The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  The man called Cavegn then stood aside and walked off into the night. It was at that moment that Patricia’s voice fetched Frank back from his nightmare.

  “Where on earth have you been? Come on up and have a look. It’s beautiful.”

  She was standing on the balcony. The light silhouetted the modest line of her body and invested it with a mature serenity that contradicted her girlish excitement. Her explanations as to how they had managed to miss each other were lost on him, as befitted their unimportance. What tugged most sweetly at his heart was not simply that he had found her, but that she seemed to have found herself again, that thoughts of Léandre appeared to have been banished – bruised and battered, but smiling. She exuded a charm that moved from smoky enigma to girlish effervescence and back again with disturbing ease.

  He took her in his arms with the zeal of a missionary holding on to his dream for fear it may evaporate. She winced.

  “My ribs took a bit of a beating this afternoon,” she explained.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m the one to say sorry. And thank you,” she added. “Yet I’ve said neither. I’ve been very selfish, and there’s no excuse. Except that I was so upset by the news of Léandre’s death. He was such a dear friend. It’s hard to believe that I shall never see him again.” She paused for a respectful silence that Frank was unable to share. “Have you ever lost anyone very dear to you?”

  “I thought I’d lost you just now,” he replied. But his words irritated her and did not even elicit the pretence of a smile.

  “Don’t be flippant, Frank. Please.”

  “I’m quite serious. I honestly thought something terrible had happened to you.”

  His words this time must have convinced her, because she ran a hand through his hair in reply with a look so exquisitely tender it radiated to every pulsatile cell of his body. “Why do you think that janitor said I don’t deserve such a pretty thing as you?”

  “Perhaps it was the charm of my French accent. Or maybe you just intimidated him with that awful German of yours. I expect he thought it was you who beat me.”

  She laughed at this afterthought. A giggle that played sweetly on his vanity. He held her slenderness just firmly enough to kindle the passion in him and just loosely enough for her to slip away still laughing from him the moment his lips went to caress the bruises on her face.

  “So this is what your father’s lawyer looks like,” she said as she span elusively towards the open wooden staircase.

  “What do you mean?”

  ‘Well, he’s left enough clues to his inner self. I’ll ignore the furnishings, they’re the mark of a good Hausfrau; he’d leave decisions like that to her. But the books are definitely his domain, property of the thinking man – Stefan Zweig, current legal issues like corruption in public life by Rudolf Wassermann – awful man, I attended one of his lectures – or Le cas Gustloff (he reads French it seems). Gustloff lived here in Davos, you know, when he was assassinated.”

  Her words called to mind the fraught conversation with Achim in the restaurant where they had met for their reunion.

  “Strange, isn’t it?” Patricia added. “The Gauleiter for Switzerland living almost shoulder to shoulder with Kirchner, one of your country’s most ‘degenerate’ artists in such neighbourly exile. I wonder if they ever met.”

  She savoured this thought for a moment before returning to the examination of his father’s lawyer.

  “A man who obviously takes his job seriously. But then…” she said, taking one of the books from the shelf, “just to show that not all is lost, that he’s still a boy at heart, a single volume of Karl May and a copy of King Solomon’s Mines. It must be that romantic boyish streak that compelled him to buy this place in the mountains, because the rest doesn’t fit at all. Just imagine, this whole secret side of him that no one else back home knows about has been carried up to this mountain lodge as a kind of undeclared investment. Come to think of it, as your father’s lawyer he’s made you an indirect investment partner too, hasn’t he?”

  At last she paused for breath, became slightly pensive, then asked:

  “You’ve never told me anything about your father. What sort of a man was he?”

  “You talk the most wonderful nonsense, Patricia. Do you know Rudolf Wassermann?” Frank asked back, ignoring her question. Once again, he was put in mind of his own boyhood, and he wondered whether this man was any relation to the Wassermann he had known, the bane of Volker’s life.

