Another Story About Raindrops on Taxis
Written for the Proboards April taxi prompt. What I love is how, while the stories are similar in some respects, each shines with that author's special talents. Others are funny or clever or sweet. Mine, of course, is angsty. Don't own, all for love, etc.
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He turned the key again, but the engine showed no sign of life. All around, rain came down in sheets, drumming incessantly on the car's roof, mocking him with a reminder that he was utterly, totally, and completely stuck.
Being left alone with one's thoughts was a dangerous thing, capable of turning a small ripple of inconvenience into a tidal wave of doubt and fear. Because he wasn't only stuck in a stalled car on an empty Salzburg side street. He was bound by obligation to seven children he was afraid he'd forgotten how to love. And for three years, he'd been mired in bottomless grief.
He'd tried to escape. Drinking hadn't worked, nor had a series of expensive hobbies: - a racing yacht that lay offshore in Trieste, a glider in Zurich, thousands of marks lost at the gambling tables of Monte Carlo, the half-finished paintings in the basement of a rented studio in Rome. One midnight, he'd even slipped into the ballroom to spend a desperate hour at the piano, as though he might be able to summon her from wherever she'd gone to with the music that she loved. The piano had been banished to the attic the very next day.
Elsa Schrader had been his latest attempt at diversion: she was lovely, undemanding and entertaining, and asked no more of him than he could give. Miraculously, he'd felt himself relax, slowly, in her company; he'd begun to sleep well and had put on some badly- needed weight. The unfamiliar sensation was almost pleasant, and had kept him in Vienna far too long, two weeks when he'd promised to be away for only one.
But then came the call from Frau Schmidt: another governess had flown the coop. Something about toothpaste, and dental bills.
"Can't you find another one?" he asked brusquely.
"That's just it, Captain. This is the eighth governess the agency has sent us. None has stayed longer than a few months."
"Between the agency's fees and the way they forced me to pay those girls off, everyone's been quite generously compensated for their trouble," he snapped, and then immediately felt ashamed. The housekeeper had been with them for years; not only had she been a particular favorite of Agathe's, but she'd held things together for the last three hellish years.
"I'm sorry," he apologized, "but I'm not sure what it is you expect me to do."
"I don't know if you remember, Captain, but when they sent this one, they said it was the last time. No more replacements. There is one other agency in Salzburg. I can call and inquire, but …"
He could practically hear the unspoken reproach: "They are your children, Captain."
But Frau Schmidt only added, "I thought that maybe if you came home to talk to the children, it might help calm things down. They miss you a great deal, you know."
He had a hard time imagining that his return might make a difference to them, not after the mess he'd made of things. The truth was, he dreaded having to face them: Gretl, whom he barely knew. Friedrich, who was showing disturbing signs of turning into a young man, one who obviously needed a father as much as Georg had needed his. Liesl, whose unnerving gaze conveyed her disappointment that he'd left a teenaged girl to bear an undeserved burden. Louisa, who looked so much like her mother he could hardly meet her eyes.
Once again, his reply was unintentionally harsh. "How hard can it be to hire a governess? Forget the agency. I'll do a better job on my own." More apologies, and he was on his way home to Salzburg within the hour.
A roar of thunder shook Georg back to the present. He'd left Elsa in Vienna with promises to return quickly, and had stopped briefly in Salzburg before making the last few minutes' drive to Aigen. He wanted to choose some small trinket for her, one he'd deliver in person as soon as he could get a new governess settled. Of course, he could just as easily have run this errand the on his return trip, but the truth was he was delaying the inevitable. He'd parked just long enough to run into a jeweler's shop, hastily choosing a diamond bracelet without giving it much thought.
And now his car wouldn't start. Around him, rain pounded into puddles and flowed in rivers in every direction.
He heard the soft putter of an engine nearby. Just ahead, he could see headlights glimmering in the rain, headlights belonging to an enormous black taxi. As the taxi drew nearer, Georg swiftly leapt from the car, ignoring the sting of cold rain on his face, and waved energetically. But the driver shook his head regretfully, nodding toward a passenger sitting in the shadows of the rear seat, and drove on.
The curses had barely left his lips when the taxi reversed course and pulled back until it was even with Georg. He flung open the door and threw himself into the back seat.
"Thanks, man," he told the driver. "I might have waited an hour for another one."
