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

“Everyone seems to have a secret side,” Frank said. “Burow, my father – what about your father?”

It was so slight as to be almost imperceptible in her preoccupation with the trophy of his father’s past. She showed such composure. So marginal it was almost intuition that alerted him to the agitation sparked by his innocent question. She concealed her disquiet almost effortlessly.

“Burow?” she asked.

“My father’s lawyer,” he explained. But for once his own curiosity was aroused, and he pressed home the point. “Now who’s being evasive?”

For an instant her eyes betrayed a darkness that had nothing to do with the bruising in her face. It unsettled him. Even the seduction she attempted to initiate was unable to dispel his disquiet. It was the only time he had seen her commit such a clumsy subterfuge. Reluctantly, he bowed to her need for this privacy. But although his desire for her swelled with each button of his shirt that she prised open so deliciously with her delicate white fingers, he could not escape his disappointment that she felt unable to confide in him.

Perhaps it was the desire for her that allowed his sense of discretion to overcome this disappointment and defeat his burning curiosity. At all events, he made no further mention of her father, and actively avoided the issue. This was made all the easier for him by the sweet distraction that she offered.

Yet, wherever his mind turned, he was confronted with a scrapbook of the evil that hounded her every move: the contusions on her face, the sorrow in her eyes and – when she slipped off her blouse – the large black bruise just below her left breast. It spread down her body like an outsized shadow, an unkind caricature of her womanhood screaming at him from her delicate marble-white skin. Gently she eased the gracile form of her body back to rest on the bed like a bone china figurine she was putting on display. And his lips touched the blemish on her rib cage as if hoping by this to remove it.

“Ouch.”

“I’m sorry.” Instantly he retreated, embarrassed by his clumsiness.

“No. It’s not your fault,” she said, playing a hand through his hair to reassure him. “It just hurt a bit when I moved.”

Little more was said that night. They lay in each other’s arms, enjoying the intimacy of the moment and contriving at the same time to keep their bodies at a discreet distance from each other for fear of further inflaming the anger of the bruises. Perhaps it was the intensely erotic nature of this precarious balancing act that focused their minds and kept them from wandering into the darker realms of their separate anxieties as they both drifted into a deep sleep. Or perhaps it was apprehension of what they might uncover if they wandered too far.

As the ensuing days unfolded, the latter explanation began to seem ever more likely to Frank. They spent their time together laughing, playing and savouring the closeness of each other’s presence. Stubbornly skirting even the most vaguely uncomfortable issue just as carefully as they had avoided touching the bruises. But Patricia’s spirit was plainly even more embattled than her body. Her trauma stubbornly refractory to any balm that he could offer. So they lavished their hours on those important trifles that held them together.

The days were spent mostly riding up the Weissfluh and back or crunching their way along snowy paths around Davos. The weather was far from ideal for winter walks. Cloud obscured the heavenly blue skies from view on most days. The air had become a little too warm for comfort. And the greyish light threw a flatness over the snowy landscape that troubled Frank.

This mood of disquiet was underlined by the glaring unseemliness of his own homeland every time they walked through the village and back up to their chalet. He had not realised when he spent holidays in Davos as a young boy just how much it had been colonised by his compatriots in search of healthy mountain air. Wandering now past the sanatoriums and the Fridericianum, the elite school for Germany’s wealthy children and now no doubt the offspring of high-ranking party members, he wondered what Thomas Mann might make of it all today. But it seemed unlikely to Frank that he would be inclined to pay a visit to this German colony anyway. Not only were the elders of Davos less than amused by his depiction of sanatorium life in The Magic Mountain. But it was barely a year since he was stripped of his citizenship, and the palpable influence that his native country clearly had on almost every corner of the town would be more than enough reason to avoid the place: even some of the buildings were decorated with the hateful flags and symbols so ubiquitous north of the border. Frank could have kicked himself for bringing Patricia to this expat hotbed of Nazism.

His efforts to distract her by taking to the slopes and introducing her to the delights of skiing proved to no avail. The bruising of her ribs was still too fresh to cope with the unaccustomed twists and turns. So they committed themselves to gentle Alpine strolls by day. And by night they sat reading to each other beside the open log fire.

“Have you read Rilke’s Duino Elegies?” he asked. “I have a copy with me.”

“Oh, please don’t. I’d much rather try Karl May. I’ve heard so much about him. But girls don’t get to read that kind of literature.”

The surprised excitement on Frank’s face quickly gave way to a questioning smile.

“There’s no need to give me such a condescending look,” Patricia said, flashing an angry smile at him in return.

“I’m just surprised. That’s all,” Frank insisted.

And so he led her into the world of boys’ adventure with one of Karl May’s Wild West tales of Old Shatterhand. Then followed this with Henry Rider Haggard’s yarns from Africa. All courtesy of