The Stronger Sex

by Hans Werner Kettenbach

  He stared at me for a moment. Then he leaned back, smiling to himself as if at some great achievement.

  After a while he added, “Women don’t just live longer than men, they’re tougher too. And in the end the women are the ones who have to support the men. Keep them alive. And most of them do! Support their menfolk. But some don’t. Or they let a man feel he’s at their mercy.” He nodded. “Have you any idea, lawyer, how shitty that is, how humiliating? Even if your wife is prepared to wipe your arse? Particularly then!”

  Another pause in which he moved his lips silently again, and then he said, “We had one in our club who was…” Suddenly he began to laugh so hard that he had to cough, panted and groaned, finally took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes and the corners of his mouth. After he had put it away again, with difficulty, he went on in a weaker voice, “He was a real bastard, he was. Really. I was quite something, but as for him…”

  Another fit of laughter seemed about to overcome him, but he suppressed the impulse. After a brief pause he said, “He was a doctor – ear, nose and throat specialist. Had a flourishing practice. Once he – yes, that was in Hungary, end of September, little hotel somewhere near the border with Slovakia. We’d gone there for the hunting, eight or ten of us. It was inexpensive at the time. The red deer cost… just a moment. I think with antlers weighing five kilos a red deer cost you about twelve hundred euros, no, wait, of course it was still marks back then.”

  He rubbed his forehead and looked into space silently for a while. Then he said, “The professional huntsman with us got the canine teeth as a trophy.” Finally he sat up straight. “Well, never mind that.” After drawing on his cigarillo, he said, “We hired the whole hotel, anyway. And our friend, the ear, nose and throat man, he hired extra services through a colleague he knew in the nearest big city. Knew him very well, of course. I say services, well, they were just tarts from a brothel in the city. Lovely women, though. Maybe one or two of them were doing it privately, I wouldn’t know. Housewives after a bit of pocket money.”

  He cleared his throat, reached for his glass and drank a few sips of water. Then he went on. “They came before dinner in a bus, ancient little bus. Green. A Skoda twelve zero three. Pretty little black-haired girl at the wheel. Looked like a Gypsy. Well, and then the fun began. The hotel people had gone off, had their own place, a little house thirty or forty metres away.” He laughed. “OK, we had to give them a thousand marks. Just in case anything got broken. I suppose they knew the sort they were dealing with!”

  He looked out of the window, smiling, leaned back a little as if lost in his memories, and suddenly straightened up. “Well, to cut a long story short. Don’t want to bore you. At some point, must have been around the end of the party, at some point our friend the doctor, the ear, nose and throat man, he got the idea the ladies should leave us with a little memento, like a personal document, he said. So one of the girls took her knickers off, and our friend and the professional huntsman picked her up and put her bare bum down on the photocopier in the little office, gently, very gently, so as not to break the glass.”

  He was laughing to himself and shaking his head, hand in front of his mouth, as if to dam up his mirth. “Never thought it would work so well, but it did… we got really good portraits, or then again you could say literally bum portraits, life-size, black and white but almost artistic because they were a bit blurred and looked strange. I don’t know if our friend had tried it out in advance in his consulting rooms, maybe with his receptionist. I asked him, but he said no.”

  After a sigh of what sounded like satisfaction, he said, “Yes, so then we put one after another of them on the photocopier in turn. Not all of them wanted to go along with it – the Gypsy girl, for instance, she hit out at us – but we ended up with half a dozen of those documents. It was worth it for the girls, too, they signed the things, and anyone who wanted one had to pay a hundred marks.”

  He drew on his cigarillo, watched the smoke rising. “In the end of course the glass pane did break. Under a really sturdy, strong girl; Julischka was her name. I’ve suddenly remembered it. Just the name for her. A redhead. Real red, down below too. She was lucky, when the glass broke it didn’t cut her bum.” He looked at me, smiling. “Your boss was one of the two helping to lift her on, it was their fault. Didn’t put her down properly so as she’d be leaning a little way forward, or it wouldn’t have happened.”

