Selections:  Walking the Dog

                    Constanze meets Casanova

                    A Child Pupil Comes to Stay

Walking the Dog

      In the early days of our marriage, we attended Mass. Perhaps it would be more truthful to say that I attended. Exhausted from playing late Saturday night, Mozart usually fell asleep, especially if the music bored him. Afterwards, along with much of fashionable Vienna, we would go to the Prater.

      Wolfi and I liked to take Gaukerel on the brick walk that ran alongside the carriage path. It was a splendid place to see and be seen.

      There were elegantly dressed riders reining in nervous, high stepping horses. The "Chapeaux" were twirling their canes and striding about everywhere. (They were jokingly called "Hats" because it was the fashion among all the stylish young men in those days to wear outsize, ornate tricorns tipped forward rakishly over their eyes. My husband was, of course, among their number.)

      There were carriages, too, filled with elaborately dressed people, the rich and the famous, making the circuit sedately. There were crowds of walkers, everyone parading in their finest.

      On one of those unseasonably blue, warm days that cheer October, we were, as usual, out for our walk. Mozart had been playing the fool, dashing around me in circles and stealing kisses. We must have looked terribly improper, but we were so very, very happy.

      Every time he hugged me, Gaukerel would growl. If I protested his embrace at all, she'd emit a high warning whine and raise her hackles.

      "Why did I ever ask Countess Thun for this wretched dust mop?" He stuck out his tongue and stamped on the bricks, provoking Gaukerel to a chorus of piercing yelps.

      "Boo, stupid dog! Why, one of these days I'm going to be working away on top of Stanzi and you're going to bite me in the ass - or somewhere worse."

      "Wolfi! Hush! Don't be so vulgar."

      To tease him back, I leaned down and spoke confidentially to Gaukerel. "He's a wicked scary stranger, isn't he?"

      Gaukerel responded by giving Wolfi a distrustful look.

      We walked on quietly for awhile, Wolfgang apparently lost in thought. Then, suddenly, he gave Gaukerel an unfriendly push with his foot. Naturally, she spun and growled.

      "Are you any good in a pinch, dog?"       He followed this remark by giving me a more than brotherly punch in the arm.

      "Ow! Wolfgang! That hurt!"

      "Taking walks by yourself. Don't think I don't know what's going on!" He swung his walking stick at me. I actually had to dodge to avoid being hit.

      "Wolfgang! What are you doing? Have you gone crazy?"

      Snarling, Gaukerel began to make feints at him.

      "The landlady says you go for walks, long walks, every single day. Who are you seeing?"

      I couldn't believe he was serious, but his face was a storm cloud. As steadily as I could, I replied, "I walk Gaukerel! What do you think?"

      Steely fingers fastened on my arms. He actually began to shake me, shake me until my teeth rattled. "Tell me the truth, damn it! Who do you see? That pig of an officer?"

      I thought he'd suddenly gone mad. "No one!" I cried desperately. "No one!"

      That was when Gaukerel popped out from under my skirts and plunged her teeth into his ankle.

      "Ow! Damn it!"

      He had to hit her with the walking stick to make her let go. With an anguished "ki-yi", she finally fled back under my skirts.

      "Sapperlote!" Mozart exclaimed. "Vicious cur! I was only pretending!"

      "Monster!" I shrieked. "Madman! You've hurt her!"

      The poor loyal thing was whimpering and trembling. When I scooped her up, she licked my face wildly. Meanwhile, Wolfi was ruefully examining his leg. Not only was his silk stocking torn, but his ankle had been well and truly bitten.

      "I'm bleeding!" he exclaimed, looking up at me, now astonished and pale.

      "It serves you right! How dare you shout terrible lies about me in public and hit my poor little dog? You vulgar, disgusting beast!" Gaukerel added her own insults, barking fiercely from the safety of my arms.

      I was telling my husband in no uncertain terms what I thought when a very grand open carriage stopped nearby. The occupant, a very tall, conservatively-dressed gentleman, called out commandingly to us.

      "Hola! You two! Yes, you! Herr und Frau Mozart."

      When I recognized who it was, I almost fainted. –– The Emperor himself!

      He was a solemn, rather morose man, little given to levity, but at this moment his thin face was cracked from ear to ear with a grin.

      We both reddened furiously. I dropped Gaukerel and curtsied deeply. My clever girl knew something important was happening. She ran under my skirts and stopped her noise at once.

      "Two months married and fighting?" the Emperor observed. "I say, I am most disappointed."

      Mozart bowed very low and then stood there fidgeting. "It was just a game, Sir, to see what her little dog would do."

      The Emperor's pale eyes traveled to Wolfi's bloody ankle. Then we heard a sound very few people were ever privileged to hear - a thin, brief whinny - the sound of Joseph II's laughter.

      "It looks to me like you found out - didn't you just, Herr Mozart!"

