The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

Frank watched Jack place his own glass on the piano as he sat down to play. Feeling disinclined to add another layer of confusion to his mind, Frank put his glass back down on one of the magazines lying on the table, leaned back in the sofa and drank in the music. He recognised the melody instantly from many years ago. A slow spiritual dirge that he recalled his mother often singing in the kitchen as she prepared the evening meal. And he began to hum along.

  In the chair opposite, Baschi’s gut quivered and heaved as he chuckled quietly to himself.

  “He always like beginning with Dvořák,” he said, as if to explain his merriment. Esther and Vreni on the other sofa looked at each other, kissed and then fell into a giggle.

  “The largo from Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony,” Jack called from behind the back of Baschi. “In America, they call it ‘Going Home’.”

  That was it. Frank recalled that his mother had an old 78 of Paul Robeson she used to flog to death on the antiquated record player. It was the tune she always sang as she prepared the scouse for the evening meal. Even Ellen had recognised it when she first heard his mother singing in the kitchen. “You didn’t tell me your mum was into Sam Cooke,” she said with a look of disbelief. Frank had no idea what she was talking about at the time. It was only later that he learned from her sister Beth how she had secreted one of Beth’s favourite EPs from her record collection and claimed it as hers.

  As these flashbacks punctuated the music in the background, Jack raised the tempo very slightly, slipping into a mysterious melody full of melancholy tension.

  “What’s that?” Frank asked, throwing his voice across the room when the change of tempo sent his thoughts scattering suddenly like marbles across the floor. Jack was lost in his music. Esther had already discarded her cigarette and was now locked in Vreni’s arms.

  “Jack play only Czechish music,” said Baschi, as he sipped his wine and contemplated the two women with a satisfied smile.

  Their playful frolics matched the release of tension in the music, and the melancholy mist was blown away as if by a sudden gust of wind. The mysterious music continued to entwine itself around Frank’s mind. And he watched the kindling embrace of Esther and Vreni gradually begin to catch alight. Their hands explored and wandered over each other’s skin with a tenderness he had never witnessed before between two women. The flaming curls of Esther’s long red hair emphasised the intensity of their embrace, as she gently slipped the strap of Vreni’s dress down over the shoulder and caressed her right breast. Frank could not imagine what Ellen might think if she could see him now. But he found it deeply arousing and was fascinated by the uncanny correspondence between their intertwined devotion to each other and the enigmatic music that became entangled in his senses with every change of meter.

  “Janáček,” said Jack, glancing over at Frank as his fingers floated nimbly over the keyboard. “I find there is such a beautiful sense of repressed passion in his music. And since the Prague Spring I find it has a special piquancy. So I play it all the more today. Pure magic.”

  The music stopped. Frank looked over at Jack, who was staring down at the keyboard, and felt he had been torn away from an intensely satisfying dream. As if caught out when a sudden bright light is switched on. The discomfort made him shiver. Slowly, pensively, Jack stood up from the piano and sat in the chair beside Baschi. He took what appeared to be a large sketchpad from the coffee table and rested it on his knees. He said nothing more. Esther and Vreni were still locked in their embrace, oblivious to the loss of music, and they continued their devotional attention to each other. Jack watched with an intensity and a look in those dark eyes of his that Frank was unable to fathom. Not a word was spoken. Finally, Frank felt compelled to reach for the wine on the table.

  By now, the two women had shed every last inch of clothing. Vreni lay in raptured abandon on the sofa. Her right leg was wrapped around the waist of Esther, who leaned over her partner and let her flaming red hair gently brush the curvature of Vreni’s body.

  Frank’s head began to spin. He took a large gulp from his glass, topped it up from the bottle on the table and watched as Jack took a pencil from his pocket. His hand swept back and forth across the paper, eyes every so often lifting to gauge the mounting passion on the sofa alongside him. Vreni threw her head back with a smile of the deepest satisfaction as Esther turned to Jack and asked:

  “Is this ok for you?”

