Disclaimers, acknowledgements, notes, warnings, etc: Please see Chapter 01.
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The Sound of Music Chronicles
Part I
The Twelfth Governess
Chapter 24
Changes
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"He loved her not
with apples or roses or ringlets
but with a real madness,
and he considered everything else
unimportant."
Theocritus
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"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."
Anatole France
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Elsa looked at the guest of honor, sitting across from her at the long, formal dinner table. Meeting her gaze, Captain Georg Ritter von Trapp smiled back.
"Behave, Elsa," she censored herself, inwardly.
Although she hated the idea, she had to tell herself that she was too sophisticated to swoon because a man had smiled at her. Fortunately she was not the blushing type, so that there was very little that betrayed her reaction to him... Looking at her now, regally composed, people would never possibly guess that he was the only man capable of making her knees weak only by only looking at her. Maybe the non observant, but not Max Detweiler, who now watched her, intently. No, the old fiend knew her to well to let it pass. What was it that had her betrayed this time? Her rapid breathing or her dilated pupils?
"What?" she asked him, feigning innocence.
"Did I say anything?" was his ironic reply. "I was just sitting here, enjoying my wine, as silence as a little lamb."
"You didn´t have to say anything," she said, meaningfully.
Max Detweiler, however, was not so easily dismissed.
"Apart from how amusing it is to watch you drool over our Captain like a lovesick débutante, I must say, my darling Elsa, I am as intrigued as you are. But don´t worry, your secret is forever safe with me."
"That I honestly doubt, darling. But… intrigued, Max? You?"
"Yes. Intrigued. Why the surprise?"
She looked at him in awe. Max would never cease to amaze her. As perceptive as he was, she never believed that he could not guess, could not known what was in her mind. Apparently, she had been wrong on all accounts. At the moment, however, she felt that she had to deal with the matter herself, and try to solve the enigma that Georg had become in the past few days alone.
The Captain von Trapp she had met for dinner at the Hotel Sacher, scarcely one hour after he had arrived from Salzburg, was not the same man who had left Vienna less than one month before. At first, she credited the subtle change to the fact that he had been tired and weary after driving so many hours in such foul weather. The next day, however, it was still there, whatever it was. Something had changed in him, something subtle, but very, very important. She did not quite know what, but it had.
Just now, for instance.
He had watched her carefully, as if holding his breath, while she sat down at the dinner table. Almost like if she were expecting her to say something, or expecting something to happen. Then he had shaken his head, as it to brush off a memory – and most definitely not a memory of a lost love this time, because he smiled, that little seductive, secretive half smile of his that she had always found so alluring. After that, she could read all sort of conflicting emotions in his face, but grief was not one of them.
Elsa had to give up her careful analysis of the aspects of her intended´s behavior that seemed odd to her when she was obliged to reassume her role of a hostess: she had neglected her dinner guests far too long because of her current love interest. Yet, as soon as the meal was over, and the dinner guests had moved to the drawing room to enjoy their drinks, Elsa was again, a woman with a mission. The mission was to find Captain von Trapp, who was no longer among the guests. It did not take very long for her to guess exactly where he could be.
It would be the third time Elsa would surprised him like that, sitting at the grand piano, staring at the black and white keys. The piano, was exactly like one he had in his own villa – she knew that because both she and Rufus and the von Trapps had gotten it as a wedding gift from Baron and Baroness Eberfeld. She wondered briefly if he had kept the magnificent instrument, worthy of the best concert halls in Europe, after Agathe had died. Although she had never been to Salzburg during the Salzburger Festspiele, she knew that the Trapp villa was always very busy during those weeks. Georg and Agathe used to host soirées, in which musicians attending the festivals would be guests of honor. Many famous piano concertists had played in that piano. Hers, on the contrary, had only been victim of her own musically untalented fingers…
She stood at the door to the music room, watching him for a few seconds. His hands in his lap were clenched into fists. He ached to touch those keys, to bring forth the music that she knew that he was very well capable of. That was almost palpable in his stance - his clenched jaw, his darkened eyes. The tension in his hands was so great that she could swear that they were shaking.
