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

man smiled uneasily over to Marthe, repeatedly muttering a word that sounded to Ellen like ‘mort’, as if this explained everything. Again and again he repeated it in what Ellen saw as a nervous response. To her, his manner carried the look of a helpless and lost little boy on his first day at school. Suddenly he did not appear to understand a word of English, and she almost began to feel sorry for him. Then Marthe explained:

“Seven is not really that early here, especially during Fasnacht,” she said. “I told him we would come back later. In the meantime, we can watch the parade. The Kommissar will probably not be back for a couple of hours. He’s been called out on a murder case.”

It was not until they were out in the chill of the dark early morning, mingling with the crowds and the noise of the carnival, that the significance of Marthe’s last words dawned on Ellen.

“Did you say murder?” Ellen shouted out over the rat-a-tat of the drums and shrill sounds of the piccolos. The last word fell in the brief fraction of a second between beats and seemed to descend on the whole carnival procession in their vicinity. All heads turned in Ellen’s direction. But they were not distracted for long. Their imagination was caught by the huge painted lanterns that bobbed and floated through the streets above their heads.

“But the Kommissar is not in the murder squad, is he? Why should he be called out on a murder case?”

Marthe said nothing in reply.

“You don’t think it has anything to do with Frank, do you?” Ellen persisted, but Marthe’s attention was elsewhere. Her eyes were alight. She was in another world.

Ellen had never seen Marthe so disinhibited in public before. And it was clear that these questions had no place here. But she did not ignore Ellen. She was plainly keen to take her along into the celebrations. Yet it was an occasion for which Ellen felt the word ‘celebration’ to be a peculiar description.

As the huge painted lanterns passed by, with inscriptions that she was unable to decipher, it all seemed strangely serious to Ellen. When Marthe told her it was a carnival, she had imagined something like Rio or Venice. But no one here was letting their hair down. No one was dancing. It appeared more like a ceremony to Ellen. And yet, from the look on their faces, like little wide-eyed children, everyone appeared to be enjoying all the pageantry, the lanterns in the darkness, and the almost military sound of drums and pipes that filled the air. Marthe was no less enraptured than anyone else. Taking Ellen by the hand she started moving, almost dancing, through the jostling crowds.

“It will start to get light soon,” she shouted to Ellen through all the noise. “We shall go and have a soup then to warm us up before we see the Kommissar.”

But Ellen found it hard to share Marthe’s enthusiasm. There was something ominously sinister about the military rat-a-tat of the drums in the air – and the lanterns floating huge and ghostly in the darkness with their indecipherable messages – which disturbed her to the core.

“What do they all mean?” Ellen asked, pointing at the lanterns as they passed.

“They’re all making political and social statements. Making fun of the politicians. Or the city’s big companies,” Marthe shouted over the noise. “Like that one there,” she added pointing at one that Ellen could at least vaguely understand as a comment about Vitamin C and Hoffmann–La Roche.

“But that’s the most controversial one this year,” Marthe said with an oddly chilled glee, pointing at the image of a man at the mercy of a woman. And alongside this picture the words Der dressierte Mann.

“Also the most disturbing,” she added. “After everything we won in the referendum last year, this Esther Vilar comes along to undermine us. And the men love it.”

“Is that The Manipulated Man?” Ellen asked with a hint of recognition in her voice. “I was reading about it recently. It’s caused quite a stir at home as well.”

Marthe let out a hiss of disdain, which was instantly swallowed up by the piccolos and drums.

Every group of pipers and drummers, each led by a drum major, were all dressed in a variety of costumes with huge grotesque masks on their heads. Ellen found the bizarre militaristic mood to the parade unnerving. And on the corner where Marthe had positioned herself and Ellen, it was a mood that only added to her sense of vulnerability.

‘Or am I just paranoid?’ she asked herself.

They had been standing on that corner for a good half an hour, when suddenly Ellen became aware of a loud enthusiastic voice of what seemed a particularly artless American behind them. His drawl put her in mind of Bill Plattner – even the way he kept repeating his appreciation with a facile “awesome!” reminded her of the way Frank’s sculptor mate would caress his granite artwork with such wonder – when at that very moment she could have sworn she saw him.

“Frank’s here!” Ellen shouted, beside herself with disbelief.

She had never known until then what the expression ‘a sight for sore eyes’ truly meant. The shape of that head, the mop of hair so delightfully, so intimately familiar to Ellen – even in the deceptive light thrown by the lanterns, the street lamps and the slowly dawning sky. She was certain it was him, and she grabbed Marthe’s arm.

“Where?”

Marthe craned her neck in all directions, her eyes alight with expectation. She appeared more excited even than Ellen was, as if it was her lost property that had just been found.

Ellen pointed over to the other side of the street where she had spotted him. But he had already vanished. Then, from behind a crowd that was drowning in a sea of confetti just tossed into the air by a carnival-goer, he reappeared. A little closer now.

“There!”

Ellen wanted to tug at Marthe’s arm, but it