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employment he has earned his bread as church musician these many years. He hints I must return there and play organ for his Arch Grossness’s chapel for a pitiful stipend and eat at table with the cooks if I can’t do well here. What a fate; hang me first for a bastard thief.”
    Leutgeb offered a bowl of onions. “We won’t have to hang you. I’ve found some work here; you will as well.”
    Mozart shook his head. “Some work, but not enough. I’ve this flute commission, and maybe a mass for the court chapel. Unfortunately, I’ve grown up, and people still expect the darling prodigy. They don’t know what to do with a man below middle height whose nose is too big. I’m to play at the Elector’s palace in a week. God willing, he won’t present me with another gold watch, as Princes are inclined to do. I speak lightly, but I tell you, old friend, there’s a sense of urgency in me.”
    Mozart began piling up the bones, absorbed, for a moment, as if it were a complicated game of chess he was playing for some great wager. Delicately balancing the top one, he drew in his breath as they all fell to a heap beside the onions, then turned away from them to face his old friend with a wry smile. “I’m much afraid if I don’t make enough money, my father will insist I return to Salzburg where I was born and beg the Archbishop to employ me as His Holiness employs him, when the truth is His Holiness loathes the sight of me and knows I despise that mangy, provincial town. I may go to Paris; I may remain here. In any case, I must succeed for my family. My parents and sister have always given their lives for me. Leutgeb, old friend, what a thing to have to repay.”
    Leutgeb whistled for the boy to bring beer. Leaning on the table, he patted the young composer’s hand. “Come!” he said happily. “We’re young, why worry? Look, if music fails us, we can both retreat to my grandfather’s cheese shop in Vienna, and live on great mounds of the stuff, then invite the cousin and both share her. She seems to have enough to go round. Vienna is the most marvelous place in the world; this town is dung compared to it.” He thrust his arm around Mozart’s shoulders, and shook him lightly. “Does your family really expect you to live like a monk for the best years of your life? At least enjoy the society of women if you must keep your breeches buttoned for nine more years. I know some sweet girls here. I believe you said you’ve been to the Webers for one of their musical Thursdays. Two are little girls, but I tell you, Aloysia, the second eldest, is the loveliest apple cake with cream you ever saw; you could eat her in two bites and lick your fingers. But of course they’re good girls, and a decent man wouldn’t—” Leutgeb stood up suddenly. “By God, look!” he said, peering through the smoky room. “There’s a couple of pretty tarts coming this way. Don’t go home with them; they’ll make you sick (by God! I knew a fellow who lost his nose to syphilis!). Still, let’s buy them beer.”
    And the girls rushed shrieking at them, feathers in their tangled hair, moist sweat beneath clustered powder on the skin visible above their low-cut dresses, one showing the edge of a hard, brown nipple. Beneath the smoke the two musicians and the girls in their faded dresses caught fingers. It was a dark, hot, secret world here, Mozart thought. One could be another man.
    Twenty or thirty feet up in the street the constables walked, and some men and women made their way home from a lecture about freedom of thought and free love.

T hat very moment in her narrow bedroom in the garret rooms in Mannheim, with the portrait of Christ on the dresser as well as a miniature of her husband and daughter, Mozart’s mother sat in her dressing gown and evening cap, blowing her inflamed nose now and then, her feet resting on a stool, rereading for the third time the letter that had come that day from her husband.
    My dear Wife,
     
    I have on