The Stronger Sex

by Hans Werner Kettenbach

  The room next to his was obviously a bedroom. Looking through the gap between the gathered curtains, I could see a broad bedstead, pale wood and the triple mirror of a dressing table inside the window. That must be Cilly Klofft’s bedroom.

  If her husband’s balcony door had been open, then she could have overheard his conversation with Katharina Fuchs from outside. Always assuming that the two of them had not been whispering, which was unlikely in view of the fact that they were in the middle of a quarrel. And even if he had not ended it by expressing his demands for sex with his voice at its usual volume, if she had taken a few steps along the wall of the house to his balcony door, she could have overheard.

  Of course she had been taking a risk. But presumably she was prepared to do that, since the conversation was about his relationship with the woman. And also presumably she had felt no scruples about eavesdropping.

  When I returned to his room, stepping quietly, he suddenly opened his eyes. He left his head hanging forward and turned slightly to one side, but he opened his eyes wide, turned them on me and examined me as if he were surprised to find me there.

  I smiled at him. “I was taking a look at your garden. It’s beautiful, it really is.”

  “Yes.” He suddenly made a slurping sound, as if he had to catch and swallow a lot of saliva. Raising his head, he smiled. “Dropped off to sleep. Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. I’ll be on my way now.”

  He nodded.

  I asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  He shook his head, and I gave him my hand.

  As I opened the door, he said, “And thank you for visiting. That was…”

  I looked back. He seemed to be searching for the right word. Finally he raised his hands, shook his head, smiling, and let his hands drop again.

  13

  It wasn’t to be expected that Frauke would break radio silence again and ring me. The answering machine hadn’t shown any calls when I came home. But I wanted to make perfectly sure that I wouldn’t miss any incoming call, leaving it to land on the tape. Since leaving Klofft’s house, I’d felt a great wish for a phone call like that.

  I was sick and tired of old people and their problems, problems that, along with what they did or felt about them, they wanted to offload on me. I was tired of the helpless pity they demanded from me. I longed for company that wouldn’t depress me, wouldn’t lumber me with questions I couldn’t answer. I wanted to be where I knew what I wanted and what I’d have to give in return.

  I longed for smooth, flawless skin. For a dense mop of strong hair, no thin places in it. I longed for the fresh, clean smell of skin and hair like that, a smell owing nothing to any perfume and at the same time not arousing the slightest suspicion that there could be a touch of sprayed urine or the bad odour of wind in it.

  I wanted the company of Frauke. Or Simone, yes, why not? Simone with her stiletto heels and the little red straps of the sandals on her bare legs.

  Simone, that was an absurd idea, and anyway she’d already begun on her own weekend. And calling Frauke would have been useless. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong by accepting Klofft’s invitation, or why I should apologize for it, and in those circumstances calling Frauke would only have set off the next explosion. There was nothing I could do but wait.

  I spent the rest of Saturday in front of the TV set. I watched the opening stage of the Tour de France, several news bulletins, a travel programme and with some interruptions the ladies’ final at Wimbledon.

  At six thirty, when I was in the kitchen putting a ready meal in the oven, the phone rang. I stood by the stove for a minute as if rooted to the spot, then went into the living room, cleared my throat twice, picked up the phone and gave my name. It wasn’t Frauke. This time it really was Cilly Klofft.

  She said she hoped she wasn’t disturbing me.

  The “No” that I managed to utter sounded rather confused, I thought.

  She hesitated and then asked whether I was alone.

  I said yes, but then I couldn’t think of anything else.

  Then it seemed to me as if some kind of tension that she had been under – yes, she too – relaxed. She asked how I was and if I was having a nice weekend. I said, “In fact I was visiting your husband until after midday. We played chess.”

  She said, “Yes, I know.”

  “Ah, yes,” I replied. “Did he tell you about it?”

