Peter Ustinov said that one of the advantages of history is that it's so adaptable. And for those of us who wish boundaries separating fact from fiction to be more flexible, these are words to live by! If you can't monkey with dead people a little, what fun is there?

On that note, I thought I would, just a week or so before I left for the continent, ask Mozart what sort of place Vienna was for him, as he is as much indentified with the city as anybody and therefore ought to know. I hear he's pretty accessible. Well, let's see.

By the way, I'm doing something called "sympathetic channelling," which I've just made up for the sake of this story. In time, there will be better ways to get at people, but this isn't a bad one because if he or she is there, they'll come right to you.

(MOZART comes right into my small, shabby room. He exudes, not a blinding sort of radiance, but certainly a well-burnished sort of grandeur. It is partly the
clothes: knee-breeches, a ruffled shirt, waistcoat and buckled shoes. He carries what may either be a punch-list or note-pad, on which he'll scribble something from time to time, then stuff into a side-pocket. He is a short fellow and moves jerkily about. Not handsome either, though he is appealingly energetic - one might even say neurotically restless.
If you ran into him in the aisle of a grocery store, you'd want to tell him to get the hell out of the way; you wouldn't because he looks like the sort of guy who might go to pieces in front of the Boca burgers.)

ME: Is this Wolfgang Amadeus. . .

MOZART: Who's this?

ME: I'm a citizen of the 21st century and I'd like to get your take on your adopted city.

MOZART: Oh. Well, let me tell you: they didn't like me.

ME: History says otherwise.

MOZART: Are you gonna listen to "history" in the abstract or somebody who IS history?

ME: Go ahead.

MOZART: That's all. I just thought I'd clarify that for you.

ME: Why don't you think Vienna liked you?

MOZART: It didn't pay, for one. Do you realize how much it costs to produce an opera?

ME: Sort of.

MOZART: That was a rhetorical question.

ME: Didn't sound like one.

MOZART: All right. Maybe it wasn't. But I'll tell you how much it costs: it cost gazillions to produce an opera. You've got your sets, you've got your singers - ay yi yi! - and, finally, you've got your musicians whom you can never rehearse enough. And who grumble all the way. If I could have played everything myself, I would have done so. There were never more than a handful of good musicians in all Vienna, and none of them wanted to play my work. "Too fast!" they'd say. When I premiered my beloved 39th, the first violin player refused to play. Absolutely refused. I told him I would play it myself. You know what he said to me?

ME: Can't imagine.

MOZART: He said that if I played the violin like I played the piano, nobody would hear anything else.

ME: A subtle message there?

MOZART: If you consider "subtle" the act of somebody banging you over the head with a blunt instrument.

ME: Now, now. Maybe he couldn't adapt to your style.

MOZART: You have already created a bit of a classic
yourself: a classic understatement! That whiny little pigeon-hearted weasel could never understand my work and this was his way of deflecting attention from it.

ME: I think you're mixing metaphors. Pigeon-hearted weasel?

MOZART: I choose my epithets very carefully. His temperament was a combination of two very disagreeable creatures.

ME: Guess you had to be there.

MOZART: That is, alas, correct.

ME: So who won?

MOZART: We both did. I used somebody else.

ME: How'd it go?

MOZART: I just tuned his part out.

ME: Can you do that?

MOZART: Can I, Mozart, tune out a teeny violin? Why not ask Jove himself whether He can build a mountain, cleave the forest with a laughing stream; make the oceans roar; induce the fertile valleys offer up their ruby grape to thirsty lips?

ME: Forgive me.

MOZART: Look, I'm sorry. I'm just used to people doubting me. You're a good listener.

ME: Thanks.

MOZART: Are you being ironic?

ME: I don't think so.

MOZART: Just promise me to do no irony. They loved irony in Vienna. In Salzburg, there is no irony. A post is a post, a shadow a shadow. There was no "context." In many ways, I prefered my hometown.

ME: But you couldn't work there.

MOZART: Not for money. I could've stood out on any street-corner the livelong day, however. . .perhaps I should have done so.

ME: No. . .may I call you. . .what should I call you?

MOZART: That always depended on people's relationship to me. Creditors called me a sleazebag, which is a very long word even in the German language. If you say that word, you really have a need to say it. What was I saying?

ME: People called you things according to their relationship. . .

MOZART: How could I forget? My landlady, well, she was with the creditors, mostly. Cosima called me "little Mozart", after a little thing I. . .never mind. What was your question again?

ME: What should I call you? Do you have a title you would prefer me to use?

