Chapter 15: The Broken Road
They had walked for hours before they saw any sign of civilization. Maria had spent the time during their silent journey coming to terms with the new found dilemma of their situation. A child-the thought seemed so absurd to her. Only hours ago she had thought herself still innocent and now they were discussing what to do if she were with child.
Up until that point she could almost think of their possible night together as a dream, now with the idea of a child it became concrete. She could no longer bat the thought away like a dust cloud above her head. Before she was at a crossroads in life, should she stay her course and continue to chase the dream of becoming a nun or take a chance on another life. A child would take that choice away from her creating a straight path. But to what she was still uncertain.
Her feet were sore and tired of walking when they came across a small opening in the wood to the right of the road. They may have walked right past the spot if it hadn't been so out of place. The wood crowded both sides of the road. The trees had been countless up until that point and countless again after the path.
Breaking up the monotony of tree trunks, and oddly out of place, was a four foot wide marble path that bordered the road. It glistened in comparison to the stark grey curtain of the trees where the sun caught the little flecks of crystal imbedded between the rocks. The pathway that was narrow where it bordered the road widened and then circled a small courtyard. To the left the pathway it widened again, becoming a sidewalk to numerous business fronts.
There was a bank, a Pub, an Inn, a Jail, as well as a common market. To the right there was a blacksmith shop and an old grist mill whose wheel was fed by a marble aqueduct fueled by the river's water that bordered the other end of the town.
It was an odd little town. It appeared almost miniscule in nature and yet the town itself could be home to hundreds of people. But where were they? The place was deserted except for a lone aged man sitting on the courtyard bench. And where did they live? For the only home settlement sat at the rivers edge perched on the sandstone rock that surrounded the riverbank. And that couldn't have been home to many for the interior couldn't have been any larger than Maria's living quarters at the von Trapp villa.
The store fronts too were odd. They didn't appear like any of the store fronts in any of the other towns in Austria that Maria had ever visited. Normally stores and businesses were made from cobblestone or red brick covered in vine and the like. These were all made from wood and painted in vibrant colors compared to the gray and white of Austrian towns. Instead she felt as if she had walked into a picture from a history book of an American Old West town. She almost expected to see a tumbleweed blow past as she and the Captain made their way to the mercantile.
"Where is everyone?" She asked the Captain looking over her shoulder at the bare sidewalk behind her.
The Captain pushed open the mercantile door; "Working…I guess…" he stepped in then backed back out, "What in the world?" He took a quizzical glance at Maria then stuck his head back into the doorway. He looked left then right and Maria wondered what in the world he was looking at and why he wasn't going in.
"Is it closed?" She asked the side of the Captain's head that was still stuck in the doorway. His mouth hung open in utter confusion.
"There's nothing here."
"What do you mean? There's no one behind the desk?"
"No," he answered still staring off into the doorway, "I mean there's nothing here. No desk, no merchandise, no building. It's a façade." He lifted his head from the doorway and looked up at the other businesses up and down the row. "All of these buildings are a facade."
"What are you talking about?"
"Look for yourself." He pulled her into the doorway, "See there's nothing here."
He was right. Behind the door was nothing but trees. There was no interior, only the backs of the entire row of buildings and their support beams. The "town" was a farce.
"I don't understand." She muttered as her hopes of finding a way out of this place vanished. There would be no train station here or food and water. They were still stranded.
"Oh I understand." The Captain closed the door to the fake mercantile, lightly tapping his forehead against the wood grain. "I understand completely." He muttered. When he turned to her he had a crazy smile on his face that matched the look in his eye. "I think we're dead."
"Dead?"
"Yes," he straightened his tie that wasn't there for he had lost it many days ago and continued his speech, "dead. I think we died from the poisoned water and everything that has happened to us since is our Hell. That is my damnation, spending eternity lost…with you."
She let out a frustrated sigh and kicked him in the knee.
"Oww." He bellowed rubbing the pain away.
"Did you feel that?"
"Of course I felt it."
"Well then, if you felt it we can't be dead."
He growled at her as he continued to rub his sore knee.
"Here," she pulled his arm, "let's ask the man over there what's going on."
"The old man? I'm fairly certain he is dead. He hasn't blinked since we've been here."
"For our sakes let's hope not. He's the only one here."
They walked up to the old gentleman that sat on the stone bench in the middle of the courtyard. As they approached Maria began to worry that the Captain had been right after all. The man didn't move a muscle. His head was slumped against the knotted cane that he held upright between his two hands.
"I think he's sleeping." Maria turned to the Captain, but he wasn't there. She heard his yelp before her eyes settled upon an open hole that was in the ground. She ran over and peered down into the narrow hole and saw the Captain on the bottom covered in a tan tarp that he was fighting to get off of him.
"Captain!" She exclaimed, "What are you doing?"
