Blue Glass

Ilse

"Is this what it's come to?" That was the first thing I said when I flung open Manfred's door that evening. "Are you so blinded by love that you resort to telling lies to Mama to cover for your secret rendezvouses with the Austrian girl?"
Manfred's blue eyes were wild with anger as he rounded on me, glowering at me in silence. "Can you please knock next time?" he snapped, his tone sharp. "And I have the right to lie. Or are you going to take that away from me, too?"
He had come back sometime during the early hours of the morning. He had told our mother that he had gone off hunting with friends, but a flyaway train ticket stub from Vienna to Schweidnitz that I found in the pocket of his greatcoat as I went to hang it up told me all I needed to know. 
"Why?" I stared back at him as evenly as I could, all the while suppressing the urge to grab his shoulders and shake him. "What's gotten into you, Manfred?"
"Ilse, I love her." Manfred sank down into the nearest chair, his once outraged expression morphing into one of despondency. "And she loves me back, I know it. She's the only girl I'll ever love. Given that, you think I wouldn't take risks to be able to see her again?"
"So why the long face now?" I asked, turning away from his collection of silver cups to face him. "You've been sulking in here all day. The way I see it, you should be filled with joy at having seen your secret paramour."
"That's exactly it." We were standing on opposite sides of the room facing each other, Manfred next to the window and me next to his mantel. "Something's not right with her, in Vienna." His voice was low. "I can feel it. It's just this unsettling feeling of unease that comes over me whenever I think about writing to her or calling her."
"What was she like when you came to see her?" I asked. For all he knew it could just be the depression that comes with being a teenager. "Was she exceptionally moody, or taciturn, or something to that effect?"
He shook his head. "She was fine. It's just that..." He raised his head to look up at me. "There's always been this sadness in her eyes that I haven't been able to understand. Why it's there, that is."
"Have you asked her about it? Why she's sad?"
He furrowed his brow. "Now, why would I embarrass the girl with such an indiscreet question?"
"If you feel so embarrassed about asking her, it's probably just a figment of your imagination, Manfred," I said.
Manfred presses his lips together. "I've seen it enough times to know that it's there."
He turned to face the window,  the gray light from the empty, cloudy sky filtering into the room illuminating his face. "That was the first thing I noticed about her—that despite her outward good sense of humor and her outgoing personality, there's this omnipresent sadness inside of her. Almost like she's missing something, or she wants something she knows she can never have."
"Working class people want a lot of things," I said. "She could be sad about money, about her social status...have you observed her around anyone else besides you or her rich uncle? Around people of her station?"
He nodded. "It's still there."
I fell silent; stared at the floor. What could have possibly happened to a girl so young to permanently embed sorrow into her expression, for her to embody it at all times?
If anything, it was that I knew for sure that this girl wasn't a social climber or wasn't entertaining thoughts of using my brother for his social standing as a member of the minor nobility or his position as a national war hero.
"If what you say is true, then that means you've seen it enough times to be accustomed to it. What made you notice it now?"
"I don't know. I feel like it's only increased. The way her gaze sort of just fades away sometimes."
"She could just be depressed, Manfred. Working class people have a lot to be depressed about, you know."
"It's not something as trivial as money or status." He sounded almost offended.
"What are you going to do about it?"
"There's nothing I can do at the moment." He clutched the armrest as if lamenting his own helplessness. "I leave for the front tomorrow." He gripped it harder, his knuckles going white. "If only I had a few more days, I could just go back and—"
At this point, I had had enough. I felt like I was talking to a lovesick teenager instead of the controlled, upright young man that I knew my brother was.
"Manfred." I pulled up a chair next to him so hard its legs scraped along the wooden floor, the squeal of the metal on wood startling him.
"You have to stop this," I said. "You're engaged, for God's sake. Don't you realize that as much as you love this girl, you're going to have to leave her one day? Do you not understand that even if—which I hope you haven't—that even if you sleep with her and do whatever else you want with her, that at the end of the day the woman with whom you're going to stand at the altar with will be Adele von Wallenberg and not her?"
His expression soured at the mention of her name. "Do you really have to—"
"Do you not acknowledge that, or are you choosing to forget that purposely so you can enjoy whatever time you have left with her—"
"That's exactly what it is."
He curled his lip, his blue eyes hard as flint, but when he spoke, his voice sounded raw and almost crackly, like he was about to cry.
"All my life, I've done nothing but what is expected of me. If there's one thing I'll do that I want, it's this. Even if it's for a short time, I don't care. For once in my life, I want to know what it's like to do something because you want to do it and not because you're expected to do it or because it's your duty to do it."
"You don't want to marry Adele?" The revelation shocked me. "We've known her forever, and you used to be best friends with her brother."
"That was in the past. And no, in case you haven't already figured out, I don't want to marry Adele. I don't love her, Ilse."
"Manfred—" I don't know what to say to him anymore. He knows more than anyone else that marriage is a duty and not meant to be for love. Whether or not the two parties love each other is secondary—it's the connection of two family names that matters the most, and the financial and social gains to be gotten from the match.
"You can't break the engagement off now," I said to him. "The two of you have been set to get married since 1913."
The corners of his lips twitched. "I'll marry her. Who said I wouldn't?" He stood up and went to the window, giving me his back. "I'll marry her, father children with her, live out the rest of my days with her if that's what it'll take to make our parents happy with me. I'd do the same with any woman they told me to marry. What does it matter who I marry, if I can't marry Lea?"
I almost walked over to him and hugged him out of pity. Propriety stilled me, however, and I conceded with joining him at the window while keeping a respectful distance.
He was silent for a while, brooding morosely as he gazed out the window. I followed his gaze to a young woman and her male companion walking down the street—a soldier, most likely on leave, and his sweetheart or fiancée. They walked arm in arm, leaning into each other every now and then. Manfred's eyes followed them down the road until they turned the corner and disappeared from sight. I could feel the envy radiating off of him in waves as he turned around again. The look on his face said that he had forgotten I was even standing there. I instinctively backed away as he crossed the room to stand before his mantel, absentmindedly straightening his trophy cups. After a while, he looked over his shoulder at me, his face completely closed off and unemotional now.
"Leave, now," he said quietly. "I have nothing more to say to you."