The Stronger Sex

by Hans Werner Kettenbach

  “Yes. Do you know who her lawyer is?”

  “A joint practice, judging by the letterhead. Drs Schlösser and… and…”

  I said, “Gladke.”

  “That was it, yes. Gladke.”

  I saw Hochkeppel raise his eyes to the ceiling.

  “Do you know them?” she asked.

  “Yes, I know them. Rather high-powered.”

  “Oh dear. You poor thing.”

  I laughed. “Oh, never mind that.”

  She said nothing for a moment, probably entertaining some doubts of my confidence. Finally she said, “Well… my husband wants to know if he should have your copy brought round to you. Karl’s not here at the moment, but I could call a messenger service. Or drop in at your chambers myself.”

  I thought for a moment and then said, “No, that’s not necessary. I’ll collect it from your house myself. And then I can have a word with your husband.”

  “And with me too, I hope, all right?”

  I said, “Of course. Goodbye, Frau Klofft.”

  She said, “Goodbye, Alex.”

  Hochkeppel looked at me in silence and nodded. I was half-afraid he’d ask, “What was that all about?” But instead he just said, “You won’t have much joy with Gladke.”

  I laughed. “I rather think not myself.” I thought for a moment, and said, “Why did Klofft leave it until now to tell us the official bill of complaint had come? It must have arrived at his house this morning.”

  “If the court wasn’t using a private delivery service, post can arrive later. But you’d better assume he’s been through the charges from A to Z by now. And that if he’s realized how black it looks, he’s already thought something up. Thought it up and set it in motion. Some nasty little trick designed to take pressure off himself. Even if it’s only at your expense.”

  “We’ll see.” I nodded. “OK, then I’ll be on my way.” I stood up.

  When I had reached the door, he said, “Oh, Alexander…”

  I looked back.

  He looked at me and rubbed the corners of his mouth. “Did Frau Klofft tell you that story on the phone? Yesterday morning? I mean how she overheard the conversation?”

  Hadn’t I told him I’d been to see her personally yesterday morning? It was ridiculous, but I felt as if I’d been caught in some guilty act. I said, “No. She told me in her studio. The big one in the backyard of the old premises. She rang on Saturday evening to ask me to go there. And I saw her there on Sunday morning.”

  I could see it would be more sensible to avoid explanations. But then I found I couldn’t leave it at that. I said, “I assume it seemed to her too risky to talk at home.” After a pause that went on for some time, I added, “Her husband moves about the house with that walking aid of his. And sometimes he turns up rather unexpectedly.”

  After a moment he said, “Yes, of course.”

  19

  On the way I tried to decide whether or not I ought to apologize to Cilly for my sudden departure the previous day, and whether, if so, I should or should not add something to show her that I stood on my own two feet, and if necessary could assert myself and do as I thought right regardless of other people’s feelings. Before I could clear up those questions, however, I also found myself entangled in the problem of how I could best frame the wording of my apology if I did decide to make one.

  I murmured to myself, “I’m sorry, Frau Klofft, that I left… left in such a hurry yesterday morning. I… I don’t know exactly what… what I… what made me do it. Maybe it was… was the idea of Frau Leisner, I’m in a… a fairly committed relationship with…”

  Oh, for Heaven’s sake! Did I want to give her the impression that I’d understood her approach as an attempt to oust Frauke’s place in my affections? And had it been her approach anyway? Hadn’t both of us, as soon as we first came into physical contact, been drawn together like two ships caught in a current and unable to keep a proper distance from each other?

  I tried to work out another way of putting it, but it was too late. I arrived outside the Kloffts’ front door early again. I wondered whether Cilly would open it to me, Cilly in her painter’s smock. Or Olga with her bare feet in slippers. But this time it was Cilly again.

  As before, she opened the door very slowly and looked round it, her eyes shining in the dim light of the entrance hall. Mysterious, eh? Enticing. Access to a special kind of place. It almost looked like a calculated performance. She opened the door properly, smiled, waved me in.

