The Stronger Sex

by Hans Werner Kettenbach

  “For the last time, Herr Klofft, I call you to order!” thundered Panda.

  Klofft replied, his voice fainter but distinct, “Call anyone or anything you like! The state gives you immunity. Do you think I don’t know what’s going on here? How often will that tart let you do it to her in return for a nice decision? Well, carry on without me, my dear fellow, I’m not sitting here to watch this! I’m off!”

  Karl whispered to me, “Support him!”

  I took Klofft under the armpit. Karl hurried out.

  I said, in an undertone, “Just a minute, Herr Klofft. We’re going to get you out of here.”

  He said roughly, “Not you – you’re not going anywhere. You just stay put. What do you think I’m paying you for?” His face was red, his forehead wet with sweat.

  Karl came back with the wheeled walking frame, and put it where Klofft could get at it. Klofft took hold of it with both hands and wheeled himself away from the defendant’s table. Karl followed him, both arms slightly raised.

  The judge, standing very upright, followed this manoeuvre in silence. One of the spectators opened the courtroom door. Klofft wheeled himself out, followed by Karl. The spectator closed the door behind them. A sobbing sound was heard from the plaintiff’s table.

  I said, “Your Honour, I’m sorry… I would like to apologize for my client’s behaviour.”

  “And so you should, Dr Zabel!”

  I said, “He’s… this case has left him in a… a state that he couldn’t cope with. He is very ill.”

  “That may well be so. But first…” He lowered himself into his chair again. “First something else.” He raised the microphone of his tape-recording device to his lips. “The defendant Herbert Klofft is fined nine hundred euros for contempt of court in this tribunal, as an alternative to three days’ imprisonment for contempt of court.” He lowered the microphone and looked at me. “And he’s got off lightly, as I don’t suppose I have to explain to you.”

  “No, Your Honour, you don’t.”

  He nodded and then looked at Gladke. “Dr Gladke, would you please continue with the statement you were making?”

  Gladke said, “Your Honour, after consultation with my client I would like to leave it for the moment. I refer you to our charge sheet.”

  “Yes, of course. Good.” His dark eyes turned to me. “Anything else you wish to say, Dr Zabel?”

  “No, thank you, Your Honour.”

  The judge said, “In view of this… unusual incident I adjourn the hearing for…” He looked at the time, and thought. “For a quarter of an hour.” He rose and walked out fast, hunching his head down again in the doorway.

  41

  As soon as the door had closed behind Panda, a babble of voices broke out in the courtroom. It seemed as if everyone present had come to a decision on the case and wanted to make it known to everyone else as quickly as possible. I saw two of my legal colleagues from other chambers obviously making for me. I turned away and got out of the door along with a number of others.

  A mature lady whose breasts I happened to brush past in the crowd told me, her eyes swimming with emotion, “I don’t think you can win this case, you know, but you’ve done very well up to this point, I can tell you!”

  What was the matter with the woman? Considering what I had to say and the way I’d said it, I couldn’t have made much of an impression on anyone but old fogies like Klofft and Hochkeppel. Surely not on a woman?

  Unless of course her husband had been unfaithful to her with some highly finished piece like Katharina Fuchs?

  I pushed away the malicious expression. I had in fact felt a surge of sympathy when I heard Katharina Fuchs sobbing. I knew her grief was not provoked by her break-up with Klofft, or the scene he had made in court. I had been the one who really hurt her badly. My cutting remarks, the disgraceful insinuations that I myself had relished when I was in full swing making my statement, had got so far under her skin that she couldn’t suppress tears.

  Gladke was right: I had been cold, rough and unfeeling. Only Klofft’s silent applause had made me doubt myself.

  I retreated into a niche by a window and tried to force down the self-reproaches that were troubling me. Suddenly I heard a voice. Manderscheidt’s voice, of course. There was absolutely no shaking off the man.

