I thought fleetingly of the hunting expedition in Hungary when Hochkeppel had been one of Klofft’s party, and I thought of Julischka, yes, that was her name. I said, “But that wasn’t the whole of it. Frau Fuchs said she’d go along with that. She helped him to, well, get it up. Orally. Although he never got it in. She suddenly felt disgusted and marched out.”
He stared at me in silence.
I said, “But I doubt whether that changes the fact of coercion.”
“No. Hardly.” He was silent for a while, and then said, “Alex, I’m sorry I got you into… into such a messy business. I didn’t know all this, believe me. I thought I was ready for anything, but not a thing like that, I assure you.”
“I believe you.” I laughed. “And I can always take his advice if all else fails.”
“Advice?” He sounded slightly alarmed. “What advice did he give you?”
“He said now I could decline to represent him. As I’d already threatened to do. No one could expect me, he said, to represent a… someone like him in court.”
“He said that?”
“In those very words.”
He swallowed audibly. Then he said, “But you wouldn’t do that, would you?” Open-mouthed, he stared at me. “Decline to act for him, I mean… you wouldn’t do that to me? Would you?”
As I returned his glance, I noticed that I was instinctively frowning.
He said, “I did explain that we mustn’t lose this case. Or give up on it. Because then everyone would think I lost it – or gave it up – on purpose. Out of ancient vengeful feelings. To hit Klofft where it hurts. Everyone would think I’d sent you out as a front man and I was steering you from the background. We can’t allow that impression, can we? Do you understand why I said you surely wouldn’t do that to us?”
“Yes, yes, I do! And I haven’t forgotten anything.” I shook my head. “Set your mind at rest, I’m not declining to represent him.”
He nodded, obviously very pleased.
I stood up and looked at him. “I’m not letting the man down when he needs help. Whatever he’s been up to.”
He nodded. Then he said quickly, “And we may be in luck. It could be that Frau Fuchs herself doesn’t want this… this sex stuff broadcast far and wide. Because she won’t want the new boyfriend to hear about it.” He laughed. “Maybe he’s a little prim about that kind of thing.” Then he asked quickly, “How much time do we have left? Until the hearing, I mean?”
“A good two weeks.”
He nodded. “Tell me if you have any questions. I mean, we should sit down together again anyway and discuss the whole case. In all its aspects. And all the eventualities. The judge is Dr Pandlitz, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” He seemed to be in such high spirits that I was afraid he would go on chatting for ever now. “I’ll get down to work,” I said.
“Yes, good. Do you have a lot to do today?”
“No, but there are some things I have to catch up on.”
“Yes, do that. But not too much of it.” He laughed.
I was still with Simone and Frau Enke when he left the office in his hat and coat. “I have a meeting now,” he told us. “And then I’m lunching at home. Enjoy your own lunch, all of you.”
“Same to you, Dr Hochkeppel,” said the ladies in chorus.
36
Over the next few days I called Klofft twice. Both times Cilly answered the phone, and both times she said only that he was all right, but he was asleep in his chair just now. I didn’t feel quite comfortable about this, and I didn’t want to wait for the end of the week and then sacrifice the weekend to getting rid of that uneasy feeling. I called him on Friday at noon, when I had finished my spell in court. Once again Cilly answered.
I said I had to see him to show him a document, and asked if I could drop in.
She said yes, of course, and then against all expectations we would see each other again.
This time, as I was coming straight from court, I drove not along the expressway by the river but through the old suburb. It was a hot day. An Indian summer had set in, and women wore summer dresses and sandals and left their legs bare. Only the older Turkish women went about in their heavy, ankle-length garments. Their wrinkled brown faces under their headscarves ought to have been shiny with sweat, but they looked dried out. Once again my image of Cilly came to the front of my mind. Her graceful, suntanned limbs stretched out on the deckchair in her garden.
