The Sound of Music Chronicles
Part II
Interlude
Chapter 02
Once upon a dream
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A/N: I hope you enjoy this one. As I said, please don´t expect quick updates, I´m making very slow progress with this one. Thank you for your reviews, they are always welcome. Have fun!
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Cruel? I think there never was a cheating
More cruel, thro' all the weary days than this!
This is no dream, my heart kept on repeating,
But sober certainty of waking bliss.
Dreams? O, I know their faces, goodly seeming,
Vaporous, whirled on many-coloured wings;
I have had dreams before, this is no dreaming,
But daylight gladness that the daylight brings.
What ails my love; what ails her? She is paling;
Faint grows her face, and slowly seems to fade!
I cannot clasp her, stretch out unavailing
My arms across the silence and the shade.
Amy Levy
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"She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleam'd upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament…"
William Wordsworth
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A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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Captain von Trapp woke up that morning with a most curious cravingof a particular, very puzzling nature. It wasn´t a basic desire born out of the primal nature of a healthy human male in the prime of his life, which was precisely what made it so intriguing. No, there was little or nothing sexual about it, it was something else entirely. On the other hand, it was…
No, it couldn´t be! It just wasn´t like him at all!
Georg never thought of himself as a nauseatingly romantic type, far from it. More often than not, he used to roll his eyes in amusement when he saw his wife buried in the pages of a silly novel and sighing. His had upbringing conditioned him to view public displays of affection something bordering on the vulgar and not something that a man of his station should engage, even with the woman he loved. Fortunately, his wife came from a similar social environment as his, and tended to agree with their ideas. He rarely kissed Agathe when they were not completely alone, and the few times it happened in public, it was always her hand, her cheek or her forehead – never her lips. That was simply the way things were done, and he had never felt comfortable in changing that. Now, with Elsa, he was following the same rules.
In essence, romancing his wife was something very private, reserved for moments when they were completely alone, moments that became increasingly rare as the years passed and the number of their children grew. In spite of it all, miraculously, it was clear to anyone who looked at them that they were a passionate loving couple.
But then, he used to make up for it, didn´t he? – He remembered with a sad smirk. He and Agathe never failed to make the most of the little time they had for themselves. When the children were tucked in bed and the doors of the master bedroom closed behind them, giving his wife a very thorough kiss was the first thing he usually did, to compensate for the distance that sometimes they were forced to keep from each other during the entire day simply because that was how the world they lived in was like.
Today of all days, for the first time ever since he lost his wife, he woke up with the absurd need to feel again the thrill of those first moments after he closed a door to the world, leaving him with Agathe alone on the other side. To kiss a woman, to feel her lips caressing his own…
A woman – but not Agathe.
It was disturbing, to say the least.
How could that be? He wanted to kiss a woman the way he used to kiss his beloved wife every morning in the twenty years of their marriage, but his wife was not that woman… It was absurd, it was illogical, irrational. It was… unthinkable!
Why?
He frowned and considered the question for a moment.
Granted, as far as the act of kissing was concerned in itself, he enjoyed it as much as any other man, but even while he was married, whenever he woke up in an amorous mood, so to speak, kissing was not exactly the first thing in his mind. Elsa frequently accused him of being the quintessential unromantic male, as she put it, and not entirely without reason. It was maddening that someone as rational as he was, even in his dealings with the opposite sex, would wake up with such ideas. One and only one of them had ever appealed to him romantically, and now she lay dead and buried, in a grave covered with silly wild flowers that the children´s Fräulein had…
His thoughts halted. He punched the bed with clenched fists to relieve the sudden tension in his body.
What did his governess have to do with anything?
Annoyed by the sudden intrusion in his musings, he methodically considered his predicament again. He had to. He would never, could never allow that slip of a governess/tomboy/would-be-nun to drive him to the brink of irrationality.
