by Kate Hewitt
“One day you may be called on to do more,” Ingrid replied. “Much more. And the question you will have to ask yourself is, will you be able to?”
Birgit swallowed hard. She did not know how “much more” Ingrid meant, or indeed how much she would be willing to give, but just the thought of doing more than leaving a few leaflets around made her stomach clench in fear, her heart feel as if it were suspended in her chest. And yet… she didn’t want to stay safe. She didn’t want to lose the sense of purpose these meetings had given her. She wanted to be brave, even if she wasn’t sure how.
“Think on it,” Ingrid said, and released her hand, leaning back in her chair as the evening’s speaker began.
Birgit barely listened, for her mind was racing so much, and in truth she’d heard it all before anyway. Most speakers said the same thing—Unite! Rally! Dare! The specifics, however, were left to the imagination, and right then Birgit did not want to imagine them.
She did not want to think about what Ingrid or the group she was part of, a motley crew of communists, socialists, and trade unionists, might ask—or even demand—of her. And why should they not demand it, when she had been coming to their meetings and had learned some of their secrets? And if they did demand it, how would she respond? Could she be brave enough to risk her life like Ingrid or August did?
Ingrid threw her a sharp-eyed glance, and Birgit realized she was fidgeting. Part of her longed to leave, yet she refused to entertain that cowardly notion. She’d found an unexpected welcome in this group, along with a sense of purpose. She was loath to leave either behind, and yet…
“One day you may be called on to do more… much more.”
Abruptly Birgit stood up from the table. Ingrid leaned forward, her eyes narrowed.
“The toilet,” she murmured. “I must…” She hurried from the room with a trembling sigh of relief. A few people in the coffeehouse glanced at her, mostly in disinterest, and quickly she made her way through the tables and slipped outside into the cold, damp night air.
She was overreacting, she told herself, and Ingrid and all the others most likely were, as well. Sometimes she thought the communists wanted to be angry. Schuschnigg had signed an agreement, after all. Austria well might be left alone; it wasn’t a certainty that Hitler’s Wehrmacht might march across its borders. It couldn’t be. It might be that she never had to be that brave. She would never have to make that kind of choice.
A sudden screech of tires had her turning in alarm as she saw a black Mercedes come squealing around the corner, followed by another. As they headed towards the coffeehouse, she realized they must be coming to break up the meeting, and she stumbled back through the door and then ran towards the back room.
She flung herself inside, and heads turned at her noisy arrival.
“Someone’s coming,” she gasped out. “There were two cars—”
Already she heard the front door of the coffeehouse crashing open, the sound of shouting, tables and chairs being overturned, cries of distress.
At once everyone in the back room began to move—some people running out toward an alleyway in the back, others sweeping up pamphlets and papers. Birgit looked for Ingrid, but she’d gone. Fighting what she knew was an unfair sense of betrayal, she hurried towards the back entrance, her heart pounding as she stumbled through the door into the dark alleyway that ran between the buildings and then fell, hard onto her hands and knees, the cobbles sharp and damp beneath her. She could hardly believe a moment had already come where her courage was being called on. She would have laughed if she hadn’t been panting in fear.
Someone who had been running behind her tripped over her and fell heavily beside her with a grunt. Before Birgit could say anything, they’d scrambled up and disappeared down the alley.
Birgit let out a sob of terror as she lurched up to her feet and made her way along the alley, as good as blind in the darkness, her hands stretched out in front of her. From the open doorway behind her she could hear the cries and shouts as those remaining were assaulted—by whom? The police? The Fatherland Front’s paramilitary troops? Nazi bully boys? Birgit had no idea, but she knew she did not want to encounter whoever it was face to face.
Finally she saw a glimmer of light where the alley led into the street, and she let out another sob, this one of relief.
Then someone else ran up behind her, pushing her aside roughly in their bid for freedom. Birgit’s head hit the wall, her cheek scraped by the brick. She bit her lip hard and then, her head swimming, kept walking forward.
