Immortal Beloved
A short story by Tyger Schonholzer
(Previously published by The Writer's Drawer, a publication which is now discontinued)
I did not expect nineteenth century Vienna to be so filthy. Stench assailed me as soon as I stepped through the portal, gagging me and forcing water from my eyes. I choked back a cough to keep from retching and sidestepped a puddle of horse urine and dishwater, clicking the heels of my lace-up boots on worn cobble stones. I had hoped to be dropped outside the city proper so I would have time to adapt, but my mission was urgent and the portal guards knew to take me as close to my quarry as possible. I did not come here for pleasure but to save a life.
I hurried along a wall of narrow buildings, ducked into a doorway just in time to avoid a splash of bath water from the upstairs balcony and pulled my stubborn skirts to my knees. Would I ever get used to this garb? And would I ever get used to the way men leered? I dropped my skirts and stepped out into the street with what I hoped to be the ‘airs of aristocracy.’ The men dropped their gazes.
I found his house at the next corner. A simple facade, brightened by vigorously climbing Wisteria, led to a cobblestone courtyard. I gathered my courage and knocked on the heavy oak door. A servant answered.
“The master is not here.”
“Oh... I...when...?”
“You can come in and wait. He never goes far when he walks.”
“Thank you.”
I followed the maid up a staircase and through a dark corridor, unadorned with paintings of any kind. Ludwig did not entertain. We entered a large, airy room, strewn with paper in piles and heaps and she bade me sit down. When I moved a stack to find room for my feet, I found scores upon scores of music, all written in his hand. What a treasure! I traced the notes lovingly with my fingers, resisting the urge to stuff the papers into my bag to preserve them for the afterworld. All would be as it should. I had but one mission.
My heart pounded in wild leaps when I heard him approach. My whole life had been anticipation for this moment, when past and future would meet and I stood in the presence of his greatness. Will you blame me for being a Beethoven groupie?
Hands clasped behind his back, he entered. He walked with the precision of a man whose feet had long since learned to mind their own stride while his thoughts ghosted among loftiest spirits of music and philosophy. I had pictured him taller but when I leapt to my feet, he stood eye to eye with me, his graying hair framing his solemn face like a lion’s mane. He did not smile. His mouth tipped downward at the corners but his eyes, dark and brooding, drew me in and held me captive, assailing me with the whole, stark tragedy that was Ludwig Van Beethoven.
He did not speak. To ask me what I wanted would have required he hear my answer and it would have exposed his deafness, his shame. I took the two steps toward him and handed him a folded piece of paper, a note, which he took, crimped, then - seeing my stricken expression - uncrimped and unfolded to read.
“Sehr geehrter Herr” it said. Honored Sir
“I hope this letter finds you well. I hear this year’s spring in Vienna is especially pleasant, drawing the ladies outdoors with bare arms to promenade. The bearer of this letter is my niece, Annelies, very dear to my heart and she has expressed her deepest desire to meet you in person and to study piano and composition under your tutelage. I understand that it is unusual for a girl to study in such earnestness but I know you to detest convention. You would do me a great honor if you took her under your wing for a season. You will find her quite talented. I have sent with her enough coin to compensate for your trouble and more to allow her a modest living during her stay in Vienna. Please also accept my gratitude and my hope that one day you and I shall meet and continue our discussions in person. I remain your greatest and most sincere admirer,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.”
The letter was a fake, of course, but the writer had perfected the strokes and curves of Goethe’s handwriting. Ludwig did not doubt its origin. He looked up from the letter - his eyes seemed to pierce my soul – and nodded. Tension had sent me aflutter and I released a long, grateful breath. Then, for the first time Ludwig spoke.
“Have you found lodging yet?” He indicated the leather satchel hanging from my back. I shook my head. His voice had a hollow quality. It was the voice of one who has not heard his own speech in some time. It echoed within my soul and I craved more of it, yet found myself mute with fear of causing him anguish. He picked up a score of music and motioned for me to sit at the piano. Placing the booklet in front of me, he said, “Let me hear you play.”
