FATE AND FAITH
chapter 9
Quickly paced steps paced towards him before a soft hand found his shoulder.
"Father?" Georg heard Liesl's voice calling his name.
His eyes were tearful, burning with rage and frustration.
He had to protect her.
The last image of her petrified with fear under the violence of those men seemed to be indissolubly printed into his mind.
"Father?" the voice called him again.
He had to protect them.
That was the only thing grounding him, had he been alone, he could as well taken his own life. Because his life, his Maria, had already been taken away from him.
No, he couldn't do that, she wouldn't want it.
She would want him to get up, stop wasting precious time in tears, shelter the children and find her. Save her.
He tried to take a deep breath, the air struggling to enter his lungs through the big lump in his throat. His wrecked body gathered all its strength to get up from his knees and once he was facing the children, seven pairs of wide-open eyes were staring at him, waiting for an answer.
Gretl and Martha were the most inquisitive, not sure of what had really happened but painfully aware of their mother's absence; Brigitta curled into Louisa, both girls with tears gushing down their cheeks; Kurt, Friedrich and Liesl in a daze, their faces as pale as he'd never seen them before.
He tried to swallow the lump in his throat again. Unsuccessfully.
"She's … she's going to be f-fine" Georg somehow managed to answer their questioning eyes.
What in the world was he doing?
Laying to himself? Trying to convince someone of something he wasn't the slightest bit sure of?
He hated himself, maybe just as much as he hated the man who had taken Maria, he had had a part in all this as well.
In less than a split second, seven trembling bodies filled his arms, soaking every inch of his coat in heavy teardrops that he couldn't help but let flow, aware that among them there were his own too. The grip of his arms tried to strengthen, his hands found somewhere the force to soothe a caress on their sobbing backs and then warmth spread against his uncovered skin. The sun had set completely.
Its light was so bright he hated the contrast it made with the darkness of their condition.
Stop Georg, you can't keep this up. You have a wife in serious danger and a family to protect.
The voice in his mind reprimanded him, it was then that he raised his head and realized he had to devise a plan, possibly a better one than the first. They had even failed in carrying out the easier part of it - looking uninvolved - since they had been holding each other for a fairly long time now.
Georg's eyes turned straight at his eldest daughter.
"We need to get back to the church, you go ahead and start bringing them up the hill. I have to make a call"
"No Father, it's too risky, we can't lo-" she disagreed with a new set of tears brimming through her eyes
"Bring them up, Liesl. It won't take long" his voice was serious.
The girl nodded, staying there arguing wouldn't have helped if they were to achieve anything at all in the end. Georg's eyes softened in a look of reassurance before they took opposite directions, she and her brothers towards the grass, he pacing the same asphalt that had allowed those Nazi to take his wife.
During the long minutes of vain door staring, he had noticed a payphone standing at one side of the square. He grabbed his wallet and pulled out some change, his hands trembling as he was about to put them in the slot.
Who was he supposed to call?
Hede, his older sister, was the first name that came to his mind.
She knew and loved the children dearly and she would have been more than delighted to shelter them in her house until he and Maria were safe. But then he remembered a detail, and quite a relevant one, that made him realize this was not the best option as he thought. She was pregnant with her fourth child, and close to the term of her pregnancy. Caring about that, her other three toddlers and seven children among which there were two very little girls, would have been too much for her to manage.
Letting alone the distress she could suffer in receiving the shocking news about Maria. They had met only once before the wedding and yet they had liked each other instantly, so much that their relationship could have appeared as one between sisters to an outsider.
His heart was aching at the thought of putting his sister in such conditions and involve her into his own family troubles. Although he didn't have much choice.
But just when his finger was about to dial the first digit of her number, another name echoed into his mind.
Uncle Raphael.
Yes, he was so far away from there but it totally made sense to refer to him for how lucid Georg's reasoning was being.
After their first encounter in his shop during their honeymoon in Paris, discovering him her father's best friend, Raphael and all his lovely children and grandchildren were the closest thing to a family that Maria had other than him and the children of course.