  After a moment’s horror I asked, “What do you mean by ‘your boss’?”

  “What do you think I mean?” His smile grew broader – laboriously, but distinctly. “Hochkeppel, who else? Oh, I beg your pardon. Dr Hochkeppel! He even bought one of the portraits. The best one of Julischka, if I remember correctly. Probably liked her fat bum, the sly old fellow. That’ll be why he felt weak at the next shot of schnapps and couldn’t hold on to her any more.”

  After a pause in which he kept grinning, he said, “I bought all six portraits. All signed by hand with a personal message. I still have them. Want to see them?”

  “No, thank you.”

  I assume he was slightly piqued. Or maybe genuinely surprised that I didn’t want to take up his kind offer. He said, “Ah, well. But that’s not why I told you the story.” He looked away from me and at his hand holding the cigarillo. “That doctor, our friend… you ought to see him today. Or maybe not, it’d make you feel bad. I visited him once before I… well, withdrew to my citadel up here, shall we say? He told me something about a muscular inflammation he had, said it would pass. Pass my arse! I looked it up. Probably muscular dystrophy, and that doesn’t pass. It does for you slowly but surely, not very nicely either.”

  He preserved quite a long silence this time before he spoke again. “He’s only a wreck now. A wreck falling apart bit by bit. That big, strong man! Lies in bed and can’t even sit up on his own. He has a switch to raise the head end of the bed. Nasty sight when the motor gets going and his face zooms toward you. Like the ghost train. And he needs his wife’s help to stand up. She helps him, but she doesn’t look as if she likes doing it. And she wipes his bum. I’d guess she likes that just about as much. He can’t do it any more. Too weak. Too limp.”

  He looked at me and nodded. Then he asked, “Can you imagine how humiliating that must be for the man? Such a big strong fellow as he was?”

  I’d had enough of this. I was tired of it. I no longer felt capable of listening to these confessions, or revelations, without protest.

  I said, “Yes, I can. I do think I can imagine it. I just wonder whether he can imagine… if he could ever have imagined how humiliating it must have been for his wife, what he got up to in that little hotel, I mean the hunting lodge in Hungary. That unusual photocopying session.”

  He looked at me in surprise. “But she never did know about it, surely?” He shook his head. “I don’t think any of us talked. No, no, we kept our mouths shut, as a matter of honour, strictly shut!”

  “And do you really think that makes a difference?” I asked.

  He stared at me as if he wanted to reply but didn’t understand the question. I had no intention of explaining it. I asked, “And did you or did your friends who are now so regrettably reliant on the help, the demeaning help of their wives, ever wonder whether what you were doing at that… hunting party, whether it wasn’t also a little demeaning for the ladies you invited? Or even very demeaning?”

  He narrowed his eyes, and said, “You’re not just a lawyer. You’re a real stickler for truth and justice.” He intensified the twisted smile. “Am I right?”

  “Do you mean by that, do I think it just that someone who used to humiliate other people should be humiliated himself later?”

  He carefully put the cigarillo he had been smoking down. “Well, I’m sorry I told you that story. I thought it was really funny.” He looked up. “Didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  I hesitated, but then said nothing. I looked at my watch. “It’s getting rather late. Sorry, but I must go.”

&nb
sp; As I reached the door, he said, “If it’s all going to take such a long time… couldn’t we play another game of chess in the interim? Or two, with a return match. Some time or other, I mean?”

  “I must see how I’m…” I hesitated. Then I said, “In principle, yes, of course.”

  25

  When I came out at the top of the stairs I saw Olga coming up them, carrying a tray on which there was a small terrine, a plate, a spoon and some bread. She said, “Wait, wait! No go away!” The staircase was too narrow for us to pass each other, so I had no option but to step back.

