The Stronger Sex (42 page)

He shook his head. “So then my mother did come in after all. She cast me a sharp glance, looked at the cupboard and asked, “Where's the wash-set, Herbert?” I'd been wondering
what to say. I wanted to tell her I was afraid her good wash-set was broken, and it was my fault, and I was very sorry, for one thing because the wash-set had been so pretty, but for another and most of all because I knew how fond she'd been of it; it was an heirloom. I don't remember, but I may even have thought of putting my arms round her and kissing her cheek, but I don't think so. You didn't do that kind of thing in those days. Definitely not if you were a boy.”

He made a dismissive movement. “Well, never mind that. I didn't do anything. Nothing at all, and I didn't say anything, I just stood there without a word and could only just manage to shrug my shoulders awkwardly. And then the storm broke. She gave me a slap such as I'd never had from her before and never did again. And I was just standing up again when she gave me another, this time on my other cheek, just as hard. And then she looked me in the eye with her brows drawn together, and turned away and went into the kitchen!”

He raised his right hand to his forehead and rubbed it hard. Then he said, “And I didn't dare to go after her and perhaps, even then, say what I'd wanted to say. I stood there, and finally I bent over the cupboard again and drank in the scent of it. My cheeks were burning, remorse was twisting my guts, and my sense of shame was there too, and I felt an overwhelming longing to wrap myself in that scent and let it carry me away. It was – I don't know how to put it – it was a… a turmoil of emotions, crazy! It felt like being stood on my head and turned round and round… really odd!”

He paused and then sighed. “Ah, well. That was the story.” He thought for a while longer, and said, “But now I realize it doesn't have any point at all.”

“Oh, I think it does.”

“No. But maybe it will have one if I go on a little. Just a very little.”

“Tell me.”

He said, “At some point I heard the kitchen door latch. I opened my door to the kitchen and listened. I thought my mother was going down the stairs. I closed my door and went to the window. Then I saw her going into the yard and up to the dustbin that stood by the wall, next to the little gate into the yard next door. She lifted the lid and looked in. That was all she did for some time, just looked into the dustbin. Finally she raised her hand, reached into the dustbin and took out a large broken piece of the wash-set. A piece from the rim of the jug, with the pattern around it still recognizable. She looked at the piece of china for a long time, and then put it back into the dustbin and closed the lid.”

He stopped. I said, “But there is a point. That's a beautiful ending.”

He said with his eyes closed, “No, a beautiful ending would have been if, when she came up again, I'd said all that I wanted to say to her. That and perhaps more.” He sighed. “But I didn't. Not that day, not on any of the days afterwards. There was… how can I put it? No more opportunity. Not until her death. Not until she was dead.”

He said nothing for a while, then suddenly opened his eyes and raised his arm. “But now I've finally come out with it all! You're a terrible fellow!”

When I was standing up again, he said, “And don't forget the letter.”

I put the chair back against the wall, brought the bucket round from the other side of the bed and put it where it had been standing earlier. At the door I turned back once more. He smiled at me. I waved to him and went out.

44

I stopped on the landing, leaned forward, supporting myself on the post at the top of the banisters, and lowered my head.
After a while I put my hand in my pocket and took out the letter, glanced at it again and then opened the envelope.

It contained a sheet of notepaper with Klofft's letterhead at the top. The text had been typed and printed out on a computer, with only the salutation and the signature handwritten, in Klofft's large and slightly unsteady hand. The letter began:

He had actually worked out the terms of a settlement in all due form for himself. Its gist was very much that of the settlement proposed by Pandlitz; he had even built in the same precautions to ensure that Katharina would have no problems with employment agencies and medical or pension insurance. Heaven knew where he had picked up these tricks of the trade.

In two points, however, the proposal did differ from the judge's. Klofft wanted to leave Katharina the choice of whether to terminate or continue her relationship of employment with the company. In the latter case, he was ready to undertake not to maintain any of his previous criticisms of her conduct. In addition he would pay all her costs in the legal dispute.

However, if she preferred to terminate the relationship of employment, he offered her, as Pandlitz had laid down, a statement of dismissal for operational reasons on 21 March of the coming year, and immediate freedom of movement from now to that date. In addition, and again differing from Pandlitz, he offered compensation of 125,400 euros. Working it out, I saw at once that he had multiplied the sum of eleven
times her monthly salary by not 1.5 but 1.9. He had probably used just the same rule of thumb as mine, but carried out the final multiplication by almost the highest factor.

I whispered to myself, “What does he hope to get by that?” I couldn't imagine that he would make her such a generous offer – generous to the point of self-denial on his part – without having some particular end in view.

I heard a voice in an undertone. “Alex?…” I looked up. Cilly was standing at the foot of the stairs. Her hands were folded together and she was looking up at me. “Won't you come down? Has something… has something happened?”

“No, no, everything's all right!” I went downstairs, stopped beside her and smiled at her. “I should think he's asleep by now.”

“Did you tell him?” she asked. Her eyes were very wide. “I mean, did you tell him the judge was… striking him such a crushing blow?”

Crushing blow? I couldn't remember saying anything about that.

I said, “No. I didn't say anything about the hearing and the proposal for a settlement.”

She looked enquiringly at me. I said, “I was afraid it would be too much for him. Afraid he might have a heart attack, or something like that.”

She nodded and smiled at me. Unexpectedly, she kissed me on the cheek. She seemed very relieved.

Once again I didn't know what to make of that. Something must have made her very anxious. Suddenly I thought of Hochkeppel.

