The Stronger Sex (36 page)

I felt as if I were in a dream, absurdly enough in a child's dream, a dream of something forbidden, an adventure, an expedition along a winding, overgrown path where I had been strictly forbidden to walk, but on which, once I had made my way into the undergrowth, unguessed marvels lay ahead. Her perfume, now that I had come closer to her than ever before, developed its own positively magical fragrance, enveloping and confusing me.

Her grasp of my arm became stronger; I felt every one of her spread fingers. Then she drew me with her through a door into a passage that possibly led to the kitchen, and from the passage into a small room lined with shelves, with dim light falling in through a small window right under the ceiling.

What I felt was a series of wildly chaotic perceptions and feelings. I thought I felt the warmth from outside resting on the window and radiating from within, but the cool of the room asserted itself and did me good. It was late summer reviving our animal spirits. Cilly's perfume mingled with a rather more astringent aroma, which went together with my excitement, but there was also a breath of air like grass wet with rain and flowers in bloom, and unidentifiable nuances coming from the shelves of strange, exotic spices, vinegar, delicious sauces in jars and bottles, a memory of the way the old villa used to smell in the days of its rich, upper-class inhabitants.

Finally I realized that I was standing behind Cilly, very close to her. I was doing what she obviously expected me to do, what I wanted to do myself in an ardent outbreak of
desire. And in the closest of all contacts I felt what I had hoped for, and I think she was feeling the same.

But even as, lost to the world, I was making my way forward along that magical path, I felt the tension in me suddenly relax and finally disappear. I felt myself inexorably going slack. For a while I tried to ignore it, hoping the process would reverse itself. But in the end I had to see that nothing more was possible. I said, in a husky voice, “I'm sorry, but…”

As I rearranged my clothes, she straightened up. She was smiling. Then she placed her hand lightly on my arm and led me out, back into the hall. Once again she glanced up at the first floor.

When she turned to me again, I said in a low voice, “I don't know what that was all about… such a thing has never happened to me before. Really, never! I really am sorry. Very, very sorry!”

Without making any great effort to keep her voice down, she said, “You don't have to apologize, silly! And maybe that's never happened to you before, Superman! But you can be sure it hasn't happened for the last time. And it happens to other people too, not least the strong men who often can't stop talking about how it always stands up for them!”

I frowned.

She said, “Yes, all right! I'll behave myself and mind my language. And I didn't mean to tread on your toes. Only to make it clear that you've nothing to feel ashamed of. You know, a great many men have a built-in emergency brake. You should be glad of that!” She smiled and shook my arm. “Perhaps you thought of Frauke. Just in time. You were thinking of her, maybe only at the back of your mind, but that was enough. It was all over and done with.”

I said, “You're being very kind to me. Thank you!”

“Nonsense!” she said. And then she asked, “Would you like to go up and see him now?”

I said, “No! Now… no, no. Not now.”

“But you brought a document that you wanted to show him.”

“Oh, that… it can wait. I can come back.”

“I hope you will. But we can go and see whether he's awake all the same, can't we? He'd probably be glad to see you.”

“No, no… I think…”

She looked at me, smiling. I didn't know what to say. She asked, “Do you have inhibitions about seeing him just now? Guilty conscience? Scared?”

“Oh well, how…”

“Come on, be a man!” she said. “And then you can see he's still alive, and I haven't murdered him and buried him in secret!”

She took my arm and led me to the stairs. I followed her up. I'd have felt ridiculous overtaking her and going ahead this time, as etiquette demands.

When we had reached his door, she stopped, looked in and put a finger to her lips. She took hold of the door handle and very cautiously opened the door.

The computer monitor was switched on. But Klofft was slumped slightly sideways in his chair with his eyes closed, head on his shoulder, breathing slowly but peacefully. He was obviously asleep.

The thought passed through my mind that he might have observed our incomplete but ardent indiscretion, maybe through secret cameras in the hall and the dimly lit storeroom. And now he was only pretending to be asleep.

She smiled at me, and then carefully closed the door.

37

Late on the Sunday afternoon, when I was sitting with Frauke at her dining table playing Scrabble, Herr Manderscheidt called my mobile. Frauke looked up briefly from her tiles, lowered her eyes again and seemed to go on wondering how she could use up all her remaining tiles at once.

Herr Manderscheidt said, “Sorry to disturb you, Dr Zabel. I just wanted to let you know that Herr Schmickler is back again.”

“Ah. And have you also found out whether there's any particular reason for that? Apart from the lovely Käthchen?”

“Well, I assume he's come to give her a little more support before the hearing begins. It's set for quite soon, am I right?”

I had to think for a moment. Then I said, “Yes, a week tomorrow. But you don't want to take me to the races again, do you? To take another look at those two?”

“No, no! No horse races today.” He paused for a moment and said, “Ice hockey, that's all.”

“What? You mean Frau Fuchs is going to watch an ice hockey match with him too?”

“Well, yes. Interesting game! Haven't you ever heard of the local derby?”

“No, sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. It's your loss. No, no… there won't be much to see today apart from their usual billing and cooing. Well, the game, yes, but otherwise…” He hesitated. Then he said, “Well, the fact is, that lad from Klofft's works is going to be there meeting them again. You remember, the young man who was sitting whispering with them in the stands. The mole you thought so amusing. By the way, did I tell you I was right? He really does work for Klofft. Although
not for much longer, I suspect. In the human resources department, would you believe it? Maybe he's been looking up, on Frau Fuchs's behalf, all those cases in which Klofft put pressure on people with his dirty tricks. Or worse than pressure. Ammunition for her lawyer, anyway.”

I said, “Herr Manderscheidt…”

“Well, never mind,” he replied. “By the way, it occurs to me, you did pretty well at the races the other day, am I right?”

