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

“Hau ab, huere Schiessdrägg!” The malicious bellow telling Frank to get the hell out brought the spinning thoughts in his head come crashing to a halt. He caught the outline of a large figure that filled the entire doorway of the tavern. It was the tall dark stranger in his hat and black leather trench coat. The teeth between his razor-thin lips glinted faintly in the light. He flicked his cigarette to the ground, turned and walked on up the street.

The bruising, it seemed, would not let up. Frank surveyed the street around him. It was empty and dimly lit. He recognised it as the street where he had met Jack and Baschi. This recollection, the sense of familiarity, prompted him to head for the only place he knew that was not too far from here. The bridge.

The northerly wind off the river stung his cheeks. His eyes prickled in the cold. He felt a shiver course through his entire body. And standing on the bridge again, contemplating the Rhine on its journey to the North Sea, Frank tried focusing his mind now on the thought that it would not be long before the eddying current of water below his feet met the water from the Thames – that he was not as far from Ellen as he felt. But the north wind on his cheeks was a chill reminder that, even so, this river was not the Thames. The bridge was not their bridge. And the eddies of water below sent his mind into a bewildering spin once more.

In an effort to focus, he looked down at the landing stage where Achim had appeared to him lost in a white flurry of gulls. That seemed like an age ago. Now the embarkation point was a cold and soulless place. The only sense of life here came from the sandstone wall and the relief of a naked, musclebound wharfman tugging on a ship’s rope.

This figure put him in mind of his one and only trip to Spain in the summer of ’35 and his fascination as he watched the stevedores and other dock workers sweltering in the quayside heat of Malaga. Was that really only eighteen months ago? How they must be suffering now in the cold reality of winter, he muttered to himself, with Franco’s fascists beating down the door. Is there nowhere safe these days? Frank wondered. The whole of Europe seems to be in the grip of dangerous fools.

This chilling thought and the biting wind brought it home to him that he was in desperate need of somewhere to stay. He recalled in his bewilderment that he had passed what looked like a hotel and decided to retrace his steps. As he approached the fountain in the old fish market with its elaborately decorated spire, he saw on the far side of the market square the building he had in mind. The huge sign above its doors read Hotel Storchen. And in front of the entrance stood a handsome, spanking-new Maybach Zeppelin with white-walled tyres. It seemed out of place. Yet at the same time the vehicle appeared vaguely familiar. But he paid it no further attention. He was tired, bruised and in need of rest. Tomorrow promised to be a big day.

Achim was due to arrive.

Frank Eigenmann picked up his key from reception and went straight to the room that was to remain his home over the next few weeks. He pushed open the door. The pale light from the street bled its anaemic pallor through the window and across his bed as he entered. It was a chilling welcome, and he went straight over to draw the curtains across the little balcony that looked out over the fish market. But he was distracted. What it was that compelled him to open the window and peer over the balcony he had no idea; perhaps the sound of a door on the Maybach swinging open onto the anxious night. A solid confident sound. He caught sight of a man wearing a hat and black leather trench coat getting into the car. There was a familiarity about them – the vehicle, the man and the leather trench coat. But he was too exhausted to give it any thought. And went to bed.

The prospect of meeting Achim the next day unleashed an endless stream of thoughts that raced around his head and overwhelmed any sense of fatigue. His mind turned constantly on memories of Achim. He had not seen him since a chilly late-spring day eighteen months earlier on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. Achim was still there now. And his letters from Berlin painted a picture of life getting ever more difficult for him and his family. Especially in the last few months since the Olympic Games.

The idea of encouraging him to come south occurred to Frank one evening in November. He had just seen a student performance of Aristophanes’ Frogs in the large restaurant room of the zoological gardens. It seemed to him an odd location for a performance of classical Greek theatre, but the passion of the players and appreciation of the audience were so infectious that the oddness was quickly forgotten. It was not the first event of this kind he had enjoyed since coming to this city, which seemed to be one of the few enclaves of culture left in the German-speaking world. A place where the theatre especially was in full bloom and did not have to suffer the pressures that poor Achim had to face.

Life was difficult enough anyway as a stage designer in Berlin at that time. For any self-respecting artist it must have been intolerable. From the letters Frank received, it was beyond his imagination how Achim was able to stay there. But his friend was so dedicated to his art and so in love with Berlin, he would endure all of these sufferings as long as he had some kind of outlet, however modest, for his creative