"Go on, darling, the piano will not bite your fingers, but I might if you don´t play one of my favorites" she had said playfully the last time she had found him like that, only to regret it almost immediately when she saw the pain etched in his face. Biting her lips, she realized, as soon as she said the words aloud, that she employed the same light, slightly flirtatious tone that Agathe did when she wanted him to play for her.
"You can´t live like this forever, Georg," she had said that day.
"Do you care to strike a wager on it?" he had asked, in his usual, self defensive sarcasm.
"Only if you are ready to admit defeat when the time comes. Trust me, my dear, I´ve been there where you are now."
"O-ho, I beg to differ."
She was intelligent enough to know what he meant that day.
Unlike his, her first marriage had not been a love match. She had been extremely fond of the late Baron Schraeder, and had been faithful and loyal to him until the day he died. Yet, although it had not been an unhappy union, she had to admit that her husband never made her blissfully happy either. In spite of her fondness for Rufus, the fact was that their marriage had been a successful business transaction in which both parts had profited from. Her family was saved from certain ruin and Baron Schraeder got himself an elegant young beauty for a wife.
Nevertheless, Rufus certainly had never looked at her quite in the same way Georg looked at Agathe. No children resulted from their union either - their two attempts in the early years of their marriage had ended in terribly traumatic miscarriages, and she had been advised by the best doctors in Vienna to avoid trying to conceive again. The fact that Georg would probably never want another child – not without seven of his own already – was oddly comforting to her. He certainly did not need or want more heirs!
For all those reasons, unlike Georg, less than one year passed after her husband death until she was ready to start living again, and to move on. She gave every single black item of clothing in her wardrobe to the poor, and vowed never to wear the accursed color again. Soon she was, once more, the best hostess in Vienna, throwing lavish parties in her house, attending every single ball of every season, and never missing a gala night at the Opera.
It had not been like that for Georg.
Elsa vividly remembered the day when he had first met Agathe, at the naval base in Fiume. The future Baroness von Trapp was the one to have the honor of breaking a bottle of champagne, as tradition demanded, in the SMU-6, the submarine Georg had just been assigned to command. Elsa had noticed him first, and the impressionable debutante that she was found herself in awe by the sight of the dashing young naval officer in uniform. She had been overcome with a powerful attraction that she had been too innocent to understand back them, although she had been capable of recognizing it.
"I want him," her mind had screamed, her knees weak. "And I shall have him…"
However, the moment when he had been introduced to Agathe Whitehead, Elsa had been clever enough to realize that if she ever had any hopes in catching Georg von Trapp´s eyes, and ultimately wearing his wedding band in her finger, she would be only wise if she forgot about it. Because he and her best friend were falling in love right before her very eyes…
Probably for the first and only time in her young life, Elsa von Schraeder, née Comtesse Enns, had shown the best side of her character as soon as she realized that Georg von Trapp was blind to any other woman other than Agathe Whitehead. She had no intention of becoming the epitome of an evil stepsister and stealing her friend´s beloved. If Agathe had not been at all interested in the young naval officer, or even if she were interested, but he did not reciprocate, she might try to charm him. That obviously wasn´t the case, and Elsa did have one remarkable quality. She was fiercely loyal to those she considered friends. Her loyalty to Agathe, whom she had known forever, was unquestionable, and, in the name of that loyalty, she pushed any hopes about Captain von Trapp aside from that very first day, even in spite of the strong physical attraction she felt towards him… An attraction that she realized was very much alive when she met him, a couple of decades later, at the Eberfeld´s home, when there was so little of him that reminded her of the dashing sea captain she had met more than a decade earlier.
Georg had been right that day – to let go of Agathe would not be easy, not for him. Not as easy as it had been for her to let go of Rufus, at least. However, she would make a promise to her dear friend, in her deathbed – she would try to keep Georg from being destroyed by his grief. It was a mission that she had accepted with the same seriousness he had accepted his military tasks, one she was bent on succeeding.
