The Stronger Sex (19 page)

The cloudy grey eyes held my gaze. “By any chance?” she asked.

“Yes. It could have happened. Or did you find out intentionally, for all I care. I don't know…”

“You mean did I overhear them from the balcony?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“No, sorry, I can't help you there.” She smiled. “But after that visit I can tell you why my husband, once he had told me to call you and as soon as he knew you were on your way – well, I can tell you why he felt ill all of a sudden. So ill that he had to go and lie down in his bedroom.”

I asked, “Why, do you think?”

“I don't just think, I know. He seemed to be unwell because he wanted to avoid you. He was too cowardly to meet you.”

She pointed to the letter I was holding. “What this Herr Gladke writes there…” She smiled. “What I assume he writes there makes the great Klofft look rather bad. And he doesn't want you confirming it. In fact he's going to avoid it like the plague. It's also possible that he hopes, by the time you next
meet, he'll have something he can use against you – you and Herr Gladke both.”

She nodded, emphasizing what she said. “He wants to run away from the truth about himself. He's a coward plain and simple, you see.”

I knew it would do me no good to embark now, of all times, on the apology I'd been contemplating without being able to make up my mind. But nor did I want to have her presenting me with any more of those sharp little allusions to my flight from her studio.

I said, “I don't know whether you think me a coward as well. And I don't know when or how I… would be avoiding the truth about myself.”

She did not reply to that, just looked straight at me. I said, “But if what you say about there not being many men who… well, if you were thinking not least of Sunday morning, yesterday morning, and my… rather sudden departure from your studio…”

I began to have serious doubts of whether I could finish this complicated sentence sensibly and indeed comprehensibly. Panic stirred in me. Probably she sensed my distress, and it may be that she only wanted to help me out, but she took another step toward me, put the palm of her hand on my chest and said, “Now, now!”

However, the gesture and her placating tone confused me even more. I said, “Of course I'm… in a way of course it could look as if I was making my own escape. But well, maybe I felt it was all too much for me, that could be it. I mean, possibly you entirely misunderstood it. The situation, I mean. And so then I kind of thought, you see… well, Frauke Leisner occurred to me, and the thought troubled me because… well, I mean I'm in a very close relationship with her.”

She said, “All right, all right!” And smiled at me. I felt her hand on my chest.

I said, “I mean, just possibly…”

She didn't let me flounder on. “Now then, stop that! Not another word about it, right?” The hand was cool. The heat and the hot flush had been mine, and the hand I felt through my shirt was pleasantly cool against my chest. I just wished she'd put it on my forehead too and cool it.

She moved her head slightly back and forth, as if trying to meet my eyes. When I couldn't avoid her gaze any more and had to meet it, willy-nilly, she smiled. Her fingertips moved lightly on my chest. I didn't want to notice it, but a pleasant shiver ran down my back.

I wanted to move her hand away, but suddenly she raised her other hand and laid it on my forehead. I stood there motionless, closed my eyes. I hadn't felt so good for ages.

After a while she took that hand off my forehead and placed it against my cheek. Maybe it was the hand, maybe the movement of her clothes, but I suddenly smelled her perfume very distinctly.

She said. “Well, it could be that you're a bit of a coward.” It sounded almost as if she were suppressing laughter. “But you're still very young, with plenty to learn yet.”

She took her hands off me. I felt her put both arms around me as she pressed her head to my breast. I smelled the fragrance of her hair. Then she stepped back and away. “And now off you go,” she said.

I opened my eyes. She was three steps away from me, smiling, and raised one arm, pointing to the door.

“Time to get down to work! See you soon.”

20

In his bill of complaint against his client's dismissal, my legal colleague Gladke had concentrated on the points that my own client, relying on his private studies, had cited as basic
reasons for dismissal without notice: obtaining a medical certificate by devious means, and wilfully taking time off without permission.

Gladke countered the charge of devious means by referring briefly to the medical certificate made out by Dr Heiner Wehling, Katharina Fuchs's GP, which I had already seen in Klofft's files. The certificate was dated Saturday, the day before the Sunday when Frau Fuchs flew to Geneva to continue treatment for her lumbago in the Beauté du Lac hotel.

Dr Wehling had certified that late on the Friday evening his patient fell sick at her apartment with lumbar vertebral syndrome (LVS), accompanied by acute pain and severe difficulties in movement. He had prescribed her physiotherapeutic treatment, and made out a certificate to the effect that she must stay away from work for the next five working days, i.e. until the end of the following week.

As for the rest of it, in succinct and forthright terms Gladke made it clear that in his view it was not Frau Fuchs who had to prove that she had been sick, but the reverse: it was up to Klofft to prove his claim that she had not. He quoted the Hamm provincial employment tribunal, which had delivered the following ruling: “If an employer dismisses without notice an employee who has a medical certificate of inability to work, on the grounds that certification of the said inability did not correspond to the facts, then he must present those facts in detail, and if necessary show that they prove the invalidity of the certification of inability to work. It is not for the employee to prove that the medical certificate was correctly issued.”

As the employer, said Gladke, it was up to Klofft to produce all the requisite evidence. My colleague also cited a ruling of the Federal employment tribunal that I had looked up myself already, and had noted down for my own statement in court – although in evidence of the opposite argument,
something that happens now and then if you are relying on highly controversial rulings. In that ruling the judge had said: “If the employee produces a medical certificate, that certificate is generally proof of inability to work.”

The second reason for dismissal presented by Klofft was immediately reduced by Gladke
ad absurdum
with the same argument that I had feared, and had mentioned in my account to Hochkeppel already: if Frau Fuchs had been ill, as the certificate showed, then she could not simultaneously have taken time off without permission on her own initiative, since at that time she had
not
been on holiday but had been ill and therefore unable to work.

