“You ask me to do the impossible — well, that’s all right. I do impossible things on a regular basis — talk sense to my mother-in-law, for instance.”

That insufferable snigger of laughter cannot be mistaken — there at the keyboard, Mozart grins over his shoulder at the assembled guests, wig askew. He’s like a child’s imitation of how adults talk — mothers-in-law, rent payments, laundry bills, when no appreciation of any of those things has ever entered his puerile mind. It’s Constanze who must mind those things for him, and no doubt she’s busy with them now, sorting out the great man’s accounts and finding new ways to stretch a pfennig.

“What, is he made of stone?” One of the wags in the party calls out.

“He’s worse! He’s alone with a beautiful girl, she’s practically throwing herself at him, and he won’t touch her!”

Various suggestions are bandied about the room like tennis balls, from impotence to Italian sodomy, and yet none of them can sting fractionally as much as the knowledge that dear, vain Caterina told him — that the two of them made a mockery together of all Antonio’s attempts to abstain from the pleasures of the flesh, to remain so high-minded that the filth and smut of the world couldn’t reach him, to be devoted only to the glory of God. But God has abandoned him here in Vienna and Salieri intends to strike back. No one here knows him, and in a house full of shining revelers he stalks abroad like grim Death.

The host, the young Prince, is already well past drunk. “Get on with it then, show us how you’d seduce him. There’s no man so cold he won’t respond to the right touch.”

The crowd in attendance are all fashionably tarted-up in a terrible clash of French and English styles, waited on by gilded fauns and silken milkmaids — the atmosphere of sexual license is inescapable, like something stuck in your teeth, and Salieri is seized with tight disgust even as he navigates the painted drawing-room for a better view of the proceedings. The hosts have set up harpsichord and fortepiano side by side for some kind of demonstration, but that conceit must have been quickly discarded; the surfaces of both instruments are cluttered with wine glasses and the benches have been pushed together into a single continuous surface.

Mozart gestures for the attention of the crowd, every bit a showman. He might as well ask to be blindfolded, but his eyes are only on the Princess von H—, who leans on the far end of the fortepiano’s case clad in an approximation of Parisian fashion that leaves little to be guessed at.

“Imagine I’m as pretty as our hostess here, very modest, very clean, not in the least bit profane, and all of twenty. I’ve got a pious old father and he wants me to polish up my talents before I’m shuttled off to be married. Salieri is very, very serious, so papa has nothing to worry about.”

A murmur of understanding, as he strokes the keyboard like a magician laying out his silk tablecloth to present a trick. Only Salieri sees the nervous smile, the faint apprehension of some kind of filial blasphemy before Mozart proceeds.

“I’d come to him like this, very serious—“ Strong solemn chords, grave as a funeral march, a strange transposition of a familiar tune. “And then I’d tease him with a little something else. Start adding in undertones and shades, like the memory of something else.” (The man in Salieri’s place leans in obligingly, to act it out. The tune is Salieri’s own.) “I’ll play so softly he’ll have to lean in to make out the notes,” Mozart says. “I’ll move in closer, and ask him to show me what’s next.”

Imagine being side by side with the smutty little creature, smelling the orange-flower water and soft salt on his skin, the residue of wig powder — there’s ink on his hands tonight, he’s had to drag himself away from his Requiem to be here, or he’s stolen off during some intermission in the festivities to scribble out a few tormenting bars on whatever might be handy. Salieri is repulsed by it all, the imitation of his own Last Judgment and the pantomime like a couple of country sweethearts sharing a bench. If he had had Mozart for a student, he would have him thrashed.

Still, Salieri is captivated, looking on at this tableau meant to represent himself under such absurd conditions — it must be fashionable in houses such as these to make a joke out of the unspeakable, to turn obscenity into a parlor game. From the back, Mozart’s head is delicately inclined as if he’s lost himself in the music, leaning in snugly against his companion whose stiff censorious bearing can only be Salieri in parody — the little beast Mozart has a very smooth white neck except in one place where it has been scraped into a raw bruise by the action of a lover’s mouth.

