Die Affäre The Affair

Roderich Edelstein usually woke up early in the morning to coffee on the veranda and french toast. His beautiful wife would smile lovingly at him from across the round glass table, dressed in nothing but one of his dress shirts that he had worn the night before and had tossed aside during one of the rare moments that they could have to lay with one another.

He never understood why Elizabeta liked to sleep naked beside him and why she insisted on wearing his shirts the next morning, it was probably a way to be closer to him. They hadn't been spending enough time together as they used to when they had first gotten married and now with his mother redecorating the house in order to move in with them, there was a significant strain between them. Elizabeta had made it clear how she felt about his mother moving into the house.

She had voiced it almost as loudly as when they argued about her job or her cooking or her choice in clothing and music. Sometimes it was like being married to the teenage girl he had fallen for; the same loud and boyish teenager that seemed to forget that she wasn't a male at all. And where he had loved that part of her the most back then, now that they had been married for so long it was easy to dispel the illusion of her. She was a police officer and worked long and dangerous hours. Roderich didn't approve because, in his opinion and in the opinion of his mother and aunts, it was not a woman's profession. But then he remembered why he disagreed with Elizabeta about it and he would apologize and decide not to listen to his mother so much until the next time Elizabeta worked late and came home smelling of coffee, sweat and her partner Sadiq's strong aftershave.

It was probably the aftershave that did him in and made him succumb to his mother's insistence that Elizabeta quit and become a stay at home wife. After all, she was married to an Edelstein. The Edelstein family was very well off and any wife of Roderich's would not need to ever lift a finger to work. And boy, had Elizabeta let him have it. Shouting matches would turn into all out brawls of kitchenware and Lord help Roderich if Elizabeta was in the possession of a frying pan!

He smiled to himself in remembrance of a particularly horrendous encounter with their Danish neighbors borrowed axe-Mathias Køhler* had never quite warmed up to Roderich after that having witnessed Elizabeta with it although he seemed in high spirits whenever he saw Elizabeta and commented loudly enough for Roderich and his mother to hear that; "Skønhed* in denim and a workman's shirt-I say its better then having to wear dresses all of the time like some stuffy ol' lady."

Roderich's smile dropped. He stared out, passed the veranda at the garden. His stomach growled, his mouth tasted like stale coffee and cigarettes and his clothes were stiff and drenched in rain water. He had been worried about Elizabeta since the morning before when he had woken to a cold and empty bed.

'Well man, what do you expect? All you do is yell yell yell yell yell-all the time.' Sadiq had said over the phone-the first person Roderich had called with the purpose of finding his wife. The Turkish thirty something year old hadn't been too happy with receiving a call so early in the morning from Roderich, who was definitely not his favorite person in the world. Not like it made a difference to Roderich about Sadiq.

Sadiq didn't really like anyone.

"She's told you about our marriage?" He could almost feel Sadiq smile into the phone.

'Well no, she didn't tell me directly. Came right out of Baghatur's* mouth.' Sadiq said with a pause before speaking again only this time his amused voice had thinned incredibly and sounded icy. 'You don't go looking for Eli now, you hear me Roddy. I don't care that about your problems with eachother.'

-But Sadiq had cared even if he was usually annoyed by Elizabeta. He had cared enough to tell Roderich to leave her alone and to let her sort out her thoughts, whatever that had meant. If Roderich knew this Baghatur, then he would have asked him where Elizabeta had run off to.

He had to know where she was. If she was safe.

If she was coming back.

The day before, after that phone call, had been spent alone. He sat there at the round glass table that she had brought from her grandmother's house after they had gotten married-the table where they had their summer breakfasts every morning thereafter. His hands splayed on the cold glass, long and thin fingers stretched apart as far as they could be, absorbing droplets left behind from the earlier rain. All day yesterday, all night last night and Roderich understood.

He knew that there was a name for this, a name for what he was going through exactly. Karma. This was his karma for what he had and had not done. The sting of his betrayal hot on his lies had come back to take her away. Not that Elizabeta knew anything about it Roderich had been careful. But he knew when he was being punished and this was it. The punishment that he so righteously deserved. The fights, the strain had all begun with his lies, his need to trap her and keep her with him always. Away from Gilbert.

Roderich scowled. Gilbert Beilschmidt. His cousin and the bane of his existence. The stupid, obnoxious, innocent, naive and lovable oaf of a man lumbering with thinly muscled arms and long legs. Laughing with a wide crooked mouth at anything and nothing incredibly entertaining. Eyes like a white rabbits and hair the color of round full moon almost white-well, that was how Roderich had remembered him. He hadn't seen Gilbert or Ludwig in ten years.