MOZART: I WISH! Hell, I'm just a commoner. I couldn't piss in any royal chamber-pot for love or money. Though I did it anyway - and for both! (With a surge of merriment that is somewhat startling.) I really am a character. If nothing else, I am indeed that. Shall we drink some wine?

ME: How's your health?

MOZART: Could be better. But what can you do? With my schedule, I was bound to pop off when I did. But do you know something? If I had it to do over again, I'd get more exercise.

ME: Really?

MOZART: Yes, I really would. I've begun to think that sitting around is the very cornerstone of our ills.
And, boy, did I do that! You don't compose standing on your head. I did that, actually. But it's really not good for the noggin. Put a wig on first.

ME: Good idea.

MOZART: I think I really was a genius, but you know the problem? The problem was that it came too easily for me. Yep. I never struggled. I'd sit down and the music came so fast, my hands flew across the score-sheet just getting it all down. And when I'd look, it came out just as it should. Oh, I'd change a note now and then, but it was for the most part ready-made. I think that's why I didn't make a lot of money with it because it came so easily to me. Hey, why don't I write something now?

ME: Really?

MOZART: Sure. I get bored here easily.

ME: How wonderful. Do you need a theme or something?

MOZART: Me? A theme? How perfectly absurd! All I need is a sheet of paper and a little wine. Got any?

ME: Uh. . .no. To either.

MOZART: Oh, that's too bad because I think I could really do something. Why don't I just hum it for you?

ME: Mozart. Humming. An original creation.

MOZART: It is magnificent, isn't it?

ME: Yes.

MOZART: You say all the right things. Oh, but. . .

ME: What?

MOZART: We've GOT to write it down. I write everything down. My father drummed that into me from an early age. He said, "If you take no other lesson from your father, you will take this." And then he'd force a big pencil into my hand and make me write something. He was always standing over me, whether he was there or not. A mixed blessing, fathers. Dads.
Kings. Popes. God. The Devil. That's the great patriarchal ladder and one's father is always on it somewhere. Some occupy several places, depending on their psychological complexity, though I'm not quite sure what psychology is. But I hear it was developed in Vienna

ME: Psychiatry, actually, but what the hell.

MOZART: I try to keep up.

ME: I'm sorry he. . .

MOZART: No need to be sorry. Because of him, I have an enormmous catalogue of posthumous works. Enormous!
Compared to what I did down there, it's like the city of Rome to an ant-hill.

ME: Really? You have all that stuff?

MOZART: Stuff, eh?

ME: Sorry.

MOZART: No, I'm sorry. You're being very good to me.
I like you. I shouldn't. . .can you tell what I'm thinking?

ME: I'm not that good.

MOZART: I'm thinking that we should change outfits.
You wear mine and I'll wear yours. Come on. It'll be fun. And then I'll compose something. That'll be my theme. Cross-dressing.

ME: Uh. Cross-dressing, in later years, became something different.

MOZART: But it isn't now. So let's cross-dress!

ME: Are you sure?

MOZART: I've never been surer!

(We undress and hand one another our respective outfits. He gets into mine quickly and struts around for a moment, ulimately deciding that he doesn't like it much. I struggle from the git-go. In this regard, Mozart is an excellent sport, a team player par
excellence.)

MOZART: Here. Let me help you with that. Now hold up your arms. Put them down. Now the leg. Now the other one. Turn around.

(He kicks me.)

ME: What was that for?

MOZART: My initiation fee. You don't get Mozart to dress you for nothing, you know.

ME: Could you, uh, finish?

MOZART: Oh, yes. Now just relax. I think it's a wrap. Ha-ha! I've made a pun. I know what a wrap is because we have movies and they have these little segments in which movie people talk about the business. And when they're finished with something, they say: "It's a wrap!" Don't they?

ME: I think so, yes.

MOZART: These clothes only look uncomfortable, when in reality they fit like an old shoe. Yours, however, don't offer much either in the way of style or comfort.

ME: I come from a more casual age.

MOZART. No doubt. Well, let's look at one another in the mirror.

(They go over to a large mirror and gaze into it. I start to giggle.)

MOZART: What's so funny?

ME: Nothing. . .everything.

MOZART: Well, pardon ME then!

ME: There's nothing wrong with funny. Funny's good.
Funny's. . .funny. I thought you were a mirthful spirit, a guardian imp.

MOZART: Not when the joke's on me.

ME: Frankly, I don't know who the joke's on. These clothes just sort of crack me up. I wonder what Sally would think.

