Blue Glass

The Window Seat

Wedding, Berlin.
It's the last place on Earth I ever thought I'd find myself going to, yet here I was, in the back of a first class compartment that cost me an arm and a leg, headed for, by all accounts, a shithole.
Despite the disgusting things I had heard about the place—that it teemed with sick prostitutes and social misfits—I was still somewhat eager to get away from Vienna. It seemed that no matter where I went, the city had this stifling quality to it that I could no longer bear. It was almost like it had acquired it overnight. I would walk into a store and immediately feel like the walls were closing in on me, or a strange feeling would come over me that something bad was going to happen. I would contend with a horde of sick prostitutes or greedy pimps any day over the emotional instability I was dealing with in Vienna. Besides, it would have been foolish of me to sit pretty and wait for Heinrich to cart me away to a mental facility. He hadn't forgotten about me in the slightest; the frequency of his calls had increased if not stayed the same. Eventually I stopped answering the phone altogether, preferring not hearing his voice at all to hearing the necessary updates on whether he had found a decent institution or not. "I should just throw you in the first looney bin I find, but I'm putting you in a decent one because despite all you've done you're still my cousin," he had said.
I had laughed after he hung up. If he thought I was supposed to overlook his attempts to have me locked up in favor of the quality of the facility, he needed to think again. He didn't know I was gone; neither did Svetlana. I had gone under total cover of darkness, when most of Vienna was asleep—or at least the people on my street. As I lugged my suitcase down the stairs to the front door, I prayed the continuous clanking of the hard shell hitting the wood wouldn't wake Svetlana up. Knowing her, she'd probably think it was my mother's ghost. She had been adamant that no one enter that room again, packing everything up in boxes and locking the door with the key flushed down the latrine. Every day, she would sprinkle salt at the foot of the door and rub it on the edges of the door also, muttering some zany protection prayer. Me, a Lutheran by birth and upbringing; an atheist by mentality, thought it was absolute Scheissegal. If anything, the past events only made me feel more certain that God didn't exist, or that He was just some ruthless higher power who loved to pull strings in order to see people suffer. I had never had any intention of praying to such a malevolent entity, and I wasn't about to start anytime soon.
Once or twice, I looked over my shoulder as I dragged my bag out the front door and down the walk, especially noisily unlatching the gate with one hand. I half expected Svetlana to come flying out of the house, shouting at me to go inside. Thankfully, the two story brown house remained silent for all I could tell.
I had made my way to the train station and for the first time in my life paid for a train ticket. I had enough money on me for a first class ticket, as well as an ample amount left over to pay for whatever expenses my stay in Wedding might concur.
The train's rails ground to a screeching halt. I moved deeper into the luxurious upholstery of my chair and opened my book, which was yet another novel from my dearly departed mother's collection. Sometimes I wondered where she got them, when literature like this was strictly forbidden for women to have. In order to be able to go out in public with them, I had taped pieces of paper over the covers to make them look like harmless, blank journals or even a prayer book—I'd leave that to the viewer's imagination.
There was a loud clatter from slightly above me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when a young man in a gray service uniform tossed his hunting rifle onto the luggage rack and sat down next to me. I opened my book to a random page and forced my eyes to go back and forth across the page in an attempt to look like I was reading, when in truth I was nothing short of confused. There were plenty of empty first class seats, so why would he sit by me, of all people?
I self consciously lowered the brim of my hat just a bit, suddenly acutely aware of the soldier's presence. Why him, though? There were countless people in the same car, and I could care less about them staring at me.
This is the first class compartment. Anyone who is anyone comes here. He could be a general, a staff officer from Berlin—
He shifted slightly in his seat. I suddenly got the feeling that he was staring at me, his gaze drilling holes in the top and side of my head. It was the same feeling I got whenever Manfred looked at me, I realized with a pang of nostalgia.
