Free Vienna Nocturne by Vivien Shotwell Page A

expression, as though she were either shy or dispassionate. Her form and complexion were good, but hers was an ordinary sort of prettiness—she did not have Aloysia’s lips or cheekbones or waist.
    “I would love to meet your husband,” Anna said, still in German, though she hardly knew if she was being intelligible. But Constanze smiled encouragingly. “I’ve heard so much about him.”
    “He’s like nobody else,” Aloysia said. “Here he comes now.”
    Anna turned, and begged heaven to help her. It was he. Indeed it was he. Wolfgang Mozart had stolen her shoes.
    “Where have you been?” Aloysia asked. “You abandoned us completely. We were forsaken utterly.”
    A hint of irritation crossed his face. “You were talking to that Herr Gosta. I can’t stand Herr Gosta.”
    “But where did you
go
?”
    “Oh, here and there. I have to spread myself about and remind them all I’m still alive. I talked with this person and that person and then I went for some air out on that terrace. I think I may have seen this lady there,” and he nodded kindly to Anna. “Though she went in before I had a chance to introduce myself.”
    “You weren’t out all alone?” Aloysia asked Anna. “But how very modern of you. I suppose you don’t care what people think.”
    “Not really, no,” Anna said pleasantly. Aloysia smiled.
    “You all sang splendidly tonight,” Mozart said to Benucci in Italian. He turned to Anna and gave her a determined smile. “Are you enjoying Vienna, mademoiselle?”
    “Yes, quite well, thank you.”
    He was certainly not thirty. Later she would learn he was twenty-seven. He carried himself proudly and easily, like a magician or a dancer. There was a mixture of lightness and strength about him; how he spoke, how he held himself, how he used his hands. His face was softly rounded and quite pale. He had a strong nose and full lips. His smile was ready and catching. Most of all she noticed his eyes, unusually large and slightly protruding, a pale hazel which in some lights looked blue-green and in others almost dark. He wore his natural hair—a light brown that hinted at red, abundant and somewhat untidy—tied back in a pigtail.
    Aloysia and Constanze, bored by the Italian, moved to a different party of friends along with Benucci, who still had Aloysia’s arm. Lidia, who disliked large crowds and was embarrassed, retired to the side of the room and sat on a chair.
    “You
wretch
,” Anna whispered to Mozart.
    “I was beside myself, hearing you tonight,” he said, stepping closer. “I nearly went out of my mind. I don’t want you to think—you see, these things mean so much to me, obviously they do, I mean they are things I think about and that have direct bearing on my life and all my dreams—and by things I mean I heard and saw you and went out of my mind—with excitement, you know, and joy. A man spends all his life dreaming about a certain kind of singer—but then to see you, to almost be able to touch you!”
    Then he looked at her with wide eyes and she knew they were both remembering about the stockings. “Oh, God!” he cried. “What I wouldn’t
give
to write an opera buffa for a singer like you. I’d cut off my own foot. Not my hands. My hands I need.”
    “You knew Thomas Linley,” she said. “I was in love with Thomas Linley when I was a girl.”
    Linley, a brilliant young English composer, had met Mozart on tour in Italy when they were boys of the same age. He had drowned a few years ago on a lake at Grimsthorpe Castle, all his finest music unwritten.
    “Were you?” Mozart asked, with a soft look. “He was my friend. He was a true genius.”
    She was sober, suddenly, and sad. “It was very wrong of you, signor. You shouldn’t do such careless things. If it were a play you could have marked me for life.”
    He raised his brows, interested. “I wish it were a play.”
    “Plays only ever end badly.”
    “Not if they’re comedies.”
    She frowned and looked away.