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

and seek. A certain ration of conversational detail was supplied on both sides. But in her case, he sensed it was intended to serve as bait more than anything else. She told him that she was studying the History of Art at the university, which he had already ascertained on their first encounter. He asked her why, of all the temples of misogyny, she should choose this country in which to do her studies, where women were not even allowed to vote.

“My father wanted me to,” was her only reply, which went nowhere near satisfying his curiosity. But when he delved further, he got no response. So he tried a different tack.

“Where are you from?” he wanted to know.

She furrowed her brow and feigned a questioning smile across the table: “What do you mean? Biologically? Geographically? Metaphysically perhaps?”

Frank had the feeling she was making fun of him. Or was she merely being evasive again? At all events her caginess began to irritate him. He would have almost been ready to throw in the towel had it not been for those dark, captivating eyes.

“I’m quite serious,” she insisted. “I don’t understand your question. If you want to know where I was born, then Normandy in France. That’s where I spent my childhood. In a small town called Avranches. A pretty place with beautiful views of Mont Saint-Michel rising from the sea like something out of a fairy tale. My parents lived in Metz originally, which was still part of Germany of course. But when war broke out, my father insisted that my mother should move to Normandy and stay with my grandmother. He stayed in Metz because of his job, but travelled to Normandy as often as he could. And that’s where I came in.”

At this, she took a cigarette from the orange pack beside her, emblazoned with the name Parisienne that could have been created especially for her, and lit up.

How apt, Frank thought, but said: “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“There are times when it helps,” she replied. “Do you want one?”

“I haven’t smoked since Berlin,” he said, taking one from the pack. “But sharing a Parisienne with a charming French lady is too much of a temptation.”

“But I’m not sure any of that answers your question,” she continued, ignoring his clumsy attempt at flattery, “because the last dozen years or so I’ve been in Stuttgart, where my father now lives. Then about a year ago, he sent me to study here, where many people assume from my name that I have something to do with the pharmaceutical company just across the river. So they think I’m Swiss. And if you ask what it all means to me, I really can’t tell you. I feel neither German nor the charming French lady you speak of. And certainly not Norman. I have no idea where I belong. But none of that matters. All I need to know is that I’m me. Anything else is quite unimportant. And slightly boring. A little like this Chasselas,” she added, as she finished her glass of wine.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “They don’t seem to have a great range of wine to offer.”

And since the restaurant only appeared to have chestnut Vermicelles to follow their main course, she declined his offer of a dessert and insisted on no more than a cup of coffee to complete the lunch.

Frank began to sense their time together slipping away. Already with the bitterness of the coffee serving as a foretaste of regret at his own foolish hesitation, he could feel the threat of failure coursing over his tongue. Here was an opportunity he could not allow to be simply tossed away with all the other forgotten litter of his past. This woman exercised an influence over him that told him she was too important to leave in the limp hands of his indecisiveness. So why mistrust her?

‘Why not for once in your life take the bull by the horns?’ he asked himself. Yet even then he felt the need to approach the task elliptically, homing in from an obscure angle, in the hope that the bull would not notice – so affording him the opportunity to escape without having to show himself up should he be rejected.

“Would you take me for a thief?” he asked.

This apparent non sequitur had her visibly baffled.

“I would take you more for that swan we saw in the river. But I imagine most of us are capable of stealing,” came the philosophical response.

“But would it surprise you to learn that I was no more than a mean street thief?”

“Yes, to be honest it would,” she said, and began to look slightly worried in her curiosity.

“But I am,” he insisted. And proceeded to relate the story of his encounter with Silverstone. Perhaps it was her apparent concern that seduced him. Or maybe it was simply the exquisite, slender beauty of her wrist as she stirred the cream into her coffee and allowed the sheen of her hair to cascade over the cup like a jet-black waterfall. Whatever the reason for the seduction, he almost unwittingly found himself laying bare the whole history behind his assault on Silverstone. He told her of Achim, their friendship, his dreams, and his recent disappearance. Almost as if seeking absolution, he began to confess every detail of the last few weeks. He appeared to need it – like a novice drinker who sips gingerly from his first brandy and quickly acquires a taste for it, renewing glass after glass with an increasingly intemperate relish. He thought of Achim and his Mirabelle brandy. And it seemed to him that those excerpts of his tale which involved his old friend were followed with particular interest by his temptress and confidante. But he did not let this impression deflect him from his confession. Now, as he unashamedly showed his colours to this woman who evinced such experience of the world in her sweet, sad eyes, he felt as naive as he had done