Had he perhaps called her after our conversation, telling her about it? He'd have had time to do that before I arrived at Klofft's villa. Hadn't I suspected once before that Cilly was conspiring with Hochkeppel? And he with her?

She pointed to the letter that I was still holding. “What's that? You were deep in it just now.”

“Yes…” I had difficulty concentrating on her question. Then I laughed. “What's this? Well, an astonishing document. But totally authentic.”

She looked at me in surprise.

I thought for a moment. But if Hochkeppel was really telling her everything, hot off the press, then she would very soon know anyway that her husband, that autocratic despot, was entirely unexpectedly giving ground in his dispute with Katharina Fuchs. No: more than that. He was capitulating entirely.

I said, “Your husband is offering his ex-lover a settlement that she's bound to jump at. This letter” – I raised it and shook it slightly – “is even more favourable to her than what the judge proposed. He'll even leave it to her to choose whether to leave her job or go back to it.”

She looked at me, frowning.

“What do you think of that?” I asked.

She said, “I think he wants her back.”

“Well, yes, one might assume that. But he's leaving her the choice. She can also go anywhere she likes. And in that case he's offering her hefty compensation. Even more than the judge stipulated.”

She shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. Her mouth turned down and she began to gnaw her lower lip. Finally she said, “Well, if that's so…”

“If what is so?”

After taking a deep breath, she said, “If his offer leaves her better off even than the judge's verdict…”

“Not a verdict,” I said. “A ruling, a proposal for a settlement.”

“Comes to the same thing. You know what I mean.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

She frowned and thought. Then she said, “Well, if
he
wants to leave her in a better position than the judge… then you
don't need to tell him anything about that… that proposal by the judge, do you?”

“But…”

“I mean, it's the snows of yesteryear! What the judge said. It's been overtaken by Herbert's offer.”

I shook my head. “But I have to tell him if the court proposes a settlement in his case! OK, I could put off informing him for a day or two, if that seemed advisable because of his state of health. I can't just keep something so… so important secret from him!”

She glanced upstairs, took my arm and led me to the back of the hall. For a moment the desire she had kindled in me three days before flared up. Was she going to take me into that storeroom again?

She stayed in the dim light in front of the doors in the background, holding my arm and looking at me with her dark, shining eyes. She whispered pleadingly, “But you said you were afraid what the judge said would kill him? That he might have a heart attack if he heard it? You did say that, didn't you?”

“Yes, of course I said it, but…”

In an urgent whisper, she went on, “Do you want to kill him after all, then?” And she added, “You're his lawyer!”

That took my breath away. But she wouldn't take her eyes off me, and in the end there was nothing for it. I said, “Well, I'll have to discuss it with Hochkeppel. I really can't decide that on my own.”

“Do that,” she said. “Discuss it with your boss.” She let go of my arm. “And think about what I told you. And not least what you said yourself.”

She took me to the door. When I was going to take her hand, she put both her hands up to my head, drew it down to her and gave me a kiss on the forehead and another on the mouth.

45

On the way back to the office it struck me that I had seldom left that house without taking some kind of problem away with me, or some new experience that had surprised me and that I hadn't understood. Was it because the people who lived there were so much older than me?

I suddenly thought of the story that Klofft had told me about his mother, and the second point, the one that left him still dissatisfied. The fact that he hadn't told his mother all he had wanted to say, neither on the day when he broke the wash-set nor on any of the following days, never before her death. And I thought I suddenly understood why this old and mortally sick man had gone to considerable trouble to settle his dispute with Katharina Fuchs.

Although I didn't in the least understand why Cilly wanted me to beat about the bush in such a weird way over the settlement that Pandlitz proposed. Was I supposed to go behind my client's back just because she wanted to spare him? And if she really was afraid that as soon as her husband heard about it he would have a stroke or die at once… should that not even have been a welcome idea to her? It would free her in a perfectly legal way, so to speak, of the burden she had been bearing. Why did she want to spare the old horror?

“Where've you been all this time?” asked Hochkeppel when I got back to the office.

“At the Kloffts',” I said. “But you know that.”

“Yes, yes,” he grumbled. “Of course I knew where you'd gone. I just didn't know you'd stay with him for such an age.”

“He had something to tell me. About his life.”

“Ah.” He blinked at me. “About his life?”

“Exactly. And so as not to keep you waiting, I'll tell you straight away that I didn't tell him about Pandlitz's proposal.”

“And why not?”

He didn't seem to be surprised. My suspicion seemed to be confirmed: Cilly had called him as soon as I'd left the house and told him the whole story as she had heard it from me.

I answered his question. “Because I was afraid it would kill him.”

“Kill him?”

“Yes, kill him. He was in such a state that I… I didn't know how he would take Pandlitz's ruling. How he could come to terms with it.”

He smiled unpleasantly. “You mean he worked himself into such a frenzy with his furious outburst in court that he was in danger of collapsing? And then hearing what Pandlitz said might have finished him off.”

“That's right. Exactly what I thought. I'll give you the
corpus delicti
, wait a minute.”

“Oh, come on, don't go making Pandlitz out a murderer!”

I opened my briefcase and gave him my notes on the settlement proposed by Pandlitz. He skimmed the sheet of paper, once making a sound like suppressed laughter, and then lowered the piece of paper. “And that was all?”

Of course, he was still waiting to hear about Klofft's own proposed settlement. Cilly had naturally told him about that too.

I said, “No, there's more to come.”

He looked at me as if in suspense. I said, “Klofft gave me a proposal for a settlement that he had worked out for himself.”