when the servants and musicians were allowed to have their own ball with a small orchestra made up of Gypsies and apprentices, that she was the most beautiful lady I had ever seen. Even more beautiful than the nobles who danced stiffly in their tight stays and panniers.

There was no use thinking about times gone by. It would not help me find out what had really happened to Papa. I was beginning to realize that the task I had undertaken would be even more difficult than I thought, especially with Mama so bent on finding me a husband.

I lay awake in the dark and reviewed my circumstances. Clearly I would have to adjust my plans. First, I must not let Mama settle my marriage too quickly. Aside from the fact that it would make it hard for me to wander about the city on my own or with Zoltán piecing together my father’s movements on the night he died, I was not ready to marry. I had no doubt that I could run a house hold as well as the next girl, but to do only that, and have babies until it was one childbirth too many and I died from it—surely life held more for me. I could not have been born with the ear and the hands I possessed only to use them to listen for an infant’s cry and to knit stockings.

I looked with longing at the empty table in my room. Only Papa would understand how I felt, the emptiness that engulfed me when I realized I no longer had an instrument to act as my voice. “Oh, Papa!” I said aloud to my room. “What happened? Why did you leave us?”