  She was wearing a skirt and blouse with sandals on her feet. She said, “Come along in.” Her hand was cool and smooth. I took a step toward the stairs. She raised her hand and shook her head. “No, not to his room.”

  I looked at her in surprise. “What do you mean? I thought…”

  “He suddenly didn’t feel well. He’s gone to lie down.” She smiled.

  I said, “I hope it’s nothing…”

  “No, no, don’t worry.” She slowly went ahead to the living room, and a little reluctantly I followed. She turned back to me. “I brought everything down here. He gave me the copy for you before going for a rest.”

  “Was it a kind of… of attack, like I saw him have before?” I asked. “On Saturday morning, when I was here to play chess?”

  “I know. Olga told me. No, it wasn’t one of those.” We had reached the living room; she let me in and closed the door behind me. Then she said, “He’s a coward, you know.” She took a step closer to me and smiled. “The way men are. Particularly loud-mouthed men, the strong sort who always want to set the tone, have everything under control.” After a brief pause she added, smiling, “But they’re not the only ones.”

  That was clear. I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. She was quite close to me, with her thick grey hair, her watchful eyes with the little folds under them. The little folds seemed to have deepened again. I thought I smelt her perfume once more, and for a moment I felt tempted to lean forward and bring my nose close to her cheek to make sure.

  With difficulty I managed to subdue this crazy impulse, but I didn’t know how to react to her obvious cut at me. Against my will I looked away as if in search of something.

  She said, “It’s over there. On the coffee table.”

  Taking a couple of steps past me, she picked up a thick white envelope the size of half an A4 sheet from the table, and handed it to me. It had Klofft’s address as sender written on the front, and mine beside it. I read the addresses, then turned the envelope over, more out of embarrassment than as if I expected to find any information on the back. But I did indeed find something obvious there.

  The flap of the envelope looked slightly crumpled and was not perfectly sealed. Clearly it had been steamed open and then sealed again.

  She had followed my eyes and looked at the seal of the envelope. But when she looked up, she seemed not at all impressed by the give-away trace that we had both seen. She was smiling.

  “I can tell you why he didn’t feel well.” A pause, and then she jerked her chin at the letter and went on, “That gentleman, Herr Gladke or Schadtke, made it clear to him that he’d shot himself in the foot when he fired her without notice.” She stopped, smiled, made a dismissive gesture. “I mean I presume that Herr Thingummy said so in that letter. And he’ll have made it clear to the tribunal too in his appeal against her dismissal. Presumably.”

  “That’s what you assume?” I gave my question an ironic undertone, and was glad to get a little of my own back like that.

  “Yes.” She smiled. “I’m no lawyer. Who knows what’s recognized as evidence in such cases and what isn’t? Anyway, I know that my husband became rather… active after reading the documents.”

  “What did he do, then?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “He phoned a few people. And then he had another visitor.”

  She fell silent. The little lines deepened again. I couldn’t shake off the suspicion that she was making fun of me. I hesitated, but finally I couldn’t get the better of my curios
ity, never mind whether I was acting just as she expected and she had provoked me into doing so.

  “What kind of visitor?” I asked. It was exactly the question that would let me in for asking her to inform on my client again, and for cooperating with her behind his back.

  She said, “A Herr Manderscheidt. Leo Manderscheidt. At least, that’s how he introduced himself when I opened the door to him.”

  “The private detective?”

  “Ah, you know him?” The question showed, unmistakably, that she was playing games with me. Of course she had come upon Manderscheidt’s letterhead and his account of the Beauté du Lac hotel in the file she had read in secret, and so she already knew that the detective could not be news to me either.

  I said, “I don’t know him. But I know who he is.”

  She was silent again. She wanted to make me take the next step confirming our complicity, so to speak, and take it unprompted.

