Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell Page B

through boxes and under the bed, she could not find the embroidered hose. Dropping to her knees, she searched the bottom of the wardrobe, hurling things out. “Someone borrowed them, likely,” she muttered. “Will I ever have anything not borrowed, remade, or lent?”
    Blessed saints, could it be true? There, stuffed under the shoes, wrapped in canvas, was the fan cousin Alfonso’s wife had given her, which Josefa had begged to borrow again last night, because she said she could not sing without a fan. Obviously, after they had finished singing, Josefa had hidden it somewhere because it was broken. From under it, Aloysia pulled out the hose with the flowers, splattered with street muck.
    She leapt up in her shift and petticoat and rushed into the hall where she collided with Josefa, who was carrying table draping. “You farmer’s daughter—you ruined it, you mauled it, look!” She opened the fan with its silk portrait of Venice, gesturing at the few cracked slats. “You ruin everything, everything! There’s a split in the Grand Canal. I don’t know who brought you into this family, Josefa Weber, what ugly gypsy brought you in his cart and sold you for two kreuzers, but you’re here to ruin my life, and I wish to the Blessed Virgin we could sell you back again.”
    “I never broke the fan; you stuffed it away yourself,” cried Josefa, throwing down the linen. “You hid it under the shoes so you wouldn’t have to share it anymore, and that broke it. What’s a fan supposed to do under twenty shoes?”
    Aloysia slapped her, and Josefa took her by the hair and pulled her a few feet down the hall. The harder Aloysia tried to shake her off, the more her elder sister continued to drag her toward the parlor by the curls. Aloysia shrieked, her piercing, light voice ringing from room to room, and was about to dig her teeth into her sister’s arm when their father, half shaven, his bare chest dusted with gray hair, rushed toward them shouting, “Josy, let go!”
    Thrown off suddenly, Aloysia stumbled against a parlor chair and a pile of music. “You did take it; you did!” she sobbed. “And now you made me scream, and I’ve hurt my voice, you ugly bitch. You can’t wait for me to hurt my voice, can you?” Her hands flew to her ragged hair and aching head, and tears spilled from her blue eyes. Her voice was shaking. “And you’ve ruined the curl. I won’t come out of our room tonight; that’s it. I have no voice; it’s gone, it’s gone.”
    Sophie, who had heard the shouting from the kitchen, bolted out like a weed driven by wind; seeing her father already held the girls apart, she retrieved the fan from under the table. “Oh, Aly,” she murmured, stammering a little as she did when there was a quarrel, “look, it’s only two slats that need replacing. Why must you go into such passions for things that can be mended, things that are inconsequential?” She fished for her wrinkled handkerchief and wiped Aloysia’s face.
    Aloysia sobbed, “There’s a tiny tear in the silk; it goes all the way from the canal to the base of San Marco.”
    “I’ll take it to the second floor to Hoffman; he repairs fans and umbrellas. He’ll do us a favor since I found his lost dog. Don’t cry. Hush, hush, darling,” pleaded Sophie, just as Constanze also rushed from the kitchen holding her father’s ironed shirt like a banner, its arms floating behind.
    “Girls!” she commanded. “Mama says you must all be quiet or she’ll come with her wooden spoon and then the cakes will never be finished! Look at the mantel clock; it’s nearly seven, and people will be arriving in ten minutes. Not one of us is dressed. Papa, here’s your shirt. You have soap on your nose. What will people think of us? It will be all over Mannheim.”
    But Aloysia stood stubbornly by the chair. “The fan isn’t inconsequential ,” she sobbed, the balled handkerchief in her hand. “It’s inconsequential to all of you because you don’t