MOZART: And who is Sally?

ME: My girlfriend. Sally. I really wish she could see me in these. She wouldn't believe it. Nor would she believe that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is my haberdasher.

MOZART: Don't let it go to your head. I just thought.
. .maybe we should change back.

ME: I see a mood-swing coming on.

MOZART: A mood-swing? I don't like the sound of that.

ME: A mood-swing is a rapid and mercurial shift in overall affect.

MOZART: Say that again, please. Slowly.

ME: It's when you suddenly feel grumpy after a bout of hilarity, say. It's when you find yourself laughing at nothing at all, or crying for no good reason.

MOZART: Oh. What did you call it?

ME: A mood-swing.

MOZART: A mood-swing. (A song is born.) "I'm on a mood-swing and I'm out on a limb with a mood that is dim. . ."

ME: You're out Sondheiming-Sondheim.

MOZART: Who's that, pray tell?

ME: A lesser composer.

MOZART: If he writes like that, I should say so.
Hmmm.

ME: What?

MOZART: I feel better now.

ME: Another mood-swing.

MOZART: So mood-swings guide us from state to state.

ME: Yes. Unless you're on Prozac or something.

MOZART: Prozac?

ME: Just something we take for the blues. And the jollies.

MOZART: You know, there is too much of a cultural abyss between us. I'm afraid I don't understand you.

ME: You don't have to. In fact, all I wanted to know is how you got along in Vienna, and I think I got that.

MOZART: You know, I never really noticed the place. I was so damned busy composing, courting, or traveling, I hardly looked up. I'll bet you I couldn't even find the street I lived on today. It was just a place like so many others.

ME: You didn't notice. . .the architecture.

MOZART: Most architecture is mere window-dressing, a projection of the power and influence of the person who builds - or renovates - it. I got sick of architecture playing all those palaces. Give me a bare room with a piano and I'm on a heaven-kissing hill irradiated with sunlight.

ME: It's not where you are, but who you are.

MOZART: How pithy.

ME: Didn't say I was Shakespeare.

MOZART: I'm sorry. I can be a bit of a snob.

ME: We forgive the great their weaknesses and make up for it by oppressing the meek.

MOZART: Who said that?

ME: Got lucky.

MOZART: You know, I'm suddenly tired? I don't really get out much. People play my music, but they seldom want to talk to me. How do you say it? I don't get all that many hits.

ME: That's surprising.

MOZART: Just as well. If I had to choose between me and my music, it'd most definitely be the music.

ME: We are seldom as great as creations. If they're any good, that is.

MOZART: That does get you off the hook, doesn't it?
If I'd've known how much future generations would revere me, I would have misbehaved a lot more. I'm not even sure if I would have married Cosima. It just happened, you know? Not a bad girl, but she really didn't get the music. Good in bed, though. I'd say passing excellent, if you know what I mean. I'd even say the girl had a sort of genius in that way.

ME: That's nice.

MOZART: You are both more open and more hypocritical than we were. We didn't flaunt ourselves the way you do, but I'll bet you we did just as much. I'd even propose that the less flaunting there is, the more exciting the exchange. I mean, I didn't know what she looked like out of those clothes until I had the time to get her out of them. A woman in my day not only had to be conquered, she had to be uncorseted and unwrapped. With clothes like these, seduction is a sorry affair, isn't it? A aria sung at the top of the voice in quick time. A sort of on-the-spot, ready-to-go, easy-to-make-do activity. In my day, there was planning. (An inspiration.) You know, THAT was something Vienna was good for: seduction. Plenty of well-appointed rooms for that - if you could get into them. Casanova would have loved it here. So many little, out-of-the-way places when one could rendez-vous and savor the slow and complicated reality of courtship. Courtship, my friend, is everything.
Once the chase is over, the conquest is slight, and leads to melancholia. The desire to posses is overpowering, but the possession itself. . .that's why I loved music so much. You were always possessing it and throwing it off and possessing it again. Much more satisfying than any human relationship. More much satisfying than just about anything. Oh, my. I think time's up. I can only do about an half an hour, then I get scatter-brained. I hope I've helped.

ME: Thank you. You have. I'll go to Vienna with a greater appreciation of its nooks and crannies, as it were.

MOZART: Nooks and crannies. Very good. Nooks and crannies. I like it. I like it!

(Mozart leaves. I realize some moments afterwards that I am standing in his clothes. Wonder how I'm going to get out of them. But he was right: they're a lot more comfortable than you think and I think they look pretty good on me. Yep. They look pretty good
indeed.)