"It is too soon."
He sinks back on the pillow, defeated. I look down on him, this derelict that was once a man. Not just any man, but the great man, he, Wolfgang Mozart, the prodigy, the genius, the rampant rakehell and hiccuping fool who has broken all the rules, defied all the constraints of our hide-bound musical universe, and still excelled where I have failed. He had been at the height of life when I met him; now he was ailing and broken, destitute, delirious. My finest work to date, the finest most complete work I would ever create.
But still that light shines out of him, out of his feverish eyes and in his fine, limp white hands, the light of the God who had forsaken me in my devotion and chosen this braying child as his instrument. I can damage the vessel, but the contents are denied me, whole and untouchable, for he is Amadeus, beloved of God.
And he is giving up! Before it is complete, before my plan is executed, he is surrendering, his ruin incomplete, his requiem unwritten! I cannot allow it.
"Could I help you?"
The words startle him. He sits up, his face - so young, so tauntingly young - alight with naive hope.
"Would you? Yes...yes I think you could."
I bring the manuscript to him, while he summons his final reserves of energy and props himself up against the bed head. Looking at him, face composed in concentration, trying to draw the clarity of his composition from his muddled mind, I feel what is almost pity. Like this, close to death and focused entirely on the heavenly music inside him, he transcends what he is from day to day, and truly becomes the instrument of God. And I am now his instrument, scribbling down as fast as I am able the full scores that come from his lips straight from his head, how does he do it? I cannot follow his genius, I am apart from it, I feel lost in a sea of meaningless notation, and demand explanation in my frustration.
As he illustrates the point, the point that is so transparently obvious to him, something...connects. It is as if my ears have been covered and suddenly they are uncovered, as if I have been deaf and can suddenly, miraculously hear. The requiem *is* written, it exists, I can hear it all about me, rising and glorious and entire, perfect. Is this how it is for him all the time? Is this why he has written with such skill since infancy? Can he at all times hear the sound of music, music uncomposed and unwritten but existent, waiting, waiting for the blessing of God and the hands of the maestro?
And then I cannot care what he has heard, anymore than I can care what he has seemed to me and what I have done to him. For a time we have ceased to exist, Mozart and Salieri and even God Himself, all that exists is the music we - yes, we, both of us - are experiencing, creating together. I see the other side of him, the inside of him, a soul of such creativity and brilliance, that loves this music as much as I. We are entirely at one, this brash boy and my bitter self, transubstantiated by the realisation of this glorious sound.
"You want to rest for a bit?"
His voice jars me, but for the first time not because it is his voice - the voice of that loathed little man, but because it is not the music. I shake my head, impatient to go on.
"No. No!" I exclaim. "I'm not tired at all!"
He seems unconvinced.
"We'll stop... for a moment... then we'll finish the Lacrimosa."
"I can keep going, I assure you!" I must keep going, we must keep going, I want the world to always consist of this, he and I and the music, the glorious music that has always been beyond my comprehension in my grasp at last. How could I ever be too tired for this?
"Will you stay with me while I sleep a little?"
The appeal recalls me to myself, and I see as if for the first time that he is faded and pale, utterly exhausted by the urgency of our composing. Of course he is, in his condition. I look at him, so frail and degenerated, and feel a protective surge of feeling I cannot begin to account for. Perhaps because I am at last seeing him, himself, a man of talent and dedication, not the laughing gabbling instrument of God's spite to me. Perhaps because I know it is I who has implemented every stage of his fall from grace, and my warped conscience is indulging in a swansong. Or perhaps it is because he needs me now. I, Salieri. I am indispensable to him, as I have never been to anyone before, even at the court before he came. Mozart is teaching me his world, and here in his world he is a greater man than the sum of his parts. I would not, could not, leave his side.
"I'm not leaving you."
My foolish words, that sound clumsy and sentimental in my own ears, elicit a faint but heartfelt smile, and then a ghostly laugh.
"I'm so ashamed."
His words startle me, and I frown quizzically at him. For him to admit of doubt, of regret...it is alien to his character as I have known him. But then, I have never known him as he is until tonight. And now...oh, now how I wish to know.
"Of what?" I ask gently.
"I was foolish. I... I thought you did not care for my work... or me."
