The Stronger Sex Read online

  I hadn’t found out the answer yesterday evening. She had indeed come over to me, but before I had a chance to bring her painting into the conversation, Frauke had followed her and joined us, starting a discussion of which I understood at the most half, because it was mainly about people of whom I knew hardly anything. I would have liked to ask Frauke if she could stand my company only when Frau Klofft was around. And after Frauke some other guests came over. None of whom wanted to talk to me, only to Cilly Klofft.

  I was still standing about aimlessly when I suddenly saw Karl in his grey uniform. He stood near the doorway, cap in his left hand. I raised a hand to greet him; he smiled and nodded. When Frau Klofft had seen him as well, he turned away and left the gallery. A little later Frau Klofft said goodbye to the people she was talking to. She told me she hoped we’d see each other again soon, exchanged a few words with Willy Ferber and Frau Novotna, and left.

  Had that despot allowed her out only for a limited time? I didn’t like to think she would let him restrict her freedom so much. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to keep the chauffeur from going home to his wife and family any longer?

  Hochkeppel didn’t come back until well after lunch. I found a reasonably plausible pretext for going to see him, a case of debt assumption in which he had acted some time ago, as I knew from Hochkeppel himself, and which had some slight similarity to my own latest case. I was aware of the risk that he would start endlessly chatting not just about the matters involved in the case but also about the client, the judge, the other party’s lawyer, for all I knew his wife and daughter too, in short about everyone who had or did not have any connection to the case, but one way or another was an interesting character.

  To my surprise, however, he kept it short. And even before I could steer the discussion along a path leading reasonably smoothly to my real subject, he asked, “By the way, is there anything else about Klofft?”

  “No, not yet.” I cleared my throat and then said, “But I met his wife yesterday evening.”

  “You did?” He looked at me through his tinted glasses. “Where was that?”

  “At an art gallery, a private showing. The Gallery Novotna.”

  “How did you come to be there?” He obviously didn’t expect me to have been in such company of my own accord.

  “Well, Frauke Leisner took me with her. She was writing something about it for her paper. About Willy Ferber, I mean.” He nodded. I asked, “Do you know him?”

  “Yes, of course. Not a bad painter. I bought two of his pictures myself.”

  “Ah.” After a moment’s pause I added, “Frau Klofft paints too, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes.” I thought that was all he was going to say, but he suddenly went on, “She’s not a bad painter either.” He looked past me into space, then back at me again. After a moment he said firmly, “She might even have been a great one.”

  It was clear to me that I was on thin ice here, but I wasn’t going to leave the question unasked. I said, “Might have been? I mean, what stopped her? Or who?”

  “Who do you suppose?” He blew air out scornfully through his lips. “That monster of a husband, who else?”

  He fell silent, looked out of the window at the tops of the trees in the yard. I deliberately didn’t ask anything else, and after a while, sure enough, he opened up of his own accord.

  He spoke hesitantly, and in several of the pauses that he seemed to be forcing himself to make I once again sensed the anger that had so surprisingly come to the fore when we were talking about Klofft’s illness. And once again it took some time, but in the end I discovered that he had met Cilly Klofft before she married. As a young lawyer he had successfully represented her father Frank Gehrke, a foods wholesaler, in a claim for damages.

  “His speciality was gherkins. Gehrke’s Gherkins.” When he saw that it meant nothing to me, he smiled. “Well, of course that’s quite some time ago. I don’t think you find them on the supermarket shelves these days. But they were well known at the time, at least in this region.” He shifted in his chair. “He – old Gehrke, I mean – he bought their whole crop from a few small farmers in the foothills, had the gherkins preserved in jars in a sugar-beet factory, and stuck his labels on them. Gehrke’s Gherkins.” He laughed. “And a slogan on the label too, From an old Rhineland recipe. Something like that.”

