The Stronger Sex

by Hans Werner Kettenbach

  “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  I stared at him and asked, in my turn, “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing special.” He smiled. “Just that I know Hochkeppel. Know him pretty well. Longer than you’ve known him, anyway.”

  I said nothing for a moment, and then remarked, “He is a very good, highly experienced lawyer. A successful one, too.”

  “Yes, yes, of course! OK.” He gave me a nasty smile. “Well, you have plenty of time to discuss it with him. Why are they putting the case off until the month after next?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Four to six weeks, that’s normal.”

  “Good heavens above. Shockingly overworked, are they?”

  “I’ve no idea. They’re over-occupied, anyway.”

  “Well, fabulous!” He shook his head, smiled sarcastically. “So I have to be kept waiting all that time for a decision?”

  I said, “You’d better not be under any illusion. It’ll take a good deal longer than that before there’s a decision.”

  He stared at me, opening his mouth slightly. “What?”

  “Well, surely you know that. I assume this isn’t the first time you’ve been involved in a case before the employment tribunal.”

  He seemed really offended. “What do you mean by that?”

  I passed over this question. “Look, during the hearing of the case there is a single judge who, after hearing the lawyers for both sides, will propose a settlement. If you reject the idea, or Frau Fuchs rejects it, or you both do, the case goes to the next court up, which will then set its own date for a hearing, four or five months later, anyway after the forthcoming hearing in the local employment tribunal here. At that second hearing there will be a ruling, unless more evidence is required, for instance by questioning witnesses. And another date would be set for that, again a few months later. It all takes time.”

  He raised one hand, but then put it down on the table and laid his other hand on top of it. With a clear undertone of indignation, he asked, “Can these quibbling lawyers and their courts do what they like with you, then?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “More or less, yes. But you will certainly be spending the interim period in more comfort than Frau Fuchs.”

  He appeared to be surprised. “What do you mean?”

  I said, “As you’ll recollect, she was dismissed without notice. In such cases the Federal employment agency doesn’t pay a red cent for the first three months of unemployment.”

  He said nothing for a while, just stared at me, and I saw a flush rising to his face. Finally he said, “Tell me, Dr Zabel, are you sure you are representing me in this case? And not that refractory woman who’s only out for her own advantage?”

  I said, “As your lawyer, Herr Klofft, I have to keep you informed on every aspect of your case. And also, so far as possible, on the interests of the other party. And the consequences our proceedings will or can have for her.”

  “Did Hochkeppel tell you to say that?” he asked.

  “It’s more or less to be taken for granted, you know,” I told him.

  He looked through the open balcony door at the trees. His breathing suddenly seemed to be heavier than before.

  I said, “But of course you can make good use of the time.”

  “How?”

  “Thinking it all over again. And making sure you don’t after all have anything else of importance to our case to tell me. Anything I ought to know before I get up to present it in court.”

  He looked at me. “What kind of thing?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  He said nothing for a while, but he never took his eyes off me. In the end he said, “Let’s drop this little game! You’re getting at something in particular. So what do you mean?”

  I did as he had done, looked out at the green treetops and said nothing. Then I looked at him. “Is it impossible that in the conversation you had with Frau Fuchs, I mean the discussion of the time off she suddenly wanted – is it out of the question that she threatened you?”

  He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Threatened me? What with?”

  I tilted my head a little way back. “Well… you see, it does happen that in such discussions an employee may have a fit of temper. And threaten his or her employer. For instance, if the boss refuses a request from the employee.”

  He laughed. “A fine thing it would be if my staff went about threatening me!”

  “Don’t put it like that. I mean, suppose the boss says, for instance: no, you can’t have time off, just now we need all hands on deck – well, a threat could slip out quite quickly. Something along the lines of: right, then I’m going to be off sick! Or: OK, just wait and see what happens!”

  I saw that his forehead was beginning to glisten with a thin film of sweat. It seemed he was trying to bite his lower lip, but he couldn’t catch it between his teeth. After a while he said, abruptly, “No. Frau Fuchs didn’t threaten me.” He straightened up a little. “Was that what you wanted to know?”

  I sighed. “I’d rather you thought about it a little more thoroughly. A threat might have been veiled.”

  He reacted by impatiently waving that idea away.

  I said, “I don’t know if you are aware that jurisdiction is very rigorous in such cases. If an employee threatens his or her boss, that’s a reason for dismissal without notice. According to the prevalent opinion, anyway.”

  He was obviously annoyed. “I’ve told you already, she didn’t threaten me. Anyone might think you never listened to anyone!” His breath was coming faster. “Is that it, then?”

  I wondered whether I could press him further without causing him physical distress. But if I let this opportunity pass, I might never find out how he would react. I said, “Not entirely. I apologize.”

  “You can leave out the apologies. You’re not my nursemaid.”

  “OK.” I looked at him. “You had a… a relationship, an intimate relationship, with Frau Fuchs over a long period. Is that so?”

  “Yes, it is.” He laughed. “My God, did you have inhibitions about asking me that?”

  “No, I didn’t. I still haven’t finished. That relationship came to an end a little while ago, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” I sensed that he was taking notice now. He glared at me.

