The Stronger Sex

by Hans Werner Kettenbach

  I sat on the chair. Klofft’s eyes wandered over the ceiling again, then spotted me and rested on my face. He smiled, with a little difficulty; his face seemed to me curiously distorted, and less mobile than ever.

  Klofft said, “Do you know what I was dreaming?”

  “No. But I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  “Yes. Yes, I will.” He smiled. “I don’t know why I tell you things I’ve never told anyone else.”

  He was still smiling at me, but he stopped talking. Finally I said, “Is that so?”

  “Yes, it is. People tell you things; you’d probably have made a good CID officer.” After a brief pause he said, “Oh, nonsense. But anyway you’re a damn good lawyer.” He closed his eyes.

  I was afraid he might fall asleep. After a while I said, “So what was your dream about?”

  He smiled, in silence, and then suddenly said, “I dreamed about my mother.”

  After another long silence I said, “I expect it was a good dream?”

  “You bet it was!” He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Anything I could dream about her, no matter what… it would have been good, do you see? There was nothing, absolutely nothing about her that wouldn’t have been good. If you see what I mean.”

  “Of course. Of course I see what you mean.”

  He closed his eyes again, moving his lips in silence. Then he said, “Not that she didn’t tell me off! No, indeed, she often whacked me one!” He was speaking with a little difficulty, concentrating on one sentence at a time. “She wasn’t one of those mothers who postpone that sort of thing. Threatening kids with their fathers. ‘Just you wait till Papa gets home!’ Not her. It was only when I’d done something really bad that she told my old man about it. And then he’d give me another whacking. But she dealt with everyday things herself. And at once.”

  He laughed. “And the slaps she did hand out, well, she had a good strong arm, I can tell you! There were quite a few of them over the course of time.” He laughed again. “Well, the everyday things… and there were quite a few of them with me, too. I’d usually been up to something when I came home. And she could mostly tell. I don’t know how, probably just by looking at me.”

  I said, “My mother could do the same. I used to go red when she just gave me one of her looks.”

  He laughed. “Exactly. Women can probably do that. Unlike…” He stopped short and then went on. “Well, take me, for instance… a woman can tell me a whole pack of lies before I notice a thing! I always let myself be tricked.”

  “Do you really think so?” I said. “I’ve always felt you were rather… well, very distrustful.”

  “What?” He thought about that for a moment and then made a dismissive gesture. “Nonsense, and I wasn’t going to talk about that.”

  “You were telling me about your mother.”

  “Exactly. And she was the real thing. Good as gold. I never caught her telling a lie, not once!”

  Obviously wanting to know my reaction, he raised his head, turning his eyes so that he could see my face.

  I nodded and smiled at him. He let his head fall back. “Good as gold.” He laughed. “And hard as iron when necessary.” He shook his head on the pillow. “Funny how all those things come back into your mind when you get old. All the things you remember.”

  Suddenly he reached up, trying to fit the pillow behind his neck so that he could see me without difficulty. I helped him.

  When I was sitting down again, he let out a long sigh, as if something had brought him relief. He waited for a moment and then said, “In that annexe of ours… maybe you remember about the three-window house and the narrow annexe in the yard where we had our kitchen on the first floor, and the bathroom behind it, and the veranda…”

  I nodded and smiled.

  He said, “In the little room between the kitchen and the veranda, the room with the bathtub standing on its lion’s paws in it, and beside it the stove – the stove was hammered copper sheeting – there was a cupboard in there as well. An old thing, it was probably once a bedroom cupboard and had been cleared out, and there was the marble slab there too, part of what they called a wash-stand, with a big china basin on it and a big china jug, both of them decorated with a pretty blue pattern around the rim… but I’m chattering on. What I wanted to say was, I kept my model ships in that cupboard. Viking ships, you wouldn’t know them now, of course, they went down well with the Nazis. Wait, what was it they said on the boxes… yes: ‘Under the Patronage of the Reich League of Naval Power’. My models were warships. Not because of the Nazi stuff, the wartime navy and all that, no, I just took an interest in the models. All grey, two destroyers, a cruiser. Battleships were too expensive. But I had a whole lot of speedboats, none of them bigger than a cockroach. And then we used to play naval battles. Sent out our fleets against each other and shot at them with tiddlywinks. At least you know tiddlywinks, I expect?”

