The Dark Frontier by A. Decker (best books to read non fiction .txt) 📕

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 fluent 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.