  He rubbed his chin. “In fact the recipe was his wife’s invention. You know, the flavourings in the brine for pickling gherkins. Or onions. And the grassy stuff – herbs, is it? – floating about in it. Anyway, his wife brewed it up in her kitchen. She probably gave him the whole gherkin idea. After that she went to the factory every morning and brewed up that broth or brine or whatever you call it. And before she started, everyone else had to go out of the room where she worked. She made a state secret of the recipe. Well, never mind how… the pair of them made a packet out of it anyway. With the gherkins and several other good ideas.”

  He laughed. “That way, you could say they were a lucky couple.” He stopped laughing, nodded a couple of times and then said, “There was just one fly in the ointment.”

  “Not their daughter, surely?”

  “Oh yes. Their only child, Cäcilia.” He sighed. “Cilly. She had no intention of studying business administration, which was the old man’s idea. Getting her diploma and then maybe coming in to take on the family firm with a doctorate behind her. Not her, she was dead set on being a painter. And as long as that was confined to art lessons and the good marks she brought home, and exhibitions in the hall of her high school, Gehrke was even proud of her. He bought her an expensive easel, all the equipment and paints she wanted. But when she’d taken her higher school certificate and matters were getting serious, he tried to stop all that.”

  He stopped, looked into space, smiled, nodded.

  After a while I asked, “Tried? He tried, you said?”

  “Yes, tried, that was all. She got her own way.” He laughed. “Anyway, she had an ally who could terrify even the boss. Her mother. She was capable of more than making gherkins a popular delicacy; she told the old man she wanted their child to have a better life than hers. She didn’t want her getting up every morning to go to the factory or the warehouse and count salami sausages. She’d like Cilly to do exactly what she wanted and what she enjoyed.”

  He shook his head, smiling. “So he gave in. I don’t know if she threatened to stop sleeping with him, but I wouldn’t have put it past her. Anyway, he gave in. The one concession he did get was that their daughter should take a course of study at an art academy that would also qualify her to teach art in a high school. It meant an extra course, with educational theory and so on. But once she had her qualifications from the art academy she dropped out of the other course and set up on her own.”

  “Can an artist do that sort of thing, just like that? I mean, don’t you need a proper studio or something?”

  “Not necessarily. But anyway, Gehrke of gherkins fame bought her one.” He laughed. “He wasn’t just a clever businessman; all things considered he was a pretty good father too, I’d say. She was able to start out in a pretty studio that the old man had bought her. In a factory that was cutting production down. Her studio wasn’t enormous, but the light was good. The building had been a fitters’ workshop that had expanded hugely during the boom and then had to cut back. Well, so she was doing well. And when she had her first exhibition – I mean the first without the art academy behind her – the old man was happy and even proud of her again. Of course.”

  He stopped, looked out of the window, nodded now and then. When the blackbird which lives in the trees in the yard here suddenly struck up its song, he smiled. I wondered whether he remembered why he had begun telling me this story, Cilly Klofft’s story, but I was afraid he’d forgotten his point of departure. I cleared my throat and asked, “And how did Klofft come into this? I mean, a valves manufacturer and a painter, they wouldn’t normally have much in common, would they?”

  “How true!” His mouth twis
ted in a wry smile. “Just about nothing, I’d say! But you’re forgetting the fitters’ workshop. He was employed there at the time, as a foreman or something. Anyway, they kept meeting each other by chance on the site after she’d moved into her studio in the yard.”

  He stopped. After a while I asked, slightly incredulously, “And so she fell in love with him?”

  He looked at me, smiled, shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the window. “Looks like it, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, but…” I stopped short, suddenly realizing that this conversation was taking its toll on him. Whatever I said to explain why I couldn’t understand Cilly Klofft’s deciding to marry this man, why I thought it incredible, it would hurt Hochkeppel, I felt sure of that. Because I’d have been hammering it home that it meant casting an unattractive shadow of doubt on Cilly herself, on her taste and her judgement.

  He too was silent for a while. When I began to fear that the silence might get embarrassing, he said suddenly, “You know, Alexander… I can’t explain it properly either. But he was rather good-looking in those days. A woman’s kind of man, people said, though Heaven knows what that means.” After a pause he added, “And among the art students she’d mingled with there were quite a number of rather, well, weedy characters. He’d have seemed like something more than that. A real man, so to speak, no question of it.”