  “It will look wonderful on canvas. What do you think, Frank?”

  At that moment, the sound of bells chimed a deep, sepulchral toll from outside, which rumbled its way into the room. A solemn sound. Like the voice of a dark angel chanting a heavy, heavy song.

  “Damn the church bells in this country,” Jack cursed. And turned to Frank on the sofa opposite. Frank stubbed out his cigarette and held his head in both hands, his eyes shut tight and his face seemingly contorted in pain.

  “I said what do you think, Frank?” Jack repeated in an attempt to raise his voice above the sound of the bells.

  Baschi continued chuckling quietly to himself. Esther and Vreni wrapped their discarded clothes around them and looked anxiously across at Frank.

  “Frank? Are you all right?” Jack shouted, louder this time. There was a hint of concern in the voice. But it was lost on Frank, as his head now flinched with every chime of the bells. They boomed through his skull twelve times. And each time left him trembling a little more.

  As the church bells ran through their midnight repertoire, Frank’s hosts looked on. Speechless. Awaiting Frank’s next move. When eventually the bells fell quiet, what should have been a blissful silence was invaded by the faint sound of the words ‘Achim, oh Achim’ repeating over and over, as they ricocheted around Frank’s head. He clasped his hands over his ears vainly trying to stifle those words. But in time they too faded, and as they did so he became aware of the smell he had noticed when he first entered the room. But now, mingled with the taste of stale nicotine, it had a new edge to it – an odour deeply redolent of a history he could not put his finger on. A troubled history. The odour swirled around his head adding new layers of confusion to his mind. For an instant, it reminded him of the little dachshund his mother adopted for company after he left home. He recalled how his father never seemed to have enough time for his mother; he was often away on business – if not in Berlin or Leipzig, then abroad somewhere. In New York, London or mostly Calcutta.

  But Frank could make neither head nor tail of these memories. In an attempt to shake off his confusion, he finally opened his eyes in the hope he might get a grip on reality. Jack, Baschi and the two women fixed their eyes on Frank in expectation. But all he could see was the bottle on the table. He picked it up and gulped down the remainder of the wine straight from the bottle. The haunting odour in the room was quickly dispelled by the Amarone on his tongue. But the memory of the dachshund stayed with him nonetheless. It played with him. Tormented him. He lashed out with his right hand as if to sweep his mind clear of the memories – and swept the bottle to the floor instead. The last dregs of wine splashed their drops of blood-red liquid onto the carpet. The weave of the floor covering was sorely worn away in places. It was old and dirty. But what should that matter?

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Frank threw himself to the floor and began to lick up the drops before they soaked into the carpet. The taste was abhorrent. And the physical sensation of the dust, the hair and the carpet, as the fine papillated surface of his tongue scraped over them and trapped them in his mouth, made him retch. He was on the brink of vomiting. But still he continued to lick at the carpet as if his life depended on it.

  “What the hell are you doing old chap?”

  As Frank lay on the floor, licking at the hairs and the weave of the carpet, he was completely oblivious to Jack’s words. It was the brutal blow to his ribs that brought him halfway to his senses.

  “He takes the dog’s nose to heart.”

  It was Baschi’s voice.

  “And this is what we do with
dogs,” Baschi added, as he aimed another boot into Frank’s side. “We don’t let dogs into this house, do we Jack?”

  Frank could not hear Jack’s reply. Or even tell if he said anything at all. He only felt Baschi grab the collar of his shirt and jacket, then let himself be dragged across the floor. He heard the door open and felt the pain of Baschi’s boot again in his side.

  “Out!” Baschi screamed, pushing Frank out onto the landing and giving him one final kick down the stairs before he shut the door behind him.

  Frank lay at the bottom of the stairs and listened for some time to the faint sound of raised voices mingled with fits of laughter from the room above. Picking himself up, he rearranged his shirt and jacket, opened the door to the cobbled street and staggered out into the night air.

