The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  “Not that I blame him for that. I think it was probably around three years ago, after the pogrom of Bloody Palm Sunday, when he realised that some kind of insurance was called for. It’s all about survival these days, after all. But what really hurt was to find he didn’t need all that protection I’ve been buying for him. He never did. And Breitner knew it all along. He was just playing with me from the very beginning.”

  “What makes you say that?” Frank asked.

  “He virtually admitted it to me.” Her voice took on a guttural edge that told him she was fighting off the tears, as she added in a tone of disbelief: “He was there. In my father’s house. Being wined and dined. I knew that one of the local SS leaders in Stuttgart was supposed to be a close friend of his, but I never imagined I would have to sit and watch my father fawning over him like that. He was so amused when I walked in and he saw the expression on my face. It was sickening, utterly nauseating to watch him feasting on my father’s grovelling hospitality. To see the smugness fill his face when my father poured him a glass of wine. It made me feel so cheap and dirty. In my father’s house. The house I grew up in. Can you imagine? He so enjoyed my pain. It was not simply the disappointment at finding that my father had climbed into bed with them. It was the sure knowledge that the day would come when he would have served his purpose. And he would be cast aside like all the others. That’s what really hurt.

  “Breitner came to me later that evening, not only to gloat in that disgusting way of his, but just to make it clear that of course nothing had changed. Said that, although my father was obviously a resourceful man and understood well enough how to safeguard his own interests (said he had the survival instincts of a rat, but that this was only to be expected of a Jew), he needed the support of his loving daughter more than ever now that he was making so many enemies. And what a tragedy it would be if for any reason my father should make enemies of his – Breitner’s – friends. If they should ever turn against him. But it can so easily happen if you expose yourself the way my father had chosen to, he said. Oh, he was so revolting, it turns my stomach every time I think of it.”

  Her words trailed off into the darkness and left a vast hole of desolation. Only their bodies touched, gently, and hers seemed cold and drained of life. He felt powerless beside her. Uncertain what to say. But he knew that any words from him would have been completely out of place: she was gathering the strength to continue this guided tour of her own private hell.

  “You can’t imagine what it was like,” she said. “All this happening in my father’s house, under his roof, where I had so many happy memories. I think that’s probably what Breitner found so titillating. But just to ram the message home and make sure that I appreciated the power he had over me, he said he would be taking me to Berlin with him. He had some business there and expected me to go along and…”

  “Keep his bed warm?”

  “Just like in that tea-room in Davos. You remember?” Still she was trying to avoid his juvenile interjections, but this time Frank sensed that he had pushed her off course. It was not the response he wanted to hear. But he had only himself to blame.

  “Damn it, Frank, you don’t make it any easier. Do you really want to go into every detail? Are you so thick-skinned?”

  He had no reply to her rebuke. Patricia – at last relieved of her burden – finally gave in to exhaustion and sank into a deep sleep. But his skin was a lot thinner than she gave him credit for. Her story was too uncomfortable for him to sleep on. As the dawn light slowly insisted itself through the single window of their room, his head began to clear and his thoughts crystallise – like the freezing light of the valley that stretched away beneath them: the snow-draped fir trees; the hotel’s ice-rink laid out with last night’s fall of snow; and further down the valley the frozen lake recognisable only as a flat expanse of virgin white. Everywhere he looked, the untouched beauty of an Alpine morning. Clear, innocent, undemanding. Just waiting to be violated.

  He turned his gaze from the window to Patricia. Only her hair visible. Like a cascade of jet-black water frozen to the landscape of her bed linen, and the gentle clasp of an arm half-open on the pillow. So vulnerable. Captive to a history that was not of her making. And of course, she was right. She had to go back. But it had to be on new terms. He would not allow her to endure another day enthralled to Breitner. All he needed was to buy a little time, to steel his nerves and let his dark ambition take shape.

  It was already late in the morning when Patricia woke. The sun was streaming through the window, as if to celebrate the rare event of an uncompromising decision from Frank Eigenmann. It was the first time for some weeks that they had seen the sun shine with such vigour. It lit up Patricia’s sleepy face with a warmth that lent new depths to her beauty. Despite the traces of sleep that still lingered in her eyes, the way she sat up in bed and stretched – the curvature of her body flexed into the morning light – betrayed a freshness which suggested a sense of liberation. But Frank knew this lightness of being was only a surface reflection, that it concealed an immense hole of despair which threatened to swallow her up if he failed to act soon.

  It was over a late breakfast that he began making preparations for his last curtain call. The large breakfast room seemed to him a fitting place for drawing up these plans. He and Patricia were alone except for a few staff who still lingered, clearing away the last remnants of the day’s first meal and making ready for lunch. Although they tried hard to be as servile and ingratiating as the staff in these luxury hotels are always trained to be, they were reluctant to bring their guests anything at all. But they did grant them a pot of coffee and some bread and jam.

  “Coffee is all I need,” Patricia insisted when Frank put a sad-looking bread roll on her plate.

