The Stronger Sex (12 page)

I put the chessboard and the box of pieces down on the stack of newspapers, placed one of the plates that Olga had brought in front of Klofft, put cutlery and a napkin beside it and asked, “What would you like?”

“Oh… one of those with Parma ham.”

I put two of them on his plate; he frowned but did not object. After I had helped myself, he said, “
Bon appetit
,” picked up one of his open sandwiches and bit into it. While he ate, he looked out at the garden again. After a moment or so he said, “Sorry about… about that spectacle.”

I looked at him. “What spectacle? Are you talking about not feeling too well just now?”

“What else?”

“It's nothing you have to apologize for.”

He was silent again for a while, and then remarked, “Just don't say you didn't mind.”

“How do you mean, didn't mind? I was… yes, I was alarmed.” After drinking some mineral water, I said, “I was wondering whether I ought to call Olga, that's true.”

“Oh yes, just the thing!” He laughed. “Cold compress on head. Foots up! And the rest of the old wives' lore she learned at home. I believe they like to treat bad cases with chicken shit back in Poland.”

“Maybe you oughtn't to talk like that.”

He looked at me, surprised. I said, “I'd say she means you well.”

He was about to answer, but then simply looked out at the garden again.

I hesitated before asking, “What does your doctor say about your condition?”

“My doctor is an arsehole.”

When I did not reply to that, he cast me a sideways glance. “Yes, I know, there you go again, not right to call anyone that, you think, certainly not a doctor. Impossible behaviour, right? But he
is
an arsehole, believe you me!”

“Then why not change to someone else?”

“Like who? That bunch are all the same! Trying to palm you off with the most expensive treatment they can think up. They're all in cahoots together!”

He took a sip of wine, and then three or four more in quick succession, grunted and put the glass down. “This one here, my GP, I've been one of his private patients for a good ten years… so it's some time ago he got the idea I may have this Parkinson's syndrome thing. I assume you know what that is?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Not precisely, but of course I've heard of it.”

“Then you probably also know that no one knows
precisely
what it is and what causes it. But never mind that – he wants to give me a thorough examination. Thorough, you understand? Meaning he wants to run me through half a dozen wickedly expensive devices – no, more like a dozen of the things! Science-fiction stuff, you have to pay through the nose for it! Doesn't have them himself in his consulting rooms, or not all of them, but there are specialists who have them standing around the place, just waiting for victims, and you can be handed round from one to the other of them. And he's probably getting his percentage from those vultures. That's what it looks like!”

I shook my head.

He stared angrily at me. I said, “But perhaps then they could find the right therapy for your… for an attack like…”

He interrupted. “Therapy? Oh yes, therapy! Only the very best of therapies, right? It may take some time and cost a
bomb, but it will help.” He nodded vigorously. “And who will it help? Those vultures, who d'you think? Specially if I live long enough not to die until the end of the therapy, right?”

“That's nonsense.”

“Oh, nonsense, you think? Do you know what nonsense is?” He adjusted himself in his chair and then said, “I'll tell you a few symptoms of this Parkinson's thing, so pay attention. That twist of the foot I did just now, that's one of them, right. And the way my hands sometimes shake. But that could be plain old age, understand? I'm not as young as I was. And that's not all.”

He raised his right hand and began counting on his fingers. “And the symptoms include reduced volume of the voice – well, I don't have that! Increased likeliness of scaly or greasy skin – don't have that! Depression – never had it in my life! Want to hear any more?”

“No, really, there's no need. I believe you!” I looked for a new argument I could use to shake this obstinate, selfopinionated man at least a little, but before I had found one, he said categorically, “Of course you don't believe me!”

He laughed, suddenly turned serious again, pointed at me with his forefinger. “You wouldn't believe me unless you were inside my skin.” The finger began to shake, and he put his hand on the table. “Then, my dear boy, even you would be wondering why you should waste your life suspecting you have a disease that you may have, or then again you may not. I don't know, and the medic doesn't know either. But I do know that there are limits to my life and I'm coming close to the end of it because I'm growing old. As for this Parkinson's – well, stuff that! Understand?”

He leaned back, moved his swivelling chair slightly to one side and looked out of the balcony door again. After a while he said, “Not that getting old is much more fun
than Parkinson's. It's got nothing to do with silver hair and evening sunshine and relaxing after the stress and strain of life. Getting old, I mean. It's got little or nothing to do with that! Getting old is absolute shit, that's what it is.”

He fell silent. After a while I pulled myself together. I said, “But… I think someone who has achieved all that you have, your firm, your business that you started up more or less out of nothing…”

He turned his face to me.

I said, “I mean, surely it must also – well, give you a sense of pride.” He still said nothing. I quickly added, “A sense of satisfaction, I'd have thought.”

He smiled. Then he said, “Nice of you. But you really have no idea. Not the ghost of an idea.” He laughed. “The young person, Olga called you. Now
she
has some idea, God knows.” Turning away, he looked out at the garden again. “You probably won't believe it, but I've read a good deal about getting old. Amazing how much has been written about it! I've forgotten most of it, but I do remember one passage that I particularly liked.”

He laughed, shook his head. “It's in Plato. You'll know who he was better than I do. Anyway, he writes somewhere that in old age you can always be glad you're not feeling so horny. He put it much more elegantly, of course. I think he called it ‘desire for women'. Desire ‘falling silent at last'. But he meant the same thing. OK, and do you know something?” He looked at me. “The man was no philosopher, he was an idiot, and I'll tell you why. He was trying to pretend either to others or himself. Acting as if he couldn't care less about not being able to get it up any more. But no reasonable person will ever have believed him, at least I don't think so. In fact I know better. Feeling horny, my boy, or call it desire for women if you like, it doesn't pass away. Whether you like it or not. Whether you can still get a hard-on or not.”

