The Stronger Sex

by Hans Werner Kettenbach

  “Oh, I think it does.”

  “No. But maybe it will have one if I go on a little. Just a very little.”

  “Tell me.”

  He said, “At some point I heard the kitchen door latch. I opened my door to the kitchen and listened. I thought my mother was going down the stairs. I closed my door and went to the window. Then I saw her going into the yard and up to the dustbin that stood by the wall, next to the little gate into the yard next door. She lifted the lid and looked in. That was all she did for some time, just looked into the dustbin. Finally she raised her hand, reached into the dustbin and took out a large broken piece of the wash-set. A piece from the rim of the jug, with the pattern around it still recognizable. She looked at the piece of china for a long time, and then put it back into the dustbin and closed the lid.”

  He stopped. I said, “But there is a point. That’s a beautiful ending.”

  He said with his eyes closed, “No, a beautiful ending would have been if, when she came up again, I’d said all that I wanted to say to her. That and perhaps more.” He sighed. “But I didn’t. Not that day, not on any of the days afterwards. There was… how can I put it? No more opportunity. Not until her death. Not until she was dead.”

  He said nothing for a while, then suddenly opened his eyes and raised his arm. “But now I’ve finally come out with it all! You’re a terrible fellow!”

  When I was standing up again, he said, “And don’t forget the letter.”

  I put the chair back against the wall, brought the bucket round from the other side of the bed and put it where it had been standing earlier. At the door I turned back once more. He smiled at me. I waved to him and went out.

  44

  I stopped on the landing, leaned forward, supporting myself on the post at the top of the banisters, and lowered my head. After a while I put my hand in my pocket and took out the letter, glanced at it again and then opened the envelope.

  It contained a sheet of notepaper with Klofft’s letterhead at the top. The text had been typed and printed out on a computer, with only the salutation and the signature handwritten, in Klofft’s large and slightly unsteady hand. The letter began:Dear Alexander,

  As the date will tell you, I wrote this before the hearing of our case. I did not want Dr Pandlitz, of all people, telling me what to do and what not to do. This is about the PROPOSAL FOR A SETTLEMENT WITH KATHARINA FUCHS.

  He had actually worked out the terms of a settlement in all due form for himself. Its gist was very much that of the settlement proposed by Pandlitz; he had even built in the same precautions to ensure that Katharina would have no problems with employment agencies and medical or pension insurance. Heaven knew where he had picked up these tricks of the trade.

  In two points, however, the proposal did differ from the judge’s. Klofft wanted to leave Katharina the choice of whether to terminate or continue her relationship of employment with the company. In the latter case, he was ready to undertake not to maintain any of his previous criticisms of her conduct. In addition he would pay all her costs in the legal dispute.

  However, if she preferred to terminate the relationship of employment, he offered her, as Pandlitz had laid down, a statement of dismissal for operational reasons on 21 March of the coming year, and immediate freedom of movement from now to that date. In addition, and again differing from Pandlitz, he offered compensation of 125,400 euros. Working it out, I saw at once that he had multiplied the sum of eleven times her monthly salary by not 1.5 but 1.9. He had probably used just the same rule of thumb as mine, but carried out the final multiplication by almost the highest factor.

  I whispered to myself, “What does he hope to get by that?” I couldn’t imagine that he would make her such a generous offer – generous to the point of self-denial on his part – without having some particular end in view.

  I heard a voice in an undertone. “Alex?…” I looked up. Cilly was standing at the foot of the stairs. Her hands were folded together and she was looking up at me. “Won’t you come down? Has something… has something happened?”

  “No, no, everything’s all right!” I went downstairs, stopped beside her and smiled at her. “I should think he’s asleep by now.”

  “Did you tell him?” she asked. Her eyes were very wide. “I mean, did you tell him the judge was… striking him such a crushing blow?”

  Crushing blow? I couldn’t remember saying anything about that.

  I said, “No. I didn’t say anything about the hearing and the proposal for a settlement.”

