Theo wiped the violin case with his sleeve. “She had to leave suddenly to be with her father, which is why thebrood is hungry. I tried to make potato soup, but I got distracted and it cooked a bit too long…”
“And it burned and now Marie’s pot is ruined and the entire place almost burnt down! The potatoes turned into little black things, harder than rocks,” said Achilles, a precocious, dark-haired boy of about ten, with thick spectacles that kept sliding down his small nose. “Hecki threw them up on the roof and they’re stuck in the rain pipe but he also hit the neighbour’s attic window, which is now broken, as is the pot. May I have it for my experiments?”
“Tattler!” Hector, the youngest, hissed at Les and elbowed him. “It was his idea to throw them on the roof! He dared me.” Hector was two years younger than Les, and when together, the two were often up to no good. Theo called them the “wicked twins”. Hector was a pretty boy with thick, dark brown curls and his mother’s big grey eyes, which made for a striking contrast, but his angelic appearance hid a mischievous, lively personality. Les was usually the one who came up with the hare-brained ideas, while Hecki would carry them out without thinking twice.
Lena frowned. “Wait. You broke Herr Bauer’s window?”
“It’s just a tiny little window, it hardly matters.” Les jumped to his defence.
“That’s right.” Hecki nodded emphatically. “He won’t even notice. No one uses the attic anyway, and if you think about it, now the pigeons can use it to get in and out like a dovecote?—”
“Hector Arenheim!” Lena placed her hands on her hips.
“I’ll fix it, Mama, I promise, I will,” the boy said.
“For sure. With newspaper and cardboard and glue.” Les grinned. “I’ll help him create a new kind of window altogether. It will be indestructible.”
“No. You’re going to Karl Bauer immediately to apologise. Tell him you’ll pay for a new window by helping him sell vegetables at the market.”
“Noooo! Anything but that, Mama!”
“And you, Achilles, will help him.” She crossed her arms.
Both boys grumbled. Turning to Theo, she asked, “What exactly is the matter with Marie’s father?”
Theo shrugged. “She received a missive saying that her father was on his deathbed. Dropped everything to catch the next mail coach to Innsbruck. Left this letter.” He handed her a crumpled, soiled letter, in which Marie had scribbled an apology for her hasty departure.
Lena perused it.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” she muttered. “This is sad news, indeed.” Marie was their maid, cook, nanny, friend, and part of the Arenheim family. Without her, things would fall apart, as they obviously already had.
Lena inspected the ruined pot. Another household item to dispose of. Mona sidled up to her and hugged her from behind. “I don’t think the boys mean to be bad,” she said. “Except when they decide to put jam in my ear.” She glared at them. “It’s not nice. Now my ear is all sticky and it won’t come out.”
“I was trying an experiment to see if the jam would prevent her ear from tearing when Hecki blows histrumpet in the same room. It’s for a new invention, you see,” Les said to defend himself.
“It’s not the ear that would tear, but the tympanic membrane,” Theo said, setting his violin aside. “I listened to a lecture on the anatomy of the internal ear ‘De Auribus’ the other day.”
Les shrugged. “Whatever, not-yet-Doctor Arenheim. My point being, it didn’t work.” His shoulders slumped. “When Hecki blared his trumpet in Mona’s ear, she jumped up immediately and gave each of us a cuff. I daresay my tum-panic membrane is now damaged. I’ll have to come up with another idea for earplugs that keep the sound out.” His eyes brightened. “Do you think tar would work better?”
“Achilles Arenheim, don’t you dare smear tar into my ears while I’m sleeping!” Mona picked up a broom and went after Les, who ran out of the room squealing, followed by Hecki, who egged her on.
“Children, children!” Lena didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Mona returned, sometime later, breathless. “I told them to go to Karl Bauer and apologise for the broken attic window, or else there would be no supper.”
Lena set aside the pot she’d been inspecting. “Poor Mona. Did you have a hard time with the boys today?”
“As the only woman in the house? Yes.” Mona was the second eldest at almost seventeen. She was a sweet, gentle girl with straight brown hair and dreamy eyes. She was a passionate musician and played the viola better than anyone Lena knew. Because she was a young woman, people had begun to frown upon her publicperformances. When she was younger, she had been considered a prodigy. Now that she was a young woman, it was considered unseemly for her to play a stringed instrument in public. “She should be married, not exhibiting herself on the public stage. It is indecent,” people said. Lena’s heart ached because Mona wanted nothing more than to become a professional musician.
Female professional musicians? In private, by all means. But on the public stage? That was unheard of. Yet they existed, these women. They were rare and overshadowed by men, but they existed.
“I can think of three female musicians easily,” Mona liked to declare. “Maria Anna Wilhelmina von Neipperg was one of them. She was an Austrian composer and music theorist. Or Mozart’s sister, Nannerl. And then there was Maria Theresia von Paradis, also a pianist.”
“The problem is that they all played the piano, not the viola. The viola is considered a male instrument,” Theo argued. “Not that I have a problem with it, mind you. It is the way society thinks.”
Mona had angrily retorted that she did not give a fig for what society thought.
Now, Lena showed her the sheet music that had been trampled in the mud.
