Disclaimers, acknowledgements, notes, warnings, etc: Please see Chapter 01.
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The Sound of Music Chronicles
Part I
The Twelfth Governess
Chapter 29
Agathe
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"Love leads to present rapture,-then to pain;
But all through Love in time is healed again."
Leland, Charles Godfrey
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"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
(Juliet at II, ii)
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Maria would have sworn that she had no intention of looking for that place, at least not at first. She certainly did not have that particular purpose in mind that day. She was naturally inquisitive, that was a fact, but she usually drew a line at things that were just none of her business. At least things that she had been repeatedly warned in a rather severe tone by a certain sea captain, that she was not supposed to meddle with. Maybe it was precisely for that reason that she was not able to help herself. Or maybe it was because of the children, and what they had been telling her about their father.
Captain von Trapp had been gone almost a month, since that morning, when he had left her standing in the rain, with a pitiful little vase of alpine flowers in her hands – a rejected gift to his bride. In the weeks that followed, that image of him, the look in his eyes, alternatively prickly, sad, angry and cold, had been replaced with another one, painted by the children, little by little, as their trust and confidence in her grew and they began sharing stories of happier times with her.
The father the children told her about was not the intimidating martinet who ruled his house like a warship. No, their papa, as they called him in the old days, would romp around with them, and would even help them to turn his study upside down while they played Indians in a rainy day – the same room that today was off limits to everyone in the house, unless summoned there by him. He would teach them how to turn the dinner table into a make believe submarine with the help of sheets and blankets. The father they remembered fondly loved to tell them creative bedtime stories before they went to bed, tales from the sea told with such vivid imagination that even Kurt, who was much too young when his mother died, still remembered details of them. The Captain the children adored would take them to one of the many lakes around Salzburg every other Sunday, or whenever the weather was nice, to teach them basic nautical skills, because, as he would say, "No son or daughter of mine will ever be a strange to boats or the sea."
Although if she tried really, really, but really hard, she could almost picture the Captain running after his children with a garden hose in a summer day, the Baroness von Trapp remained, to Maria, a faceless mythical creature, an angel hovering over the eight of them. As hard as she tried, she could not picture her face. After three weeks in the house, she had yet to see a portrait, the children had none in their bedrooms, which she always found strange. It suddenly became important for her to know about the late Baroness, as she realized what her untimely death had done to that family, especially to the man the children once fondly called papa.
Whenever the Captain´s wife was mentioned by the children or by some of the other servants she sometimes talked to, she had never dared to let her curiosity about the children's mother show. She tried to convince herself that it was only natural – if she wanted to help them, she needed to know how their mother was like – something told her it was more than just that. She felt that she needed to know what she looked like, she needed to know she had indeed existed. It was so morbid, she thought, being so curious about the poor dead woman. Was she only curious because she was his wife or the children's mother? Everything was so puzzling, and her mind was behaving in a way that was simply unknown to her.
Such was Maria's mood when she left the villa to go to Aigen that day.
Every Sunday morning, she used take the children to the village, where she attended the morning mass at the small parish church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The children had been reluctant to accompany her at first, but she had never forced them. She knew rebellious children well enough in order not to – she had been one herself. Soon, they were enjoying the Sunday outings to the picturesque village that was Aigen. They were even enjoying themselves during Mass - Father Wassner´s (1) sermons were anything but boring. Frau Schmidt or Frau Poppmeier would usually join them, and stay in the village afterwards, to spend the rest of the day with their families. As for Maria and the children, after the Mass was ended, if the weather was nice enough, they would walk back to the villa, climbing a few trees here and there on the way.
It was not Sunday, however. It was Tuesday. That alone gave a different light to the day. The church was not so busy with parishioners attending mass – the place was quiet, and it seemed that everyone was enjoying the warm summer day elsewhere. Maria was not wearing her habit, but one of her favorite new dresses, much more suitable for what she had planned for the day ahead. The children were not wearing their good clothes, but their play clothes made of the old curtains that used to hang in her bedroom. The only thing in common with their Sunday excursion was Frau Poppmeier, who had accompanied them because she had errands of her own in the village.
"Frau Poppmeier, would you mind if I walked around for a little bit?" Maria asked, a bit hesitantly. It was not the woman's job to watch over the children, and she had already learned the hard way that most of the staff of the Trapp villa was very particular about what everyone's place in the house was. She knew she was running the risk of asking too much of her, but the woman's answer surprised her.
