The Stronger Sex

by Hans Werner Kettenbach

  His smile disappeared. He said, “Wasn’t so easy for me. With that… with old age in my bones. I told her first she must… must put her lips round it. Her mouth. And then, if she did it well, she could sit on top of me. And if she did it at once, there and then, and one more time to say goodbye, when she was back… then I’d let her take her week off. In spite of the foreign order. It would be like an act of God. An urgent private matter.”

  He laughed and then shrugged his stooping shoulders. “I didn’t think it possible, but she actually did go along with it. I don’t know… maybe she was afraid of all the fuss, lawyers and all that. Maybe this… this non-violent solution appealed to her more. Anyway, she said she’d go along with it. And it worked! When she was kneeling in front of me, I felt it, I felt aroused. And in the end – what do I mean, the end, it was only the beginning, and she really could soon have been sitting on it. But all of a sudden…”

  He shook his head, stared at the top of the table. After a while he said, “All of a sudden she jumps up. Fishes a handkerchief out of her jeans. Spits in it and wipes her mouth out like a woman possessed, spits in her handkerchief again. Then she says, ‘No, I can’t do it. And I don’t like it. I don’t want to do this.’ And she storms out of the room as if the Devil were after her and down the stairs, and she was gone.”

  After a while I said, “And of course you didn’t want this… this incident coming out during the hearing at the tribunal. And to make sure of that, and not provoke Frau Fuchs unnecessarily, you were going to keep equally quiet about the fact that she threatened you with going off sick.”

  He was listening to me, looking at me fixedly from his half-stooped position.

  I said, “But possibly Frau Fuchs herself is not interested in having the details of her last encounter with you discussed in court. Maybe she’s not entirely happy with her own part in that encounter. Maybe she would at least like to keep her… her new boyfriend from knowing about it.”

  He showed no reaction. I said, “What a muddle!”

  After a little pause he said, “At least now you can decline to represent me. You threatened that once before.” He scratched his cheek with trembling fingers. “No one can expect you to represent a man who forces his employee to have sex.” He laughed. “Although you’d land your boss nicely in trouble that way. He’d have to represent his old friend in person.”

  That was true. The same idea had gone through my mind.

  “And now get out of here,” he said. “No hanging about.” He raised his voice. “Out!”

  35

  I had hardly left his house before I began worrying about him. He had only to stand up, maybe because he needed to go to the bathroom, reach for the handles of his wheeled walker, miss and fall heavily to the floor. He’d be lying there helpless. He was at least half-tipsy; he’d drunk more than half the bottle of wine.

  When would Olga be coming to make him some soup and bring her piece of home-made cake? If her husband was really such an unpleasant character as Klofft thought, who knew if he wouldn’t make a scene when she said she was going out? Jealousy again. Even if the amorous services that Olga performed for Klofft had brought them a good monthly income, and would continue to do so. Perhaps most of all because of that.

  Suppose jealousy flared when he saw her packing up the cake. It seemed to him too large a piece; what next, he asked, he struck her fingers, she hit back, then he beat her and finally locked her in. Klofft would wait for her in vain. He would be lying on the floor with his thigh fractured, calling for help. And finally just whimpering quietly.

  Cilly? Heaven knew where she might be. And what she might be doing.

  The picture I had formed of her was clouded now. What upset me was not so much the line that I must inevitably draw under it. I was far more troubled by the fact that despite that, another picture kept coming in front of it: Cilly on the deckchair in her garden, sunbathing. Brown and naked.

  I wondered whether I ought to call her at her studio, just in case. Tell her I had the impression that her husband was in a bad way. Very bad. And I wondered whether I should add that I didn’t understand how she could leave him to his own devices when he was in such a condition. On his own. Helpless.

  I suppressed the thought. I was afraid of the answer she would give. The answer that I thought I knew in advance. A negative answer, unmoved, unemotional. Cold. And then a sober reminder of what the man had done to her for a whole lifetime.

  I was equally afraid of exposing myself, at the same time, to the strange power of attraction that she exerted on me.

  I took refuge with Frauke. I don’t know whether she had been expecting and waiting for me since my hasty departure at breakfast-time, but anyway she was at home. The first thing she asked was, “How is he?”

  “Very ill,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised…” And I hesitated for a moment, but then I said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he died today or tomorrow.”

  This concise prognosis shocked even me. Hadn’t I had my own doubts of whether he was merely putting on an act with his physical crisis, so that I would go and talk to him, listen to his childhood memories and his fears of loneliness, which he had brought on himself?

  “But what’s really the matter with him?” asked Frauke.

  “No one seems to know for certain.”

  “Isn’t he having medical treatment?”

  “Not as far as I’m aware.”

  “But that’s impossible! Isn’t Cilly Gehrke doing anything about it?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. Then I said, “I know he doesn’t… doesn’t think highly of doctors. And he’s probably one of those men who think it’s dishonourable to admit to illness.”

  She shook her head. Then she looked at me. “Are you contemplating doing something for him? I mean, calling the doctor or… or taking him to the doctor even if he doesn’t want to go? And making sure he’s all right otherwise?”

