Three

face.

  “How are you feeling?” asked Mathew.

  “Very good indeed,” said Mozart. “There is definitely something in those chocolates Constanze makes that highly agrees with me. The last ones had some kind of nut inside them. Very interesting taste.”

  Now, Mathew knew, it was time to explain to Mozart about the antibiotics. The Master seemed very taken aback. “So it wasn’t the chocolates or the nuts inside them,” he said.

  At this point, Mathew emptied the vials and boxes of pills he had in his pockets into a bowl in the kitchen. “If you get sick again, please swallow one of these,” he said.

  “Well, we will see. Austrians like myself are very fatalistic,” Mozart said.

  “What must be must be,” said Herr Schack.

  “Bene is right. If I am to die, it is God’s will,” said Mozart. “But I think your kindness to me is also part of His will. Thanks to you I have managed to finish the Requiem. I want you now to have a copy of it—to take to your father, Carol.”

  “Thank you, Herr Mozart,” she said with all her heart. It was the most wonderful gift she could ever imagine getting, and now she wouldn’t have to steal it. He handed her a large envelope containing the finished manuscript.

  “Wolfgang must get back into bed,” said Constanze. “He is still not completely well. We have to let him rest and sleep.”

  “I must be going,” said Herr Schack. “I think we all need some rest and sleep. Perhaps, you will feel up to rehearsing the Requiem again tomorrow, Wolfgang.”

  “By all means,” said Mozart. “Bring along the others. You will have new music to sing,”

  Now it was time for hugs and goodbyes as Carol and Mathew also got ready to leave. “You have been a very naughty boy, Mathew,” said Constanze, “but I forgive you. You misbehaved for Wolfgang’s sake and for Carol’s, too.” She dissolved into tears as Carol and Mathew embraced her.

  When Mathew reached out to hug the little man Carol’s father had called a giant, he was struck again by how small he seemed. Small and frail. “Don’t forget to take the pills,” he said. “With food,” he added. That’s what the doctor had told him to do.

  “I will consider it,” said the man whose music will live forever.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” said Mathew smiling.

  Mozart tried to suppress a giggle but couldn’t. Then, he took Carol’s face in his hands and kissed her on the forehead. “Never stop playing,” he told her.

  “I promise,” she said. She was trying not to cry, but it was hard.

  “She won’t wash her face for a year,” Mathew told Herr Schack.

  And now they got set to use the talisman to launch their time traveling back to America. They stood together in front of Mozart’s broken window while Carol held tight the envelope containing the completed Requiem---to give to her dad. Mathew grasped the talisman in his right hand and with the forefinger of his left hand carefully traced Mozart’s signature.

  “Are you thinking about what I’m thinking?” she whispered.

  “You mean about how long were we gone?”

  “How are we going to explain it to our parents?”

  “I just don’t know.”

  The two of them turned to wave. Suddenly, Mathew called out: “Do you want the talisman back, Herr Schack? It’s got a note to you from Herr Mozart. Might be important. It was with your page of music.” He handed it to Mozart’s friend even as he felt himself and Carol starting to disappear.

  Herr Schack glanced at it and laughed loudly. He cupped one hand to his mouth and called out: “He wants me to bring along some herring and sour cream. I did.” And, then, they were gone.

  They had been swept up once more in a hurricane of light and sound and wind followed by a plunge into a spiraling black tunnel that tumbled them onto the floor in front of the window in her dad’s library. It was where their trip to find Mozart had begun.

  “There’s the yellow pane of glass. This is Mom and Dad’s window. We’re home, Mathew! Home!”

  “Thank God,” he said. “Still got the manuscript?”

  She waved it on high. “Let’s go find Dad. The finished Requiem!! He’s never going to believe it---after two centuries it’s right here in my hand. Dad! Dad!”

  They looked frantically around the apartment, but neither her dad nor her mom were around. “Wait a minute. What time is it anyway?” She looked at the library’s wall clock. “Two p.m. I guess they’re still at work.” But a very creepy feeling was starting to come over her. “Hey, Mathew, help me remember. Didn’t that thing say two p.m. when we left?”

  Mathew was frowning. “Yeah, I think so.”

  Almost whispering to herself she said: “So how long have we been gone? Like what day is today?”