  His mouth twisted. Then he said, “Or maybe she was impressed by him as a technological genius, an inventor. I’m sure he made a great display of that. And he really had invented a few things already. Took out patents for them. Valves of some sort, gauges, devices for adjusting measurements precisely. I remember a beer-tapping system, but there were much more complex things as well. At the time he was begging his boss, the owner of the fitters’ workshop, to go in on the production of these instruments. But he was probably too old and too inflexible, so Klofft’s devices had to be shelved, for the time being anyway.”

  He nodded, and then said, “The misunderstood genius, do you see?” After a small pause he added, with a caustic laugh, “Extremely interesting, that kind of thing! And extremely attractive, I assume.” He all but closed his eyes and fell silent.

  Then he suddenly sat up, looked at me as if he had just woken from sleep and asked, “Did you find anything in the file?”

  It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. “In Klofft’s file – no. Or nothing I could use against Frau Fuchs.” I hesitated, and added, “More like the opposite. More like something she could use against us.”

  He frowned and looked at me keenly. “And what might that be?”

  “She booked a few treatments in that hotel. Medical treatments, obviously. Even on the first day. That’s in the detective’s report. And he said that the hotel lays stress on its range of what its advertising calls ‘wellness’ treatments. Medical treatments.”

  “Didn’t this Sherlock Holmes character bring back one of the hotel’s brochures with a list of the treatments on offer?”

  I hesitated, and then said, “His report did indicate that there was something of the kind. But it wasn’t in the folder.”

  “So?”

  I looked enquiringly at him.

  “Have you asked Klofft about it yet?”

  After a moment I said, “Not yet. No.”

  “Then off you go and do it,” he said. “Put the fear of God into him. It’s no use leaving him in peace. He’ll only think he can put one over on us.”

  I got to my feet, hesitated for a moment and then said, “OK. See you later, then.” I went to the door. As I glanced back, leaving the room, I saw that he had taken his glasses off and had bent his head, pressing his thumbs and forefingers to his eyes.

  7

  In my room the heavy silence of a summer afternoon reigned. I hesitated for a moment, but then picked up the phone and rang Klofft’s private number. I got the answering machine. “You have reached the home of Cilly and Herbert Klofft…”

  It was her voice. I listened, and by the end of the recorded message I was so confused that after the beep I could only swallow for a moment. Then I said quickly, “Good afternoon, Frau Klofft, this is… good afternoon, Herr Klofft, this is Alexander Zabel. I must… I must speak to Herr Klofft, it’s urgent. Please let me know when I could reach him. Many thanks and… well, it would be best if I could come to your house. As soon… as soon as possible. Thanks… yes, thanks and goodbye.”

  I hung up and left my hand on the receiver. Judging by what I’d stammered out, she’d be likely to assume I was unhinged. The heat of the sun was making itself felt in the room in spite of the air conditioning. My hand on the receiver was beginning to sweat.

  I went over to the window and opened it, because I suddenly needed to be in touch with the sounds of the outside world, maybe even a breath of wind. But the warm air that suddenly flooded in made me close the window again at once. I stood there for a moment and then sat down at my desk, picked up the folder on top of the pile that Simone had left on the left-hand side of it, and opened it.

  I stared for some time at Hochkeppel’s remark to me; Simone had taken it down and attached it to the first page of the file. When I realized that I had not taken in any of these comments, let alone understood them, I closed the file and pushed it away. I hesitated for a moment, then picked up the phone and pressed the redial key.

  Yet again I got the answering machine. I listened to her voice until the beep sounded, and then I quickly broke the connection.

  I spent a little while trying to relax. I leaned back, propped my elbows on the arms of the chair, placed my fingertips together and closed my eyes. But this sort of hocus-pocus, as practised and frequently recommended to me by Frauke, has never yet helped me. I opened my eyes again, opened Klofft’s folder and began leafing through it.

