The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  “You don’t need to take it to heart so, Maud.” This was a signal, a clear sign that Ellen’s words had missed their target and that Beth’s ego was still firmly intact. She always used Ellen’s middle name when she wanted to drive home what she saw as her superiority over her sister. It went back to when Ellen was five years old and discovered for the first time that she had a second name. Maud. She left no one in the family with any doubt how much she hated the name. And Beth pounced on it with the eager malice of an elevenyear-old girl trying to cope with five years of unmitigated jealousy.

  “Presumably having his mother move in just down the road added to the strain. I can quite imagine how these things can happen.”

  “For goodness sake, Beth. What are you talking about? What strain?”

  Ellen had by now been seized with the desperation that must take hold of a rape victim when she’s made to feel that she’s the guilty party. That she must have been asking for it.

  “Anyway, his mother moving into the area was his idea,” she added in her defence. “And if that was a strain for anyone, then more for me than for him. Do you remember how I was always allergic to animals as a child?”

  “You must be joking. How could I forget the hassle you gave us? We had to get rid of my dear little dog because of my precious little sister.”

  “You make me sound like a spoilt hypochondriac. God, I was suffering Beth! I was suffering! And so I did when Frank’s mother came calling, cat and all. Which was just about every day. She wasn’t there for long, bless her soul. But it was hard.”

  “Come on, Maud,” Beth continued. “Don’t be such a hypocrite.”

  “No, I mean it. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. But her animal obsession really got to me. It was horrendous, Beth. She would bring it with her on a lead and let the creature sit at the table so she could spoon-feed it its milk. I tolerated it. But it was quite disgusting. I think she much preferred animals to people. Even her own husband.”

  “What was he like?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellen said, thankful that at last they seemed to be getting away from the rebukes and insults. “I never knew him. He must have been an odd father, though, because I remember Frank telling me how he would always tease him cruelly about the indentation in the bridge of his nose – ‘as if he’d been shot between the eyes at birth’ he used to say apparently.

  “But Frank also spoke very fondly of him – how he had once brought a lovely ivory bracelet back from one of his business trips for Frank’s mother and she flatly refused to wear it. She wouldn’t have anything to do with ivory. In fact, she wouldn’t have anything to do with her own husband for months apparently. Wouldn’t go near him.”

  “Sounds to me as though you and he would have got on like a house on fire,” said Beth.

  And so the barbed exchanges continued for the next few days – until the phone call. Beth spent most of her time sniping at Ellen, who felt exhausted having constantly to dive for cover. But she could at least be thankful that Malcolm had to go off playing war games soon after she arrived, so she did not have to suffer his smug, smart-aleck sarcasm beyond the first evening. By the second day, she found herself trying as far as possible to avoid the company of her sister by taking long walks around the neighbourhood.

  It was the kind of housing estate that manages to combine a soulless, comatose anonymity with the atmosphere of nosy curiosity. As if the whole place had been picked up lock, stock and barrel somewhere in England and dropped in the middle of Germany, complete with shops, pub, G plan furnishings and all the other accessories of Britishness. Even the classic red telephone boxes. Nothing fitted. After her stay in Switzerland, she found it especially strange to hear her native language being spoken all around her again in this foreign country even on the streets – a paradox that was made complete when the ill-fitting Britishness of the scene, the sense of being back home and yet not, underlined the alienation she felt from her own sister. She asked herself why on earth she had decided to visit Beth. What she could possibly have expected to gain?

  Beth herself seemed unable or unwilling to show any understanding. Ellen assumed now that what she had seen as their earlier closeness had probably just been some image-boosting charade on her part. In fact, her recriminations and aspersions showed that the resentment of her baby sister ran far deeper than any sibling bond. What hurt most of all was the understanding she professed, to an almost exaggerated degree, for Frank. And then there were the secrets she shared with him. Her thoughts latched on to the apprehension Beth had expressed, whether feigned or real, when she suggested that maybe Frank was on his way to see her. It was beginning to look increasingly plausible.