  I said, “Yes, I do. I had a tiddlywinks game myself. Little coloured discs, you flip them into a bowl. And I know model Vikings too – but they’re cars.”

  “Yes, they built those after the war. These days you pay collectors’ prices for the warship models. A hundred euros is nothing. OK… but don’t keep distracting me; I was going to tell you about my mother.”

  “So you were.”

  “Well, those Viking models were in the old cupboard. But there was something else there, except I never could make out where it came from and what it was. A smell, but not an ordinary one. It had settled right into the compartments of that old cupboard. Sweet but very delicate… or no, strong, intense. And delicate at the same time. Violets. But only like violets. Much better. My auntie – she was a milliner – made hats and got to meet high-class people; maybe she’d brought my mother a cake of special soap, specially expensive soap some time, wrapped up in black tissue paper with a pattern of coloured tendrils on it. Soap from Colombia or Dar es Salaam or Heaven knows where.”

  He smiled. “My auntie had a weakness for such little luxuries. And maybe my mother kept that cake of soap in the cupboard for a long time but never used it. Because it seemed too good to be used in her Sunday bath. On a winter afternoon when there was snow on the window sills, and it was getting dark outside… and the fire behind the glass panes of the stove in the bathroom was flickering. Selenite panes – glass we called it, but that was wrong, of course. Anyway, the stove roared away. And the icy-cold little room between the kitchen and the veranda warmed up. But for her bath she used the flower-scented soaps in packs of three. From the pharmacist’s three buildings along the road.”

  His voice was gradually slowing down. He hesitated between sentences and often cleared his throat. “Damn it,” he said, “this is difficult! But I want you to understand it all.”

  I said, “I’ve understood it all so far. Or at least I think so.”

  “OK. Maybe my mother took the soap out of that cupboard one day – and threw it away, feeling bad about that. But there was nothing for it, the soap didn’t smell of anything any more. It had left all its fragrance in the wood of that cupboard. And there the fragrance stayed, coming out of the wood all the time. It brushed past my nose and… yes, it enchanted me, damn it all. That’s how it was. The fragrance enchanted me, can’t think of any other word for it.”

  “I do understand. I think.”

  “Really?” His mouth was twisted, but he beamed at me as if I had given him a valuable present. “And do you know what that fragrance meant to me?”

  “Tell me.”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know… probably sounds funny. Maybe ridiculous.”

  “Never mind, just tell me.”

  43

  He hesitated, but then, almost triumphantly, he said, “Love! Love pure and simple! That was what that smell called to life in me! You see… I felt so tenderly but so strongly moved that… well, I was happy. And at the same time I felt sore. Hurt. Pierced to the heart, don’t they say? Pierced and wounded to the heart. It was… wait… yes!” He forced
his rigid face into a smile. “Yes, it was a feeling like when I saw the little girl. The girl with the blonde braids. That happy feeling the moment I saw her. And the longing… the sadness when she just passed me by. And I didn’t know if I would ever see her again.” He raised his head. “Do you know Kreisler’s Liebesfreud and Liebesleid?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Fritz Kreisler. Viennese, a virtuoso violinist. And a composer. Famous in the 1930s.” He let his head drop back. “Maybe I’ll give them to you some time. Very simple melodies. But such… such double-stopping on the violin. Goes to the heart.” He laughed. “The heart again! Goes to the heart. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.” He laughed again and then closed his eyes, breathing deeply.

  After a while I looked at the time. I had to come out with my news at some point. I watched his chest rising and falling barely perceptibly under the tracksuit top. How could I shake him out of his drowsy state now and tell him about his favourite enemy’s cunning and malicious act of revenge – how could I upset him so much?

