Blue Glass

In The Night

The darkness that swallowed Room 34 of the Hotel Continental felt different somehow, diffenent from the darkness that settled over me in my room in Vienna, different from my room in the Wedding apartment complex. This one was heavier, more stuffier and constricting, and had a certain gloomy quality to it that was difficult to ignore.
But what sets one darkness apart from another, after all? Perhaps it's the circumstances under which each one descends.
I could feel Manfred staring at me through the blackness, almost like he had night vision. I could feel his gaze burning holes in my back, in my arms, in the sides of my face. I stuck to one end of the bed while he took up his place at the other side. The springs of the mattress creaked as he shifted his weight slightly.
I hugged my knees to my chest self consciously, suddenly wanting nothing more to jump out the window. What had once started out as a forbidden yet girlish fantasy of sleeping with the man of my dreams was slowly burgeoning into my worst nightmare...a painful yet necessary undertaking I would have to see through to the end if I wanted him to stay...if I didn't want to lose him to another woman.
Besides, I should have known Manfred would have wanted something like this from me sooner or later. He was a grown man. I told myself I should at least be thankful my first time would be with someone I actually loved.
But why now? What made him want us to cement the bond between us so soon?
"We should go places tomorrow," Manfred said from where he sat. "I really would like to do some hunting before I leave for the Front."
"I have yet to take up your offer of teaching me to shoot," I said teasingly. "Hopefully you haven't changed your mind?"
"Of course not." Manfred shifted his weight again. "It would be my pleasure."
The only logical reason why Manfred would underhandedly ask me to sleep with him would be if he was planning on asking me to marry him soon. No one slept with anyone before marrying them first. Part of me was elated at the prospect of becoming Freifrau Von Richthofen, while the other half was slowly getting cold feet.
I was a tiny cog in the plexus that made up the working class, but I knew what was at stake. Losing your virginity as a woman was akin to having your head shaved. It was literally the most honorable thing a woman had, something that was reserved only for their husbands to take. No man wanted to marry a girl who had already been screwed by someone else. For me to give myself so unhesitatingly to a man I wasn't even engaged to was crossing the line between honor and eternal shame. Of course Manfred would ask me to marry him sooner or later after all this was over, but wouldn't it be better to wait until after that?
The familiar pop of a bottle being opened, followed by the telltale clink of the neck of the bottle against the lip of a glass made me look up. There was the comforting burble of liquid—most likely alcohol—being poured. I almost asked Manfred for a glass out of habit, but stilled myself. I wasn't about to ask if he didn't offer. Upper class women didn't drink, after all.
There was another clink as Manfred filled another glass. His fingers were warm as he lifted my hand and curled my fingers around the smooth, rounded expanse of the champagne flute. I resisted the urge to wind my fingers around his and bring the back of his hand to my lips.
"Danke." I took a shaky sip of champagne, letting the alcohol do its job of numbing my senses. I wondered how on Earth he managed to ferret a bottle of alcohol into his room.
Manfred downed one glass, then another. I took dainty sip after dainty sip and slowly let the customary lethargy that came with drinking alcohol overtake me. I had never had a high tolerance for alcohol, and now was no exception. By the time I worked up the courage to ask him for seconds I was already having trouble sitting up straight.
He refilled my glass without saying anything and handed it back to me. I was secretly glad for the alcohol. Sleeping with a man for the first time quasi-drunk was a lot better than doing it sober. Manfred seemed to think so, too. I secretly wished I could have a few more glasses to dull the pain.
"Are you scared of me?" Manfred's voice, the suddenness with which he had spoke, made me jump.
"No." My voice barely rose above a whisper. I didn't want to tell him that yes, I was scared, but not of him. It was more of what he was about to do to me. What was once my number one wish now terrified me, especially since my honor hung in the balance. I told myself that it wasn't that bad, that Manfred would eventually ask me to marry him, but I only had empty words to prove that. He hadn't even given me a ring.