  “Oh no.” She laughed. “He wouldn’t be likely to do that in a hurry. He treats such things as private, a secret between men.” She laughed again. “None of a woman’s business.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really!” After a little pause she said, “Anyway, I haven’t been home yet. I’ve been at my studio since this morning. My real studio, not the one in the villa.”

  I said, “Yes, your husband told me you were there.”

  “Ah.”

  Another pause. I wondered why she had called me. Something or other made me uneasy, and suddenly I knew what it was. I asked, “But if you haven’t spoken to him yet, then how…”

  She laughed. “You’d like to find out how, in that case, I know you’ve been playing chess with him?”

  “Yes, well…”

  She said, “Frau Leisner told me.”

  I swallowed, then I asked, “Frauke Leisner?”

  “Yes, she called me here.”

  “At your studio?”

  “Of course. She knows the number, after all.” After another brief pause she said, “She asked when I was going to the Documenta modern art exhibition. And whether I had a date to meet colleagues there. It sounded as if she might want to join us and write something about it.”

  “Ah, yes. The Documenta.”

  “And in passing she mentioned that my husband had asked you to go and play a game of chess this morning.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  She laughed, and then said, “But that’s not really why I’m ringing.”

  “No – no, of course not.”

  After a moment she said, “I wanted to ask if you’d come and see me tomorrow morning. At my studio, not at home.”

  I felt hot. I don’t know whether it was her voice, or what. Or the fantasies that had been bothering me before, the imagined, secret glimpses of her in her secluded garden. Or the painter’s smock. Her voice was low, sometimes slightly mysterious, not always perfectly clear.

  “Tomorrow is Sunday,” she pointed out. “Or do you have to go to the office?”

  It almost sounded as if she were making fun of me. I said, “No, of course not.”

  “Well then – how about eleven?”

  Why did she want me to go to her studio? Because she didn’t want her husband knowing about our conversation, of course. What else? It was an obvious explanation. And all the same I felt a touch of excitement as if I’d been invited to a den of vice.

  “Or would ten be better, or ten thirty?”

  I said, “Yes,” and hesitated for a moment before adding, “ten would be fine.”

  “Let’s say ten, then. You can have breakfast with me if you like.”

  “No, no thank you! I’ll have breakfast at home.” She took a deep breath, and said, “I didn’t mean to make it all so mysterious! It’s nothing as interesting as it may have sounded.” She seemed to be thinking for a moment. Then she said, “Well, yes, it is quite interesting.” A shorter pause, and she added, “It’s to do with the dismissal of Frau Fuchs.”

  14

  The address she had given me was in a quiet suburban street, unpretentious and not heavily built-up. I found the number and saw a two-storey, broad old brick building, which seemed to house offices or small commercial enterprises. The ground floor had probably once accommodated the fitters’ workshop. There was an entrance to the yard next to it. On this Sunday morning there was no one to be seen either through the windows or out in the street.

  I drove slowly through the entrance to the yard, past the windowless side wall of the buil
ding on one side and a wire netting fence on the other. Plants run wild on the plot of land next door were growing through the wire netting. The yard was quite spacious. In the middle stood an old building, not very tall, also brick, with a large slanting skylight such as you might find in a factory. I parked beside the double door, which looked as if it had been restored.

  When I got out, a bell rang somewhere near by. A little later its high, rhythmical note was joined by two more bells pitched lower. Obviously there was a church somewhere close. I looked at my watch. I’d arrived too early. The peal of bells was probably ringing for high mass at ten o’clock.

  I looked around me. The back part of this quite large plot was a desolate sight. Piles of soil lay here and there next to the wire netting marking off the plot next to it, maybe originally leaves that had been swept up, set aside and left there, mingled with rubbish and overgrown by scanty grass. Beyond that I saw the dilapidated back of a row of old five-storey apartment buildings. The site they occupied was quite large too. Some of the paved yards behind the buildings were used as gardens, but several others contained rubbish heaps, like the furthest part of the plot on which I was standing.

