mortified to see Mathew back so soon in Mozart’s bedroom---the scene of his outrageous theft of the doctor’s bag. She was about to scream at him and beat him with her fists when Mozart held up his hand and instead welcomed Mathew with a huge smile. “Constanze, I owe my life to this young man. That doctor would have murdered me if Mathew had not—liberated his black bag.”
Constanze did not pretend to understand any of this. What she did know was Mozart needed peace and quiet. These out-of-control children must be hustled out of the Master’s bedroom immediately. But Mozart had his own ideas about that, too.
“No, my dear, let them stay,” he said. “The music for the last movement of the Requiem is already created. I am now copying it down. Everyone can stay and chat as they wish.”
Carol gave Constanze a puzzled look. “It’s true,” said the eminent man’s wife in a low voice. “No one knows how he does it. I have seen him play cards and joke with friends while he writes the music down. It is already in his head, he says, as though God Himself had put it there.”
• TEN •
It took him less than two hours to finish copying the new pages of the Requiem. Then, he began to feel tired again. “I fear this malady is coming on me once more,” he said. “I must sleep. I am probably doing too much again.”
Carol exchanged a look with Mathew who merely winked. “Have a chocolate,” he said to Mozart. “In England they say it cures everything from rheumatism to broken bones to---”
Constanze looked very suspicious. “Chocolate?” she said. “It’s impossible. I never heard of such things!”
“Oh, yes,” said Carol. “It’s well-known among the lords and ladies.”
“Especially if each chocolate’s got a nut from the famous Antibiotical Tree,” said Mathew.
“I will put no such thing in my chocolates,” said Constanze becoming very indignant. “Antibiotical tree---what in heaven’s name is that?”
Carol understood immediately what Mathew had done and had to turn away so Constanze wouldn’t see her stifling a smile. “It’s a tree the king of England’s crazy about,” said Mathew. “He has a nut from it every morning with his tea.”
But Mozart wouldn’t eat the chocolates. “Maybe later,” he said. “I am not hungry now.” Soon the great man was sleeping, breathing softly and normally.
“I’ll play the piano for him again,” Carol said to Constanze. “To soothe him.”
“Yes, it does seem to help him sleep. I will be in the kitchen if he wakes up or needs me,” said his wife.
As she played the sonata movement again, Carol whispered to Mathew: “Put the chocolates by his bed. We can’t force him to eat them---but maybe he will if he wakes up and sees them there.”
“I guess he’s finished writing this thing,” said Mathew. “There’s no need for us to hang around. We’ve done what we came to do.”
Carol looked torn. “We don’t have to go back right away, Mathew. I was hoping he’d feel up to giving me a few piano lessons. He did say I have talent.” She was smiling. “I also think he likes me.”
Mathew could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Get real, Carol!” he said tensely. “We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Vienna---eating chocolates.”
Clearly Carol was thinking it over. “Not the rest of our lives,” she said. “A week or two maybe. I could learn how to make those chocolates, too.”
Mathew was adamant. “They’re going to catch onto who we are. Next thing we know they’ll throw us in jail---or here it’ll be a dungeon. We’ll never get home. Believe me, Carol, you won’t get piano lessons in a dungeon—or learn how to make chocolates either.”
Mathew watched her staring at Mozart. What was she thinking? Was she imagining herself taking lessons every day from this guy? He knew she was. “He’s not going to turn you into a whiz-bang piano player with a few lessons,” he said. “It takes years.”
She took a long, deep breath. “Yes, I know that,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mathew. I’ve made up my mind. I want to stay.”
“I can’t believe this,” he said. “You want me to go back alone? What the heck am I going to say to your dad or your mom?” The implications of her not going back began to pile up on him. “Who’s going to play the piano for the show on Friday? We need you there,” he said.
“I know, I know, I know. Everybody’s going to be furious at me.” She gave him a desperate look. “Think up something. Tell them the truth maybe. No, you can’t do that.” She was pacing wildly around.