I stare at him, dumbfounded. How could he ever have doubted my devotion to his work? His music, his heavenly music! Could he ever have doubted that? For had I not always been honest on that score at least - had I not always told him his music was the greatest I had ever heard or hoped to hear? Oh, in my jealousy I might have tried to see him undervalued, underexposed - but when my opinion was asked, how could I lie and say I liked it not, when it would be to lie and cheat my very soul? And for him? Not cared for him? Ah yes, before, when I thought him shallow and uncouth, loathsome even...but such a world seems alien to me now. I was divided from my hate and bitterness by the sea of music that had surrounded me this night, and I wandered now on a paradisal isle of his genius - how could I not care for him? How could I ever not have cared?
"Forgive me."
And I feel my heart wrench then, twisting around the old bitterness for a moment then freed. He meant a simple thing no doubt, a courtesy, no more. But in his appeal I read a wealth of things he never intended - "forgive me for being as I am; forgive me for my unworthy actions, for my shaming of my talent. Forgive me; for I know not what I do. Forgive me, for this is who I truly am, beneath all the exterior shows, THIS that I truly am, forgive."
I feel my heart go out to him, the troubled, damaged, flawed genius of him, who could not be other than he is - weak and undisciplined and vulgar, but touched and truly moved by God's great gift. And for all the hurts he has done me, for every crime real or imagined, I absolve him here and now, with all my heart.
"Forgive me."
I absolve you. I say it to him without words, without his hearing, but a burden seems to fall from his troubled young brow and sleep - merciful, life-giving sleep that my torments have long denied him - comes over him.
I stoop over him, and lightly touch my trembling, ink-stained fingers to his damp curly hair. Then I withdraw from him, and going to the window I see the dawn arise in gold and rose like a vapour through the silver streets of Vienna. The city awakens at the touch of the sun, but its people will sleep a while yet. Yes, let them sleep. soon enough there will be a music in the world that will awaken them all, and all will be united in this grand rebirth. Even I, Salieri, may be reborn, when such music may be played, when more can be composed and set to parchment by Mozart - jester, genius, imbecile, incarnate divinity. Even I, Salieri, may be saved.
And for the first time in years, I fall to my knees and make the sign of the cross.
"Grazie, Signore."
And then I fall into a dreamless sleep.
* * *
Well, you know what happened of course. I woke to find that harpy in the room, shrieking and upbraiding and disrupting and destroying. I woke to find him dying, saw him dead. And felt that God again abandoned me.
My salvation was locked away in a cabinet by a dog-in-the-manger little chit. My saviour carried off in a cheap coffin and thrown into a paupers' grave. My own machinations were fulfilled, and I could only weep for what I had done, knowing forever as I had in that awful moment when he died before my eyes, that I had been the instrument of God all the time - an instrument of vengeance, of malice, of self-destructive wrath. He - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - he had been caught up in my own downfall, he was the blade with which I had unwittingly cut my own throat. And all the world was to suffer for my sins. For who know would hear the concertos he never had the chance to write? The music that had filled the air around him, that only he had been able to hear and transcribe - only he, and for one glorious, tauntingly brief night, I, Salieri.
Music tormented me. His image in the Musikverein haunted me. For the longest time, I was lost to all comfort. I twice attempted to end my own miserable existence. Whenever I heard his name, my guilt and shame overcame me, and I wept. And his name seemed now to be everywhere, "Mozart, Mozart." It sang through the streets, it rang out in the sky, as his memory was lauded and his gift lamented by our staid, hypocritical little musical world. I could not escape his accusing spirit, my very own Don Giovanni's ghost who rose from the grave night after night to terrorise my sleep. I thought I could no longer survive this dreadful tragedy.
But as time went on, I learnt to bear my pain. I learned again to listen to his works with the adoration I had always felt, and with the new admiration born of a single night's joyous communion.
His name still pains me. 'Mozart' is theirs, the personality, the revolutionary, the defier of convention whose audacity was all the more marvelled at after his death. 'Wolfgang' is hers - that wretched girl who took our time away, who stole our Requiem, who never understood him in all those years so well as I had in a single night.
And so he has become simply Amadeus to me. For that is what he was to me that night, the instrument of God's divine Voice, the creature of the Almighty, His servant on earth, martyred for my salvation.
Amadeus, beloved of God.
Amadeus - beloved of mine.