  I remembered the large picture I had seen in Cilly Klofft’s studio at home, the land lying fallow, with distant rooftops on the horizon. It was obviously the view before me – and yet at the same time it was not.

  In her painting she had given this place a new character. She had expanded it, moved the apartment buildings into the distance, making the rooftop horizon look solid, like an almost insuperable barrier. At the same time the sky above the scene was wider, becoming a dome resting on the rooftops and marking off this city scene. The picture conveyed a sense of hopelessness, a melancholy resignation, that I could find nowhere here in the real place on which it was based.

  Perhaps the peal of bells had brightened the scenery here and now, giving it a Sunday glow. Sunday, a day off. The rubbish, the disorder, the dilapidated buildings lost their significance for twenty-four hours. You could overlook them, you had to. No one had to go to work, this was a time of leisure. You could withdraw, be undisturbed, do as you liked.

  When I looked at the time, suddenly overcome by fear that she might stand me up, I heard the sound of a car engine. A small convertible sped through the entrance, drove in a swift curve and stopped on the other side of the double door parallel with my own car. She waved to me, got out and took a large bag off the passenger seat. I went toward her.

  “Have I kept you waiting?” she asked.

  I said, “I think I arrived too early.”

  She laughed. “Oh, I take that as a compliment!”

  “Are you going away?” I asked, taking the bag from her.

  “No, I just had a few things to bring that I need here,” she said, laughing again.

  “Have you gone back to working here?”

  She closed the car door and said, smiling at me, “Maybe. I don’t know yet.” She waited as if expecting me to ask more questions, but I couldn’t think of any to put to her without sounding too familiar. I pointed to the building. “Is all that part of your studio?”

  “Yes, not exactly small, is it? Unfortunately, in spite of that it’s not ideal.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, this and that could be more practical. But I’m used to it.” She smiled. “Because of my father.”

  “Did he?…”

  “Yes, he bought the place and gave it to me, a surprise present. Many years ago.” She smiled. “Shall we go in?”

  The room we entered was large, if not quite as large as I had expected from outside. Her pictures stood just inside the door, as they did in her studio at home, pictures and portfolios. A wooden ceiling had been put in above the doorway, creating a kind of gallery with a flight of steps leading up to it. She probably stored more pictures up there.

  In the background there was a wall with two doors in it, one of them open. I could see the rim of a bathtub. I guessed there was also a little kitchen there, perhaps even a bedroom.

  Did she sometimes leave her husband on his own overnight?

  “You could put the bag down there beside the sofa.”

  I went over to the group of sofa and chairs in the corner beside the closed door. Halfway there I passed a large easel with a canvas showing a fragment of a painting on it. Beside it was a trolley of paints and palettes and craft tools; on the other side there was a folded screen. Only then did I realize what the canvas showed.

  It was obviously going to be a portrait of a seated man. So far, only the face was executed in detail. It was not an old man’s face. I stopped short in surprise, looked again. I thought I recognized my own nose, my mouth, my eyebrows. My hair. My eyes.

  As I stood there, she came to my side. “Oh, I forgot to unfold the screen! I was going to do it yesterday evening.” She laughed. “Sorry! I didn’t want to shock you, really I didn’t!”

  “I’m not shocked.” I examined the fragment. “Just surprised.” I looked at her. “Is this the picture you had behind the screen in your studio at home?”

  She nodded, smiling. “Karl brought it over here for me yesterday.”

  Another conspirator. I couldn’t think that Karl’s boss had been told about that errand.

  She took my arm. “Come on, let’s sit down.”

  She led me over to the group of seats and pointed to the sofa. I sat down. She hesitated for a moment and then sat down beside me. I noticed her perfume again. Her knee brushed my thigh. She looked at me and smiled.

  For Heaven’s sake, how old was this woman?

  Had she by any chance invited me here to get into bed with me? Or was it to be here on the sofa with its brightly coloured linen cover? How many other guests had she entertained here? Did her husband know, did he guess that maybe more than painting drew her back to this studio?