Managing to free himself from the entangled tarp the Captain stood to his feet then balled the tarp up and threw it down to the bottom of the hole. The hole wasn't that deep after all for when the Captain stood he was half in it and half out.
"What am I doing? What do you think I'm doing? Playing a game of hide and seek? I fell, that's what I'm doing."
"Are you alright?"
The Captain dusted himself off, "Yes, it's just my pride that was broken." He placed both hands on the ground and tried to heave himself out. "Or what was left of it anyway," He finished when his first attempt failed to free him from the hole.
"Here let me help you," Maria reached down offering a hand to the Captain.
He smacked her hand away, "I can do it myself." She ignored him and this time when he tried to get out she reached under his arms and yanked with all her might. A little too much might for he came flying out of the hole and directly on top of her landing with a thud across her body.
The weight of him sent the air out of her lungs and the Captain to his knees straddling her body.
"For god sakes, are you alright?" He ran his hands down her torso onto her belly, "I didn't mean to…" His words caught in his throat when he saw the look in her eyes and heard the hitch of her breath. Realizing what he was doing, he quickly scrambled from his knees while pulling her up to her feet.
"Sorry…" he mumbled, dusting off her back side. Darn his helpful hands, he cursed himself, they didn't seem to be helping anything except his curiosity.
"That's an odd place for a hole, don't you think?" Maria regarded the hole that was nearly in the middle of the courtyard and next to a small wooden statue of a girl. The statue was meticulously carved with great detail added to the face. It almost seemed like she would come alive at any moment. In the center of the statue's chest was a prism heart that caught the sunlight sending tiny colorful light bubbles dancing on the ground before it. Her one arm was outstretched as if it were waiting for something. Surrounding her were three carved woodland creatures, a chipmunk, a squirrel and a rabbit.
The Captain held up his removed shoe and dumped the sand out of it that had collected during his fall, "In this place I don't think anything is 'odd'."
"That is exactly what I told Nadia eighty years ago."
Well, the old man wasn't dead after all. He had witnessed in silence their shenanigans and was now sitting on the bench still with his head propped against his cane, but now with an amused smile on his withered face.
"Hello," Maria extended the first greeting while the Captain put his shoe back on.
The old man bowed his head in return before gingerly accepting the Captain's handshake.
"I'm Captain Georg von Trapp…"
"Nobility has come to Traumland," the old man interrupted before the Captain could introduce Maria. "It's an honor Baron and Baroness. I would stand out of respect, but alas, these old legs had barely enough strength to bring me to my bench today. So you must forgive this old man's lack of social graces."
"Not at all sir," the Captain bowed in return. He motioned for Maria to take a seat next to the gentleman, "And it's simply Georg and Maria, you can leave out the Baron and Baroness." He motioned towards the well in the center of the courtyard, "We've been walking all morning. May we steal a drink from your well?"
"Certainly. And there's no need for thievery, my son. One can't steal what God has given."
The Captain walked over to the well and pulled the bucket up from its depths. He filled the small cup that was inside of the bucket to the brim and brought it over to Maria. She gulped the refreshing water down her parched throat. Oh it was heaven. She had begun to believe that her tongue would never come unglued from the roof of her mouth.
When she had had her fill the Captain went back and filled the cup for himself.
"Hmmm…" the old man hummed in the back of his throat, "that Captain of yours is a good man." He said to Maria, "He was just as parched as you and yet he took care of you first. A husband that puts his wife before himself is a good man. Title or not."
"Ummm…" It would be rude not to agree with the old gentleman, but her tongue still hesitated for a moment, "Well he's not…" your husband? Actually he is. "Well, ah what I meant to say is…"
Could you be a little more tongue tied Maria? "Well… yes he is." She was sweating from the exertion of getting those four little words out. It wasn't that she didn't believe that the Captain was a good man. Or at least she once believed that to be nothing but the truth. It was verbally acknowledging the Captain as her husband that sent the sweat streaming from her pores. As if her words added another layer of concrete to the idea thus turning it more into a fact. The problem with facts is they are awfully hard to dispute.
"What was it that you called this town?"
The old man gave a little laugh, which sounded more like a gurgle in his aged lungs, "Traumland, at least that's what Nadia called it."
"Nadia? Is that your wife?"
"Of over eighty years, yes." The old man glanced up the road, "She'll be along any minute now. It'll be nice to have some company while I wait for her. I am Pavel, by the way. Pavel Zupan."
"A pleasure, sir." Maria extended her hand taking Pavel's frail one in her own. The skin on top was soft as velvet while the bottom was coarse like sandpaper. Pavel had been a hardworking man at some point in his life Maria surmised.
"We were hoping that your little town here had a train station." The Captain sat on the ground off to the side of Pavel so that he could hear him. "We've lost all of our transportation and were hoping to make it back home before nightfall."