"Don't thank me," the driver told him. "Thank her. We're not supposed to pick up multiple fares, but the young lady insisted."
Georg turned to find a young woman smiling a greeting. "Hello," she said cheerfully. Her damp golden hair lay sleek against her head, with a few stray curls plastered against her neck. He shifted uncomfortably under her clear blue gaze, which glowed even in the dim shadows of the taxi.
"Thank you for intervening on my behalf," he said politely, but his courtesy was tinged with wariness. It never failed to shock him, how many giggling young girls, barely older than his daughters, were on the hunt for a rich husband. He steeled himself for the inevitable: the glimpse at his right hand, the disappointed reaction to the gold band he wore still. But no, nothing like that, just her steady, direct gaze.
"Sir?" The driver cleared his throat. "May I ask where you're going?"
"Right," Georg startled, tearing his attention from those eyes. "I'm going out to Aigen. Take the young lady wherever she likes first, of course. I'm in no rush," he reassured the driver, grimacing inwardly at the thought of the unruly horde waiting for his return.
"Very well, then, Nonnberg Abbey and then out to Aigen," the driver replied.
Nonnberg Abbey? He turned to inspect his companion again. This time, he noted her shapeless black dress and sensible boots. She was looking at her lap now, nervously wringing some bit of sopping wet fabric in her hands. It was black-and-white and-
"Oh," he blurted. "I'm sorry, Sister. I didn't know - I mean, I didn't realize..." He wasn't sure what he was apologizing for.
"It's not sister," she said quietly, and he was surprised at the roses that bloomed in her cheeks. "I'm a postulant there. Or at least, I was a postulant there. After today, they'll probably throw me out on my ear."
"Were you out on some errand? Visiting the sick, or feeding the hungry, or..."
She laughed, but it was a sad, defeated little laugh. "No, no. I ran away, I mean, just for the day. The storm broke on my way back, but when I woke up this morning, it was an absolutely beautiful day. The sky was so blue, and everything was so green and fragrant. I just had to be a part of it. I grew up on the mountain, you know. I miss it so much. When I'm sad or lonely, the feelings build up inside me until, well, I run away."
"This isn't the first time?" He couldn't say why, but tucked into the warm, cozy back of a taxi while the storm roared around them, he found this girl's story diverting. Maybe because it had nothing to do with diamond bracelets and dead wives and champagne-soaked waltzes and children who might as well be orphaned.
"No," she admitted, "but it might be the last. Sister Berthe told me that if I did it again, it would be proof that I'm not meant to be a nun. That it's not the life I was born to live."
"She's the one in charge, then?"
"No. That's Reverend Mother. She's more forgiving, or at least she's the one who's always saying that God forgives us a million times, a million times a million. But she also thinks my headaches might mean that living at the Abbey is not the best thing for me. Not God's will."
The girl had lapsed into a contemplative silence, chewing her lip. The gesture touched and stirred him somehow. Outside, lightning forked the purple sky. The rain hammered steadily around them while the wipers slapped at the windscreen, again and again, a soothing sound despite the force of the storm.
He dreaded it already, his return to the villa, knowing that as soon as he arrived, he'd be fighting the urgent desire to flee to Vienna. To anywhere, really.
Was it God that called her back? Something, surely, some power more magnetic than seven children, seven children loved too much and not half enough.
"So you keep running away, but you always find your way back?" he asked.
"I don't have anywhere else to go," she said matter of factly.
"Most young girls want to have a family, a home of their own," he prodded at her, though he didn't understand why he did it.
"Those things are definitely not for me," she said flatly.
Regret pinched at him; he should not have been baiting her. "Of course. It's very admirable, what you're doing, serving God that way. Not everyone can do it."
"I'm not sure I can do it either. I mean, I love God. With my whole heart, I really do. I pray constantly to do His will. It's just that..."
Now he was curious. "That what?"
"That's the thing about praying. I feel closer to God when I'm on the mountain than I do at the Abbey. It's easier for me to pray to Him up there. Oh, I feel safe at the Abbey, but there are so many rules, you know, and it's hard to remember that following those rules is God's will. Does God really care if we smile at a friend, or say hello during silent hours? Or eat a candy bar? Or if our clothes are rumpled? And how can it possibly be that God does not want us to sing? When I'm on the mountain, oh, I don't know, my heart just - I mean, I feel..."
