By the end of it, I could see the shadows clearly under my brother’s eyes. My own cheeks were pale, my eyes even darker against my white skin.
Papa looked at the oratorio once with a hurried eye, made several changes, and then delivered it to the archbishop so that he could receive his payment. The archbishop approved, pleased enough with the work to forgive our brief lateness.
A marvelous feat,he told my father.
He had not believed Woferl could do it at all. For a man as powerful as the archbishop, this was just a game to him. But my father did not complain, because soon after, he received a modest sum for our work and his salary was reinstated. We paid our rent.
Woferl had signed the oratorio with his name. I could not bear to watch while he did it. Instead I stared at my father, until Papa had to turn away from my searing gaze, grumbling over the extra time it took us to finish it.
“Perhaps next time he will give the children more than eight days,” Mama said at supper after Papa had told us about the archbishop’s payment. “How can a man toy with his subjects so?”
“Perhaps next time the children will write a piece worthy of more,” Papa replied.
“It was brilliant,” Woferl suddenly said to our father before I could utter something in our defense. The whole of his small body tensed, leaning forward like a stag protecting his herd, and a fierce light appeared in his eyes. “If the archbishop cannot appreciate it, he is wholly incompetent.”
Papa sucked in his breath at Woferl’s words, but I smiled for the first time that morning.
“You and Woferl did very well,” Mama said to me later that morning. We sat together in the music room for a moment’s reprieve, for the sun had decided to come out on this late winter’s day, and the room felt warm and lazy.
“I know,” I said to her before turning away to stare out the window. “But it is never enough, is it? We could work ourselves nearly to death, and Papa would still hand us the quill and ink.”
At that, Mama frowned. “Nannerl. Don’t speak about your father that way. He loves you, and he loves your brother. He fears for your health and your brother’s as much as his own. He just wants to ensure that our family—including you—is provided for.”
I looked back at her. “Yes,” I replied. “I know the lengths he’d go to in order to provide for us. So does Woferl.”
There was a brief silence. “You are still angry with your brother,” she said gently.
“No,” I replied. “What is the use of such anger?”
Mama sighed. “Woferl is like your father. They are stubborn men, and as the women in their lives, we must learn to voice our opinions without letting them realize it. It is the way of things.”
The way of things.
I looked down, unwilling to meet my mother’s gaze. I wondered if, decades from now, I would find myself in the same position, comforting my own daughter. Would I repeat this advice to her?
“You are stubborn too, Nannerl, like your father,” Mama went on. I could not help looking at her now, and when I did, she leaned forward and touched my cheek with her hand. “I know the little things you do to show your will.” She was telling me something without saying it outright, and although I couldn’t guess at exactly what she meant, I could sense the feeling of it hanging in the air.
Then she gave me a sad smile. “I know your compositions meant a great deal to you.”
I had not prepared myself to hear her speak directly to meabout the bound volume of sonatas. Mama was our silent sentinel, always watching and sometimes disapproving, but she did not question our father’s decisions for us. This was the closest she’d ever come to acknowledging my work.
For the first time, I thought about what Mama must have been like at my age. What dreams did my mother have as a young girl? Had she imagined this life with my father, moving always along the sidelines of our lives? When she looked at the night sky, did she ever think of some land far away, where the trees grew upside down and the paths ended along a white-sand shore? When did she become the mother that I now knew?
Suddenly, I feared that I would cry in front of her. I slid out of my chair, then knelt on the rug and put my head in her lap. She brushed my hair with soothing strokes, humming as she went. I savored the sound of her musical voice. Herr Schachtner was right. My mother had a wonderful ear.
We stayed this way for a long while, bathed in the light shining through the music room’s windows.
Finally, the door to the music chamber opened and Papa came striding in. My mother and I looked up in unison, jointly shaken out of our quiet moment.
“The archbishop has given us his blessing,” he said. “We are going to Vienna.”
“Can we not wait until the following year? We’ve not been in Salzburg for long.”
My mother’s voice was hushed and hurried, tense tonight asshe spoke with Papa in the dining room after Woferl and I had gone to bed. I stayed near my door and listened, peeking through a crack at the sliver of my parents seated at the table.
“Next year Woferl may be several inches taller,” Papa replied in his terse, gruff way.
“He’s so small as it is. No one will question that he is a young prodigy, even if he grows a little.”