Salieri draws unconsciously closer as the little brute plays, there to the very edge of the assembled audience; he is struck by the fineness of Mozart’s posture, the smooth adherence of his breeches to his outstretched leg, the way his stockings follow the swell of his calf. Anything to keep from looking at his deliberately-positioned ass — the little deviate knows just what he’s doing. The music swells, chords against chords, now loud and now quiet, arcane and delicate. Sacred voices, eerie and tense.

“And then—“ Mozart plunges into his neighbor’s lap and makes a gesture that is extraordinarily, uncommonly obscene. “I have him!”

The guests positively shriek with laughter, and Salieri burns.

*

Salieri peers down at him from the carriage window — from this angle for all his frivolities the man looks puny and pinched, like little more than a shivering insect in the street. Even torchlight can’t hide the shadows beneath his eyes.

“Oh my God, it’s you — I didn’t even know you were here, I would have said hello, and paid my respects. What on earth are you doing here?”

“You’ve done more than enough, Herr Mozart. You should be at home in bed with your wife.”

In the cold, it’s impossible to tell if the man is blushing — he rubs his bare hands together, huffing a startled breath. “Oh, I don’t attend these things because I like them, they’re really rather horrible, these parties. I play billiards with our host sometimes and I’m afraid that I owed him a favor.” Then, a nervous snort of laughter.

“Then you must have the whole house fooled. You were the star of the show tonight, I gather.”

“People expect to see me, and they all expect me to do something amusing, a man in my position has to advertise. You understand that.”

Mozart’s eyes are pleading. The falling snow has dusted his hair and melted to pinpoints of water on his cheeks; if Mozart were only a woman, he’d be the most coveted whore in all of Vienna, a giddy little minx. His silk-velvet waistcoat is embroidered with figures of monkeys, and someone’s tenderly reattached one of the mother-of-pearl buttons on the breast of his coat. Fine clothes for a spendthrift gallant, but well-worn, and no overcoat. Is the man a fool or did he make his exit in a hurry?

“Surely you have better things to be doing. How on earth did you come here?”

“I thought the host had arranged for me to get home at the end, but I guess not. It’s not far, really, and I’ve got two good legs, haven’t I?” Mozart shrugs his shoulders with cheerful resignation.

And wouldn’t that be an ignominious end to God’s cherished ape — bare-headed and frozen to death on an icy bridge, on his way home from a ribald party? The Lord is teasing Salieri. Not yet, not yet, not yet. Let Mozart exhaust himself first.

Salieri marshals his features into an appropriate mix of concern and indulgence. “Please, I couldn’t possibly allow that — you must let me take you home. We can’t have you dying from cold, or the reputation of Vienna will never recover.”

“Oh, you’re too kind, but really, you don’t have to take all the trouble on my account—“

“It’s no trouble at all. I insist.”

This little devil cannot die before the greatest joke can be played at his expense; God cannot have him yet, not before Salieri does.

*

The carriage interior is stiff and old-fashioned, a jewel box in claret-colored velvet, studded with gilt-brass nails. Against such a saturated backdrop Herr Mozart looks sallow as a cheese and pitifully young, cringingly grateful. He doesn’t regret his little joke, he regrets not knowing for certain whether he’s been caught. His hands knot together in his lap, still ungloved and soft as a woman’s underneath their splotches of ink; it’s a painful effort to resist the urge to take them up between Salieri’s own palms and rub them briskly.

“If I didn’t see you in the courtyard outside, I’d never have known you turned up at all. There’s such a thing as being too discreet, you know, and it would have been nice to congratulate you. Maybe you could have played something for us.”

“You’re too kind, but I doubt any of my music would be appropriate for such a heady atmosphere.”