  Out into the familiar street with its familiar worn-out look. He knew instantly where it would lead him. Knew that it was only a short walk from here over the cobbles that he had trodden so often in the past. The place where it all began. In the Hotel Storchen.

  Chapter 3

  It was just after lunchtime on Sunday when Ellen got the call. She was sitting on the sofa in their Fulham bedsit with the Sunday paper, playing with the tresses of her strawberry-blonde hair and smiling to herself as she thought of Frank stealing a lock of it before he left.

  The phone was shared with the other tenants. It hung on the wall outside the bedsit. She ran out onto the landing as soon as it started to ring – certain that it must be Frank. And when she picked up the receiver, she fully expected to hear his voice at the other end. But what startled her was not the strange, high-pitched woman’s voice in place of Frank’s. It was the words.

  “Your husband’s had an accident,” the woman said. She was calling from the Fleet Street office that had sent Frank to Switzerland. Ellen’s heart missed a beat. She felt quite faint and sat back in the stool beside the phone.

  “An accident? What happened? What sort of accident?” Ellen asked. By now her heart was racing and she began to gasp for breath.

  The woman on the other end did not know the exact details. She had been given to understand that it was nothing life-threatening and that Frank was in good hands, but they wanted to keep him in for observation. The newspaper, she added, would be prepared to fly Ellen out to see her husband.

  It was twenty-four hours later – around lunchtime on Monday – that Ellen touched down on Swiss soil. Everything had moved so quickly since the phone call the day before that she felt almost in a daze as she pushed her passport under the glass screen to the immigration officer on the other side of the desk. She was engulfed by a brief sense of panic at the thought that her dazed demeanour must make her look so suspicious that she expected to be called to one side. Ellen reached into her bag for a handkerchief – as if the hint of a cold might explain any oddness of behaviour.

  It was not necessary. Once through immigration and customs, Ellen was met by an elegant, middle-aged lady in a black trench coat – she carried a board in front of her that read: Mrs Ellen Goss. At the sight of her name, Ellen instantly felt her entire body relax. It seemed in her fragile state of mind to be a sign she was among people she could trust.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs Goss. I hope you had a good journey,” said the lady in the trench coat, as she lowered the board and offered Ellen her hand. “Frey. Maria Frey,” she added. “I’m Professor Abegg’s secretary.”

  Ellen shook her hand.

  “Thank you,” she said, before mumbling – almost as an afterthought – “I’m pleased to meet you.”

  Ellen’s new acquaintance gave her a slightly inquisitive look.

  “If you follow me, I’ll take you to the clinic.”

  Ellen followed her companion out of the building and across the road to a row of cars. She was slightly taken aback when the elegant Maria Frey in the black trench coat opened the back of a red Austin Healey, took Ellen’s suitcase and placed it inside, before opening the door on the passenger’s side.

  “Please,” she said.

  Ellen duly ducked down and manoeuvred herself into the bucket seat of the Austin Healey. She was still trying to reconcile the picture of this rather serious, yet elegant middle-aged woman with her flashy choice of car, when they turned off the airport road just a few minutes later and directly into the grounds of what she assumed to be the clinic. A complex of pavilion-style buildings interspersed with trees in a park that lent the scene a slightly desolate feel in their denuded winter state. But as she climbed out of the car, Ellen could well imagine the tranquillity of the setting in a couple of months’ time when the trees in the park sprang back into life.

  The car had stopped outside the tallest of the buildings in the park – a large grey two-storey edifice from the nineteenth century that put Ellen more in mind of a railway station with its huge arched windows towering above the main entrance. As Maria Frey led her up the stairs to the entrance and in through the door, it was the words on the plaque beside the door that jumped out at Ellen: Psychiatrische Klinik.

  “I was told my husband had an accident,” she said as she tried to keep up with her escort, who led her up to the second floor and along a rather bleak corridor heavily punctuated with doors on either side.

  “Yes, he has had a small accident,” said Maria Frey, as she opened one of the doors.

  “So why is he in a psychiatric clinic?” asked Ellen.