Then again, I didn't want to voice my objections and upset or embarrass him. This was obviously something he didn't voluntarily want to do—hence his reliance on alcohol—and I didn't want to exacerbate his nerves. Besides, sex was an important part of being married, and I had to put his wishes before mine and do what was—and would be—expected of me in the foreseeable future if I was to win him over completely.
"I don't want to make you do something you don't want to," he said as he turned to face me. "But I imagine it's a lot easier for the two of us to get used to it now than later on...after the war."
After the war. Did that mean that we were going to get married after all?
"You're right," I said, and I meant it. I suddenly felt ashamed that I had doubted Manfred; that I had mistaken his intentions for anything other than honorable. He was different from the rest. He wasn't my father.
Drunk as he was, I heard his breath hitch with trepidation. "If you're afraid of the pain, I'll try not to hurt you. I just—"
"It's fine," I said dismissively."I don't care." Because I didn't...did I? I could survive the pain of hanging myself and failing; this should be nothing...right?
I felt the mattress dip beneath me as he shifted closer to me, so close that I could feel the heat from his body from where I was sitting. Not knowing what else to do, I leaned forward and rested my head on his shoulder.
It suddenly occurred to me just how much fabric separated our bodies. He had somehow managed to silently change out of his uniform in the dark into a nightshirt whose flimsy material felt absolutely luxurious beneath my fingertips. I on the other hand was still in my walking suit minus the jacket. The fabric of the blouse I wore was made of a gossamer, almost sheer fabric. The distance between us—or lack of it thereof—sent a rush of adrenaline through me. It took all of my self control not to lean backward and go back to my previous position at the other side of the bed.
Manfred suddenly leaned back, took my face in his hands and kissed me full on the lips. I swooned involuntarily at the intensity of the gesture, feeling as though I would melt in his arms. Then he was leaning forward, or perhaps it was I who moved backward--whichever one of us initiated it, I didn't know, but within moments the two of us were lying on our sides on the bed, our arms draped loosely around each other, our foreheads touching, staring at each other through the layers of darkness that veiled us from each other's eyes.
"You have ruined me." Manfred's words had a faint slur to them. "You have completely destroyed me."
Oh. "How so?"
"In all of the twenty-five years that I've been on this earth, I've never felt so strongly for a girl before. Ever. You don't understand how alien the concept of...of falling in love, of being with a girl was in my upbringing." His grip on me was slowly tightening. "I've met scores of pretty girls who would kill for me to spend a night with them. All that, and not a single one has found her way into my heart. But you—it's just you, do you understand?" He interrupted his sentence with a deep, shaky inhale. "You don't know what you do to me, Lea. We're not even supposed to love each other, yet I feel more strongly towards you than any girl I've met who would be acceptable for me to love."
"Manfred--" I began. I wanted to tell him that he didn't know who he was giving his love to. I wanted to be able to tell him everything—about Vienna, about what I had done to my mother, about what I had tried to do to myself. I wanted to be able to open up to him and tell him who I really was. I was grateful for the darkness more than ever now, for if we had been doing this in the light of day, he would have seen what I had done to myself. He would have seen the mess of slashes of varying depths and lengths up and down my calves and forearms. He would have seen the ugly purple bruise ringing my neck like a collar.
He quickly clapped a hand over my mouth, effectively shutting me up.
"If you think I care that what we're doing is wrong, you should know I do. If anyone found out about us, it would be the end of the world for both of us. But at this point in time, I can forget about that. All I ask of you now is that you find it in your heart to forgive me for whatever repercussions this will have for you."
He paused, taking my face in his hands again, leaning forward so that our noses were touching. I could smell the champagne on his breath and knew that he was speaking out of intoxication, nothing more.
"So go on, then," he said. "Destroy the rest of me. I'll welcome it."
We didn't say a word to each other after that. We didn't need to; our bodies told each other all they needed to know, and whatever was left unsaid was left unsaid. It was better that way, to hold that silence between us. Here, cloaked in impenetrable darkness, we shed all artifices and titles, demoting ourselves to nothing but a man and his lover expressing their deep-seated affection for each other in the most intimate of ways. It was easy to see that Manfred had never done anything of the sort before, and while I had clandestinely read about what to expect, experiencing it was something else.