  “I just attended a lecture of his once, that’s all,” she said. “But don’t be so evasive. I asked you a question.”

  “I’m not,” he replied, thinking of all the evasions that she lived by, but said nothing. “It’s just a name that puts me in mind of someone I was reminded of recently when I returned to the memories of my childhood.” And he described the abortive visit to his mother – but above all, the discovery he had made about his father and the mysterious photo from the young woman calling herself Neeti.

  “Goodness knows why, but I brought it all back with me for some reason. It intrigued me I suppose. Unfortunately, the book and I have since parted company, but I still have the photo.”

  He fished it out of his wallet, where they had been left to mature, untouched since leaving Cologne. Patricia seized on it with a ravenous curiosity.

  “Everyone seems to have a secret side,” Frank said. “Burow, my father – what about your father?”

  It was so slight as to be almost imperceptible in her preoccupation with the trophy of his father’s past. She showed such composure. So marginal it was almost intuition that alerted him to the agitation sparked by his innocent question. She concealed her disquiet almost effortlessly.

  “Burow?” she asked.

  “My father’s lawyer,” he explained. But for once his own curiosity was aroused, and he pressed home the point. “Now who’s being evasive?”

  For an instant her eyes betrayed a darkness that had nothing to do with the bruising in her face. It unsettled him. Even the seduction she attempted to initiate was unable to dispel his disquiet. It was the only time he had seen her commit such a clumsy subterfuge. Reluctantly, he bowed to her need for this privacy. But although his desire for her swelled with each button of his shirt that she prised open so deliciously with her delicate white fingers, he could not escape his disappointment that she felt unable to confide in him.

  Perhaps it was the desire for her that allowed his sense of discretion to overcome this disappointment and defeat his burning curiosity. At all events, he made no further mention of her father, and actively avoided the issue. This was made all the easier for him by the sweet distraction that she offered.

  Yet, wherever his mind turned, he was confronted with a scrapbook of the evil that hounded her every move: the contusions on her face, the sorrow in her eyes and – when she slipped off her blouse – the large black bruise just below her left breast. It spread down her body like an outsized shadow, an unkind caricature of her womanhood screaming at him from her delicate marble-white skin. Gently she eased the gracile form of her body back to rest on the bed like a bone china figurine she was putting on display. And his lips touched the blemish on her rib cage as if hoping by this to remove it.

  “Ouch.”

  “I’m sorry.” Instantly he retreated, embarrassed by his clumsiness.

  “No. It’s not your fault,” she said, playing a hand through his hair to reassure him. “It just hurt a bit when I moved.”

  Little more was said that night. They lay in each other’s arms, enjoying the intimacy of the moment and contriving at the same time to keep their bodies at a discreet distance from each other for fear of further inflaming the anger of the bruises. Perhaps it was the intensely erotic nature of this precarious balancing act that focused their minds and kept them from wandering into the darker realms of their separate anxieties as they both drifted into a deep sleep. Or perhaps it was apprehension of what they might uncover if they wand
ered too far.

  As the ensuing days unfolded, the latter explanation began to seem ever more likely to Frank. They spent their time together laughing, playing and savouring the closeness of each other’s presence. Stubbornly skirting even the most vaguely uncomfortable issue just as carefully as they had avoided touching the bruises. But Patricia’s spirit was plainly even more embattled than her body. Her trauma stubbornly refractory to any balm that he could offer. So they lavished their hours on those important trifles that held them together.

  The days were spent mostly riding up the Weissfluh and back or crunching their way along snowy paths around Davos. The weather was far from ideal for winter walks. Cloud obscured the heavenly blue skies from view on most days. The air had become a little too warm for comfort. And the greyish light threw a flatness over the snowy landscape that troubled Frank.