I stopped at traffic lights and felt as if I could catch, through the open door of the old house, its slightly musty but cool smell, felt as if I could see the muted glow of the floor and wall tiles in the hall, the dimly lit wooden stairs. Then a breath of wind blowing through the open car window brought me the smell of fresh vegetables and fruit from the lavish display in front of the shop on the corner here.
Not Olga but Cilly opened the door to me. She was wearing her painter’s smock and green sandals on her bare feet. The sandals made an attractive contrast to the red of the varnish on her toenails.
She invited me in, closed the door behind me and said in an undertone, “I thought we were never going to set eyes on each other in this world again.” She laughed softly.
I said, instinctively lowering my voice as well, “I’m sorry… I really do have a lot of work to do.”
“And that’s all? Really?”
She looked up, as if to see whether there was anyone up there eavesdropping on us. Then she put her hand on my arm and led me to the other end of the hall, where she stopped and stood right in front of me. She left her hand on my arm.
She said, “Not in a bad mood? No resentment of our difference of opinion?” Her eyes shone in the dim light. “Not sick and tired of this old woman and her unpredictable whims and moods?”
“What on earth are you talking about?” I said. “You’re not an old woman!”
It was the same as the first time we kissed on the sofa in her studio: I don’t know now how it happened, whether I made the first move or she did, but suddenly our lips were together, and this time it was not a gentle kiss that she gave me. I felt her tongue and then her teeth, and finally she thrust her stomach forward and pressed it to mine.
I did not retreat, although the question of whether she wasn’t afraid of the risk throbbed inside my head. Because it was a risk we were running, she in particular, even if Olga wasn’t in the house, or Karl, or any of the other servants, of whom there were several, the gardener or the cleaning lady or whoever. I didn’t retreat.
I felt as if I were in a dream, absurdly enough in a child’s dream, a dream of something forbidden, an adventure, an expedition along a winding, overgrown path where I had been strictly forbidden to walk, but on which, once I had made my way into the undergrowth, unguessed marvels lay ahead. Her perfume, now that I had come closer to her than ever before, developed its own positively magical fragrance, enveloping and confusing me.
Her grasp of my arm became stronger; I felt every one of her spread fingers. Then she drew me with her through a door into a passage that possibly led to the kitchen, and from the passage into a small room lined with shelves, with dim light falling in through a small window right under the ceiling.
What I felt was a series of wildly chaotic perceptions and feelings. I thought I felt the warmth from outside resting on the window and radiating from within, but the cool of the room asserted itself and did me good. It was late summer reviving our animal spirits. Cilly’s perfume mingled with a rather more astringent aroma, which went together with my excitement, but there was also a breath of air like grass wet with rain and flowers in bloom, and unidentifiable nuances coming from the shelves of strange, exotic spices, vinegar, delicious sauces in jars and bottles, a memory of the way the old villa used to smell in the days of its rich, upper-class inhabitants.
Finally I realized that I was standing behind Cilly, very close to her. I was doing what she obviously expected me to do, what I wanted to do myself in an ardent outbreak of desire. And in the closest of all c
ontacts I felt what I had hoped for, and I think she was feeling the same.
But even as, lost to the world, I was making my way forward along that magical path, I felt the tension in me suddenly relax and finally disappear. I felt myself inexorably going slack. For a while I tried to ignore it, hoping the process would reverse itself. But in the end I had to see that nothing more was possible. I said, in a husky voice, “I’m sorry, but…”
As I rearranged my clothes, she straightened up. She was smiling. Then she placed her hand lightly on my arm and led me out, back into the hall. Once again she glanced up at the first floor.
When she turned to me again, I said in a low voice, “I don’t know what that was all about… such a thing has never happened to me before. Really, never! I really am sorry. Very, very sorry!”
Without making any great effort to keep her voice down, she said, “You don’t have to apologize, silly! And maybe that’s never happened to you before, Superman! But you can be sure it hasn’t happened for the last time. And it happens to other people too, not least the strong men who often can’t stop talking about how it always stands up for them!”
