Free Vienna Nocturne by Vivien Shotwell Page B

“It’s not a comedy when Thomas Linley drowns.”
    “But that was the last play. Now you’re in Vienna.”
    “I’m in Vienna and you’re married,” she said.
    “Indeed,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m, ah—I can be impulsive, especially when I’ve been working hard.” He glanced around the party, smoothing his hand on his thigh. His clothes were the finest cut and material; they made him handsomer than he was.
    The emperor has been to visit us at home
, Anna wrote to her brother.
He stayed half an hour and played with the dogs. Mama was beside herself. When he left he kissed my hand! This should tell you something of how I am esteemed here
.
    Stephen replied:
I can’t think but you exaggerate about the hand kissing. Have you met Wolfgang Mozart?
    Yes
, she wrote,
I met Mozart. He’s rather arrogant for someone who’s not done much
.
    Anna
, Stephen answered,
he has reason
.

At Café Hugelmann

    In June, the Italian company gave its last performances before the emperor retired to his summer palace. Since coming to Vienna they had put on four new operas. They had been joined most recently by Mozart’s sister-in-law, Aloysia, who had sung with the old German singspiel company and now took second lady to Anna’s first.
    She was five years Anna’s senior, with striking cheekbones and rosebud lips. The men of the company loved her hesitant, broken Italian, which they declared the sweetest attempts at their language to ever have endeared them. They all endeavored to give her Italian lessons and declared she would be one of them in no time at all. She was married to a well-regarded actor and painter, Joseph Lange.
    “I never felt more secure,” she told Anna prettily, “than in the cherished moment when my dear handsome husband made me his wife.”
    They were sitting at an outdoor garden café, Café Hugelmann, on an island in the middle of the Danube. One bridge led to thefestivities of the Prater, another back into the city. Boats floated at speed down the deep-running river. The garden was filled with flowers and birds. The two sopranos sat in the shade of a wide parasol, eating cream cakes and drinking from small cups of coffee. They spoke in German, and Anna, still far from comfortable in that language, fit in a word or two where she could. It put her in the position of a child.
    “He is extraordinarily jealous and possessive,” Aloysia continued, “as all the world knows, so no one questions my honor. I used to have all sorts of fellows in love with me—though, mind you, I never encouraged them. I just couldn’t help it. There is no stopping a young man once he gets his mind set on an object, and then people
will
talk. You must know all about that already, how cruelly people talk of us female singers. But my dear husband put a stop to all of that, and I never felt more chaste and safe than on the day he took me for his own. I declare it was the best feeling I have ever known, to surrender myself to his power.” She smoothed a curl from her eyes. “I’m surprised you’re not wed yet yourself, a girl so fetching. You’re quite the thing now, aren’t you? I am not so vain to claim to comprehend your degree of occupation. Even at my height,” she said, snapping open her fan and looking to the side, “I was not singing nearly half so much as you are. Do not you find it wearying? La! I should worry for the health of my vocal apparatus. I just don’t know
how
I would manage so much singing. But I suppose my own arias are much more taxing than yours.”
    She sighed and nibbled her pastry. Yellow cream bulged out the side and she licked it up with her tongue. “You quite put me to shame with all your theatrics. I mean to copy your every motion, though I expect to fall flat. My beloved husband is quite an admired thespian, you know, and is always making fun of me for my unnaturalness. But you shall be the cure of me.”
    “Oh,” said Anna, “you don’t need a cure.”
    “I do if I want to keep