Finally, finally she emerged onto the street, gasping with relief. Her stockings were torn and dirty; there was blood on her hands and cheek, and her hair had fallen down in tangles about her face. Still, she was free.
“Hey!”
She stiffened with both shock and terror as she realized the angry voice was directed at her. A man was standing in front of the coffeehouse, his rubber truncheon pointed at her. Birgit froze, her heart in her mouth, her legs like water. The man started towards her. He was a policeman, she realized. She could be arrested. Put in prison. Still she didn’t move, even though her brain was bidding her to run, run, as fast as she could.
“There you are!”
The voice coming from her right was warm and good-humored, and before Birgit could so much as blink she was swept up into an embrace and kissed soundly on the lips.
“You know her, Oberleutnant?” the police officer asked suspiciously, and her savior, or perhaps her captor, answered easily, his arm around her waist.
“Do I know her? Yes, of course I do. This is my fiancée, I’ll have you know. Clearly she was caught up in the violence. I hope you have it under control, Offizier.”
The policeman began to bluster, but the man at her side was already guiding her away. They walked in silence for several minutes, Birgit’s mind a dazed blur, before he stopped and withdrew his arm from her waist.
“There. We’ve lost them.”
She turned to face this stranger who had rescued her, and saw he wore the peaked cap and gray uniform of the mountain troops of Austria’s Bundesheer. “Th—thank you,” she stammered. “I don’t know why you did, but you saved me.”
“I could never resist a damsel in distress.” He handed her a handkerchief from his pocket. “You have blood on your face. Here.” He gestured to her cheek. “And here.” To her lip.
“Thank you,” Birgit murmured as she dabbed the handkerchief at her scrapes.
“I apologize for being so forward,” he continued, “but it seemed necessary at the time.”
Birgit had no response to that, and no idea what to think of her very first kiss. Her mind was still spinning.
“Look, you’ve clearly suffered a shock. How about we get a coffee? My treat, of course. And then I insist on walking you home. Where do you live? Nearby?”
“On Getreidegasse—”
“How lovely. Well, what do you say? A coffee?”
She stared at him in confusion, her thoughts still jumbled. On top of everything else that had happened that evening, she did not know how to respond to this kindly man’s offer. And he did seem kind; he looked it as well, with a round, homely face and an easy smile. His eyes were blue, his teeth a bit crooked. He was not handsome, and somehow Birgit liked that. Kindness was better than beauty by far.
“Very well,” she finally answered, still shaken although she was desperately trying to recover. “Thank you. A coffee would be most welcome.”
Chapter Seven
Lotte
December 1936
Snow was falling gently as Lotte once again mounted the steep steps of the Nonnbergstiege. Already, in the late afternoon, the sun was sinking towards the horizon and lengthening shadows as the city became blanketed in white. Lotte drew her coat more tightly around her as she came to the top of the steps; Nonnberg Abbey loomed ahead of her through the snow, seeming as ancient and indestructible as the mountains above.
It had been two months since she’d last clim
bed these steps, two months since Maria von Trapp had wondered aloud whether she—she, Lotte Eder—might have a vocation. Lotte had barely thought of anything else since.
As she went to class, as she practiced her singing, as she ate dinner and sat with her family in the evenings, listening to the radio or Franz playing the piano, the question ran through her mind in a never-ending reel. Could I possibly have a vocation?
She’d dared to ask Johanna one morning, as they walked home from church, what she thought.
“Johanna,” she’d begun hesitantly, “have you ever thought of becoming a nun?”
Her sister had snorted in amusement. “What! Of course not. Why would I?”
“Because,” Lotte had answered, “it would be such a… such a peaceful life.”
“Dull, more like. And my life is dull enough.” Johanna’s gaze had wandered to Franz, who was walking with their father. He attended mass with them every week although as a non-Catholic he was forbidden from taking part in Communion.
“So you never even considered it?” she’d asked, uncertain whether she felt relieved or disappointed by Johanna’s decisive response.