I frowned.
She said, “Yes, all right! I’ll behave myself and mind my language. And I didn’t mean to tread on your toes. Only to make it clear that you’ve nothing to feel ashamed of. You know, a great many men have a built-in emergency brake. You should be glad of that!” She smiled and shook my arm. “Perhaps you thought of Frauke. Just in time. You were thinking of her, maybe only at the back of your mind, but that was enough. It was all over and done with.”
I said, “You’re being very kind to me. Thank you!”
“Nonsense!” she said. And then she asked, “Would you like to go up and see him now?”
I said, “No! Now… no, no. Not now.”
“But you brought a document that you wanted to show him.”
“Oh, that… it can wait. I can come back.”
“I hope you will. But we can go and see whether he’s awake all the same, can’t we? He’d probably be glad to see you.”
“No, no… I think…”
She looked at me, smiling. I didn’t know what to say. She asked, “Do you have inhibitions about seeing him just now? Guilty conscience? Scared?”
“Oh well, how…”
“Come on, be a man!” she said. “And then you can see he’s still alive, and I haven’t murdered him and buried him in secret!”
She took my arm and led me to the stairs. I followed her up. I’d have felt ridiculous overtaking her and going ahead this time, as etiquette demands.
When we had reached his door, she stopped, looked in and put a finger to her lips. She took hold of the door handle and very cautiously opened the door.
The computer monitor was switched on. But Klofft was slumped slightly sideways in his chair with his eyes closed, head on his shoulder, breathing slowly but peacefully. He was obviously asleep.
The thought passed through my mind that he might have observed our incomplete but ardent indiscretion, maybe through secret cameras in the hall and the dimly lit storeroom. And now he was only pretending to be asleep.
She smiled at me, and then carefully closed the door.
37
Late on the Sunday afternoon, when I was sitting with Frauke at her dining table playing Scrabble, Herr Manderscheidt called my mobile. Frauke looked up briefly from her tiles, lowered her eyes again and seemed to go on wondering how she could use up all her remaining tiles at once.
Herr Manderscheidt said, “Sorry to disturb you, Dr Zabel. I just wanted to let you know that Herr Schmickler is back again.”
“Ah. And have you also found out whether there’s any particular reason for that? Apart from the lovely Käthchen?”
“Well, I assume he’s come to give her a little more support before the hearing begins. It’s set for quite soon, am I right?”
I had to think for a moment. Then I said, “Yes, a week tomorrow. But you don’t want to take me to the races again, do you? To take another look at those two?”
“No, no! No horse races today.” He paused for a moment and said, “Ice hockey, that’s all.”
“What? You mean Frau Fuchs is going to watch an ice hockey match with him too?”
“Well, yes. Interesting game! Haven’t you ever heard of the local derby?”
“No, sorry.”
“No need to be sorry. It’s your loss. No, no… there won’t be much to see today apart from their usual billing and cooing. Well, the game, yes, but otherwise…” He hesitated. Then he said, “Well, the fact is, that lad from Klofft’s works is going to be there meeting them again. You remember, the young man who was sitting whispering with them in the stands. The mole you thought so amusing. By the way, did I tell you I was right? He really does work for Klofft. Although not for much longer, I suspect. In the human resources department, would you believe it? Maybe he’s been looking up, on Frau Fuchs’s behalf, all those cases in which Klofft put pressure on people with his dirty tricks. Or worse than pressure. Ammunition for her lawyer, anyway.”
I said, “Herr Manderscheidt…”
“Well, never mind,” he replied. “By the way, it occurs to me, you did pretty well at the races the other day, am I right?”
I said, “Yes, I won, if that’s what you mean.”
“You could put it like that, yes. I saw the figure. Not a bad return on your fifty.”
I said, “Herr Manderscheidt! I am here with my… my fiancée, and we are in the process of preparing to spend a pleasant Sunday evening together.”
