The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  Above all, he was disarmed once again by her strange beauty, by the strong but soft geometry of her cheekbones, the rich lustre of her raven hair toned with a warm hint of mahogany, the dark eyes that appeared paradoxically to sparkle with a perpetual melancholy, and the lips so perversely enticing in a clumsy imperfection that may have been moulded by grief. Once again, she gave him the impression of immense strength coupled with delicate vulnerability. It was a picture that intrigued him to the depths of his soul. For all his reluctance to admit of such feelings, he had to acknowledge that he was dangerously close to something called love. And yet, in spite of all his innocence and willing sacrifice to her charm, he was fully prepared to accept that she was not to be trusted.

  “You’re probably wondering why I wanted to meet you here,” she said.

  With great difficulty, he concealed his burning curiosity for fear of forfeiting some undefined advantage. So he said nothing.

  “What do you think of it?” she asked, gesturing towards the man in the floppy hat.

  “It’s a fascinating portrait. The expressiveness of the eyes, the mouth – the face as a whole – even though the rest of the picture is incomplete – he looks anxious, hunted, underneath that calm exterior.”

  He could see that his affected response amused her. This was apparent from that smile of hers, which was rapidly becoming the cause of such sweet pain.

  “I think perhaps you’re projecting a lot of yourself into the picture,” she observed, with a disturbingly accurate grasp of his condition. “Do you know who it’s supposed to be?”

  Frank had to admit his ignorance.

  “Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim,” she said with slow deliberation, showing a cynical edge to her voice that ill-befitted his image of her.

  “Poor soul. His parents really didn’t like him, did they?”

  “Better known,” she added, ignoring his attempt at wit, “as Paracelsus. A man who is said to have made a lot of enemies – and a dubious contribution to the advance of medicine. I can’t understand why people are still so interested in him here, of all places, where his ideas aroused such indignation. But that’s so typical of the people in this place, so petty bourgeois and resistant to change – until they perceive the opportunity for a little reflected glory.”

  Her voice had changed, become more poignant in its expression, more accusing, but then softened slightly as she added: “So they’ve talked themselves into believing that this portrait by Holbein represents the great man.”

  “And you think otherwise?” I asked.

  “Let’s just say I’m still waiting to be convinced.” She paused and studiously contemplated the portrait.

  “This is why I suggested meeting here. I wanted you to see the picture. Despite what the experts say, I doubt very much that it’s Paracelsus. And for good reason. So, every time I see it, it reminds me not to trust anyone or what anyone tells me until I’m convinced that it’s so, until I know for sure that the person or the information can be trusted. It’s the only way to survive these days.”

  Without giving Frank so much as a glance, she then turned to leave the gallery.

  “Now let’s go and have lunch,” she said.

  Smart, single-minded and committed. To what he was not sure. But it was here that she derived her strength. And here that she cast her bewitching net over him.

  Frank had always found grit and intelligence in a woman highly seductive. And yet, impressed as he was by her knowledge of the artworks on display, he doubted that this was the true reason she wanted to meet right here, exactly where he had witnessed the encounter between Achim and the mysterious Silverstone a few days earlier. It all seemed such a contrived arrangement, not to say a tad pretentious, just to make such a simple point. He was certain that she was conveying another message he was too stupid or too innocent to comprehend.

  They exchanged few words as they walked together to the restaurant, Frank pondering the true significance of that moment. Yet right now, as he let Patricia Roche guide him to their appointed lunch, he was more intent on keeping both eyes firmly on what was going on around them and checking to make sure they were not being followed.

  But the manner in which she also kept glancing back behind them told him that she was no less wary of stalkers than he was. She guided him around the cathedral towards the terrace overlooking the river that he had come to know so well. Before reaching the thick red sandstone walls of the terrace, however, she tugged Frank by the arm and pulled him around the outer wall of the chancel.

  “We wait,” was all she said, as they stood pinned against the wall behind the furthermost column of the chancel. The last time Frank had walked this way, late at night, he had been hounded by a sense of shadows in pursuit.

  ‘Is it the church,’ he wondered, ‘that foments this sense of persecution?’

  The answer was carved into the walls above: weird sandstone sculptures of exotic creatures, sciapods threatening to plant a huge foot on anyone who came too close to the walls of the chancel where they stood. They spoke of trouble and menace.

  ‘These buildings are made to intimidate,’ Frank mused, and felt the nudge of Patricia’s elbow in his side. He looked at her, and followed her gaze as it fixed on a shabbily dressed young man in a cloth cap. The man hurried to the edge of the terrace, peered over its thick sandstone walls, then turned and vanished down the steps to the promenade below.

  “Who was that?” Frank asked, as Patricia walked over to the terrace walls and cast a glance down at the promenade.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “But I don’t like the look of him.”

  They watched as he hurried along the promenade to the ferry. This was moving slowly towards him, carried by the slow winter current of the river. And in its wake a swan gently drifted and bobbed on the ripples created by the boat. It seemed oblivious to the world around it, as if floating in another dimension altogether.