He sinks back on the pillow, defeated. I look down on him, this derelict that was once a man. Not just any man, but the great man, he, Wolfgang Mozart, the prodigy, the genius, the rampant rakehell and hiccuping fool who has broken all the rules, defied all the constraints of our hide-bound musical universe, and still excelled where I have failed. He had been at the height of life when I met him; now he was ailing and broken, destitute, delirious. My finest work to date, the finest most complete work I would ever create.
But still that light shines out of him, out of his feverish eyes and in his fine, limp white hands, the light of the God who had forsaken me in my devotion and chosen this braying child as his instrument. I can damage the vessel, but the contents are denied me, whole and untouchable, for he is Amadeus, beloved of God.
And he is giving up! Before it is complete, before my plan is executed, he is surrendering, his ruin incomplete, his requiem unwritten! I cannot allow it.
"Could I help you?"
The words startle him. He sits up, his face - so young, so tauntingly young - alight with naive hope.
"Would you? Yes...yes I think you could."
I bring the manuscript to him, while he summons his final reserves of energy and props himself up against the bed head. Looking at him, face composed in concentration, trying to draw the clarity of his composition from his muddled mind, I feel what is almost pity. Like this, close to death and focused entirely on the heavenly music inside him, he transcends what he is from day to day, and truly becomes the instrument of God. And I am now his instrument, scribbling down as fast as I am able the full scores that come from his lips straight from his head, how does he do it? I cannot follow his genius, I am apart from it, I feel lost in a sea of meaningless notation, and demand explanation in my frustration.
As he illustrates the point, the point that is so transparently obvious to him, something...connects. It is as if my ears have been covered and suddenly they are uncovered, as if I have been deaf and can suddenly, miraculously hear. The requiem *is* written, it exists, I can hear it all about me, rising and glorious and entire, perfect. Is this how it is for him all the time? Is this why he has written with such skill since infancy? Can he at all times hear the sound of music, music uncomposed and unwritten but existent, waiting, waiting for the blessing of God and the hands of the maestro?
And then I cannot care what he has heard, anymore than I can care what he has seemed to me and what I have done to him. For a time we have ceased to exist, Mozart and Salieri and even God Himself, all that exists is the music we - yes, we, both of us - are experiencing, creating together. I see the other side of him, the inside of him, a soul of such creativity and brilliance, that loves this music as much as I. We are entirely at one, this brash boy and my bitter self, transubstantiated by the realisation of this glorious sound.
"You want to rest for a bit?"
His voice jars me, but for the first time not because it is his voice - the voice of that loathed little man, but because it is not the music. I shake my head, impatient to go on.
"No. No!" I exclaim. "I'm not tired at all!"
He seems unconvinced.
"We'll stop... for a moment... then we'll finish the Lacrimosa."
"I can keep going, I assure you!" I must keep going, we must keep going, I want the world to always consist of this, he and I and the music, the glorious music that has always been beyond my comprehension in my grasp at last. How could I ever be too tired for this?
"Will you stay with me while I sleep a little?"
The appeal recalls me to myself, and I see as if for the first time that he is faded and pale, utterly exhausted by the urgency of our composing. Of course he is, in his condition. I look at him, so frail and degenerated, and feel a protective surge of feeling I cannot begin to account for. Perhaps because I am at last seeing him, himself, a man of talent and dedication, not the laughing gabbling instrument of God's spite to me. Perhaps because I know it is I who has implemented every stage of his fall from grace, and my warped conscience is indulging in a swansong. Or perhaps it is because he needs me now. I, Salieri. I am indispensable to him, as I have never been to anyone before, even at the court before he came. Mozart is teaching me his world, and here in his world he is a greater man than the sum of his parts. I would not, could not, leave his side.
"I'm not leaving you."
My foolish words, that sound clumsy and sentimental in my own ears, elicit a faint but heartfelt smile, and then a ghostly laugh.
"I'm so ashamed."
His words startle me, and I frown quizzically at him. For him to admit of doubt, of regret...it is alien to his character as I have known him. But then, I have never known him as he is until tonight. And now...oh, now how I wish to know.
"Of what?" I ask gently.
"I was foolish. I... I thought you did not care for my work... or me."
