The Stronger Sex

by Hans Werner Kettenbach

  He had appeared in the doorway from the judge’s room, which was of normal height, so that with his head slightly hunched between his shoulders he looked like a gigantic raven. He took a few swift strides in and got his black-robed and considerable girth behind the judge’s table, where he now stood upright, letting his dark eyes wander through the courtroom. Finally he said, “Would someone please close the door?”

  There was a slight clatter; some helpful volunteer must have been so startled by Panda’s apparition that, in his effort to do as the judge asked, he had stumbled. The door was closed. “Thank you,” said Panda.

  He sat down in his leather chair, opened the file he had brought with him, looked at Katharina Fuchs and from her to Herr Schmickler, who had withdrawn quietly to a seat in the front row of spectators but who, thanks to his tan, still stood out from the crowd, then looked back at Katharina and asked, “Are you Frau Fuchs?”

  She stood up and replied, “Yes, Your… Your Honour. Katharina Fuchs.”

  Panda raised a hand as if to reassure her, and said, “Please sit down.”

  Frau Fuchs sat down, a little hesitantly.

  “You do know,” said Panda, “that you didn’t have to be present at this hearing?”

  She swallowed, then nodded and said, “Yes, I know… Your Honour.” He nodded, looked at his file, then looked at Frau Fuchs again. “Your lawyer isn’t here yet?”

  “No, I…”

  As if on cue, the door opened, Gladke came in, tried to slam the door behind him and made haste, robe billowing, to his place, saying as he hurried past, “I’m so sorry, Dr Pandlitz, but I was…”

  “Yes, yes, never mind, spare us the rest of it. But I don’t like hearing a case with the door open.”

  Gladke cast an irritated glance over his shoulder. The door had failed to latch, and was opening slowly into the courtroom as if by the agency of a ghostly hand. Gladke was hurrying back with his robe swirling again when a spectator, probably the man who had made himself useful before, got up, took hold of the doorknob as if it had to be handled with kid gloves and closed the door without a sound.

  “Thank you very much,” said Panda.

  The man stood there rigid for a moment, then made a little bow and sat down again.

  Panda looked a little reluctantly at Gladke, who had now greeted his client by kissing her hand, then shaking hands with Herr Schmickler before gathering up his robe and sitting down on the chair next to Frau Fuchs. He picked up his briefcase, took out several files, finally sighing with satisfaction as if he had just caught the last bus. Then he leaned back and folded his hands on the table.

  The judge cast him another sharp glance and then opened the hearing. He summed up the charges in Gladke’s bill of complaint and the present situation succinctly and very precisely, and then looked at me. “Dr Zabel?”

  I expressed my thanks to Panda – Gladke responded to this with a smug smile – and made my opening statement in response to the charges. I confined myself to the two central arguments cited in Gladke’s complaint: first, his rejection of Klofft’s claim that Frau Fuchs had made her GP write her a medical certificate when she was not sick at all; second, his response to the accusation that Frau Fuchs had taken it upon herself to go on holiday when she did not have permission, which he answered with his extensive presentation of the medical and therapeutic qualities of the Beauté du Lac hotel.

  Since Klofft’s argument that the medical certificate had been obtained by devious means was undoubtedly a hazardous one to use, I left it alone, despite the researches of Manderscheidt aiming to show up Dr Wehling the GP as corrupt and lecherous. I had considered whether or not – against my client’s wishes – to cite Katharina’s threat to go off work sick if she was not given time off. I would have had to take into account Klofft’s protest, but the fear he presumably had that, to revenge herself, Katharina would cite the coercion he had exerted seemed to me unfounded. I didn’t think that the lovely Käthchen, obviously presenting herself as very much the perfect lady today, would want to answer questions about the details of that coercion, not in front of her new lover, and in the worst case – for her – she would have to admit that she had gone quite a long way in complying with her boss’s demands.

  On the one hand, my position was pitifully weak; on the other, I felt that I had some advantage in that Gladke’s little performance when he made his entrance seemed to have annoyed the judge. So I risked offering the double-edged statement that Frau Fuchs had threatened her employer. However, I put the threat into slightly veiled terms, so as not to provoke the lady and her lawyer too much, and did not give it in the forthright manner in which it had probably been made.