  Satisfied that they had shaken off the man in the cloth cap, Patricia tugged at the sleeve of Frank’s coat and led him back across the cathedral square, down the weaving side streets of the city and in through the back door of a tavern unknown to Frank. The blast of warm air as they entered spoke instantly of cosiness, a feeling that was reinforced by the interior design. Beneath the low-slung, low-wattage lamps, many of the tables were slotted in between high-backed bench seats that offered cosy séparées for dining. It was clear to him that Patricia had chosen this tavern precisely for its discretion. The kind of place to share secrets without fear of any wider disclosure.

  They settled on the table in the farthest corner. She placed a pack of cigarettes and lighter on the table beside her, and Frank ordered half a litre of La Côte, while they studied the menu. But once the order was taken – a rösti special for each of them – and they gingerly immersed themselves in conversation, it seemed as if there were no secrets to reveal after all. The conversation rambled through the more anodyne corridors of their histories, as neither of them appeared ready to take off the safety chain. He insisted on guarding secrets that did not seem worth the engrams they were etched in, while she preserved confidences that looked too heavy to carry for much longer, but too important to let go.

  And so their lunch became a game of hide and seek. A certain ration of conversational detail was supplied on both sides. But in her case, he sensed it was intended to serve as bait more than anything else. She told him that she was studying the History of Art at the university, which he had already ascertained on their first encounter. He asked her why, of all the temples of misogyny, she should choose this country in which to do her studies, where women were not even allowed to vote.

  “My father wanted me to,” was her only reply, which went nowhere near satisfying his curiosity. But when he delved further, he got no response. So he tried a different tack.

  “Where are you from?” he wanted to know.

  She furrowed her brow and feigned a questioning smile across the table: “What do you mean? Biolog
ically? Geographically? Metaphysically perhaps?”

  Frank had the feeling she was making fun of him. Or was she merely being evasive again? At all events her caginess began to irritate him. He would have almost been ready to throw in the towel had it not been for those dark, captivating eyes.

  “I’m quite serious,” she insisted. “I don’t understand your question. If you want to know where I was born, then Normandy in France. That’s where I spent my childhood. In a small town called Avranches. A pretty place with beautiful views of Mont Saint-Michel rising from the sea like something out of a fairy tale. My parents lived in Metz originally, which was still part of Germany of course. But when war broke out, my father insisted that my mother should move to Normandy and stay with my grandmother. He stayed in Metz because of his job, but travelled to Normandy as often as he could. And that’s where I came in.”

  At this, she took a cigarette from the orange pack beside her, emblazoned with the name Parisienne that could have been created especially for her, and lit up.

  How apt, Frank thought, but said: “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “There are times when it helps,” she replied. “Do you want one?”

  “I haven’t smoked since Berlin,” he said, taking one from the pack. “But sharing a Parisienne with a charming French lady is too much of a temptation.”

  “But I’m not sure any of that answers your question,” she continued, ignoring his clumsy attempt at flattery, “because the last dozen years or so I’ve been in Stuttgart, where my father now lives. Then about a year ago, he sent me to study here, where many people assume from my name that I have something to do with the pharmaceutical company just across the river. So they think I’m Swiss. And if you ask what it all means to me, I really can’t tell you. I feel neither German nor the charming French lady you speak of. And certainly not Norman. I have no idea where I belong. But none of that matters. All I need to know is that I’m me. Anything else is quite unimportant. And slightly boring. A little like this Chasselas,” she added, as she finished her glass of wine.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “They don’t seem to have a great range of wine to offer.”

  And since the restaurant only appeared to have chestnut Vermicelles to follow their main course, she declined his offer of a dessert and insisted on no more than a cup of coffee to complete the lunch.

  Frank began to sense their time together slipping away. Already with the bitterness of the coffee serving as a foretaste of regret at his own foolish hesitation, he could feel the threat of failure coursing over his tongue. Here was an opportunity he could not allow to be simply tossed away with all the other forgotten litter of his past. This woman exercised an influence over him that told him she was too important to leave in the limp hands of his indecisiveness. So why mistrust her?

  ‘Why not for once in your life take the bull by the horns?’ he asked himself. Yet even then he felt the need to approach the task elliptically, homing in from an obscure angle, in the hope that the bull would not notice – so affording him the opportunity to escape without having to show himself up should he be rejected.

  “Would you take me for a thief?” he asked.

  This apparent non sequitur had her visibly baffled.

  “I would take you more for that swan we saw in the river. But I imagine most of us are capable of stealing,” came the philosophical response.

  “But would it surprise you to learn that I was no more than a mean street thief?”

  “Yes, to be honest it would,” she said, and began to look slightly worried in her curiosity.