  This mood of disquiet was underlined by the glaring unseemliness of his own homeland every time they walked through the village and back up to their chalet. He had not realised when he spent holidays in Davos as a young boy just how much it had been colonised by his compatriots in search of healthy mountain air. Wandering now past the sanatoriums and the Fridericianum, the elite school for Germany’s wealthy children and now no doubt the offspring of high-ranking party members, he wondered what Thomas Mann might make of it all today. But it seemed unlikely to Frank that he would be inclined to pay a visit to this German colony anyway. Not only were the elders of Davos less than amused by his depiction of sanatorium life in The Magic Mountain. But it was barely a year since he was stripped of his citizenship, and the palpable influence that his native country clearly had on almost every corner of the town would be more than enough reason to avoid the place: even some of the buildings were decorated with the hateful flags and symbols so ubiquitous north of the border. Frank could have kicked himself for bringing Patricia to this expat hotbed of Nazism.

  His efforts to distract her by taking to the slopes and introducing her to the delights of skiing proved to no avail. The bruising of her ribs was still too fresh to cope with the unaccustomed twists and turns. So they committed themselves to gentle Alpine strolls by day. And by night they sat reading to each other beside the open log fire.

  “Have you read Rilke’s Duino Elegies?” he asked. “I have a copy with me.”

  “Oh, please don’t. I’d much rather try Karl May. I’ve heard so much about him. But girls don’t get to read that kind of literature.”

  The surprised excitement on Frank’s face quickly gave way to a questioning smile.

  “There’s no need to give me such a condescending look,” Patricia said, flashing an angry smile at him in return.

  “I’m just surprised. That’s all,” Frank insisted.

  And so he led her into the world of boys’ adventure with one of Karl May’s Wild West tales of Old Shatterhand. Then followed this with Henry Rider Haggard’s yarns from Africa. All courtesy of Burow. But he found little enthusiasm for this escapism.

  “You know, this kind of stuff puts me in mind of the human zoos they used to stage,” he said when he reached the end of the Rider Haggard yarn. “Bringing people from Africa and putting them on show for people’s entertainment. They still do it in some places. There was one at Basel zoo a year or two ago.”

  “I’ve heard about them,” Patricia replied. “They sound quite disgusting.”

  “Believe me, they are. My mother took me to one in Freiburg when I was a kid. She was fascinated.”

  The distaste voiced in the delivery of Frank’s words matched the revulsion in his eyes.

  How much sweeter he found it listening to Patricia as she recited from Baudelaire with her enchanting lilt, which transported him at once to the smoke-filled cafes of Montmartre. He looked out for every sign of emotion in her eyes as she recited from Les fleurs du mal. Watched every beguiling movement of her sweet lips as she spoke, listening all the while for them to whisper the cryptic words about her great swan, with his crazy gestures. But the words of that poem never came. And their absence made them all the more enigmatic to Frank.

  For the best part of two weeks, they remained encapsulated in this cocoon. Every so often, she would lapse into her own dark, impenetrable reflections, bringing to the surface the prurience she had encouraged in him for the affairs and secrets of others. And he would contemplate the possible reasons she might have for avoiding that particular poem. Was it too painful for her, he wondered. Did it have something to do with the mysterious Léandre, who had died in Spain?

  But the honeymoon was too sweet and too precious to be sacrificed to any unkind histories that may have been lurking in the shadows they had left behind. And far too brittle. So, with the dedication that might be expected of a restorer attempting to preserve the beauty of an Old Master from the Early Renaissance, they handled every moment with devotional care, working silently to keep the bonds intact.

  Between days, tucked into the narrow warmth of their bedclothes, a special kind of circumspection was called for. They were encouraged in this by the cold, verecund board down the middle of the bed that was so typical of bedsteads in the German-speaking world – built to keep its occupants apart. But the makers had not reckoned on the slenderness of Patricia. And defiantly they slotted together in their snug rapture, flesh upon flesh, her breasts exquisitely modest against his clumsily worn body, and her eyes more beautiful each night as the bruising became friendlier and lent a new sensuality to their expression.