I felt rather than saw that Frauke was staring at me, open-mouthed.
Manderscheidt said, “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t know that.” He laughed. “I thought a man like you would work right through the weekends. Do please forgive me, and…”
I interrupted him. “We’ll speak some other time, Herr Manderscheidt.”
He said hastily, “Yes, of course, and… wait, wait, don’t hang up yet! I’ve thought of something else you ought to know. I think it’s something you really should know.”
He stopped. After a while I said, “Yes. What the hell is it?”
“Just a moment, just a moment. I don’t know whether you’ll want to know it!”
“Well?”
He paused again, and then said, “Klofft also wants to follow those two with me some time soon. To see what they get up to in the street like that, in public. Or in a restaurant.”
“What?”
“That’s what he wants to do. He told me so.” He let his breath out audibly. “Wants to form a picture for himself.”
“Surely you’re not going to allow that?” I said.
He pretended not to know what I meant. “Why not?”
I asked, “Do you want to kill him?”
“Dr Zabel, I’ve told you already, I’m not my clients’ therapist. And he’s employing me. If he wants to—”
I interrupted him. “But he can’t… I mean, damn it all, he can’t get around at all without that walker on wheels! He’ll fall flat on his face in the street if you get him there, on the spot. Do you want to—”
This time he didn’t let me finish. “Hold on! Do you think I’m stupid? I know all that! To set your mind at rest, I’m going to lift him into my car with the kind assistance of Karl; that’s his chauffeur. Into the back seat. He won’t be as comfortable there as in his own handsome limo, but he can sit quietly there and watch the world going by. And as I have special blinds for the windows in the back, and I’ll put them up, he can look out but no one looking in can recognize him from outside. Any more questions?”
I said, “Herr Manderscheidt, until now I’ve considered you a responsible man. But if you do this, then I shall think of you as an unscrupulous…” I bit back the word on the tip of my tongue.
“Wait a moment, Dr Zabel,” he said. “I don’t have to take that sort of thing from you! The man’s been grown up for quite some time. He should know what he wants and what he can or ca
n’t do. In addition, I have a contract with him, and according to the contract he pays the piper so he can call the tune. And maybe you don’t yet know it, but if not: even in your job you’ll find out that the client is king!”
I cut him off and threw my mobile down on the table. It skittered across the table top and knocked into my rack of lettered tiles, sending them flying all over the place.
Frauke was looking at me in silence. I said, “That pompous idiot wants to take Klofft hunting with him. Next time he goes snooping on Frau Fuchs and her boyfriend.”
“What’s so bad about that?”
“That pair of lovebirds act in the street almost as if they were on their own in some sleazy hotel!” I shielded my letters with my hand and rearranged them in the rack.
Frauke shook her head. “Well, I expect they’re in love.”
“You could say that, yes. Pushing their tongues down each other’s throats and…” She frowned. “It’s very graphic.”
“So I suppose Herr Klofft won’t like watching the two of them putting on this exhibition—”
“Won’t like it? It’ll kill him!”
She looked at me in silence. Then she said. “I just don’t get it. You can’t like the man, not the way you are.”
“What way am I?”
She waved that question away, frowning, and then turned back to her letters. And the day was saved, because suddenly she found inspiration, and while the word prophylaxis didn’t use up all her letters, she got rid of the most difficult ones, and in the next round she did it and won the game.
The following night I woke up suddenly. Frauke was lying beside me, fast asleep, one of her long, smooth legs at an angle on top of the sheet, now and then sucking peacefully at the pillow she had propped under her head.
I had gone to her place with some apprehensions, but this time they hadn’t been justified. The debacle with Cilly had not been repeated. With Frauke, it had all been the way we were used to, just the way we enjoyed it. While I was thinking of that, and feeling glad of it, I suddenly wondered whether that had, in fact, been the most important aspect of my adventure.
The Stronger Sex Page 27