  “I still haven’t apologised for my stupid remarks last night,” he said. “They were completely juvenile and absurd.”

  “Please, squirrel, let’s forget about it. I’d rather think of other things while we’re here. And enjoy the sun and snow.”

  “Agreed. But we’re not going to be here for long, are we?” He spread his bread roll with jam while he considered his next words.

  “Patricia, you must contact Breitner and invent some story about me. Above all, he has to know that you’re alone, that you need some time to yourself and that you will contact him as soon as you get back in the next few days.”

  The searching expression in Patricia’s eyes was tainted with a host of emotions. Under any other circumstances, they might have intimidated him, but now was not the time for faint hearts. He had made up his mind.

  “It’s likely he will be returning home today,” Frank continued, “so I suggest you phone this evening. If he’s not there, leave a message that you will call again tomorrow – and keep calling until you speak to him. He needs to know that you’re still ‘toeing the line’.”

  “What are you playing at, Frank?” she asked, staring at him over her cup.

  “Trust me, Patricia,” was all he said, and it seemed to be all she needed to hear. From that moment, her expression lightened, as if he had just removed the last burden from her shoulder and she could now walk upright. She became as carefree as every other tourist in St Moritz. Even the phone call she made to Breitner later that evening failed to chip away at the screen she had thrown over the giant hole of despair. Quite the contrary, she found the conversation hugely amusing.

  “You should have heard him,” she giggled. And Frank was reminded of her girlish enthusiasm during the concert that became such a horrendous experience for him at the hands of Bartok.

  “The way he was blustering and choking. It’ll be a long time before he gets over his walk down the mountainside.”

  Frank smiled.

  “When did he get back down?”

  “I didn’t dare ask. His pride was far too injured to tell me that.” She laughed, so free at last that Frank felt his task was already half done. “But he did say you would live to rue the day you met him.”
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  “That day has long since passed.”

  She reached a hand across the table and held his arm as he was about to put the last piece of buttered roll in his mouth.

  “Frank,” she said, “promise me you’ll take care.”

  Her concern excited the conceit within him. But it expressed itself as irritation: “Why is it that my sacrifice is any less worthy than yours?”

  “What do you mean, Frank?”

  She was hurt. His words had plainly taken her aback. And he had to admit that he was unable to explain them. But this brief preoccupation with the darkness that was lurking in the wings would not be allowed to unhinge their extended honeymoon.

  “Come on. It’s time we enjoyed some of this Engadin sunshine.”

  He guided her out through the expansive lobby and past the other hotel guests milling around the aspidistras in opulent fur coats that looked far too large even for the most overweight of them. Patricia clung to his arm like a wicked young koala and whispered: “What on earth made you bring me to this place? It must cost a fortune.”

  “Childhood memories, maybe,” he replied, conceding quietly to himself that it was more likely he just wanted to impress her. And of course, she was right: he could not afford it. But issues of this kind were unimportant as they walked out into the sun, into a week that would come the closest to heaven he would ever be. And a week also that saw his decision harden and carry him relentlessly towards the final act.

  Much of their time was spent either watching the bobsleigh teams practising for the world championships or following the horse-racing down on the flat. It had always fascinated him as a boy when he came here with his father to watch the horses. The snow and ice of the frozen lake under the beating hooves added a new dimension to the excitement of the race. Perhaps it was the resonance of their pounding hooves in the cold thin air. Or maybe it was the crowd. The atmosphere was so unlike anything he had met anywhere else in his narrow world at the time.

  Patricia was even more spellbound by the activity than he had been as a boy. The heavy breath of the beasts on the cold air and the steaming of their sleek bodies. It pleased him that he had been able, however unwittingly, to provide her with some nutriment for her dreams. In fact, so taken was she by the festive, gaming mood of the spectators all around them, as they buzzed with expectation at the final Grand Prix race, that he could not restrain her from trying to throw nearly all their money away on one of the horses.

  “But you don’t know the first thing about horses,” he insisted.

  “You don’t have to. All you need is intuition and a sense of fun,” came the bubbling reply. She was in thrall to the race even before it had started and her chosen beast had taken the lead.

  “Come on, Broiefort!” she screamed with a power in her voice that was new to him – and did not altogether meet with the agreement of the spectators around them. A tall distinguished-looking man in his early sixties with a white moustache and a fresh-faced appearance that told Frank he was not unaccustomed to a winter climate in the mountains even went so far as to offer his sympathy for the loss he was about to incur.

  “I regret to say that your young lady has made a most unwise choice,” he said, instantly identifying himself as an Englishman.

  “I knew his father, Blandford. Derby winner. Beautiful creature. But this horse is not a patch on him,” the man explained, before adding: “Something of a failure as a two-year-old, you know. Tends to fade when the chips are down. You know the type. Not to be trusted.”

  But Patricia was too enthralled by the race to hear his words. “Broiefort! Broiefort!” she continued to scream.

  And perhaps this support was the fillip which the horse had been waiting for. If so, Frank knew precisely how the creature felt and fully understood how, much against his English neighbour’s judgement, the horse managed not only to win, but to lead from start to finish.

