Wintersong(24)

I retreated into the comforting embrace of my klavier more and more as the date of my brother’s departure approached. Without Josef’s guiding hand, the bagatelle grew wild and unchecked. Its musical phrases did not resolve themselves according to a logical, rational progression; they went where my flights of fancy took them. I let them go where they will. The results were slightly dissonant, eerie, and unsettling, but I did not mind. After all, I was not a child of beauty; I was a child of the queer, the strange, and the wild.

I had the shape of the piece now, its rise, fall, and resolution. It was simple enough, especially for a virtuoso like Josef. I had written it with the violin in mind, to be accompanied by the fortepiano. I wanted to hear my brother play it, wanted to hear how it would transform in his hands.

A few days later, I got my wish.

Fran?ois was attending to Master Antonius, who had taken a “mild chill,” although it seemed more a fit of jealous pique—he wasn’t the only one to have been abandoned by someone he loved, I realized. I found Josef in a rare moment alone downstairs in the main hall, lovingly tending to his violin. Twilight was falling, and the shadows carved the planes of his face into sharp relief. My brother looked like an angel, a sprite, a creature not quite of this world.

“Think you the kobolds will be out tonight?” I asked softly.

He startled. “Liesl!” He set down his oiling rag and wiped his hands on his trousers. “I didn’t see you there.” He rose from his seat by the hearth, arms out to embrace me.

I walked straight into them. With a pang, I realized he was of a height with me. When had that happened?

“What is it?” he asked, sensing my heartache.

“Nothing.” I smiled at him. “It’s just … you’re growing up, Sepp.”

He chuckled. It rumbled deep in his chest, a man’s chuckle, a bass. Though Josef still retained a boy’s sweet soprano, his voice walked the edge of breaking. “It’s never nothing with you.”

“No,” I admitted. I wrapped my hands around his. “I have something for you. A gift.”

His brows lifted with surprise. “A gift?”

“Yes,” I said. “Come with me. And bring your violin.”

Bemused, Josef followed me upstairs to my room. I led him to the klavier, to where the bagatelle rested against the music stand. I had stayed up late the previous night, wasting precious candlelight to make a fair copy.

“What is this?” He squinted and leaned closer.

I didn’t say anything, but waited.

“Oh.” Josef paused. “An entire new piece?”

“Don’t judge too harshly, Sepperl.” I tried to laugh off my sudden embarrassment. “It’s full of mistakes and errors, I’m sure.”

Josef tilted his head. “Do you want me and Fran?ois to play it for you?”

I flinched. “I had thought,” I said, unexpectedly stung, “that we would play it together.”

He had the grace to blush. “Of course. Forgive me, Liesl.” He took his violin and rested it beneath his chin. He scanned the first few lines and then nodded at me. I was suddenly nervous. I shouldn’t be; this was Josef, after all.

I nodded back and Josef lightly bounced his bow up and down, setting the tempo. We gave it a measure, and then began.

The first notes were tentative, unsure. I was nervous and Josef was … Josef was unreadable. I faltered, my fingers slipping on the keyboard.

Josef continued to play, reading the notes I’d written with mechanical precision. You could have set a watch by his playing, exact and ruthless. Numbness began to spread from my fingers, traveling through my hands, up my arms, my shoulders, my neck, my eyes, my ears. I had written this piece for the Josef I had known and loved, for the little boy who never skipped out on an opportunity to run away to find the H?dekin dancing in the wood. For the child who had shared half my soul, strange and queer and wild, for the brother who kept faith with Der Erlk?nig.

He wasn’t there.

It was as though my brother had been replaced by a changeling. The music did not transform, did not transcend in his hands. The notes were muddy, mundane, terrestrial. Suddenly it was as though I could see the cobwebs of delusion I had woven about myself, through which I could see another world and another life.

Josef finished the piece, holding the last note’s fermata with exacting length.

“A good effort, Liesl.” He gave me a smile, but it did not quite reach his eyes. “A definite start.”

I nodded. “You’ll be leaving for Munich tomorrow,” I said.

“Yes.” Josef sounded relieved. “At first light.”

“Get some rest, then.” I patted him on the cheek.

“And you?” he asked, inclining his head toward the piece on the klavier, the piece he had just finished playing. “You will write, won’t you? Send me more music?”

“Yes,” I said.

But we both knew it for a lie.

*

Energy was high when the coaches arrived to bear Josef, Master Antonius, and Fran?ois to Munich. Guests and patrons and friends from the village turned out to bid them farewell. Papa wept as he embraced his son, while Mother—stoic-faced and dry-eyed—laid her hands over Josef’s head in a quiet benediction. I avoided Constanze’s gaze. Her eyes were dark and clouded, her mouth set in a mutinous line.