by A. B. Decker
“Put that thing away, Eigenmann. You’re not going to shoot anyone. You haven’t got the stomach for it. People like you have too much respect for human life.” His voice lingered on these last two words, and turned about on them like a thick boot stubbing out a cigarette butt in the gutter.
He was right, of course. But for all the wrong reasons.
“Trouble is, Breitner, you’re not human. You’re not even alive.”
As if to test the truth of these words, Frank dug the barrel of the gun into his ribs. Deep. Breitner winced. And instantly lost his balance in the snow. His smooth city shoes carried his feet from under him with exquisite treachery. A hand grabbed at Frank’s sleeve as he fell. But he was already out of reach, so fast was his ungainly body gathering speed as it dropped and slithered down the slope. A helpless bundle plunging into insignificance. With growing satisfaction, Frank watched him dwindle away into the distance until the dark heap came to rest a good hundred metres or so below him.
The chill of the breeze off the mountainside nipped at Frank’s face and reminded him that daylight was beginning to fade. But he felt comfortable in his sudden solitude – which was probably more than Breitner could claim as he staggered shaken and uncertain to his feet. Frank left him to his predicament and made his way back to the station before he too missed the last train down.
Yet, as he sat alone in the top compartment of the funicular, the comfort quickly began to show cracks where Breitner’s words still echoed through his mind. What did he mean about the spectacle of his advances towards Patricia? And what was the connection with Achim? He recalled that clumsy evening, the image of Lutz raising his glass to him as he left the bar, the clinging sense of menace that pursued him through the streets, the rustling leaves, the suspect shadows. He was convinced at the time that someone had been following him. So was it really he who had been so stupid and unwitting to lead Breitner to his old friend?
The severe rock face slipped away from him with a scowl on its icy black countenance, as if reminding him that he did not deserve even the tiniest comfort which its heartless austerity could offer.
‘And I have the gall to ride in luxury,’ he told himself.
Quietly, the train sank down the mountainside and dragged him with it into the pit of his own dull conscience. Into the terrors of his memory. Gertrude, her boys, and the squealing rats that crawled over their decomposing bodies.
‘Oh Achim, my dear old friend. How could you ever forgive me?’ he asked himself. ‘It was not you who betrayed our friendship. I was the traitor from the outset. And your family the defiled victim, sacrificed by my dumb stupidity.’
When the train eventually jolted to a halt, Frank stumbled out like a scatterbrained imbecile waking from a troubled sleep. What he had not anticipated was the devoted vigil of the two watchdogs. They had plainly been waiting for him to return with Breitner. And these attack dogs now barred Frank’s way when he emerged from the station alone.
Chapter 22
The two sports youth louts filled the width of the pavement with their overweening presence. They said nothing. But Frank was in no mood to play their boy-scout games. He was tired. And desperate to see Patricia.
“Your friend took it into his head to come down on foot. He just wouldn’t listen to reason.”
Frank showed them the cold iron barrel of the gun, inched closer to the one on the outside of the pavement and thrust it into his nose.
“Don’t get the wrong idea. Just take a sniff of this. Not been used, has it?” He paused, savouring the young man’s discomfort. “Not yet.”
He left them standing there, looking impotent and just a little self-conscious, and hurried back to the chalet. They made no attempt to follow him.
Although evening had already set in by the time he got back, the chalet was in darkness. It gave the impression of being empty. The dense black cover of the trees seemed to have edged much closer to the building than he remembered it from their first night there. It had the effect of drawing in the night even earlier, even colder, around their refuge. To his surprise, the door was open. He called Patricia’s name, but the house remained quiet and unresponsive. His mind clouded over, seized by a sensation that lay somewhere between panic and profound sadness. The pounding of his heart was almost audible. Not until he went into the bedroom did he find her, face down on top of the bed, fully clothed, motionless. Only the shadows cast by the light from the landing gave any clue to the subtle rhythm of her body as it followed the mechanics of her shallow breathing.
With a sense of relief, he lowered himself gingerly onto the bed beside her. She stirred at this movement and curled up like a snail retracting into its shell. He watched her as she slept. Her hair draped in the shadows on the bed like a curtain, blacker than the night, over her dreams. The dismay and dread that appeared to haunt every corner of her waking hours was in such stark contrast to this shell of peaceful innocence. This helix of unspoken beauty. The quiet concentration with which he watched over her made the shock all the greater when, without warning, his presence startled Patricia from her sleep.
“Frank! You’re back!”
He said nothing, just ran his fingers through her hair.
“Frank!” There was panic in her voice, as she reached out for the light switch. In the sudden glow of the bedside light, he could see that she had cried herself to sleep. Her eyes had the look of raw meat that had been washed clean. “What have you done, Frank? Where’s the gun?”
He took it from his pocket and laid it on the bed between them. A dark destiny still untested. A look of horror filled the washed-out spaces in her expression.
“You haven’t?” She stared in disbelief.
“No. He literally slipped away before I had a chance.”
Frank smiled to himself at the memory as he reassured her, taking her hands in his, and explained how Breitner had unwittingly escaped his clutches.
