Blue Glass

Kunigunde

...I have sent home a number of relics from my aerial battles, and would greatly appreciate it if you could have them placed in my room.
Your obedient son,
Manfred.

The click of the bevels of the thin knitting needles against each other as I knit round after round after round of the heel of a wool sock used to be the only sound that filled the room. Now, I set it aside and gingerly rise from the padded rocking chair I have occupied for the past hour. I wince as the joints in my knees crack and pop, but I don't mind it the way I used to before. At my age it can only be expected.
The parcel containing the things Manfred had requested I arrange in his room still lies on the kitchen table wrapped in crinkly brown paper and fastened with a length of twine. I run my fingers over the uneven bumps in the package, a package that my son's hands have touched, a package he himself has wrapped. An indirect display of a son's achievements to his mother.
It makes me proud that Manfred still yearns to display his trophies before me first and foremost, like a schoolboy rushing home from school with his report card in hand.

I pick up the parcel and start up the winding stairs to the second story of the house, where my room and those of my children are. It is heavy and cold, like he has wrapped hunks of metal.
Manfred is on recuperative leave now, but he has gone hunting somewhere. As much as I loathe his absence, it's an understandable necessity. Watching my son being hounded by the public is both a satisfying and irritating thing to witness--satisfying because it stokes my ego to know that it is my son men line up to shake hands with, it is my son at whose feet girls throw each other—and irritating because it prompts him to prefer solitude to the company of his family.

I pass the door to Lothar's room first. While Manfred was always his father's replacement in my eyes, God's way of compensating me for the disappointment I had endured by marrying Albrecht von Richthofen, he fell short in certain worldly aspects, aspects that only Lothar could embody. Whereas Manfred was quiet and shy and introverted, Lothar was outgoing and a ladies' man who loved god socialize and make new friends. I had no doubt that when the time came to marry him off, I could afford to take my chances with a family having much higher social status than mine. As for Manfred, as much as I hated to admit it, I would have to wait till the public interest in him had died off to a considerable extent before I could consider marriage for him. The last thing I needed was for him to go off by himself with his bride to a place where he could be alone, where I couldn't still capitalize off of him.

I will not allow any woman to take any of my sons away from me. That is my only stipulation: that my wishes and my opinions always come first in their marriage. I will never allow it to be said by any of their wives that they have their husbands "wrapped around their little fingers."

The door to Manfred's room creaks open as I curl my fingers around the cold metal doorknob and turn it. His room is immaculate as always--I would expect nothing less. Organization, cleanliness; they're all things Wahlstatt taught him.
I set the parcel down on his writing desk and take a long look around the room: at the mantelpiece upon which are lined rows and rows of silver trophy cups, at the stag's head pegged above his bed, its dark eyes staring sightlessly down at me, at the multitude of serial numbers and fragments of enemy aircraft littering the walls. At the imposing chandelier made out of the rotary engine of an enemy aircraft. It seems that his whole room is a shrine to himself and his achievements, a tribute to the fruition of years of hard work and self-denial. This is what he has trained to become his entire life—a good soldier.

My thoughts go to Adele von Wallenberg, the girl who, if all goes well, will become my daughter-in-law. Personally, I think Manfred has the potential to marry someone above his station--if it were up to me, I would have him marry a countess. But Adele's father is close friends with Manfred's father, and he had put his foot down because of that. It was one of the only times he had asserted his dominance as the man of the house, and averted from his role as the useless cripple who sat in a chair all day doing nothing.