  I said that if my client had spoken, in his written notice of dismissal, of a medical certificate obtained by devious means, the plaintiff had, not least, provoked him to do so. In the discussion of the holiday she wanted to take all of a sudden, despite the precarious situation of the firm in dealing with orders, she had indicated several times that if she were refused time off, she might be away sick, and the company would then have to manage without her anyway.

  As I made my statement, I saw Gladke give a slight start, lean over to Frau Fuchs and whisper something to her. She whispered back.

  I said, maybe Frau Fuchs had meant to say only that we are all in God’s hands, and no one is immune from sudden illness or even worse. But nor could one blame my client if, in view of such expressions, he had doubted whether her following disorder was genuine. Particularly as she had fallen ill overnight, just at the beginning of the week’s holiday that she had planned.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Frau Fuchs shake her golden head vigorously, and when, as if casually and in search of the continuation of my argument, I let my glance rest on her, I met her own indignant gaze. She was sitting up very erect, there were flecks of angry red on her delicate cheeks, and her lips were moving. I thought I could read the word “Outrageous!” on them.

  And as I let my apparently seeking gaze leave her face, I saw Herr Manderscheidt. He was standing, with some other spectators for whom there had been no seats left, in the narrow aisle between the rows of seats and the side wall of the courtroom, and he actually had the nerve to give me an appreciative nod, a broad grin and the thumbs-up sign. I turned my eyes to the judge’s table, but luckily Panda was still in the same position, head tilted slightly and half-bowed, deep folds showing in his fat cheeks, his robe ruffled up like the plumage of a gigantic, brooding raven.

  I countered Gladke’s argument against the grounds we gave for dismissal – to wit, that Frau Fuchs had taken the leave she had not been granted on her own initiative – by explaining that no one could claim my client was unjustified in assuming that Frau Fuchs had indeed taken it upon herself to go on holiday without his permission, after expressing such an urgent desire to take that holiday – for reasons that, to this day, she had not explained to her employer, or in the proceedings leading up to this hearing in court.

  The tribunal should know, I continued, that over the last few years Frau Fuchs had been conspicuous for a lax attitude toward her hours of work. So far as her duty to observe them was concerned…

  Here I was interrupted by a sharp slapping sound from the plaintiff’s table. Katharina Fuchs, obviously indignant, had brought the flat of her hand down on the table top. It still lay there, and Gladke was busy patting it soothingly and whispering something in her ear.

  The judge, who had jumped, scrutinized the scene with a heavily furrowed brow. “Control yourself, Frau Fuchs!” he said. After a pause conveying menace, he turned to me. “Go on, please, Dr Zabel.”

  “Thank you very much, Your Honour!” I cleared my throat and said, “As I had been going to say before this regrettable interruption, which of course I…” Here I turned to the plaintiff’s table. Gladke was looking at me with a subdued but arrogant smile; Katharina Fuchs’s eyes were flashing at me. I smiled back. “…This unfortunate interruption, which I can of course well understand,
because what I have to say will not be pleasant hearing for the defendant, is as follows.”

  I straightened my shoulders under my robe, turned to the judge, crossed my arms and said, with a smile. “Frau Fuchs, then, has increasingly neglected her duty to observe her hours in the workplace, and in support of this allegation we offer in evidence, first, relevant notes made by Herr Gerhard Pauly, the firm’s authorized signatory; second, similar notes made by the head of the production department, and thus the immediate superior of Frau Fuchs, Dr Ralf Vogel, qualified engineer; and third, relevant observations made by three witnesses, all of them colleagues of Frau Fuchs, people who were in daily contact with her in the course of their work.”

  I paused, opened my file and pretended to be looking for something, then closed the file again. I saw that Katharina Fuchs kept shaking her head, as if what I was saying was outrageous and incredible. In spite of that, there was a tense silence among the spectators in the courtroom.