Manfred—
Out of habit, my gaze swooped to his hands, now clasped primly in his lap. They were medium sized, with veins crisscrossing the backs of them...
"You know, it's rude to ignore your seating partner."
I flinched and looked up at my traveling companion. His face was shadowed by the upturned collar of his greatcoat and the lowered brim of his bill cap. I couldn't make out his features clearly in the gray light from outside filtering into the compartment but I could hear his smile through his words.
"I'm paying attention to you now," I snapped. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"
"Pretty girls are a hard thing to come by in the homeland," the soldier continued. "You're a sight for sore eyes."
"Spare me your flattery," I said, struggling not to full on snap at him. "I don't—"
"Don't you know who I am?" He was still smiling. I could hear it.
"I don't. And I don't plan on enlightening myself." I couldn't believe the audacity of this man, talking to me like he was my best friend. I would most likely have slapped him if we hadn't been in such a public place.
"Ah, I forgot." He reached up and deftly lifted his cap from his head and folded the collar of his coat down. My jaw came just short of hitting the floor when I saw who it was.
"Is this better?"Manfred asked.
I didn't know how to react. I stared at him, numb with shock and disbelief. Manfred's hand inched across his lap to cover mine, and I laced my fingers through his.
"How...how did you find me?" I asked, my voice breaking at the edges. I will not cry on the train. I will not cry on the train.
"No, how did you find me?" His grip on my hand tightened. "Aren't you supposed to be in Austria?"
"I'm here for work." It was a blatant lie, but it was the best I had in my arsenal. What else could have brought me to Germany anyway?
I could have killed my mother. I could have tried to kill myself. I could have lied to my cousin and stolen money from him, and now he's on my case trying to get me locked up. Those are all decent reasons for me to flee Austria—
"Where are you headed to?" I asked.
"I was just going back to Berlin for more administrative chores" Manfred raked a hand through his hair. "I just finished some hunting in Gotha."
It was then that I noticed he looked slightly different. He no longer had the white length of cloth I was so used to seeing him in banded around his head like a skullcap.
"Your bandage," I said. "They allowed you to take it off?"
He nodded. "They tell me I have to be careful with it." He turned to me. "We've spoken so less about you. How is your mother?"
Bile rose in my throat, and my stomach immediately twisted itself into a Gordian Knot of anxiety.
How is my mother? She's too far away from either of us for me to answer that question for you. And if I hadn't been such a terrible knot tyer, I wouldn't be able to answer that question for you, either.
I passed my tongue over my lips and turned to meet his blue eyes, wide and expectant. "She's—"
The train began to slow down considerably. The wheels ground shrilly against the tracks, the entire car vibrating as a result. Manfred looked up, letting out a low groan of foreboding.
"I have to go now," he said. "Are you getting off here, too?"
I nodded. "I have to go meet up with a few of my colleagues."
"Mmm." Manfred glanced pointedly at my bag. "Have you something I can write with?"
I handed him a random piece of paper I had in the depths of my bag, as well as a fountain pen that proved to be the leakiest thing next to the drainage pipes I was sure to encounter during my stay in Wedding. Manfred made a displeased sound deep in his throat as ink gushed out all over his fingertips, staining them a deep, inky blue-black. He wrote something down on the paper, blew on it a few times to dry the ink, and pressed it into my waiting hand.
"Come see me sometime," he said in parting as he soundlessly slid open the door to the compartment and hefted his rifle off the wire rack. "I don't know when I'll be able to come back to Germany again, and I'd like for us to spend some time together before I go."
His voice suddenly sounded strained, like the words he uttered didn't belong to him. Maybe it was just my imagination, I thought, as he bowed to me and then disappeared into the crowd of people, a needle in the haystack that was Berlin, Germany.

There's a dog barking on my street and just about six others just joined it from different houses so now I'm trying to write over this huge symphony of barking in various pitches. -_-
Sorry if the chapter is bad in any way...blame the dogs SMH