"I will begin with that cursed piano," she thought, briefly leaving the room before she saw her and running across the hall to the library, where she quickly found what she wanted.
"Here," she said, returning the music room. "I knew I had those somewhere," she said. Sitting on the piano bench next to him, she began arranging some music sheet before his eyes.
"What are you up to now, darling?"
"It will be a lovely idea to have some music in this house. I completely lack any kind of musical talent, but you, on the other hand…"
He tensed visibly, his jaw clenched, and he said nothing, not at first. So, she continued until she got some kind of response from him.
"Never mind the yellowish color, I haven´t touched these since my mother forced me to take piano lessons. I was so horrid." she rambled on, while he remained silent. "But I think we can find something that is adequate for your skills."
"Elsa," he murmured, when he noticed that she was not going to give up. "Not now!"
His tone was enough of a warning, but she chose to ignore it. With him, she had always acted like that, and it had always worked.
"No, Georg. I let you get away with this once, but not anymore. I admit, it was too soon before, but now you have to be ready for it. It is killing you, you know, to be away from your music."
"Elsa… It is not only the memories, darling. Honestly, if it was just that I would have started playing two years ago when I met you again – perhaps that very same night at the Eberfeld´s. But playing the piano is not exactly like riding a bicycle. You don´t forget the notes, but your fingers become clumsy and they forget what they are supposed to do."
"I know, you are too much of a perfectionist to be able to live with that."
"Precisely."
"Interesting, Georg, but unconvincing," she said honestly. "I know what those big hands and long fingers of yours are capable of doing, my dear, and they are not clumsy."
"Ah ha," he chuckled.
"No, I won´t take a no for an answer. Let me see what I have here… I hope that we can find something appropriate for your skills. I have the complete edition of Mozart´s Sonatas. That should lift everyone´s spirits!"
"Elsa…" he said her name again – this time his voice was entirely devoid of mirth.
"Beethoven´s Pathetique, Bach´s inventions, something by Scarlatti… I wish I had something from one of those Russians you are so fond of, but their work was always so beyond anything I was ever able to accomplish that I never bothered to… What is this doing here? Oh my, those really made me suffer. Heller´s piano studies!"
His reaction was as violent as it was unexpected. He banged the piano keys, resulting in an awful, loud and dissonant sound. It was enough to make her jump on the seat, and look at him in complete surprise. Never before he had reacted like that to her gentle coaxing.
She was rendered speechless for a moment, but she recovered quickly. Whatever had caused his reaction, her keen sixth sense told her that it had not been the memory of his wife. Why she knew that, she wasn´t sure. No, this was more inward than outward. He usually closed himself to the world, by turning into silence, by turning away and leaving, or – what most ordinarily happened – by letting out one of his dry and sarcastic remarks. Sometimes, when she pushed him too far, he would just walk away without a word. Certainly, punching a precious grand piano was not a typical gesture for the Georg von Trapp she knew. It had been such an outburst. She had caught him by surprise, and he had reacted accordingly. It had not been grief, but something else.
"I think there is hope for him, at last," she thought, taking his reaction as a positive sign.
"Well… How silly of me, I thought this would help," she said, hating that her voice shook slightly. "Forgive me for being so insistent, darling. I went too far."
He took her hands in his.
"No, forgive me for reacting like that. It was an inexcusable outburst. It was not your persistency, on the contrary. If it weren´t for you I would still be that half dead man you met two years ago." He took a deep breath before continuing. "I will play again one day soon. I promise. But this… Believe it or not, it was not… because of you," he said.
"What was it then, Georg? Who was it?" she asked, mentally congratulating herself for being right.
Suddenly, he was no longer looking at her. He was staring at the music sheets with the most unreadable expression in his face.
"Things are irrevocably changing, Elsa. There is too much happening at once. Just too much. Sometimes…" he chuckled. "… sometimes things can be quite overwhelming, even to a seasoned old sailor like myself."
"Politics? I know how much you worry about what will happen to your Austria."