~  ~  ~

      The libretto for the new opera wasn't completed yet, so Daponte came along to finish it. He had put up at The Sheet of Ice across the street, because the town was already filling up for the Archduke's wedding. Like a couple of rowdies, he and Wolfi hung out the windows and shouted across the street to each other.

      A few days after his arrival, a group of us were sharing dinner at The Three Golden Lions. I was the only woman present, straining after a conversation in Italian.

      We - Mozart, Dusek, Bondini, the tenor, the bass and the two baritones - were seated at a big table. Luigi Bassi and Felice Ponziani might have been brothers, both handsome young Italians with tumbling black curls. They would sing the leading roles, those of Don Giovanni and his servant, Leporello.

      We had just finished the main course when a shout announced the arrival of DaPonte. He came striding in accompanied by a friend whom he introduced as "Chevalier de Seingalt."

      Looking beyond the candlelight, I saw a thin shadow bowing gracefully. Only when this "Chevalier" got next to the table did I really get a good look at him.

      Belying his fluid movements, the man was ancient. Beneath his sallow, sunken cheeks not a single tooth remained. His eyes, however, were supernaturally alive. Gleaming, black, they roved over the company. When they met mine, I swear, sparks flew. Not wasting a moment, the death's head bowed over my hand.

      "Ah, what a vision," he sighed. "Bella! Bella Madamina!"

      My face went hot. It was disconcerting, to say the least, to have so much heat turned on by a man old enough to be my great-grandfather. Across the Chevalier's shoulder, I saw DaPonte watching with ill-concealed glee.

      Embarrassed, I withdrew my hand, transferring it directly to the safety of my husband's strong fingers. Thank heaven, Mozart seemed to understand perfectly. He favored the ancient rake with one of his ingenuous smiles.

      "My wife is a modest German lady, Chevalier," he said, "but she thanks you for the compliment."

      "Alas!" the Chevalier intoned, rolling those fiery eyes, "her husband. What an inevitable nuisance."

      After contenting himself with a last burning look, he shifted his attention to the rest of the party. Servants brought in extra chairs and soon the old man and DaPonte were seated. Madeira was poured and a final course of cheese, nuts and fruit was presented.

      The Chevalier began to drink and tell a long, risque story, a veritable torrent of Italian heavily larded with German and French. What a story it was - at least as much of it as I could understand.

      Every time he switched languages, I'd get lost. From their expressions I could tell that even the heads of the linguistically accomplished singers were spinning. Mozart, however, followed every word. Soon he was joining in with a vengeance, tossing Latin and English tags into the salad.

      That delighted the Chevalier. He began to pound Mozart on the back and croak cheerfully, like a crow on a well-filled gallows. DaPonte, pleased that his friends were enjoying each other, joined in. A deluge of punning and filthy innuendo in five languages followed, as each tried to top the other.

      Suddenly, Wolfgang seized my arm. In the next moment I found myself being propelled up the stairs, with my husband whispering in my ear that it had long passed the point where it was proper "for a respectable woman" to be present.

      "What you really mean," I snapped, "is that you're going tavern hopping all night with DaPonte and that evil-minded, so-called Chevalier."

      "Probably," Mozart replied with a grin. Then, as he kissed me good night, he added, "Promise me you'll bolt the door. I'll keep a close eye on that old devil, but who is to say that he won't drink me under the table and come back after you?"

      My suspicion that yet another tour of every Bierstube and Weinkeller in Prague had been undertaken was confirmed at daybreak when I awoke alone. Going to breakfast downstairs I found the remnants of last night's party - Mozart, the Chevalier, DaPonte, and our young Don Giovanni, Luigi Bassi, all of them languidly experimenting with hangover remedies.

      There was a mound of sauerkraut beside one of raw scraped beef and a pitcher of thick, black Bohemian beer. Wolfgang was dexterously cracking a raw egg into a stein where it floated like a sickening yellow eye.

      The ancient Chevalier was the brightest of the group, promptly leaping to his feet to greet me. "Good morning, adorable Madamina. I, Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt, salute you on behalf of this entire group of pitiful and insignificant creatures, who, in vain, call themselves men."

      Young Bassi's handsome curly head was in danger of hitting the table. Twenty-two and strong he might be, but clearly he was the most wretched of the group. Heaven only knows what feats of lechery and consumption the rest of those fiends had dared him to during the night.

      After breakfasting on a horrible mixture of the stuff on the table, Wolfi escorted me back to our room. As soon as the door closed behind us, he began to tease me about the Chevalier's undiminished interest.

      "He liked you a lot, Stanzi Marini. He kept telling me how lucky I was, that he always knows a hot little piece when he sees one. Your kind, he said, are most willing when they're already a bit fat around the waist."

      In trying to give him the smack he deserved, I was not only thwarted but embraced. In between nibbles, Mozart explained that the Chevalier Casanova was a real life Don Giovanni, who'd boasted of having had over eighteen hundred women. When DaPonte had mentioned some difficulties they were having with the plot, the Chevalier had promptly suggested several witty solutions.

