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

all waiting for their number to come up. Turning left as his feet touched the pavement, in the hope he might escape that voice, Frank followed the tramlines that continued on down a narrow street and headed deeper still into the heart of the city. The street twisted around a monumental sandstone building that instantly cast everything around it – and Frank in particular – into a deep sense of gloom. Cut into the side of the building as he passed was a vast gaping entrance. Perhaps built to let coaches pass in days gone by. Momentarily confused by two words at this gateway that caught his eye – Passagio proibito – Frank stopped dead in his tracks. Gaping around him like the jaws of a monster, it had the air of a gateway to Valhalla. Yet those words on the wall hinted more at the threshold to Dante’s Inferno. Whatever their provenance, wherever he was, they spoke of gloom and despair. So it came as a huge relief when he got the grim walls of the building behind him after some fifty metres and saw the street open out onto another square.

Frank’s vision blurred at the sudden sense of space. He teetered on the edge of the pavement as a gigantic kaleidoscope of shifting patterns from the buildings around the square rolled before him. He leaned against an advertising pillar for support and found himself eyeball to eyeball with a huge insect – that same poster he had seen earlier in the day. A fly crawling over a baby’s dummy. In a brief moment of clarity, it reminded him of his mission. The reason he was here. The referendum.

He caught the aroma of roast chestnuts in the air. Then his head began to spin. He sensed the advertising column roll away from him and closed his eyes in an effort to stop the motion. It helped. Slowly the undulating movement receded. And thoughts of that mission called to mind the note from the local newspaper editor. He would be looking for Frank at 7.30 that evening. Gingerly he opened his eyes and squinted at his watch. He needed to find his way back to the Hotel St. Gotthard while it was still light.

Pushing himself from the pillar, Frank turned and crossed the road, then headed into a narrow street off the square. This was not the way back. He knew it.

He knew it only too well. That street. It beckoned him into its clutches. Pulled him into the warren of alleyways behind the square that seemed untouched by time. His world had become completely disjointed since stepping off the plane. But he felt strangely comfortable in this quarter. The homely aroma of roast chestnuts still wafted through the air. The fragrance of street life, spilled beer, restaurant kitchens. Every moment invaded his senses and made itself at home in his muddled mind. Instantly his appointment with Rösti had found its way once again to the back of his thoughts. And sank completely out of reach as his footsteps on the pavement trod what seemed such a cosily familiar path. He knew there would be a place nearby where he could sit and draw his breath for a while over a beer.

But he was not prepared for the deep sense of loss when he turned the next corner and stopped dead in his tracks. In his mind, he had seen a huge advertisement for Persil on the side wall facing him. But there was no wall. And there was no sign of any tavern. There was simply nothing. Just a site fenced off to allow an anonymous new building to take shape.

A sudden sharp slap on the back almost knocked him to the floor. In the shock of the moment he almost missed the crackle of words that came with it.

“Wir vermissen’s auch!”

“What the fuck!?” Frank swung round and came face to face with a large jovial figure, whose distinguishing feature at that moment was a gut that spilled generously forth beneath an open jacket and overcoat. Restrained by a waistcoat vainly trying to hold it in place, it looked none too comfortable. Frank fancied the garment had lost two buttons already.

“He says we miss it too,” came a softer voice the other side of Frank in almost perfect English with shades of an old colonialist or public-school polish to it. This added to the slight oddness about the voice, which carried the strong hint of an accent that Frank was unable to place. Instantly intrigued by the voice, he turned to face its owner – a man some ten years older than him, possibly late thirties, with a strikingly handsome face. Swarthy, with an aquiline nose and dark eyes that would have been sultry and mysterious had it not been for the engaging white smile that came with his words.

“Lisettli’s wine tavern,” the voice continued. “The jewel of the Spalenberg. She closed down a few years ago. But come along with us old chap.”

The two men each put an arm around Frank. Drained by his bewilderment, confusion and the utterly strange familiarity of this city, he meekly submitted to these unlikely Samaritans and let himself be guided down the road. They walked back to the square, past the blood-red building with its kaleidoscopic frescoes, across the bridge over the Rhine and deep into a warren of streets on the other side of the river.

When they reached a corner building that displayed the modest sign of a sheep over the door, the two men led Frank through the doorway into a dingy room. He had the uneasy impression of a lamb being led to slaughter.

“What can we get you?” said the English speaker, as they settled Frank into his seat at the table. Frank looked about him and felt instant comfort in the warmth of the rough but cosy little pub – infused with years of spilled beer and tobacco smoke, the aroma a soothing balm for his confusion. It