Piano sonata in F major, I had practiced this piece many times, yet sitting at Beethoven’s own grand piano, my palms dampened and my fingers trembled. I had but one chance to prove myself. I played the piece with as much heart and pathos as I could muster. My fingers found the keys and did not fail me. While I played, Ludwig did more than listen. He watched. His eyes caressed my face and my body, but mostly my arms, hands and fingers, as though he were reading from my posture and movements the music I drew from his piano. After the last note faded, I raised my eyes to him and found the corners of his mouth slightly elevated, a gesture I would come to know as a Beethovian smile.
“Not bad. But let me show you how I like it played.”
He stunned me. I would have never thought him deaf from hearing him play. His hands fondled the piano, stroked the music from it with the ardency of a lover. I had never heard F major sound that way. Suddenly, I wished to feel those gifted hands on my skin. I wept.
He regarded me silently while I dried my tears. He must have seen in me a kindred soul, one so enchanted by music that it filled my very being with a need for it. His hair, unencumbered by any style flowed around him like a silver flame. The darkness in his eyes gleamed. He reached for me and I sat beside him, thigh against thigh, joy and fear fighting in my heart.
**************
I did not leave his house to seek lodging elsewhere. He gave me quarters in his own home but the nights found me in his bed, drenching pillows and sheets with sweat of passion. He stoked my fire. He played my body as masterfully as he did his piano. He composed symphonies on my skin and wrote scores of music between my thighs. On the third night, he brought me a suicide note he had written and tore it up in front of my eyes. He kissed my tears and I clutched him to me, grateful I had given him reason to live.
Ludwig rose each morning at daybreak and retreated to his study to compose. Sometimes he stormed out into the streets only to return an hour later with a new score in his head, which he then wrote feverishly with pen and ink on lined paper. And woe the servant who didn’t fill his inkwell or stack fresh paper on his desk each morning! I once heard him dress down a maid most viciously until she fled from his rooms in terror. His fearsome temper made it difficult to keep good help and more than once, I had to step in to soothe his darkened mood and appease the servants. He had the patience of a flea and I dared not make too many mistakes during my piano lessons or he would stomp away disgusted with my lack of dedication.
Though in the days, his disposition varied, his spirits leapt and faltered, in the nights his tenderness had no equal. I wondered what had happened to those others who had shared his bed. How could they bear to be without him?
We had devised a way to communicate since he could not hear my voice. We filled books upon books with conversations. I wondered about his deafness, which ebbed and flowed like the tides but was ever present. Speculations abound in my time as to its cause but I saw no signs of the dreaded syphilis. The fine red rash across his nose and cheeks spoke more of Lupus or some similar autoimmune disease.
Beethoven suffered from many and mysterious ailments. His suffering darkened his moods and his moods increased his pain. Many a night, I traced with light fingers across his brow, wishing to heal his body as well as his spirit. It was not to be though, for his suffering birthed his music and his restless spirit propelled him to greatness. Had I changed any of that, the world would have been deprived of his gift. I was there, simply, to be muse to his work and to keep him from taking his life prematurely. All might have been well, had I not fallen ill myself.
Although I brought with me the medical knowledge of the twenty-first century, I had none of its remedies. I had taken to the local custom of keeping head lice in check with camphor and had grown used to its pungent smell which always lingered in Ludwig’s house. Yet others who came to see the master were not as clean of hair and body and a pesky louse must have slipped by my watch and bitten its way into my scalp. The chills and fever did not tip me off right away. I had a persistent cough and thought I might have caught a flu. But when the rash spread across my body, even Ludwig saw and the gravity of his face gave me my diagnosis. I had succumbed to Typhus.
Beethoven’s time knew nothing of antibiotics. There was no cure for this horrid disease and nineteenth century contemporaries deemed it contagious from body to body. To his credit, Ludwig did not shrink from me but cradled me gently in his arms while chills and aches racked my ailing form. In my delirium, I told him the truth about me, or tried to, where I came from, why I was there. He did not understand most of it but what he did make out was my plea: “Take me to the portal and leave me there. I will not die. If you do this, I will not die!”
