Free Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell

it was always this way, always since Aloysia’s birth.
    Josefa remembered peering over the cradle at the very tiny fragile child who, anxious relatives muttered, hovered between life and death. For weeks following Aloysia’s birth Josefa had stumbled over kneeling aunts whispering over their rosary beads. The child lived, and, from shortly after that time, everything changed.
    Josefa had been the darling of her parents for three and a half brief years of life as an only child. Later, even after it seemed Aloysia would live, it was Josefa who was the first to read, the first to have a music lesson, the first to sing to aunts and grand-mothers as she stood on a chair and was held steady by her adoring mother, and then, dressed in her childish best, the first to sing to her father’s musical friends on Thursdays. Suddenly, though, there was another songbird, a higher, lighter, purer voice, yanking at her dress as she sang, almost pulling her from the chair. At the age of seven Josefa had had enough; she pushed her sister down ten minutes before guests arrived, and had then been slapped for it. Friends who had first lifted Josefa into their arms now exclaimed playfully at her weight, and they lifted tiny Aloysia instead. The younger girl darted like a sparrow; she was more appealing. And yet Josefa loved her small sister as something finer and sweeter than she could ever be. Hadn’t there been that day at the menagerie so long ago to prove it forever?
    The tiger, behind the slats of its wood, wheeled cage, was old and lethargic. Josefa and Aloysia had approached the cage hand in hand, each drawn by the other’s courage to go forward. Were they six and nearly three? Aloysia wore a little crushed bonnet, and the few feet to the heavy wood cage seemed very long as they pulled each other closer. Then the beast roared. He rose, glaring at them, and swiped one paw through the bars. Aloysia stood petrified, some inches away from the great curving claws; someone was shouting, but before the large keeper could reach them, Josefa yanked her baby sister’s limp arm and pulled her away so fast that Aloysia tumbled in the dust. Josefa was shaking so hard she had to lean against the wall. Still trembling, she picked up her sobbing sister and dusted her off. Was it minutes, hours, before their parents found them? “Why didn’t you protect your little sister?” her mother had cried later. “You know you have to take care of her; how could you let her go so close?” Her father’s voice had replied angrily, “It’s not the girl’s fault, Caecilia; she saved her.” Josefa still recalled the sensation of his mustache against her cheek as he knelt and held her close.
    Now, years later, she sat on the landing outside her family’s apartment, trying to keep her tears within. She could hear that the trio was done, that now someone accompanied a violin. Then everyone called for a duet, and the cry went up, “But where’s Josefa? Where’s our Josefa?” That was her father’s voice calling, “Where’s my girl?”
    The door creaked open, and Sophie emerged, blinking, onto the landing. “Josy?” she murmured.
    From the shadows the eldest sister held her breath. The love in the smallest sister’s voice sounded again. Josefa could not bear to hear Sophie’s questioning plea and leapt to her feet. “I was too warm inside,” she said. “That’s why I left.”
    Inside she crossed, smiling, to Aloysia. The sisters each wound an arm about the other’s waist and, lifting their faces, sang purely and truly as if nothing had occurred at all: as if one had not been fondled in a dark hall under the small dour portraits of their ancestors, and the other had not fled to the stairs to confront her unhappiness. Their voices rose in thirds to the top notes, glistening off the low flames of the candles and echoing about the empty wine bottles. Then another magical evening came to a close, and the guests reluctantly began to depart.
     
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