  Suddenly he said, “There’s something else I have to give you. Could be I’m dropping off to sleep again, but you must have it now, I mustn’t forget it.” He opened his eyes, raised his head and looked at the bedside table. “On top there, look, in the top book on the middle pile… there’s an envelope in it. It’s for you.”

  I picked up the book. It was a copy of Maupassant short stories, parallel French and German text. There was indeed an envelope in it, addressed in a large and obviously not entirely steady hand to “Dr Alexander Zabel – from Klofft”. I took the envelope out of the book. Its flap was sealed.

  “You can read it later,” he said, and laughed. “I don’t feel like discussing it now. Or answering stupid questions.” I looked at him and then put the envelope in my pocket.

  “You can put the book back on the pile,” he said.

  I asked, “Do you know French?”

  “A little.” He let his head sink back and closed his eyes. “Learned at my secondary school. For three years. Came in useful later.”

  I leafed through the book. Suddenly he asked, “Do you know La maison Tellier?”

  “No. I’ve just found it in here.”

  “Fine story. Max Ophuls made a film of it after the War, with two of the other stories. Plaisir. They’re in the book as well. Magical film.” He laughed. “The madam of a brothel closes the place temporarily and goes on an outing into the country with her half-dozen girls, for her niece’s first Communion. Of course the menfolk out in the country soon see what kind of girls they are and make approaches. But they go to the little church with the local families and the children and kneel down, very chic and a little dolled up, but they sit in the pews like good girls singing hymns with the congregation, all in their Sunday best, and the children are there, the girls with their little white wreaths, and the boys with their hair cut short and their ears sticking out and sprigs of greenery in their buttonholes. The children have such high voices, and they sing so loudly and fervently… really funny! The hymn that the ship’s band was playing when the Titanic went down. “Nearer, my God to thee, nearer to thee.” Very funny, but at the same time, somehow moving.” He laughed. “Goes to the heart.”

  Suddenly he opened his eyes. “Not that you want to get these things mixed up.” He raised his forefinger. “What I was talking about just now, love, you know what I mean, joy and sorrow – that has nothing to do with sex! We did sex with other boys, on the cellar steps or behind the rabbit hutch. And on our own, of course. Having fantasies about grown-up, curvaceous, black-haired women. I saw one like that when I was five, saw her naked by chance, and she was on my mind for a long time. Made me uneasy. But girls, no, they were something… something higher. Nothing dirty about it.” He raised his head and looked at me. “Was it like that for you?”

  “I don’t know… I think so, yes.”

  He put his head back again. “Love had nothing to do with sex. It was a very, very strong feeling, but not sexual. Sex, the real thing, that didn’t begin until later.” He chewed his lips, thought for a while and then said, “And it’s a funny thing: sex, real sex, kind of the other way round, often had nothing to do with love! When sex really got its claws into me a few years later, all I wanted was… was to ram it in. No objection if I liked the woman too. If she was nice. But that wasn’t essential.”

  After a pause he said, in a hesitant voice, “But with girls… the little one with the braids, and there were other girls I liked a lot now and then… I’d have hit my own fingers, no, I’d have hit myself in the face if an idea of… of what was under their clothes had come into my mind.” He thought for a moment and then said, “Nonsense, eh? There was no question of any such thought coming into my mind! There was nothing like that, nothing at all. Not even the trace of such a thought.”

  After a while he looked up and laughed. “Aren’t you ever going away again? Want to get all the secrets of my bloody life out of me, do you?”

  I stood up. I’d missed my chance. I couldn’t tell him about the worst-case scenario of my entire career so far and about his personal disaster, not now. I was afraid the shock might kill him. Then another thought struck me. Didn’t he want to know what the judge had decided? He ought to have been asking me about it.

  Or had he been so confused and agitated after his scene in court that he had forgotten all about what was on today’s programme there?

  “Just a moment!” he said. He looked at me with a forced smile. “You haven’t heard the point of the story about my mother yet!”

