The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  She shivered at the coldness of the room. The chill was underlined by the spartan, grey concrete walls with piping and equipment on the far side. Only the shelves neatly stacked with cans of food and a large wine rack alongside them offered any sense of comfort.

  “This is our bunker,” Marthe announced. There was a hint of embarrassed irony in her voice. “All new houses must have one. It’s the law. Everyone is terrified that the Soviets could drop a bomb on us any day. It’s even worse in the last years since they ordered their tanks onto the streets of Prague.” Her dark sapphire eyes appeared to seethe with a frustration that bordered on anger, which then visibly ebbed away when she added: “We’re not quite so bad in the French-speaking part of the country, where I come from – or even here in the Basel area. Here they think a little like the French speakers. And often vote the same way.”

  Marthe paused, letting a smile cross her lips and a sparkle light up her eyes.

  “This is one of my favourites,” she said, as she reached out to one of the shelves and took a book from behind the cans of food. It was more of a booklet than a book. A red tract emblazoned on the cover with huge white letters that were indecipherable to Ellen.

  “Civil defence,” explained Marthe. “Our government distributed this to everyone after the Czech crisis. And Urs feels a duty to keep it on the shelf. It’s full of such useful information like what to do if Switzerland is invaded. It’s unbelievable the fear and anxiety that grips this country sometimes. And when people are not worrying about invasion, then they’re feeling alarmed by the vote for women, attacks on Swissair, getting swamped by foreigners or even the frontaliers.”

  Marthe Zellweger’s voice quivered slightly with exasperation as she took back the booklet, placed it on the shelf and turned to leave the shelter, guiding Ellen back out to the stairwell. But closing the door behind her seemed to help Marthe regain a sense of composure. And the puzzled expression on Ellen’s face was sufficient to restore her wits.

  “Sorry. I don’t know how you say that in English,” Marthe apologised, stopping halfway up the stairs to ponder. “This country is quite schizophrenic about foreigners. They are so important for the economy. But at the same time there are many people who live in fear of being overwhelmed by them. Even the ones who live just across the border in Alsace or Germany and simply cross into Switzerland for work, then go home again in the evening. These are the frontaliers. People who cross the border. But in this case, I sometimes wonder if the fear is driven mostly by tax issues. As so many things are in this country.”

  “So frontier workers I suppose.”

  “Exactly,” said Marthe. Then asked: “Do you work?”

  Ellen smiled to herself.

  “Why do you laugh?” Marthe’s expression betrayed a sense of hurt.

  “I’m not laughing,” Ellen insisted, following Marthe back into the lounge. “You just reminded me of a play I saw at the theatre recently with Frank. A man asks a woman whether she works, and she replies: ‘My arms and legs move’.”

  The quiet, neatly furnished lounge that exuded gentility and decorum suddenly exploded with a guffaw of laughter that seemed completely out of character from what Ellen had seen of Marthe until now.

  “That’s very good! It should be our motto!”

  There was an inclusive, conspiratorial turn of phrase in Marthe’s words that gave Ellen a sense of warmth and belonging.

  “But yes,” she said. “I work as a secretary. And the professor kindly let me phone England from the clinic. My boss has given me the rest of the week off.”

  “I hope you won’t need more than a week,” Marthe said in a tone that left Ellen fearing she almost certainly would.

  Dr Zellweger did nothing to dispel this fear when he arrived home in the evening from work. His wife and Ellen were still in the lounge talking. Only the tea tray was missing. Replaced by a bottle of wine.

  “Salü Schatz,” he said, planting a kiss on his wife’s cheek. Then turning to Ellen: “Mrs Goss. I hope my wife has been looking after you?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he disappeared into the kitchen, promptly returned with a glass in his hand and poured himself some wine after topping up the other glasses.

  “I’m sorry to say, Mrs Goss, that there is still no news of your husband. We shall just have to be patient.”

