He looks at me. How much has changed since that firstblustery morning when he heard me play. I am married now, mother to three young children. As for Herr Schachtner himself, he has become an old man, bent from the world.
“Thank you, Frau Berchtold,” Herr Schachtner says. He bows to me. “How have you been keeping?”
“Well enough,” I say. “Better than before.” My words lodge in my throat for a moment before they come free. “It is slowly getting easier to accept Woferl’s absence.”
He gives me a sad smile and shakes his head. “Ah, I’m glad to hear it.” We stay silent for an awkward moment, the consequence of many years apart and the lack of my father’s presence. Papa would have known what to say.
Then Herr Schachtner clears his throat and reaches for a chair. “Let’s begin, then,” he says. “What is it that Herr Schlichtegroll needs to know?”
“He wishes to compile a biography of Woferl,” I reply, “and has requested some information from his early life. I would like to have another’s voice added to my own, so I thought of you. I’m sure you may remember some things about Woferl that I may have forgotten.”
Herr Schachtner nods. Some of his early energy disappears as he begins to think of my brother. “Very well,” he murmurs. He has brought with him a stack of papers, old letters and concert announcements, and he starts to sift through them. I bring over a stack of my own, and together we sit to pore over each one.
“Did you have a chance to speak to him before he died?” he asks me after a while, after we’d begun to compile a small list of anecdotes.
I look at him. “No,” I say. “I spoke to him once, several years ago, but I did not know of his illness last winter until he had alreadypassed.” I pause there, suddenly uncomfortable with a topic that I’ve already needed to discuss on several occasions. I do not like to remember it. Sometimes I still wonder, on nights when the others have fallen asleep, what had ultimately caused my brother’s early death. Woferl had been in the middle of a composition shortly before he fell ill. I never tried to ask his wife what the composition was. I was too afraid of recognizing in it some familiar, ethereal sound.
Perhaps Woferl had always been the boy suspended between worlds, never meant to stay here for long.
“There are still masses, you know,” Herr Schachtner says. “All Salzburg mourns for him. I’ve heard of gatherings held in Vienna and Prague as well, attended by hundreds.”
I picture Vienna, a city once plagued with smallpox, now in silent mourning for Woferl. I wonder how grand his mass was, or if it was simple like that of his funeral. I wonder if Marie Antoinette, the little archduchess to whom Woferl had once proposed, would have attended his mass if the French had not imprisoned her in the Tuileries Palace.
Herr Schachtner and I trade stories, some that we both know, some that I have to remind him gently of. I recall how Woferl had picked out thirds on the clavier with me, and his little frown when one of the keys seemed out of tune. Herr Schachtner remembers his fervent composing, even at a young age, and the tears that would spring to his eyes whenever he was forced to pause. I bring out my old music notebook, now yellowing with age, and point out pages where Woferl had composed menuetts or where my father had written notes. When Herr Schachtner asks me about the page torn in my notebook, I simply shrug and tell him I cannot be sure what had happened.
“You and Woferl were so close,” Herr Schachtner remarks, when I become carried away in telling one of his childhood stories. A smile emerges on the edges of his mouth. “You were quite the pair, weren’t you? You played for the kings of Europe, those who have changed our countries and written our histories.”
The memory returns of our jostling carriage rides, the stories my brother and I would make up to entertain each other. I smile too, cherishing the warmth of this nostalgia. “Yes,” I reply gently. “I suppose we were.”
Herr Schachtner returns to his stack of papers, pulls out the next one, and holds it out to me. “Sebastian, your old servant, had this in his possessions. I found it and thought you might know more about it than I will.”
I stare at the paper, momentarily unable to speak. It is the old map that Woferl and I had once asked Sebastian to draw for us, a map of the Kingdom of Back. Some of his sketching has faded away now, and the castle on the hill is smudged and ruined. I look at the little moat Sebastian had drawn, the upside-down trees and the white sand beach. I hear in my mind the crunch of leaves beneath our feet, the splash of water as we swim in the kingdom’s ocean. I remember the dark, damp stairs in the castle tower, the scarlet sky and the children and the winding, crooked path.
I do not try to remember the faery’s name.
“It was a childhood memory,” I say after a while. “We called it the Kingdom of Back.”
“The Kingdom of Back?” Herr Schachtner laughs a little. “How did such a name come about?”
Woferl had whispered it to me one afternoon, a long time ago. But to Herr Schachtner, I say something different. The kingdom, and all its secrets, were meant only for my brother and me. “I canno longer be certain,” I say. “We used it to pass the time we spent in the carriage and on our journeys.”
Herr Schachtner studies my face, as if he knows that there is more I want to say about it. I choose my words carefully, changing the kingdom into something that the rest of the world can understand. “We thought of ourselves as the rulers of this place,” I say. “I suppose it was where we could escape to, with our joys and sorrows, and let them out to play.” I look at Herr Schachtner. “Just a simple childhood game.”
Herr Schachtner nods, satisfied with my story, and moves on to the next paper.
We sit together late into the afternoon. When it finally comes time for him to leave, he promises to visit me again and bring gifts for the children.
“I will let you know how Herr Schlichtegroll does with his writings,” I say. “I hope he will portray Woferl as a great man.”
Herr Schachtner bows to me. Then he seems to remember something and pauses halfway out the door to face me again. His hand digs into the pocket of his jacket. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I’d almost forgotten. I have something for you.”
I wait patiently.
The Herr pulls out a tiny package for me, wrapped in white silk and tied with a simple ribbon. “His widow, Constanze, told me that she found this among Woferl’s possessions shortly after he died. She said that he meant this for you, as he had a little note on it with your name. She asked me to give it to you.”
I turn the package over in my hands. Sure enough, a tiny scrap of paper is attached to its bottom.Für Nannerl, it says. I look at Herr Schachtner, who holds out his hands to me.
“I’ve no idea what it is,” he says. “But I’m sure he would have liked you to receive it.” He bows once again, tipping his hat to me. “Farewell, Marianne. History will remember the Mozart name.”