“Not for a moment,” Johanna had responded with a firm shake of her head. “Why are you asking?”
Lotte had shrugged, unwilling to admit the vague yet tempting thoughts that kept circling in her head. “I don’t know. You see them sometimes, going to the hospital.” Some of the nuns offered their nursing services at the Krankenhaus der Barmherzige Brüder in the old town. Lotte had always thought they looked so serene, with their hands tucked into their wide sleeves, their faces framed by their white wimples and flowing black veils.
“Yes, so?” Johanna had laughed and patted her on the head as if she were a child. “The thoughts you have, Lotte! Although, do you know, I could almost see you as a nun. You seem lost in your own world so much of the time anyway.”
Lotte had blushed and said nothing.
Now she approached the abbey, snow dusting her headscarf and coat. The world felt very quiet, the snow softening and muting both sounds and sights. It seemed fitting, this hushed silence. It made the moment more sacred, as if the whole world were her chapel.
“May I help you?” The slightly sour voice of the elderly nun—whose face, framed by her veil, looked like a wrinkled egg—startled Lotte out of her dreamy thoughts.
She was standing in front of the porter’s lodge, and a flicker of impatience crossed the nun’s face as she waited for Lotte to answer. She did not seem so very serene.
“I—I have an appointment with the Mother Abbess,” Lotte stammered.
The nun nodded and withdrew, ushering Lotte into the hall of the abbey, plainly furnished, the whitewashed walls bare save for a wooden crucifix. She sat on the edge of a bench while the nun went to speak to the Mother Abbess. The air was so cold her breath came out in frosty puffs.
“The Mother Abbess will see you now.” The sour nun’s expression softened slightly as she led Lotte down a narrow, stone-flagged corridor to an ancient wooden door, which she knocked on once.
A voice as serene and mellifluous as Lotte could hope for answered, “Enter.”
The nun came in and knelt, while Lotte stood uncertainly. “Benedicte,” the nun said, her head bowed, and the abbess waved her up with one hand.
“Dominus.”
The nun rose and nodded towards Lotte. “Fräulein Eder to speak with you, Reverend Mother.”
The abbess nodded and the nun retreated, the door closing behind her with a quiet click. Lotte was left alone with the Mother Abbess, and suddenly she felt terrified, her heart beating fast, her mouth dry.
“Please, sit,” the abbess said with a smile, and with a slight nod she indicated the one other chair in the room—a plain wooden one, without any adornment. In fact, everything about the room was plain—whitewashed walls, the only decoration a large crucifix.
“Thank you, Reverend Mother.” Lotte knotted her fingers together in her lap as she waited for the abbess to begin.
She was an older woman, well into her sixties, and had been the abbess at Nonnberg, Lotte knew, for fifteen years. Her face, framed by her white wimple and black veil, was wrinkled and kindly, her eyes and brows both dark.
“You wished to speak to me of a possible vocation,” she prompted gently, and Lotte nodded, biting her lip. Why did she suddenly feel so nervous, as if she were a fraud waiting to be found out?
“Yes, Reverend Mother, I did.”
“Very well.” The abbess folded her hands, which had been hidden in the wide sleeves of her habit, on top of her desk. “Tell me what you have experienced, child.”
And so, haltingly, Lotte told of coming to the abbey two months ago, of feeling a sense of peace descend over her, and how the prayers of the nuns had been the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. As she spoke, she heard the throb of sincerity in her voice, and she hoped the abbess heard it as well.
“When I am here at the abbey, I feel as if something in me has settled. I’m at peace in a way I am not in the—the real world.” The abbess smiled faintly, and Lotte wondered if she’d misspoken. “I mean, you know, down there.” She nodded towards the window, indicating the steep Nonnbergstiege down to the old town.
“Yes, I know what you meant.” She gave Lotte a kindly smile.
“And so, when Baroness von Trapp spoke to me about having a vocation,” she continued stiltedly, “it made me wonder. Perhaps I do have one.”