Without warning, she threw her arms wide, unfortunately knocking his damp hat off his head and onto the floor of the taxi.
She gasped an apology. "I'm so sorry, sir. I didn't mean..."
"Sir." That stung a bit.
Suddenly, the taxi lurched violently, swinging one way and then the other before skidding across the road. The young woman was thrown against him and by pure reflex, his arm went around her shoulders.
A moment later, they were moving on steadily again.
"Sorry. Slippery out there," the driver called.
"I'm sorry," the young woman apologized. "The taxi-"
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Y-yes, I'm fine," she said, and there was an awkward pause.
"Are you sure?"
"It's just that - I think you can let go of me now," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper, and he could see the blush creep back into her cheeks.
"Of course, of course," he said hastily. "Sorry."
"No, no, I'm sorry. Reverend. I mean, Sir."
He had to do something to put her at ease.
"I'm Georg," he offered his hand, and she shook it with a relieved smile.
"Maria. How do you do?"
She peered past him out the window.
"We're almost there," she sighed.
"Try to restrain your enthusiasm," he said drily.
"Oh, I love the sisters. Even Sister Berthe. They've been nothing but kind to me. There's one of them, Sister Margarethe, she...anyway it's not the sisters. Or the praying, even. It's..."
"It's what?"
"It's all the rules. The discipline. What to wear and how to walk and what to eat and how to pray and how to spend every minute of the day. I hate discipline."
"Discipline?" He had nothing to say on the subject of God's will, but discipline was a topic he knew something about. "Good discipline is essential. It builds character. Drives achievement. Why, without it..."
He never got to finish his sentence.
"Here you are, Fraulein," the driver said, pulling up outside a tall, forbidding stone wall punctuated by a narrow iron gate.
"Thank you so much," Maria fluttered, leaning forward to give giving the driver a wide smile that somehow made Georg feel he was missing out on something. After all, the taxi driver was simply doing his job. Speaking of which, how well-fixed could a postulant be?
"Listen," Georg told her urgently, "I don't want to offend you, but may I - I mean, you can't possibly pay for..."
"No worries, sir," the taxi driver broke in. "No charge for the sisters."
"Of - of course then." He turned to the young woman. Somehow, he regretted that this interlude was coming to an end.
"Goodbye, Fraulein Maria. I wish you the best of luck no matter what your future holds."
"Oh, you too, sir. I was awfully rude, wasn't I, chattering on about myself, and not a word about you. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to - well, I wish you the best of luck on your journey as well."
With that, she plastered her wrung-out wimple on top of her damp hair, ducked out of the taxi, waved merrily in his direction and then threw open the iron gate and dashed within.
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One year later
He'd been right about one thing. It wasn't hard to hire a governess, not with all the practice he was getting. He'd already done it three times in the last year and was apparently about to do it again.
Around him swirled the uproar and antics of seven unruly children who had greeted him warmly on his return from Vienna and then proceeded to go out of their way to do everything possible to infuriate him. Frau Schmidt was clearly nearing the end of her rope. And he realized, with a sinking heart, that he'd better stay a day or two to make sure things were squared away before running back to Vienna again. Last time, he'd been able to stay a month.
The day had begun promisingly enough. Georg was full of hope as he greeted the eleventh governess just after breakfast and briefed her on her duties. She seemed to have the children reasonably well in hand when she escorted them – on time, he'd noted approvingly – to lunch. He felt a brief flare of optimism before - well before the incident involving the fish cakes, the pepper grinder and a small garden snake.
He didn't know which of the seven the mastermind was, but it didn't matter; the lunch table was barely cleared and he was writing her a check while Franz called a taxi. The woman crackled with rage, spitting words about little monsters, chaos and a complete lack of discipline.
Discipline. The word snaked its way into his brain and lodged itself there. He needed discipline desperately, or rather his children did. Now where had he heard something about discipline? The thought teased the edges of his brain – an incident he could barely recall, it was raining at the time, he thought, and-
Nonnberg Abbey. That was it. One of Agathe's causes, but he wasn't sure if she'd been the one to tell him that Nonnberg was a bastion of discipline. Surely they could make some sort of recommendation.
He pulled out a piece of paper and began to write a letter.
Next time, he hoped, it might be six weeks in Vienna. Or more.
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THE END