Mary Weather et lisztomania

It had been too long ever since she had last received a letter from Ludwig, and it pissed Julia off, as she worked in her off time, in the infirmary set up next to the prisoners' camp, that had been installed there to make them work in the nearby farmlands for the year. It had been her choice to leave, Father wrote her sometimes, with that paternalistic, self-important tone that always pissed her off, and to refuse her responsibilities as a daughter of the powerful general he was. She had chosen not to marry, not to bend to her father's will, not to bear children for a man she knew she would hate and chosen to teach, in a rural area of Eastern Prussia. It was a harsher life than the one she'd led in the family residence on their ancestral lands in Silesia, but it was a purer life too, in a way, when she woke up to the majestic, commanding sound of the Baltic Sea.

It was ironic, in a way, how she'd spent so many years defying Father's authority and still ended up serving Kaiser and Fatherland willingly, in the stench of sickness that surrounded the makeshift hospital. She knew for a thing that they would never let her fight, no matter how much she wished to, no matter how much of a better rider, shooter, hunter and fencer she was than her brothers. Her brothers... Each day, they received more wounded from the Eastern Front, who talked about the unforgiving winters and the waves of Russians charging against them through snow, mud and death, and they all looked so much like Ludwig sometimes. Still, Julia knew better than to let thoughts that would destroy her go to her brain.

It's in that state of mind that she met Matthew, the awkward boy, because he was still a boy, just like Ludwig was, who had tried to speak to her in uneasy French and an even more uneasy smile. How weird, especially the accent, that sounded positively barbaric to Julia's ear, trained to the purer Parisian accent in her youth. Julia eyed him suspiciously at first, before giving a questioning look at the officer who was supervising the prisoners' work. 

"Warum arbeitet dieser Mann nicht?" she asked the officer with a frown. "Ich habe zwei Brüder, die in Frankreich kampfen. Hier brauchen wir keine nutzlosen Münder zu stopfen."
"Keine Angst, Fraulein!" There was a laugh from the soldier, who seemed very much amused by the rather dry tone she had used to address him. His accent, as he answered her, was harsh, biting, reeking from the slums of Berlin. "Unser Matthew ist klein, aber er schuftet wie ein Pferd."

She had a sigh, somewhat unnerved, before throwing another glance at the prisoner that had addressed her. She had some time before starting her evening shift of volunteering, and so she stopped for him, a little bit. It wouldn't kill her to be patient, for once, as she was with her students when her strict but just discipline wasn't doing the job of getting them to learn.

"Je vais bien, merci beaucoup, Monsieur," she said briefly, with a quick nod. "Je vous souhaite une bonne journée."

And on these words she had a rigid, almost military bow, before going her way once more. What a very peculiar encounter...

Julia wasn't, well, one to let emotions get the best of her. She didn't cry, being the only girl in a family of boys had made her that way, as it had been upon her shoulders to always hold her ground. She only laughed, sometimes, that biting, mocking laugh Mother had always found unfeminine, and that made Ludwig, the boring, old soul he was, roll his eyes in annoyance. There was no way she ever let herself be weak, especially not now, with Father, with the war, and with her brothers out there, somewhere in the West, one flying planes without even a basic care for his own safety, the other throwing himself from a trench to the other endlessly. Still, she found herself, as she tended to various veterans in the hospital until late at night, thinking about that boy with the dreadful French and the bright blue eyes, the sunken look about him and how young, how stupidly young he was, in a way. 

It only hit her later on, as she brushed her hair and prepared to go to bed, why she had been thinking about him, about that kid that would probably not even last a month here, in that recluse area where they sent back the sons of the Fatherland half-living and half-dead. She hadn't been able to think about anything else than him because he reminded him so much of Ludwig.

She had nightmares, that night, sharp ones, with vivid colours and that irrational sense of dread that has no explanation, and leaves no clear lucid memories. She hadn't had nightmares like these ever since her childhood, but Julia didn't believe in foreshadowing or any of that bullshit meant for naive children and weak-willed old ladies. And yet, and yet, after her daily lessons in the local school, she found herself coming back to the fields where the prisoners worked, apples in the bag where she kept her student's copies, looking for the kid. He had looked starved and weak, and it was only her rigorous Christian upbringing that forced her to be, at the very least, charitable, or at least that's what she tried to tell herself.

"Wer ist der Jung, der hat mit mir gestern gesprochen?" she asked the guard, who gave her a funny look, but didn't comment. Obviously, she wasn't the only one who came to visit the prisoners. Maybe he misread her intentions.
"Sein Name ist Matthew," the guard said. "Ich denke, dass er von Kanada ist. Ich kann ihn suchen, wenn Sie wollen? Warten Sie bitte."