  How else was she to interpret his being in Cologne? He did not know anyone else within a hundred miles of the place. But why would he want to see her? They hardly knew each other really. And all they had in common was Ellen. It was this thought that had her wonder whether Beth could have been right after all, whether Ellen really was the cause of Frank’s disappearance in some way.

  They had married in some haste, after all. And Frank was a fence-sitter. Not the type to rush into any decision, let alone a marriage. Perhaps he had already started to regret it, she wondered.

  ‘But was I really so difficult to live with?’ Ellen asked herself.

  Then she remembered the phone call Beth said she had had with Frank. And the secrets they shared. And a darker thought edged its way into her mind: since Beth had chosen to take sides and clearly opted against her own sister, was it possible that Frank had already been here and discussed everything with her? Or even that they were having an affair?

  Ellen recalled the embarrassment on her face when she realised she had said too much. The very idea sent a dull pain to the pit of Ellen’s stomach. It drilled through to every nerve in her body as the suggestion took hold and refused to be dislodged.

  Although she was forced to run the gauntlet of her sister’s wounding remarks and not-so-covert hostility for the entire time she spent in Beth’s house, Ellen decided to stay on. Perhaps Frank would appear at the door, she thought. Or maybe her sister would reveal some even darker secret that she shared with him. Suddenly anything seemed possible. So, despite her hurtful attitude, Ellen felt a compelling need to stay with her a little longer. Until the phone call.

  “It’s for you,” Beth said, handing her the receiver. “Sounds like your friend from Switzerland. So women are allowed to make phone calls abroad as well now that they have the vote, are they?”

  Ellen ignored the facetious remark as she took the receiver.

  “Hello Ellen. I have some good news.”

  She recognised the voice at once as Marthe’s. After the torment of her sister’s company, it was such a comfort to hear her Swiss accent again. So pleased was Ellen to hear her voice that the words themselves did not immediately register, and Marthe had to repeat herself.

  “I have good news for you,” she said, with characteristic patience for what she took to be Ellen’s excitement. “We’ve found your husband.”

  Chapter 16

  Hansruedi was a large, barrel-chested man with a beard that reached almost to his chest. His ship was his castle. Unannounced visitors were not welcome. Especially German visitors. While the Alemannic German that Frank spoke helped soften the bargee’s resistance, the air remained clouded with suspicion. And it would take more than the tenuous bond of a vaguely shared dialect to dispel the suspicion any further.

  It was the heavy thud as he was dragged out of the lifeboat that did it. Frank had forgotten about his father’s book on Indian fauna and flora. He had buried it deep in the inside pocket of his coat on top of the hipflask Achim had presented him with for the journey. He was reminded of it by that heavy thud against the oarlock. When he eventually pulled the flask out from under the book and shared his friend’s golden elixir with the bargeman, the affinity between them was sealed.

  Frank was granted the privilege of travelling in a guest cabin on condit
ion that he could provide Hansruedi with a supply of Achim’s Mirabelle nectar once they reached Basel. The deal was struck. For the rest of the journey, Hansruedi proved a moody, but accommodating companion. A card-carrying member of his local socialist party who was glad of any opportunity to make his own personal mark in the struggle against fascism.

  “Take care when you get to Basel,” he warned, as he took a final sip of the Mirabelle brandy. “It’s a great city. I was at the Peace Congress there before the war, you know. Can you imagine the ‘Internationale’ and the ‘Marseillaise’ echoing around the cathedral square against a background of red flags? And the cathedral echoing with the sound of socialist speeches? But you need to be on your guard there today. The place is teeming with fascists and Nazi spies. Take care who you speak to.”

  Hansruedi was not to know that such warnings were unnecessary. In the telling of his story, Frank had focused on Achim. He saw no need to feature Breitner in the narrative.

  The journey up the Rhine took the best part of four days. It was an uneventful voyage. And Frank remained in his cabin most of the time until they reached their destination. The sense of relief he felt when he finally stepped back onto Swiss soil was liberating. He was surprised by the exhilaration he felt at that moment.

