The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  Pushing himself from the pillar, Frank turned and crossed the road, then headed into a narrow street off the square. This was not the way back. He knew it.

  He knew it only too well. That street. It beckoned him into its clutches. Pulled him into the warren of alleyways behind the square that seemed untouched by time. His world had become completely disjointed since stepping off the plane. But he felt strangely comfortable in this quarter. The homely aroma of roast chestnuts still wafted through the air. The fragrance of street life, spilled beer, restaurant kitchens. Every moment invaded his senses and made itself at home in his muddled mind. Instantly his appointment with Rösti had found its way once again to the back of his thoughts. And sank completely out of reach as his footsteps on the pavement trod what seemed such a cosily familiar path. He knew there would be a place nearby where he could sit and draw his breath for a while over a beer.

  But he was not prepared for the deep sense of loss when he turned the next corner and stopped dead in his tracks. In his mind, he had seen a huge advertisement for Persil on the side wall facing him. But there was no wall. And there was no sign of any tavern. There was simply nothing. Just a site fenced off to allow an anonymous new building to take shape.

  A sudden sharp slap on the back almost knocked him to the floor. In the shock of the moment he almost missed the crackle of words that came with it.

  “Wir vermissen’s auch!”

  “What the fuck!?” Frank swung round and came face to face with a large jovial figure, whose distinguishing feature at that moment was a gut that spilled generously forth beneath an open jacket and overcoat. Restrained by a waistcoat vainly trying to hold it in place, it looked none too comfortable. Frank fancied the garment had lost two buttons already.

  “He says we miss it too,” came a softer voice the other side of Frank in almost perfect English with shades of an old colonialist or public-school polish to it. This added to the slight oddness about the voice, which carried the strong hint of an accent that Frank was unable to place. Instantly intrigued by the voice, he turned to face its owner – a man some ten years older than him, possibly late thirties, with a strikingly handsome face. Swarthy, with an aquiline nose and dark eyes that would have been sultry and mysterious had it not been for the engaging white smile that came with his words.

  “Lisettli’s wine tavern,” the voice continued. “The jewel of the Spalenberg. She closed down a few years ago. But come along with us old chap.”

  The two men each put an arm around Frank. Drained by his bewilderment, confusion and the utterly strange familiarity of this city, he meekly submitted to these unlikely Samaritans and let himself be guided down the road. They walked back to the square, past the blood-red building with its kaleidoscopic frescoes, across the bridge over the Rhine and deep into a warren of streets on the other side of the river.

  When they reached a corner building that displayed the modest sign of a sheep over the door, the two men led Frank through the doorway into a dingy room. He had the uneasy impression of a lamb being led to slaughter.

  “What can we get you?” said the English speaker, as they settled Frank into his seat at the table. Frank looked about him and felt instant comfort in the warmth of the rough but cosy little pub – infused with years of spilled beer and tobacco smoke, the aroma a soothing balm for his confusion. It was the kind of place where he felt instantly at home.

  “I must apologise,” the man continued, “we have not even introduced ourselves. My name is Jan, but my friends call me Jack.”

  “And I am Baschi,” the jovial one chipped in, offering Frank his hand.

  “Thanks, I’ll have a beer,” he said. Then: “Why Jack? You’re not English surely.”

  “My family name is Hruby. With an H. Jack’s the name people called me after Lee Harvey Oswald was shot. And I’ve been carrying the name around with me ever since. It sounds macabre. But I can live with it. And it’s better than Donát.”

  “That doesn’t sound very Swiss either.”

  “Maybe not. But what does that even mean? My father was originally from Bohemia. My mother is Irish. But I’m as much Swiss as anything. My father wanted to call me Donát. But my mother by her own account hated the name. It sounded too much like a doughnut to her. So they compromised with Jan. And now I’m stuck with Jack.”

  “He grow up here and go to the school here,” added the man called Baschi. “He is Swiss just like me.”

