The Stronger Sex (39 page)

Panda frowned and dismissed this remark. Then he looked over his shoulder. “I see there are still two chairs over there… perhaps you, sir, could?…” He pointed to Karl.

Karl hesitated briefly, then stepped forward, made a little bow as he passed Panda and fetched a chair that had been standing behind the judge, came back with it and looked enquiringly at me. Meanwhile, stony-faced, I had acknowledged the arrival of Klofft. I took the chair from Karl and placed it beside mine at the defendant's table.

Karl helped Klofft to sit down on the chair. Klofft, who could not be used to sitting anywhere so uncomfortable, uttered a suppressed but audible groan as he let himself sink into it and gave his faithful employee several instructions in an undertone for helping him into a different position, directions that Karl tried to carry out with an enquiring look every time.

The courtroom followed this procedure in tense silence. Panda sat there frowning. Finally Klofft pushed Karl aside with an abrupt, angry movement. Karl wheeled the walking frame away and joined the spectators in the side aisles near the door.

The judge bent his head. Then he looked up and said, “Go on, if you please, Dr Zabel.”

I looked at my file, acted as if I had to pull myself together, fought down my fury with Klofft, cleared my throat and said, “I won't hold up this tribunal much longer. I will be brief.” After a glance up at the ceiling and a short pause I continued, “As I was saying, my client had very good reasons to assume that the plaintiff had wilfully and of her own accord taken the time off that had been refused to her for urgent reasons to do with the company for which she worked.”

I thought as I spoke, God forbid that Gladke or even Panda might think of looking at those urgent reasons under the microscope, possibly coming up with Gaston Weber in Thionville. I said, “If, finally, you will allow me to say a word or two about the hotel in which Frau Fuchs spent her holiday” – I saw another vigorous movement at the plaintiff's table – “and about the mountain of material with which my colleague Dr Gladke has thought it necessary to overwhelm this court.”

I straightened my back, took a deep breath and then said, smiling. “This hotel, the Beauté du Lac, is what the travel agencies would call a de luxe outfit, frequented by Arab
sheikhs, French and American actors and film directors, German entrepreneurs with their wives…” and after a little pause I added, “…or sometimes without them.” I waited for the suppressed laughter behind me to die down, as well as the glance of reproof that Panda cast at the spectators, and decided to finish by saying, “Such people are regular guests at that hotel. Of course!…”

Here I interrupted myself. Panda had raised his hand. The courtroom was still restless, with whispering and laughter. Panda said, “Silence in the auditorium, if you please.” He stopped and let his dark eyes wander. The background noise died down. Panda looked at me. “And will you, Dr Zabel, please confine yourself to the matter in hand.” As I had lowered my eyes, I saw that Klofft's chest was shaking with his own suppressed laughter.

“Of course, your honour!” I took up at the point where Panda had interrupted me. “Of course this… er, de luxe outfit has associated itself over the last few years with a great deal of allegedly medical and therapeutic… let's just say guff.”

Gladke said under his breath, but clearly, “Incredible!”

I went on. “It offers, for instance, the services of doctors who, for what is presumably a good fat fee, convey to the guests the impression that, between games of tennis and the cocktail hour, they are also enjoying the benefits of medical treatment. I won't go into detail, it would take too much time, but we all know what to think of such charlatans and the so-called institutes they run: beauty spas, anti-ageing clinics and similar methods of alternative medicine. Over the past few years” – and I put my hand in my briefcase and took out a fat package of photos that Frauke had got from the archives of her paper for me – “a number of studies critical of that, er, branch of medicine have been published. I have put together” – and I held up the package – “a small selection from the last year. I don't want to deluge the tribunal with all this, but of course it is at the disposal of
the court if required. In any case, it is not unimportant, for in the light of these studies the many expert medical opinions brought back by the plaintiff from her holiday hotel appear… just a little dubious.”

I put the package down. “And I will end there for now. Thank you for your patience.”

I leaned back. Klofft raised his hands and gave me shaky but silent applause. The judge shot him a nasty look, and said, “Thank you, Dr Zabel. Dr Gladke… is there anything you would like to say in answer to your colleague?”

“Oh yes, oh yes, your honour.” He stood up and shook the sleeve of his robe into place. I saw that Frau Fuchs was bending over the table, elbows propped on it, and holding in her right hand a small, crumpled handkerchief, with which she dabbed her eyes. Her shoulders were shaking.

Gladke said, “Your honour, and this tribunal! In a case where the… the human components are so obvious and will touch any open-minded observer so directly, I have seldom heard such a coarse and cold justification of a dismissal, a justification that in reality is inadmissible and ineffective in every respect. Such an unfeeling approach…”

Panda said, without raising his voice, “Get to the point, please, Dr Gladke.”

“At once, your honour!” I could see that Gladke was furious. He went on, “But no one, no one, your honour, can or should disregard the human aspects of this case. We see here a woman who for eleven years, eleven important years of her young life, placed her powers loyally – loyally and often to the point of self-sacrifice – at the disposal of an entrepreneur.”

I saw Klofft moving vigorously. He drew up one leg, rested both hands on the edge of the table. I looked at him and put one hand on his arm to steady him. He shook my hand off.

Gladke went on. “And then what happens? How is her loyalty rewarded? On a comparatively petty pretext, this
woman is dismissed by the entrepreneur who has been employing her. As we have just heard for ourselves, without a moment's hesitation he gets his lawyer to accuse her of neglecting her work. He throws her out overnight for fictional and false reasons. And this, I repeat, after eleven years, eleven years of conscientious and unselfish service! And now…”

He never got to finish his sentence. With a huge exertion, Klofft got to his feet, hanging on to the table with both hands. “Conscientious? Unselfish?” he shouted.

Karl came hurrying up from the back of the courtroom, took Klofft under the armpits and supported him. “What are you talking about?” Klofft cried. “Distorting the truth like that!”

“Herr Klofft!” said the judge in a voice like thunder.

Klofft croaked his answer, but it carried all the same. “Look at that woman! She's a slut, a classic example of a slut. Loyal? She's as loyal as a bitch on heat!”

“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.