What made the sudden urge even more maddening was the fact that not just any woman would do. It was not the occasional reaction of the hormones of a healthy but sexually deprived male, thus the kiss he longed for was not the mere prelude more intimate acts that would certainly follow, a kiss of lust, meant to arouse and to excite, but nothing more. It wasn´t that he didn´t want that – he did, but he wanted more: the woman he wanted to kiss so badly he could almost feel his lips on hers was a very specific one.
The trouble was that he had absolutely no idea who she was!
How absolutely maddening!
He tried to think of the women in his social circle. He considered every suitable living female that he knew in his life, he even considered a few unsuitable ones and found that none would be able to offer him exactly the earth shattering experience that he craved.
O-ho, but he knew who she was not, and that at least was a start: to his profound, utmost displeasure, the woman was not Elsa, the one he intended to marry.
It was, of course, utterly unfair to think about his future wife in that manner, but there was something lacking in their kisses, a certain elusive element that he failed to define. Physically they were highly satisfactory, they served their purpose, but emotionally they usually left him empty and bitter. He assumed that it was only natural, since, in a way, he was still recovering from the trauma that the loss of a spouse represented to him. There had never been any reason to expect that his relationships with women would ever be the same again, he was still adjusting to the changes in his life. His reckless affairs in Vienna before he met Elsa had proved that to him in spades. All he could do was to hope that things would start to change with Elsa in due time, after they were married.
Yes, change. With Elsa, there was always the hope that things would change in the future… No, things would have to change with her, but his wife was unreachable to him now, in the past. Regrettably, there was nothing about it that he could change, even if he wanted to.
Well, he didn´t think he would ever want to change a thing. He smiled sadly and, just for a moment, he allowed himself to remember the first time he and Agathe had ever kissed… Or, to put it correctly, the first time he had kissed her.
It happened the same day they were introduced, the day his first submarine was christened. They were at the grand ball in celebration of the ceremony that was held same evening. Ironically, it was also in that same ballroom that he would meet Elsa for the first time although, on that occasion, he did not have eyes for her blinding beauty. All he saw before him was Miss Agathe Whitehead.
It was their fifth dance together already, and the matrons in attendance were already raising their censorious eyebrows against the inappropriateness of their actions. As ridiculous as it may seem to modern eyes, another dance and Agathe´s reputation could suffer some damage, so he saw that fifth one as his last chance to have a private word with the girl of his dreams. Deftly, he whisked her away from the ballroom before the orchestra finished playing the waltz, to an adjacent room that was blessedly empty. The arrogant, impetuous youth that he was saw no reason why the gently bred maiden in his arms who was yet to deny him a dance would resist him, at least not after having agreed to waltz with him five times. Thus, before his partner could say a word, he was kissing her passionately. She did not fight him at first, and he misinterpreted her acquiescence as a sign of acceptance while, quite the contrary, it meant only that she had been too stunned to do anything else but to submit.
The stinging slap in the face he received from her the moment their lips parted was as passionate as the kiss. A slap, an indignant "How dare you?" spoken in the most perfect upper class British accent he had ever heard in his entirely life and she was out of his sight, leaving him behind, completely bewildered. It would take one week, at least two nerve wracking conversation with her formidable parents, several dozens of pink roses – her favorites - accompanied with notes with his most sincere apologies to convince Miss Whitehead that he was worthy of her attentions again.
The memory of his little ordeal would always make he and Agathe laugh over the happy years that followed. It made him smile even now. There was, however, a difference – this time he did not avoid the memory, he welcomed it, embraced it, savored it as if it were a delicacy of the rarest type. There was a sense of nostalgia attached to it, but not the anguish, the sadness he feared. It was simply a good memory of times past.
Still lingering in bed, he frowned.
When had that changed exactly? Was it just another one of the small miracles Elsa had been able to accomplish, one that he hadn´t realized until now? Was he really ready to love the woman he had chosen to be his wife as she deserved to be loved? Or was it – as absurd as it would seem – the work of another miracle worker, one who had barged into his house causing havoc with every step she took, the problem postulant of Nonnberg Abbey?
His frown deepened as the vivid image of the children´s Fräulein invaded his thoughts for the second time in the past ten minutes. He allowed himself to consider Fräulein Maria Whateverherlastnamewas for a moment… What harm would there be in it, anyway?