The pain, as expected,was excruciating. Being in a position where I couldn't bring my knees to my chest or roll over made it even worse. This is what you've always wanted, I told myself over and over again as silent tears leaked out the corners of my eyes and down the side of my head, falling in my ears. My lip throbbed from how hard I had sunk my teeth into it. And despite all my physical discomfort, I couldn't help but find a note of happiness in the whole situation. The bond holding Manfred and I was cemented and eternal now, engraved in brass and stone. He was mine, and I was his, in all but religious decree. I could handle a little bit of pain knowing that.
As the hours of the night dragged on, I realized with surprising clarity that this was exactly how my mother must have felt during the early days of her relationship with my father. She undoubtedly felt the same overpowering love I felt for Manfred now towards my father back then. For once in my life, I understood the reason behind her gradual descent into moral depravity: she had given herself to my father body and soul, wholeheartedly, selflessly, sincerely; allowed love to blind her to such an extent that her world suddenly became comprised of Siegfried Anton Schwarz alone. And when he left, he took her heart with him. She had nothing more to live for except for the very thing that had destroyed their relationship —me.
Was tonight my first and last night with Manfred? Would he just leave in the morning and fabricate an excuse to go to some other city. It was a scenario likely to unfold.
But why, then, would we be lying here in the dark, defiling each other like it was the only thing either of us knew how to do? Why was I running my fingertips down the smooth, broad expanse of Manfred's back, following the lines of his body like a child drawing with a charcoal pencil, in an attempt to take my mind off the red hot pain slowly consuming me like a forest fire? Why were his fingers tangled inextricably in my hair as he kissed me over and over and over again until both of us were dizzy and lightheaded from lack of oxygen? Why did it feel like the corners of his body were melting, fusing with mine, until the two of us meshed together as one and I could no longer tell where one of us ended and the other began? He would never have done something like this if he intended our relationship to be nothing more than a fling.
On the flip side, why bother worrying about it? Why waste time thinking about what tomorrow would bring when I could enjoy the present?
I couldn't see Manfred in the blackness, but I could feel his gaze slicing through the inky darkness as he propped himself up on his forearms, hovering centimeters above me, his face next to my ear, his clenched fists indenting the feather pillow on either side of my head.
"Ich liebe dich," he said huskily. "I'll never truly love anyone but you."
"Ich liebe dich auch, Manfred." I spoke those five words with such conviction that I figured they were probably the most sincere confession of my life.
This moment was what I had killed my mother for; it was what I had stolen money from Heinrich for. This was where I was meant to be all along—in the dark, in a luxurious hotel, with the man of my dreams making love to me. Yes, he might be gone by sunrise, but who was I to care? I would enjoy the present; let the future take care of itself.

I didn't remember much of what happened after Manfred gingerly extricated himself from me and lay against me on his side, except for one thing.
I was lying in fetal position with my knees to my chest, worrying my index finger between my teeth in an attempt to stave off the pain spasming through me. I forced myself to take deep breaths and willed my body to shut down and go to sleep. All at once, I felt both of Manfred's hands catch my right hand in his own and slowly raise it to his mouth. Apparently assuming I had fallen asleep, he said something under his breath so quietly that if it weren't for how close we were I would never have heard it.
Thank you.
What for?
My heart nearly stopped working as I felt him slide off the only ring he wore on his right ring finger, a silver ring with a diamond in the middle, and lower it over my right ring finger. His touch sent millions of tiny electric shocks up and down my arm and it was all I could do to hold still as he slowly curled my fingers in towards my palm and held my fist to his lips. It seemed like the two of us lay there like that for centuries. I willed myself not to tighten my fist as he flattened my hand and slid the ring off my finger.
I felt the mattress dip as he got up off the bed. I could feel his presence as he stood over me, watching me. He muttered something under his breath and turned away, most likely to put his uniform back on.
I was half asleep by now, but that didn't mean I hadn't heard him.
I love you.
I'm sorry.

UwU