  “I don’t think that would be within my power.” After a moment’s hesitation, I said, “But I’m not going to let him down.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” And I preserved a long silence before going on. “Look, I know he… he was a revolting old horror. While he was well, and probably he still is. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so obsessed with getting the better of that woman. The woman he fired.”

  She nodded.

  I said, “Only he doesn’t just want to get the better of her. He wants to destroy her. And I should think he’s destroyed several other people like that in the course of his life. If I spoke his kind of language, I’d call him a bastard.”

  “But that doesn’t prevent you from…”

  “Look, he’s not always had an easy time of it. He worked his own way up in the world, and I can imagine he didn’t do that by accident. And he’s been hurt and humiliated by a good many people. Downgraded. I should think he’s had to swallow a lot of that. And then, when he’d made it, he took his revenge. Got his own back.”

  “And that’s your new philosophy of life, is it?”

  I realized that I’d dropped a brick. I said, “Of course not. Of course I don’t think you can play one thing off against another like that, I mean along the lines of: such-and-such a number of people have done you harm, so you can do harm to the same number of people in return. Well, no, of course that’s wrong. But I think…”

  Once again it took me some time to work out what I was going to say next. “I do think… no, I know, I know for a fact that he’s terribly lonely, and that makes him suffer miserably. Of course Cilly… his wife, I mean, of course she looks after him. But I don’t think she shows him even a spark of warmth. I can’t blame her after a marriage like that, but he can’t be happy with the kind of care she takes of him. And as for the rest of it…”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “For the rest of it, he has a Polish woman who sees to him, and takes him to the loo, and… clears up after him if he gets there too late, and she lets him touch her up when he wants to, or ev
en more. He’ll be paying her well for it, I assume. Yes, and he has a driver, very loyal, and in his years as a businessman he trained him to be an excellent chauffeur. But that’s it, as far as I know. Well, I suppose he gets visits from a chiropodist, maybe he can flirt with her a little now and then. And a barber, yes, there must be a barber who comes to cut his hair at home. But it stops there. That’s about all.”

  She said nothing for a moment. Then she asked, “And you want to make up for that? For that – lack of contact with real life that he’s suffering from?”

  “I don’t know if I can make up for it. No, of course I can’t. But I do know that… that in his own way he values me. I mean, he trusts me. And he likes my company, even if we fight.” After a pause I added, “And I know I got him out of a deep hole this morning. A miserable situation, no hope, no comfort. Maybe even life-threatening.”

  I wasn’t sure whether I might not have sounded overdramatic, thus embarrassing Frauke. I said, “Well, anyway… I won’t ignore him when he’s in such need if he feels I can help him. I don’t know if you can understand that.”

  She nodded.

  We went out to the racecourse and had an excellent lunch there. There were no races this Sunday, but the weather was fine, and we walked over the extensive layout of the racecourse, sitting down for a rest on one of the many benches or on the grass now and then, and then we went back to the restaurant for afternoon coffee and cake. We spent the rest of the day in Frauke’s apartment.

  That evening, when we were sitting in front of the TV with sandwiches and beer that I’d fetched from the bar next door, it dawned on me that the difficult part of my coming to terms with the Klofft phenomenon still lay ahead. That would be when I saw my boss next morning. I would at least have to tell him that my client had answered the two questions that seemed to me significant for the case. And that by this time the irksome duty that Hochkeppel had landed me with was making more demands on me than he himself would like.

  About ten in the evening I said goodnight to Frauke. I’d told her I had to get up early next morning. In fact I didn’t have to be in court, but before I went to the office I wanted to call the Klofft villa and see how Klofft was, and I didn’t want to have Frauke there when I rang.

  I didn’t sleep well, and I got up early. When I was under the shower, I suddenly felt afraid that Death might have come to seize Klofft and extinguish his life in the night – heart attack, maybe, some kind of shock that he wasn’t able to deal with any more. I had a vivid mental image of the Everyman production in Salzburg that had terrified him so much, I heard the voice calling him, first from afar, then closer and closer, and finally as loud as if Death were standing beside him, shouting his name into his ear.

  I dried myself quickly and called Klofft’s number. Cilly answered, obviously surprised that I was ringing so early. I asked how her husband was. She said all right, and why? Was there any special reason?

  He had obviously kept quiet about our meeting on Sunday morning and the reason for it. I told her that he had called me and I had gone out to see him.

  “For anything in particular?” she asked. “I mean, did he want to tell you anything new about that case of dismissal without notice?”

  I said, “That too, but mainly he called me because he was feeling bad. Very bad.”

  She said nothing for a moment. Then she asked, “Do you mean physically?”

  “Not just physically… mentally as well. But not least physically, yes. For a moment I was afraid he might actually die while he was on the phone to me.”

  “Oh.” She said nothing for a while, and then went on. “When I helped him out of bed and into the bathroom yesterday morning, and got him dressed, he was the same as usual. And when I took him his breakfast later. Or I wouldn’t have gone out. But I thought I could leave him on his own until Olga came. She was going to bring him a piece of her home-made cake and make him some soup for lunch.”

  I said, “Yes, I know.”

  “And she did. What time did he call you, then?”

