The Stronger Sex (34 page)

I put the glass down. He said, “Thank you, lawyer.”

As I sat down in my chair again, he said, “And I'll bet I wasn't the only one in that big block of apartment houses who felt like that. Later, in the evening when it was dark, there were lights on in many of the windows. Naked bulbs, some of them, hanging from the ceiling by a cable. Others were shining under carefully home-made lampshades, behind white net curtains. People sat at tables, they went back and forth, they talked to each other. And no one was alone. You just had to look out and see all those lights shining over the yards.”

He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand again, and looked at me. “Maybe I was just shit-scared this morning.” He smiled. “Because there was no one with me. I felt alone. Lonely. This old house can feel like a grave. It was so deathly
quiet here this morning. Maybe that's why I imagined my heart was stuttering and palpitating. Death reaching his bony fingers out to squeeze it.” He shook his head and laughed. “Sorry to have unloaded all this onto you.”

I said, “There's nothing at all to apologize for.”

He nodded. Then he said, “Thanks.” And then: “Well, now get out of here!”

“But—”

“Off you go!”

I stood up, hesitated, and offered him my hand.

He shook his head a little reluctantly. “That's OK.”

I walked away. When I had almost reached the door, he cried, “Wait!”

I turned back. He was sitting there, slightly stooped in his chair; he turned, and twisted his face as if he were feeling physical pain. I was about to go back to him when he said, “You were always saying there were two things you wanted me to tell you. Two questions. Two things you needed to know before the hearing. That's right, eh?”

“Yes, that's right. First…”

He waved that away. “No need to tell me. I remember.” He sat up straighter. “First: yes, Katharina Fuchs did threaten me. When I refused to give her the time off she wanted. She said then she'd just be off work sick. From what you've told me, in court they'll see that as an inadmissible threat.” He breathed out hard. “And she also said she supposed I didn't think I could still decide about her private life just as the whim took me.”

“But why didn't you want to tell me that?” I asked.

He waved that away as well. “Just a moment! I haven't finished! And second, yes again. It's true. On her last visit I tried to have it off with her once more. Wanted to sleep with her one more time. That all-over-between-us stuff had been too sudden for me. And then again,” he said with a wry smile, “then again, that fellow I had to thank for it,
the one who'd turned her head, I wanted to make that bastard wear the horns. I wanted him to feel, to guess, to know outright for all I care, that she'd opened her legs for me again, and then again. I wanted him to suffer raging jealousy, I wanted him to feel the torments of hell that I'd been through before myself!”

His smile disappeared. He said, “Wasn't so easy for me. With that… with old age in my bones. I told her first she must… must put her lips round it. Her mouth. And then, if she did it well, she could sit on top of me. And if she did it at once, there and then, and one more time to say goodbye, when she was back… then I'd let her take her week off. In spite of the foreign order. It would be like an act of God. An urgent private matter.”

He laughed and then shrugged his stooping shoulders. “I didn't think it possible, but she actually did go along with it. I don't know… maybe she was afraid of all the fuss, lawyers and all that. Maybe this… this non-violent solution appealed to her more. Anyway, she said she'd go along with it. And it worked! When she was kneeling in front of me, I felt it, I felt aroused. And in the end – what do I mean, the end, it was only the beginning, and she really could soon have been sitting on it. But all of a sudden…”

He shook his head, stared at the top of the table. After a while he said, “All of a sudden she jumps up. Fishes a handkerchief out of her jeans. Spits in it and wipes her mouth out like a woman possessed, spits in her handkerchief again. Then she says, ‘No, I can't do it. And I don't like it. I don't want to do this.' And she storms out of the room as if the Devil were after her and down the stairs, and she was gone.”

After a while I said, “And of course you didn't want this… this incident coming out during the hearing at the tribunal. And to make sure of that, and not provoke Frau Fuchs unnecessarily, you were going to keep equally quiet about the fact that she threatened you with going off sick.”

He was listening to me, looking at me fixedly from his half-stooped position.

I said, “But possibly Frau Fuchs herself is not interested in having the details of her last encounter with you discussed in court. Maybe she's not entirely happy with her own part in that encounter. Maybe she would at least like to keep her… her new boyfriend from knowing about it.”

He showed no reaction. I said, “What a muddle!”

After a little pause he said, “At least now you can decline to represent me. You threatened that once before.” He scratched his cheek with trembling fingers. “No one can expect you to represent a man who forces his employee to have sex.” He laughed. “Although you'd land your boss nicely in trouble that way. He'd have to represent his old friend in person.”

That was true. The same idea had gone through my mind.

“And now get out of here,” he said. “No hanging about.” He raised his voice. “Out!”

35

I had hardly left his house before I began worrying about him. He had only to stand up, maybe because he needed to go to the bathroom, reach for the handles of his wheeled walker, miss and fall heavily to the floor. He'd be lying there helpless. He was at least half-tipsy; he'd drunk more than half the bottle of wine.

When would Olga be coming to make him some soup and bring her piece of home-made cake? If her husband was really such an unpleasant character as Klofft thought, who knew if he wouldn't make a scene when she said she was going out? Jealousy again. Even if the amorous services that Olga performed for Klofft had brought them a good
monthly income, and would continue to do so. Perhaps most of all because of that.

Suppose jealousy flared when he saw her packing up the cake. It seemed to him too large a piece; what next, he asked, he struck her fingers, she hit back, then he beat her and finally locked her in. Klofft would wait for her in vain. He would be lying on the floor with his thigh fractured, calling for help. And finally just whimpering quietly.

Cilly? Heaven knew where she might be. And what she might be doing.

The picture I had formed of her was clouded now. What upset me was not so much the line that I must inevitably draw under it. I was far more troubled by the fact that despite that, another picture kept coming in front of it: Cilly on the deckchair in her garden, sunbathing. Brown and naked.