  “So Frank, what are you doing here in Basel?” asked Jack, as the waitress placed a beer down in front of Frank along with a bottle of red wine and two glasses for his hosts.

  “God, I need this,” said Frank. He put the beer glass to his mouth with a craving that surprised even him in his slightly unhinged state.

  It was a lager. Not his idea of a good beer. But the initial coolness of the liquid was enough to slake his thirst. And the unexpected chink of light that this encounter now shone onto his dark confusion lit up his memory of why he had even come here in the first place.

  “Cheers,” he said and put down the glass. He pulled the notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket and placed it on the table. “You have a big referendum here tomorrow.”

  “News travels,” Jack said. “At last the country is dragging itself into the twentieth century.”

  “Will you be voting?” asked Frank. Jack stared into his glass.

  “What do you think, Baschi? Will we be voting?”

  Baschi shrugged.

  “They tried twelve years ago. And failed then. Why will it be any different now? Politics is a dirty business. Not for women. And many women do not even want to vote. They trust their men.”

  “Baschi doesn’t talk to many women,” Jack explained, “What he’s really trying to say is that women don’t have to do military service like men do, so why should they get the vote? Isn’t that so, Baschi?”

  Baschi just smiled.

  “I’ve been given some names of women I might talk to,” said Frank, flicking through his notebook. “Gerhard and Späth-Schweizer, for example.”

  “Späth-Schweizer”, Baschi chuckled. “What kind of a woman is a Späth-Schweizer?” he added slamming his right hand down on the table with a guffaw. His left hand held the buttons of his waistcoat in place just as a precaution.

  “Baschi likes his jokes,” said Jack indulgently. “It’s a name that translates as Late Swiss.”

  “I know,” Frank said, irritated by Jack’s assumption of his ignorance.

  “I don’t know these women myself. Frau Gerhard is very old now, and I know she learned a lot from your suffragettes in England. She also saved many Jewish children before the war. They like to hold her up as a shining example of the great humanist tradition in this city, say it’s because of people like her that women have already had the vote in local elections here for some years. But if you want to know what the average Swiss woman thinks about voting in national elections, you’d do better speaking to my wife.”

  “Most countries gave women the vote years ago. Why’s it taken so long for Switzerland? Your women can’t be happy with that.”

  Jack frowned over the table at Frank.

  “That sounds a tad like a rebuke old chap. Women are beautiful creatures and they can rejoice in that. As we men can too.”

  “And that sounds rather like a no vote,” Frank reciprocated.

  “Let’s talk of more interesting things,” Jack said, paying no attention to Frank’s words. “What do you think of the beer?”

  “What you write?” asked Baschi with suspicion, when he saw Frank scribbling in his notebook. Frank ignored the curiosity.

  “Lager’s not really to my taste.”

  “You see this place?” Jack asked, as he made a sweeping gesture with his right arm to encompass the entire room. “They were serving wine here 500 years ago. The oldest pub in the city. They have sold many kinds of wine and ale over the centuries. Let me get you something special, which might be more to your taste.”

  A
s the sweeping gesture reached the end of its trajectory, he raised his arm again, clicked his fingers and called over the waitress.

  Frank was unable to hear what Jack said. But as he was speaking, he cast a sideways glance at Frank, who could not escape the expression in those dark, deep-set eyes. A look that lay somewhere between mischief and villainy. He could not be sure which was closer to the truth. Within a short time, the waitress returned to the table, took the lager from Frank and replaced it with a slender, tulip-shaped glass of cloudy-looking ale that boasted an impressive head.

  “Danke schön, Lisbeth. Und was hältst Du von der Abstimmung morgen?” Jack said to the waitress, asking her in a clear High German – for Frank’s benefit – what she thought of the vote for women. And that look still lingered in the smile on his lips.

  The waitress’s answer came in an impenetrable dialect that left Frank flummoxed. He looked quizzically at Jack.

  “It seems our friend Baschi is right. She said she leaves that kind of thing to her husband.”