She waited, for him to be brought to her, only giving him a rather curious look as he appeared. The guard nodded, left, obviously thinking that they needed a bit of privacy, which was weird, given that Julia was in now way close to whoever that Matthew was. She had only come here to give him something to eat, she knew she had.

"Allez," she said as she threw him an apple, before taking out another for her to eat. "Attrapez ça et mangez un peu, vous avez un air de déterré."

Julia munched on her own apple pensively, leaning against the wooden fence that surrounded the prisoners' camp. It was odd, really, what she had just done, and she couldn't help but wonder what exactly she was trying to do here. It didn't matter very much now, not really, as the Canadian babbled in approximative French with a very awkward accent. It was almost painful to hear, and it made Julia laugh, even though she knew perfectly well that the moment was really the best to do so. She didn't care, and hadn't cared ever since she'd left the house, what was the proper behaviour for a lady of a good family.

"Julia Beilschmidt," she said between two snickers. "Mon frère, Ludwig, m'appelle Julchen. Il doit avoir votre âge, plus ou moins, et il est parti au front pas plus tard que l'année dernière."

Her laugh had grown silent, and all what was left on her face was a somewhat sad little smile at the mention of her brother. Still no news from the Western Front.

"J'imagine que ça doit être dur, pour vous, d'être ici, c'est tout..."

She gave Matthew a look, the holes in his battered uniform and the dirt that marred it. He looked, well, out of place. It was something in his face, about him being too young to be out there, and killing like she knew her brothers were doing right now, in trenches, in mud and in cold blood. Of course, Ludwig didn't talk about those things in his letters, as they would never get past censorship if he did, but she knew from the way his hand trembled that something was wrong. Something had broken inside her little brother, making him a different kind of man than he should have been.

"Ludwig? Il est officier dans l'artillerie, le plus jeune de son régiment. Mon père est général sur le front Ouest et lui a trouvé une position là-bas dès qu'il a eu l'âge, vous voyez."

It was sad to think that, even if he managed to survive this was, she'd never see her Luddi, the bright, sensitive little brother she'd taken care of, ever again. She sighed, with a tired grin on her face. Long gone were the spring days in her native Silesia, the games in the woods, the childish fights between siblings and the warm feeling of the summer rain on her skin, ruining her dresses and making Mother sigh and order a new one that, she knew, was going to end up being just as battered. There was no use in dwelling upon the past anymore. The sun was about to set, and she had work to do, back home, taking part in the war effort, as it was fit for her to do.

"Et... Je ne crois pas que nous soyons assez proches pour ce genre de familiarités, Monsieur," she said,taking the last bite from her apple and throwing on the ground. She offered him a little nod, after a quick glance to the guard, that was probably coming back in a few minutes for the curfew. "Mais parlez-moi de vous, j'ai envie d'en savoir plus. Je vous trouve un peu jeune pour vous battre en Europe. Qu'est-ce que vous faisiez avant la guerre? Vous étudiez peut-être?"

Julia came home late that night, after she'd left that lone little soldier alone to his back breaking work in the fields, to the winds that blew over the fields of Eastern Prussia and the uniform that hung over his shoulder like the battered remnants of a past long gone. She needed to think, and her steps had taken her to the forest, the dense one, dark one, that reminded her of the castle of her childhood, the games and make believe of things that she knew had died.

Julia had begged, begged, begged Father to please stop Ludwig from enlisting, to keep him from harm's way. She hadn't even batted an eyelash when Gilbert had gone to fight, years earlier, but that had been only because she and Gilbert shared the same mind, the same strong, pig-headed, unbreakable mind. Ludwig wasn't like his older siblings; Ludwig was soft, in his own way, even under all that seriousness he kept around himself like some kind of mask. Ludwig only ever was happy in the tales of a past long gone, Homer and Virgil, Goethe and Schiller, Schubert and Wagner. Both Julia and Father had known that the front, the soul-crushing reality of war, would destroy him. It hadn't been enough to stop him from throwing himself towards it.

Julia came home late that night, and when she did, she didn't get to work on her student's copies, or eat. She let herself fall on the bed of the small house she occupied in the outskirts of the village, sighed, and wished, for a very brief instant, that she could cry, like she knew other women did whenever they thought about their loved ones, out there, fighting the French, the English, the Russians. But Julia was made of steel, Father had made her this way, and steel did not weep.

That night, she sleeplessly thought of that lonely soldier, with the blond hair and the blue eyes, and of the tragedy of war itself that repeated itself, she knew, time and time again under the unstoppable wheel of politics and that senseless raison d'État. It wasn't fair, in a way, for that boy to be here, just like it wasn't fair for Ludwig to be in the trenches now.