  For the rest of the evening, over a light dinner, the conversation remained polite and restrained. Ellen said little more. She felt herself sinking into a morass of despair and felt it better not to sit at the dinner table with her hosts any longer than necessary. She decided to have an early night.

  For Ellen it seemed a particularly dark night. Left her in a sleepless turmoil, dwelling on her irritations and deep concern. Irritation over Frank getting himself into this mess in the first place and concern about where he might be at that moment, as she lay in the comfort of a warm bed and the temperature outside fell below zero.

  It was before breakfast – before she had even had a chance to wake properly – that her next ray of hope set her heart beating with anticipation. She heard the phone ring from her bedroom. When Marthe called her down and handed her the receiver, Ellen heard the voice of Dr Zellweger on the line. He had long since left for work by the time she rose for breakfast.

  He apologised for disturbing her so early, but he wanted her to know that a man answering Frank’s description had been picked up that night by the police. He had been found sleeping in the Storchen. This was a multistorey car park, he explained, and by coincidence it lay almost next door to the police station at the Spiegelhof. He had arranged to be at the Spiegelhof at ten that morning and said that Marthe would bring Ellen into town to meet him.

  Once again, the doctor insisted that Frank had displayed a native fluency in the Alemannic dialect – even to the extent that, on this occasion, the man who was supposed to be Frank Goss convincingly persuaded the police that he was a German national from just across the border by the name of Eigenmann. Yet Dr Zellweger persisted in speaking of this man as Ellen’s husband. His conviction, it seemed, was based entirely on Frank’s passport photo, and she had to admit there was no escaping the fact that the photo he had shown her in the clinic was authentic. Yet this very photo, from a British passport, was confirmed by the police as being the exact likeness of their Eigenmann. How this could possibly be, the doctor was unable to explain. But Ellen had the distinct feeling that he saw this simply as evidence of how shaky their marriage must be and how little she knew her husband.

  Still, now that the man was in police custody, Ellen was sure they would soon get to the bottom of the mystery, and she would be able to correct everyone’s impression of her. For she was certain the professor saw her as a rather unstable woman at the very least. And possibly even a potential patient in his clinic.

  It was a short walk to the tram stop. And the tram ride into town took no longer than twenty minutes. But it seemed much longer to Ellen, whose heart raced with a mix of excitement and anxiety for the whole journey.

  The Spiegelhof was a long, grey, soulless building from the 1940s. Despite an endless succession of windows on each floor, it gave the impression of a closed, impenetrable garrison. The intimidating air about the place did nothing to dampen Ellen’s spirit. She and Marthe arrived just before ten. Dr Zellweger was already outside the main entrance awaiting their arrival.

  By now, Ellen’s heart was pounding even faster at the prospect of finally seeing Frank. Or the man who was said to be Frank. Her excitement was short-lived.

  When Dr Zellweger caught sight of her approaching with Marthe, he hurried towards them.

  “Good morning, Mrs Goss,” he said, offering her his hand. “I’m afraid we have a problem. When I arrived here a few minutes ago, I was told that your husband somehow managed to slip out and disappear again. No one knows where he is.”

  Chapter 6

  When Frank eased open his eyes, he was confronted by two solid dark table legs, like menacing boots. Uncomfortab
ly close to his head. The hard floor had left his back aching. Must have fallen out in the night, he thought. And dragged himself back into bed feeling bruised and battered. Then recalled that he was due to meet Achim later that day. His mind raced ahead of his discomfort with a buzz of expectation.

  By the time he appeared for breakfast, his condition had outwardly improved. The bruising ache in his back remained, but the puffy oedema round the eyes had subsided. And he could now see things with a strained modicum of clarity – something for which he was about to find himself oddly thankful.

  He sat at a discreet corner table and waited for breakfast to be served as he took a book from his pocket. Confession of a Murderer by Joseph Roth. It was either that or Rilke’s Duino Elegies. This was the incongruous extent of the library he had with him. And on that bruised and battered morning, murder was a better match for his mood.