  She said, “This may perhaps seem to you like a… an ambush. And so it is, of course, in a way.” She smiled. “But with the best of intentions. I wanted to ask you if you’d model for me some time.”

  After a tiny pause I asked, “Model for you?”

  “Yes. You’ve seen this studio now.” She pointed to the easel. “I started on that after you first came to see me at home. Came to see my husband, I mean.” She frowned slightly, as if doubting whether I understood what she was talking about. “You sat in the living room with me for a while after your conversation with him. Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I do.”

  “Anyway, now I’m not sure whether I want to paint you like that. In that pose, you understand, sitting in an armchair as you were then.” She smiled. “I think there are more interesting situations.”

  What on earth did she mean, more interesting? She didn’t want to paint me as a nude, did she?

  My first reaction couldn’t have been more ridiculous. I regretted putting on my plain ordinary underwear that morning, not a pair of the designer briefs that Frauke had given me for Christmas.

  I tried to shake off this stupid embarrassment once and for all. I said, “No – no, I don’t think I’d really like that.” After a pause I was quick to add, “I mean, it… naturally it’s an honour that you think I’d be a suitable subject for a portrait by you. A portrait by Cilly Klofft. But…” I shook my head.

  She scrutinized me, frowned slightly again. “What do you mean by suitable?”

  “Well…” I was trying to appear amused – no, cheerful. Cheerful and composed. “Well, I don’t think I’m good-looking enough for that sort of thing!”

  She made a sudden movement, as if what I had said was some kind of provocation. Her knee touched my thigh again, and I thought I caught her perfume once more. She said, rather vehemently, “It’s not a question of good looks! And even if you were not good-looking – which, as you must know, you are – even then you would be a man worth painting.”

  “But that’s really…” I shook my head again. I couldn’t think of a way to finish the sentence. After what threaten
ed to be an awkward silence I pulled myself together. “No… maybe it’s much simpler than that.”

  She looked at me. I said, “What do you think your husband would say if he found out I was modelling for you?”

  Her eyes widened. She said nothing for a while, without taking her eyes off me. Then she said, “My husband? Do you really think you should worry about his opinion of anything you or I did or did not do? Or that interests me? You know him by now! You’ve found out certain things about him! Do you seriously believe he is qualified to pass judgement on other people’s conduct? Moral judgement, because that’s what it would be.”

  I wasn’t going to let this woman catch me out. I said, “Just a moment, please. I—”

  She interrupted. “No, let me finish what I was saying!” She leaned back slightly, but she didn’t take her eyes off me. “I can tell you what my husband’s opinion would be if you modelled for me. He’d say: what does that young whippersnapper think he’s doing, posing nude for my wife? Is he planning to bring out his… his cheesy white doctoral prick? And what does the old slut think she’s up to, using a boy like that as a model? Is she so hot for it, before it’s too late, that any pretext is good enough… well, I don’t want to be vulgar.” She laughed. “That, my dear, or something like it is what my husband would think if you modelled for me. Except that he’d put it even more coarsely. Very much more coarsely. His moral judgement, right? Do you really think you need bother about that for a single moment?”

  She leaned back on the sofa. I saw what I hadn’t registered before, that she was wearing a blouse and denim waistcoat, dark-brown and presumably exquisitely elegant jeans, with a wide belt and a big, gleaming, silvery belt buckle. I thought of her brown legs, her knees under the fine fabric of her smock, and instantly censored those thoughts.

  After a while I said, “Your husband is my client.”

  She said nothing for a moment, then asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it may seem ridiculous to you, but not to me.” I was trying to concentrate. “Your husband is my client. To go behind his back in any way at all wouldn’t do. I… I’d be neglecting my professional duty. And of course we would be going behind his back if I modelled for you. Because we’d be keeping a secret from him.” I looked at her. “It’s not just that my clients owe me something, I owe them something too. Not least loyalty. Do you understand?”