Mozart's Last Aria Read Online Free

now, a mother who had experienced the loss of one of her own infants and had continued with her life for the sake of the children who remained. I was no longer so feeble before extreme emotions. When I faced Death, I was able to deliberate on which cheek I would strike him. That was how I resolved to go to Vienna.
    Seating myself in the drawing room before my piano, a wedding gift from my father, I warmed my fingers under my arms. I looked toward the wall and its simple papering, thin green vertical stripes on white. Beyond it, my husband shivered in the cold and scowled at the documents on his desk. You shall hear this of him , I thought. I played the Sonata in A Minor Wolfgang wrote after our dear mother’s death in Paris.
    Its opening theme, dark and disturbing, sounded true even on my half-ruined keyboard. The D-sharp in the right hand was discordant over the relentless basso ostinato of the left hand, built around the A minor chord. I hammered at the frenetic Allegro maestoso as if I wished my brother’s soul to hear it, wherever he was.
    “I’m coming, Wolfgang,” I whispered.

Chapter 2
    V IENNA
    T he goddess Providence watched me leave my inn after breakfast and cross the empty Flour Market in the cold wind. In her bronze hands the two-faced head of Janus frowned back upon the past as a bearded old man, while youthful and open he peered the other way into his future. Wishing I might know what lay ahead of me, I shivered. Even the mythic embodiment of foresight could find herself abandoned in a frozen fountain at the center of a blustery square. I prayed that I shouldn’t be so isolated.
    Beyond the statue was the gray, shuttered Flour Pit Hall, where Wolfgang often gave concerts, and the terra-cotta façade of the Capuchin Church, crypt of the Habsburgs. I kicked at the muck and snowy slush with my high boots, and headed in the direction of the younger Janus’s gaze.
    The innkeeper had directed me toward a narrow street of five-story houses, their ground floors in heavy, broad granite and their gables stuccoed orange or yellow or white. The buildings were bright, despite the dull, flat light filtering through the clouds. When I came to the foot of a church spire on my left, I turned into Rauhenstein Lane and looked for my brother’s home.
    A gentleman in a broad-brimmed English hat was kind enough to guide me into a modest courtyard. Horse feed and wet hay ripened on the cold air.
    “You’ll find the apartment of the late composer at the first landing, madame,” he said. “You won’t be the only one to pay your respects to his widow today, though you may be the earliest. Our little street has been crowded with distraught music lovers this entire week.”
    “I’m sure it has.” I made for the entry to the staircase.
    “I knew him only by sight,” the gentleman called after me. “One would never have thought— Such a small, unassuming man, and yet his work— Masterpieces, genius. But to look at him—well, one hardly would look at him, really. Did you know him, madame?”
    “As if he were my brother,” I said.
    The gentleman’s mournful smile faded into confusion. He raised his hand like someone trying to place the face of a remote acquaintance.
    The wind rushed into the courtyard. I stepped past the open door of the building’s toilet, and onto the dark staircase.
    One flight up, I pulled back the hood of my cloak and spread it over my shoulders. I heard a high voice within the apartment calling someone’s name and I knew it was my sister-in-law. I felt a twinge of anger toward the woman who had stolen my brother away from my family. I kicked my knuckle against the door and was answered by the high-pitched bark of a lapdog.
    A short, thick girl with red cheeks and black hair raked under a white Bohemian bonnet opened the door and curtsied.
    “ Grüss Gott . May you greet God,” she said.
    “ Grüss Gott. Please tell Frau Mozart her sister is here,” I said.
    The girl led me through the