  She said, “Wife wants speak! You go see her!” Raising her chin, she jerked it at the door to Cilly’s home studio.

  I was completely taken by surprise. Had Cilly been in the house when I rang the bell to summon help for Klofft? If so, why hadn’t she reacted? Had she even already been at home when I arrived?

  Olga, opening Klofft’s door with her elbow, stopped, looked at me and jerked her chin at the door opposite again. “Go in! She waiting.”

  I was so irritated that I asked abruptly, “How do you know?”

  She stared at me in surprise. Then she smiled. “I know! You believe! She waiting!”

  I was about to go on with this silly argument when the door opposite opened. Cilly appeared in her painter’s smock. She smiled and waved me in.

  When she had closed the door after me, she came close, raised her lips and kissed me. “How are you, my dear?”

  Oh no, not this too! I’d had enough of these people. I didn’t want to go on administering first aid for their problems with growing old, neither the husband’s exhibitionism nor the wife’s hunger for love.

  I took half a step back and asked, “Were you here when I rang the bell? When I needed someone to help your husband?”

  She looked at me as if testing me, and smiled. “Yes.” When I said nothing, she asked, “You want to know why I didn’t come in answer to the bell?”

  I said, “Well…”

  “I knew Olga was in the house. And that she’d go to him at once.”

  She was still smiling. Apparently she, like her husband, was letting me know that I wasn’t to be taken entirely seriously. She said, “You see, I’ve escorted him to the lavatory so often, got him in a fit state for it, that I’ve certainly more than done my duty. Or that’s what I think, anyway. And if I accept that he brought Olga under our roof as… as a maid of all work, literally all, then I think that I can also expect her to see to the reverse side of the man. Service and maintenance.” And without a word to bridge the gap she asked, “Won’t you sit down?”

  “I’m sorry, but I really think I should be getting back to my office.”

  She nodded, and smiled. I said, “Thank you, by the way, for those two newspaper cuttings. I thought they were interesting.”

  She nodded again, and said after a moment, “I’d like to have them back. Maybe you could post them to me some time.”

  “Of course. I’ll copy them for myself first. If I may.”

  “Naturally. Why not?”

  Suddenly it occurred to me that this might be our last private conversation. At the same time I realized that she alone could probably answer the questions I had asked her husband in vain. I remembered her reserve when I’d first tried to get answers out of her, and I was well aware of the risk of losing access to her once and for all.

  But hadn’t I done that already?

  I said, “I’d like to ask you something.”

  She looked at me, but did not respond.

  “I know I once bothered you with it, but now I’ve asked your husband, and he said that Frau Fuchs did not threaten him. It’s about his last conversation with her, you see, in his room over there, before she went off on her holiday…”

  She waved that away. “Yes, yes, I know. The conversation which I partly overheard. And now he says she didn’t threaten him with going off work sick if he didn’t give her time off anyway?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what he said.”

  She let out the air through her lips. “He’s lying.”

  I nodded and hesitated. But then I asked, “Are you sure? That she threatened him with pretending to be ill?”

  “Of course I’m sure! I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.” Her voice was a little sharp. “Or do you think I wanted revenge on the woman?”

  “No, no… no, I assume not.”

  She smiled grimly. “Just as well, my dear.” It sounded almost like a threat. After a short pause she added, “Did you by any chance tell him that I gave you that information?”

  I shook my head. “Of course not! Do you think I’d… well, stab you in the back like that?”

  She didn’t answer. After a moment she turned away and went to the table with the two chairs at it. I saw the teacups set out. She sat down.

  I tried to meet her eyes. “Would you be prepared to say so in court? That Frau Fuchs threatened him, I mean? And say what her threat was?”

  She smiled. “So would you be ready to stab me in the back in court?”

  I looked at her hard.

  She said, “Or what would you call presenting me as an informer who slinks around eavesdropping on other people? On my own husband, at that!”