  I went on. In addition, I said, one could not and must not forget that during the week for which Frau Fuchs had obtained a medical certificate saying that she was sick, the human resources department of Klofft Valves had tried several times, but in vain, to get in touch with the sufferer by telephone at her home, to ask how she was, and had even sent someone from that department to see her, also several times but also in vain.

  Here I threw my right arm aloft, so that the sleeve moved dramatically, and said, “In view of this state of affairs, what kind of impression was my client likely to get of his employee’s illness, especially as it came at exactly the same time as—”

  The disturbance that interrupted me this time was even more violent than the first: there was a knock on the door, quite a vigorous one, and directly after that the door swung open to reveal the figure of Karl Schaffrath in his blue-grey chauffeur’s uniform, holding his cap in his left hand. Karl stepped aside, and behind him Herbert Klofft, supporting himself on his wheeled walking frame, made his way into the courtroom. Karl closed the door and followed Klofft, hands raised as if afraid that his employer might stumble and fall at any moment.

  40

  The judge sat motionless in his armchair, only his dark eyes moving. They examined Klofft from head to foot. Klofft wheeled himself closer to the judge on his walking frame, finally stopped and said in a slightly croaking voice, “I’m sorry, Dr Pandlitz, but it’s difficult for a disabled man to find a place to park near this courthouse. Without my loyal employee here,” he added, half-turning and indicating Karl, “without him it would have been impossible. I regard that as scandalous. And I say so regardless of the danger that your opinion, yet again, may differ from mine!”

  Panda rose to his feet, raised his open hand and moved it down through the air a couple of times, as if to stem Klofft’s flow of words. “Never mind that for now!” he said. “You do know, I suppose, that there was no reason at all why you had to attend this hearing? And it is my impression that your lawyer is representing you very ably.”

  Klofft did not react to this. Instead he said, “Hearing?” He laughed, a forced laugh. “Hearing, yes, yes, we know all about hearings!”

  Panda frowned and dismissed this remark. Then he looked over his shoulder. “I see there are still two chairs over there… perhaps you, sir, could?…” He pointed to Karl.

  Karl hesitated briefly, then stepped forward, made a little bow as he passed Panda and fetched a chair that had been standing behind the judge, came back with it and looked enquiringly at me. Meanwhile, stony-faced, I had acknowledged the arrival of Klofft. I took the chair from Karl and placed it beside mine at the defendant’s table.

  Karl helped Klofft to sit down on the chair. Klofft, who could not be used to sitting anywhere so uncomfortable, uttered a suppressed but audible groan as he let himself sink into it and gave his faithful employee several instructions in an undertone for helping him into a different position, directions that Karl tried to carry out with an enquiring look every time.

  The courtroom followed this procedure in tense silence. Panda sat there frowning. Finally Klofft pushed Karl aside with an abrupt, angry movement. Karl wheeled the walking frame away and joined the spectators in the side aisles near the door.

  The judge bent his head. Then he looked up and said, “Go on, if you please, Dr Zabel.”

  I looked at my file, acted as if I had to pull myself together, fought down my fury with Klofft, cleared my throat and said, “I won’t hold up this tribunal much longer. I will be brief.” After a glance up at the ceiling and a short pause I continued, “As I was saying, my client had very good reasons to assume that the plaintiff had wilfully and of her own accord taken the time off that had been refused to her for urgent reasons to do with the company for which she worked.”

  I thought as I spoke, God forbid that Gladke or even Panda might think of looking at those urgent reasons under the microscope, possibly coming up with Gaston Weber in Thionville. I said, “If, finally, you will allow me to say a word or two about the hotel in which Frau Fuchs spent her holiday” – I saw another vigorous movement at the plaintiff’s table – “and about the mountain of material with which my colleague Dr Gladke has thought it necessary to overwhelm this court.”