  I returned his glance. “You see, it’s not unimaginable that in that last discussion, the one in which she asked for a week’s leave, I mean, you suddenly felt you would like another experience of what you…”

  He wasn’t taking his eyes off me, and as I was still wondering how to conclude that sentence without hurting him, he said, “Would I have liked to fuck her again? Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “I wouldn’t have phrased it like that, but in principle, yes.”

  “Bingo!” He laughed. “You guessed it. Yes, I would have liked to fuck the woman once more. Are you surprised?”

  I cleared my throat. “That’s not the question. As I said, such a thing is not unimaginable.”

  “Yes, all right, all right! I didn’t want to shock you.” He didn’t seem to be feeling very well, but apparently in spite of that he was trying to confuse me.

  I said, “It comes down to a very simple point. I mean, did you express that wish? Out loud? Did you… express it emphatically, do you understand?”

  Narrowing his eyes again, he slightly broadened the frozen smile. After a moment’s pause he said, “You’re asking if I raped her?”

  “It doesn’t have to have been a rape. It would be enough if you had coerced her to agree to such a thing.”

  He said nothing for a while. I almost said: And kindly take that silly grin off your face!

  Finally he said, “Enough for what? Also for firing her without notice?”

  “Listen, Herr Klofft, this is no time for joking. I can tell you what it would be enough for. If you coerced Frau Fuchs into having sex, or tried to coerce her, and if she comes out with that in court, it will be enough to lose yo
ur case for you. In spades, believe me!”

  He kept quiet again for a while, and then suddenly said, “I need to take a pee! At once!” He stood up with a violent movement, knocked into the table, reached for the wheeled walker standing behind him. The crutches that had been leaning against it clattered to the floor.

  I jumped up to retrieve them, but he already had both hands on the handles of the walker. He turned it and wheeled it over my toes. “The bell!” he said. “Ring for Olga! And quick!”

  He pointed to the corner table. I looked for the little box with the bell and found it. When I pressed the button – three times, in my alarm – its shrill tone sounded right through the house.

  I followed him and caught up just in time to open the door for him. I heard Olga’s voice on the stairs. “Coming! Hold on!” She came hurrying up, took him under one armpit. “Call sooner! Not always wait for pee to come!” She disappeared with him. I went back to his room, leaving the door open.

  I was about to sit down again, but I didn’t like to hang around within reaching distance of his papers on my own. Heaven only knows what he would think I was doing if he found me there. So I went out on the balcony and stood by the balustrade.

  The deckchair that had been out on the terrace in front of the ground floor had disappeared. Had Cilly stopped sunbathing? For a moment I wondered whether Tippi Hedren was as brown all over as on her face.

  He hadn’t answered my question: had he coerced or wanted to coerce Katharina Fuchs into a sexual act? Could he have simulated that sudden call of nature to avoid replying?

  Of course that was possible. But nor could I rely on his outright No when I asked whether Katharina had threatened him. However, if he was lying on that point, it was a mystery why he was reticent about such a telling argument in his confrontation with his former lover.

  And furthermore, if he had put Katharina Fuchs under pressure with his demand for sex, why she had not said so in her charge against him was an even greater mystery. No one had to tell Gladke what a good weapon that would have given him.

  Maybe my legal friend was saving it up for the court hearing.

  However that might be, it looked almost as if the disputants were sparing each other: Klofft by not saying that she had threatened him, she by keeping quiet about his attempt to coerce her into sex. Or even, de facto, of having coerced her into sex.

  When I heard sounds in his room I went back in. Olga had escorted him back and was holding his swivelling chair while he sat down. I was not sure, but I thought he had been wearing a different pair of trousers with his short-sleeved blue shirt just now.

  Olga said, “Soup come soon. Must taste first.”

  “Off you go, then, out of here!” he said. “Taste your soup, but leave me alone!”

  Olga flip-flopped to the door. Before she went out, she said distinctly, “Arsehole!”

  He did not react. He looked at his hands, which he had laid on the table. Finally he raised his eyes and looked at me.

  I cleared my throat once, then again. Then I asked, “How are you feeling?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “The way anyone feels when he’s wet his pants.”

  24

  I didn’t want to hear any more of this horrible, miserable stuff. But he wasn’t stopping, he wasn’t letting me get away, he was continuing the spectacle as if exposing himself to me brought him relief.

  However, he seemed to notice my distaste for his admission that he had wet himself. He raised a hand, fingers spread: “No, no, don’t worry! I don’t stink!” He smiled. “Olga’s cleaned me up.”

  I hardly knew where to look. He solved the problem for me by putting out a hand to the bottle of water on the table. I took it and poured him a glass. He thanked me, drank thoughtfully, and looked out at the trees and the sky, where a few large white clouds were gathering.

  “She’s good at that, our Olga.” He laughed. “If necessary she’ll hold your prick on the way to the toilet to make sure it all goes in the bowl and nothing spills over.”

  He seemed to be bent on talking dirty, in the same way as he had after the attack he suffered during our game of chess. I wondered whether I should simply say goodbye, but he got in first.

