The Stronger Sex (6 page)

“Yes, of course. That's how you're acting, anyway.”

“Well, really!” She straightened up and looked at me with a searching smile. “I'd think you capable of a good deal, my dear, but so far I really never would have imagined you losing your head over venerable antiquities.”

I felt the blood rise to my face. “What does that tasteless remark mean? Frau Klofft may be a lot of things but she's certainly not a… a Roman ruin.”

“Interesting! You seem to have looked at her very closely!” She appeared to be wondering whether to add some other cutting expression, but perhaps she couldn't think of one on the spot, or perhaps she simply decided against it. Anyway, she said briefly, “Excuse me, please,” turned away and went over to the people clustering round
Willy Ferber. The circle took her in, and Ferber shook hands with her.

I was furious and taken aback at the same time. Was she seriously suggesting I'd been sleeping with Cilly Klofft? And if so, what for Heaven's sake had put that way-out idea into her head? Why, moreover, if she thought such a thing possible, did she make such an unpleasant remark about Cilly Klofft's age?

I was already thinking of leaving this occasion, where I really had no business anyway, as soon as possible. I pushed up the sleeve of my jacket and looked at my watch. Just after eight-thirty. When I looked up, I met Cilly Klofft's eye; she was standing with Frau Novotna, who was still speaking to her over in the corner, gesticulating with both hands, and when I looked at her she raised her brows and moved her forefinger back and forth. The gesture was unmistakable; she didn't want me to go yet.

Oh well. She wouldn't have any further instructions to give me, so she could only have meant it as a joke, but why shouldn't I stay a little longer and talk to her when Frau Novotna let her out of her clutches?

I took a Pils from the tray that a little blonde offered me, and when a thin black-haired girl appeared behind the blonde with a plate of cocktail sausages, I helped myself. I put two straight into my mouth, and as the brunette was about to move on I said, “Just a moment, please!” and speared another on one of the cocktail sticks. I could presumably write off any idea of dinner with Frauke. And I didn't feel in the least like munching my way through a cold cutlet in a bar or heating up a can of soup at home.

I was in luck. Frau Novotna's young ladies came back with hot meatballs and sharply seasoned canapés. With the last canapé and afresh Pils, I withdrew from the main thoroughfare of the room to a quieter corner where a large and brightly coloured painting hung. As I ate and drank I tried to decipher
the picture, but apart from a large number of irregular rectangles of different colours, stacked together by the artist and interlocking, I could make nothing of it. Going first closer to the picture and then away from it again was no help.

I glanced sideways, suddenly afraid that some art freak had been watching me and pointing me out to all his clan, who were now standing together, grinning, as they watched my hopeless attempts to make sense of Willy Ferber's work. No, no one was taking any notice of me. I did see, however, that Frau Novotna and Cilly Klofft were in a farewell embrace. Cilly Klofft moved my way, but was held up again by the green blazer, who barred her way with hands raised. I turned back to Ferber's rectangles.

What did a woman like Cilly Klofft have to do with these eccentric figures? Was she one of those rich people who set up as collectors or patrons, trying to buy their way into a world of which they understand little or nothing, although they like to bask in its atmosphere?

“Does it interest you?”

I jumped when I suddenly found Frau Novotna behind me. “Oh, I… I'm just getting to know it.”

She nodded. “Not a difficult work, though. Or do you think so?”

“No, no, not that! But…”

I immediately cursed myself, because I knew I couldn't follow up that “but” with anything reasonably intelligent, let alone well-phrased. I smiled, swayed slightly back and forth, as if polishing up what I had to say. But suddenly she said, “And so you're acting for Herr Klofft in a legal case?”

What was this about?

“A legal case? Well, no, we haven't got that far yet. It's not certain.”

She nodded with a forbearing smile, as if to suggest that she knew more than I might think. I asked, “What makes you say that?”

“Oh, you know… Cilly Klofft and I have been friends for a very long time. Too long for me to tell a charming young man just
how
long.” She laughed.

I felt I ought to contradict her gallantly, but before any idea of what to say occurred to me, she went on, “She's very taken with you!”

I had even less idea what to say in answer to this revelation, but finally I said, “Ah, yes, and how… how did you meet?”

“Well, how do you think?” She shook her head, laughing. “A gallery owner in this city who didn't know Cilly Klofft would be in the wrong profession, don't you think?”

So that was it – she bought paintings. But maybe she pursued this idle hobby not of her own free will, maybe he sent her off to spend his superfluous money and get him the social status that his valves could never supply. I said, “I see. Then she's a collector.”

“No, no!” She raised her eyebrows and looked at me almost indignantly. “She's a painter! Didn't you know that?”

6

Next morning I spent two hours in court, and when I came back to the office, Hochkeppel was out. I was disappointed because since last night I had been wondering what kind of a painter Cilly Klofft was, whether she was well thought of, and why, if she really was an artist to be taken seriously, she had married that uncouth oaf of a husband.

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?”