  “OK, tell me before I go.”

  He nodded. “Right. One day I quarrelled with my friend about his battleship model. It was the Admiral Tirpitz, a wonderful model. Four 38-mm twin turrets, you could move them. Of course the battleship had more firepower than the little boats, so its commander took more tiddlywinks out of the set. And Jochen Trump, that was my friend, he flipped them well, you have to give him that. When I sent out my speedboats for a torpedo attack, and he shot them down from the Tirpitz… ah, you should have seen those little grey beetles fly sky-high in the air, one by one!”

  He snorted. “Of course I wanted to have a go with the Tirpitz myself. At least for one battle. And he said I could. But that day we’d pushed the wash-set aside and set up our fleets for inspection and to position them on top of the cupboard, and I reminded him of his promise. I reached out for the Admiral Tirpitz to bring it over to my side, but then he grabbed my wrist – not the ship, of course, something might have happened to it – and he held it tight and tried to pull my hand with the ship over to his side. But I pulled back, and while we were wrestling like that, both of us furious but taking care not to hurt the Tirpitz or snap one of its masts by accident… well, in the middle of that the idiot suddenly let go of my wrist, and…”

  He sighed, breathing heavily out. “Well, you can guess what happened next. My elbow shot suddenly back, sweeping one of my models off the cupboard; luckily the model was all right, but my elbow struck the wash-set, and the jug and basin slipped over the edge of the marble slab – crash, bang!”

  He nodded. “Broken to bits! The big china basin and the jug. There were only tiny scraps of the pretty blue decoration around the rim left. You couldn’t tell what it had been like. Well, that was it for naval battles that day. We had our hands full picking up all the bits of the wash-set and taking them away before my mother came home; there were fragments even under the cupboard, which stood low. Then Jochen Trump said he didn’t have time to stay, he packed up his models and made off, the coward!”

  After a while, during which he had obviously been thinking, I asked, “What about your mother?”

  “Yes. My mother. She unpacked her shopping in the kitchen and put it away, but she didn’t, she just wouldn’t come into the bathroom. Although we had another store cupboard for food on the veranda. With a wire grid in front to keep flies out. And I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the wash-set unasked. Finall
y I couldn’t stand it any more. I went into the bathroom myself. I went up to the cupboard and even leaned a little way forward to breathe in the wonderful smell, trying to feel carried away by it.”

  He shook his head. “So then my mother did come in after all. She cast me a sharp glance, looked at the cupboard and asked, “Where’s the wash-set, Herbert?” I’d been wondering what to say. I wanted to tell her I was afraid her good wash-set was broken, and it was my fault, and I was very sorry, for one thing because the wash-set had been so pretty, but for another and most of all because I knew how fond she’d been of it; it was an heirloom. I don’t remember, but I may even have thought of putting my arms round her and kissing her cheek, but I don’t think so. You didn’t do that kind of thing in those days. Definitely not if you were a boy.”

  He made a dismissive movement. “Well, never mind that. I didn’t do anything. Nothing at all, and I didn’t say anything, I just stood there without a word and could only just manage to shrug my shoulders awkwardly. And then the storm broke. She gave me a slap such as I’d never had from her before and never did again. And I was just standing up again when she gave me another, this time on my other cheek, just as hard. And then she looked me in the eye with her brows drawn together, and turned away and went into the kitchen!”

  He raised his right hand to his forehead and rubbed it hard. Then he said, “And I didn’t dare to go after her and perhaps, even then, say what I’d wanted to say. I stood there, and finally I bent over the cupboard again and drank in the scent of it. My cheeks were burning, remorse was twisting my guts, and my sense of shame was there too, and I felt an overwhelming longing to wrap myself in that scent and let it carry me away. It was – I don’t know how to put it – it was a… a turmoil of emotions, crazy! It felt like being stood on my head and turned round and round… really odd!”

  He paused and then sighed. “Ah, well. That was the story.” He thought for a while longer, and said, “But now I realize it doesn’t have any point at all.”