The Kingdom of Back(77)

That was it, then.

We packed our things in a silent hurry, bid farewell to Herr Schmalecker and his wife, and headed into our waiting coach. When we went to the home of Papa’s friend and helped Woferl into the seat beside me, I saw that my brother’s eyes had turned so dark that they looked black.

I was in a city, Nannerl. His dream came back to me now, and I shivered at the truth of it. It was burning to the ground. The fire nipped at my skin, and the smoke blinded my eyes.

I took my brother’s hand in mine and squeezed it tightly. “How is your cough?” I asked him as we headed on our way. Behind us, I could hear the city’s cacophony of church bells and prayers and panic.

Woferl shrugged. Already, he looked suspended between here and somewhere else.

“It is just a cough,” he replied.



* * *





We left Vienna and their royal family behind us, then arrived in Olmütz, a small city on the edge of the Morava River, on a day full of rain. I sat opposite our father, although neither of us looked at the other. Papa was not a man of many words, but today he seemed even quieter than usual, and his lips stayed locked in a tight line across his face. He kept his eyes turned toward the windows. Once, when I looked away and could see him only through the corner of my vision, I thought I saw him stare at me. When I turned my eyes back to him, he had returned to his silent study of the rolling terrain.

The room at our Olmütz inn did not help Papa’s mood. When he smelled the dampness of it and saw the smoke that poured from its stove, he threw his hands up and cursed loudly. “God has punished my greed,” he muttered.

Woferl’s cough grew worse from the rain and smoke, so that he kept us awake throughout the night with his fits. I could not sleep, anyway, as the smoke forced my eyes to tear unabated.

I held my breath for much of the next day. There was no clavier here, not even separate rooms for us. I had nothing to do, nothing to distract myself. All I could think of was the music I had played, of when Hyacinth would come calling for me, and the smile in his raspy, haunting voice.

Woferl continued to cough. His black eyes watered without pause.

The next morning I awoke to the sound of our door slamming shut. My father had left.

“Where is Papa going?” I said to Mama as I sat up. Woferl was not sleeping at my side.

“Hurry and get dressed, Nannerl,” she said to me. Behind her, Woferl swayed on his feet and shivered in his clothes. “We are moving to better rooms.”

We switched to a room with less dampness and smoke, but by now it was already too late. Woferl had trouble breathing properly that evening, and by the time Sunday came and we were to attend church, Woferl had become delirious with a high fever. Mama hovered over him, distraught and teary-eyed, and Papa told her he would ask the cathedral’s dean about my brother’s condition.

I already knew what would happen, although I did not say this to my parents. Hyacinth had found his way to my brother.

The dean, an old friend of my father’s from Salzburg, sent the doctor Joseph Wolff to our inn straightaway, and confirmed that Woferl had smallpox. We moved again to the dean’s house. There, under the surveillance of Herr Wolff and my family, we watched helplessly as Woferl’s fever worsened and his eyes swelled shut with pain.

That night, I dreamed again of the clavier sitting on the dark sands of the kingdom’s shores and of Woferl’s milky, vacant eyes. I woke with tears streaking my face.

Woferl woke up crying one night, and as Mama rose from her slumber in a nearby chair and hurried to his side, he told her that he could not see. Even candlelight hurt his eyes so much that he kept them closed all the time. Red spots began to appear on his skin, slowly at first, and then more and more quickly, like a wildfire to an untouched forest. I could hardly recognize him through the smallpox rash. Whenever he burst into a fit of coughs, I thought it sounded like Hyacinth’s laughter. I would look for him at night, but he did not appear to me.

I woke the next night, trembling. From my open door I could see candlelight still flickering in Woferl’s sickroom. I rose then, wrapped my blanket around me, and made my way to him.

Mama slept quietly in the chair at the corner of the room, while my father lay with his head in his arms at the writing desk. I saw an unfinished letter to Herr Hagenauer crushed beneath his elbow. I walked carefully, so that I would not wake them, and sat down beside Woferl’s bed. Through the flickering candlelight and the windowpane I could see the hints of floating shapes, the cloaked figures that seemed to haunt us in a way that others could not notice, waiting patiently beside the glass. I turned to look at Woferl, who tossed and turned in his fitful sleep.

“Nannerl?” he whispered.

I blinked. Woferl suddenly turned his head in my direction, although his eyes—still swollen shut—could not see me. Instinctively, I reached for his hand and pressed it between mine. His skin was hot to the touch.

“I’m here, Woferl,” I said.

He tried to smile, but the pain stopped him. “You came to see me,” he said.

I swallowed. “Of course,” I said. “You are my brother.”

“Do you think I will get better? Is the smallpox very bad?”

The weakness in his voice cracked my heart. “It is not so bad,” I lied. The shapes outside the window grew larger, so that I could see their bony arms and long, spindled fingers. “The smallpox will disappear in just a few days.”