The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

Ever since she had made a copy of her door key for him and sent it so invitingly with a note wishing him ‘Bon voyage’, he had been burning with impatience to use it. Uncertain what might be waiting for him inside, his pulse quickened as he inserted it into the lock. The emptiness he felt when the door opened hit him with a quiet brutality. It came as no surprise, since he was not expecting her back for at least two weeks. Yet it draped a leaden chill over his mood.

The room had been left immaculately tidy, as only a woman with Patricia’s style could leave it. On the table stood the telling vase of roses, now multiplied to three. Three flowers of evil, wilted in the intervening weeks and its petals fallen. Frank refused to contemplate the favours they might have involved. Drew a protective shield down against any thoughts in that direction. It was a stratagem made so much easier by the table companion of that vase.

There, on the gramophone beside the vase, lay These Foolish Things. Instantly a warm flutter coursed through every muscle of his heart. He smiled at the thought of her laying the record on the turntable for him before she left. Had it not been for this and the books on a corner shelf, the room would have given the air of permanence about her departure. All but two of the books were heavy tomes on the Renaissance, Romanticism, Symbolism and other periods of art that meant little to him. These two books piqued his curiosity for the clues they gave to the private side of Patricia. One was by Lou Salomé, Ruth, which instantly put him in mind of his conversation with Achim – and gnawed at his conscience for cravenly abandoning the mission he had taken on. The other book in this otherwise dry and dusty collection, which appeared to be annotated in the margins, was a dog-eared paperback of Les fleurs du mal by Baudelaire.

It was plain that this had been often and passionately read. This paperback gave him an uncomfortable feeling because, not only did its association with the flowers in the vase leap out at him, but there was also something about the dog-eared copy of the book that did not fit with what he knew of Patricia. And this drove home to him just how little he did know about her, and how much more privileged others were in this respect. When he opened the book, he saw at once a deeper reason for him to feel so unsettled. Like the other works on the shelf, it was heavily annotated. But by a different hand. Plainly not

hers. The scrawl was that of a bold male hand. And it boasted an intimacy with her which Frank was still far from achieving. The page he was looking at appeared to be a particularly important one to judge by the natural ease with which the book opened there. Certain lines of verse showed pencil marks. He suspected they had been made by Patricia, since they bore such a strong similarity to the style of markings in her books on art. Frank wondered why they might be so important to her.

Je pense à mon grand cygne, avec ses gestes fous,

Comme les exilés, ridicule et sublime,

Et rongé d’un, désir sans trêve! et puis à vous3

His French was adequate to grasp the meaning of the words, but what was their significance? What was it in her life that warranted giving them such importance? Was it Léandre? Or could it be him the words referred to, Frank wondered in his vanity. It was already one o’clock in the morning. He had committed robbery with violence, and dragged his aching body endless miles through strange territory. He was too exhausted to cope with these questions, however much they intrigued him and teased his vanity. So he took Baudelaire onto the bed with him, where this troubling verse carried him off to sleep with his coat and shoes still keeping him warm.

When he woke, the light was already shining confidently through the garret window. The poet lay on the floor staring up at him like a sad old bitch waiting for its morning walk. Still fully clothed and with stubble on his chin, Frank was aware of the staleness and dirt of his body. He recalled the last time he had woken here and watched the light break through the window. The cool white cubit of her arm thrown carelessly across his chest in her sleep, like an ivory bracelet half open at the clasp. It had reminded him of a bracelet which his father had brought home from India for his mother and which had always lain half open on the dresser, never worn, almost as a symbol of their relationship. It irritated Frank that his memory of Patricia triggered this association. On two counts now he felt that he was sullying the purity of what little intimacy there was between them.

Tucking the secrets of Baudelaire safely away in the coat pocket that was not already occupied by the gun, he got up to wash. The washbasin held no soap. And no towel hung from the rail. So, after splashing his face with some cold water to freshen up, he looked into the cooking niche for evidence of food or drink while his face dried in the chill of the unheated room. He had hoped at least for a trace of stale coffee beans, but there was nothing.

From above, through the garret window, the street looked quiet and harmless; an elderly woman sweeping out her doorway on the opposite side of the narrow, cobbled road; a group of children, satchels strapped to their backs, on their way to school. Only the hint of rain in the clouds that hung over the rooftops gave any suggestion of menace in the air. Frank decided to call