  “My dear Dr Zabel, I’d never have believed it of you!” he said. “You really are a cunning dog! The way you steamrollered that girl! She was distraught! My respects to you!”

  I turned and looked at him angrily. He must have noticed there was something wrong. “Well,” he said, “I’m only saying what the general impression in the courtroom was. They really enjoyed listening to you.”

  He smiled a little awkwardly. But of course that wasn’t all he wanted to say. He probably wanted to offer a little more consolation, spread a little balm on the injuries he suspected I had suffered. He said, “And then along comes that old fool, barging in like a bull and trampling over everything you’d built up so brilliantly. I’d have liked to chase him out of the courtroom myself, I can tell you. Talk about idiocy! Just because he can’t forgive the woman for breaking up with him! And having another go at Pandlitz! Incredible!”

  I looked at him without showing any reaction. He tried to get to the end of what he had to say, although all of a sudden he seemed uncomfortable in my company.

  “I can’t wait to hear what kind of settlement Pandlitz is going to propose once he’s cooked it up in his little room there! Of course you can never predict the outcome of a hearing in advance, most certainly not with this judge. But I’m sure that if the old man hadn’t come in and then lost his temper, you’d have got him a much better deal. I’d bet on it, in fact; what do you think, Dr Zabel?”

  “Let’s wait and see,” I said.

  Manderscheidt said he could do with a coffee now, and when I nodded, he asked whether he could bring me one as well. I gave him the money, and watched with relief as he walked off in the direction of the cafeteria. By the time he came back, two middle-aged men who introduced themselves as committee members of the Chamber of Trade and Industry had involved me in a conversation that was no more welcome to me than Manderscheidt’s compliments, but at least shielded me from him. He gave me my coffee and took his own straight back into the courtroom. The aroma of mine rose to the nostrils of my companions, and as their secretaries weren’t with them, they excused themselves and trotted off to the cafeteria themselves.

  I drank my coffee, still seeing Frau Fuchs in my mind’s eye drying her tears with that ridiculously small, fine handkerchief, and once again I had to force down a sense of dissatisfaction with myself. Suddenly I saw that Herr Manderscheidt had appeared in the courtroom doorway. He caught my eye, raised his forefinger and pointed repeatedly to the courtroom behind him. I made haste to get in there myself. Someone called, “Adjournment over!” and I just managed to get to my place before the crowd started jostling at the door.

  Panda was standing in his place, watching the spectators pushing their way to the rows of chairs and the side aisles, murmuring and coughing. Someone took a last look out and closed the door. Panda’s majestic glance quelled the noise.

  “Please sit down!” he said. After all the rustling and the sound of chairs being pulled out and pushed back had died away, he sat down himself, cleared his throat, picked up his microphone and said, in measured tones, “In the legal dispute concerning dismissal without notice, Fuchs versus Klofft, the court proposes to the parties the following settlement. First, the parties shall agree that the relationship of employment between them, on the grounds of dismissal for operational reasons by the employer as detailed in the bill of complaint today, 10 September 2007, shall be terminated on 31 March 2008. Second: that by that date the relationship of employment shall be properly wound down. Third: that the defendant shall pledge himself to pay the plaintiff, in compensation for the loss of her position in his firm, the sum of ninety-nine thousand euros in accordance with paragraphs nine and ten of the Protec
tion Against Wrongful Dismissal Act. Fourth: the defendant shall declare that he will not maintain the accusations of conduct contrary to the contract of employment raised in his written notice of dismissal of 22 July. Fifth: compliance with the terms of this settlement shall put an end to all mutual claims of the parties arising from the relationship of employment and its termination, as well as from the present legal dispute.”

  The judge put both elbows on his table and linked his fingers. After a glance around the courtroom he said, “There is one more remark that I would like to make orally: in view of the obviously severe disruption of the relationship of employment that has been made clear in this tribunal, the court assumes that the defendant will release the plaintiff from all obligation to her conditions of employment with immediate effect. The defendant should put that on record immediately after the conclusion of the settlement before this tribunal.” After a short pause he said, “There remains only the question of whether the parties will accept this settlement.”