  After a short time I raised my eyes from the file. I looked at the telephone and then at my watch. It was not a decision I’d thought about, making it on the basis of clear reflection, it was more of a reflex action working independently of my mind. I put Klofft’s papers in my briefcase, left my office and looked in at the secretaries’ door. “I’ll be at Herr Klofft’s, I don’t know for how long. See you!”

  I didn’t drive down the busy main street of the old suburb; like Karl Schaffrath, I took the expressway going upstream beside the bank. The traffic wasn’t too dense, I had opened the window, and reasonably cool air blew in over the river. I began to feel at ease. However, I also realized that that wasn’t just because of the pleasant breeze.

  I knew it was the prospect of seeing Cilly Klofft again today, on a pretext handed to me by Hochkeppel in person, and one that even sounded plausible.

  It was as if my boss had instructed me to play with fire, and at the same time absolved me of any responsibility. It was like a big win in some kind of celestial lottery, an outing to Paradise, without any conditions, without any threat of penalties if I happened to be transgressing the laws of the place. Authority had given me permission to sin and absolved me in advance.

  Of course I knew that this comfortable feeling was bound to prove deceptive very soon. Old Hochkeppel was not Lord God almighty. And he certainly had not sent me chasing off to the Kloffts in such a hurry so that I could get closer to the woman who had been the love of his life. More likely he wanted to get a clearer notion of whether her husband, obsessed as he was, had already involved our legal practice in something from which we wouldn’t be able to extricate ourselves intact.

  That was clear to me, yet as I turned into the shelter of the old avenue, I was overcome by a bold, improper, utterly impossible idea. It was the same idea that had occurred to me once before, when I was sitting next to Karl Schaffrath as he drove me back along this avenue from my first visit to the Kloffts, and I saw the flickering sunlight filtering through the leaf canopy of the elms behind my closed eyelids.

  I saw Cilly Klofft sunbathing on her terrace, concealed in the little garden with its profusion of green to shelter her from prying eyes. I trie
d not to, but for a moment I saw what had been hidden from me at our two meetings and would continue to be hidden from me. I saw her naked.

  Then the sense that I was embarrassingly, shockingly breaking a taboo gained the upper hand. What had come over me? Had Frauke maybe hit the bull’s-eye with her ridiculous suspicion? Even if her insinuation that I’d been intimate with Cilly Klofft was wrong – wasn’t it what I secretly wanted? And if that was so, ought I not to reproach myself for a deviation from the straight and narrow? And at the same time of an outrageous insult to this woman?

  When I turned into the drive, and after some hesitation left my car outside the garage, I was sorry that I hadn’t stopped for a moment on the way to try to disentangle my confused feelings. Too late now. I went up the three steps and rang the bell. The little chime sounded inside the house.

  After that there was no sound for quite a long time. It struck me that I could go back at once and avoid a confrontation with Cilly Klofft. Next moment I realized that my wish to see her again was too strong for that. I waited.

  Maybe she was out with him somewhere. Surely he must sometimes want to leave the house. Maybe Karl was driving them to a café with a garden where Herr Klofft felt like drinking coffee.

  I was wondering whether to ring again when suddenly the door opened, slowly and soundlessly. Just inside it Cilly Klofft appeared in a grey smock spattered with splashes of colour. I saw her eyes shining in the dim light of the entrance hall. She was smiling at me.

  “Well, what a nice surprise! I didn’t expect to see you again so soon! Come on in!” She held the door open.

  My scruples were gone. I said, “I didn’t mean to take you by surprise. I called and left a message.”

  “I haven’t listened to it. And my husband probably hasn’t either.” She glanced at the stairs. “He’ll probably still be having his siesta.”

  “I’m sorry if I…”

  “No, no, that’s no problem.” She glanced down at herself and looked at her smock. The thought came to me that because of this heat she wasn’t wearing much under it. She said, “Go into the living room for a minute, and I’ll just change into something else.”