Disclaimers, acknowledgements, notes, warnings, etc: Please see Chapter 01.
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The Sound of Music Chronicles
Part I
The Twelfth Governess
Chapter 23
Femmes fatales and damsels in distress
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"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark.
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand´ring hark.
Whose worth´s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love´s not Time´s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle´s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours or weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:-
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man has ever loved."
William Shakespeare
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Vienna – A few days days later…
"You´ve found it!" the unmistakable sound of Elsa´s cultured voice spoke from somewhere behind him. "I knew you would be drawn to it, somehow," she hooked her arm in his, and joined him in the appreciation of the painting before them.
Georg turned and smiled at her.
"I did not know you collected art, Elsa."
"And I don´t! Dear old Rufus, it is his entire fault. He was the art collector. Art Noveau and symbolist painters – those were his preferences, but please do not ask me anything about them. I am afraid I wouldn´t be able tell one of these modern paintings from one of your little children´s doodles," she continued.
"O-ho, I don´t think this one would qualify as a doodle, my darling!" He gazed at the artwork again.
The painting that now hang in the drawing room of Elsa´s lavish Vienna house was a lesser known, earlier work of the celebrated Austrian artist, Gustav Klimt. It held a certain mysterious appeal to Georg. Dark and disturbingly erotic, it depicted an embraced couple – a much taller, dark haired man about to kiss a much smaller and innocent looking female wearing a white gown (1).
Elsa studied the painting, quizzically. It was as if she was trying to decide whether she loved or hated it.
"It was one of his favorites. I never quite understood why."
"I think I do. It is undoubtedly not one of Klimt´s masterpieces, but it has its charm," he replied casually, patting her hand. "Things forbidden had a secret charm," he quoted, not quite sure why that particular phrase came to his mind. "I believe that is how Tacitus said it."
"Who?" she asked, distractedly.
"Publius Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman senator who…" he began, but her eyes were still glued to the painting. "I am sorry, darling, I am being a bore. You promised you would stop me when that happened," he teased.
"Never mind, Georg. Now that I think of it… it does have a secret charm about it, indeed. It is funny, this has been here for ages, and I never realized it before," she cast him a mischievous glance, and pointed a long finger to the man in the painting. "Well, forbidden, forbidding, maybe both. In any case, he reminds me of you!"
Georg raised his eyebrows.
"Really? Does that mean that you are imagining yourself in the place of that damsel in distress over there?" he asked, cocking his head towards the painting.
"A damsel in distress? Poor little me?" She let out a pearly laughter. "Certainly not, darling! Although Rufus did use to say that I reminded him of the women in Klimt's paintings - strong and confident… yes, sensual too, that goes without saying."
"Oh yes – the femme fatale."
She laughed. "No, I would not go that far, Georg, although I am known for having broken a few hearts in my old days… although not as many as you have, Captain," she nudged him, and he chuckled.
He looked at the woman by his side, a bit critically. No, she was no femme fatale, although she was right – not only Max, but most of Viennese society would disagree with him. To those who did not know her, Baroness Schraeder was a snob, and even a bit shallow. Few people, closer to her, knew that appearances could be deceiving, at least in her case. She was a highly intelligent, cultured woman, who had her share of pain and suffering in the past, just like he had. A woman who knew very well how to use her classic beauty to get what she wanted, but only as a last resource.
Right now, what she wanted was him – she made no secret of that, not to him, not to anyone. That being the case, she also knew very well that her beauty alone would not be enough.
That evening, she wore a stunning red evening gown, since they were going to the Opera later. She did favor that particular color, and not without reason. It suited her perfectly, her looks and personality. In fact, Elsa von Schraeder was probably the only ice blond woman who could wear red without appearing vulgar – quite the contrary. Elsa always liked bold colors, even as a debutante. He remembered one of the first times he saw her, at the ball that had followed the SMU-6 christening in Fiume. He remembered Agathe, in an ethereal cloud of aquamarine silk, and Elsa next to her, gorgeous, but absolutely miserable in a peach colored gown. He remembered Agathe´s pearly laughter when Elsa said that she could not wait to get married so that she could wear any color she wanted and not only dull pastels.
Would he have noticed her, and not Agathe, had she been wearing scarlet that evening?
He doubted it, but he would not be a hot blooded man if he did not acknowledge the fact that he was noticing her now.
"After all, there is a reason why nun´s habits are not red," he thought, and the image of the new governess in her black postulant´s attire came to his mind again. No, no scarlet for her. Never. "Red is Cupid and the devil," he had heard somewhere, a color that conjured conflicting emotions, from passionate love to equally passionate hate. "But she would look perfect in blue… sky blue. Ocean blue…" A color that evoked wide open spaces, freshness, purity…
He shook his head and had to hold himself back in order not to curse loudly. One moment he was thinking about how alluring his future bride looked in red, and in the next he was trying to envision the children's governess in blue and thinking that she would look equally alluring in a color that would unquestionably be the right one for her personality. That was simply… unacceptable.