"It´s your Austria too, Elsa," he reminded her. "Yes, it worries me. The possibility of seeing whatever little is left of my country completely disappear is enough to keep me from sleeping at night. I have been trying to be practical about it – I am wiring money to Switzerland, just in case we have to flee one day."
"Oh dear, do you think we run that risk?"
He shrugged. "I think there is a possibility, and if that happens one day I won´t be unprepared. I have seven children, I will do everything and anything I can to protect them."
"Oh yes, the children. You worry about them, obviously" she stated.
"Of course I worry about my children," he said irritably, which made her sure that she had hit the mark – or at least close to the mark.
She still did not understand what Heller´s Études had to do with the current state of Austrian politics or the von Trapp children. She knew Georg had virtually banished music from his life – and consequently theirs, she so believed – after the loss of his wife. No, the music book must have been the last drop before his patience expired. Yet, apart from all that, it was curious that there was something else other than annoyance in his reply. She detected a tone of… relief? Unknowingly, she had given him the perfect excuse not to reveal to her what was really bothering.
"The children," she thought. "Always the children!"
He continued speaking, still staring at the music sheets.
"I got a telegram from Franz earlier today – that would be my butler. He says that our phone in Aigen is inexplicably dead, so he cannot give me the daily reports I asked for because of the…" he seemed to be stumble upon the next words, "… the new governess."
"You always trusted your servants completely to run things in your home while you were away. Daily reports now? How very unlike you, Georg?"
"Why? Shouldn´t I want to know what my children and the… what my children are up to?" he asked, and his tone was one of self-defense.
"Yes, but you never seemed to care before. Not long ago you were here in Vienna for six weeks, and not a word about the children. What has changed, darling?"
There, she had maneuvered him back to the subject again. However, she knew he would not give in so easily.
"Nothing has changed, Elsa," he said, looking at her with that dangerous half smile, challenging her to keep questioning him.
She laughed.
"Do be careful, darling, you are contradicting yourself. You just said a moment ago that things were changing..."
"I know what I said," he exclaimed, irritably. "I – uh – I wasn´t talking about Austria, I was talking about us, of course. We are adults and we both know where this is leading and it is time we…" his voice died, and she insisted.
"It is time we what?" She held her breath.
He rolled his eyes.
"Georg, darling, why do you have to torture me like that!"
"Elsa, darling, you know we can´t… I can´t decide anything until I make sure all is well with the children. And at the moment, there is a… minor complication. This… this new governess, Fräulein…" There he was, staring at the music book again.
"The one Max was talking about."
"Yes, the very same."
"Since when a servant has you so worried, Georg?"
"I am not worry about her, specifically, and she is not a servant," he said immediately, and with surprising vehemence. "That is, not quite," he corrected himself. "She is on loan to me… to us."
"On loan?"
"From Nonnberg Abbey."
"Good Lord, what is a Benedictine nun doing in your villa?"
"Looking after my children - which is precisely the problem. The Reverend Mother referred her to me. She is not exactly a nun, but she will be one very soon. She is not very much a governess either."
"I see. How old is she?" she asked.
He shrugged.
"I have no idea. I usually do not inquire my governesses about her age," was his sarcastic comment. "It is completely irrelevant for the job they are hired to do."
"Well, why worry them? Who better than a future nun to discipline seven children? After all, you have tried everything else, haven´t you? That is, if the ludicrous tales Max has been telling me about your previous governesses are true."
"O-ho, they are quite true, I assure you."
"Why do I have a feeling that you are a little too worried about a nun looking after your little ones? She is a nun, Georg, what is so fearsome about that?"
He looked at her enigmatically, then shrugged.
"Elsa, it is important to me that nothing changes in the children's routine, especially now. If we decide to – uh - settle things between us, I don´t want anything else disrupting their lives."
"I see… Don´t worry, I am sure your little darlings will be just fine." He did not look like he believed her at all, but she was satisfied for the moment. "Come on, now, let us join our guests, before Max once again starts acting like a chaperon…"