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It was dark, but then Salieri had been in the dark so long that he hardly noticed the change when it crept in at the corners of the room, the cries of the mad becoming muffled as though layer upon layer of wool were being wrapped around his head. It was a subtle change, gradual, like a sunset but without the warm golden tones or the appearance of the first star. He began to wonder if this was death, this slow slip into quiet and dark, and his thoughts waxed lyrically for a moment on the parallel of returning into the womb of the earth. The idea was just beginning to really form a shape in his mind, a nearly sleepy thought, like the feel of too much wine when one is sitting before a warm fire, when the quiet and the uniformity of the darkness abruptly shattered.
“Hello, old friend!” came that loud, coarse, loutish, uncouth, boorish… no, he simply couldn’t use enough adjectives to describe the sheer horror of that voice, the way the skin on his arms crawled and prickled in response.
He still had skin? Limbs? Ears? How was this possible?
“Oh, quit being so damned literal, Toni,” Mozart’s voice responded. “Being dead doesn’t make someone any less himself, just more so. Well, you know what I mean, I suppose.”
And then he laughed. Oh, God, he laughed in that horrible, high-pitched bray that should have made horses in the street rear up and charge away in fright, and Salieri suddenly found that he also had teeth since they were most certainly set on edge.
“Go on, go on,” the voice said in that tone of nearly childlike enthusiasm Salieri had heard so often, usually wasted on things like chocolates or shoes or a particularly garish wig, “try saying something! Eternity is a devil of a long time to go without uttering a word, you know.”
Salieri sighed, and the sound of the breath escaping his lips seemed unusually loud. His eardrums felt as though they were stretched too tightly, and he winced.
“Go away,” he finally managed to say, and his voice seemed too loud as well, jarring his ears.
“No,” Mozart’s voice said, his tone entirely conversational and pleasant despite the refusal. “No, I’m staying right here, right where I’ve always been.”
There was that laugh again, Salieri thought. If he really had died and been consigned to hell, he wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the chief torture of his eternity would be that incessant, donkey-like laugh repeated in an endless refrain until the stars burned out and the universe imploded.
“Why can’t I see you, then?” Salieri asked, hoping that making Mozart speak again would end the incessant, glass-shattering giggle.
“Because you don’t want to, silly!” Mozart said, punctuating the thought with yet another laugh. “You don’t want to at all, and you aren’t ready to.”
That, Salieri privately thought, was true enough. He wanted to be left alone.
“No, you don’t,” Mozart voice said suddenly.
“No, I don’t… what?” Salieri asked.
“No, you don’t want to be alone,” Mozart replied as though explaining something exceedingly simple to his little son. “You’d best get used to the idea I know what you’re thinking, Maestro. You don’t have any secrets here anymore. Just not allowed!”
Salieri was perfectly still in response, and he realized he was trying desperately not to form any thoughts at all, so repulsed by the idea that Mozart, that creature, would know them at once, that he was experiencing a sort of mental paralysis. And then Mozart laughed again, and sheer repugnance over the sound filled him.
“Yes, yes, Maestro, I’m aware I sound like a drunken mule when I laugh,” he said, the voice so damnably good-humored that it annoyed him further. “I could change it if I like, but why should I? It works as a laugh quite well, and I don’t want another, even if it does annoy you. Well, maybe because it does annoy you. Ha!”
“So we are to have no secrets at all, then?” Salieri said.
“Well, you aren’t,” he said teasingly. “At least not where I’m concerned. I can have all the ones I like. Oh, and you can still keep secrets from yourself, if you want, but I don’t really advise it. It’s quite draining, you know. And you do know, don’t you, Maestro.”
Salieri’s face pulled together in a pucker as he tried to comprehend that little gem of wisdom, though he doubted it was anything of the sort.
“Oh, now I’ve gone and puzzled you,” Mozart said, his tone playful in mock apology. “You think you don’t have secrets from yourself, do you?”
“And how, precisely, would one keep a secret from oneself?” Salieri responded with as much dignity as he could, making it clear he thought this nonsense.
“By denying it,” Mozart said, and Salieri shuddered, for the voice had been shockingly close to his ear. “You deny what you really think or want or feel or what have you, and you pretend to yourself that it’s something else entirely.”
“I have always known what I wanted,” Salieri said.
“What’s that?” Mozart said, and he was no longer so close.
“To be great,” Salieri said at once, his tone tragically serious. “To be a conduit of greatness, genius, perfection, a true artist. I want to be an audible representation of God.”
Mozart blew a very loud, very extended raspberry at him.
“Too easy,” he said. “Much, much too easy, friend Salieri, like asking you to play a C scale one-handed. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, knows that’s what you want. You’re really quite tedious about it. What ELSE do you want?”
