Archive of Our Own

And so it has come to this.

“It’s not any good, is it?” Mozart—Mozart—is asking. He peers up at Salieri with wild eyes, eyes bloodshot with drink and glazed from fever. There is a gleam of sweat on his brow. He looks very young still but frightfully frail and tired. Beneath his eyes are dark shadows that appear to have sunken into his skin.

Salieri looks from the pitiful, floundering composer to the sheets of music that have been thrust into his hands. He examines the notes scribbled upon the staff. The marks translate to sound in his inner ear, because he has been granted just enough talent to comprehend the heights of genius forever beyond his artistic reach, and the music is somehow both more than he ever could have dreamed and also a crushing disappointment. Mozart has again created something beyond mere brilliance, a piece fit to make Salieri weep even in the silence of this room. But this room is a barren mess of empty wine bottles and discarded paper. It is cold enough in here to chill a man to the bone. Mozart’s hands are weak and trembling, and yet still—still—his gift comes through as if this requiem were beamed directly from the heavens with no mortal conduit to sully the divine instructions.

That is a great disappointment. A gut-wrenching blow to all Salieri’s efforts to muzzle this vulgar, utterly unworthy mouthpiece of God. Did the man actually have to die to be stripped of his talent? Would he lie in his grave, conducting awe-inspiring symphonies in the dirt?

Salieri seethes, reduced to nothing but a bitter husk of the devout disciple of music he once was. He is torched by envy, scraped hollow in his hatred. He has betrayed every vow of goodness he ever made and broken the very principles that formed the bedrock of his self-esteem and sense of purpose. Even as he continues to excel in his career at court, inside he is nothing.

And for what? All to try and fail to destroy Mozart?

“Salieri?” Mozart is still waiting for an answer. He paces back toward the pianoforte, his movements quick and agitated. “Tell me honestly, please. Is it any good at all? The notes are… are leaving me. I can feel that they are.”

At the instrument, he lifts the only bottle of cheap wine that is still most of the way full and brings it to his lips. He drinks like a slob, a grotesque glutton. He tilts his head back and sucks from the mouth of the bottle with total abandon, his throat convulsing through a series of loud gulps. When he is finished, he sways a bit on his feet, steadying himself on the pianoforte. He wipes his wet, reddened lips on his wrinkled shirtsleeve, leaving behind a stain. The bottle is now less than half of the way full.

Salieri turns his back to conceal the look of revulsion he cannot keep from his face. He refocuses on the music, only the music, and near to choking on his bitterness, he tells the truth. “It is... miraculous. Extraordinary, really. I cannot imagine any work more perfectly reminiscent of heaven.”

Mozart laughs, a high, disruptive sound as obnoxious as the braying of a donkey, and hurries across the room to throw himself at Salieri’s feet. “Oh, grazie! Grazie, signore!” The laughter gives way to a gratitude full to bursting with desperation. Mozart seizes Salieri’s hand and brings it to his lips, kissing his fingers again and again, as though Salieri were the Emperor himself.

Salieri stiffens. His first instinct is to withdraw his hand, to firmly suggest that Mozart conduct himself more appropriately, with much less… enthusiasm. But Mozart is there on his knees before him in a gesture of clear supplication, and this positioning is too satisfying to Salieri’s battered ego to be ignored. He allows Mozart to carry on kissing him as long as he pleases. Silently, he relishes in each feverish peck lavished upon his knuckles.

After what seems an abnormally long time, Mozart finally finishes with his excessive display of thanks. He glances up, his cheeks flushed. “Apologies, signore, but I am just so relieved! You cannot fathom how relived. I didn’t offend you, did I? Make an ass of myself? I am an ass, but I didn’t mean any offense.”

“Nonsense, Mozart. I am humbled by your gratitude.”

“Of course. You will always have my gratitude—you above all others. I see now that you have been my only real friend in this false place. You are the only one who hasn’t deserted me.” Mozart shakes his head and attempts to rise.

Salieri grips his shoulder, urging him back down. He isn’t ready to dispense with this vision just yet. “I have been a good friend, you would say?”

“Oh, exceedingly, signore.” Mozart glances at Salieri’s restraining hold on his shoulder, a questioning lift to his brow.

Salieri smiles. “Tell me all I have done for you. I worry, you see, that, given your current troubles, I have not done enough.”

Mozart smiles back, a bit slack-jawed. He slides his hand overtop Salieri’s and rubs it affectionately as he speaks. “You are too kind. Much, much too kind. Anyone will tell you my troubles are my own fault. I—I can make money, but I’d much rather spend it.” He laughs a short, piercing laugh. “My father was right about that.” He gazes up at Salieri with gleaming eyes that seem to dance in the candlelight. “You were good enough to put me forward for a position at court. I know you did all you could to secure me students. You encouraged me to put the Masons in my opera—it was an inspired idea, and you couldn’t have known the fools would take it as an insult. I could go on. You don’t know, signore, what your support has meant to me.”

Salieri can scarcely believe his ears. All his attempts to sabotage Mozart put forward in the most flattering light possible. The thin masking of his motives has worked better than he dared hope. Salieri has never acted with any aim other than to systematically dismantle this infantile man’s career, and now here is the absurdly gifted and criminally unappreciated composer, kneeling and smiling and clinging to the very anchor that has been drawing him down by the ankles, praising that which is actively drowning him with the understanding it is all that has kept him afloat.

A peculiar feeling descends upon Salieri, a contradictory mingling of triumph and regret.

He looks down on Mozart. He savors their positions for exactly one moment more. Then he steps back, releasing his hold on the creature, finding some latent shred of mercy in his heart for the broken, dwindling man.

“Rise, Mozart,” he says, speaking softly but with a note of urgent command. “You must rise up now.”