Instead of censorious, it sounds knowing, and salacious. Mozart slips across the gulf to Salieri’s own seat, drawing in close beside him — the impudence is extraordinary, but more astonishing than that, the man’s body temperature is blazing hot. He’s like a little warming pan, and his proximity makes even the frosty seats more tolerable. Salieri shifts to let him in and instantly regrets it.

“You know, it’s the strangest thing — when I conferred with our hostess she assured me you’d declined her invitation. I’d be shocked if she even sent one. Have you been following me?”

“Only in your professional capacity.”

What had he hoped for, that Caterina would be there? She must have had a half-dozen lovers by now, each one coarser and more loud-mouthed than the last if Herr Mozart has set the pattern for them. It isn’t about her anymore, not even about betrayed secrets and broken confidences — it’s always been about him, the creature, this imp of God’s cruelty who sits beside him now with his bare hand carelessly tossed against Salieri’s arm.

Mozart continues, gabbing earnestly. “I know my jokes aren’t always in the best of taste, but I never mean anything by them. My mouth gets me in trouble, I agree to things, I make a fool of myself — I really would put a padlock on it, if I could.”

Salieri’s smile is stiff and ghastly, an undertaker’s grin. “I understand completely.”

Where their bodies meet, there is a seam of vulgar contact, even through the tumble of superfine wool and silk satin — outer thigh pressed to outer thigh, Mozart’s neat pretty ankle in its silk stocking tossed so casually against Salieri’s own foot. The man must be drunk to take such liberties, but his vulgar pert face is upturned in earnest friendliness.

“You know, if people knew you better, they wouldn’t laugh. You’re an uncommonly good teacher, and you’re always working, your Tarare was a terrific success in Paris, but the people here barely know you. Real people, I mean, cloth merchants and bankers, not just princes and bishops who go around with sticks up their asses all day. People in Vienna think you only do church music.”

What man in sworn opposition to God and His works could hear that and not laugh? Salieri turns his head to keep from grinning. “I see you have your finger on the pulse of popular sentiments.”

“That’s what makes the mental image so funny. People love to think a pious man is secretly riddled with vices, it makes them feel better about their own. But you know I don’t really mean it.”

Sodomy has not numbered among Salieri’s vices until tonight. If the man who has gazed after a woman with lust in his heart has already committed adultery with her, as Christ tells us, then he will have sinned unspeakable sins half-a-dozen times tonight, half of them since allowing Herr Mozart into his carriage on a winter’s night. He wants him, this man: his mouth, his hands, his body — why this man and not some lovely Ganymede? You might take him for an angel only if he stood very still and didn’t open his mouth. But his music—

“You don’t need to apologize,” Salieri says. “I’m not made of stone. What man can’t take a joke?”

A perversity seizes him — to remove his glove (perfumed with roses and ambergris, a gift from some court eunuch or other) and to press Mozart’s hand in his own. It’s either that or strangle him bare-handed, and either way the impulse is terribly strong, not truly to annihilate him but to overtake him. Salieri would devour him if he could, if only it would make that extraordinary music his own — to hear it in a state of perfection as Mozart does, to hold it within himself completely.

They spend a long moment like that. Mozart doesn’t know what to do with himself; he blushes and fidgets.

There’s a light in the window of the apartment at Rauhensteingasse 8; somewhere, a baby is crying. Salieri raps on the carriage door with his cane to halt their passage; the clatter punctures whatever reverie he has permitted himself to sink into, and it’s all he can do to keep himself from plunging headlong into folly. Take him, ravish him with strange pleasures, wrench all the music out of him and leave him ragged and bereft. That too would make a decent joke on God, to destroy this exquisite plaything with love. Only love.

They are still holding hands. Salieri clears his throat, only to find it is wonderfully dry.

“This is where I leave you, isn’t it?”

“Well, then. Merry Christmas, Herr Salieri, and good night.” Mozart kisses him swiftly on the lips, and swings open the carriage door in a rush of cutting sleet and cold air.