"Of course. I even asked Frau Schmidt the other day when you were finally going to have some time for yourself."
"You did?"
"I did! She told me that the Captain apparently forgot to leave her any specific instructions in that respect. In fact, it was the first time such a thing has ever happened in the Trapp villa – the Captain tends to be very thorough about anything concerning the running of his household."
"But I do have every Sunday off," Maria retorted.
"Yes, but that is a courtesy of Fray Schmidt, the Captain never said a word. But oh, I am sure he would not mind if you had a little more free time now and then. God knows how hard you have been working – the children, and all that sewing and…" she lowered her voice, "… the surprise for the Baroness!"
"Oh, I don't need a whole day now, just a few moments."
"Go along, please. My doctor's appointment is not until nine thirty, so I have some time. I'll keep an eye on the little ones for you."
"Thank you, I shall not be long" Maria replied, with a smile.
"I'll take the children to the park. You can meet us there whenever you are ready."
Maria nodded, and as soon as she reassured the children that she would be with them shortly – they had planned a boat ride in the lake later that day.
"The Captain probably did not expect me to stay here long enough to be entitled to a day off," she thought, shaking her head as she briskly walked away. "Well, I showed him, didn't I?" The question remaining to be answered was if the Captain would like what she had to show him when he got back.
She did need a little time for herself – it had been weeks since she had been able to breathe on her own. In fact there were times she thought she had forgotten how it felt to be alone with her thoughts. Although she had taken the children to some of her favorite places high in the mountains, she had to admit that she missed the sense of freedom she felt whenever she was up there by herself, with her own thoughts and feelings. More than anything, she missed singing, just for the sake of it, at the top of her lungs, without worrying about being in tune – it was something that she could do only up there, in the mountains. That day in particular, she had woken up with a nagging feeling that something was about to happen.
She walked to the place that seemed to be drawing her like a magnet. Not the nearby hill, just behind the church, but to the grave yard.
Yes, she was curious about him too, she could not help it, she thought, as she made her way through the trees. Curious as she had never been about any other human being before in her entire life. She was curious about his feats during the war, about the wondrous underwater boats he commanded. The bits and pieces of information she had heard from the children, from Frau Schmidt and Frau Poppmeier fascinated her. Yet, it was not only his military career that had her intrigued – it was the elusive, still faceless woman who haunted him, the one had broken his heart by dying under such tragic circumstances, the one who had changed him from the man he used to be.
She knew enough about the Captain now to draw a few conclusions of her own. At first, she found his striking good looks incompatible to the image she had in mind of a seaman, let alone a captain. It was not only his looks, although she had to admit that his appearance had overwhelmed her in the strangest possible way. His house was not what she would have expected from a sea captain either, even a military one – there was not one nautical symbol in sight. Except for the whistles and the orders, the children's sailor clothes and that 25 pages schedule of activities, it would have been hard for her to guess that Georg von Trapp´s life had anything at all to do with the sea.
Her employer was a very peculiar man, there was no denying that, and Maria had little doubt that most of the staff shared her opinion. For an aristocrat, he was an interesting mixture of an eccentric with a man who lived by the rules dictated by his status in society. Georg von Trapp was not merely a naval commander, but he had been a submarine commander. That made all the difference, she had been told. He was used to being the lord and master when in command of his U-boat. Naturally expected his household to run in the same manner, it was practically second-nature to him. Herr Schmidt, who was the housekeeper's husband and the gardener of the villa, had told Maria that while the Captain was underwater, sometimes he would not have any contact with his superior officers for a very long time. His will was the law, and he was used to being obeyed without questioning and any member of the crew who even considered daring to defy him would be court-martialed.
For that reason, he was used to act more according to his own good judgment than with what his superior officers might have expected of him. That was precisely how he earned every other one of his medals. From that, Maria concluded that he followed rules only because he chose to, but he would not hesitate in doing otherwise if he thought it was the best thing to do. Apparently – and unfortunately -, it was not what happened in her case.
Peculiar indeed.
What made him different from a stereotypical seaman, however, said a lot about the man himself. Frau Schmidt had said that after his wife died, he had pushed away everything that reminded him of her, even the children. It did not take Maria too long to realize that he had done the same thing to the sea when Austria lost its Navy – for what other reason had he chosen to leave hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest port?