The man was so affectionate to her that everything told him he wouldn't let her down. Also, he had always demonstrated so excited and impatient about meeting their own children that he could already see them getting along with Hans's perfectly.
It was the hastiest decision he had ever taken but he had decided to carry on its line without any second thought.
His fingers started to dial the old man's number and the phone painfully rang about four times, marked with the uncertainty that he wouldn't answer, or that the number was wrong since he had it committed to memory alone.
"Hello?" a male voice answered after the fifth ring
"Raphael? This is Georg Von Trapp, Maria's husband" Georg's voice hesitate, aware that he had to take the risk anyways
"Oh, Georg, I'm so happy to hear about you!".
He felt his entire body shaking with relief as the good man spoke so kindly at the other end of the receiver, a tiny smile almost seemed to cross his lips.
"I'm sorry it took me so long to answer, but tell me about Maria, how's she?".
The cheerful tone of his voice calling her name made his heart fall into pieces. That had been his first thought.
How was she?
The last time he saw her she was miserable, frightened, defenceless.
"I am calling you for this very reason" Georg released a shaky breath, "she's … she's been kidnapped …"
The suffering in his voice was unmistakable, to the point that Raphael's tone dropped its typical cheerfulness to turn in a deep shade of worry.
"Kidnapped? Is she hurt?" he asked in a voice that could be heard from the entire neighbourhood
"I don't know" Georg's voice trembled as the question led his imagination to the worse scenarios, "all I know is that, I need to find her".
Another heavy breath came from his mouth in a vain attempt to calm himself down. How silly he had been not to see Raphael could have had such an impulsive reaction.
"I need to ask you a huge favour, Raphael"
"Anything for you and Maria, Georg" the old man's voice lowered and became more serious and ready to listen carefully
"The children. I know it's a lot to ask but no place around here is safe, not when we're escaping, and I can't leave them on their own while I search for Maria. Please Raphael, you're the only one I know that could take care of them" Georg all but begged.
Images of the children spending one more night into that shack of a church, weary cold and lonely was making his stomach twist even more.
But the man had no doubt in accepting his request, it was risky and contrary to every thought a reasonable mind could formulate, but it sounded right, and it would have been.
They decided not to exchange further information through the phone, the wires might have been under control, and being caught was a risk they couldn't take. Instead, it was decided that Raphael would leave as soon as possible, meeting up with Georg in that very secondary street under the favourable darkness of the night. Then the children would head to France, and he would waste not another minute of time to find Maria.
Maria.
He wished he could move the hands of time back to save her, the amount of anger cursing through him fooling him he was totally capable of doing so. But his broken heart, frail as she was when he would make love to her, sadly told him otherwise.
Steps, voices, sounds of life suddenly filled his ears and brought him to the tough reality.
Liesl and the others were waiting for him, he had to run.
A door being shut, spinning darkness before whirling light, a disgusting smell of smoke, whiskey and mold filled her nose.
She coughed repeatedly and in the act of bringing a spontaneous hand to her mouth, she discovered her wrists were bound behind her back.
Maria came to, sat on a chair that seemed to be made of the hardest steel.
Her head swung slightly, her eyes blinked a few times, and her surroundings came into better focus: the walls surrounding her were dark, a man stood in front of her, and she sensed the presence of two others behind her, tightly holding her biceps.
Tears formed in the back of her eyes at the grin of satisfaction on the mousy faced man in front of her as she remembered what had happened.
"Poor thing" the man scoffed, "but I would save those tears for later"
"What do you want from me?"
"It's very, very simple, dear. Tell me where you husband is, and all of this will stop right away. You will be safe, and we will be happy, very happy"
"I will never do that, are these my last words!" she all but screamed, tears gushing down her cheeks.
Zeller grinned from his position, offering a look to someone behind her, a fourth man she wasn't aware of. He placed the glass back on the desk at his side, and walked a few steps till he was close enough to her, standing on crossed feet.
"Yes, I thought you would say that" he leaned in, his face now directly in front of hers, "perhaps this lovely little thing needs some time to remember" his smile widened wickedly.