H commissioned a carriage and brought me to the place I described to him in his book, my handwriting shaky and almost illegible. He laid me upon the cobblestones and kissed me one more time.
“I love thee, Ludwig!” I said.
He nodded. “And I thee as well, my immortal beloved!”
And then the portal claimed me and I arrived back in my time, weeping and ill, calling for a doctor.
Weeks have passed. I stand in Bonn, Germany, in the Beethoven museum and stare down at the glass case which holds the last letter Ludwig ever wrote to me. He never mailed it. Historians have puzzled over this letter, over the intended recipient and why it was never delivered. He could not have mailed it. I had left his time and realm to become his ‘Immortal Beloved’ as the letter states. My eyes mist over with longing. I want to trace his writing with my fingers but the glass stands between me and my lover. We are forever apart, forever lost to one another, yet we also are inseparably bonded across the centuries. My mission was successful. Beethoven did not take his own life but years later died a natural death. Our conversation books have vanished. History tells me that Anton Schindler, Ludwig’s historian, destroyed them, embarrassed, perhaps by the depth of feeling expressed in them. The letter, he did not destroy. Perhaps its beauty captured his heart or the mystery of the intended recipient stirred his curiosity.
I now perform Beethoven’s works the way he taught me, with the fineness of timbre and depth of pathos he intended. When patrons hear me play, they weep, just as I once did, centuries ago in Ludwig’s cluttered study. Of the two of us, Ludwig van Beethoven is the true Immortal Beloved.
Footnote:
In 1812, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote, at the time receiving hydrotherapy at a spa in Tepltz, Bohemia, a letter, addressed to his ‘Immortal Beloved’ which was never mailed but was found in his desk after his death in 1827. The identity of the woman he addressed was never discovered. After his death, historian Anton Schindler is believed to have destroyed numerous of Beethoven’s conversation books and altered content in some of them. Medical historians believe the composer suffered from an autoimmune disease, possibly Lupus and that swelling and inflammation in the ear canal caused his deafness. Beethoven was a contemporary of Author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and they met in 1812. Beethoven is believed to have suffered from bipolar disorder and suicidal thoughts. He wrote many of his greatest works while completely deaf.
I hurried along a wall of narrow buildings, ducked into a doorway just in time to avoid a splash of bath water from the upstairs balcony and pulled my stubborn skirts to my knees. Would I ever get used to this garb? And would I ever get used to the way men leered? I dropped my skirts and stepped out into the street with what I hoped to be the ‘airs of aristocracy.’ The men dropped their gazes.
I found his house at the next corner. A simple facade, brightened by vigorously climbing Wisteria, led to a cobblestone courtyard. I gathered my courage and knocked on the heavy oak door. A servant answered.
“The master is not here.”
“Oh... I...when...?”
“You can come in and wait. He never goes far when he walks.”
“Thank you.”
I followed the maid up a staircase and through a dark corridor, unadorned with paintings of any kind. Ludwig did not entertain. We entered a large, airy room, strewn with paper in piles and heaps and she bade me sit down. When I moved a stack to find room for my feet, I found scores upon scores of music, all written in his hand. What a treasure! I traced the notes lovingly with my fingers, resisting the urge to stuff the papers into my bag to preserve them for the afterworld. All would be as it should. I had but one mission.
My heart pounded in wild leaps when I heard him approach. My whole life had been anticipation for this moment, when past and future would meet and I stood in the presence of his greatness. Will you blame me for being a Beethoven groupie?
Hands clasped behind his back, he entered. He walked with the precision of a man whose feet had long since learned to mind their own stride while his thoughts ghosted among loftiest spirits of music and philosophy. I had pictured him taller but when I leapt to my feet, he stood eye to eye with me, his graying hair framing his solemn face like a lion’s mane. He did not smile. His mouth tipped downward at the corners but his eyes, dark and brooding, drew me in and held me captive, assailing me with the whole, stark tragedy that was Ludwig Van Beethoven.