  Baschi laughed. Jack meanwhile pulled a hipflask surreptitiously from the inside pocket of his jacket and poured a shot into the glass while Frank was still gazing at the waitress.

  “Now what do you think of this beer?” Jack asked, nodding at the tall glass in front of Frank. Frank caressed the glass with a smile of approval at what looked a little more like the beer he was used to and put it to his lips.

  “That’s good. It’s got a real kick.” Smacking his lips, he placed the glass back down in front of him with a look of pure satisfaction.

  “It’s a speciality I picked up from a friend of mine,” Jack said. “Wheat beer with a shot of gin. He calls it dog’s nose.”

  Frank gave a nod of approval. He raised his glass in appreciation to the waitress. She smiled. And the three of them settled into an evening far removed from anything Frank might originally have had in mind. It was several glasses of wine and dog’s nose later that the three ventured back out into the night air. The breeze from the river was already making its mark on the street. Frank shivered with the chill and buttoned up his jacket. By now, his date with Rösti had faded into oblivion. And the dog’s nose had sniffed its way so deep into his skull that he was glad of the support his companions gave him as first Baschi and then Jack draped an arm around his shoulders with the words “You come along with us old chap.”

  Frank barely noticed Jack’s soft voice. There was certainly no way he could detect whether it still carried any of the mischief or villainy he had sensed earlier. For now, he felt only the succour of those two guiding arms as they steered him back along the street. Where they were taking him, he had no idea. But he knew they were retracing their steps when the cold air from the Rhine hit him in the face as they crossed the bridge.

  Perhaps it was the vibration and rumble of the trams over the bridge. Or the sight of the water that flowed beneath. Whatever the reason, Frank felt his gut suddenly heave. He pulled himself free of those guiding arms and leaned over the parapet of the bridge to throw up. Behind him Jack and Baschi laughed, exchanging garbled jokes. Then slapped him on the back.

  Frank looked up. Facing him on the far side of the river, a host of lights flickered out across the water. He fancied he could hear their sparkling glitter, as they celebrated the night. Dancing and singing before his eyes. The motion threatened to send his mind into a spin.

  “Is that a palace or what is it?” Frank asked. He hoped his words might foil the spin. Jack laughed and slapped him on the back again.

  “Quite right,” he said. “A palace fit for three kings. The best hotel in town.”

  “And the most dangerous,” Baschi added darkly. And left the words to hang mysteriously, without elaborating further.

  Still leaning over the parapet for fear of further heaving, Frank looked up at Baschi. Jack saw the glazed bewilderment in Frank’s eyes.

  “That was thirty years ago,” Jack reassured him. Frank was not reassured.

  “The bridges here were packed with explosives back then,” he explained. “In case the Germans invaded. The button for this bridge was in that building.”

  “That’s not all,” Baschi said in a sinister tone.

  “He’s not wrong,” Jack added in an effort to lighten the darkness. “It’s one of the ironies of history that the building was home to Mr Herzl during the first Zionist Congress, while the hotel opposite,” he said, gesturing towards a white, neoclassical building behind them on the other side of the river, “was built by the grandfather of Mr Schicklgruber’s personal astrologer.”

  These words only added to the confusion in Frank’s head.

  “Come on,” Jack said, putting an arm around Frank to steady him. “It’s time to move.”

  With his companions either side of him, Frank let himself be guided on across the bridge to the heart of the city. As he found his step and settled into the rhythm dictated by Jack and Baschi, the sounds of the street took over.

  It was not until these sounds were shut out by a door closing behind him that Frank regained at least a vague sense of his whereabouts. He caught the creak of boards as Jack and Baschi guided him up two flights of stairs, pushed open a door and escorted him into a dimly lit room. Then he heard Jack call out: “Hello girls. Are you decent? We have a guest tonight.”