I wondered whether I ought to call her at her studio, just in case. Tell her I had the impression that her husband was in a bad way. Very bad. And I wondered whether I should add that I didn't understand how she could leave him to his own devices when he was in such a condition. On his own. Helpless.

I suppressed the thought. I was afraid of the answer she would give. The answer that I thought I knew in advance. A negative answer, unmoved, unemotional. Cold. And then a sober reminder of what the man had done to her for a whole lifetime.

I was equally afraid of exposing myself, at the same time, to the strange power of attraction that she exerted on me.

I took refuge with Frauke. I don't know whether she had been expecting and waiting for me since my hasty departure at breakfast-time, but anyway she was at home. The first thing she asked was, “How is he?”

“Very ill,” I said. “I wouldn't be surprised…” And I hesitated for a moment, but then I said, “I wouldn't be surprised if he died today or tomorrow.”

This concise prognosis shocked even me. Hadn't I had my own doubts of whether he was merely putting on an act with his physical crisis, so that I would go and talk to him, listen to his childhood memories and his fears of loneliness, which he had brought on himself?

“But what's really the matter with him?” asked Frauke.

“No one seems to know for certain.”

“Isn't he having medical treatment?”

“Not as far as I'm aware.”

“But that's impossible! Isn't Cilly Gehrke doing anything about it?”

I shrugged my shoulders. Then I said, “I know he doesn't… doesn't think highly of doctors. And he's probably one of those men who think it's dishonourable to admit to illness.”

She shook her head. Then she looked at me. “Are you contemplating doing something for him? I mean, calling the doctor or… or taking him to the doctor even if he doesn't want to go? And making sure he's all right otherwise?”

“I don't think that would be within my power.” After a moment's hesitation, I said, “But I'm not going to let him down.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” And I preserved a long silence before going on. “Look, I know he… he was a revolting old horror. While he was well, and probably he still is. Otherwise he wouldn't be so obsessed with getting the better of that woman. The woman he fired.”

She nodded.

I said, “Only he doesn't just want to get the better of her. He wants to destroy her. And I should think he's destroyed several other people like that in the course of his life. If I spoke his kind of language, I'd call him a bastard.”

“But that doesn't prevent you from…”

“Look, he's not always had an easy time of it. He worked his own way up in the world, and I can imagine he didn't do that by accident. And he's been hurt and humiliated by a good many people. Downgraded. I should think he's had to swallow a lot of that. And then, when he'd made it, he took his revenge. Got his own back.”

“And that's your new philosophy of life, is it?”

I realized that I'd dropped a brick. I said, “Of course not. Of course I don't think you can play one thing off against another like that, I mean along the lines of: such-and-such a number of people have done you harm, so you can do harm to the same number of people in return. Well, no, of course that's wrong. But I think…”

Once again it took me some time to work out what I was going to say next. “I do think… no, I know, I know for a fact that he's terribly lonely, and that makes him suffer miserably. Of course Cilly… his wife, I mean, of course she looks after him. But I don't think she shows him even a spark of warmth. I can't blame her after a marriage like that, but he can't be happy with the kind of care she takes of him. And as for the rest of it…”

I shrugged my shoulders. “For the rest of it, he has a Polish woman who sees to him, and takes him to the loo, and… clears up after him if he gets there too late, and she lets him touch her up when he wants to, or even more. He'll be paying her well for it, I assume. Yes, and he has a driver, very loyal, and in his years as a businessman he trained him to be an excellent chauffeur. But that's it, as far as I know. Well, I suppose he gets visits from a chiropodist, maybe he can flirt with her a little now and then. And a barber, yes, there must be a barber who comes to cut his hair at home. But it stops there. That's about all.”

She said nothing for a moment. Then she asked, “And you want to make up for that? For that – lack of contact with real life that he's suffering from?”

“I don't know if I
can
make up for it. No, of course I can't. But I do know that… that in his own way he values me. I mean, he trusts me. And he likes my company, even if we fight.” After a pause I added, “And I know I got him out of a deep hole this morning. A miserable situation, no hope, no comfort. Maybe even life-threatening.”

I wasn't sure whether I might not have sounded overdramatic, thus embarrassing Frauke. I said, “Well, anyway… I won't ignore him when he's in such need if he feels I can help him. I don't know if you can understand that.”

She nodded.

We went out to the racecourse and had an excellent lunch there. There were no races this Sunday, but the weather was fine, and we walked over the extensive layout of the racecourse, sitting down for a rest on one of the many benches or on the grass now and then, and then we went back to the restaurant for afternoon coffee and cake. We spent the rest of the day in Frauke's apartment.

That evening, when we were sitting in front of the TV with sandwiches and beer that I'd fetched from the bar next door, it dawned on me that the difficult part of my coming to terms with the Klofft phenomenon still lay ahead. That would be when I saw my boss next morning. I would at least have to tell him that my client had answered the two questions that seemed to me significant for the case. And that by this time the irksome duty that Hochkeppel had landed me with was making more demands on me than he himself would like.

About ten in the evening I said goodnight to Frauke. I'd told her I had to get up early next morning. In fact I didn't have to be in court, but before I went to the office I wanted to call the Klofft villa and see how Klofft was, and I didn't want to have Frauke there when I rang.

I didn't sleep well, and I got up early. When I was under the shower, I suddenly felt afraid that Death might have
come to seize Klofft and extinguish his life in the night – heart attack, maybe, some kind of shock that he wasn't able to deal with any more. I had a vivid mental image of the
Everyman
production in Salzburg that had terrified him so much, I heard the voice calling him, first from afar, then closer and closer, and finally as loud as if Death were standing beside him, shouting his name into his ear.