The Stronger Sex Read Online Free PDF Page A

not.”
    I couldn’t prevent him from opening the door to the passenger seat for me. I got in. As we were driving away I said, “I’m Alexander Zabel. What’s your name?”
    â€œKarl Schaffrath,” he replied. “You can call me Karl.”
    After a little pause I said, “Well, you know… Herr Schaffrath, I don’t think I ought to do that.”
    He smiled without looking at me. I asked, “How long have you been working for Herr Klofft?”
    He glanced at the rear-view mirror, then looked ahead down the shady street again. Finally he said, “Over forty years.”
    â€œGood heavens! That’s a whole working lifetime!”
    â€œYes.” He smiled. “You could say so.”
    I said nothing for a while, and then remarked, “It can’t always have been easy for you.”
    His own silence lasted a little longer than mine before he replied, “I can’t complain.”
    He probably assumed I wanted to pick his brains about his employer, as indeed I did. But I could see that I wasn’t going to get much out of the attempt. “That’s good,” I said. Then I ostentatiously closed my eyes.
    Through the reddish film of my closed eyelids I could just see the flickering light cast by the sun, shining through leaves as we drove along the avenue under the elms.
    Was Frau Klofft lying out on the terrace by now, helping her suntan along? I only just suppressed the shake of my head that was my instinctive answer to that.

    What on earth made me think of such a thing? Cilly Klofft sunbathing! She wasn’t the type who could find nothing to do but bother about her appearance. And in addition… well, she was too old!
    Really? What did age have to do with it?
    I opened my eyes as we were going along the expressway again, and looked out over the glittering water. Several lighters were slowly making their way upstream past the green bank on the opposite side of the river. The coloured pennants hung limp from their masts.
    Suddenly I realized why Hochkeppel had told her he’d retired. He had been friendly with her, just as much as being a friend of her husband’s, that was it! And that was also why she had told me to give him her regards – twice, in fact. And for the same reason, when she had called the chambers earlier and asked him to represent her husband before the tribunal, he had not wanted to say an outright no to her: no, I will not act for that obnoxious man you married.
    In no circumstances did he want to represent him. He knew the obnoxious Klofft. They had played skittles together, later they’d gone hunting together – as I had already heard from Hochkeppel himself – and later, when they had both made their reputations and enough money in their very different professions, they had belonged to the same golf club.
    They must share various memories, full-blooded robust memories of the masculine kind, maybe of outings in some Polish or Czech game preserve, or golf in Andalusia, or of some pleasant Portuguese or Tunisian destination. And if I had judged Herbert Klofft accurately, in his leisure activities he would forget himself as forthrightly and with as little inhibition as he did in conversation with a lawyer he assumed to be immature. Maybe he and Hochkeppel had quarrelled at some time, maybe over a black-eyed lady
sitting at the hotel bar where they played golf with an eye open for visitors from Germany.
    Hochkeppel did not want to take on board this client who kept his shirt sleeves rolled up. He had told Cilly Klofft he was sorry, but in fact he had retired, he just happened to come to the chambers now and then and it was coincidence that she had found him there. But if she agreed, he would send her a young lawyer who had been working for his legal practice for some time and was very able. And she had said yes, and he had put her in touch with me, and then she had fixed the meeting. Oh, and sent the car for me