“Here’s the thing. I know I’m never going to get a chance like this again. Never in my whole life.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Piano lessons with Mozart. Think of that! Mozart!” she said. “It’s too insanely wonderful to miss.” She looked at him pleadingly. “Don’t you understand that, Mathew?”
“Frankly, no,” he said. He thought of something else. “How are you going to get back?” If he used their talisman to travel forward in time, he would have to take it with him. That meant she’d have no way to time travel.
Or maybe she wouldn’t want to come back. That was a scary thought. She might decide to stick around in this old-timey place where the doctors were all crazy. He could see the whole thing surging through his mind. She’d help Constanze take care of this clown until he popped off. Then, some day soon after that she’d marry some Vienna dude, picked out by Constanze, a guy with smelly breath, and they’d have a bunch of smelly kids. It seemed like far out awful.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ll figure something out. You should take the talisman. Go back for the show. They’ll find somebody else to play the piano. Mary Schole plays pretty well.” She put a hand on his arm. “Maybe some day you can come back and get me.”
“Yeah, sure.” He realized he was starting to miss her already.
She pulled the talisman from the pocket she’d been carrying it in and held it in front of them. “Here’s what I did. I’ll do it for you.” She ran her finger along Mozart’s fancy signature. “Then, I thought really hard about going to his house. All you’ve got to do is reverse it. Think about going to my house.”
She gave him the talisman and suddenly gasped. “Hold it! Not yet! The Requiem’s finished. You’ve got to take it to my dad. We promised him.”
She rushed over to Mozart’s bed where the finished pages of it lay scattered around him as he slept. Gathering them up into a loose bundle, she ran back to Mathew, but, even as she approached him, he had already started to fade—to begin time travelling. She tried to thrust the pages of music into his hands, but the bundle seemed to go right through him. In another couple of seconds he had evaporated completely. She was too late!
She hadn’t even had a chance to say a proper goodbye to him. It began to come over her that she might never see him again. Would each of them stay stuck in their separate centuries? She was starting to realize how madly rash her decision was to stay on in Vienna. Not just rash---more like terrifying. Perhaps, she might not even see her family again either. She also realized she hadn’t told them what she was doing. She was leaving it up to poor Mathew to tell them.
• ELEVEN •
Mathew could dimly make out Carol running toward him with the finished pages of the Requiem. He knew she wouldn’t make it. Well, he thought, maybe she can bring them with her when she comes back. And, then, he realized he was the one who had the talisman now. He didn’t want to think it---but without the talisman, she might never be able to get back.
He began to have the same eerie experience he had had before---a shorter version of it. Again, he seemed to dissolve into a foam of bubbles and felt himself sliding and sliding down, down into a dark vortex that left him sprawled on the floor in front of a very familiar window.
He was totally confused. Had nothing happened? This was one of Mozart’s windows. He hadn’t even left their house. “Da
mn!” he said aloud. “Damn, damn, damn!” The talisman hadn’t worked this time. He thought to himself: “Now we’re both stuck in this stupid old century.” Except Carol and Mozart were nowhere in sight---and, then, he noticed that the window in front of him had a pale yellow pane of glass in it. As Carol had pointed out, Mozart’s similar window didn’t have a yellow pane so this really was Carol’s house.
He had made it! He had traveled all the way forward through two hundred years back to the good old U.S.A. “Super!” he said aloud.
“I’m back!” But before long he felt a lot less happy about it. Carol hadn’t been able to give him the finished Reckie so he couldn’t pass it on to her dad. A real drag, he thought to himself, because giving him the Reckie might’ve eased the shock of not getting Carol back.
And, then--Omigod!--he heard her dad’s voice calling up from downstairs. He felt totally panicked. “Who’s that up there? Carol? Is that you?”
Well, obviously he couldn’t answer. The guy would want to know where she was. Somehow it would be his fault that she wasn’t there, and he sure didn’t want to have to tell her dad where she was. Wow. He began to realize what a mess he had gotten himself into. .
Everybody—not just her dad---would want to know where she was, and why had they missed at least a day of school, maybe more, and all those rehearsals?