The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  As they closed the door on the menace outside, he recalled her bewitching reverie in the concert hall even before the strings had made their haunting entrance. Now, as she took his coat, the coincidence of their thoughts excited him with its implicit hint of intimacy between them when she asked: “What did you think of the music? Didn’t you find it just marvellous?”

  The words came with a special sparkle in her eyes. But what captivated him above all was the way she could so easily embrace Bartok and Billie Holiday with equal passion.

  “I don’t understand classical music well enough to offer a verdict,” he confessed, preferring to hide behind his ignorance rather than disclose the truth of his emotional whereabouts during the concert.

  “But you must have an opinion. You must know whether you liked it or not,” she insisted. “That first movement for example. Didn’t you find it absolutely beautiful? The way it slowly opened out like a fan – and then closed again, just as slowly, just as deliberately.”’

  “Just like you,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  The tone of her voice signalled mock offence. It was plain to him from the coquettish way she loosened his tie that she was flattered by his remark – obtusely so, he thought, since the layers of meaning in those three words spoke of an opaque secrecy as much as approval. But he was enjoying the moment and was not about to spell it out any further. They did not speak with any substance again that night, but left their bodies to converse, and enjoyed the mingling of their perfumes.

  Before getting into bed, however, he took the precaution of putting the gun under the pillow while Patricia was attending to her evening toiletries. Even in her caring hands, he did not feel entirely secure. And although the touch of her sleek and slender warmth against his body kindled a flame that would never die, and gave him all the strength he needed, it was nonetheless an unquiet night he spent in her arms. The darkness would not allow his eyes to close for a minute. The slightest unfamiliar sound nurtured fear and suspicion of every shadow. Every so often the clouds would draw back their curtain over the moon and let the night light play on the wall beside the window. It shone through the scudding clouds above and cast their shadows in ominous designs sketched out especially for him: every movement spoke of the intentions which the night still had on him, warned him not to drop his guard for a moment – advice he took to heart.

  Patricia meanwhile slept peacefully by his side, her hair on his shoulder blacker than the night, an arm draped in carefree nonchalance across his chest. Such sweet innocence in the asylum of her precious dreams, he thought. The contrast between them was immense. How he wished he could sleep with such abandon.

  “I was thinking last night,” he announced while she prepared the morning coffee. But sleep still swam in her eyes, the fragility of early morning hung in her every move. She was plainly up too early for new ideas, so he did not return to the subject until they were sitting together at the breakfast table with a dose of caffeine already coursing through their veins.

  “I was thinking last night, Patricia. Why don’t we take a holiday? A couple of weeks in the mountains while things cool off here.”

  “I can’t, squirrel,” she said and poured herself another cup of coffee. “And things aren’t going to just cool off, as you put it. You just have to learn to accommodate unpleasant truths. Make a few concessions to reality and learn to live with it.”

  “Can you ski?” he persisted, ignoring her advice. His change of tack elicited what he sensed to be the slight trace of a willing submission.

  “Can you?”

  Those two words came with a sweet challenging smile in her eyes. They hinted at confirmation. And he could already see her thoughts busily packing her suitcase.

  They agreed to meet at the central railway station later that afternoon. This gave him time enough to return to his lodging across the border, settle the bill and fetch his few belongings. But the anxieties of the night still trailed through the cold morning air as he made his way to the tram and back to his auberge. Although he checked his tracks continually, he could not escape the feeling that he was being followed. Shadowed by some dark unseen presence, some undefined shape of things to come. When he alighted from the tram at the end of the line, the smell of wood smoke hung in the gentle breeze that blew between the half-timbered houses of the village. He stopped, and looked cautiously down the length of the bottle-green carriages. Only three other people got out with him, all elderly pensioners who appeared quietly content in the twilight of their lives. They plainly had no interest in Frank’s fortunes. He was comfortably alone.

  Yet the walk up the hill towards the border crossing refused to let him shake off the unease and enjoy the prospect of two weeks alone in the mountains with Patricia. The breeze blew up colder and more harshly as he reached the brow of the hill and started his approach towards the ghostly pale of trees that was the frontier. Alone on the landscape of ploughed fields that swept down to this border, he saw himself as little more than a misplaced apostrophe on someone else’s horizon. A clumsy punctuation mark to be erased. Caught unawares, he almost jumped out of his skin when a flock of rooks were startled into flight from their winter foraging. Noisy and menacing, they circled up and over the trees ahead of him like a jackboot army with wings. The dendritic weave of branches drawn against the sky that they vacated reminded him of the nerve cells which run their paths of organised confusion beneath the skullcap and spoke of the chaos in his own mind.

  The customs house looked more desolate than ever as he passed. The shutter still flapped in the wind. Only today no one seemed about to fasten it and quell the boring repetition of its noise. It smacked each time against the wall with the sudden crack, as of gunfire, and unnerved him with each strike. He hurried his step, eager to re-join Patricia and begin their escape from reality together, however brief it may be. The overcast sky as he crossed the frontier darkened his path with a message he was unable to decipher. But an uncomfortable feeling told him he was in danger of not seeing her again.

