Blue Glass

Ilse (continued)

As shocked as I was by Manfred's uncharacteristic outburst, I couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to talk this out with him. I assumed that he had only reacted that way out of fear that I would go to our mother with the matter—and the paper.
It made sense: he had simply lost control out of fear that if I told our mother, he would not only fall from grace in her eyes but in the eyes of our father as well. And although our father tended to just go with the flow and do whatever it was my mother said to do when it came to family matters, he would put his foot down if he got word that his son, an engaged man, was having an affair with another girl.
I sat up in bed and looked around. The room was pitch black, the oily darkness converging on me from all sides. The streets, I noted with nostalgia, were also dark—an attempt by the government to conserve the fuel needed by the street-lamps for usage by the troops.
Manfred hadn't come out of his room since he locked himself in earlier that evening. He had begged off of dinner with the universal excuse: I don't feel well today. The only time we saw him was when our father had to go upstairs to wake him up when a delegation came to sing his praises in front of the house. His reaction was uncharacteristically sour—for all his self-control, he couldn't quite disguise the fact that he was in no mood to accept the ovation.
I threw the covers off of my legs and hopped out of bed, shoving my feet into the pair of house slippers next to the bedpost. My thoughts chased each other round and round in my head, conglomerating into one big jumble, a Gordian knot.
What if he had reacted not out of fear for himself but out of fear for the girl he loved? Although I could never imagine our family doing any harm to anyone, the idea of having the name of the person he loved besmirched by our family's ill talk must have been that abhorrent to him.
But still—how? And why? Manfred has never had any time for women in his teenage years; why now, in the middle of a war?
Maybe that's just it: he's never had time.
Just exactly why my brother reacted that way I didn't know, but I knew the answer was only a few doors down, and if I had a prayer of getting the answers i needed, I was going to need to talk to him.

The three light taps on the door were out of habit more than anything else. I pushed the door open as soon as I heard the customary "Who is it?", hoarse with sleep.
There was a haphazard rustling on the other side of the room as soon as I shut the door behind me, followed by a loud click.
Manfred screwed his eyes shut at the faint yet bright glow of the lighter's flame, aiming it at me. His eyes widened.
"Ilse..?"
"We need to talk." I dragged the chair over to his bedside and sat down, plucking the lighter from his fingers and using it to light the thick candle on his nightstand.
"I'm sorry I lashed out at you like that earlier." The apology sounded strained, like it was the customary thing to do rather than something he actually meant.
"Forget about that," I said, exhaling sharply. "Who is this Leopoldine Schwarz?"
Manfred's blue eyes were suddenly alight with trepidation. "If you're milking me for information to give to Mama..."
"Do you really think of me as that slimy?" I shook my head. "I won't breathe a word to her."
His shoulders seemed to relax a little; his wary expression slowly transitioning into one of neutrality.
"She's the only girl I will ever truly love," he said.
Oh, Manfred.
"How old is she?" I asked.
"Seventeen."
My eyes widened. "She's nine years younger than you, Manfred."
"What difference does it make?" He isn't even looking at me anymore; his words sound as if they're coming from a faraway place, to be spoken to another person. "Adele is two years younger than me and I don't feel anything around her: absolutely nothing. Yes, she's honorable and demure and would make a good wife, but at the end of the day she's just another duty I need to fulfill. On the other hand...Lea is everything she isn't."
My heart nearly cracks in two. Part of me wants to berate him for embarking on the road of a philanderer so early on, while the other half wants to express my joy at him having found love for once in his life.
"Is she from Schweidnitz?" I stick to asking sensible questions.
He barked a laugh. "No. She's from Vienna."
An Austrian. Manfred has given his heart to an Austrian girl.
"Does she love you back?" The answer was obvious—at least to me, but it was still worth asking.
He pursed his lips. "I'd like to think so. We haven't gotten the chance to talk to each other very much."
I sighed. "Do you plan on marrying her?"
He sat up, staring at me now. "I would if I could. You know I can't; I know I can't. I'm going to have to explain it to her one day that we can never be together."
"You can't just say that," I said. "Remember how we were at her age? That she won't take it well is an understatement."
"Do you think I want to tell her?" His features twisted with anger, the anger of the frustrated and helpless. "Do you think I want to break her heart? I've no other choice, Ilse. Mama and Papa have wanted me and Adele to get married since 1913." He rubbed his eyes. "You and I both know the benefits of an association by marriage to the Wallenberg-Pachaly family. Do you really think they would be pleased to hear I passed all of that up in favor of an Austrian wine dealer?"
My jaw dropped. For once, I was truly shocked.
"She's a working class girl...?"
Now his face is defiance personified. "Yes. She's a working class girl. What's wrong with that?"
"Manfred—" I'm secretly honored that he would speak so openly and frankly with me.
"I love her, Ilse. Can't you see that already?"
I do, I want to say. I see it in his eyes, if not through his words, and I know that my brother will never be the same again. Betrayal changes people, mentally if not physically—and then I wonder if he even considers it betrayal. Who is he betraying here, other than family members who have done nothing but make him cater to their needs and put his on the back burner, and a woman whom he never and will probably never love?
I think of the letter he wrote to this Leopoldine Schwarz. There was no trace of the upright, straight laced Manfred all of Germany, including us, knew. I would never have guessed my brother was capable of putting his feelings into words on paper, giving a voice to the voiceless. I would have never guessed he was capable of feeling so strongly for someone the likes of whom we had been inadvertently taught to scorn, to avoid, to abhor.
A thought occurs to my mind, and as unconventional as the question is, I have the urge to ask it while I can.
"Manfred," I said, slowly turning back to him; he blinks at the sound of his name.
"Did you sleep with her?"
His whole face goes up in flames of embarrassment, his fair skin now tinged a tomato red. The answer is obvious—I breathe a sigh of relief.
"We barely know each other." When he regains enough of a grip on himself to speak, his voice comes out shaky and uneven. "It's far too soon for us to—"
"Have the two of you kissed?"
He presses his lips together. "Once or twice, yes. More than that, actually."
The image of my brother kissing a girl is suddenly too preposterous for me to bear, and I start laughing. He looks up at me, his eyes wide.
"What? What is it? What's so funny?"
I try to stop; try to tell him that nothing is funny; that I'm not ridiculing his love affair, but I have somehow lost the ability to form words and so I laugh until he eventually joins in for no reason other than the simple fact that laughter is contagious. We only fall silent when there is an ominous creak in the floorboards: someone is in the hallway.
In a hushed whisper, I ask: "Do you want to sleep with her?"
He blows out the candle at that; I don't dare light it again. The true Manfred, my brother Manfred, is gone; to be replaced by the aristocratic, Prussian officer that is Manfred Von Richthofen.
"Good night, Ilse," I hear him say from somewhere in the dark.
"Good night, Manfred." The conversation is over; I know it even without having to detect the tone of finality in his voice.
I close the door behind me and hastily tiptoe back to my room. Halfway there, I hear an unmistakable creak in the floorboards behind me, and brush it off as a servant doing nighttime chores. It isn't until I open my door and am closing it that whoever it is in the hallway comes into view and my heart skips two beats.
It isn't a servant. If only it was a servant. The figure at the end of the hallway, clad in a white nightdress over a white peg noir, is my mother.