Why was Roderich jealous of the memory of this boy?

He shut his eyes and sighed deeply and recalled a near distant memory of one year ago. Ivan Braginski's phone call.

General Winter had died and the old man had left Elizabeta a pretty "penny" or what Ivan called candies and affection for the grand daughter he never had. Old Mr. Braginski, as he was actually called had loved her and it hurt Roderich that he had to lie to Ivan. He told the Russian that Elizabeta was sorry for the loss but she had to work on the eve of the funeral and could not make it. The conversation had gone on for a half an hour after that with "да" here and then and a "visit up soon, мой друг. Elizabeta should have some time off to see old friends."

Of course Roderich had never told Elizabeta about Mr. Braginski's passing or about Ivan's open invitation for them to visit partially because he knew that Gilbert was still in Stadt and because it sounded like Ivan knew what he was doing.

Roderich cursed himself. Of course Ivan knew what Roderich was doing! Even when they were small children together in grade school Ivan Braginski always seemed to know things that he shouldn't always seemed to realize the worse of people when there was never any indication that the worse was possible. It was the damn Russian's gift to know these things and of course he was taunting him with the knoleged that he knew Roderich's dirty little secret.

"I'm being foolish." Roderich thought. He had not seen Ivan in ten years and before that the two were not incredibly close. There was no way that Ivan would know something like that. Roderich was just being paranoid. "That is all that it is. Paranoia."

When Elizabeta came home Roderich would talk to her, apologize for his behavior in the way he was talking at her. He would fix this, they would go back to their lives and maybe, God in heaven, they would finally have a baby.

His hand turned to a tight and painful fist. He had almost forgotten the topic of their most volatile and hateful fights had caused. Elizabeta didn't want to have children. Roderich wanted them, had wanted them right after they had been married same as Roderich's mother. He couldn't understand why she didn't want children with him. Was it such a heinous thought?

"Maybe this is the reason she left. To sort out her thought about having a baby." He said to himself praying that he was right as it began to rain on him again.

She breathed him in. The cologne he had worn earlier had faded but Elizabeta swore that she could smell him on her body in her hair. She wondered when she would get tired of it if she ever would and didn't think it would be possible. It was intoxicating and exhilarating all at the same time. It made her breathless and she found herself comparing Gilbert to Roderich yet again.

Roderich always smelled flowery. He had smelled like the roses in the music room, the hyacinth tucked away in their garden and of the orchids he always bought her. Always on Sundays, put in her favorite metal vase and set on the round glass table right before breakfast time. Roderich had always smelled sickeningly sweet and safe and she wondered, when had she gotten so tired of that smell?

Gilbert smelled like motor oil and musk.

Smelling him, Elizabeta was transported somewhere else where the comforts of flowers were left behind. If Elizabeta could describe Gilbert's scent she would compare it to the wind. Gilbert smelled like the warm summer breeze she had longed for since she left Stadt ten years before like the summers of her childhood left behind in shrouded monotony of her boring marriage.

-Mathias Køhler is obviously Denmark. Mathias Køhler is his fanon name.
-Skønhed means Beauty
-Baghatur is Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The name Baghatur is an Old Turkish word meaning warrior. This was the name of several historical figures, such as Baghatur Khagan of the Khazars, and two rulers of the Mughal Empire.
да is yes
мой друг is my friend

HELLO! I hope you like chapter 1 of The Affair. I have never ever written Roderich before so I took some...liberties with his personality. I don't think he came out entirely out of character given the situation going on but he isn't exactly the same. But...this is Roderich Edelstein and not Austria so I think its okay, right? I wanted to write this first character with Roderich because I wanted it over all understood that he's not malicious, just a jealous mama's boy. A lot of guys fall into categories like that and I'm here to say that with confidence the women that they love wont leave them if they're up front. Roddy should have realized that but then there would be no story.
I think my favorite part was talking about their scents. Okay, I know the part about motor oil and musk probably sounds gross but it's not-I promise no one smells bad here. You just have to imagine summer outside, wind basically Roderich smells like flowers in nature the beautiful scent from kept gardens while Gilbert is wild in his scent, heady and wild. He's the warmth carried in the wind. You get it? He;s wild and unkempt compared to Roddy's garden?

Well anyway, this took me a while to write, I'm going to start on chapter two real soon so keep a look out. Please don't flame and I hope you like it! It's been a while since I've written so this might be horrible (then again the part one to this was written horrible too...) but give it a chance. I hope you like it!

-Kale