  Chapter 20

  The laughter came skipping up the stairs to meet Ellen on her way down for breakfast. It instantly dispelled the dreams of Frank that still lingered in the sleepy corners of her mind. Marthe had assumed such an effortless way of helping her forget all her trials, especially since they had come to know each other more intimately. Often it was enough just to hear the sound of her voice from another room or feel the warmth she radiated when she smiled.

  Ellen half-expected to find Dr Zellweger still breakfasting with her when she walked into the kitchen, and was surprised to find she was alone.

  “Good morning Ellen. Have you slept well?” Marthe asked.

  The amusement Ellen had heard from the stairs still showed in the corners of her mouth as Marthe handed her the newspaper.

  “You must read this. It’s so funny.”

  Ellen passed it back without even attempting to read it. So often these past weeks she had been made to feel so stupidly dependent at times.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Ellen. I’m forgetting you can’t read German yet. But it’s so funny, I must read it for you.”

  Ellen’s train of thought caught on the word ‘yet’. It excited her in a way she was unable to explain, and she pondered its significance as Marthe took the newspaper in her hands, brushing some flaky crumbs of croissant from her blouse as she did so. The outline of her breasts that she revealed as the crumbs scattered on the table in front of her aroused Ellen. Above all it was the secret that excited her – the knowledge she now had of Marthe. Only a short time ago, she never would have thought it possible. Marthe either failed to notice her arousal or preferred to ignore it. She was more interested in her newspaper article.

  “It is standing here that two men have been found last night walking through the town completely naked.”

  Ellen was struck by the way Marthe’s command of English seized up when she had to translate directly from the printed page. She was normally so flu
ent when she spoke.

  “It says they have been attacked by a gunman who was forcing them to undress,” she continued. “He then threw their clothes in the river and ran off. No explanations. No demands for money. He has ordered them just to take off their clothes. Can you imagine what a sight this must have been? I wish I could have seen that. The man deserves a medal.”

  Ellen smiled.

  “Don’t you think the male body is very comical?” Marthe asked.

  Ellen was slightly surprised by the streak of feminism in Marthe.

  “All male bodies?” she asked. “Even your husband’s?”

  “Especially my husband’s!” Marthe laughed.

  “I always rather liked my Frank’s body,” Ellen said. She found the disloyalty a little distasteful, but secretly she flattered herself that she knew what Marthe was talking about.

  “I don’t speak about like or not like. I just find them comical. Men are so protective about their virility. Can you imagine what these two men looked like? That little difference shrivelled up to nothing in the cold?”

  Marthe sniggered at the thought, and the ludicrous image she conjured prompted Ellen to join in the girlish giggles. She almost choked on the breakfast tea that Marthe so thoughtfully made for her every morning.

  “The problem is,” she went on, “they think they’re so wonderful they can’t imagine that we don’t think so too.”

  “They are in a way though, aren’t they?” Ellen said. And her words brought the disturbing memory of their honeymoon in Venice back to the surface once again. The pain. The cry. The rank disgust on Frank’s face. She sensed herself colour slightly at her own words and felt a little foolish.

  Marthe failed to see the embarrassment in Ellen’s cheeks.

  “But you must agree, Ellen, they are rather messy instruments. We women need more than that. Warmth and tenderness, compassion, understanding. Love. For men, this seems to mean the privilege of leaving their mess all over you and expecting you to be grateful.”

  “Perhaps you look at it like that because you’re not interested in having children?” Ellen suggested. And regretted the words the moment they came out. Marthe glared at her with an expression she was unable to read. But Ellen could see that her words had hurt.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Ellen. Urs and I have a good relationship. He’s very good to me. And very understanding. I’m so much luckier than my sister in that way.”

  “You also have a sister?”

  “She’s some years older than me. And I don’t see her much these days,” Marthe said. “She lives in Berne with her accountant husband. Poor soul. He doesn’t even let her have her own bank account, makes sure she keeps a cash book for everything she buys and expects her to present every receipt for him to check. He’s quite typical of many Swiss men.”

  “He sounds a lot like my own brother-in-law.”

  “I’m sure that’s not possible,” Marthe insisted. “You know, I first met him when I was going through my ‘Women in Playpens’ phase. I’m not sure whether it was thanks to Iris von Roten or my sister’s husband. Maybe it was a combination of the two. But it was around then that I decided to take a job with the school psychological service in the hope that I could help some of the children to avoid the traps men like to lay in this country.”

  Marthe paused for a moment. The expression in her eyes spoke of a reminiscence she preferred to keep to herself.

  “That was before I went to America with Urs. But you’re right, Ellen,” Marthe added, reviving Ellen’s allusion to her lack of children. Men can certainly be useful.”

  There was a thinly veiled rebuke in Marthe’s voice, but she allowed Ellen to ignore it as she continued in the warmer tone that Ellen had come to appreciate in her.

  “How important is it to you really?” she asked. “To have children?”

  “Very.” It was all Ellen needed to say. It expressed everything. But Marthe was not satisfied.

