Chapter 3: A Broken Man
The mornings were hardest, waking to...no one beside him, an empty bed rather than the wife he loved, possibly more than he should have. His hand always reached out for her—an instinct Georg couldn't quite resist, ingrained day after day and year after year—only to find cold, empty sheets. Not the soft curve of her back, her long dark hair twisted into a tight braid to stop it tangling through the night if she twisted about or he tugged her to his chest, the swell of her hips that were set wider after giving birth to seven children in eleven years. If anything, the growth of her waist left Agathe even more beautiful to him, even if another man might scoff and frown. Choose to seek out a mistress, young and thin, every single part of her body small and tight like she'd never lain with a man. Never. It was the undeniable evidence of their love and the passion that always flared when he found her here, that was all it was.
And then, there was the utter silence: not the faint hum of her sleeping, the hitch in her breathing whenever they began to make love, even the first gurglings deep in her throat and difficulty in swallowing the water the chambermaids would bring when she couldn't be around the children for even a moment. The first sound that had stoked the fear that her time looking after the children, feverish and miserable in their own beds, had left her with scarlet fever as well and hardly any time left, her body still worn and raw with the baby lost after Gretl.
Many days began exactly like this one, a struggle to even open his eyes. It was only the plastered ceiling above him, but so long as his eyes were closed, the world around him didn't exist. It wasn't now any longer, but then again, when all that mattered—all that he needed—was here in the face of his wife. It echoed in the shouts and laughter of their children in the nursery on a Saturday morning that reminded both Agathe and himself that there was no time for losing themselves in one another when the older children would be eager to drag them onto the grounds. And it glowed like a bonfire during the hours when all but the youngest girls were at the local school (Marta and Gretl were often with their nurse, though Agathe insisted on looking after them herself quite often), leaving them free to wander about the grounds, through the tiny clusters of trees that blocked the sun in the summer and dulled the breeze in the winter, basking in that warmth flickering between them.
But when he opened his eyes, all of that vanished. More than that, it was a weight suddenly settled on his chest, crushing him under the anguish, transforming to anger in a matter of seconds. It was the anger that always drove Georg from his bed, throwing aside quilts and sheets despite the chill of a mountain winter. Not when she was meant to be here—had always been here—not buried in the local cemetery, nothing but chilly bones, her curves and face stripped away by decay and rot. Not that warm body he adored curled into his, always ready for his touch, nearly always ready for him, breathing along with him.
Georg shivered in the cold air, his bare chest sprouting goose pimples above the waistband of the cotton trousers he wore to bed each night. He took a few steps to the window, the moulding between the panes shattering the morning light. A year ago, he would have reprimanded himself for being abed so late, but now...sleep and dreams and nights were the only times he had to hold everything that mattered at all. It was all he had of her, now; she'd banished him from their bed—their bedroom—when her first coughs had begun. "It can't be both of us," she'd said. She knew, she knew the risk she'd taken when Louisa had her first coughs, the first marks on her tongue. Damn you. But it was all too late for that. Too late to change her mind, too late to very nearly hate her, too late to persuade her to hire a nurse who knew to cover her face as the nurse who had looked after her knew to.
It was a late time to rise on a winter morning—any morning, really—the sun already high in the sky despite the late dawn. On the submarine he commanded throughout the Great War, it would have been enough to earn a common sailor a verbal lashing for being so languid. But by now, the elder children were probably in their second class of the day, firmly out of the house and out of his sight after their school was shuttered the previous week under the snow. (Not that he would have dared let them leave the house for anything but a snowball fight even if classes had remained in session!) And Frau Bauer knew better than to bring Marta and Gretl from the nursery, leaving him safe: alone in the house, the staff more than happy to keep clear of him and his tendency to snap his orders just as he had during his years in the navy. Those were the hours when he tried to lose himself in a book in the library—but the words blurred across the pages. He would happily accept a tray from the kitchen when it came time for lunch, Frau Schmidt setting it on the mahogany desk in his study with hardly a word—but nothing quite tasted of anything. Even when the snow fell thick in the afternoon these last weeks, an unblemished blanket across the grounds and the icy lake, he didn't feel it dusting his hair or cheeks or hands—he was already frozen.