  She looked enquiringly at me. I said, “I was afraid it would be too much for him. Afraid he might have a heart attack, or something like that.”

  She nodded and smiled at me. Unexpectedly, she kissed me on the cheek. She seemed very relieved.

  Once again I didn’t know what to make of that. Something must have made her very anxious. Suddenly I thought of Hochkeppel.

  Had he perhaps called her after our conversation, telling her about it? He’d have had time to do that before I arrived at Klofft’s villa. Hadn’t I suspected once before that Cilly was conspiring with Hochkeppel? And he with her?

  She pointed to the letter that I was still holding. “What’s that? You were deep in it just now.”

  “Yes…” I had difficulty concentrating on her question. Then I laughed. “What’s this? Well, an astonishing document. But totally authentic.”

  She looked at me in surprise.

  I thought for a moment. But if Hochkeppel was really telling her everything, hot off the press, then she would very soon know anyway that her husband, that autocratic despot, was entirely unexpectedly giving ground in his dispute with Katharina Fuchs. No: more than that. He was capitulating entirely.

  I said, “Your husband is offering his ex-lover a settlement that she’s bound to jump at. This letter” – I raised it and shook it slightly – “is even more favourable to her than what the judge proposed. He’ll even leave it to her to choose whether to leave her job or go back to it.”

  She looked at me, frowning.

  “What do you think of that?” I asked.

  She said, “I think he wants her back.”

  “Well, yes, one might assume that. But he’s leaving her the choice. She can also go anywhere she likes. And in that case he’s offering her hefty compensation. Even more than the judge stipulated.”

  She shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. Her mouth turned down and she began to gnaw her lower lip. Finally she said, “Well, if that’s so…”

  “If what is so?”

  After taking a deep breath, she said, “If his offer leaves her better off even than the judge’s verdict…”

  “Not a verdict,” I said. “A ruling, a proposal for a settlement.”

  “Comes to the same thing. You know what I mean.”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  She frowned and thought. Then she said, “Well, if he wants to leave her in a better position than the judge… then you don’t need to tell him anything about that… that proposal by the judge, do you?”

  “But…”

  “I mean, it’s the snows of yesteryear! What the judge said. It’s been overtaken by Herbert’s offer.”

  I shook my head. “But I have to tell him if the court proposes a settlement in his case! OK, I could put off informing him for a day or two, if that seemed advisable because of his state of health. I can’t just keep something so… so important secret from him!”

  She glanced upstairs, took my arm and led me to the back of the hall. For a moment the desire she had kindled in me three days before flared up. Was she going to take me into that storeroom again?

  She stayed in the dim light in front of the doors in the background, holding my arm and looking at me with her dark, shining eyes. She whispered pleadingly, “But you said you were afraid what the judge said would kill him? That he might have a heart attack if he heard it? You did say that, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course I said it, but…”

 
In an urgent whisper, she went on, “Do you want to kill him after all, then?” And she added, “You’re his lawyer!”

  That took my breath away. But she wouldn’t take her eyes off me, and in the end there was nothing for it. I said, “Well, I’ll have to discuss it with Hochkeppel. I really can’t decide that on my own.”

  “Do that,” she said. “Discuss it with your boss.” She let go of my arm. “And think about what I told you. And not least what you said yourself.”

  She took me to the door. When I was going to take her hand, she put both her hands up to my head, drew it down to her and gave me a kiss on the forehead and another on the mouth.

  45

  On the way back to the office it struck me that I had seldom left that house without taking some kind of problem away with me, or some new experience that had surprised me and that I hadn’t understood. Was it because the people who lived there were so much older than me?

  I suddenly thought of the story that Klofft had told me about his mother, and the second point, the one that left him still dissatisfied. The fact that he hadn’t told his mother all he had wanted to say, neither on the day when he broke the wash-set nor on any of the following days, never before her death. And I thought I suddenly understood why this old and mortally sick man had gone to considerable trouble to settle his dispute with Katharina Fuchs.