  It must have been about two weeks after arriving in Davos when this idyllic veneer finally cracked, when even his most tenacious efforts to avoid the arrogant backslapping SS types that filled the pavements and restaurants fell miserably short. Frank and Patricia were strolling through the village towards the Parsenn station after lunch, having avoided the rush of skiers on their way to the mountain top. The streets appeared to be enjoying the peace. It was still a little overcast and slightly chillier than usual for the time of day. Patricia walked closer to him that afternoon, one arm wrapped snugly around his – whether she was feeling more affectionate or simply colder, he was unsure.

  He enjoyed the closeness, but at the same time it troubled him the way the tightening of her grip on his arm coincided with the sound of a brass band striking up somewhere out of sight. The significance of the music was not immediately obvious. It was only when Patricia’s grip on his arm grew tighter still that its familiarity became plain to him. But no sooner had he registered the swagger of his country’s national anthem than this celebration of arrogance gave way to the even more sinister theme of the hymn to Horst Wessel.

  The overbearing presumption of this insult on the tranquil hospitality that had been theirs for the last two weeks filled him with a sense of nausea. And Patricia plainly more so. But his feelings at once came into conflict with a morbid curiosity. And when she steered him away from the noise, he resisted.

  “Come on,” she pleaded. “We don’t want to have anything to do with that.”

  “It was you who encouraged me to be inquisitive,” he observed. So, against Patricia’s better judgement, they moved in the direction of the arrogance that masqueraded as music. If only he had respected her wishes.

  The scene that greeted them when they turned the corner into the square was already enough to sicken the heart: banners flying their emblems of evil were held erect like ugly pylons in the snow by mostly young, earnest-faced men, some in the shameless colours of party uniform and others in civvies so normal they chafed at the credulous innocence that still clung stubbornly to the more comfortable corners of Frank’s spirit. Grouped around them stood a group of men in long black coats conveying the impression of sinister intent – like carrion crows gathered around in the hope there might be some pickings on offer. The scene put Frank in mind of his mother’s nurse and her vivid description of the thugs who killed her dog.

  But the band, the flag-bearers and the crows were not alone. They were simply the more conspicuous extras among a gathering he found
disturbingly respectable in appearance: a few women, who were dressed up in their expensive furs, but mostly men fumigating the area with their thick cigar smoke. They were all absorbing a message from the mean pinched mouth of a man so strikingly ordinary that Frank wondered what it could be that made this man so presumptuous as to believe he had anything worth saying to so many people. His words were nothing less than a diatribe of hatred. A ranting paranoid indictment of some international conspiracy against men like Wilhelm Gustloff, who died in the service of his people. A heroic champion of the Third Reich cut down by the vicious craven rat of a decadent community. The word ‘Jewish’ did not cross his lips. It did not need to. Everyone knew what he meant. And nodded wisely in agreement.

  “Please, Frank. Let’s go. I can’t stand this any longer.”

  Patricia’s appeal betrayed a pitch of anxiety he had never heard in her voice before. And he could not listen to it any more than she could stand the hate-filled ravings of his fellow countrymen.

  It was just as they turned to go that Frank saw an all too familiar figure standing in the crowd. The features were partly hidden under a large felt hat. But the supercilious expression of his thin lips was unmistakable. And for an instant, just sufficient for the animosity to register, their eyes met. Hoping that Patricia had not seen him, Frank guided her into the nearest side street.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, surprising himself by his composure. “The assassination of Gustloff is not an event that figures in my calendar. If I’d known it was just a year ago, so close to where we’re standing now, I wouldn’t have brought you here this week.”

  As he looked back, he saw Breitner detach himself from the crowd of onlookers, move around behind them with his characteristic swagger, cigar in mouth, and follow them into the side street. At the next junction, Frank manoeuvred Patricia to the right and, finding a tea-room round the corner, persuaded her that some refreshment would do them both good.