  Maria Frey turned, beckoned Ellen through the doorway and gestured towards a chair just inside the room. “If you take a seat, Professor Abegg will be with you very soon. He will explain everything.”

  With that, she disappeared through another door, leaving Ellen to ponder what seemed to have the trappings of a sinister mystery behind the events of the last day. Were they even talking about her Frank, she asked herself. Her mind remained so deeply entrained by her thoughts that she failed to hear the door open behind her.

  “So you survived the journey in Maria’s little sports car. I suppose we must get used to more such whims now that they’ve won the right to vote.”

  Ellen turned to find a tall, slim, slightly beaky-looking man in a white coat smiling down at her.

  “Abegg,” he said, as he offered Ellen his hand and invited her into his office.

  He walked around behind his desk and beckoned her to take a seat, modestly apologising for what he insisted was a poor English picked up during several years of research in the United States. But Ellen found his command of the language nothing short of perfect, albeit betrayed by a thick Swiss accent that made each word sound as if it were being dragged over a cheese grater every time he spoke. Despite the slightly cynical joviality of his opening words, the impression created by this fifty-something man was one of sympathy and understanding. Due undoubtedly to the furrows of fatherly concern etched into his forehead by years of patient listening, Ellen told herself. She could well imagine him as a father of daughters.

  “I’m so glad you could answer our call so quickly,” he said. “We are faced with a particularly difficult and puzzling case. And I think it is very important that you are here to help us find the root of your husband’s problem.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” said Ellen, “but I’m really confused. What’s actually happened to Frank? I was told he’d had an accident. And now I find he’s in a psychiatric clinic. What’s going on? Where is he? Can I see him?”

  “Mr Goss is in good hands,” he assured her. Then looked at Ellen with a piercing expression in his eyes that unsettled her when he asked: “Why is your husband in Switzerland?”

  “He’s a journalist. He came to write about the referendum on women’s right to vote. But what’s that got do with his accident?”

  A wry smile crept across the professor’s lips, disconcerting Ellen even further.

  “You know, Switzerland’s first qualified female lawyer campaigned her entire life to achieve equal rights for women and was eventually committed to this very same institution for her lunacy. It seems a strange irony that your husb
and who came to report on the referendum should be admitted to this clinic on the very day the country finally accepted that women must be given the vote.”

  “I wish I could share your sense of humour.” Ellen made no attempt to disguise the irritation in her voice. The professor peered across the desk at Ellen with a look of questioning concern, his hands folded across his chest fiddling with a pen.

  “Mrs Goss, your husband was found early yesterday morning in great distress. He walked into the road and was hit by a car.”

  “Oh my God!” Ellen exclaimed. “I was told it was just a minor accident.”

  “As I said, he’s in good hands. You really don’t need to worry. Just a few scratches and bruises. But he was in great distress when he was taken to the accident unit. And it was decided to admit him to our clinic.”

  “Why? What’s the matter with him?” Ellen asked. She was growing ever more disturbed by what seemed to her like euphemisms for something sinister. “What do you mean by distress?”

  “Your husband speaks very good German,” the professor said, ignoring Ellen’s questions. “Can I ask where he learned to speak the language so well?”

  “He studied it at university in England,” Ellen replied. She was growing increasingly impatient. “But he did say before he came here that he was wondering how he would cope with the weird kind of German you speak here.”

  Professor Abegg smiled.

  “Well I can tell you he is coping very well,” he said with a tone of reassurance that Ellen felt carried more than a hint of sarcasm. “In fact, he speaks an Alemannic dialect like a native from just across the border in Germany. Yet he has a British passport. So I find that puzzling.”

  “Why?” Ellen was beginning to feel increasingly defensive, and her question came across almost as a challenge.

  “In my experience, Mrs Goss, foreigners do not truly master the dialects of this region unless they’ve grown up here.”

  “Well, Frank grew up in London,” said Ellen. “So maybe your patient is simply not my husband.”