  “I know many people who find children very fulfilling,” she said, “but children can also hamper a woman. During the referendum, the campaign against the women’s vote was quite nasty. They produced some unbelievably unpleasant posters showing babies falling out of prams or flies crawling over a baby’s Nuggi, er,” she hesitated, looking for the English word. “Pacifier,” she said at last, curling her tongue around the r.

  “Do you mean a dummy?” Ellen asked, mildly irritated by the American ways Marthe would throw into the conversation now and then.

  “Is that the word?” Marthe asked. “Can you imagine? These were the posters they put up to persuade people that women should stay at home, look after their babies and not concern themselves with politics. Voting on issues that affect women’s lives was a man’s job. Really I didn’t need any encouragement to join the campaign against ideas like that. There’s more to a woman’s life than looking after babies. But let me put this another way,” Marthe added in an effort to get them back to the point of her original question, “suppose we never find Frank, and you never meet anybody to take his place. What would you do?” Marthe asked.

  “It’s funny. If you’d asked that a few weeks ago I’d have died at the thought. Now I can talk about it without any problem. It’s frightening really.”

  Marthe put her hand on Ellen’s, as if to demonstrate the warmth and understanding she spoke of earlier. Her touch made Ellen feel strangely at ease with the world. But Marthe was not prepared to leave it at that.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” she persisted.

  “I just don’t see that as a problem these days. You don’t have to have a mate to make babies nowadays.”

  “It means that much to you?”

  “Yes, it does.” Ellen failed to understand the disbelief in Marthe’s eyes. And sensing the demand for some explanation, she added: “I want to show I can do it better than my parents, who thought it was enough to bring me into the world and then packed me off to boarding school.”

  “It’s interesting that we share the experience of a Catholic boarding school, but come to such different conclusions,” Marthe said. Her look of incomprehension deepened, as she paused, then added: “And you wouldn’t mind whose sperm you had, as long as it was fertile?”

  “I didn’t say that. And in fact the question wouldn’t arise, because I still have Frank’s sperm. We’ve read a few reports recently about the advances they’ve been making in donor insemination. We discussed it a few times. And then one day, a few weeks ago, Frank just sprang the news on me that he’s banked some of his sperm in a donor insemination centre.”

  Marthe’s mouth dropped. Had she not already finished her coffee, it would have doubtless been spluttered all over the table. Ellen had never seen her lost for words before and was surprised by the reaction. She had always seen Marthe as such a woman of the world, so difficult to shock – yet Ellen appeared to have done just that. Marthe’s expression wavered between amusement and incredulity.

  “You know, Ellen,” Marthe said at last, her hand still reassuringly rested on Ellen’s arm, “the science is not nearly as advanced as people would like it to be. And these insemination services can be very questionable.”

  Ignoring Marthe’s words of caution, Ellen felt compelled to justify herself.

  “We discussed it a few times after he made it plain that he wasn’t keen on having babies just yet. You can’t believe what a shock that was. It made me very depressed to begin with. I even thought of stopping the pill and not telling him. But I couldn’t just trick him like that. So, when I read about donor insemination, we talked a bit about it, and I sold it to him like an insurance policy. Only it was my insurance, in case something happened to him before he could make up his mind.”

  “And he was buying this insurance for you, just like that, without any questions?”

  “Yes. I was quite surprised. He really took to the idea. Perhaps it appealed to his male vanity having his seed put aside for posterity.”

  “He did not feel threatened?�
� Marthe asked. “I mean, in the end he was selling his power over you.”

  “On the contrary, it seemed to come as a great relief. It took the decision out of his hands as far as he was concerned. He appeared so much more relaxed about everything. It was as if he had suddenly been set free. He’s always been terrible about committing himself in any way. I think that was probably his mother’s fault. She was such a domineering bitch, had poor Frank right under her thumb.

  “She was constantly going on about how difficult he was as a child. Always talking about imaginary places and people. Always telling wild stories, insisting that he didn’t belong there, that his other home was much different. And he was always having nightmares as well. Maybe it was this that made her lose patience with him. According to Frank, his mother had scolded him for as long as he could remember. For every tiniest little thing. So I suppose he just caved in eventually. Anything for a quiet life. And so he did everything she told him to. Even after we married, he was never allowed to be himself when she was around. It was awful. I felt so sorry for him sometimes. Then so angry and irritated.

  “He actually suggested buying a house so she could live with us, although we didn’t even have the money for a down-payment. He put the whole idea across as a business venture, with his mother putting up the capital that would enable us to invest in a more valuable property later. I knew all along she’d put him up to the idea. It had her stamp all over it. Fortunately, Frank realised it would probably mean the end of our marriage, so it never came to anything. But it didn’t stop her moving into a house not far away. She was such a scheming bitch. Still, she was the one to suffer in the end.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When she died. It wasn’t long after she moved in. I’ve heard it’s quite common for elderly people to give up the ghost when they suddenly find themselves uprooted from their familiar surroundings and dumped in a strange place where they have no roots. A bit like plants, I suppose.”