  The number 8 tram from the harbour area was well frequented with the grey, sullen faces of workers heading home at the end of their shift. But the face that boarded a few stops down the line and planted itself at the far end of the carriage shone through the cloud of early-evening travellers with uncomfortable familiarity. It was not a pleasant light. An awkward and slightly overweight figure, which seemed to have been put together by the clumsy hand of an architect with no eye for the elegance of symmetry or proportion. It also clashed shamelessly with the ingratiating smile that the owner of the face wore with such insistence among the other features of his unctuous manner: the vulgar twinkle in his eyes and the greased black hair. Although Frank could not recall where or when their paths had crossed before, his memory was still sufficiently loyal to him to suggest that it had not been an agreeable experience.

  Unfortunately for Frank, the man’s powers of recollection were sharper than his. As soon as he caught sight of the weary traveller from Cologne, he moved up the aisle of the tram in Frank’s direction.

  “Mr Eigenmann, what a fortunate coincidence,” he said, sibilating the last syllable with particular effect and causing Frank to squirm inwardly as the man lowered himself into the empty seat beside him.

  “I’m sorry. Have we met somewhere before?” Frank asked. While the man’s presence nauseated him, he saw no good reason to drop his guard and make his feelings felt. He preferred to know who he was dealing with first.

  “We have a mutual acquaintance,” was all he offered.

  The way he inclined his head as he spoke, like a self-satisfied hen, instantly put Frank in mind of that fruitless evening in the wine tavern, where he had waited in vain for Patricia. It was not enough to identify the man by name, but it told Frank where he had seen him before.

  It was on that evening – after the man had raised his glass to Frank as he was leaving the tavern – that he had been pursued so mysteriously through the streets and become embroiled in the dealings of Breitner and his cronies. And it was this sequence of events which led him to assume now that the mutual acquaintance he spoke of was Breitner.

  “Why fortunate?” Frank asked.

  “Fortunate for you at least, Mr Eigenmann.” The man’s smile spread even wider across his face with particularly sinister smarm. “You see, I’m in a position to give you some advice which you would find very much to your benefit.”

  “And why would you want to do that?”

  “Let us say because I like you, Mr Eigenmann. Quite simply because I like you.”

  He knew that Frank did not trust him an inch, and this clearly pleased him, adding an even bolder contour to his self-satisfied smile. But he was also shrewd, and he knew too that Frank’s curiosity would compel him to seek a way into his confidence. That all he had to do was wait.

  “Well? What’s the advice?”

  Frank’s response was clumsy in its abruptness. He was suddenly impatient for that confidence. The man sensed his hunger and preened himself on it with the manicured nails of a usurer exacting every ounce of advantage from his position.

  “Mr Breitner is looking for you, Mr Eigenmann.”

  “That’s no great surprise,” Frank said. “Nor am I sure it qualifies as advice.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed as he fixed Frank with a sideways gaze.

  “If you value your skin, Mr Eigenmann, I would strongly recommend you stay away from the apartment of Mademoiselle Roche.”

  All at once a light went on in Frank’s memory. And the tired rehearsals of his brain were rewarded with a flash of inspiration. Those words had put him in mind of the last time he was with Patricia in her flat, of the fierce banging on the door that had so rudely trespassed on the early alpenglow of their lovemaking.

  “Are you Lutz?” he asked.

  The man answered with a hint of fabrication in his smile. It gave Frank the impression the question had unnerved him.

  “This is my stop,” he said as the wheels of the tram ground to a halt. “It was a pleasure meeting you again, Mr Eigenmann.” Whereupon the man Frank took to be Lutz rose and melted away into the anonymous crowd behind him.

  He felt the cold air of the city sweep in through the doors of the tram as they opened to let his greasy counsellor out. The man was instantly lost in the busy exchange of commuters. And when the doors closed again on the draught, Frank appreciated the cocoon of warmth that he knew he could count on until the next stop. But his slippery, self-appointed saviour had left him with a sense of apprehension. A foreboding that only served to heighten his awareness that the next stop would not be long in coming, that he would soon be treated to another blast of the wintry Bise which blew right across central Europe from the steppes of Siberia and so forcefully drove his need for shelter.