  “Well I’m blowed,” was all the man could say. His eyes widened in amazement, as Patricia wrapped every inch of her excitement around Frank. But he could not resist overcoming his English reserve to interrupt their embrace.

  “Beg your pardon, madam,” he said, raising his hat with an emphasis that seemed to say he was not accustomed to such forward behaviour and would she please forgive him the indelicacy, “but may I be so blunt as to ask whatever possessed you to put your money on Broiefort?”

  “If it’s a choice between a horse called Reichsherold and a horse called Broiefort, what else could a French lady do?” she laughed.

  Frank had never heard Patricia speak anything but German, except when she read Baudelaire to him beside the log fire in their Davos chalet. And to hear the sweet cadence of her French accent now turn to the language of Shakespeare and Noel Coward was strangely arousing, as if she had just put on a new dress that highlighted her figure in a way he had never seen before.

  “As a colonel in the British Army, I share your antipathy, madam. But don’t be misled by the label. Broiefort does not have an ounce of French blood in him. He’s English to the core.”

  “But of course.” Patricia was in effervescent mood. She sparkled more freely in English than Frank had ever seen her do in his own language. And although he found it bewitching to observe, the power of this fascination tugged at his jealous nature. “The English have a monopoly here, don’t they? You dominate the bobsleigh racing, so it’s only right that your horses should also win. Is that why Mr Churchill comes here?”

  “Winston?” The colonel seemed pleasantly surprised, as if she was talking about a member of his family. Patricia looked across at Frank with her pleading expression, and he felt obliged to become involved in the meaningless banter of this absurdly self-satisfied colonel, who looked as though he had long since retired from any kind of service that might warrant leaning on the privilege of rank.

  “It is standing in the newspaper that Mr Churchill comes to St Moritz.” Frank was aware of his clumsiness with the English language and added “His wife is already here”, sensing that this allusion to family and the implicit intimacy with the affairs and gossip of his establishment would meet with the colonel’s favour. But he was irritated by his own incomprehensible desire to please a man who plainly had no time for the likes of anyone remotely German.

  “I say, do you happen to know where they’re staying?” the colonel asked. But Frank had to disappoint him.

  “And where are you two charming people staying?”

  The question had to come, but Frank was not prepared for quite such a ready reply from Patricia. The colonel beamed like a little boy when he heard the name of the hotel.

  “What a stroke of luck. That’s my hotel,” by which Frank assumed that he was also staying there. Not that he owned it. “We must have dinner together one evening,” he added with an air that suggested it was not so much an invitation as a command. And again Frank was taken aback by Patricia’s readiness to obey the bugle call.

  “That would be nice,” she said in all sincerity. Frank could see that the table was already mentally reserved. Her excuses when the colonel had taken his leave and Frank had a chance to express his annoyance – “He seems so lonely. And he’s harmless enough” – failed to impress him. Their time together was too short. He felt the brittle texture of every second perish between their fingers whenever they touched, and he was not prepared to forfeit a fraction of her attention for anyone so pompous. On the other hand, nor did he want to sacrifice a single moment of their rapture to bickering or argument. So he did not pursue the matter and hoped that nothing would come of it.

  “You’re right, Patricia. I knew there was something different here. It’s the English.” He was trying to move their thoughts in a new direction, but his irritation was still kicking and bent on him having the last word. “They’re very present, aren’t they? It makes an odd contrast to last week in Davos. I’m not sure which strain of arrogance I dislike the most.”

  “Do you always have to be so negative?”

  The re
buke in her voice was unmistakable. And became even sharper when she fetched her winnings. “Well, you needn’t worry about having to waste your precious money on the poor old man – or on me either.”

  The rapture had been sacrificed long before Frank was even aware of what was happening. But her anger with him did not compromise her beauty one inch. On the contrary, it enhanced it all the more. And made his pain all the greater.

  They left the jostle of the racecourse and walked over to the Cresta Run without exchanging another word. She locked her arm in his. But it was more as support to help her keep her balance on the ice than an expression of intimacy. The crowds grew steadily thinner as they approached, and the afternoon sun was warm on their backs. But it was unable to thaw the frost that had settled between them. The toboggan run was already closed when they got there, the ice too soft, so they wandered aimlessly along the snowy paths overlooking St Moritz, their uneasy silence broken only once by Patricia’s words:

  “He reminds me of my father in a strange sort of way.”

  She was speaking of the colonel and thinking of her father, but at the back of her mind he detected Breitner. And he knew the moment could not be put off much longer – an awareness that gnawed at him for the rest of the day. It was not until sometime later – as the mountain light was beginning to fade and they were walking into the driveway of their hotel – that he responded to her remark.

  “All right. I’ll leave a message for him at the desk inviting him to have dinner with us tonight.”

  But the gesture proved superfluous. As he approached the desk, he caught sight of the colonel waving a stick in the air that would have brought the chandelier down had the ceiling been much lower. Frank’s heart sank.