As he spoke, his index hooked under her chin and his thumb brushed the lower part of her cheek, preventing a heavy tear to slip onto her lips.
"Keep those lurid hands off me" she struggled and glanced at him with sheer disgust in her eyes.
She could have thrown up both from his whiskey-breath against her face and the feeling of his touch on her skin, she would have had to wash that spot of her face over and over again to forget that gut-turning feeling.
"Ah ha ha" he wiggled his finger in the air, taking it off her face, "I wouldn't use such disgraceful manners Baroness, there might be consequences. I vaguely seem to remember that it's me to give orders here".
Maria dropped the eye contact immediately, she couldn't stand to look at that dreadful face for another second. This made him smile, aware that his ascent to the throne of victory had just begun.
"Rolf, bring the Baroness to her cell, I trust that further measures won't be needed the next time".
Rolf? Was he involved up to that point with that disgusting man?
Before she could have any time to dwell on these thoughts, the grip of the two hands holding her tightened painfully and she was brought into a standing position before other yanks and pulls could lead her through a long corridor and then into what they had called a cell.
When the only thing actually resembling of a cell were the thick bars that she saw Rolf closing in front of her, his eyes never meeting hers and rightly so. She couldn't believe he was doing it to her and, indirectly, to Liesl.
It was so dark that it was hard to tell whether there was someone supervising her or not, but the sound of the soldiers' steps had become fainter and fainter until she convinced herself that she was probably alone.
But where was she?
She wished she had the slightest clue, but she had probably lost consciousness back into the car and not her eyes nor her mind could therefore remember anything about the journey or her location.
Her stomach began to make noises, she still hadn't eaten anything and was feeling almost ashamed that one of the worries that had come to her mind was being famished.
That was the last of the problems, she had to get out of there.
Maria started to vaguely wander into that tiny square room plunged into darkness, there were no windows and probably the sun had gone down already a long time ago so she couldn't see anything at all. The only certainty was that along with the bars, mold was covering all the remaining walls, wherever they were, and she hoped rats nor any other animal would come to pay her visit through the night.
She took a few more steps and the sharp edge of something cold, hard, and smooth hit the palms of her bound hands and she realized it must have been the surface she was supposed to sleep on.
She sat on it and tried to lay down, an almost impossible task given the uncomfortable position of her hands. Gathering all the strength left into her body, she made an enormous effort to turn on her side, the surface so tough and cold under her body that it made her regret the awful benches of the abandoned church.
The children.
The image of them sleeping in the safety of the church the previous night flashed into her mind as a new flow of tears brimmed through her eyes and began its rush down her cheeks and neck.
She prayed they were alright, safe, and sheltered under Georg's thoughtful decisions.
She prayed he was alright and that he would come and save her before it was too late.
As her body curled into a ball from the overwhelming weight of her painful thoughts, she felt her ribs aching from how tightly she had been held earlier that day.
The flow of tears increased, everything went dark, and she fell asleep, out of exhaustion.
Quarter past eight.
The sun had gone down enough for the streets not to be as crowded as they'd probably been throughout the whole day, and the family had begun their descent as soon as the children's stomachs were satiated enough to allow them the necessary energy.
Georg had eaten too, not much since his meal had been only two of the smallest bread rolls that he even felt guilty about eating at the thought that they were being taken away from the children.
Halfway through the descent, not more than a quarter of hour away from entering that dreadful street, he decided to stop the family and finally talk to them.
He had been musing and brooding about the latest events and had been so absorbed into his thoughts that he had fallen silent for the whole day. The children didn't dare to speak either, by now they knew how their father coped with losses and even if their innocent hearts were in desperate need for some comfort, they feared the situation could somehow worsen if they did speak their feeling.
"Brigitta, Kurt, Liesl, come here, you all" his voice spoke in the darkness as his arms opened wide to welcome his children in, "apparently, I can't deal with my problems as well as you can do, I apologize".
His voice seemed to tremble as he nuzzled his nose into his eldest daughter's cheek and tangled his fingers through the little ones' hair.