  “But I am,” he insisted. And proceeded to relate the story of his encounter with Silverstone. Perhaps it was her apparent concern that seduced him. Or maybe it was simply the exquisite, slender beauty of her wrist as she stirred the cream into her coffee and allowed the sheen of her hair to cascade over the cup like a jet-black waterfall. Whatever the reason for the seduction, he almost unwittingly found himself laying bare the whole history behind his assault on Silverstone. He told her of Achim, their friendship, his dreams, and his recent disappearance. Almost as if seeking absolution, he began to confess every detail of the last few weeks. He appeared to need it – like a novice drinker who sips gingerly from his first brandy and quickly acquires a taste for it, renewing glass after glass with an increasingly intemperate relish. He thought of Achim and his Mirabelle brandy. And it seemed to him that those excerpts of his tale which involved his old friend were followed with particular interest by his temptress and confidante. But he did not let this impression deflect him from his confession. Now, as he unashamedly showed his colours to this woman who evinced such experience of the world in her sweet, sad eyes, he felt as naive as he had done that Monday morning when Achim had recounted the stories of his youth over the Mirabelle brandy. A simpleton with no grasp of the world about him despite his gruelling experience at the hands of Breitner. And the threat of worse if he were to be seen here now with Mademoiselle Roche.

  “And the only reason he seemed to have for brutalising me was to warn me against having anything to do with you,” said Frank, as he brought his confession to an end.

  As he added this rider to his story, he watched her expression for some tell-tale sign of her involvement. Some handpost to an explanation for the whole episode. But she simply raised her beautiful dark eyes from the empty coffee cup in front of her and smiled from a distance in a way that was guaranteed to lend enchantment, but defied any attempt to read its message.

  “I was told the same story,” she said. “Breitner warned me to stay away from you too. He said you were dangerous.” Her smile took on an incongruous warmth as she spoke these words. And the sad sparkle returned to her eyes. “Are you dangerous?” she asked.

  He threw the question back at her: “Do you think I am?”

  “The way you behave, I think you must be.” She saw that her reply had taken him slightly by surprise, and she paused briefly to enjoy the moment. “Why invite me to lunch today if contact with me is such a risky game as you would have me believe?”

  “Why accept the invitation if I’m such a danger as Breitner would have you believe?” he countered. “But the question that interests me more is why I was warned off you in the first place. What’s your business with Breitner? What’s his hold on you?”

  “You should be more careful in your choice of words,” she said, and he saw the sparkle momentarily vanish from her eyes. “Especially in matters you don’t understand. Ill-chosen words have a way of putting things in a false perspective.”

  “That’s really unfair.” He felt foolishly stung by this rebuke. “I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes trying to explain every detail of my situation to you. And I get nothing in return, except a reproach that I don’t understand. But how can I, if you tell me nothing?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She said no more than this. But, as with every other aspect of her, that single word of apology completely disabled him. She could have left him there, powerless as a fledgling pushed out of its nest before its time, and he would not have complained. But instead she followed up her apology with a remark that both intrigued him and gave him a vague hope that perhaps she was beginning to trust him – just as he was feeling compelled to trust her.

  “One thing you can be sure of is that Breitner knows very well you are not Silverstone.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. But she brushed off his question.

  “I’m afraid I have to be going. I’m already late.” And she got up to leave, threatening to desert him with an abruptness that nearly threw him into a panic. He rose to his feet and, as she stood by the table preparing to make her exit, took her hand in his. It seemed so soft and slight, so fragile.

  “I almost forgot,” he said. “I thought you might like this.”

  Frank reached down to the bag that was leaning against the table leg and placed it on the table. She looked at it with a puzzled smile.

  “What is it?”

&n
bsp; “Open it and see.”

  The sweet smile of appreciation in her eyes when she took the record out of the bag was the perfect balm for every one of the bruises he had suffered.

  “I couldn’t help noticing the record on your gramophone. I hope you don’t already have this one?” he asked hopefully.

  “No,” she replied, and the smile had now taken on a pensiveness that he was unable to fathom. “You’re very kind.”

  “You know, we have so much more to talk about,” he said, and hesitated for an instant, before adding: “I’d like to see you again.”

  “You will,” was all she said in reply before slipping out of the restaurant. Evasive and enigmatic as ever.

  Chapter 11

  After the events of the last days, Frank should have become inured to surprise. But on his return to the hotel later that afternoon, he found the unexpected was still capable of stopping him in his tracks. The tracks in question ran between the reception desk and the staircase up to his room. Past the lobby. Here, relaxing with a newspaper, sat a figure painfully familiar to him. As Frank approached the staircase, the man lowered the newspaper and cast a glaring looked in his direction.

  “I believe you have something of mine.”

  He fixed Frank with a stare that momentarily froze him to the spot. It was Silverstone. He tried desperately to gather his composure, as the American put the newspaper aside and rose up from his chair.

  “I was only talking about you just now.” Frank put on an unconvincing display of cheerful familiarity. It was more for the man on reception than for Silverstone’s benefit.

  “Oh yes? And to whom might that have been?”

  “But I’m afraid I no longer have what you’re looking for,” Frank confessed, ignoring the question. “A man called Breitner relieved me of it.”

  Silverstone continued to fix him with a calculating expression, as if measuring and analysing the words before venturing any closer.

  “Can we talk?” he asked.

  Frank gestured to the seat from which he had just risen.