  Although I didn’t in the least understand why Cilly wanted me to beat about the bush in such a weird way over the settlement that Pandlitz proposed. Was I supposed to go behind my client’s back just because she wanted to spare him? And if she really was afraid that as soon as her husband heard about it he would have a stroke or die at once… should that not even have been a welcome idea to her? It would free her in a perfectly legal way, so to speak, of the burden she had been bearing. Why did she want to spare the old horror?

  “Where’ve you been all this time?” asked Hochkeppel when I got back to the office.

  “At the Kloffts’,” I said. “But you know that.”

  “Yes, yes,” he grumbled. “Of course I knew where you’d gone. I just didn’t know you’d stay with him for such an age.”

  “He had something to tell me. About his life.”

  “Ah.” He blinked at me. “About his life?”

  “Exactly. And so as not to keep you waiting, I’ll tell you straight away that I didn’t tell him about Pandlitz’s proposal.”

  “And why not?”

  He didn’t seem to be surprised. My suspicion seemed to be confirmed: Cilly had called him as soon as I’d left the house and told him the whole story as she had heard it from me.

  I answered his question. “Because I was afraid it would kill him.”

  “Kill him?”

  “Yes, kill him. He was in such a state that I… I didn’t know how he would take Pandlitz’s ruling. How he could come to terms with it.”

  He smiled unpleasantly. “You mean he worked himself into such a frenzy with his furious outburst in court that he was in danger of collapsing? And then hearing what Pandlitz said might have finished him off.”

  “That’s right. Exactly what I thought. I’ll give you the corpus delicti, wait a minute.”

  “Oh, come on, don’t go making Pandlitz out a murderer!”

  I opened my briefcase and gave him my notes on the settlement proposed by Pandlitz. He skimmed the sheet of paper, once making a sound like suppressed laughter, and then lowered the piece of paper. “And that was all?”

  Of course, he was still waiting to hear about Klofft’s own proposed settlement. Cilly had naturally told him about that too.

  I said, “No, there’s more to come.”

  He looked at me as if in suspense. I said, “Klofft gave me a proposal for a settlement that he had worked out for himself.”

  “Good heavens!”

  He apparently wanted to keep up his pretence of knowing nothing. I felt like telling him to drop it; he knew all about it, and I knew who had told him. But I said nothing. I took Klofft’s letter out of my pocket and handed it to him.

  He read it very fast, and refrained from pretending to be surprised. With a nod, he gave me the letter back. “Make a copy for me, please.” He settled in his chair and said, “Hm, well, then you’d better get in touch with Dr Gladke. I assume he’ll have no objection to this proposal. Still less his client.” He laughed. “That’s a lucky young woman!”

  “Yes, you could say so. But what do you make of the offer? I mean, why is he suddenly showing all this generosity?”

  “Because he wanted to get in ahead of Pandlitz, of course! Wanted to pay him out, get his own back.”

  “I don’t entirely understand.”

  “What’s so difficult about it?” He seemed to be annoyed. “As soon as he knew what Pandlitz had cooked up, he put that thing” – he pointed to Klofft’s letter – “he put that thing down on paper. So that everyone would think he was in control again.”

  “But he wrote it last week! He specially mentions the date.”

  Hochkeppel smiled and shook his head pityingly. “Fell for all his tricks, did you?”

  I almost lost control of myself in the face of such obstinate dislike. Such steadfast hatred. I said, raising my voice a little, “Have you thought that he could only have heard about Pandlitz’s proposal from me? And he certainly didn’t write that letter then and there, in front of me!”

  He smiled. “You have something yet to learn, Alexander, no offence meant! Have you thought that he very probably had someone planted in the courtroom? Someone who was also to spy on you. Someone who rang him the moment Pandlitz had announced his proposal and told him about it, straight from the horse’s mouth?”

