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

culminated in a steep, winding road. This is the smart side of town, Ellen thought, as they climbed past the rows of rather cold and menacing Bauhaus mansions with touches of Jugendstil that looked proudly out over the city. A view dominated by the twin spires of the cathedral. After countless twists and turns that eventually took them away from this view over the city, Maria swung into a drive and stopped the car.

“Here we are.”

This was a cosier-looking house than the mansions they had passed on the way up. Still grand enough, but comfortingly modest with its green window shutters, white-washed walls and terracotta roof tiles growing dark with age. Ellen felt relieved.

As she and Maria Frey climbed out of the Austin Healey, the door of the house opened. In the doorway stood a slim woman in her forties, with dark shoulder-length hair and eyes the colour of sapphire that sparkled with a deep emotional intelligence. She wore a navy cardigan and light grey slacks. Casual, but elegant.

“Salü Marthe,” said Maria as they approached. “This is Mrs Goss.”

“Please call me Ellen.”

She held out a hand as Marthe Zellweger came down the steps from the house. The doctor’s wife took her hand with a limp indecisiveness that bothered Ellen.

“Zellweger, Marthe,” she said with an uncertain smile, and looked from Ellen to Maria Frey.

“We’re not so free with first names in this country,” Maria Frey explained.

“No really, that’s perfectly fine,” the doctor’s wife insisted, instantly abandoning her Swiss formality. “I spent some time in America with my husband when he worked at a clinic in Chicago. I’m quite used to it. Please come in, Ellen.”

Once Maria Frey had left to return to the clinic and Ellen had been shown her room, Marthe invited her guest to sit in the lounge that looked out onto the garden, while she made a pot of tea. Ellen was struck by how spotlessly clean and uncluttered the lounge was. The minimalism of the furnishing gave the impression that the room was barely lived in. On the coffee table lay an unopened packet of cigarettes, a magazine with the name Annabelle emblazoned across the top, resting on a newspaper, the National-Zeitung. Otherwise there was no sign of life here at all. The walls a pristine white were equally uncluttered but for a single painting, hung like a counterpart to the magazine and newspaper.

Ellen moved closer to examine it. There was a sombreness to the scene that was in stark contrast to the theme. The browns and greys of the watercolour depicted a dreary, dingy room furnished only with a chair and a bed. A setting of bleak cheerlessness. Yet on the floor beside the bed lay the forms of two naked women flushed with the pinkish-red passion of an embrace so joyful that it was hard to reconcile with their surroundings.

“That belongs to Urs,” said Marthe. Ellen sensed a disapproving smile on her face as she set a tea tray down on the table. “It was painted by a local artist who went to school with my husband. He likes it.”

Then after a prolonged silence as she poured the tea: “Urs told me your story. I can imagine it must be very difficult for you right now.”

Ellen could hear traces of an American accent she must have picked up when she was in Chicago. But it was softened by another accent Ellen was unable to identify. It was unlike the harsh Swiss accents she had heard in the clinic.

“I hope the tea is all right for you,” she said, placing the cup on the table in front of Ellen. “It’s Darjeeling. We have a very fine tea house in Basel, where we buy our tea. I’ll take you there one day while you’re here. I know the English have a special relationship to their tea.”

Ellen looked down at the cup and smiled.

“You might be surprised to learn that our relationship with tea is not quite as refined as all that. PG Tips would have been fine.” She looked around the tray on the table. “Do you have any milk?”

Her hostess apologised and went back out to the kitchen.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Ellen, as Marthe returned with a small jug of milk. “But I hope I won’t be here long enough for visiting tea houses in Basel.”

“Of course. I’m sorry,” Marthe replied. “I didn’t mean to sound like a tourist brochure. But at the same time, this is quite a small city. And your husband knows no one here. So if you spend some time walking around the place, it’s quite possible you might see each other.”

“Your own husband and the professor seem to think he’s quite at home here. So maybe he knows people I’m not aware of. But I’m not even sure they’re talking about my Frank.”

“If it was not your husband in the clinic, then the question of your husband’s whereabouts is as urgent as ever,” Marthe said. And then asked: “What is he doing in Switzerland?”

“He came to report on the referendum.”

Marthe’s eyes briefly lit up, then darkened again. “It’s a shame he will not have had a chance to file his report. But perhaps it’s more to our shame that we had to wait this long before any such report could be written.”

“The professor said you were quite excited about the result,” said Ellen, happy for the chance to change the subject. “Irrepressible, he said you were.”

“The professor’s a fool. Like both my parents, he thinks it a completely stupid idea. So his answer is now to patronise us.”

“Even your mother?”

“She doesn’t patronise. But yes, even she thinks it stupid. And many other women too. They seem to think that women are not intelligent enough for politics. That they should keep to looking after the household.

“When I met Urs, I wanted to understand something about his field of work, so I started to devour a lot of books about psychoanalysis, especially Lou Salomé’s work. And it really worried my