  Sitting over croissants and coffee a few tables away from Frank were two men in grey suits with a young woman. The two men had their backs to him and were as inconspicuous as the chairs they were sitting in. The young woman told a different story altogether and seemed unlikely company for her faceless companions. She had a natural chic that was captured in the self-assured contrast between the fullness of her raven hair and a silver-white scarf that hung delicately around the collar of a navy-blue jacket. He could not hear what they were saying, but it was obvious that she carried herself with supreme self-confidence. The way in which every so often she threw herself back in her chair. The gentle curvature of her back touching the frame. Teasing it. And tantalising Frank’s curiosity. He placed his book to one side and watched. Captivated by the scene.

  A feigned expression of surprise or amusement on her lips. Maybe a look of shock in her eyes. It was plain she was in complete control of whatever conversation they were holding. She was not especially attractive in the conventional sense. Yet an aura of quite exceptional, indescribable beauty was described by every movement she made, every expression she conveyed across the table. When she threw her head back, her hair would catch in the corner of her mouth. And as if deliberately to underline this moment, she would discreetly part her lips and sweep away the black strands with her fingers, leaving the lips pouted in a way that was all the more provocative for their fleeting, innocent sensuality.

  But Frank’s enchantment was suddenly trampled all over by the arrival of a newcomer at their table. For all his frustration over this intrusion, however, it proved an intriguing turn of events. The newcomer was wearing a black hat and long black trench coat. Frank recognised him at once.

  It was the man with the Maybach Zeppelin from the night before. And seeing him now in the light of day, he realised that he knew the man. He was, or used to be, the owner of a sleazy cabaret in Berlin. Willi Breitner. An opportunist, a fast talker and a womaniser. The type who wore all the danger signals like a bright red carnation in his buttonhole and still managed to soft-soap anyone into doing whatever he pleased. During Frank’s years in Berlin, before the Nazis seized power, he had often seen Breitner strutting around some of the classier establishments, like the White Mouse or the Chat Noir, before setting up in business himself. Frank considered himself fortunate never to have made the man’s acquaintance. He knew a number of people who had. And every one of them had come to regret it.

  The aversion that Frank felt towards Breitner was nourished all the more as he watched him take the delicate hand of his temptress, raise it to the loathsome curl of his cold razor-like lips and – with all the charm of a cobra – stoop to kiss it. She smiled and discreetly withdrew her hand before getting up to leave. Breitner stepped back slightly. He deliberately allowed her too little space to pass without brushing against his beefy, barrel-chested frame and bade her an ostentatiously regretful farewell. As he lowered himself into the chair she had just vacated, opposite the two faceless men, his lupine eyes followed her across the room to the cloak stand and watched as she slipped on her coat. Even this she managed to do with an innocent allure that teased away all the layers of cold cynicism that Frank had accumulated over the years. The way she moved her arms back, sliding them into the sleeves of the coat and just briefly revealing the white blouse under her jacket – the warm hint of fragile femininity beneath.

  Frank’s curiosity was uncomfortably divided. Who was this woman? And what was she doing here with a man like Breitner so far from his stamping ground? Whatever it was, Frank’s muddled logic told him he would be unlikely to find the answer to the second question here in the breakfast room. So, to satisfy the deeper part of his curiosity, he went after an answer to the first instead.

  It was still twilight when he reached the pavement outside. She was already some distance down the street and just turning into a side alley. Frank hurried after her as unobtrusively as his burning eagerness would allow. Once at the alley, he could see her some thirty metres ahead walking almost meditatively, hands in coat pockets, up a steep flight of steps. The higher up she went, the slower her pace became. His eyes never once left the beguiling movement of her slim dark ankles as they flexed effortlessly over the steps, the seam of her stockings tracing the movement with the elegance of a master calligrapher. For all the confidence she had displayed in the company of those two men, these ankles betrayed a poignant vulnerability. Yet paradoxically, the beauty of their movement and the gentle curve of the legs invested her at the same time with an irresistible appeal of strength and independence.