He sat nodding for a while, and then said, “Anything else would be a miracle, wouldn't it, when Olga, I mean when a woman like Olga flaunts her taut bum in front of a man! How's his desire expected to wear off? I know what she carries around with her in secret, good old Olga.” He uttered a short laugh. “I've often enough put my hand under her skirt when she was standing beside me or leaning over me. And usually she wasn't wearing any knickers.” He laughed again. “That woman
always
knows when to do what.”

I thought he would leave it at that, but he hadn't exhausted the subject yet. He said, “And often enough she was offering it.” He rubbed his cheek, and added, “And even if it hadn't been for all that, if she hadn't let me touch her and see her, not Olga or any other woman… I'd have guessed it, understand? I'd have caught the scent of it, I could have imagined it. And run after it. Like a…well, there we are. That's how human beings are made. Or do we call them living creatures endowed with reason?”

When I accepted his invitation to play chess, I'd wanted to get a little closer to him, but God knows not as unpleasantly close as this. My toes were cramped rigid inside my shoes, a hot flush had risen to my face, I thought I felt the hairs on the back of my neck literally standing on end. The way the old man exposed himself – himself and other people – was not just embarrassing, it was barely tolerable.

He said, “The best thing in the world. You know that painting by Courbet, Gustave Courbet?
L'origine du monde
, the origin of the world. My wife once showed me a print of it. Not bad, origin of the world. Poetic. Or philosophical. Very high-flown, anyway. I put it more simply. The best thing in the world. Thing, yes, literally so! That's one name for it. And you could call it something else, a single good old German word. You can find it in the Grimms' dictionary. But I won't say it now, you'd only be shocked again.”

He smiled, but he wasn't looking at me.

What possessed this man? I was sure that he had consumed and tolerated large quantities of alcohol in his younger days, anyway more than he had drunk in front of me so far. But maybe sickness had reduced his capacity? Or old age – maybe old age meant he didn't have such a strong head as he used to?

He said, slurring his words slightly, “I can say it out loud in front of Olga without any inhibitions. She doesn't understand too much German, but she understood
that
from the first, that wonderful word, and it never shocked her.” He laughed. “And she's never let these… these little attacks of weakness shock her either. When there's that misfiring that Plato was thinking of, understand? No, not her! She always does something to help with those… little disturbances. She understands about that.” He nodded. “Wonderful woman, believe you me!” He laughed. “Young person!”

The man hardly knew me, but he was talking about a serious indiscretion he had committed and apparently was still committing as if it were the most natural thing in the world; he unreservedly admitted long-term adultery and named the woman concerned in front of me, a comparative stranger. And since he didn't know that the third person involved, his wife, had already put me in the picture about his unfaithfulness over many years, he had also exposed her, the deceived party, in front of me.

I felt as if he were subject to some uncontrollable urge to offend the proprieties, break the most primitive commandments of morality and decency. Was he under a compulsion to name out loud things and feelings that were taboo according to the rules of civilized society? Or was it maybe just a symptom of senility? More precisely, the randiness of old age that Hochkeppel had mentioned?

I had not thought about what precisely Hochkeppel might have meant by that, but it occurred to me that I had
once read something about the liking of old men for the genital and faecal areas. The senile, it had said as far as I remembered, did not feel particularly bad about soiling themselves. And they sometimes missed the lavatory bowl when urinating and left it to a woman to clean up after them. Was that why Olga had escorted him to the bathroom?

And old men, I had read in the same passage, sometimes enjoyed making a verbal exhibition of themselves. Felt it was like sexual titillation. That was what it had said literally, probably in the psychological advice section of some magazine. The old could be just like small children who insist on repeating “Wee-wee!” and “I did a poo!” in spite of being told not to, obviously thinking it very amusing.

I saw him close his eyes. Suddenly he said, “But don't think an Olga is enough to stop you feeling old. Even Olga can't do that.” He said no more for a while, and when he spoke again his voice was lower and more indistinct. “Olga isn't always there. Not at night, for instance. At night when you suddenly wake up and wonder, can't help wondering if you hear someone calling.”

His shoulders moved a little, almost as if he were shivering. “And then after a while of course you also wonder whether something outside, something out of the night was announcing itself with the call that woke you up. And you wonder whether it will be there in a dark corner of the room next time. Maybe whispering to you.” He took a deep breath. “Or shouting in your ear. Like Everyman in that play, you'll know it. I once saw it in Salzburg, my wife wanted to go, and I went with her. I thought I was going to have a heart attack when that fellow bellowed, ‘EVERY – MAN!' I could tell my wife was looking at me. She noticed. Probably enjoyed it. Look at that, will you, macho man terrified to the marrow of his bones!”

His shoulders moved again. Then he began muttering to himself with his eyes closed.

At first I had great difficulty in understanding him, but finally I could distinguish the words. “…no fun, not at night. Not when you're alone, no. Sounds ridiculous. Isn't, though. First you wait to see if it will call again. And when. Or whisper. And then in the deathly silence you seem to feel all those free radicals at work in you. Free radicals eating up your cells. And it goes on. Stuff Parkinson's? Yes, right, but you've read too much by now. And you wonder if it's the degeneration in your
substantia nigra
, the stuff you feel somewhere in your brain. Kind of like a crackling somewhere. Something going wrong, and you have to lie there feeling it, right?”

He fell silent. His lips moved once or twice, but he said no more. Then I saw his head fall slowly forward. His chest was moving peacefully, at long intervals but with regularity. He had gone to sleep.

I sat there for a while and then, cautiously, stood up. He was still breathing peacefully. I went on tiptoe to the open balcony door, looked back at Klofft and then went out and over to the balustrade.