Wintersong(85)

“Dear Liesl,” he said.

A letter. Josef was writing me a letter.

“Six months since I left home, and still no word.” He paused, waiting for his hand to catch up to his words. “Where are you, Liesl? Why do you not write?”

Sepperl, Sepperl, mein Brüderchen, I am here, I said. But I was once again voiceless, mute and silent.

My brother lifted his head, as though he could sense my presence. Josef! I cried. Sepp! But his eyes went dull a moment later, and he returned to his letter.

“Mother sends letters by the week, and K?the writes by the hour, but of you, and from you, there is nothing.”

I watched my brother struggle with the quill. A bow had always looked so natural in his hand; Josef wielded it with such delicacy, his wrist loose, his movements fluid. But the quill was strangled in his fingertips, the motions of writing and transcription awkward and strange. I wondered then if this was not part of the reason my brother had always preferred that I take dictation in his rare fits of composition—because he could not write.

I staggered back. My brother could not write. He had learned his letters at Mother’s feet like the rest of us children, and he could certainly read, but Papa—obsessed with the makings of another little Mozart—had taken Josef away, making my brother practice the musical alphabet instead.

Josef dipped his quill in the well and touched the nib to paper—careful, slow, and deliberate. His letters were ill-formed and childish, and I saw that he hadn’t even learned to join them properly into up and downstrokes.

“I ponder the reasons why you keep silent, and none of them make sense. It is like you are a ghost, a shade. It is like you don’t exist. But how can that be so? How can you be a ghost, when I hold the proof of your existence in my hands?”

He glanced to the side. The piece I’d named Der Erlk?nig lay open in a portfolio on a low table, my handwriting stark in the flickering candlelight.

“Wherever you are, I hope you knew the moment I released your music into the world, when I played your Der Erlk?nig piece in public for the first time. I wish you had seen the faces of the audience. They were transported”—he scribbled out the word—“transformed by your music. I wish you had heard their cries of Encore! Encore! It wasn’t me they were cheering, Liesl; it was you. Your music.”

I was crying. I did not know a ghost could cry.

“Fran?ois insists we try and get the piece published. He thinks it is a work of genius. He is clever and I trust his judgment.”

Josef glanced over his shoulder, his eyes turning soft and tender. I followed his gaze. Fran?ois slept on the couch in the room, his arm thrown over his eyes.

“But I do not want to proceed without your permission. I want to know this is what you want.”

Yes, I cried. Yes!

“Fran?ois does not understand my delay. He does not seem to understand that it is you who holds the power. So I await your word every day, every hour, proof incontrovertible of my older, more talented sister’s existence. My partner-in-arms, my connection to the Underground.”

I longed to wrap my arms around him, my Sepperl, my darling baby brother and partner-in-arms. But my hands passed through him and my heart broke. I could never again set foot in the world above, never again embrace my family.

“We are settled in Paris now, so please, please, please write to me, care of Master Antonius.” His hand shook, turning Master Antonius’s name into an illegible scrawl. Josef swore in French.

“I do not love Paris, although I don’t imagine that surprises you. If you’ve gotten my other letters, you will know how much I miss our little inn and the Goblin Grove, despite all the impressive sights of the great cities of Europe. I keep thinking how much K?the would love it—it’s all fancy balls and dignitaries and people dressed up in frippery and finery. I am ill-suited to this life, Liesl. The travel takes its toll, and I am constantly weak. We scarcely had time to recover from our journeys before it was another concert, another salon.”

As Josef wrote that last word, something within him seemed to change. A great sigh left his body, and he seemed to grow smaller, weaker somehow. Travel and time had taken the last of the baby fat from my brother’s face, honing his cheekbones, sharpening his chin. It was only then I realized that Josef looked ill. Drained.

“My homesickness affects my playing. I know it, and Master Antonius knows it.”

He pressed down harder on the nib of his quill as he wrote Master Antonius’s name, much harder than necessary.

“The old violinist is a great performer and I have learned much studying with him. But he isn’t patient, not like you or Fran?ois, and he…”

Josef stopped writing, struggling with the words. But I could see what he could not say. The tense set of his shoulders. The way his lower lip and jaw jutted out with stubbornness. The way he kept glancing at Fran?ois, as though the black boy were both his shield and his refuge. He crossed out the last few words and continued.

“Nobody understands. Fran?ois does his best, but while he understands my heart, I can’t always find the words to tell him what I feel. He’s so clever; he can speak French, Italian, and even a little English. But he finds German difficult, and I am a dunce with languages, according to Master Antonius.”

My hands tightened into fists. I should have known—I had known—on the night of Josef’s audition that Master Antonius was not the mentor my brother needed. That vain, selfish man would never raise my brother up; he would only put him down.