  I straightened my back, took a deep breath and then said, smiling. “This hotel, the Beauté du Lac, is what the travel agencies would call a de luxe outfit, frequented by Arab sheikhs, French and American actors and film directors, German entrepreneurs with their wives…” and after a little pause I added, “…or sometimes without them.” I waited for the suppressed laughter behind me to die down, as well as the glance of reproof that Panda cast at the spectators, and decided to finish by saying, “Such people are regular guests at that hotel. Of course!…”

  Here I interrupted myself. Panda had raised his hand. The courtroom was still restless, with whispering and laughter. Panda said, “Silence in the auditorium, if you please.” He stopped and let his dark eyes wander. The background noise died down. Panda looked at me. “And will you, Dr Zabel, please confine yourself to the matter in hand.” As I had lowered my eyes, I saw that Klofft’s chest was shaking with his own suppressed laughter.

  “Of course, your honour!” I took up at the point where Panda had interrupted me. “Of course this… er, de luxe outfit has associated itself over the last few years with a great deal of allegedly medical and therapeutic… let’s just say guff.”

  Gladke said under his breath, but clearly, “Incredible!”

  I went on. “It offers, for instance, the services of doctors who, for what is presumably a good fat fee, convey to the guests the impression that, between games of tennis and the cocktail hour, they are also enjoying the benefits of medical treatment. I won’t go into detail, it would take too much time, but we all know what to think of such charlatans and the so-called institutes they run: beauty spas, anti-ageing clinics and similar methods of alternative medicine. Over the past few years” – and I put my hand in my briefcase and took out a fat package of photos that Frauke had got from the archives of her paper for me – “a number of studies critical of that, er, branch of medicine have been published. I have put together” – and I held up the package – “a small selection from the last year. I don’t want to deluge the tribunal with all this, but of course it is at the disposal of the court if required. In any case, it is not unimportant, for in the light of these studies the many expert medical opinions brought back by the plaintiff from her holiday hotel appear… just a little dubious.”

  I put the package down. “And I will end there for now. Thank you for your patience.”

  I leaned back. Klofft raised his hands and gave me shaky but silent applause. The judge shot him a nasty look, and said, “Thank you, Dr Zabel. Dr Gladke… is there anything you would like to say in answer to your colleague?”

  “Oh yes, oh yes, your honour.” He stood up and shook the sleeve of his robe into place. I saw that Frau Fuchs was bending over the table, elbows propped on it, and holding in her right hand a
small, crumpled handkerchief, with which she dabbed her eyes. Her shoulders were shaking.

  Gladke said, “Your honour, and this tribunal! In a case where the… the human components are so obvious and will touch any open-minded observer so directly, I have seldom heard such a coarse and cold justification of a dismissal, a justification that in reality is inadmissible and ineffective in every respect. Such an unfeeling approach…”

  Panda said, without raising his voice, “Get to the point, please, Dr Gladke.”

  “At once, your honour!” I could see that Gladke was furious. He went on, “But no one, no one, your honour, can or should disregard the human aspects of this case. We see here a woman who for eleven years, eleven important years of her young life, placed her powers loyally – loyally and often to the point of self-sacrifice – at the disposal of an entrepreneur.”

  I saw Klofft moving vigorously. He drew up one leg, rested both hands on the edge of the table. I looked at him and put one hand on his arm to steady him. He shook my hand off.

  Gladke went on. “And then what happens? How is her loyalty rewarded? On a comparatively petty pretext, this woman is dismissed by the entrepreneur who has been employing her. As we have just heard for ourselves, without a moment’s hesitation he gets his lawyer to accuse her of neglecting her work. He throws her out overnight for fictional and false reasons. And this, I repeat, after eleven years, eleven years of conscientious and unselfish service! And now…”

  He never got to finish his sentence. With a huge exertion, Klofft got to his feet, hanging on to the table with both hands. “Conscientious? Unselfish?” he shouted.

  Karl came hurrying up from the back of the courtroom, took Klofft under the armpits and supported him. “What are you talking about?” Klofft cried. “Distorting the truth like that!”

  “Herr Klofft!” said the judge in a voice like thunder.

  Klofft croaked his answer, but it carried all the same. “Look at that woman! She’s a slut, a classic example of a slut. Loyal? She’s as loyal as a bitch on heat!”