He did not speak. To ask me what I wanted would have required he hear my answer and it would have exposed his deafness, his shame. I took the two steps toward him and handed him a folded piece of paper, a note, which he took, crimped, then - seeing my stricken expression - uncrimped and unfolded to read.
“Sehr geehrter Herr” it said. Honored Sir
“I hope this letter finds you well. I hear this year’s spring in Vienna is especially pleasant, drawing the ladies outdoors with bare arms to promenade. The bearer of this letter is my niece, Annelies, very dear to my heart and she has expressed her deepest desire to meet you in person and to study piano and composition under your tutelage. I understand that it is unusual for a girl to study in such earnestness but I know you to detest convention. You would do me a great honor if you took her under your wing for a season. You will find her quite talented. I have sent with her enough coin to compensate for your trouble and more to allow her a modest living during her stay in Vienna. Please also accept my gratitude and my hope that one day you and I shall meet and continue our discussions in person. I remain your greatest and most sincere admirer,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.”
The letter was a fake, of course, but the writer had perfected the strokes and curves of Goethe’s handwriting. Ludwig did not doubt its origin. He looked up from the letter - his eyes seemed to pierce my soul – and nodded. Tension had sent me aflutter and I released a long, grateful breath. Then, for the first time Ludwig spoke.
“Have you found lodging yet?” He indicated the leather satchel hanging from my back. I shook my head. His voice had a hollow quality. It was the voice of one who has not heard his own speech in some time. It echoed within my soul and I craved more of it, yet found myself mute with fear of causing him anguish. He picked up a score of music and motioned for me to sit at the piano. Placing the booklet in front of me, he said, “Let me hear you play.”
Piano sonata in F major, I had practiced this piece many times, yet sitting at Beethoven’s own grand piano, my palms dampened and my fingers trembled. I had but one chance to prove myself. I played the piece with as much heart and pathos as I could muster. My fingers found the keys and did not fail me. While I played, Ludwig did more than listen. He watched. His eyes caressed my face and my body, but mostly my arms, hands and fingers, as though he were reading from my posture and movements the music I drew from his piano. After the last note faded, I raised my eyes to him and found the corners of his mouth slightly elevated, a gesture I would come to know as a Beethovian smile.
“Not bad. But let me show you how I like it played.”
He stunned me. I would have never thought him deaf from hearing him play. His hands fondled the piano, stroked the music from it with the ardency of a lover. I had never heard F major sound that way. Suddenly, I wished to feel those gifted hands on my skin. I wept.
He regarded me silently while I dried my tears. He must have seen in me a kindred soul, one so enchanted by music that it filled my very being with a need for it. His hair, unencumbered by any style flowed around him like a silver flame. The darkness in his eyes gleamed. He reached for me and I sat beside him, thigh against thigh, joy and fear fighting in my heart.
**************
I did not leave his house to seek lodging elsewhere. He gave me quarters in his own home but the nights found me in his bed, drenching pillows and sheets with sweat of passion. He stoked my fire. He played my body as masterfully as he did his piano. He composed symphonies on my skin and wrote scores of music between my thighs. On the third night, he brought me a suicide note he had written and tore it up in front of my eyes. He kissed my tears and I clutched him to me, grateful I had given him reason to live.
Ludwig rose each morning at daybreak and retreated to his study to compose. Sometimes he stormed out into the streets only to return an hour later with a new score in his head, which he then wrote feverishly with pen and ink on lined paper. And woe the servant who didn’t fill his inkwell or stack fresh paper on his desk each morning! I once heard him dress down a maid most viciously until she fled from his rooms in terror. His fearsome temper made it difficult to keep good help and more than once, I had to step in to soothe his darkened mood and appease the servants. He had the patience of a flea and I dared not make too many mistakes during my piano lessons or he would stomp away disgusted with my lack of dedication.
Though in the days, his disposition varied, his spirits leapt and faltered, in the nights his tenderness had no equal. I wondered what had happened to those others who had shared his bed. How could they bear to be without him?
