Papa’s expression did not change. “Thank you,” he said, his voice clipped and cold.
When he said nothing more, Johann bid us a hurried farewell and returned to what remained of the crowd. His eyes darted at me before he left. I did not dare return his look. Papa’s attention was fixed entirely on me now, the others around us forgotten.
“Who was that, Nannerl?” he said to me.
I kept my head low, and my eyes downcast. “I don’t know, Papa,” I murmured. “He said his name was Johann. He said he and his family live here in Frankfurt.”
“I will not have you carrying on a casual conversation with boys like that. Surely you must know better. Do that often, and rumors will spread about you, especially in places like Frankfurt, and especially about a girl as well-known as you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Papa,” I said.
His gaze wandered away into the crowd. I knew he was searching for Johann, to see if he lingered nearby. “Young ladies with no manners,” I heard him mutter. “Perhaps I should not take you on these trips, if you are going to learn such poor behavior from the locals.”
On the stage, Woferl was still entertaining the crowd, winking at a group of women to earn laughter and coos from them. The audience responded with delight. My father was unbothered. His frown stayed on me.
“Papa,” I started to protest. “He only wanted to tell us that he enjoyed our performance. He said nothing else.”
My father shot me an angry stare. I shrank away at it. “Do not be naïve, Nannerl,” he said. “All men are villains. They want only to benefit. Remember that, and do not speak again to a stranger unless I have given you permission to do so.”
My heart was beating very fast now. “Yes,” I replied quickly. “Yes, Papa.”
“Good.” With that, the argument ended. Papa looked away from me and back toward the dispersing people.
All men are villains.
He was afraid, I realized, and I wonder now if it was because he knew his proclamation made him a villain too.
WHODIRECTSTHEORCHESTRA?
Papa was pleased with how we performed in Frankfurt. Our purses were full again, our expenses for the trip covered. My father spent the night counting out the coins, nodding and smiling at Mama, and in the morning, he bought her a necklace hung with a sapphire teardrop at its base that shone like starlight. For Woferl he bought a tidy new notebook of paper, so that my brother could continue his relentless composing.
For me, he bought a new cap to match my dress.
He was so pleased that when a local count invited him to the opera, my father paid for us all to come with him.
Woferl and I had never been to an opera before. Papa had always been too worried that we could not sit through a performance without wriggling in our seats. So I tried to keep my composure and remember the lessons Mama had taughtme. I needed to behave like a proper young lady. Still, my eyes wandered up to the opera house’s grand, arched entrances and white pillars, and down to its veined marble floors and rich velvet carpets. Gold banisters, curved stairways, and ceilings covered in rich paintings. The nobles attended these every week. I wondered if they still gaped in awe each time, and if the sights and sounds could still take their breaths away.
Woferl held my hand in earnest and stared so hard at the gentlemen and ladies we passed that I feared I would need to catch him if he fell. We settled with Papa and Mama in our own balcony. In a private box near us, a group of spectators had already taken out their playing cards and started a game, while down below, young men filed through the aisles to flirt with the ladies. They were all beautiful, I thought, women in wide, sweeping skirts and ruffled half-sleeves, their headdresses adorned with feathers, and gentlemen on their arms with shining jackets and bright, blinking canes.
As they flitted about below, I began to imagine that we were in the kingdom, and that I sat alone on a giant root of an upside-down tree, quietly looking on as the kingdom’s creatures—these colorful birds—gathered below me. I imagined them turned in my direction, staring back up at me, and smiling. I glanced at Woferl, who in turn watched the opera stage in anticipation. When I told him about my vision of the plumed birds, we grinned together at the absurdity of it and tried to think of strange names for them.
“Papageno,” Woferl declared one of the more ridiculous headdresses, and mouthed the name so comically,Pa-pa-pa-papageno,that he dissolved into giggles.
I hushed him even as we laughed conspiratorially. “You will get us kicked out.”
“No, I won’t,” he replied as we rose with the orchestra for the conductor. “I’ll be down there one day, and it will be me they clamor for.”
“What do you mean?”
“I will be before the orchestra,” he said, clapping along. “Someday I’ll write an aria, Nannerl—the most difficult aria ever written, and they’ll clap for me even louder than this.”
I laughed. “You put yourself above Herr Handel. Don’t you know the king of England himself once stood in delight for his oratorio?”
A grin of delight crossed his cherubic face. “When I play, the kings of Europe will all stand for the entirety of my opera.”
He would be directing the orchestra, I realized, and the premonition in his words appeared before me in all its future splendor, him a young man in a red coat, weaving his music to life. I would be on the ground, staring upward to see my brother at the top of the upside-down tree. I would be a lady with feathers in her wig and no quill in her hand, looking on in silence.
Suddenly, I felt angry at Woferl, though I knew it was not his fault. I thought of his outlandish antics onstage, the way people adored him for it. They would relish him even more when he was grown, fawn over his winking eyes and quicksilver smile.