  Gladke whispered briefly and urgently with his client, who began to nod. I said, “If you will allow me, Your Honour, I would like to discuss the matter with my client.”

  Panda said, “I can understand that. Then I suggest, if you are in agreement, that for the sake of simplicity we all meet here again for a second hearing, let’s say…” He opened his diary and leafed through it. “Let’s say a week from today, the seventeenth of September, at twelve? Would that suit you?”

  Gladke and I began consulting our own diaries, and said almost in unison, “Yes, that would suit us.” Panda entered the date in his diary. Then he rose and said, “Until today week, then. Good day to you.” He hurried to the door into the judge’s room, hunched his head down and disappeared.

  Gladke was grinning. He leaned over in my direction and said, “That’s what I call a settlement, eh? What do you think of it?”

  “Let’s wait and see.”

  I noted down the essential points of Panda’s proposal for a settlement, and put the sheet of paper in my breast pocket. As I stood up, I met Katharina Fuchs’s eyes. She was standing up at the plaintiff’s table, with Herr Schmickler leaning over her from behind, holding her close to him with both his arms around her waist, and she was giving me a mocking smile as she stood in her lover’s embrace. I didn’t mind that; it helped me to shake off my pangs of conscience.

  I tried to avoid any conversation on the way out, giving a friendly smile as I passed all the people who came toward me with the obvious intention of expressing their sympathy. I climbed down the steps to the underground car park on foot as well, and managed to get to my car, which I had left a little way from the main parking areas, without letting anyone speak to me. Once I had slammed the car door behind me, I took a deep breath.

  What a catastrophe! Talk about a “proposal for a settlement”! What a disaster!

  Panda had meted out painful chastisement to the masterful and arrogant Klofft. I wasn’t sure what he had thought of the case until Klofft appeared at the hearing. I had at least felt I was scoring points with Panda in my answer to Gladke’s charges. And I had begun to hope that I’d go home with a settlement that would be reasonably favourable to my client. But Klofft’s performance had wrecked everything. He had, of course, reminded the judge keenly of the trouble he had given Panda before. And not least of Klofft’s attempt, even though it failed, to reject him as a judge on the grounds of bias.

  The judge had shown him who had the whip hand. He had given my client a lesson that might, I felt, kill him.

  Klofft was not going to accept this settlement, which was no real settlement. He couldn’t accept it without waving goodbye to all his own principles and values.

  42

  On the way back, and at the first red light, I started thinking how Pandlitz had worked out his proposal for a settlement.

  He had specified that we had here dismissal (in this case wrongful) for operational reasons – the other two possible grounds of dismissal being for personal or behavioural reasons – so that Frau Fuchs would not have to fear any complications with the state employment agency or her medical insurance, and also that the employment relationship was to be “properly wound down”. For the same reason, he had not made Katharina’s immediate release from the terms of her contract of employment part of the written text, but had ordered that Klofft must provide it separately for the records of the tribunal.

  The compensation that the judge wanted to impose on my client was indeed a large sum. But after a little thought I worked out why he had set it at that. According to a current rule of thumb, compensation is worked out on the basis of gross monthly salary multiplied by the number of years the employee has been with a company, and the result is multiplied again by a factor that can vary between 0.5 and 2.0.

  Katharina’s most recent monthly salary had been 6,000 euros, and that sum, multiplied by her eleven years with the firm, came to 66,000 euros. He had multiplied the figure again by 1.5. That was generous, but within the framework of what was possible.

  Klofft wouldn’t see it that way. He had wanted to punish his lover where it hurt for her double disloyalty – to his life’s work with the firm, and to himself personally in dumping him for that handsome young Swiss man from the travel industry, a tennis player, rock climber, yachtsman, surfboarder. He had wanted to leave her painfully scarred for life. And now, instead, that self-satisfied judge was aiming to ruin him, the victim of that disloyalty, morally by extracting money from his pocket and handing it straight over to that woman.