  “Around ten thirty, or not quite.”

  She made a non-committal sound.

  It was difficult for me, but I went on all the same. “You know… I’m anything but knowledgeable about medicine, but I think… I got the impression yesterday morning that he’s in, well, a very delicate state of health. Rather unstable. Rather dangerous. I think that… strictly speaking he shouldn’t be left alone. He could stand up and then stumble at any time; he might even fall to his death! Or have one of those attacks when he goes red and comes out in a sweat, his blood pressure going right up or something, and he’d need a doctor at once, but he wouldn’t be able to call one himself, or he might be too obstinate to do it, and…”

  “But my dear Alexander… how am I supposed to prevent it? I can’t sit beside him day and night, noticing every movement, every drop of sweat and…” Suddenly I heard a suppressed sound, a cough, no, it wasn’t a cough, but when she went on, her voice sounded tense, constrained, high, as if she were forcing herself to speak. She said, “Look, he wants to sleep on his own, and I want that too, but how often do you think I wake up in the night and listen because I think I heard a clatter, the noise he’d make falling downstairs if he wanted to fetch a bottle of wine, tried to get on the stair lift, felt dizzy and then…”

  She was sobbing wildly. “How am I supposed to prevent it?”

  I was horrified. I cried, “Cilly! Cilly, don’t!” For some time I heard only inarticulate sounds on the line. I said, “Please don’t, Cilly, please! I didn’t want to…”

  After a pause, in which I just heard her breathing, she said, “All right.” Her voice sounded the same as usual again, a little cool but not unfriendly. “I’m sorry. I know it’s risky to leave him alone. You’re right. But he knows he can call me any time. At the studio or wherever I am. He knew I was at the studio. He’d only have had to call me. Well, this time he called you.”

  I listened intently to her voice. Was there an undertone to that? An undertone of jealousy?

  Nonsense! That was certainly a fantastic notion. But one way or the other there was still something I had to tell her. I cleared my throat and then said, “And by the way, he told me the answers to those two questions. The answers you didn’t want to give me.”

  “Ah. Did he?”

  “Yes.”

  After a moment she said, “Did you want to speak to him now?”

  “No! No, I…”

  “You can set your mind at rest, I’ve just been into his room, and he’s OK. He’s the same as usual.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand that. I… I’ll ring again if I may.”

  “Of course you may.”

  Hochkeppel was already at the office when I arrived. Simone said, a little reproachfully, “He’s just been asking whether you were out at a meeting.” I put my briefcase in my office and went in to see the boss. He lowered the newspaper he had been reading, or pretending to be reading, and pointed to the chair in front of his desk.

  I sat down and said, “I hope you had a nice weekend?”

  “Very nice, thank you.” He hesitated and then asked, “How about yours?”

  “Not so good.”

  “No?” he asked, as if my answer had surprised him, but I suddenly felt sure that he knew all about it, right up to the last few words I had exchanged with Cilly. She’d had time to call him, whether at home or at the office, and tell him the whole story. It rankled that she obviously trusted him more than she trusted me. “No quarrels with Frau Leisner, I hope?”

  “No, no, far from it.” I took a deep breath and said, “Well, I went to see Klofft. Yesterday morning. He rang me. He was on his own, his wife had gone out. To her studio. And the Polish woman who comes in to look after him was out. It seems that at weekends her husband likes to have her at home and… available to him.”

  He listened attentively. You might have thought everything I was saying was news to him.

  I said, “He was obviously desperate w
hen he called me. It was probably one of those attacks I’ve seen him having before. Flushes, racing heartbeat, I assume. Very short of breath. And he was in fear of death. When I got there, he felt better. I think being on his own depressed him. And the fear of being helpless. Unable to do anything to help himself.”

  He raised his glasses slightly. “Why didn’t he call his wife? She could have come home at once.”

  I let the corners of my mouth drop as if I didn’t know the answer, and shrugged my shoulders. He ignored this, and asked instead, “And why didn’t he call the doctor?”

  “He doesn’t trust doctors. At least, that’s what he told me.”

  “Yes, yes, and above all he’s afraid that would tarnish his image. The great Klofft, sick and weak, putting himself into other people’s hands. People who would tell him what to do and what not to do.”

  I said, “I don’t think it was that. I think that by now his view of that problem… of his situation is a little different. Well, very different, I think.”

  He raised his eyebrows and stared at me for a minute. Then he lowered them again, and turned his eyes away from me. Finally he asked, “Was that all?”

  “No.”

  He looked at me as if I was keeping him in suspense to know what, as I was now sure, he knew already.

  I said, “He answered the two questions we’ve already discussed here.”

  Hochkeppel frowned. “Two questions?”

  “Yes. Two questions to which Frau Klofft already… knew part of the answers, but she didn’t want to tell me.”

  “I see, I see,” he said. “So?”

  I said, “Frau Fuchs did in fact threaten to go off work sick if he wouldn’t let her have the week off that she wanted. And he said she could have her week off if she would sleep with him once again… no, to be precise, two more times. Once right then, during that conversation, and then again when she was back from her holiday.”

  He said, mouth hardly open, “I can hardly believe it! The old goat!”