The Kingdom of Back(10)

After a pause, Mama shook her head and held out a hand to each of us. We took them, and she began to lead us back up the stairs. “The very idea,” she murmured, frowning at how cold our hands felt in her warm ones. “I’d not thought you capable of such mischief, Nannerl. Rushing out here with your brother in the darkest hour of night. And in this cold! Thank goodness your father sleeps so heavily, otherwise he’d never let you hear the end of this.”

I looked up at her. “Didn’t you hear the crash in the music room, Mama?” I asked.

Our mother raised a slender eyebrow. “Nothing of the sort.”

I fell silent again. As we stepped back inside our building, I saw the trinket shop at the end of the Getreidegasse from the corner of my eye. The boy’s final words lingered. I wondered what would happen if I met him there.

When I looked at Woferl, he looked ready to say something to Mama—but after a while, his mouth relaxed into a line and he turned his face down. The matter was dropped.





THE PRINCELING IN THE GROTTO



Papa discovered that my notebook was missing the next morning.

He did not shout when he became upset. Instead, his voice would turn quiet like a storm on the horizon, so soft that I’d have to strain to hear what he was saying.

Careless. You are so careless, Nannerl.

Each of his words lashed at me. I bore it and kept my head turned down, my eyes focused on the embroidery of our rug. It was a hunting scene of three brothers riding in the sun-dappled clearing of a forest, their hounds forever frozen in the throes of tearing a doe to pieces.

“Well?” my father asked. “What do you have to say for yourself, now that we must buy you a new notebook?”

I counted the number of hounds and horses as I tried to still my thoughts. “I’m sorry, Papa,” I replied.

“Sorry,” he echoed me in disbelief, then shook his head and looked away.

Beside him, Mama glanced quickly at us and cleared her throat. “They are still children, Leopold,” she said, putting a comforting hand on our father’s arm. “You are a grown man, and yet how many times have I scolded you about your misplaced quills and your lost spectacles?”

Papa just scowled. “Young ladies should be more responsible,” he said, looking back at me again. “How will you care for a husband if you cannot even care for your belongings?”

The word burrowed into my mind. A husband, a husband, it repeated in a whisper that quickly evolved into a roar. You will be forgotten, it said. I watched as my mother smoothed my father’s sleeve. One day, you will disappear.

I did not know how to defend myself. How does a daughter explain such a thing to her father? Even I could not be sure anymore what had happened. Sleep had already fogged the memory of last night. Could someone really have been in our home, standing by the clavier? Who had drawn us out into the street?

No, my father must have been right. I simply misplaced it. Last night was a dream, nothing more. And yet I kept staring at the rug, studying the doe’s wide eyes as my mother coaxed Papa with soft words.

Then, as my father resumed his scolding of me, Woferl rose from the dining table. He went up to the clavier, pulled himself onto the bench, and placed his hands on the keys.

“Don’t be angry, Papa,” he said over his little shoulder. “I can remember the pages. Then we can write them down again.”

Of course he could not. Of course this was just another one of his whims. I stood there and almost wanted to smile at his strange attempt to defend me, for trying to turn our father’s shadow away from where I stood.

Papa’s eyes softened in amusement. “Can you, now?” he said.

Woferl’s expression stayed serious. He turned back around on the bench and started to play.

At first, he struck the wrong note, and hit a few more strays before he shook his head and paused. The piece was supposed to be a menuett in C. I saw him frown, knew that the same thought had just crossed his mind, and watched him start over.

This time, Woferl hit the right note. Then another and another and another. One of his fingers slipped, but that was the last mistake. He managed to make it through sixteen measures, all correct, of the menuett, and though his rhythm was off because he had to think about each measure, he remembered all of it.

My father stared at him, all signs of his earlier tirade completely vanished. I looked at my brother in disbelief. None of us dared move a muscle, as if what we’d witnessed was only a figment of our minds, and that if we disturbed this moment, Woferl’s playing would have never happened at all.

My brother was barely old enough to read. What he just did was impossible.

I looked at our father. His smile had disappeared, but his eyes had turned very bright. He said nothing. He needed not to, for even then, I could see in his mind the thought that lit his face.

This was the song of God he yearned for, emerging from the small hands of his son.

My affection for Woferl wavered then, and suddenly I felt that cold twinge return to my chest. The same one I’d felt as I’d let him play on the clavier beside me, when he’d remembered what I played so easily. It had taken me a week to remember the same piece! Surely, he could not have memorized so much in such a short amount of time. I wondered, suddenly, if Woferl could have been the one who hid away my notebook.

My brother climbed off the bench and looked at me. There was only curiosity in his gaze, that perpetually innocent smile on his face. He was waiting for me to compliment his playing. I hesitated, unsure of what I might say.