Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell Page B

added on, of course, will begin within a year. Our friends Heinemann and Alfonso will help us.”
    Joseph Weber rose a little, leaning on his desk. “What, what? How?” he stammered. “Does my brother know of this? What do you know of the world? From books, which I am told you buy incessantly with your little musical earnings? Blessed Savior, you’re cut from your family’s cloth! Of course my brother can’t sustain such a large family with their longings for books, French hats, chocolates, and wine! I told him two years ago to leave Mannheim to find more work elsewhere. Would he go? No. Will he do anything practical for you girls? Engage you as ladies’ companions? No. Apprentice you as seamstresses or milliners? Send you out into service with some good family? Never. He has mad, ambitious ideas for you and himself, none of which will ever come true, and now you have inherited them.”
    The clerk hid his scrawny face by busying himself with a pile of papers, while Uncle Joseph rose a little more, fixing his cold eyes upon them. “Music, music, music,” he cried. “And now, on my hope of salvation, more music! You all do nothing but starve on it, and still you persist. Loans last year, and the one before, and nothing repaid. Here I am selling cloth and have made a fine living, while he grows poorer and pretends it doesn’t matter. Will he join me in my work? No. Will he cease his ridiculous and expensive entertaining? No. He could have at least remained single; indeed, he should have joined the priesthood before he married that mother of yours.”
    Josefa had drawn herself up now so much she seemed twice her height. “You can say what you may against our mother, though it’s unjust, unjust, but you won’t speak of our darling papa,” she shouted. “Can’t you see I’m sincere? You don’t; you don’t believe me.”
    “Sincerity does not buy firewood; I certainly do not believe you.”
    “It’s futile to come to you; you have no heart. Papa’s a saint. We’ll get on without you. I’ll make my way in the world, I swear, and won’t turn my back on my family. Aloysia will become a great singer and make an advantageous marriage, as will my younger sisters. She will make one soon; see how beautiful she is!”
    Uncle Joseph smiled crookedly and sadly. “A great singer?” he murmured. “An advantageous marriage? You’ll starve on music as your father’s done, and where is the splendid suitor to climb all those flights of stairs to marry one of you? Men of good fortune want modest women; modest women don’t sing in public. Heinrich, pack the pork pies for them.”
    “Stuff the pies up your arse!”
    “Fine words, young woman! Get out! Good day to you.”
    Josefa rushed out of the house and down the street, with Aloysia running behind her. After some streets, she managed to pull her older sister to a stop. “I’m cold, so cold,” Aloysia panted. “My legs aren’t as long as yours; I can’t run so fast. Let’s have a coffee. It’s not real coffee, only roasted barley with syrup, but they also give you a crescent roll. Did you have breakfast? I didn’t. I have two kreuzers. It’s all I have left from the last time we sang.”
    Shivering, they drank their bowls of coffee in the wood shack while the old vendor spoke to some workmen who had also come in. Aloysia ate her roll slowly, pulling off fragments bit by bit. “We should have taken Uncle Joseph’s pork pies,” she said sadly.
    “Let him choke on them!”
    “Josefa, you scared him. You scared me.”
    “I hate him. It would have been a wonderful music shop. I was going to call it Weber and Daughters—Music, Instruments, and Sundries. I will call it that. I’ll find someone else to sponsor it. ”
    “Josy, we can’t go back there again to ask. You’re too horrible to have told our uncle to stuff the pork pies up his ...” She glanced at the workmen and ate the last crumb of her roll. “Que tu es horrible de dire à notre oncle de