"I wanted to say goodbye to you properly"
"Aren't you accompanying us, Father?" little Martha sweetly asked
"No, darling, I can't risk to be caught" he then revealed the reason behind his sudden change of plan
After some minutes, the children's grip around him loosened slightly, allowing him to better see their faces and, unfortunately, their fears.
"Raphael is a fine man, I am sure you will love him as much as he will love you" he tried to speak with sympathy, sucking in prickling tears
"How can he love us if he's never met us?" Gretl huffed
"Because your mother and I have told him everything about you and he couldn't wait to meet you all. His son has children you can play with, and he will look after you while I find your mother".
Georg had avoided to speak her name on purpose, knowing that his heart would be stabbed again if he did, but referring to her as the children's mother and doing it for twice in a row, took a similar effect on them and fresh tears made their eyes brim again.
"She will be fine, right?"
"Promise you will find her"
"I miss her so much already"
A choir of little, tearful voices overwhelmed him with their questions, and he so wished he could answer them all, tell them that everything would be fine and he would have been able to keep those promises but he couldn't lie to them. Not again.
"Stop it, she's gone!" Louisa's voice stood out from the chorus before she ran a few steps away and started to cry copiously.
Hers was the one statement Georg couldn't pull himself back from.
His hands turned her to face him and soon he pulled her into his embrace, holding her tightly as a deep kiss pressed to her blonde crown. That girl had always been a bit of a mystery – in her thoughts, in her behaviours, in her feelings – even Maria had struggled to understand her at first, but eventually she was the only one that could understand her at all, of course.
"Darling, your mother isn't gone ..." he vainly tried to reason
"We didn't deserve to lose her again because of those people!" she sighed, stuffing her face into the front of his coat again
"What they did to her is awful, but I will find her and bring her back to you, I promise".
The girl's eyes raised to meet his and they shared a set of intense gazes, comforting gazes, that managed to reassure her, at least in the slightest, that it was a hard situation but not the end of the world.
Yes, he would rescue her.
And there was no time to lose, Raphael should have been at their meeting point already and it was time to say goodbye before he could leave them at the feet of the mountain.
Georg composed himself and joined the group again, "now, Raphael knows all your aliases and your features, it shouldn't be hard to recognize each other but be careful" he recommended them.
Except for Liesl and Friedrich, whose responsibilities had never been so high before, the youngest children were already tearful and scared about the new adventure they were about to undertake.
Seeing their mother taken away from them had been shocking enough already, but being forced to leave their father too was being utterly devastating for them.
"Remember, I love you" Georg's eyes softened as tears formed in their back.
He had no certainties anymore, what if this ended up to be the last time he saw the children? He had to tell them how much he loved and admired them, he had to try to make up for all the lost years. One more time.
The eight of them shared a smile, painful more than they could have imagined and then he saw them heading off, to a new place and a new reality.
So far away from him, so far away from his protection. Almost as far from him as his wife was.
Maria, Maria, Maria.
Fourteen excruciatingly long hours had gone by since she had been taken and it was nothing less than fear-striking the thought that anything could have happened to her in the meanwhile.
She didn't deserve any of this. She was the purest, kindest, most generous soul in the entire universe, the most forgiving and innocent of women; her wit, her sense of humour, her contagious joy.
If there was one person that less deserved it in the world, that was Maria.
Georg threaded his fingers through his dark curls, sucking back the curse his entire body screamed.
He was a fine, brave man, a loving and gentle one with the people he loved; but if anyone ever dared to even twist a hair of one of these people, his most animalistic spirit would raise to the surface.
And it wouldn't have been forgiving, not even reasonable in front of people that took pleasure in ruining lives for no reason at all.
Zeller and his men would pay for their crime, was it the last thing he did.
Authour's Note: Hello everyone and thank you so much for taking some time to read this chapter. I hope you liked it and am looking forward to receive your reviews.
p.s: Raphael is a new character I intruoduced in an old story I've written but never published. Hans is his son's name and more about him and his family will be revealed in the next chapters but let me know if you'd be interested in his encounter with Maria and Georg, I might try to figure out a way to include the chapter in this story as well.
I'll see you next week!