“Baroness von Trapp has often spoken before she has thought,” the abbess said with another small smile. “Indeed, her impulsiveness was a continual struggle for her when she was with us here as a postulant.”
“Oh.” Lotte wondered if the abbess had, in a single stroke, dismissed any possibility of her having a vocation.
“Tell me, child, what draws you to the religious life, other than experiencing this sense of peace?”
Lotte eyed her uncertainly; she had the feeling the abbess was guiding her gently into some sort of trap, and whatever she said would be wrong. “I suppose… a sense of meaning,” she answered. “And a desire to dedicate myself fully to God.”
The abbess nodded slowly. “One is able to dedicate oneself fully to God, whatever one is called to, whether it be the home, the hospital, the school, or the convent. The religious life is one that is characterized far more by sacrifice than by anything else.” Her tone was gentle yet her words felt severe. “It is a sacrifice that is lived out minute by minute and hour by hour. The vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are not to be taken lightly. Even after many years they can cause great trials and test us sorely.”
“I would never, Reverend Mother—” Lotte began, horrified that the abbess would think that. And yet how could she even know what those vows would mean? Her vision of being a nun had not progressed much farther than picturing herself drifting through the ancient cloisters, elegant and serene in a black habit, utterly at peace with her tranquil life. “I would never wish to take any vow lightly,” she finished, looking down at her lap. She felt embarrassed and childish, like a little girl playing dress-up, and the Mother Abbess was gently removing her costume and putting it away.
“No, I do not believe you would,” the abbess replied. “Whatever your faults may be, Fräulein Eder, I believe you are sincere.”
Lotte swallowed and said nothing.
“Tell me,” she continued after a moment, “have you spoken to anyone else about this sense of calling you have experienced?”
“No, Reverend Mother. I have not.” She thought of her brief conversation with Johanna, when she hadn’t dared to say anything of her own deliberations. It had felt too sacred a secret to share with her skeptical sister.
“Your parish priest?” the abbess pressed, and Lotte shook her head. “And what of your family? Would they be supportive of such a decision?”
“I think they would.” Although she wanted to appear measured, Lotte could not keep from rushing on impulsively, “But should it matter what they th
ink? If I have a calling from God, I must obey it, regardless of others’ wishes… shouldn’t I?”
The abbess was silent for a moment, and Lotte struggled not to squirm under her considering, benevolent gaze. “A calling from God must be heeded, it is true, but God does not speak in just one way, like a bolt of lightning, although on occasion that might be the case. But far, far more often, my child, God speaks to us in murmurs and whispers, that still small voice of calm in the midst of the whirlwind.”
“Yes—”
“And He shows us His way by giving us spiritual advisers and elders to guide us. If your parish priest or your family did not approve of your vocation, it would give me great hesitation to accept you as a postulant.” The abbess smiled to take any sting from her words, but Lotte felt it anyway.
“I see.” She realized she’d had some romantic idea of sailing through the abbey gates, leaving the weeping world behind like in the triptych of the last judgment she’d once seen in a church, all wailing and gnashing of teeth, arms outstretched towards a heaven just out of reach. Of course it wasn’t going to be as dramatic as that. She shouldn’t even want it to be.
“If you are truly serious about discerning whether God is calling you to the religious life,” the abbess continued kindly but firmly, “then speak to your priest. He will guide you. And talk with your parents, whom I believe to be devout. God has put them on this earth to instruct you.”
“And if they all agree that I have a vocation?” Lotte asked, hearing the eagerness in her voice.
“Then we will discuss the next steps at the appropriate time.” She paused, and Lotte tensed, sensing something unwelcome. “I should say that most women who have a sense of calling to this life, Fräulein Eder, experience some uncertainty or anxiety, at least at the beginning. They are aware, if only in part, of how much they are being called to relinquish, even if they cannot possibly understand the full depth of the sacrifice God will call them to over the years.”
“Yes, Reverend Mother.” Lotte knew she did not fear giving up the amusements of the world; she thought she would surrender them gladly.