Frau Bauer understood she was only to liberate the little girls from their own sanctuary until the others returned—he had them sent to school with their midday meals, now—unwrapping the scarves from their faces and shaking fresh snow from every limb, stamping the snow from their shoes and brushing it from their bags. By then, Georg had the lock to his study firmly in place, another layer of armor against a child who might forget that he was not to be disturbed. As the evening wore on, he answered any letters he had missed during the time in his flat in Salzburg, a cigarette always between his fingers and a cloud of smoke swirling to the ceiling as his chest burned with each breath. With any correspondence finished, he struggled with a book yet again, or jotted a few notes for his memoirs. In the last months, everything from before Agathe had transformed, an easier time to remember, almost to relive, the war be damned. All the years stalking frigates and destroyers from below, the cramped world he commanded amidst pipes and occasionally whistling valves...there was no pain, nothing like this. Some days now, though, bury it as he tried to, it rose so stark and pure, it swept him away, crushing him against the shore and the rocks, threatening to break him apart anew. Whenever the grief grew too strong, Georg simply lit yet another cigarette, the grey cloud around his face blinding him.
"You shouldn't smoke so much, Georg," she'd told him that so often when he reached for the brass box where he stored them all at the corner of his desk—perfectly aligned, filters all at one end—and the lighter that he always left by its side. "Wouldn't it be nicer if you didn't cough as much?"
"Quiet." That was always his answer to the question haunting him. "Like you should be, now."
It was only after the children's bedtime had ticked past that he unfastened the study door's lock, the outside world a safe place once more. He took dinner in the dining room alone, the cook's wonderful food still tasting of nothing from green salad to the roasted fish, boiled potatoes, and sauteed cabbage to the cake the cook had brought to them already perfected when she was hired...so many years ago, he'd lost track. It might have been the dull bread he remembered from the navy instead, even a communion wafer. The brandy at his side was what he really desired, the alcohol dulling the anger and muting the grief just like the cigarettes he followed one after the other when he was in his study, locked away from the children. "Don't forget to love them. You have to love them for me as well, now." Everyday when the emptiness of his life rang the loudest, Georg remembered that; all she had wanted was for him to love them and hold them close, just as she had.
No. That was his answer, anymore. There was no questioning if he could do it, preferring his life in Salzburg—alone—
It was too long here, not just too long in the house but in Aigen, in Salzburg. God, I can't stand it any longer, Georg thought, downing another mouthful of brandy to empty his glass...and refilling it again. "What will the children think?" That would be her question now.
"Quiet," he hissed again, gulping what he had just poured until the delicate crystal was empty and he shoved his chair back from the empty table. "Whatever you wanted then doesn't mean a thing now. Not..." Without you.
The days were always the same when he was here, from when he woke to when he finally took dinner before peeling away his tie and jacket, unbuttoning his shirt and trousers, taking solace in his bedroom. But tonight, Georg escaped to the terrace—he had to be out of the villa, all the walls and memories hemming him in—needing just a momentary detour to his study for a pair of cigarettes and the lighter. He didn't know when he would be able to step back inside. In the gentle flurry of snow still falling as it had been since midday, he stood utterly still, apart from when he pulled the cigarette from his lips, sighing as it burned so quickly, almost down to his fingertips before he flicked it away into the fresh mound of snow from the terrace.
So clean, he thought, the ash singing white snow: sinking, vanishing, burning its way in. Just like...No. Every now and then, he saw her blue eyes peering up from the street, her hand hesitating to take his, almost like she was wary. (Worried? Frightened?) Such a little girl, eyes wide like she's never seen a bit of the world, just the streets of Salzburg.
Salzburg...it wasn't far enough, not from everything haunting him here. It was time to be gone again, Georg understood that. The snow had lessened from the mounds that had buried him here for the prior week, the children as well. Torture, that was all it had been, the laughter echoing through the halls as Frau Schmidt refused to allow them out on the grounds when the deluge was falling hardest, the youngest four not at all until the weekend. No, after the past week, not even Salzburg would dull their voices.
Vienna? Perhaps. Elsa's arms had been no match for the grief drowning him when he had last seen her...a month ago, but it might be different with the extra time between him and everything in the past. When he'd found his way into her bed before, after the glow of sex and pleasure and satiation had faded, the guilt and misery had risen so quickly. She wouldn't want to see you bedding a friend of hers, you know that. So soon. But I'm not yours anymore, Agathe. Not if it's even what I want.
In the final swirling flurries of the night, Georg lit the other cigarette he'd tucked into his pocket, the burn calming the quiet rage in his blood. After a second, he released the mouthful of smoke to the sky, some of the tiny snowflakes vanishing into the ashy white cloud, almost swallowed whole and melting into the air. The days might all be the same as the morning gave way to midday and finally to the night, but nothing would ever be the same.
A/N: Look up "Heaven Is So High" by Pat Wictor for these last two chapters. That man has such a rich voice. And the chorus: "Will the arms of heaven reach all the way to the ground? Heaven is so high and I'm so far down." *swoons* The first verse is his, the third verse is hers. I'd forgotten how beautiful this song is.