He decided to give his full attention to the lady next to him once more.
"You are never modest, Elsa, and that is one of the things I admire about you!" he spoke, in order to banish his disturbing thoughts, bringing them back to Vienna, where they belonged for the moment.
"She is no femme fatale, is she?" Her eyes narrowed a little bit, as she threw another critical look at the painting.
"Who?" he asked, distracted, his thoughts not exactly in the damsel in distress. No, the little Fräulein was surely not that, although she had a strange appeal…
"The woman in the painting, Captain! Darling, what is it? You were far away again just now, I know you were. I leave you alone with your thoughts for merely a second, and you start brooding again."
"I´m sorry, Elsa," he apologized, squeezing her hand. "You have my full and complete attention now."
"I hope so! You almost made me jealous of the girl in the painting! Don´t worry, that would never happen, I would never envy her. She looks so virginal – I don´t think I ever had that air about me even when I was one! It is why he kept it here, you know – he knew I would be jealous of the others, but never of this poor girl about to face a fate worse than death," she added, dramatically. "I wonder why she is so different from the rest of Klimt´s women…"
"I´m sorry, I can´t help you with that, Elsa. I am no connoisseur."
"Now, it is your turn not be modest darling – you are a true renaissance man, I have always known that (2)." He smirked, and she continued, returning her gaze to the painting. "I am considering donating it to a Museum, where it could be fully appreciated, instead of gathering dust and cobwebs here in this little room. What do you think?"
"I think it would be a fine addition to any Museum in Vienna. Any Museum in Europe in fact," he replied simply. "However, you should keep it in Austria."
"I will do that, if it makes you happy. Tell me - what do you like about it? You seemed… oddly fascinated a while ago."
"It reminds me of some…" He was about to say someone, but his quick wit allowed him to corrected himself in time. "It reminds me of something. How well you know your Shakespeare?" he asked in return, after searching his brain, and effectively finding, something else other than his governess that the image could remind him of.
"Not as much as you do, I´m afraid."
He quoted a few lines of a well know poem.
"´Love alters not with his brief hours or weeks,/ But bears it out even to the edge of doom…´ Art scholars may disagree with me, but I like to believe that was what he was thinking about when he painted that."
"It is… rather dark, don´t you think?"
"What? The sonnet or the painting?"
"Both! The painting mostly – apart from the maiden in distress, that is what I dislike about it the most. It paints a rather frightening picture of love." She shrugged. "Oh dear, I only hope I am sophisticated enough to avoid being condemned to such fate!"
"Like in most works of art, one sees what he or she wants to see, my darling Elsa. I think even your dear Rufus would not disagree with me on that one."
"What do you see, Georg?"
"A love that knows about pain and loss…"
However, it seemed that Elsa was no longer listening to him. She had turned to the door. Max Detweiler was there – he had heard the Captain´s last words and had stopped cold.
"For pity´s sake, Georg! Good grief! Pain and loss? When you are going to learn that in Vienna such gloomy matters are never discussed. At least in Elsa´s house, isn´t that true, my dear?" he said, smiling at the Baroness.
"Certainly, Max. Unless, of course, one has a bottle of the most exquisite champagne nearby, which I believe is our case."
"She always had a talent for reading my mind," Max said to Georg. Then to Elsa again. "Where is it, my dear?"
"Right there, waiting for you," she said, indicating a small table with a bottle of Don Perignon on ice, and three glasses. "By the way, Max, you are late! Georg and I were alone here for ten minutes, completely unchaperoned. Enough to start another scandal."
"Ten minutes, darling? Vienna certainly underestimates me," Georg purred, not able to resist the temptation of teasing her. It certainly had the desired effect – Elsa looked up at him, her eyes gleaming.
"Well, well! What Vienna does not know, Georg, is that ten minutes with you are worth a whole night with Casanova."
"If Vienna does not know, how the devil do you know that?" he asked, in the same tone with a quick cautionary glance to Max.
"I have my sources," she winked at him. "I could supply you with a list, you know – a very long list. Just to refresh your memory."
"Is there a list?"
"Oh, Georg," she laughed. "Somebody has to keep track of your past amorous pursuits if you do not! I am the woman, remember, I need to know where my competition is at all times!"
"I never thought you were the jealous type, darling."
"I am not, darling. Besides, it is them I have to worry about, not you. I´m just too clever for my own good about certain things," she finished, immodestly. "I can´t help it!"