Slowly, the frown turned into a devilish little smile.
If he were to drag someone like her from a ballroom for a thorough kiss, undoubtedly his punishment would be far worse than a slap in the face, considering the fury with wish she had lashed out at him the day before. He chuckled, wondering about the unfortunate male who had been the first to try to steal a kiss from the tomboyish female. O-ho, he simply had to exist, there had to be someone before the little spitfire made the decision to lock herself for life and throw away the keys. Although she had said she was a mountain girl, unless she had grown up in isolation in one of Austria´s highest peaks, she had to have some kind of life before she entered the convent, and if she did, then someone must have noticed her before. The Fräulein certainly wasn´t the quiet, subdued type. He found it hard to believe that no man had ever even tried to taste those luscious pink lips of hers, had never touched…
"What the hell?" he exclaimed, furious with himself and with the direction of his thoughts had taken – and not for the first time. "It was that blasted dream," he cursed again. "It had to be the dream."
It had not been an easy night for him. Half of it he spent musing about his troubles with the children and their governess, devising ways in which he would successfully put the pestering Fräulein in her right place without running the risk of being caught unawares by her particular brand of logics.
The other half was restless, plagued by dreams… or nightmares.
He dreamed he could not remember Agathe´s face…
It was simply… gone, wiped out from his memory. The sensation of panic was horrifying, something he did not recall experiencing in his life, worst that his worse experiences during the Great War. He needed to see her just one more time, to look at her again, so that he would never forget, but every time he tried, he saw nothing but a blank space where her face should be.
In his dream, he got up from his bed. He needed to find something that would help him remember, only to be reminded, in the worst possible manner, that he had removed every image of her from his sight. There wasn´t a single photograph to be found. He searched everywhere, in the silent, empty hallways of the villa at night, but there was nothing but darkness before him. Until he saw a woman, only the shadow of the white dress she was wearing, so faint that it was barely discernible to his eyes.
Who was the lovely apparition?
Oh, she could only be his Agathe, who else would haunt his dark dreams like that? On the other hand, Agathe would not do that to him, she would never torture him in such manner, by withholding from him the memory of her face…
There was only way to find out – he had to look at her face. If she was his wife, he would be able to look at her just once more and remember… He would not have her back by his side when he awakened, but at least he would not have forgotten her face. If she was not… no, he was not ready yet to consider that possibility.
She escaped him as he tried to catch her, so he started to pursue her. Larger and faster, eventually he caught up with her, cornering her against the door that led to the attic. A door that, even in dreams, was firmly locked.
He could see her more clearly now, as the moonlight streamed though a small window in the hallway. Her dress reminded him of one worn by the woman in the Klimt painting he had admired in Elsa´s parlor weeks before. From her neck up she was still immersed in darkness, so that her hair could not be seen. It struck him briefly that she was much taller than his wife.
He spoke to her, while she stubbornly kept her back to him.
"Who are you? Why did you bring me here? Agathe, is that you, my love? Why this place where I now keep every object that was so dear to you? What are you trying to tell me, do you want me to open this door again, to let the memories of you intrude in my life once more? I would, gladly, if you would only let me see you… If you would let me know that it´s indeed you…"
The apparition answered to his pleas.
She turned around to look at him before he could raise his hand to touch her, before he could bring her to his arms.
He finally saw her face….
He woke up before his mind could register it, bathed in cold sweat.
Closing his eyes again, he tried to see Agathe in his mind. He couldn´t at first, just like in the nightmare, and panic made it hard for him to breathe. Only as he calmed himself down the details came back to him: her soft, curly hair framing her face, her beautiful brown eyes, her upturned nose, her porcelain skin, her luscious lower lip, the tiny mole on the left side of her neck. It was all still there for him to remember, every detail etched in his memory forever.
He sank back in his pillows, nearly shouting his relief, taking huge gasps of air until he felt normal again.
It was another face, the one in the dream was the one that was now completely forgotten.
The face of the woman he wanted...
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