I stare at him, dumbfounded. How could he ever have doubted my devotion to his work? His music, his heavenly music! Could he ever have doubted that? For had I not always been honest on that score at least - had I not always told him his music was the greatest I had ever heard or hoped to hear? Oh, in my jealousy I might have tried to see him undervalued, underexposed - but when my opinion was asked, how could I lie and say I liked it not, when it would be to lie and cheat my very soul? And for him? Not cared for him? Ah yes, before, when I thought him shallow and uncouth, loathsome even...but such a world seems alien to me now. I was divided from my hate and bitterness by the sea of music that had surrounded me this night, and I wandered now on a paradisal isle of his genius - how could I not care for him? How could I ever not have cared?
"Forgive me."
And I feel my heart wrench then, twisting around the old bitterness for a moment then freed. He meant a simple thing no doubt, a courtesy, no more. But in his appeal I read a wealth of things he never intended - "forgive me for being as I am; forgive me for my unworthy actions, for my shaming of my talent. Forgive me; for I know not what I do. Forgive me, for this is who I truly am, beneath all the exterior shows, THIS that I truly am, forgive."
I feel my heart go out to him, the troubled, damaged, flawed genius of him, who could not be other than he is - weak and undisciplined and vulgar, but touched and truly moved by God's great gift. And for all the hurts he has done me, for every crime real or imagined, I absolve him here and now, with all my heart.
"Forgive me."
I absolve you. I say it to him without words, without his hearing, but a burden seems to fall from his troubled young brow and sleep - merciful, life-giving sleep that my torments have long denied him - comes over him.
I stoop over him, and lightly touch my trembling, ink-stained fingers to his damp curly hair. Then I withdraw from him, and going to the window I see the dawn arise in gold and rose like a vapour through the silver streets of Vienna. The city awakens at the touch of the sun, but its people will sleep a while yet. Yes, let them sleep. soon enough there will be a music in the world that will awaken them all, and all will be united in this grand rebirth. Even I, Salieri, may be reborn, when such music may be played, when more can be composed and set to parchment by Mozart - jester, genius, imbecile, incarnate divinity. Even I, Salieri, may be saved.
And for the first time in years, I fall to my knees and make the sign of the cross.
"Grazie, Signore."
And then I fall into a dreamless sleep.
* * *
Well, you know what happened of course. I woke to find that harpy in the room, shrieking and upbraiding and disrupting and destroying. I woke to find him dying, saw him dead. And felt that God again abandoned me.
My salvation was locked away in a cabinet by a dog-in-the-manger little chit. My saviour carried off in a cheap coffin and thrown into a paupers' grave. My own machinations were fulfilled, and I could only weep for what I had done, knowing forever as I had in that awful moment when he died before my eyes, that I had been the instrument of God all the time - an instrument of vengeance, of malice, of self-destructive wrath. He - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - he had been caught up in my own downfall, he was the blade with which I had unwittingly cut my own throat. And all the world was to suffer for my sins. For who know would hear the concertos he never had the chance to write? The music that had filled the air around him, that only he had been able to hear and transcribe - only he, and for one glorious, tauntingly brief night, I, Salieri.
Music tormented me. His image in the Musikverein haunted me. For the longest time, I was lost to all comfort. I twice attempted to end my own miserable existence. Whenever I heard his name, my guilt and shame overcame me, and I wept. And his name seemed now to be everywhere, "Mozart, Mozart." It sang through the streets, it rang out in the sky, as his memory was lauded and his gift lamented by our staid, hypocritical little musical world. I could not escape his accusing spirit, my very own Don Giovanni's ghost who rose from the grave night after night to terrorise my sleep. I thought I could no longer survive this dreadful tragedy.
But as time went on, I learnt to bear my pain. I learned again to listen to his works with the adoration I had always felt, and with the new admiration born of a single night's joyous communion.
His name still pains me. 'Mozart' is theirs, the personality, the revolutionary, the defier of convention whose audacity was all the more marvelled at after his death. 'Wolfgang' is hers - that wretched girl who took our time away, who stole our Requiem, who never understood him in all those years so well as I had in a single night.
And so he has become simply Amadeus to me. For that is what he was to me that night, the instrument of God's divine Voice, the creature of the Almighty, His servant on earth, martyred for my salvation.
Amadeus, beloved of God.
Amadeus - beloved of mine.