We had devised a way to communicate since he could not hear my voice. We filled books upon books with conversations. I wondered about his deafness, which ebbed and flowed like the tides but was ever present. Speculations abound in my time as to its cause but I saw no signs of the dreaded syphilis. The fine red rash across his nose and cheeks spoke more of Lupus or some similar autoimmune disease.
Beethoven suffered from many and mysterious ailments. His suffering darkened his moods and his moods increased his pain. Many a night, I traced with light fingers across his brow, wishing to heal his body as well as his spirit. It was not to be though, for his suffering birthed his music and his restless spirit propelled him to greatness. Had I changed any of that, the world would have been deprived of his gift. I was there, simply, to be muse to his work and to keep him from taking his life prematurely. All might have been well, had I not fallen ill myself.
Although I brought with me the medical knowledge of the twenty-first century, I had none of its remedies. I had taken to the local custom of keeping head lice in check with camphor and had grown used to its pungent smell which always lingered in Ludwig’s house. Yet others who came to see the master were not as clean of hair and body and a pesky louse must have slipped by my watch and bitten its way into my scalp. The chills and fever did not tip me off right away. I had a persistent cough and thought I might have caught a flu. But when the rash spread across my body, even Ludwig saw and the gravity of his face gave me my diagnosis. I had succumbed to Typhus.
Beethoven’s time knew nothing of antibiotics. There was no cure for this horrid disease and nineteenth century contemporaries deemed it contagious from body to body. To his credit, Ludwig did not shrink from me but cradled me gently in his arms while chills and aches racked my ailing form. In my delirium, I told him the truth about me, or tried to, where I came from, why I was there. He did not understand most of it but what he did make out was my plea: “Take me to the portal and leave me there. I will not die. If you do this, I will not die!”
H commissioned a carriage and brought me to the place I described to him in his book, my handwriting shaky and almost illegible. He laid me upon the cobblestones and kissed me one more time.
“I love thee, Ludwig!” I said.
He nodded. “And I thee as well, my immortal beloved!”
And then the portal claimed me and I arrived back in my time, weeping and ill, calling for a doctor.
Weeks have passed. I stand in Bonn, Germany, in the Beethoven museum and stare down at the glass case which holds the last letter Ludwig ever wrote to me. He never mailed it. Historians have puzzled over this letter, over the intended recipient and why it was never delivered. He could not have mailed it. I had left his time and realm to become his ‘Immortal Beloved’ as the letter states. My eyes mist over with longing. I want to trace his writing with my fingers but the glass stands between me and my lover. We are forever apart, forever lost to one another, yet we also are inseparably bonded across the centuries. My mission was successful. Beethoven did not take his own life but years later died a natural death. Our conversation books have vanished. History tells me that Anton Schindler, Ludwig’s historian, destroyed them, embarrassed, perhaps by the depth of feeling expressed in them. The letter, he did not destroy. Perhaps its beauty captured his heart or the mystery of the intended recipient stirred his curiosity.
I now perform Beethoven’s works the way he taught me, with the fineness of timbre and depth of pathos he intended. When patrons hear me play, they weep, just as I once did, centuries ago in Ludwig’s cluttered study. Of the two of us, Ludwig van Beethoven is the true Immortal Beloved.
Footnote:
In 1812, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote, at the time receiving hydrotherapy at a spa in Tepltz, Bohemia, a letter, addressed to his ‘Immortal Beloved’ which was never mailed but was found in his desk after his death in 1827. The identity of the woman he addressed was never discovered. After his death, historian Anton Schindler is believed to have destroyed numerous of Beethoven’s conversation books and altered content in some of them. Medical historians believe the composer suffered from an autoimmune disease, possibly Lupus and that swelling and inflammation in the ear canal caused his deafness. Beethoven was a contemporary of Author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and they met in 1812. Beethoven is believed to have suffered from bipolar disorder and suicidal thoughts. He wrote many of his greatest works while completely deaf.