The Kingdom of Back(67)
Later that night, Papa called me into the music room and whispered to me by candlelight. “Nannerl,” he said, his voice strangely subdued. “Woferl cannot finish such a work in eight days.”
“I know,” I replied, because it was true, and sat calmly with my hands in my lap, a shawl draped about my shoulders. I could tell my father wanted me to offer my help willingly, suggest that I work with my brother.
Instead, I was silent. My eyes stayed level with his, willing him to ask first. I had summoned the strength to challenge him earlier—I could not back down now.
Papa hesitated, his hands fidgeting restlessly. He was weary, the lines on his face pronounced tonight. He kept searching for the right words to say. I watched his eyes settle again and again on the window. Even though I knew he could not possibly be seeing Hyacinth, I still felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck, could sense the faery’s presence in the room.
Finally, I said, “What does this have to do with me, Papa?”
For an instant, my father’s eyes softened at me, and with their softness I felt myself lean instinctively closer to him, trying to remember this rare moment.
“You write in a style not unlike your brother’s,” he replied at last. His words were not stern, but reluctant, as if he was voicing a thought he had kept quiet for a long time.
The silence in the room weighed against us. I stayed frozen, unsure how to respond. His words echoed through me like a bell. This was it, his admission of what I’d done.
I wrote like my brother. I wrote. It was an acknowledgment of my volume of sonatas. Papa was telling me, without saying it directly, that he knew that music was mine. The quiver of candlelight trembled against my folded hands, disguising the shudder that coursed through my body.
“How do you know this?” I asked him quietly.
“Nannerl,” he replied. His eyes fixed on mine. “You know how.”
You know how. I looked around the music room, its shadows stretched and shaking from the candles. Any doubt I might have felt over what had happened now fell away. Here, at last, was his admission that he had indeed taken my music with intention, had put my brother’s name on my work and published it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.
“Would it have made any difference?” he mumbled. “Except to make you miserable sooner? Would you have fought me? It is the way it is.”
He did not like coming to me like this, vulnerable in admitting to me the truth. I found myself thrilled by his discomfort. For once, I was not the one apologizing to my father, seeking his approval, trying to find a way to appease him. Now it was his turn. I let him shift, his eyes first meeting mine and then darting away in frustration, trying to settle on anything else but my unspoken accusation.
“Why do you do all of this, Papa?” I asked. “Our lessons. Our tour. Sacrificing your own standing with the archbishop. What is the reason for it? I know it is about the money. But that cannot be the whole of it.”
His posture was stiff and hunched, his fingers woven against each other. I waited patiently until he finally found his response.
“Do you know what I thought I would become, Nannerl?” When I shook my head, he said, “A missionary. My parents thought me a future priest, that my calling was a divine one.” He was silent a moment. “For a long time, I thought that my entire purpose in life had been to become a missionary, and that I had failed it. Music and composition? I am good at it, but I am no lasting figure.” He looked down at the creases in his hands. “Then I heard you and your brother at the clavier. I knew what God had put me on this earth to do. In a way, I have become a missionary. There is no greater purpose for me than to ensure that you are heard by as many as possible.”
I studied his bowed head and realized how old he looked. In that moment, I felt sorry for him. I believed my father, but I did not think he understood himself as well as he thought. He wanted me to be heard, but not by name. He wanted me to be seen, but not for what I could create. And he thought himself a missionary, an ambassador of God, when what he really wanted was to validate himself.
The satisfaction I’d felt earlier at his admission and his vulnerability began to fade. I’d gotten what I wanted from him. Now, as I stared at his aging face in the candlelight, all I wanted to do was shake my head. Underneath his harsh exterior was just a pitiful man, mired in insecurity. I sighed. The thought of dragging this on suddenly brought me no joy.
“I’ll help him,” I said.
My father glanced up at me, surprised.
“I’ll help him,” I repeated. “It will be hard, but we can do it.”
Papa opened his mouth, closed it, and searched my gaze. He did not smile. I waited, wondering if I might catch a glimpse of guilt, some semblance of an apology on his face.
But he had already admitted too much for one night. In the next instance, he leaned back and furrowed his brows. “Of course you will,” he said. The authority had returned to his voice just as I had retreated to my meek position, the daughter at his command. “I want you and Woferl to do nothing else in these eight days, to go nowhere, until you have finished the oratorio. I will check on you both twice a day, at morning and at night, and your mother will bring you food. If Woferl tires, you will take his place.”
“Yes, Papa.”
“I cannot have the archbishop thinking that Woferl does not deserve the reputation he has earned across Europe. You understand this, of course, Nannerl.”