  I hesitated, but in the end I couldn’t refrain from asking the question after all. “Did you by any chance happen to find out why your husband wanted to see Herr Manderscheidt? I mean, was there something he wanted him to do? And if so, what?”

  The cloudy grey eyes held my gaze. “By any chance?” she asked.

  “Yes. It could have happened. Or did you find out intentionally, for all I care. I don’t know…”

  “You mean did I overhear them from the balcony?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “No, sorry, I can’t help you there.” She smiled. “But after that visit I can tell you why my husband, once he had told me to call you and as soon as he knew you were on your way – well, I can tell you why he felt ill all of a sudden. So ill that he had to go and lie down in his bedroom.”

  I asked, “Why, do you think?”

  “I don’t just think, I know. He seemed to be unwell because he wanted to avoid you. He was too cowardly to meet you.”

  She pointed to the letter I was holding. “What this Herr Gladke writes there…” She smiled. “What I assume he writes there makes the great Klofft look rather bad. And he doesn’t want you confirming it. In fact he’s going to avoid it like the plague. It’s also possible that he hopes, by the time you next meet, he’ll have something he can use against you – you and Herr Gladke both.”

  She nodded, emphasizing what she said. “He wants to run away from the truth about himself. He’s a coward plain and simple, you see.”

  I knew it would do me no good to embark now, of all times, on the apology I’d been contemplating without being able to make up my mind. But nor did I want to have her presenting me with any more of those sharp little allusions to my flight from her studio.

  I said, “I don’t know whether you think me a coward as well. And I don’t know when or how I… would be avoiding the truth about myself.”

  She did not reply to that, just looked straight at me. I said, “But if what you say about there not being many men who… well, if you were thinking not least of Sunday morning, yesterday morning, and my… rather sudden departure from your studio…”

  I began to have serious doubts of whether I could finish this complicated sentence sensibly and indeed comprehensibly. Panic stirred in me. Probably she sensed my distress, and it may be that she only wanted to help me out, but she took another step toward me, put the palm of her hand on my chest and said, “Now, now!”

  However, the gesture and her placating tone confused me even more. I said, “Of course I’m… in a way of course it could look as if I was making my own escape. But well, maybe I felt it was all too much for me, that could be it. I mean, possibly you entirely misunderstood it. The situation, I mean. And so then I kind of thought, you see… well, Frauke Leisner occurred to me, and the thought troubled me because… well, I mean I’m in a very close relationship with her.”

  She said, “All right, all right!” And smiled at me. I felt her hand on my chest.

  I said, “I mean, just possibly…”

  She didn’t let me flounder on. “Now then, stop that! Not another word about it, right?” The hand was cool. The heat and the hot flush had been mine, and the hand I felt through my shirt was pleasantly cool against my chest. I just wished she’d put it on my forehead too and cool it.

  She moved her head slightly back and forth, as if trying to meet my eyes. When I couldn’t avoid her gaze any more and had to meet it, willy-nilly, she smiled. Her fingertips moved lightly on my chest. I didn’t want to notice it, but a pleasant shiver ran down my back.

  I wanted to move her hand away, but suddenly she raised her other hand and laid it on my forehead. I stood there motionless, closed my eyes. I hadn’t felt so good for ages.

  After a while she took that hand off my forehead and placed it against my cheek. Maybe it was the hand, maybe the movement of her clothes, but I suddenly smelled her perfume very distinctly.

  She said. “Well, it could be that you’re a bit of a coward.” It sounded almost as if she were suppressing laughter. “But you’re still very young, with plenty to learn yet.”

  She took her hands off me. I felt her put both arms around me as she pressed her head to my breast. I smelled the fragrance of her hair. Then she stepped back and away. “And now off you go,” she said.

  I opened my eyes. She was three steps away from me, smiling, and raised one arm, pointing to the door.

  “Time to get down to work! See you soon.”

