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

of the shop. In the dim light, he could just about make out that all her energy was concentrated on a knitting pattern. She was disturbed by Frank’s arrival, and her response was automatic.

“Grüezi,” she said. In the short time he had been in the country, the greeting had already become familiar. Frank smiled as best he could and returned the greeting in a way that plainly betrayed his origins.

“Can I help you?” she asked, instantly switching to English.

“Thank you. I’m just looking.”

“We have many English books,” she said with obvious excitement at this opportunity to put down her knitting. “Come,” she added. Laying her needles and wool carefully on the table, she led him into a narrow back room, where shelves of literature reached from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.

“Here. Some English books for you,” she said, an edge of triumph in her frail voice, and left him alone to browse. The books here were of no interest to Frank, but he was disinclined to offend the old lady. So he hung around for a few minutes in her back room, absorbing the dusty atmosphere. It was warm and stuffy. He could feel the heat rising to his head, as the dizziness and throbbing pain began to invade his senses again.

“Oh Achim, what have I done?” He heard the words ring quite distinctly through his mind. In German. Traces of comprehension, like brief clearings in the fog, flashed through his head before a net of fuzziness cast itself over his mind. The tension fastened this net so tight that his neck muscles ached to their deepest nerve cells. Beads of sweat gathered on his upper lip. In the corner of the room was a narrow staircase that led down into the cellar. Should he venture down? He knew full well what to expect. The horror that lay beneath.

No. Mopping away the sweat, he turned and retreated to the front of the shop. The old lady was back at her knitting. Without really seeing her, he could feel her look up. She was talking to him. He saw the lips move. He heard the sound of her voice. But he could not understand a word. It was impossible for him even to recognise what language she was speaking.

He moved towards the window in a desperate attempt to regain his senses. And rested there. Sweating. Gripped by an unremitting angst. Slowly the fuzziness in his head began to clear. And gradually he became aware of the old lady beside him now, touching his arm.

“Are you needing a doctor?” She was speaking English. This much he could decipher. He pointed to the book in the window display. Physiognomik by Rudolf Kassner.

“I’d like that book please,” he said. “What does it cost?”

The old woman peered over the partition between the shop and the window display. Looked back at Frank with a quizzical hesitation. Then reached over into the window bay to retrieve it.

“This book?”

Frank nodded, and she opened the front cover.

“Twenty francs.”

She could have asked a hundred. A thousand.

“You are reading German?” she asked as she took the volume back to the desk on the far side of the room.

Frank said nothing. He had no energy for any further talk.

“Ah, I understand. It is for a present,” she said. And disappeared into the back room. Had she gone down to the cellar? Did she know what was down there? Frank asked himself.

The question was answered a moment later when she returned with a sheet of wrapping paper. And with slow, arthritic fingers she proceeded to gift-wrap the book. Even in his sorely chafed state of nerves, Frank could not help wondering how she could possibly manage to knit a wearable garment when her hands were so disfigured and gnarled.

He pulled a twenty franc note from his wallet. It was only then that he noticed how the palms of his hands were sweating. He sensed the turmoil in his mind begin to stir again. And let the note drop out of his hand and onto the desk before his mind swam totally out of its depth. As he picked up the book, the voice returned, speaking a German that seemed so strange and yet so familiar.

“Oh Achim. Can you ever forgive me?” He could see them all lying there in the cellar. The two baby boys and Gertrude. Barely lit by the single naked lightbulb that hung from the ceiling.

Without another word to the old woman, Frank hurried to the door and out onto the street. Turning right to put some distance between him and the bookshop as quickly as he could, he hoped this would clear his head. After a brisk few minutes’ walk, the street opened out at a crossroads in the shadow of a church. He saw a tram approaching from the right. On the front the number 23. It read Barfüsserplatz. He had no idea where that was. But he knew what it meant. It conjured bucolic images of boys and girls romping barefoot on a village green. Intrigued by this thought, he climbed on board and enjoyed the relative calm, the gentle sway of the tram as it negotiated the corners on its journey.

But Frank’s quaint picture from a bygone age vanished when the tram reached its destination. The doors opened onto what looked like the very heart of the city. Not a hint of village green. Instead a space dominated by a large white building ahead of him as he alighted onto the pavement. It pointed skywards in a way that spoke of religious fervour and was buttressed by two red sandstone struts – they had the look of skinny legs over which the building spread its white garment like the gigantic habit of a Franciscan monk seated above the square. In the throng around him, he fancied he could still hear the sound of that voice in his head crying “Achim, oh Achim.”

The square itself was a teeming mass of people at the tram station,