“When it came to it, I suppose I lost my nerve. However monstrous he is, I couldn’t just gun him down in cold blood.” He felt her hands tense in his. “I imagine he’s still picking his way down the mountainside in his smart leather-soled shoes at this very moment.”
“You’re a fool, Frank.” She flung his hands back at him in disappointment. Or maybe contempt. And she began to pace the floor. Her fragile vulnerability had turned to outright fear.
“Once you’ve got someone like Breitner on the hook, you don’t just throw him back in the water. Oh, Frank, you’re such a fool.”
“You were the one who warned me off. What was I supposed to do?”
“Finish it. You should have finished it. Once and for all. Finished it.”
There was a venom in her voice that shocked him as she hurled the words at him like balls at a coconut shy and continued to pace the room. Her eyes sparked again with life. But Frank felt the obsessive quality of her words open up a disturbing distance between them. He had never seen her like this before. It was at odds with everything he knew about her. And it kindled a new fascination.
“I’ll make some coffee,” he said with a naive desire to please. But she caught his arm as he tried to leave the room.
“There’s no time for coffee. We need to pack and get out of here before he finds his way back.”
“What’s the hurry? He doesn’t even know where to start looking for us.”
“Davos is a very small place.” Her words were not only identical to those Breitner had used on him earlier. Even the way she spoke them was the same. They carried an edge that threatened to widen the distance between them further. “And you saw yourself that he has a lot of friends here,” she added.
The new side to her that she revealed that evening made him slightly uneasy in her company, like a new acquaintance with so much ground for him to make up. And so little time to do it. It created a self-conscious urgency. A sense of gaps to be closed. But he recalled the two faithful watchdogs at the Parsenn station. And had to admit she was almost certainly right.
&nbs
p; The next train out of Davos was heading for Filisur. Once they were on it and heading out of the station, they both relaxed and settled back into a kind of harmony that, while still a little edgy, had sufficient substance to let them laugh together at the day’s events: Breitner throwing his weight around over a slice of carrot cake in a shabby tea-room; the thought of him sliding his way down the mountainside in the dark; or the ludicrously earnest gathering to honour one of the most forgettable figures in a chaotic nation’s history.
“I’m sorry, Patricia. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have brought you to Davos.”
“You should have told me what your plans were,” she said and rested a forgiving hand on his arm. “But it’s my fault too. I remember him mentioning that he would attend the event. He wanted me to come with him.” She stopped herself, but too late. She had already said too much and withdrew momentarily into a dark, impenetrable silence reflected in the blackness of the night, which sped past them unannounced behind the carriage window.
Frank was desperate to pursue her thoughts. But although she had taught him the art of curiosity, he still shied away from indiscretion. And she was more than eager to gloss over her own lapse and led them quickly onto a safer track. She rested a seductive hand on his and caressed his hapless desire for her with the obtusely captivating smile of her embattled lips and bewitching ebony eyes.
“Frank, I can’t go home now. Let’s stop off somewhere else. Just for a few days at least. Please,” she implored. She knew instinctively how to fill him with boundless warmth whenever she wanted to.
“How about St Moritz?” he suggested, handing her the newspaper he had bought at the station. “It says here that Winston Churchill is due to arrive there shortly for his winter break. After the nest of vipers in Davos, perhaps you’d feel safer in the proximity of a man of his stature.”
“You don’t have to make fun.”
“Actually, Pat, I’m quite serious. If you really want to go somewhere else for a few days, I can’t think of a better place. But I shall have to go to the bank tomorrow.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me Pat.”
“I’m sorry. When I was in England, many people used it as a term of endearment. They call their cats and dogs ‘pets’, just like you call me squirrel in your dafter moments,” he teased her, before adding a sting in the tail: “What do your other lovers usually call you?”
“Only a German could fail to notice any distinction in pronunciation between ‘pat’ and ‘pet’,” she said with a look of dismissive scorn. Then added:
“Do you think they allow pets in the hotels of St Moritz?”
She had chosen to ignore his last question. And he was glad of this. Even if it did come with a crushing put-down, it at least indicated that she had approved his suggestion.
They were fortunate that the last connection for St Moritz had not yet left by the time they reached Filisur, so it was still a respectable nine o’clock when their little red train pulled them into their last resort in the upper reaches of Engadin. Frank had already telephoned the Suvretta House from Filisur and managed to book a room.
“We shall have to take a taxi,” he explained. “It’s a little way out of town. But at least we shall be safely isolated from the Breitners of this world.”
She rested her head on his shoulder as the taxi swept them over the snow up the hill to their hotel. Although she was exhausted, the look in her eyes remained stubbornly alert. Frank could sense the trouble turning in her mind as he caressed her lips and the deep seductive furrow of her philtrum with his thumb.
“I’ve been told the more pronounced it is, the bigger the heart,” he whispered, “and those who have not been touched at all by your angel Lailah are completely heartless. Do you think that’s why Mr Hitler wears that ridiculous moustache? To conceal the absence of any soul?”
Patricia sat silently enjoying the caress of his fingers on her lips. But her mind was elsewhere.
“Can you imagine anyone wanting to bring children into the world?” she asked.
