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

“You look very fetching in your hat and coat,” she said. Her words put him in mind of the shabby old coat he had abandoned to its unsuspecting new owner.

“I have an apology to make, Patricia.”

“Don’t speak of it now.”

What does she mean? Frank wondered.

“No,” he insisted. “Just while I think of it. That book of Baudelaire. Les fleurs du mal. It was in the pocket of my old coat.”

“I was wondering where that had got to.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll buy you a new copy,” he promised.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “It was only something I picked up at a flea market.”

An instant sense of relief swept over him. A sense of comfort in the knowledge that the annotations were not some private code of intimacy for her, but came with the second-hand grime and dog-eared corners.

“Nonetheless, it meant something to you,” he insisted. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have underlined all those passages.”

He recited the one that had impressed itself on him with particular effect, as he had done to himself every idle moment of the last three days in his limbo across the border.

“You see,” she laughed, “I don’t need the book. I have my squirrel.”

Vanity convinced him there was affection in her mockery.

“Don’t laugh, Patricia. I know my French is appalling. But I remember the words so well because I find them very beautiful, but also because they surprise me. They don’t seem like you at all.”

“Oh, but they most definitely are. Dreams, little squirrel. They remind me of my dreams. And if I didn’t have these, if I couldn’t forget this mess every now and then, I’d go insane.”

They did not speak again until they reached the new accommodation that Lutz had found for her not far from the zoological gardens. Her words disturbed him, because they seemed to echo a profound disquiet that he would never fathom.

As they closed the door on the menace outside, he recalled her bewitching reverie in the concert hall even before the strings had made their haunting entrance. Now, as she took his coat, the coincidence of their thoughts excited him with its implicit hint of intimacy between them when she asked: “What did you think of the music? Didn’t you find it just marvellous?”

The words came with a special sparkle in her eyes. But what captivated him above all was the way she could so easily embrace Bartok and Billie Holiday with equal passion.

“I don’t understand classical music well enough to offer a verdict,” he confessed, preferring to hide behind his ignorance rather than disclose the truth of his emotional whereabouts during the concert.

“But you must have an opinion. You must know whether you liked it or not,” she insisted. “That first movement for example. Didn’t you find it absolutely beautiful? The way it slowly opened out like a fan – and then closed again, just as slowly, just as deliberately.”’

“Just like you,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

The tone of her voice signalled mock offence. It was plain to him from the coquettish way she loosened his tie that she was flattered by his remark – obtusely so, he thought, since the layers of meaning in those three words spoke of an opaque secrecy as much as approval. But he was enjoying the moment and was not about to spell it out any further. They did not speak with any substance again that night, but left their bodies to converse, and enjoyed the mingling of their perfumes.

Before getting into bed, however, he took the precaution of putting the gun under the pillow while Patricia was attending to her evening toiletries. Even in her caring hands, he did not feel entirely secure. And although the touch of her sleek and slender warmth against his body kindled a flame that would never die, and gave him all the strength he needed, it was nonetheless an unquiet night he spent in her arms. The darkness would not allow his eyes to close for a minute. The slightest unfamiliar sound nurtured fear and suspicion of every shadow. Every so often the clouds would draw back their curtain over the moon and let the night light play on the wall beside the window. It shone through the scudding clouds above and cast their shadows in ominous designs sketched out especially for him: every movement spoke of the intentions which the night still had on him, warned him not to drop his guard for a moment – advice he took to heart.

Patricia meanwhile slept peacefully by his side, her hair on his shoulder blacker than the night, an arm draped in carefree nonchalance across his chest. Such sweet innocence in the asylum of her precious dreams, he thought. The contrast between them was immense. How he wished he could sleep with such abandon.

“I was thinking last night,” he announced while she prepared the morning coffee. But sleep still swam in her eyes, the fragility of early morning hung in her every move. She was plainly up too early for new ideas, so he did not return to the subject until they were sitting together at the breakfast table with a dose of caffeine already coursing through their veins.

“I was thinking last night, Patricia. Why don’t we take a holiday? A couple of weeks in the mountains while things cool off here.”

“I can’t, squirrel,” she said and poured herself another cup of coffee. “And things aren’t going to just cool off, as you put it. You just have to learn to accommodate unpleasant truths. Make a few concessions to reality and learn to live with it.”

“Can you ski?” he persisted, ignoring her advice. His change of tack elicited what he sensed to be the slight trace of a willing submission.

“Can you?”

Those two words came with a sweet challenging smile in her eyes. They hinted at confirmation. And he could already see her thoughts busily packing her suitcase.

They agreed to meet at the central railway station later that afternoon. This gave him time