  “I’m not sure. Let’s ask them in the office,” said Mathew.

  The receptionist was used to Carol asking her silly questions---back to when she was a little girl. “Today’s Tuesday, dear,” she said.

  Carol sat down on one of the go-to-sleep chairs and stared at Mathew. “This is pretty scary,” she said,

  “Our whole trip lasted like no time at all,” said Mathew shaking his head. “Zero seconds. I feel like one of those electrons. The ones that tunnel from one place to another.”

  “They do it instantaneously, Mr. Kabala said.” Carol suddenly laughed out loud. “And I thought we’d have to do all this major explaining. Like where were you? We were so worried. Yakety yak. I bet they never even noticed we were gone.”

  Her dad walked one of his patients out to the waiting room and turned to go back into his office. He caught sight of the two of them.

  “Kids!” he called out. “Did you have a look at my Mozart books?”

  Carol stole a look at Mathew. Taking a deep breath, she said: “We sure did. They were super-helpful.” She was wondering how to tell him. “Dad, the fact is we found out how to time-travel. It takes no time at all. We actually saw him, Dad, and he gave us this to give to you.”

  “Oh, really?” He was smiling that indulgent I-love-my-daughter-but –I-don’t-believe-half-of-what-she-tells-me smile. He had barely listened to what she’d told him.

  She handed him the finished Requiem. He took it and looked at the cover, flipped it open and said without great enthusiasm:

  “Wow, La Clemenza di Tito. His last opera. Looks like an autograph copy.” That was the “in” word, Carol knew, for a music manuscript written out by the composer himself. “Where on earth did you get this?”

  “Clemenza di---” Carol couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  “No, Dad, it’s the Requiem. All finished!”

  He showed her the title on the cover page. It sure wasn’t the Requiem.

  “Oh, no!” Her face fell about a mile and a half.

  • EIGHTEEN •

  At the very same moment, someone else’s face was falling at least as far. “Bene, Bene! Look what I’ve done. I’ve given Carol the wrong manuscript!”

  “You gave her the Requiem, Wolfgang. All completed.”

  “No, I’m a fool. I have the Requiem here in my hand. I gave her a copy of the Clemenza instead.”

  “Gott in Himmel, it is not possible!”

  “I wish that were true,” said the composer. He held his head in his two hands.

  “Well, it is a shame---but it cannot be helped now, Wolfgang.”

  “No! I promised it to her for her father. A promise is a promise. I must go now to their far away time and give it to her.”

  “No, no, you cannot. They are 200 years in the future. You are not well enough to do that.” Herr Schack wagged his finger at Mozart. “Perhaps, they will come back some day. Give it to them then, Master.”

  “When they are old and gray, and you and I are gone? That cannot be,” said Mozart.

  “Besides,” said Herr Schack placing a hand on his arm. “We have a concert tomorrow
. The two of us.”

  “We don’t!” Mozart was aghast.

  “We do. I have booked it.”

  “You never told me.”

  “We both need the money, Wolfgang.” He paused. “Perhaps, I should go on this journey---not you,” he said.

  “No, it is my fault. It must be me. Mathew said the trip is very quick. I am sure I will be back in time for our concert.”

  “200 years there and 200 years back? You cannot do it.”

  “In which case you can play the piano and sing, too.” Mozart burst into giggles.

  “Me? I can barely play a note,” said Herr Schack, “—compared to you.”

  “You better start learning, then,” said Mozart. “Now, how does this talisman they talked about work?”

  “Mathew was showing me,” said Herr Schack. “All you have to do is trace your signature with a finger—your left finger. That is very important, he said.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are left-handed so the signature is a left-handed signature. The talisman demands that only the left hand can be used to trace it.”

  Mozart became a little defensive. “What is so bad about being left-handed? A lot of good musicians are left-handed. Look at Bach’s son. Carl Emanuel Philipp.”

  “There is nothing wrong with being left-handed, Wolfgang,” said Constanze, who had overheard this conversation. “Only in some people’s minds”.

  “I think many composers,” said Herr Schack, “would strive to become left-handed if they knew you were left-handed.”

  “You really think so?” Mozart seemed partly mollified.

  Just then, there was a loud rap on the front door. “Oh, oh, I recognize that rude sound,”