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

aspect of life, and he wondered whether she was unusual in this respect. He had no yardstick. She was the only woman among his contemporaries who had chosen to go forth and multiply. Everyone else he knew had found the patriotic calls to breed for the fatherland too repugnant. To this extent, then, she was certainly unusual within his limited circle. But in the broader population, she was probably excruciatingly normal. With the benefit of hindsight, it now seemed almost as if her carefree nature had been an ill-fitting mask that she had struggled to keep on in order to conceal the real and painfully conventional ambitions for her life. It made him wonder whether this made her a poor match for his old friend after all – and whether maybe he regretted it. Or was she perhaps just what Achim needed?

At all events, Frank was happy to let her retreat into the shadows of their conversation, as he and his old friend wandered through the history of the days and nights they had shared in Berlin – down the avenues of their friendship to a time when that city breathed the kind of excitement which made you hungry for the next day. From lively cabarets to some of the most exciting playhouses in Europe.

He recalled the time they attended the premiere of The Threepenny Opera. It was late one summer evening, and Achim had already got wind from some of his theatre friends that this was going to be something special. So they were already full of boyish expectation as they headed off to the theatre, calling on the way at their favourite Hungarian restaurant Zur Csarda – the best goulash he had ever tasted, evoking shades of the puszta and the flavour of gypsy music. The atmosphere that evening was as merry as he had ever remembered it. Many of the guests, like them, were plainly on their way to the theatre.

As Frank and Achim quaffed their second bottle of Tokay and let their merry abandon run loose like dogs off the leash, they failed to notice that the other theatregoers had long since left. When eventually they felt compelled by the emptiness of the second bottle to settle up and head off to the theatre, the fact that they were late arriving for the performance was a triviality. More important was the mood. And this was as much imbued with the late-August merriment of a city humming with excitement as it was with the Tokay. It was a city of gaiety and bright new ideas. A city for falling in love, not for timekeeping.

So primed were they by this mood, and so captivated by the cabaret atmosphere as soon as they got into the theatre, that they barely noticed they had missed half the play. They arrived just before the duet between Lucy Brown and Polly Peachum. And Frank fell instantly for Roma Bahn’s Polly. He found the sexual jealousy of women always such a fascinating and intensely arousing spectacle, and this duet accommodated all his deepest fantasies. He could not help feeling a certain envy for Macheath.

It was a feeling he recalled with particular irritation now because, with the benefit of hindsight, he reminded Frank in many ways of Willi Breitner. It was an association he preferred to suppress so as not to burst the bubble of his nostalgia too soon. But he could not suppress the nagging question that this reminder brought to the surface: who the hell was Lola?

Achim did not betray a hint of recognition when Frank mentioned this name.

But the way he derided what he called Frank’s superficial enjoyment of the play with such exaggeration, dismissing him as a licentious romantic, gave Frank the impression he knew exactly who Lola was and was simply trying to change the subject. He and Gertrude exchanged smiles that suggested a private joke at Frank’s expense.

Frank let the question lie and pointed out that he had not been alone in his enjoyment of the performance, that the theatre had fairly bubbled with entertainment that evening and that it was probably the biggest stage success they had ever witnessed in Germany – or were ever likely to witness there again.

“That just goes to prove my point,” said Achim. “Germany is now dead to culture. And no one wants to visit the theatre only to be reminded of just how dead it is.”

This return to the darker reaches of their shared memory brought them back to the real reason for his being there. Achim was not slow to pick up the thread. He tilted the bottle towards Frank and refilled his glass.

“Achim, your methods are both crude and unnecessary.”

His old friend seemed to weigh each one of those words with painstaking scrutiny, frowning sceptically as he put the last one on the balance and repeated it with the questioning care of an archaeologist as he pieced together a priceless vase not believing he had all the fragments.

“Unnecessary? Does mean you might help us?”

Frank signalled his agreement with the merest hint of a nod as he sipped from the glass and muttered something under his breath to the effect that this was surely what friends were for. Frank was aware that his assent was demonstratively weak in conviction – almost as if born of the sheepishness of knowing that it could be construed as a step over the fence into the realms of commitment. So, perhaps by way of insurance cover, he reiterated Achim’s insistence that this would only be a test run, and that he would not be carrying any incriminating material with him through Germany.

Achim’s enthusiastic endorsement of this condition set the seal on the contract.

“Here,” he said, pulling a hip flask out of his back pocket, pouring the remains of the Mirabelle brandy bottle into it and handing it to Frank. “This will give you some company on your trip.”

Frank took the bottle and slid it into the inside pocket of his coat, as Achim opened