Salieri could swear he could hear the man squirming in excitement at the question, possibly bouncing up and down on his toes like a demented puppet. He deeply, deeply hated him.
“No, you don’t,” Mozart said, and he imagined his hand waving airily at the suggestion. “No, no, no. That’s all part of your problem, isn’t it?”
“And what problem might that be?” Salieri bit out. If Mozart could hear his thoughts, there was no longer any cause for the façade of genteel politeness that had become his mask those many years ago. “Do you speak of my mediocrity, sir? Of my inability to rise higher than a few degrees in the heavens while you, you blundering, loathsome, nearly inhuman, filthy minded, addle-pated, moronic, crude rustic, you rise to the zenith, unparalleled?”
There was a pause before another giggle erupted.
“You really do like adjectives, don’t you, Toni?” he said. “I use too many notes, I think you once said, but you, you just don’t know how to let things go, do you, old friend?”
“I am not your friend!” Salieri roared. “I have never been your friend!”
“Now that’s true,” Mozart said approvingly. “Keep going with that and maybe you’ll get some more true things.”
“Did you know I successfully seduced your little guttersnipe of a wife?” he said, grinning fiercely.
Another resounding raspberry split through the darkness.
“You never actually bedded her,” he said.
“I could have if I had wanted to,” Salieri said defensively.
“But you didn’t,” Mozart said.
“As you have just said, no, I refused her advances,” Salieri said.
“No, no, no, no,” and Salieri could actually her him wagging his head in emphasis. “I mean you didn’t want to.”
“Didn’t want to?” Salieri said, his tone rather offended. “What do you take me for, a eunuch?”
“No,” Mozart said, still giggling. “Not that.”
“I assure you I was more than capable of bedding her if I so chose,” Salieri said, sounding petulant.
“Oh, I’m sure of that,” Mozart agreed. “I mean, you saw her. Those are really very, very good looking breasts. World class! Blue ribbon! Best in show!”
Salieri very clearly formed the thought that he wanted to strangle the man every time that inane laugh appeared, but Mozart laughed all the harder.
“No, Maestro. I mean, and you know, though perhaps you’ve lied to yourself about it for so long that maybe you really don’t even know you’re lying anymore, that you never actually wanted her,” Mozart said.
“No,” Salieri admitted. “What I wanted was to destroy what was yours, anything you cared about, including her.”
“Will you at least attempt being interesting?” Mozart said, sounding exasperated. “Yes, you wanted that, but what else did you want?”
Salieri was genuinely perplexed.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Mozart finally cried, taking pity on him. “You wanted me! You know that perfectly well!”
“I… what?” Salieri said.
“Me!” he repeated. “You were obsessed with me every waking moment of the day and night for years. Couldn’t get me from your head. I was the one you saw as destroying everything you wanted, and you just returned the favor, didn’t you?”
“You had the talent, the gift,” Salieri started, but the words stuck in his throat, choking him for a moment before he could continue. “It should have been mine. You had everything I had wanted, worked for, sworn I would make myself worthy of just so that I could possess that infinite, unreachable height that you soared towards without any payment. You did nothing to deserve it. Nothing!”
“Poor, dear Salieri,” Mozart said, his voice close against his ear again. “You never understood, did you, that nobody ever deserves that. Of course I didn’t deserve it. Neither did you. It’s not a question of deserving but a question of being.”
“I did deserve it!” Salieri suddenly bellowed. “I was pure, chaste, obedient, devoted, hard-working…”
“And a bunch of other adjectives,” Mozart said, interrupting him.
“Until you came!” he continued as though the other man hadn’t spoken. “Until I saw the perfection in what you did in spite of your low morals and your penchant for…”
“For laughing, Maestro,” Mozart finished for him. “Do you know what the real difference was? I had fun! No, really, your main objection to me was that I wasn’t a dour old sourpuss who thought smiling a sin and constant self-denial the greatest of virtues. I indulged—I admit it, over-indulged at times—with passion. Passion, Salieri! That’s what’s in my music that simply, well, wasn’t in yours.”
Salieri looked stricken.
“Nothing personal,” Mozart said, then laughed gleefully.
Salieri scowled.
“Have you never laughed even once in your whole life, Toni?” Mozart asked, and he seemed strangely serious. “Even once?”
“Of course I’ve laughed, you fool!” Salieri fairly screamed.
“When was the last time you enjoyed anything at all?” he asked. “I mean besides those dreadful Italian sweets of yours. Really, it’s amazing you have a tooth left in your head. But besides that, when was the last time you were happy? Honestly, now.”
He stood perfectly still and tried to think of the last moment he had not been drowning in the guilt of having willed the most perfect instrument in the world to death. Before that, he had been consumed with envy like poison, and before that…
“Your music,” he admitted at last. “The last time I heard your music. It filled me with… oh, such joy!”
