The Kingdom of Back(36)

My heart leapt. It meant that I could start writing again too.

Papa spent longer hours at the clavier with Woferl and with me, as if to make up for the time we’d lost. He made Woferl play so late into the night that my brother could not concentrate anymore, then slapped Woferl’s hands when he saw my brother’s eyes drooping at the clavier.

I’d seen Papa’s temper strain many times before. But Woferl had suffered so long during his latest illness, and I’d been so truly unsettled that Hyacinth had done something to him, that now I felt the urge to defend him rise in me.

“Maybe he should rest now, Papa,” I said as Woferl wiped tears away, the dark circles prominent under his eyes. His small shoulders hung low like a wilted plant. “I’m sure he will play better in the morning.”

Papa did not look at me. He watched as Woferl started once again to play through the beginning of a sonata. The music did not have its usual joy, and Woferl’s hands could not play with their usual crispness. After several measures, Papa stopped him.

“To bed, both of you,” he said wearily. Shadows hid his eyes from me, so I could not guess what they looked like. “I’ve heard enough for today.”

That night, Woferl curled up tight beside me and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep. He had recovered, but his strength had not fully returned to him. It was strange, his quietness. I draped my arm around him, touched my lips to his forehead, and let him rest.

I continued to write my music in secret. By now I had accumulated a small stack of papers at the bottom of our bedroom’s drawers, little sonatas and whimsical orchestra pieces, and had started to scatter them around in different spots so that they did not all sit together. I would write when Woferl and I had a rare moment alone.

One day Woferl, who sat near the clavier and watched me work, spoke up again, a welcome respite from his silence.

“You should show Papa your music,” he whispered. He rose from the windowsill and came to sit beside me on the clavier’s bench, pressing his small, warm body to me. When I looked down, I saw that his feet still dangled some distance from the floor.

“Papa will not like it,” I said. “I’ve told you this before.”

“You don’t know that,” he replied. He turned his eyes to the sheet of music before him, his face full of wonder. “How can someone not like this?”

I sighed. “Woferl, it’s very kind of you to like my music, but you are not Papa. What can he possibly use it for? He certainly would not let me publish them, or perform them for an audience. He may tell me to stop writing altogether then. He will think it is a waste of my time, when I should instead be practicing for our performances.”

“Why?”

I always disliked this question from him. “I am a lady. It is simply not proper for me,” I decided to say. “I would need to have your fame, and your ability to draw a crowd, to even risk such a thing.”

Woferl frowned. I had never spoken of our performances like this before, as if we did not play together, as if we were separate. “But you have my fame,” he said. “You draw your own crowds.”

I looked down at him. He meant it in earnest, I could see that, but I knew it was not true. Still, I put my arm around him and squeezed his shoulder once, my silent thanks, before I turned back to the half-filled sheet before me. “Let me finish,” I said. “It is almost your turn at the clavier.”

I saw Papa alone that evening. It was very late at night, and Mama had already retired to bed, and I had carried a sleeping Woferl from the music room to our own bedroom. I had returned to the music room to fetch a candle. On my way back, I caught a glimpse of Papa sitting by himself at the dinner table and paused.

Both of his elbows were propped up on the table, and his head sat in his hands. I watched him for a moment, my face partially hidden behind the edge of the wall. Papa had rolled his sleeves up to the middle of his arms, messily, and gotten a stain on one of them. Mama would have to wash his shirt in the morning. His powdered wig lay forgotten on a nearby chair. I saw his dark hair in mild disarray, combed through with his fingers, loose strands everywhere. He seemed not like the stern figure often standing beside the clavier, but a tired soul, vulnerable and small.

In this light, I could see what he might have looked like as a young man, wide-eyed and smooth-faced, how my mother must have seen him before the weight of family and fortune carved lines into his skin. Perhaps he had been carefree in his youth too. A teenage Woferl.

I could not picture my father playing childish pranks on his peers, though, or clapping his hands with laughter at a story. He must have always been serious, even when he was handsome and charming enough to have coaxed my mother into his arms. And something about the intensity of his presence, the gravity of him, made me feel bold.

What if I did as Woferl suggested and told him about my compositions? Would it cheer him? Surely, he could feel some sense of pride, however fleeting, in knowing that his daughter could write music as competently as his son? I remembered Woferl’s words, and then my own. Perhaps he would let me perform them, just now and then, a small refrain in the middle of a private concert, some opportunities before my performing years ended.

An urge rose in me then, to tell my father about my secret. To hear the approval in his voice. My pendant felt suddenly heavy in my pocket. I thought about what Hyacinth would say. Did he want me to do this? I took a deep breath, wondering how I could word it to Papa.