  20

  In his bill of complaint against his client’s dismissal, my legal colleague Gladke had concentrated on the points that my own client, relying on his private studies, had cited as basic reasons for dismissal without notice: obtaining a medical certificate by devious means, and wilfully taking time off without permission.

  Gladke countered the charge of devious means by referring briefly to the medical certificate made out by Dr Heiner Wehling, Katharina Fuchs’s GP, which I had already seen in Klofft’s files. The certificate was dated Saturday, the day before the Sunday when Frau Fuchs flew to Geneva to continue treatment for her lumbago in the Beauté du Lac hotel.

  Dr Wehling had certified that late on the Friday evening his patient fell sick at her apartment with lumbar vertebral syndrome (LVS), accompanied by acute pain and severe difficulties in movement. He had prescribed her physiotherapeutic treatment, and made out a certificate to the effect that she must stay away from work for the next five working days, i.e. until the end of the following week.

  As for the rest of it, in succinct and forthright terms Gladke made it clear that in his view it was not Frau Fuchs who had to prove that she had been sick, but the reverse: it was up to Klofft to prove his claim that she had not. He quoted the Hamm provincial employment tribunal, which had delivered the following ruling: “If an employer dismisses without notice an employee who has a medical certificate of inability to work, on the grounds that certification of the said inability did not correspond to the facts, then he must present those facts in detail, and if necessary show that they prove the invalidity of the certification of inability to work. It is not for the employee to prove that the medical certificate was correctly issued.”

  As the employer, said Gladke, it was up to Klofft to produce all the requisite evidence. My colleague also cited a ruling of the Federal employment tribunal that I had looked up myself already, and had noted down for my own statement in court – although in evidence of the opposite argument, something that happens now and then if you are relying on highly controversial rulings. In that ruling the judge had said: “If the employee produces a medical certificate, that certificate is generally proof of inability to work.”

  The second reason for dismissal presented by Klofft was immediately reduced by Gladke ad absurdum with the same argument that I had feared, and had mentioned in my account to Hochkeppel already: if Frau Fuchs had been ill, as the certificate showed, then she could not simultaneously have taken time off without permission on her own initiative, since at that time she had not been on holiday but had been ill and therefore unable to w
ork.

  Gladke then devoted the most extensive part of his complaint to the evidence that her trip to Switzerland – which might possibly give rise to suspicious speculations – could not in any event be considered a holiday but was undertaken in order to get medical treatment for her disorder, and thus had served to improve her condition. He added a whole series of medical statements, certifications and expert opinions.

  In clarification, and abandoning the succinct style entirely, Gladke stated that late on the evening of the Friday, her last day at work, as the certificate confirmed, Frau Fuchs had suffered a sudden attack of lumbago, i.e. severe pain in the area of the lumbar vertebrae, also spreading into her right leg. She had suffered a similar attack before, two years ago, and at that time she had been off work, certified unfit, for three days. On this second occasion she had called her GP Dr Wehling again, and he had visited her late on Friday night.

  Dr Wehling, Gladke continued, had diagnosed stress and overwork as a possible contributory cause, had left his patient some strong painkillers and made out a certificate keeping her away from work until the end of the following week. In addition he had made out a note referring her to a physiotherapist and mentioned to her that unfortunately she would not be able to reach him, Dr Wehling, again over the weekend, since early on Saturday morning he and his family were going away for a brief seaside break.

  On Saturday morning Frau Fuchs, said the complaint, had then had a phone call from her acquaintance Herr Henri Schmickler, a Swiss citizen in the travel industry, and she told him about her misfortune. Thereupon Herr Schmickler, who was in Geneva at the time on professional business, had told her about the Beauté du Lac hotel on Lake Léman in the Waadt area, mentioning that it had a good international reputation as a hotel promoting wellbeing, and in addition offered a wide range of medical and therapeutic services. Its guests could be treated by highly regarded doctors. He had offered to find out from the hotel about the facilities it could offer for treating her lumbago, and he would call her straight back.