“Good!” he said, and Salieri felt a hand slap him on the back. “That’s what it’s supposed to do!”
“But I wanted it… I wanted it to be mine,” Salieri said, and he knew he sounded childish, like a little boy robbed of a new spinning top. “I wanted it so very desperately, and you took it from me!”
“Nonsense,” Mozart said. “I stole nothing from you. You stole from yourself, though.”
“I suppose I did,” Salieri admitted. “I allowed my hatred of you to sully me, to sap my purity.”
“You were really pretty obsessed,” Mozart said, sounding rather impressed. “That took a whole lot of energy. Concentration. Creative force. Rather a massive distraction you put in your own way, wasn’t it, Toni?”
“Will you cease calling me that?” Salieri said in an attempt to stop thinking about the frightening point he had just raised. “You never once called me that in life.”
“I think you need distinctly less formality,” Mozart said by way of explanation.
“And who better to teach me in the ways of informality than the spoiled, bratty child with no self-control but limitless ability to behave like a madman,” he replied dryly.
“Really? A madman? I don’t recall me as the one who died in a mental asylum,” Mozart said, then laughed.
“Touche,” Salieri said. “I admit it. You drove me mad.”
“You drove yourself mad,” Mozart corrected him.
Salieri sighed in resignation.
“See? You can’t argue with me,” Mozart said smugly.
“What exactly am I doing here? Where am I?” Salieri asked, not expecting an answer.
“Where do you think you are?” Mozart asked.
“I’m dead and in impenetrable darkness with the man I hated more than any other,” Salieri said evenly, “so I assume this is probably hell.”
“Really? I’m hell?” Mozart said, sounding absurdly amused. “Well, someday someone will say hell is other people, so maybe you’re not wrong.”
Laughing again. Salieri fought the urge to clap his hands over his ears.
“Fine, fine,” Mozart said, calming himself. “I’ll tell you. You’re in school, Maestro.”
“School?” Salieri said.
“Yes, school,” Mozart replied eagerly, and he was sure that ridiculous bouncing of his had returned in spades. “Do you want to know what you’re going to learn?”
“I think that would probably be helpful,” Salieri said in an icy tone.
“Passion, Maestro! Passion!” Mozart cried exultantly. “Isn’t that exciting!”
Salieri stared at the darkness in front of him, raising an eyebrow at the unseen form of his nemesis.
“To what purpose?” he asked.
“So you will finally have the gift you wanted, Salieri. You will create music that is glorious beyond the lot of mortals,” Mozart said melodramatically, “or however you want to put it.”
“I’m dead,” Salieri said, stating the obvious.
“So what?”
“So, I cannot write music!” he said angrily.
“Why not?” Mozart said, and he could hear the grin on his face.
“Because… I’m dead,” Salieri repeated.
“You already said that, shit-wit,” Mozart said, and Salieri felt himself slapped over the head with what he could have sworn felt like a feathered hat. “Why shouldn’t you be able to write music when you’re dead? You’re talking while you’re dead. You’re thinking while you’re dead. Why couldn’t you write music while you’re dead?”
“There’s no audience,” Salieri said, wondering if he was merely madder than usual and was having a conversation with a hat-rack again.
“So what am I? A blue-assed baboon?” Mozart said.
“Occasionally, yes,” Salieri said.
There was a stunned pause.
“Did you just make a joke?” Mozart asked, sounding shocked.
“…yes?” he said uncertainly.
“Progress already,” he said approvingly. “I think you will turn out to be a receptive pupil after all, good sir.”
An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, or at least Salieri felt it was uncomfortable. He doubted anyone had ever made Mozart uncomfortable, well, with the exception of his father.
“I hated you,” Salieri said simply. “I hated you so much that I wanted you dead. I rejoiced in it.”
“And you also apologized for it, as I recall,” Mozart said, “along with spilling a truly ridiculous amount of blood. Dreadfully messy.”
“Then you forgive me?” Salieri asked, and the words were strangely soft in his mouth.
“Certainly,” Mozart said off-handedly. “Eternity is a very long time to carry a grudge, you know.”
Salieri remained motionless for a moment, trying to understand the simple statement.
“Then what, pray tell, is to be my first lesson, Herr Mozart,” Salieri said.
“We shall begin at the beginning,” Mozart said, sounding delighted. “The first rule of passion is if you want something, you must reach for it.”
“Like this?” Salieri asked as his hand shot forward in the direction of Mozart’s voice and came into solid contact with a particularly rich brocade waistcoat. In that single moment, the world became alive with dazzling light and color, and Salieri could see that annoying, contemptible, glorious man standing only inches from him and laughing, laughing ridiculously and not caring at all about the discordance of the sound, only the joy of it.
“Precisely, dear Maestro,” Mozart said, bringing their lips closer together, “and in perfect tempo, too.”