  Frank now regretted his decision to take the tram into town. There were taxis. He could even have walked. It was not so far. Had he done so, he would have avoided the misfortune of running into Lutz and would now be happily on his way to Patricia’s flat. As it was, he found himself caught in a tangled web of doubt that held him fast in his seat, uncertain as to his next move.

  The tram seemed full to bursting as more passengers climbed on board the further it continued into town. The air was becoming thick with the body heat. Hemmed in now by the standing passengers who crowded around him, he felt impotently small. Coats towered densely into the space above him, which narrowed a little more with inexorable malice at every stop of the tram. He sensed the heat of this confined space apply a pressure that came perilously close to his limits of endurance. The needle was in the red zone and still moving. His skull ached with the heat and the noise. He was aware of nothing else. The heat, the noise and the growing pressure in his head, which felt about to split open and gush its hot serous fluid on the spark of anxiety that Lutz had left behind.

  In the havoc of this suffocating tension, his mind craved the deliverance of fresh air. He struggled to his feet through the thicket of anonymous coats, and forced a way to the doors of the tram. Crazed panic scored a line through the expression in his eyes so ferocious that a path spontaneously cleared through the dense wall of people around him, and he reached the doors in time to see the river speeding past. The tram slowed down as it reached the other side of the bridge, and when the doors opened, it was a caged and desperate animal they released onto the pavement.

  Gasping at the sweetness of the night air, he made his way back to the bridge. From the parapet of a small watchtower halfway across, he sucked in the cool refreshment that blew down over the water. The swirls and eddies of the current below appeared to mirror his own confusion – yet the river displayed a purpose and determination in its chaos that plainly had the edge over his own behaviour.
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  Lulled into a new composure by this movement of the water, his thoughts returned to Lutz. Why should he offer his unsolicited advice and set himself so clearly at odds with his sadistic employer? So, was his advice even to be trusted? Or was it some devious trick set up by Breitner himself? Every question begged a host of other doubts, and his head was not equal to the task of finding any sensible answers. Nor was he feeling in the mood for empty-headed displays of valour. So he opted against going to Patricia’s flat that night and decided to head for the Kolping house a little further upstream in the hope of finding cheap lodgings there.

  His head was still throbbing as he checked in at reception, and the elderly woman on the desk promised to send some aspirin up to his room. He had imagined that, in the privacy of his room, he would have a chance to relax. He was mistaken. He threw his coat on the bed, laid the book he had carried with him all the way from his father’s study on the bedside table and flopped into an easy chair that stood beside the window. Relentlessly the pain returned. What felt like a deep fissure seemed to open in his skull. Once again, like that day on the castle ruins, watching a scythe of black cloud sweep over Germany and waiting for his old friend to arrive, he sensed an unquiet presence, a peculiar otherness over his shoulder that seemed undefinably a part of him. More than sensed it. Became it. And watched his own discomfort with a strange detachment, as the fissure widened to accommodate the tumescent folds of brain tissue that appeared to feed off the hot, dry air of the room, like bread dough rising in the oven. For an instant, this swelling flesh of his brain appeared to magnify before his eyes, as if it had been slipped under the eye of a powerful microscope to reveal a complex tangle of neurons: dendrites hooking up like the tentacles of an octopus to bewildered tissue; astrocytes like starfish swimming in their element. In panic, he got to his feet in a desperate effort to shake off the vision. But it clung like a stubborn leech.

  In a pitiless sweat and stifled by the unrelenting grip of chaos, he flung open the window and willed the traffic noise and coldness of the evening river air to come to his aid. The blue light of an ambulance flashed over what was little more than the blurred screen of his consciousness. He watched the vehicle silently and, almost in slow motion, circle Wettsteinplatz and disappear around the corner to the sleazier end of town. ‘No doubt come to pick up another overdose victim,’ he told himself, confusing his mind with the speculation – until a banging on the door stirred him from this emotional farrago. His head instantly cleared.