Gladke then devoted the most extensive part of his complaint to the evidence that her trip to Switzerland – which might possibly give rise to suspicious speculations – could not in any event be considered a holiday but was undertaken in order to get medical treatment for her disorder, and thus had served to improve her condition. He added a whole series of medical statements, certifications and expert opinions.

In clarification, and abandoning the succinct style entirely, Gladke stated that late on the evening of the Friday, her last day at work, as the certificate confirmed, Frau Fuchs had suffered a sudden attack of lumbago, i.e. severe pain in the area of the lumbar vertebrae, also spreading into her right leg. She had suffered a similar attack before, two years ago, and at that time she had been off work, certified unfit, for three days. On this second occasion she had called her GP Dr Wehling again, and he had visited her late on Friday night.

Dr Wehling, Gladke continued, had diagnosed stress and overwork as a possible contributory cause, had left his patient some strong painkillers and made out a certificate keeping her away from work until the end of the following week. In addition he had made out a note referring her to a physiotherapist and mentioned to her that unfortunately
she would not be able to reach him, Dr Wehling, again over the weekend, since early on Saturday morning he and his family were going away for a brief seaside break.

On Saturday morning Frau Fuchs, said the complaint, had then had a phone call from her acquaintance Herr Henri Schmickler, a Swiss citizen in the travel industry, and she told him about her misfortune. Thereupon Herr Schmickler, who was in Geneva at the time on professional business, had told her about the Beauté du Lac hotel on Lake Léman in the Waadt area, mentioning that it had a good international reputation as a hotel promoting wellbeing, and in addition offered a wide range of medical and therapeutic services. Its guests could be treated by highly regarded doctors. He had offered to find out from the hotel about the facilities it could offer for treating her lumbago, and he would call her straight back.

As Frau Fuchs had agreed to this suggestion, said Gladke, Herr Schmickler had made enquiries at the hotel and discovered that LVS syndrome was one of the disorders frequently treated at the hotel, and as a rule sufferers were cured within a very short time. As they had agreed, he had passed this information straight on to Frau Fuchs, and told her that if she felt able to make the journey he would take a few days' holiday himself, to make sure she was all right while she stayed at the Beauté du Lac and keep her company until she was better.

Thereupon, and in view of the fact that in any event she could not reach Dr Wehling, Frau Fuchs had decided to book a flight to Geneva on the Sunday. Herr Schmickler had met her at the airport and taken her to the hotel, where she had stayed for the following week, i.e. the time for which she had a medical certificate, as we would be aware, undergoing specialist treatments (see enclosure) with great success, as was shown in Dr Wehling's final assessment of her case (also enclosed).

I was beginning to struggle as I made my way through Gladke's enclosures, and I found at once that I was suffering from a numbing sensation of being exposed to a concentric attack from white-coated medical experts, all of them determined to nip any doubts of the merits of the Beauté du Lac in the bud, bludgeon them into the ground and in general remove them entirely from the face of the earth – more particularly if they were doubts of the place's therapeutic qualities.

As I was finding out about the assorted medicinal and mud baths in which Frau Fuchs had immersed herself, there was a knock at the door and Hochkeppel came in.

“How does it look?”

“Not too good for us, I'm afraid.”

He nodded.

“Will it take you much longer to read through it?”

“A little while yet.”

He nodded again. “Well, I'll be off then.”

I looked at the time. It was after five-thirty and his wife didn't like him to be home too late.

“Right. Have a nice evening.”

“Thanks. You can tell me about it tomorrow.”

“Of course.”

He nodded once more, and closed the door.

I leafed my way through the rest of the medical information enclosed, which at first glance seemed no less impressive than what I had read already, and then thought about Frauke for a while.

She had a date at one of the little private theatres this evening, a presentation of the programme for the coming season and an invitation to dinner afterwards with the woman who was artistic director at the theatre. I had been congratulating myself on the fact that no one had thought of including me in this invitation, but by now I shrank a little, after all, from the prospect of an evening alone with my own company.

I tried to draw up an interim summary of the Klofft case. Gladke's strategy was obvious to me; he would argue first that Frau Fuchs had really been sick, and second that she had acted exactly as a dutiful employee should, that is to say she had done everything possible to restore herself to health and return to work. It looked to me as if he had a very good chance of convincing the tribunal.

At first sight, anyway, I could find no weak points in his line of argument. I had already entertained the possibility of accusing Frau Fuchs of conduct injurious to her return to health, maybe because of the stress of the journey she had risked taking, and possibly we could find a medical expert to give an opinion to that effect, but Hochkeppel had warned me off making any such attempt. All the same, I pursued the idea once again.

I leafed through Klofft's folder and reread the detective's report on the journey to Geneva: on the Sunday morning a taxi driver had gone to the building where Frau Fuchs had her apartment to collect her, she had appeared on crutches, on reaching the airport she had had a wheelchair fetched for her by a Red Cross aide, who wheeled it to the plane, and the process was repeated in reverse when the plane landed in Geneva; she went by wheelchair to the baggage collection point and the car park.

I did find an incidental remark made by the detective that I had missed in my earlier reading: Frau Fuchs, contrary to Klofft's claim, had travelled economy class on a low-cost airline – certainly not the most convenient way to get around with lumbago. Of course the tribunal could consider that of no importance in view of the “wellness” establishment for which she had been bound.

However, another point had struck me only as I read Gladke's argument, and at the moment I didn't know what to make of it. That was the part played by Herr Schmickler, Henri Schmickler, in the tale of the dutiful employee. Was
he perhaps Katharina Fuchs's new lover? Was he the man for whom she had dumped Klofft after ten years? If so, then Herr Schmickler had probably not called her on the Saturday morning purely by chance, as Gladke's account made it sound.