      "He was most inspirational," said Wolfgang. His kisses grew warmer as he purposefully maneuvered me backwards towards the bed. It wasn't immediately clear whether he was talking about his opera - or what.

~  ~  ~

A Child Pupil Comes to Stay

                He had lots of pupils that year, both adults and children. The children positively worshipped him, though it was hard to understand why. He was usually late for their lessons and occasionally he forgot them all together.

          Sometimes, he simply sat down at the klavier and played, leaving them to stand at his elbow and watch. To me, it seemed these displays of mastery would be defeating, even disheartening. How could they ever aspire to his perfection?

          By far the most talented of his young students was Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Generous to a fault, my husband never charged the boy's Papa a kreutzer, although he was an extra son in our house off and on for almost two years.

          One afternoon I came home from visiting Sophie and found Wolfi sitting at his clavichord with a small boy on his knee who was expertly performing a Scarlatti sonata. Wolfgang's face was glowing. He looked, for all the world, like a child with a new toy.

          When I asked who this accomplished little musiker was and where he had come from, I was told that, during my afternoon absence, we had acquired another child.

          "How long will he be here?" I asked, staring at the top of Johann's curly, fair head.

          "Oh, until Michaelmass. Or, maybe, Christmas."

          When I looked dismayed, I think it finally dawned on him that a wife might have something to say about this kind of thing.

          "Well, he's only seven, aren't you, Johann?" Wolfi said. "He won't take up much room. Why, he's already told Elise he knows all about babies, as well as Signore Scarlatti."

          Johann, who had been studying my expression with some apprehension, hopped off Wolfgang's lap. "I'm very pleased to meet you, Frau Mozart," he said, and the polite greeting was accompanied by the most adorable bow. "My Papa very much hopes that I can stay and have lessons with Kapellmeister Mozart. I promise I won't eat much or be in the way. I've already promised to help the nice nurse with your baby."

          This young gentleman, I thought, possessed a thousand times the finesse of my husband. I sighed, shook my head at Wolfgang, and then knelt to talk directly with this tactful child.

          "That's all right, darling," I said, stroking his round cheek. "You are very welcome to stay."

          Thank heaven, he really was a dear, polite and well-behaved. Elise immediately took him under her wing and soon became very fond of him herself. She said it was easier having two little boys in the house because they entertained each other. Karl found our small guest endlessly fascinating and toddled after him all day.

          From the start, Mozart treated young Johann Nepomuk like a professional. The boy was dragged off to entertainments that lasted all night so he would hear good music and be around musicians. He was also frequently roused out of a dead sleep to perform. No matter how much Elise or I complained, Mozart insisted this was "good training."

          "Herr Mozart," Elise protested, "I really don't think you should get a child up at all hours like that." In her opinion, a seven year old should be sleeping at two o'clock in the morning, not playing for drunks--even if these self-same drunks were also Kapellmeisters.

          Wolfi waved her protest aside. "Oh, he loves it! He's born to music. Why, Papa dragged my sister and me all over Europe before we were ten and neither of us is any the worse for wear."

          Besides music, Johann studied arithmetic and reading. Papa Hummel had left behind a notebook filled with practical arithmetic, all about bookkeeping and converting kreutzer, florin, gulden, ducats and sequins back and forth. Every day Johann was supposed to work a few problems.

          Towards the end, Papa Hummel made them rather knotty. I was surprised to discover, as I helped him with these, that I had quite a knack for this kind of thing.

          The worst scrape the boy got into with us was over Wolfi's beloved billiard table. Johann had been cautioned more than once not to touch either the table or the cues, but one afternoon I heard Wolfgang shouting, "Don't you come into this room again, Johann Nepomuk! Not ever! Do you hear me?"

          Could it be? Wolfi in a temper?

          As I went to see what was wrong, Johann came pelting. When he saw me, he sank to the floor in despair and grabbed my skirts, sobbing as if his little heart would break.

          "I didn't mean to! Oh, please don't send me away, Frau Mozart!" As I gathered him into my arms, he wailed, "Tell the Kapellmeister I'm sorry! Please! Tell him it was an accident!"

          Goodness! What on earth had he done? "Don't worry, sweetheart!" I soothed.

          Elise, always quick to answer the bleats of her lambs, came running from the kitchen. To her questioning look, the only answer I could give was a shake of my head. I passed Johann, now hiccuping with distress, into her arms.

          In the parlor I found Wolfgang bending over his precious billiard, strong fingers soothing the baize. "Sapperlote!" he muttered. "Damn. I always thought Stadler would be the one to pull this trick!" He patted the felt solicitously.

          Sure enough, there was a neat triangular tear. Why, I thought, the poor child had only wanted to play the way his hero did!

          Sighing, I rubbed my husband's back. I knew that Mozart wouldn't rest until he'd fixed his table. I hoped it wouldn't take an entire new cover, but knew, too, that he couldn't stand to be deprived of his billiard for long.

~  ~  ~