  She would leave him for ever to begin a new life. She would go off to Switzerland with her handsome boyfriend and the loot, climb mountains and bathe in the lakes. Maybe she would find a new job, even a slightly better-paid one. She had let him down and left him alone.

  And her reward would be to live a happy life – unlike him.

  When I saw an empty parking slot, I went into it and called Hochkeppel. He had been in the office since early today. “He’s already been asking about you,” Simone told me.

  Hochkeppel came on the line. “Hello, Alex? How did it go?”

  I said, “I don’t know what you expected, but I’m afraid I have a worst-case scenario to report.”

  He didn’t reply for a moment, and then asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Pandlitz proposed a settlement that Klofft isn’t going to accept. Can’t accept, if you ask me.”

  “Tell me the details.”

  “Klofft is to terminate their relationship of employment on 31 March on operational grounds. He is to agree that from now up to that date she is free from her contractual obligations, and to pay her ninety-nine thousand in compensation.”

  Another silence before he asked, “How did it get to that point?”

  “I’m not entirely sure what the reason was. In fact I had an impression it was going pretty well for us. But then Klofft took it into his head to alienate his old enemy Pandlitz. Pandlitz and more or less everyone else in the courtroom.”

  “What? Was Klofft there?”

  “Not at the start. But after a while he burst into the middle of the hearing. With his chauffeur. And finally he lost his temper and shouted. While Gladke was speaking. Gladke was saying that his client had served the firm loyally. And Klofft shouted that it was a fine kind of loyalty, the woman wasn’t loyal, she was a slut of the worst kind. And a bitch on heat, yes, he shouted that out in the courtroom. And then he left.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “You’d better. If you say that a few more times I’ll end up not believing it myself any more!”

  After a moment he said, “What are you doing now?”

  “I’m on my way to see him and inform him. I’m afraid it all has to be done in rather a hurry.”

  When he did not respond again, I said, “Well, till later, then.”

  He said quickly, “Alexander!”

  “Yes?”

  After a pause he said, “You do know, don’t you, that you now have a va
lid reason to decline to represent him further?”

  “Yes, I know, but I’m not going to.”

  “Why not?”

  I laughed. Then I said, “Loyalty, I suppose. I’ll be in touch later.”

  I ended the conversation and called Klofft’s villa. Cilly answered.

  “Is he home yet?” I asked.

  “Yes. Karl and I got him to bed. I don’t know if he’s asleep, but he wanted to lie down. And be left in peace.”

  I said I had to let him know the outcome of the hearing. She hesitated, and then asked, “Well?”

  It took me some time to get a reply out. “I don’t know how he’s going to come to terms with it. It… it’s a bad outcome for him. Very bad.”

  She said, “OK. I’m here.”

  When she opened the door to me, she wasn’t wearing her painter’s smock but white jeans, with a blue-and-white check blouse, white sandals and a blue headband in her hair. She raised her head and kissed my cheek. Then she went upstairs ahead of me. She reached out to the door handle on the left, waited until I was beside her and then opened the door.

  Klofft was lying on a broad bed beside the back wall of the room, with his eyes closed, dressed in a dark-grey tracksuit and his socks. There were three stacks of books on a bedside table, and a large table lamp with a shade; a bucket stood in front of the table. You could hear him breathing quietly.

  Cilly tiptoed toward the bed. “Herbert?” she said.

  He didn’t move.

  She went another step closer. “Herbert? Dr Zabel is here.”

  His eyelids opened. His eyes wandered over the ceiling for some time, and then around the room until they fixed on Cilly.

  She said, “Dr Zabel is here. He has… some information for you.”

  He made an indefinable sound, and moved his hand as if to beckon me closer, then patted the right-hand side of the bed.

  Cilly moved a chair up, took the bucket and put it down on the other side of the bed.