Mozart's Last Aria by Matt Rees Page B

spectators as though I were listening with my head submerged in a washbowl.
    I couldn’t do it. Wolfgang would be ashamed of me.
    “Madame de Mozart?”
    I looked up. Baron van Swieten extended his hand. A long spray of white lace fell from his cuff, but the hand was thick and black hair ran along the backs of his fingers.
    A delicate tug from that strong hand, and I arose. He led me to the piano, the tapping of his cane on the floor the only sound in the room.
    I sat before the piano and watched him step to his seat in the front row.
    As the soloist, I was to double as the conductor. But I found I couldn’t lift my hands. A few of the musicians cleared their throats. Someone in the audience snickered.
    The baron snapped his fingers to get the attention of the violas and cellos. Like me, the musicians saw the command in his face. He twisted his wrist to count the beats and conducted the orchestra into the march at the opening of the Allegro.
    I stared at the hands in my lap. The keyboard seemed so far away from them. When I looked up at the baron, I felt the sting of tears in my eyes and a shaking in my jaw. He smiled and nodded encouragement, then he gestured for the woodwinds to answer the theme.
    We approached the moment for me to play. I raised my hands and brought them through the brief scales with which the piano enters the concerto. By the time I neared the conclusion of the opening movement, I sensed a new strength in my fingers and through my shoulders. I improvised an intricate, exhilarating cadenza. My body felt weightless, drifting above the floor and the stool, connected to nothing but the keyboard.
    I took in a long breath and lifted my head toward the baron. He led the orchestra into the serene second movement.
    The music soothed me. Every note spoke to me like the voice of my brother when we had been children rattling from town to town in the coach my father bought for our longest tours. Wolfgang’s smile beamed from the keyboard and his laughter reached out of the body of the piano.
    In the final movement, I grew exhilarated by the speed of the arpeggios and scales. The joyous theme carried me to a sense of such complete triumph and life that I barely heard the applause.
    Baron van Swieten gestured for me to stand.
    I bounced on my toes with excitement. Constanze wept against her sister’s shoulder.
    In a strong baritone, the baron called, “Brava.” He rose, and the crowd followed him.
    I laughed when I caught his eye. My delight was pure and childish. But it was because of the music, not the applause.
    He stepped forward and raised the silver head of his cane to quiet the crowd.
    “Our dear Maestro Mozart has departed from us,” he said. “He left the astonishing power of his music, whose secrets we amateurs might only guess at. But he understood, as until this moment we did not, that someone remained who might reveal those mysteries to us.” He reached for my hand. “Thank you, Madame de Mozart, for restoring to us the great spirit of your lost brother.”
    I lifted my lower teeth over my upper lip and grinned. It wasn’t the most sophisticated of gestures, but after all no one knew as well as I how lost my brother’s spirit had appeared to be—nor how strongly it had returned to me.
    As the audience applauded again, I vowed that I’d repay Wolfgang for this moment, no matter the cost to my soul or my body. I had rejoined him in his music. Once more we were together.

Chapter 9
    B aron van Swieten concentrated on his cane, as though its tip clicked out a message in an obscure code on the floorboards. The muscles of his face were tight. I saw he struggled to overcome a strong emotion, but his voice revealed it. “It was as though Wolfgang performed for us here this evening.”
    “You flatter me, sir.”
    He rubbed his finger beneath his nose. “Oh, I’m really not given to flattery.”
    “It’s something I’ve never learned, either. So you’ll believe me when I say that Wolfgang wrote