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

surprise. Yet it was not this, but the indescribable beauty of her that made him hesitate.

“How I’d like to stretch this moment to the end of time,” he said. The remark appeared to please her. But Frank sensed that she did not fully grasp his meaning, and he tried hopelessly to expand on his words.

“There’s something so pure and exciting about the erotic line of a woman’s body. And when it shows this kind of perfection,” he continued, as he ran his fingers the full length of her delicate frame, “then I just want to keep that moment of purity open for as long as possible.”

“You mean you don’t want to make love to me.”

The bluntness hurt. And was compounded further by a sudden, fierce pounding on the door.

“Mademoiselle Roche!”

The voice from the other side of the door was ugly, but ineffectual. It repeated Patricia’s name several times before eventually conceding defeat. They remained motionless on the bed and listened to the footsteps disappearing down the stairs. Then lay in complete silence. Like laboratory mice in an anechoic chamber.

“That was Lutz,” Patricia whispered at last. This remained the extent of her words, until she saw that the name failed to make any impression on him.

“Didn’t you meet him when you were at Breitner’s place?” she asked. “He’s what Breitner likes to regard as his private secretary. I’ve never been quite sure whether Lutz is his first name or his family name. Everyone just calls him Lutz. But it’s certainly not a term of endearment. He’s smarmy and thoroughly unlikeable.”

“What do you think he wanted?”

“What he usually wants at this hour.”

“Which is what?”

“To take me to Breitner.” A cold despondency came into her expression with these words, and a blankness clouded the melancholy sparkle of her eyes.

“Why? To sleep with him?”

“You know, my first-ever acting role was a terrific success.”

Was this another of her evasions, Frank asked himself. Or was it a relevant digression? He was rankled by the studied avoidance of his question.

“It was in my last year at school,” she added. “We put on a stage play of Tristan and Isolde, which our teacher had adapted especially for the occasion. I was asked to play Isolde. By all accounts I did it quite well. My teacher said I had a natural talent. But I think my performance had more to do with the fact that I was madly in love with the boy who played Tristan. And I found the whole story so beautifully sad, so full of love and betrayal, just the kind of thing an adolescent girl adores.”

Patricia smiled wistfully through her private reminiscence. It was a smile that seemed to shut Frank out entirely.

“Isolde taught me a lot about life and betrayal. Sometimes I think that life is just one long series of betrayals. But you know, it’s not the big betrayals that are important. They can be excused by the schemes of history. The ones that matter are the small betrayals – the ones we commit in the course of a day without really giving them very much thought. It’s those that gnaw away at our fibre and slowly destroy us.”

“What happened to your Tristan?”

“Oh, I went off him shortly after that, when I saw him with a gang of his friends all in lederhosen. I can’t abide lederhosen.”

“And where does Breitner fit in?”

It was a clumsy question, but having brought her back to earth with Tristan’s lederhosen, Frank felt the timing, if not the wording, was quite apt.

“He doesn’t fit. He just forces his way in.”

Frank sensed anger in these words as she slipped out of bed, tiptoed over to the door and opened it just a crack. He saw her crouch down and pick something off the floor outside. It was a single red rose. She closed the door, walked over to the table, put the flower in the vase with the other rose and crept back into bed.

Lying back into her pillow, pensive and unapproachable, Patricia left Frank to hang like a bat at dawn waiting for night to fall.

He regretted his earlier clumsiness. And, intrigued though he was by the significance of the scene he had just witnessed, he said nothing. Simply waited patiently for her to continue. When at last she appeared ready to admit him to her thoughts again, she spoke with a flatness and detachment that only served to underline his regret.

“My father has no time for all the talk we hear about race and religion these days. The woman he fell in love with and married, my mother, is classed a Gentile. But that makes him no less of a Jew. And Breitner has some useful connections. In exchange for certain favours, he promised to see that my father would be all right.”

“What sort of favours?”

Frank’s indiscretion was met with a partly worried, partly disparaging look which he found hard to fathom.

“Breitner sees himself as a businessman with interests in every corner of the city. He has a lot of contacts in the Swiss chemical companies here, for example, and other organisations that do business in Germany. And he keeps an eye on the students here as well. Especially German students. All for his masters in the party over the border. So I feed him with useless information about student activities.”

“And where does he take his meals? In bed?”

“You know, it seems to me that you’re very inquisitive when it comes to things that don’t concern you. And not nearly curious enough about the things that really matter.”

Her words were right on target. And they stung. The two of them fell into silent contemplation. Frank could sense the tension in the slight touch of their bodies as they lay side by side on her bed.

“Where do the roses come in?” Frank asked at last, unable to let his urge for interrogation lie still for any longer.

“Ah, les fleurs du mal.” A wry smile crossed her lips as Patricia whispered these words. They came with a deep sadness