Pavel made another gurgling sound from deep within his chest. "You've missed the train I'm afraid."
"Oh we have?"
"Yes, by at least thirty years. The train had a stop about two miles through the woods in Keitel. Track was laid to extend here to Traumland, but then the Great War came followed by the Great Depression and all of that was forgotten. No more people, no more dream, just Nadia and I in Traumland. But I build anyway. For her, I built our dream along this broken road."
"Your dream was to live in a fake town?" The Captain asked.
"No, it was to be so much more than this. It was to be real. A real live American frontier town with cowboys and all. For that was my dream eighty years ago. I wanted nothing more to be an American cowboy. But my father had other plans for me. I was sixteen at the time and it had been arranged that I was to marry a girl from the neighboring village. Her father was a miller and he was to teach me his craft having no sons to leave the business to. Only I didn't want to be a miller, I wanted travel to America and be a cowboy. I was going to fight Indians in the wilds of the American West and be a hero. So I ran away from home a week before the wedding. I stole my father's maps of the land and took off from my home with nothing in my pockets other than my hopes and dreams. On my second day of travel I came across this broken path and found a young girl crying on this rock." Pavel paused in his story to pat the stone bench. "I thought maybe someone had attacked her, so I approached her asking if I could offer any help. She told me through her tears that she too had been set up in an arranged marriage to a man that she didn't want to marry. Her parents had broken the news to her only days before the wedding. Then I told her my story and how I was running away and if she wanted to she could run away with me. So we planned together for four days. I would wait for her here by this rock and we would talk of our plans for hours at a time. We talked of our dreams and planned out in great detail what we would do when we reached America. Every day she came I fell in love more and more.
On the day we were supposed to leave I came to the rock and found a note from her. It simply said that she would love nothing more than to run off with me, but she couldn't leave her family. She had found out that if she didn't marry the man that her father had arranged for her, the family would lose their home. She loved me, but she couldn't leave her family destitute."
Maria gasped, "So what did you do?" The Captain was secretly glad that she had asked for he was just as captivated by Pavel's tale.
"What could I do? She had made her choice, so I left without her. I set out to find my life, alone. Only me heart knew more than my head for it sent me in the direction of her town. A mile into it my walk became a run. And I ran the rest of the way to find her, to stop her. I found the church and I burst through the doors. I had planned to wait at the back of the church for the part in the ceremony where the priest asked for objections, for I had some to voice. Only what I found inside, well it surprised the hell out of me. Waiting up at the alter was my father and mother. The right side of the church pews was filled with my other family members and friends from back home. You see, I had just interrupted my own wedding. When I approached my father, he put his hand on my shoulder and nodded his head the way fathers do when they think they have taught you a valuable lesson. And he said to me, Pavel, you followed my maps, didn't you? I told him I had. And then he said, I knew you would find your way along the broken road, son. Sometimes it's the broken road that leads you home again. Next thing I knew the church doors opened and my Nadia walked down the aisle to me."
Maria clapped her hands together, "Oh what a lovely story," she exclaimed.
"Yes, yes it is. And it's been a lovely life. Nadia and I built our home here. I built my own mill, after Nadia's father passed away. Then one day we decided to let other people come to this place that we loved so much. So we decided to build Traumland, a place where families could come and experience the American west, right here in Slovenia. There was to be a hotel and the shops were to be real. Here in the courtyard I was going to build a carousel for the children to enjoy. Nadia had a great love of children." Pavel looked wistfully at the statue of the little girl and the three woodland creatures at her feet. "Do you have any children?"
"Seven." The Captain answered.
"Seven!" Pavel patted Maria's hand, "you must have started young, my dear."
The Captain met Maria's eyes. It seemed like too much to try and explain it all to Pavel. With just that look they silently agreed to let him believe what he wanted to.
"Well, as much as I appreciated the rest and the water as well as the story, I believe Maria and I must be going. We need to catch the next train."
"You'll be waiting a long time. The only train has left already for the day and the next won't be until tomorrow at noon." Pavel gave a lazy smirk, "The habits of the runaway boy never died from within my heart. I still memorize the train schedule." He gave a half shrug, "Just in case, you know."
"Oh I see." Maria laughed. Pavel was such a charming stranger, she felt like she had known him all her life.
"Well there she is." Pavel nodded his head towards the statue. The sun was lower in the sky at this point and it shone straight into the prism heart of the girl. A million rainbow reflections began to stream out of the heart. They danced along the ground towards Pavel's feet in the shape of a heart. "There's my Nadia." He said.
A/N There is more to this chapter, obviously, but alas, I can't finish it. But I wanted to give you all some sort of update. This is to be a turning point for Maria. I hope I have woven it the way I wanted to. Right now I am feeling a little lost. But hopefully you all get where I am going with it. Thanks again for reading and all of the wonderful reviews. You're all really keeping me going with this story. So I thank you for that!