That was the directions her thoughts had taken when she found herself walking among the graves, marked by intricate iron crosses. She did not know exactly what she was looking for. All she had was the last name – von Trapp. No one had told her what the Baroness first name had been, and she never dared asking. All she knew, apart from the fact that she had married the Captain, borne him seven children and died young, was that she was English, and her grandfather had invented the torpedo. Or had it been her great-grandfather? The few times people talked about her, she was referred to as the Captain's wife, or the late Baroness.
So distracted she was by her thoughts that she nearly stumbled upon a grave. She had not exactly expected to find a grave there, a bit apart from the others, under a ginkgo tree. Wincing, she bent down, in order to massage her bruised right toe. It was the beautiful poem she read in the epitaph that attracted her attention at first:
"Come to us in our dreams.
Live in our hearts.
Be part of our thoughts.
Stay with us.
Beautiful lady we miss you..." (2)
It was only instinct that told Maria she had found what she had been looking for. She had also been right about something else – she had always believed one could learn interesting things from a grave.
"Stay with us…"
It was so sad!
How could anyone move one after losing a loved one without willing to let go of the past, without willing the deceased one to move on as well towards a higher spiritual life?
That was what the epitaph spoke about to her. Although beautiful and poetic, it had been written by someone who refused to let the past go, and by doing that was preventing him from having a happy future. Someone like… She felt the most absurd lump in her throat – so unlike her, because Maria was not someone who cried very easily. Laughter always came naturally to her, even in the most inappropriate moments, but the same could not be said about tears. Yet, that was what she felt prickling her eyes when she read the lines below the simple, and yet poignant, little poem.
"In memory of
Agathe Whitehead von Trapp
Beloved wife and mother."
Agathe…
That was her name. It was not a good omen, Maria thought, recalling the gruesome and tragic story of the martyrdom of Saint Agatha – a story that gave her nightmares after she had heard it for the first time. Sister Berthe was particularly fond of the Sicilian martyr, and loved to use it as an example for the postulants, describing her ordeal in excruciatingly gruesome details – the story of the maiden who suffered the most terrible tortures but held on firmly to dedicate her life to God's service (3).
"Remember Saint Agatha," she used to say, whenever a postulant came to her tempted by the life outside the convent walls. "Live by her example! If you want to dedicate your life to His service, you must not allow anything, whether it is temptation or torture, to stray you from your path."
Fortunately, Agathe von Trapp had a happier life than the woman she had been named after, even though her death had been just as tragic, for entirely different reasons.
There were some withered roses on top of the grave, placed there probably weeks before. To Maria, that was even sadder than the little poem. Most of the other tombs displayed colorful vases of flowers, but not that one. Her sadness turned to anger – was that the whole extent of the Captain's grief? Neglecting his wife's final resting place was almost as terrible as neglecting his own children. It was not that the grave itself was in a sorry state – it wasn't. On the contrary, it appeared to be well kept. However, the dead flowers depressed her. Something had to be done about it, and, at the moment, she had the power to do it. Without hesitating, Maria picked up the posy of flowers, wondering where and how she could get some fresh ones for Baroness von Trapp. Fortunately, wildflowers could be found everywhere you looked in Austria this time of the year, and in a couple of minutes, Maria had gathered a large, colorful bouquet, which she used to replace the withered one.
"Maybe one day I'll bring the children here," she thought. "That is, if the Captain allows me to stay until September".
In any case, she vowed that, for as long as she remained in the Trapp villa, Agathe von Trapp would always have fresh flowers in her grave.
That decision made, with one of her typical shrug of her shoulders, Maria forced her mind back to happier thoughts. In the next second, she was running towards the children, who were scattered all over the green field next to the church.
A/N: I used some information provided in the preface of Georg von Trapp´s book, To the last salute, which was written by one of his granddaughters. (1) Those of you who are familiar with the real Maria's story know who father Wassner was. Here I am only using his name. I am not planning to make him a regular character in any of my stories. (2) This is not original. It's from the grave of Araceli M. Zatsepin. Source – The Epitaph Browser website. (3) Agatha, Saint, according to tradition, a noble Sicilian maiden of great beauty and wealth, who, having decided to consecrate her life to God, rejected the love of a Roman consul and as a result suffered cruel martyrdom. She is the patron saint of breast cancer patients, bell makers, firemen, nurses, rape and torture victims.