  “I expect you’re surprised I’d tell you a thing like that,” he said. “But who else would I tell? Except Olga, yes, but I’m not so sure that she understands everything I say. She nods, of course, sometimes she even smiles, when she thinks I’m waiting for her to smile and it will do me good.”

  I said nothing. After a while he shook his head. “Maybe you’re wondering why I have to talk about something like that at all. Such disgusting subjects.” He snorted. “Embarrassing, eh?”

  Since he was looking at me as he said that, I felt bound to answer. I said, “Well, you know…”

  He smiled. “All right. Then let’s say you’re not embarrassed. Very kind of you. But I am embarrassed, believe you me!”

  For a moment I was afraid he was going to burst into tears. But it was probably only the curious blurring of his voice, the laboriously accented way in which he brought out his remarks.

  Suddenly I realized that this was part of the Parkinson’s disease that had its claws into him. I had looked up a few technical pages on the Internet, and some of what I read there about the disorder had stuck in my mind. The unnatural attitude, the fixed smile were presumably to do with the rigor, the involuntary tensing of the muscles that afflicted its victims.

  After moving his lips silently and obviously with difficulty for a while, he said, “I used to be someone. Maybe a good many people didn’t respect me very much. I was too vulgar for them. Too primitive. But at least they were wary of me. Everyone was wary of me. And that’s a kind of respect, I think. Don’t you agree?”

  “Well… yes, of course, one can say so.”

  His smile grew broader. And suddenly I felt the expression on his lips was pitiful. It was like a soldier lying on the ground with his legs blown off by a shell, still trying to salute.

  He said, “Well, I think so, anyway. And if you’d known me before, at my works, I don’t think you’d have had any doubt of it.” He snorted, then went on. “But now? Well, look at me!”

  He glanced down at himself, almost as if checking that his flies were done up. He said, “If I stand up, and I can’t hold on to anything with both hands, I’d fall flat. Probably. When I’m peeing I have to support myself with one hand on the wall. And something usually goes over the edge of the bowl.”

  He breathed out heavily through his nose as if stifling laughter. “I need a rustic Pole to help me take a pee. And wipe up after me. And get me something dry if I wet my pants. Or my bed. That sometimes happens too, and then I’m in a fine state!”

  With a gesture that he was obviously trying to control precisely, he reached for the box of cigarillos lying on the table. Laboriously, he fished one of the thin, black cigars out of its pack. I took the lighter and gave him a light. He puffed the cigarillo a couple of times, then put it in his left hand, rested the hand on the table and looked out at the garden. Because of his awkward attitude he had to shift in his chair to do so.

  He put the cigarillo to his mouth once again, drew on it deeply and let out the smoke. “I can think myself lucky to have our Polish Olga to look after me and my… orifices. Otherwise my wife would have to do it.” He turned to me. “Can you imagine what that would mean?” As I desperately tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t be too close to the bone, he turned away again. “Imagine you wake up in the morning and you have to tell the woman who once loved you that you had a little accident in your sleep. You dreamed you were on the loo, and let it out, and you can’t clean up after yourself. Wash the sheets, dry the mattress, make the bed and God knows what. It’s just beyond your powers, so your wife has to do it, who else?” He nodded. “The woman who’s seen you as a strong man all her life. And that’s not surprising, because after all you’ve played the part of a strong man for a lifetime. But now it’s curtains! The sho
w is over!” He laughed. “Can’t keep your orifices closed any more, not in front and not behind. You can think yourself lucky if you don’t fart in front of strangers. Only in front of your wife. Only, understand? Or suppose your… your valve doesn’t keep the liquid in any more, and you have to say goodbye to visitors with a damp patch showing. Can you imagine that, lawyer?”

  I said, “Well, it’s…”

  He didn’t leave me floundering for words very long. He said, “It’s shit, that’s what. And I’m not the only one in this way, oh no! I know a few more folk like me, lame or deaf or half blind, all of us old dodderers. They’re all to be found among my friends. My former friends. Because now they’re no good for anything, not even friendship. Yet they were all once big strong fellows. Macho men, like me. The stronger sex, we say, don’t we? And now they’re all tied to their wives’ apron strings. Have to be led about by the hand. Have to get their wives to shout in their ears, so they’ll know what the man on TV is saying. Have to be fed because they can’t even get a spoonful of soup to their mouths without spilling it.”

  He leaned slightly forward. “They have to get their wives to wipe their arses. The women they used to go to bed with, understand? Because they can’t reach that far behind them. Arthrosis, see? It’s the joints, the joints of the stronger sex go rusty! In the end a proud man like that can’t even knock a nail in! The mother has to do it herself, and she does, oh yes, she does, even if she hits her thumb!”

  He laughed. “The stronger sex my arse! You know which is the stronger sex?” He leaned forward again, both arms propped on the table top, never taking his eyes off me. “Well, who do you think?”

  It seemed as if he actually wanted to get an answer out of me, but the question was purely rhetorical. After a moment of dramatic silence, he announced, “Women, my dear fellow, that’s who! Women, yes. The stronger sex, that’s women! And the men who once thought themselves so strong, in the end they’re just a limping, stinking, slobbering picture of misery! Too weak to keep their holes closed in front and behind.”