Frank was startled by the digression. For some reason, he had never imagined she would entertain such ideas, even from the remotest of theoretical viewpoints. She had always seemed to him to be above the untidy biological dimensions of life. It was one of the many qualities he liked about her. So he was glad the taxi was already pulling into the driveway of the hotel before the commitment of an answer could be expected of him. But her question stayed with him like a thorn, pricking him every time he touched it. Yet teasing, and inviting his vanity to play with its implications.
Patricia had taught him sufficient curiosity to want to return to the subject once their luggage had been delivered to their room and they were left alone for the night. But perhaps he was too fearful of where the conversation might lead. After the day’s untoward surprises and unplanned travel, he was too tired for any kind of serious conversation anyway. So they both sank into their private worlds, side by side in bed, without exchanging more than a few words. Only touching.
When it was he woke, he could not say, but it was still dark. Nor was he certain what it was that woke him – whether it was the unseen hand of his conscience or the communication between their tangent bodies. But even in his stupor, he was instantly aware that Patricia too was awake. He sensed her staring into space. Trying to lose herself in the darkness that surrounded them.
“Patricia,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”
But night remained possessive of her thoughts. Not a peep filtered through the grasping darkness, until he felt driven to switch on the bedside light.
“Uhh! What are you doing?” She blinked violently and hid her face under the sheets. “Please!”
She said nothing more. Frank switched off the light again. And waited. It was the faint tremor of her weeping body that eventually shook the night into some kind of action. He took her in his arms. Her head on his shoulder. The soft flesh of her breasts caressing his belly as she breathed. And her tears trickling onto his chest. Not a sound passed her lips. He could only offer her closeness and warmth. He felt powerless to help. And sensed that she felt the same.
How much of the night passed over them in this impotent embrace it was hard for him to tell, as sleep kept trying to drag him off in other directions – until her words finally pulled him out onto the cold ledge of consciousness.
“It’s hopeless, Frank,” was all she said. But it was enough.
“What?”
“Everything,” she replied. And the waiting game continued, until she added: “We’ll never shake off Breitner. As soon as we get back, he’ll be there.”
But Frank had the impression this was not all she wanted to say, that something else was eating away at her heart.
“We don’t have to go back,” he suggested.
“I do.”
The ominous reflex of her response urged him to try the light again. He had to see her expression, the story in her eyes. But he held back. He feared the exposure would prompt her to pull the blanket of silence over her again.
“I have to return, Frank.” Her voice betrayed a flutter of agitation.
The night seemed ready to snap with the tension, as she lapsed into a hesitant pause – and prepared for the leap.
“I told you about my father, that he’s Jewish. And Breitner’s threats if I didn’t toe the line.”
“Is that what you call it nowadays?”
His flippant question gagged her for a moment. He could sense her struggling, attempting to maintain her balance on the sheer, unlit face of her confession. And he instantly regretted the callous archness of his words.
But her burden was already too heavy to carry, and she ignored the mean stupidity he threw at her.
“I love my father dearly. He’s so kind and understanding, always has a smile on his face, nothing’s ever too much trouble. He can be a bit stern sometimes when he feels he has to be, but he wouldn’t be a good father if he didn’t, would he?”
Frank sensed her he
ad turn lightly on his shoulder, as if looking up for confirmation.
“And I’m so grateful that he sent me here to study. I might never have discovered such treasure…” – Frank interrupted her with a gentle kiss to her brow in vain anticipation of her next words and was instantly deflated by the folly of his conceit when she ignored his gesture – “I knew little about the jewels of Swiss art before I came here. People like Anker and Böcklin. Or Segantini. Although he’s not strictly Swiss; he was actually stateless. A little like me in a way.”
Patricia paused for a moment at this last thought and let the darkness speak for her. Then added:
“But my father can be ridiculously sentimental – like that business with the Chateau Haut-Brion. And of course I adore him. I’d do anything for him.”
Despair filled the space left by these last words as she paused again. Frank could almost hear her fighting to keep it at bay while she gathered her thoughts.
“You remember I said that Breitner promised me protection for my father in exchange for…”
“… certain favours,” Frank added with sarcastic emphasis on the last word to complete her sentence for her. He was still unable to let his foolish jealousy rest. But she skirted around the clumsy bait.
“I was with my father in Stuttgart recently,” she continued. “The first time I’d seen him for more than a year. You can’t imagine how a person can change in such a short space of time. The smile was gone, the kindness a thing of the past. He was irritable and impatient the whole time I was there. Suddenly I didn’t know him any longer. He was not the man I knew as my father. In fact, he made it plain I wasn’t welcome.
“And I soon realised why: it must have been embarrassing for him to have his daughter in the house when he was entertaining all those local dignitaries and officials with their impeccable party credentials. Especially the SS men. Hardly a day went by without someone knocking on the door, at all hours, often late at night, dinner parties that stretched into the early morning, fat guffawing boorish pigs with opinions of themselves even bigger than their bellies, behaving as though they owned the place. And my father with it. They’ve probably long since drunk his cellar of 1913 Chateau Haut-Brion dry. You know what he’s done? He’s made his pact with the devil, sold out to keep his head above water.