  “I don’t think you’re looking at it in the right way.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I mean, it would be possible that you just happened to go out on the balcony and heard…”

  She waved that away. “Thank you, never mind the rest of it.” She looked away from me and at the table, biting her lower lip. After a while she said, “But I can’t see any reason why he would say she didn’t threaten him. It would surely do him good if she threatened him, or am I looking at it in the wrong way?”

  “Oh no, in absolutely the right way. It would be an argument I could quite possibly use to turn the whole hearing around. In his favour.”

  She nodded, looked at the fingernails on her right hand, bit her lower lip again. I had an idea it wasn’t helping my argument for me to go on standing up while I talked to her. I went over and sat down on the chair opposite hers. She looked up. I had the impression that she was both surprised and pleased.

  I said, “But there’s one other point.”

  She nodded. “You mean, you were asking whether, in the same… conversation he, well, sexually pestered her?”

  I said, “Yes. I know you didn’t want to answer that question.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “And I don’t want to answer it now either.”

  I shook my head as if I couldn’t understand her reluctance. “But you see, that point could be very important.” When she said nothing, I went on, “Not least for me. For me personally. Because if, during the hearing, Frau Fuchs unexpectedly came out with the fact that your husband came too close to her in any way at all… It doesn’t have to have been rape. Not rape in the usual sense of the word.”

  She nodded quickly a couple of times, as if I was taking too long to finish making my point for her liking. I said, “It would be enough if he tried putting her under pressure to… for instance, if he offered some kind of deal. Such as if he said to her: if you’ll see me once more, just once more…”

  She said, “For sex.” She smiled. “If you let me have sex with you once more – that’s what you mean?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, something along those lines. And if he had added that then she would get the week off she wanted – if he’d offered a barter of that kind…”

  She nodded and smiled to herself. Then she looked at me. “You’re a clever man.”

  This was incredible. Instead of giving me a plain answer she was buttering me up again. I said, “What do you mean by that? Did he in fact offer her such a deal?”

  “I didn’t say that.” She leaned back.

  “But you understand what I’m getting at?”

  “Yes.” That smile again. “You don’t want to stand up in that tribunal and suddenly look a fool.”

  I threw up my hands and brought them down rather
vigorously on the table. The teacups clinked. “But it’s not about that!”

  “Of course it is!” She shook her head. “I don’t want it to happen either. You don’t deserve that.” She put her right hand out and laid it on my own hand where it rested on the table.

  I felt like pulling my hand away, but I realized that her gesture was an approach that I had better not reject if I wanted to achieve my aim.

  No, that was wrong. I certainly did want to achieve my aim. But if I didn’t withdraw my hand, it was more because the touch of hers was very pleasant. Her hand was warm and smooth, soft but not limp like many other people’s fat, moist hands.

  She said, “But there’s one thing I don’t understand.”

  “There is? What is it?”

  She frowned. “Why didn’t her lawyer bring that up among the charges in his bill of complaint?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t understand that either. Maybe he wants to save it up and make a big dramatic number of it when the case comes to court.”

  She nodded. I felt her hand move slightly under mine. She was stroking my wrist gently with her fingertips.

  All of a sudden she said, “Yes, I take your point.” She breathed in deeply, with a sound almost like a sigh. Then she added, “But… I’m sorry, I still don’t want to answer your question.”

  I reacted at once. I regretted it as soon as I’d done it. I pulled my hand away, got to my feet and said, “I really do have to go now.”

  She accompanied me to the door. I was about to press down the handle, and then I said, “I’ll send you back those two press cuttings. If I put them in the post tomorrow, is that soon enough? I’d just like to copy them first.”

  “Yes, yes, take your time, my dear.” Once again she raised her mouth and kissed me. I stood there until she took her lips away from mine.

  I said, “Those articles… I’d very much like to discuss them with you some time, Cilly.”

  She laughed and gave me another kiss. “You really are a dear,” she said. I turned away and left.

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