  “Here you are old chap,” Jack said, as he and Baschi steered Frank across the room and eased him gently into a sofa. Frank surveyed the scene in the room through the bewilderment wrought by the dog’s nose. He sniffed the air and caught the faint trace of ammonia. Mingled with tobacco smoke. He was trying hopelessly to work out where he was. What he was doing here.

  Although dimly lit, it was a room made comfortable by heavy dark-green drapes that hung over the windows. On the right of him stood another sofa and opposite him two armchairs that had seen better days. Behind these stood a grand piano.

  Jack still stood in the doorway to his right. Baschi alongside him. As Frank was trying to make sense of it all, he became aware of a new fragrance entering the room from behind him. A feminine fragrance that wafted around the sofa as its owner walked over to Jack. She carried a cigarette packet in her left hand. A slim woman, not much shorter than Jack, with long red hair that fell in thick curls over a green velvet, figure-hugging dress. It lent the contrast of the orange cigarette packet in her hand the air of an accessory.

  She looked down at Frank with bewitching green eyes that were a perfect match for her outfit, cast a glorious warm smile over him and held out her hand as Jack said: “Frank, meet Esther.”

  Frank stumbled to his feet and shook her hand.

  “Your husband has been kind enough to show me round your city,” he mumbled in the best German he could manage with the dog’s nose still sniffing at his mind.

  The woman called Esther laughed, and the red curls of her hair flew out with wild abandon as she threw back her head.

  “Esther’s not my wife,” Jack explained. “Esther’s my muse.”

  Before Frank had any time to pigeonhole this information, they were joined by a second woman, who followed Esther from around behind the sofa. She was shorter than Esther, with cropped dark hair – a gamine with sparkling dark-brown eyes.

  “And this is Vreni,” said Jack.

  “Your wife?” Frank asked, as he shook her hand.

  “My wife’s not here.”

  There was an irritation in Jack’s voice. Frank did not pursue the matter any further. He sank back into his sofa. Baschi took one of the armchairs, while Vreni and Esther both settled into the other sofa. Esther pulled out a cigarette, lit it and threw the pack and the lighter over to Frank.

  It was then that Frank noticed the only decoration in the room. On the wall behind Esther and Vreni to the right of the window with the heavy green curtains hung a small painting. A portrait of a red-haired woman with dark makeup and bright red lipstick. In her green dress that draped loosely off the shoulder to hint at the curvature of her left breast, the likeness of this woman
to Esther was striking.

  “Did you paint that?” Frank asked, picking up the lighter and cigarettes with the name Parisienne emblazoned across the pack. A logo with a hint of such warm memories. Yet he could not for the life of him recall exactly what or why.

  “You mean Lola?” Jack asked in return, as he walked over to a cupboard behind Frank’s sofa, where he took out three glasses and a bottle of wine and placed them at the end of the table in front of Frank. “No. Lola belonged to my mother. She was the one who got me interested in the arts. And painting.”

  “Und wer zum Tüfel isch Lola?” Frank asked. A look of shock etched into his expression by the sense of strangeness in his own voice as he asked: Who the hell is Lola?

  He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit up in an effort to feign composure. Jack looked at Frank with suspicion at this sudden fluency in what sounded like the Alemannic dialect spoken just across the border.

  “I was told it’s Lola Bach,” he replied, preferring to conceal his suspicion for the moment. “An erotic dancer from the Twenties. But who knows?”

  “Who painted it?” Frank asked.

  “No idea. Some unknown expressionist. A woman probably,” Jack said and waved a dismissive hand at the painting on the wall. His suspicion had nurtured a growing impatience with Frank and his questions, and he turned to the two women.

  “Ladies,” he announced,” Frank is here to report on how we treat our women in this country. What do you think about that?”

  Esther and Vreni giggled.

  “Something few people know about this country is that every single canton produces wine,” said Jack, turning back to Frank as he filled the glasses on the table. “Even the city of Basel produces wine. But none of it has the class of an Amarone from south of the border. I think you’ll like it.” He handed both Frank and Baschi a glass of red wine, then sauntered over to the piano.