  On reaching the top, she disappeared over the horizon of the steps against the looming white wall of a church. Again Frank quickened his stride and arrived at the topmost step just in time to catch sight of her cross the road on the other side of the church. She skipped lightly over the road, up a short flight of steps and into the park on the other side. Bereft of any foliage, the winter trees that lined the park stood like sentinels guarding her passage to the other side. At times, he almost lost her in their shadows.

  It was a good five minutes after crossing the park before she eventually entered a tall terraced house in a narrow street the other side of the city’s mediaeval gateway of the Spalentor. The late dawn sky had barely penetrated here, and the house was in darkness. It was cold and uninviting. But after a minute or so, a lamp from a garret window lit up and strained to compete with the grey twilight above. Frank needed no second bidding. He tried the door she had entered and found it was not locked. He went in. There was just enough light on the stairwell for him to find his way up the creaking wooden stairs to the top floor. The nameplate on the door that awaited him there read ‘P. Roche’. He knocked. The sound reverberated through the chamber of the stairwell, and only then did it occur to Frank that he had no idea what he was going to say when she opened the door. He began to panic. He had allowed myself to be drawn here by her magnetism. And now that he was jolted into considering his actions in the cold light of reason, he felt completely out of his depth.

  When the door opened, he stood mesmerised by the sight of her before him. And said nothing. The deep ebony of her eyes sparkled with an eloquent edge of melancholy trying not to be heard. It was camouflaged as suspicion and mistrust, but was visible nonetheless.

  “Can I help you?” she whispered.

  “Good morning, Mademoiselle Roche. I have a message from Mr Breitenbacher,” he replied, misnaming his taskmaster in his agitated haste.

  This impromptu creativity came right out of the blue and took him by surprise. He felt slightly ashamed at how easily the lie came out – yet rather pleased by his resourcefulness. He had hidden depths. It was not until sometime later that the folly of his inventiveness was made painfully clear to him.

  The long silence that followed Frank’s words hollowed out his brief moment of smugness to a thin shell that eventually cracked and disintegrated under its own weight. He felt himself beginning to shuffle from one foot to the other. And almost as a reflex he started rubbing his hands together to disguise his nervousness.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Mr Br
eitenbacher.”

  “I don’t know any Breitenbacher.” Her sweet voice had by now taken on a dismissive edge. It left Frank teetering on the edge of dejection.

  “The man you were with earlier in the Hotel Storchen,” he explained, affecting the sense of a chill on the stairwell as he continued rubbing his hands together.

  “You mean Mr Breitner?” she asked. He nodded.

  “Could I come in? It’s quite cold out here.”

  She looked nervously over Frank’s shoulder in the doorway, as if nervous of eavesdroppers on the stairwell. Then stepped back to open the door a little wider and silently beckoned him in.

  “You don’t really seem the kind of lady to keep company with a man like that,” Frank said as he stepped inside. She ignored the intrusive bluntness of his remark.

  “What message?” she asked.

  Frank hesitated. He looked about him, uncertain where to go next with his lie. The room was small, but well-furnished. A dining table and chairs, a settee with books strewn over it, a single armchair and beside this chair a table on which there stood a vase with three red roses. And a gramophone. A record lay on the turntable. Vocalion label. A Fine Romance.

  “You like Billie Holiday,” he said.

  Close to the table with the gramophone stood a wood-burning stove. He moved over to the stove and warmed his hands while he continued to absorb the scene – the mood of independent womanhood that pervaded the room, the secrets, the longings and the anxieties that lived within those walls.

  All the while, she stood in tantalising proximity watching Frank. Still waiting for a reply to her question.

  “You have a lot of books,” he prevaricated further, trying hopelessly to make conversation.

  “I need them for my studies.”