  I felt hot. I had just remembered Manderscheidt. I said, but it was only a feeble attempt at contradiction, “Dr Hochkeppel, it’s just not possible that in the three-quarters of an hour, no more, that it took me to get from the court to him, your friend Klofft, a layman, had managed to formulate the complicated text of his proposal – no, do his research and then formulate it!” I put my hand to my forehead. “Oh, and type it too! Can you tell me how he’s supposed to have done that, the way his fingers tremble?”

  He dismissed that airily, saying with a smile, “Never mind all that, Alex! I know him rather better than you do! I know how devoured by ambition the man is. By his craving for recognition. By a mania to be always the first, the best, the most able. Cleverer than the rest. And how obsessed by fear that he might lose face. Might find the man who can get the better of him.”

  He stopped, as if this enumeration had exhausted him, took his glasses off and rubbed his face. Then he said, “OK. Make sure you get in touch with Gladke as soon as possible. And show him this… this capitulation on Klofft’s part. The sooner it’s dealt with the better.”

  I felt a certain secret pleasure in having another little problem for him. I said, “There’s one more point I’d have liked to clear up with you.”

  He looked at me. “Oh yes.” It sounded as if he himself had just remembered the problem. Well, of course Cilly had told him that too. And asked for his help.

  I said, “Frau Klofft wants me not to tell her husband about the proposal made by Pandlitz. She thinks he could get so agitated that he might… come to some harm. Or even die.”

  He looked out of the window. Then he nodded. “Yes, that’s a tricky one. On the other hand: there are no cuts suggested in what Pandlitz wants. Klofft’s offer is even more generous than Pandlitz’s proposal.”

  He said nothing for a while, and then looked at me. “OK. Do as she wants. If anyone finds out, I’ll say I told you to keep it from him. I can be sure of your discretion. Can’t I?”

  46

  His attachment to Cilly must still be strong, stronger than I’d thought until now. If that were not the case, he’d have dismissed her bizarre proposition with raised eyebrows and an indignant shake of the head. And he would have thought it wrong of me to pass the idea on to him at all. He would have reminded me of the duties of a l
awyer and asked whether the lectures and seminars on ethical aspects of the profession that I had attended had failed to sink in.

  I had once been almost sure that he had had an affair with Cilly, or even a relationship lasting some time. He had been her father’s lawyer, acting for the industrious Gherkin Gehrke, and had probably known her when she was a very young girl. Perhaps he hadn’t thought it right to court her yet, and then, when he thought she was old enough, along came handsome Herbert Klofft, with his inventive mind and broad shoulders, and stole her from him. Bruno Hochkeppel had given way and married his nice blonde wife.

  Absurdly, he had his rival to thank for the fact that he was still thrown together with Cilly: the uncouth Klofft, I thought, had probably got his marriage into a crisis soon for the first time, and after there had been three or four such crises, she had sought advice and comfort, and naturally a little love, from her old friend. And Bruno Hochkeppel, carried away, had plunged into the first great adventure of his life – the first and at the same time probably the last. Of course he was clever enough to keep the liaison secret from the dangerous Klofft. And everyone else. Cilly, naturally, was clever enough for that too.

  Yes, and so they all lived happily ever after, and so on and so forth! Was I really going to explain Hochkeppel’s deviation from the path of professional duty with a trashy story, the sort you find in the popular magazines? No. More likely she would have kept him short, giving him her love in careful doses. Disappointing his desire again and again and thus keeping it alive. The way I’d noticed her playing games with me.

  No, and no again. What nonsense. I didn’t think Hochkeppel had any sexual needs left. The man was seventy-seven! Klofft, of course, was a year older and still so greedy for it that he had forced the beautiful Frau Fuchs into a situation that she would rather forget. And he acted as if he would sooner have it off with his sturdy maidservant right away rather than in five minutes’ time.

  Never mind, that was another matter. And what was Hochkeppel’s close attachment to Cilly really like? So close that he was ready to do something not quite right for her sake, in addition sparing the “friend” he hated pain?