The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [20]
“You know how a lot of cons say they discover God in prison?” Gold said.
Reggie put on the face that demonstrated to clients he remained unimpressed.
Gold said, “Many believe God once took the form of man. What if I told you He could take the form of music?”
Reggie sniffed. He lifted pages of the manuscript one at a time, only to find more of the same madness underneath.
“I have a story for you.” Gold placed himself in front of the dark window again. “In the summer of 1791, a messenger brings a letter to the Viennese home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The letter is unsigned, but the anonymous correspondent asks Mozart if he would compose a requiem mass. His intention is to have it played every year on the anniversary of the death of his beloved, departed bride.”
“Requiem mass?” Reggie asked. “Sorry, I’m a Miles Davis guy. And a Baptist two days a year.” The manuscript felt heavy in his lap, as if it had the density of something heavier than paper.
“A Catholic mass honoring the dead,” Gold said. “Mozart is intrigued. He’s never written a requiem before. He is also in debt. He names a price, which the messenger pays in coin on the spot, and promises to double that amount on the composition’s delivery. The courier never names his sponsor.
“Generous as the offer is, Mozart is unable to complete the requiem right away. He has not one but two operas to finish, including the famed Magic Flute. He also tells his wife, Constanze, that he’s afraid to finish the requiem because he fears he is writing it not for some benefactor, but for himself. So he puts it off in favor of other projects. Do you see where this is going?”
“Constanze is your daughter’s middle name.” Canada Constanze Gold. Reggie was always making tangential connections in his mind, but the adrenaline in his blood combined with the lingering scotch caused him to blurt this one out. Even as he said the name, he noticed it written on the manuscript in Solomon’s hand—“Constanze!”—next to his own thumb.
Gold nodded in annoyance. “Mozart finally continues work on the mass late in the year, but a mysterious illness seizes him after he begins and he is unable to finish it. On his deathbed, Mozart summons a minor composer, Franz Süssmayr, and describes to him how the work should be completed. Süssmayr and several other students work as a team to finish, with Süssmayr doing the transcribing, as his handwriting is most similar to the master’s. Mozart dies in December, and sometime in January, Constanze, in pursuit of the remaining commission, delivers the completed work to the mysterious client, representing it as Mozart’s own. But history knows better. Süssmayr is not a master and the parts written after Mozart’s death are obviously inferior.”
“Obviously,” Reggie said.
“For more than two hundred years, the final composition by history’s most brilliant composer has carried the practical equivalent of an asterisk next to a baseball statistic. Some have tried to repair Süssmayr’s contributions in a manner more worthy of Mozart, but because the students were presumably operating under instructions from their mentor, the Süssmayr Completion, flawed as it is, has remained the definitive version.”
From the title page Reggie read aloud one of the few phrases he could decipher. “Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor.” He glanced up. “The Gold Completion.”
Solomon walked over to Reggie and reached to take the manuscript back with both hands, and as he did, he let an awful animal sound escape his throat, as ominous as a hiss but deeper and more menacing. Reggie tried not to flinch, as he had heard it before. Every time the prosecution scored a point at trial, Reggie had felt Gold lean in, lips to his ear, as if