I said, “Yes, I won, if that's what you mean.”

“You could put it like that, yes. I saw the figure. Not a bad return on your fifty.”

I said, “Herr Manderscheidt! I am here with my… my fiancée, and we are in the process of preparing to spend a pleasant Sunday evening together.”

I felt rather than saw that Frauke was staring at me, open-mouthed.

Manderscheidt said, “Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't know that.” He laughed. “I thought a man like you would work right through the weekends. Do please forgive me, and…”

I interrupted him. “We'll speak some other time, Herr Manderscheidt.”

He said hastily, “Yes, of course, and… wait, wait, don't hang up yet! I've thought of something else you ought to know. I think it's something you really
should
know.”

He stopped. After a while I said, “Yes. What the hell is it?”

“Just a moment, just a moment. I don't know whether you'll want to know it!”

“Well?”

He paused again, and then said, “Klofft
also
wants to follow those two with me some time soon. To see what they get up to in the street like that, in public. Or in a restaurant.”

“What?”

“That's what he wants to do. He told me so.” He let his breath out audibly. “Wants to form a picture for himself.”

“Surely you're not going to allow that?” I said.

He pretended not to know what I meant. “Why not?”

I asked, “Do you want to kill him?”

“Dr Zabel, I've told you already, I'm not my clients' therapist. And he's employing me. If he wants to—”

I interrupted him. “But he can't… I mean, damn it all, he can't get around at all without that walker on wheels! He'll fall flat on his face in the street if you get him there, on the spot. Do you want to—”

This time he didn't let me finish. “Hold on! Do you think I'm stupid? I know all that! To set your mind at rest, I'm going to lift him into my car with the kind assistance of Karl; that's his chauffeur. Into the back seat. He won't be as comfortable there as in his own handsome limo, but he can sit quietly there and watch the world going by. And as I have special blinds for the windows in the back, and I'll put them up, he can look out but no one looking in can recognize him from outside. Any more questions?”

I said, “Herr Manderscheidt, until now I've considered you a responsible man. But if you do this, then I shall think of you as an unscrupulous…” I bit back the word on the tip of my tongue.

“Wait a moment, Dr Zabel,” he said. “I don't have to take that sort of thing from you! The man's been grown up for quite some time. He should know what he wants and what he can or can't do. In addition, I have a contract with him, and according to the contract
he
pays the piper so he can call the tune. And maybe you don't yet know it, but if not: even in
your
job you'll find out that the client is king!”

I cut him off and threw my mobile down on the table. It skittered across the table top and knocked into my rack of lettered tiles, sending them flying all over the place.

Frauke was looking at me in silence. I said, “That pompous idiot wants to take Klofft hunting with him. Next time he goes snooping on Frau Fuchs and her boyfriend.”

“What's so bad about that?”

“That pair of lovebirds act in the street almost as if they were on their own in some sleazy hotel!” I shielded my letters with my hand and rearranged them in the rack.

Frauke shook her head. “Well, I expect they're in love.”

“You could say that, yes. Pushing their tongues down each other's throats and…” She frowned. “It's very graphic.”

“So I suppose Herr Klofft won't like watching the two of them putting on this exhibition—”

“Won't like it? It'll kill him!”

She looked at me in silence. Then she said. “I just don't get it. You
can't
like the man, not the way you are.”

“What way am I?”

She waved that question away, frowning, and then turned back to her letters. And the day was saved, because suddenly she found inspiration, and while the word
prophylaxis
didn't use up all her letters, she got rid of the most difficult ones, and in the next round she did it and won the game.

The following night I woke up suddenly. Frauke was lying beside me, fast asleep, one of her long, smooth legs at an angle on top of the sheet, now and then sucking peacefully at the pillow she had propped under her head.

I had gone to her place with some apprehensions, but this time they hadn't been justified. The debacle with Cilly had not been repeated. With Frauke, it had all been the way we were used to, just the way we enjoyed it. While I was thinking of that, and feeling glad of it, I suddenly wondered whether that had, in fact, been the most important aspect of my adventure.

To be sure, Cilly herself did not seem much upset by the consequences that she had prophesied, warning me against them when she made sure that my first attempt came to
nothing. And I hadn't felt that she had a guilty conscience for misusing me after our expedition into the storeroom. Instead, I had had more of a feeling that she was amused by the idea that
I
had a guilty conscience that kept me from wanting to face her husband.

But perhaps she was just so disciplined and self-confident that she could hide what was going on in her mind after that failed act of adultery. Or was she really so volatile, so light-minded – still, at her age – that on the way back from the storeroom to the hall she had already written off the experience as one more encounter with an impotent man?

No. The consequences that did weigh on my mind affected my relationship with Frauke, and Cilly had warned me in advance. I had abused Frauke's trust. I didn't think that she had found out about my peccadillo or noticed anything unusual about me. But whenever I looked at her, I suffered from the feeling that I was keeping something important from her. Whenever the conversation got around to Cilly, I would have to keep the facts secret from Frauke. I would have to lie to her. Whenever we met Cilly, I would have to be careful not to give myself away by saying something stupid, making some ill-considered gesture to show that I was keeping a secret from her.

If I wasn't going to hurt Frauke very badly, if I didn't want to risk a break with her, then she must never, ever discover that I had entered into that greatest, most unreserved intimacy, something that she, Frauke, thought was private to the two of us. I had betrayed her with another woman.

In the dim glow from the street lights outside the window I looked at that long, smooth, beautiful leg. I didn't want anyone else to look at it. I remembered the keen pain I had felt once when Frauke wore a mini-skirt, and how I had wondered why she went about wearing that infernal garment in public. Did she want to drive all the men mad with desire?