He was about to ask her what exactly her sources were when Max – who had been completely forgotten by them – opened the bottle of champagne quite noisily.
"My, my… has the Captain been misbehaving again?" Max asked.
"Oh Max, I wish!" Elsa said, stifling a giggle by taking a sip of the glass of champagne that he had just handled her. "We were talking about Klimt, Roman senators, Shakespeare and virgins in distress."
"What an unusual combination!"
"I am an unusual man, Max," Georg finally spoke again, sitting on the couch, next to Elsa, stretching his long legs before him.
"Speaking of unusual, when in Salzburg, you should take Elsa to meet Drascher, of course. And that mad wife of his (3). I am not sure about Klimt, Roman Emperors or Shakespeare, but he would have a lot to say about distressed damsels. The pirate!"
"Don´t ever call him Drascher or he will twist your neck. He is Hans Schneider now, as quaint as it may sound to you. But don´t worry, I think I will spare you of that particular fate, darling," Georg said, giving her shoulders a light squeeze.
"But Georg, you promised to introduce me to all your friends in Salzburg."
He shook his head.
"Elsa, Erik Drascher is…"
"A rascal," Max intervened. "During the 40… no, make that 42 days I served in that U-boat, the best advice on how to stay alive was given to me by that scoundrel. He said "Max, it is all very simple. You just count the number of times we dive. Then you count the number of times we go back to the surface. Add both and if you don´t get an even number, don´t open the hatch!"
The Captain smiled at the memory.
"Yes, and up to this day, this summarizes the full extent of Max Detweiler´s knowledge about submarines," was his biting comment.
"It also explains why I am perfectly happy working on dry land exploring… I mean, discovering young talents. How is Erik – I mean, Hans nowadays, by the way?" asked Max.
"Happily and settled, I suppose. He owns the most disreputable shop in the Getreidegasse filled with junk he smuggles from all over the world. I haven´t seen him quite a while, in fact."
"Hm – he does sound very interesting, darling," said Elsa, leaning a bit closer to him.
"He is – more than you know. Completely unaristocratic!" Max added. "Tell me, Georg, does he still keep that remarkable collection of books in the back room?"
"Oh, a book collector! How curious!" Elsa exclaimed.
"Trust me, darling, I don´t think the kind of books he collect would be suitable to your taste."
"Hans Schneider collects books, Captain von Trapp collects governesses," Max said. Georg stilled, the glass of champagne half way to his lips. "Tell me, Georg, how is number twelve doing?"
"Why do you ask?" he asked, a little briskly. The tone did not go unnoticed by Elsa. "You never seem to take interest in any of the previous eleven women I hired."
"Why? Because whenever you hired any of the previous governess and fled to Vienna afterwards, after a few days, all one would hear from you were complaints about the poor woman´s complete inability for the job. But this time – nothing! Not a word. Complete silence."
"I have more far more pleasant things in mind than to think of whatever Fräulein… my new governess is up to, Max," he said, winking at Elsa. "To tell you the truth, I am so fed up with the whole lot of them that, as long as she is not trying to drown my children in the lake, I am perfectly happy for the moment."
It was, after all, the truth. Not the whole truth, but true enough.
The real reason why had had not fired Fräulein Maria before he left was still unknown to him. Not even loyalty towards the Reverend Mother of Nonnberg Abbey explained it because he was sure that the nun would understand his reasons for dismissing her. Lately, he tried to convince himself, to no avail, that he had not sacked her because she was, after all, a lot younger than the others, and certainly inexperienced as a governess, so that her age and inexpertness were a reasonable excuse for her early mistakes. Granted – she was accident prone, but that was something no one could be blamed for.
Whatever the reason was, he had no intention of dwelling upon it any further. Franz and Frau Schmidt had, for some reason, failed to send him the daily reports he had requested, but it hardly mattered to him anymore. He was done with it. Once he was back in Aigen, he would send the girl back to Nonnberg Abbey, where she undoubtedly belonged, in spite of the fact that some of the nuns there considered her to be their black sheep.
It was Elsa, again, who rescued him from unwanted thoughts.
"Now, hurry up, my dears. Five more minutes and we´ll be late, but if we leave now, I´ll have the opportunity to make my perfect entrance at the Opera!"
"Darling, you always make a perfect entrance," Georg said gallantly, as they walked to the door.
A/N: (1) The painting I have in mind here is Gustav Klimt´s Love (1985). (2) "Renaissance Man and (less commonly) Homo Universalis are related terms to describe a person who is well educated, or who excels, in a wide variety of subjects or fields. This ideal developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72): that "a man can do all things if he will". It embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance Humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible. Thus the gifted men of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts." Source – Wikipedia. (3) See my story "Treasures" for more about the character.