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

and the gentle curve of the legs invested her at the same time with an irresistible appeal of strength and independence.

On reaching the top, she disappeared over the horizon of the steps against the looming white wall of a church. Again Frank quickened his stride and arrived at the topmost step just in time to catch sight of her cross the road on the other side of the church. She skipped lightly over the road, up a short flight of steps and into the park on the other side. Bereft of any foliage, the winter trees that lined the park stood like sentinels guarding her passage to the other side. At times, he almost lost her in their shadows.

It was a good five minutes after crossing the park before she eventually entered a tall terraced house in a narrow street the other side of the city’s mediaeval gateway of the Spalentor. The late dawn sky had barely penetrated here, and the house was in darkness. It was cold and uninviting. But after a minute or so, a lamp from a garret window lit up and strained to compete with the grey twilight above. Frank needed no second bidding. He tried the door she had entered and found it was not locked. He went in. There was just enough light on the stairwell for him to find his way up the creaking wooden stairs to the top floor. The nameplate on the door that awaited him there read ‘P. Roche’. He knocked. The sound reverberated through the chamber of the stairwell, and only then did it occur to Frank that he had no idea what he was going to say when she opened the door. He began to panic. He had allowed myself to be drawn here by her magnetism. And now that he was jolted into considering his actions in the cold light of reason, he felt completely out of his depth.

When the door opened, he stood mesmerised by the sight of her before him. And said nothing. The deep ebony of her eyes sparkled with an eloquent edge of melancholy trying not to be heard. It was camouflaged as suspicion and mistrust, but was visible nonetheless.

“Can I help you?” she whispered.

“Good morning, Mademoiselle Roche. I have a message from Mr Breitenbacher,” he replied, misnaming his taskmaster in his agitated haste.

This impromptu creativity came right out of the blue and took him by surprise. He felt slightly ashamed at how easily the lie came out – yet rather pleased by his resourcefulness. He had hidden depths. It was not until sometime later that the folly of his inventiveness was made painfully clear to him.

The long silence that followed Frank’s words hollowed out his brief moment of smugness to a thin shell that eventually cracked and disintegrated under its own weight. He felt himself beginning to shuffle from one foot to the other. And almost as a reflex he started rubbing his hands together to disguise his nervousness.

“Who?” she asked.

“Mr Breitenbacher.”

“I don’t know any Breitenbacher.” Her sweet voice had by now taken on a dismissive edge. It left Frank teetering on the edge of dejection.

“The man you were with earlier in the Hotel Storchen,” he explained, affecting the sense of a chill on the stairwell as he continued rubbing his hands together.

“You mean Mr Breitner?” she asked. He nodded.

“Could I come in? It’s quite cold out here.”

She looked nervously over Frank’s shoulder in the doorway, as if nervous of eavesdroppers on the stairwell. Then stepped back to open the door a little wider and silently beckoned him in.

“You don’t really seem the kind of lady to keep company with a man like that,” Frank said as he stepped inside. She ignored the intrusive bluntness of his remark.

“What message?” she asked.

Frank hesitated. He looked about him, uncertain where to go next with his lie. The room was small, but well-furnished. A dining table and chairs, a settee with books strewn over it, a single armchair and beside this chair a table on which there stood a vase with three red roses. And a gramophone. A record lay on the turntable. Vocalion label. A Fine Romance.

“You like Billie Holiday,” he said.

Close to the table with the gramophone stood a wood-burning stove. He moved over to the stove and warmed his hands while he continued to absorb the scene – the mood of independent womanhood that pervaded the room, the secrets, the longings and the anxieties that lived within those walls.

All the while, she stood in tantalising proximity watching Frank. Still waiting for a reply to her question.

“You have a lot of books,” he prevaricated further, trying hopelessly to make conversation.

“I need them for my studies.”

“Oh really? What are you studying?”

“Did Mr Breitner not tell you?”

“No, why should he?” Frank sensed he was being tested as he struggled to come up with an explanation for knocking on her door.

“No reason.” She smiled in a strangely coquettish way that was both alluring and yet out of place. Then threw in the words “History of Art” like a half-hearted tip she was leaving for the waiter.

Another long silence followed. From the corner of his eye he watched covetously as she swept back the right side of her jacket and rested her hand on the slender curvature of her hip. There was an implicit impatience in her posture. And it brought a certain piquancy to the excitement he was already feeling over the gentle curve so exquisitely accentuated by her hand. Frank was floundering in his agitation.

“All right,” he finally admitted. “There is no message.”

“So who are you?” she asked, releasing the hand from her hip and letting the jacket fall back into place. “And why are you here?”

A flash of anger lit up her ebony eyes. A look tinged with unease that verged on panic.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I saw you in the hotel. And I was wondering.” He paused, aware that he was getting onto dangerous terrain. “Would you care to meet