Free The Stronger Sex by Hans Werner Kettenbach Page A

without closing the door. While I was still trying to take in the wealth of pictures hanging on the walls, standing on the floor and on two portable easels, I heard his voice on the other side of the broad corridor, distant but raised so angrily that I could make out what he was saying. He obviously hadn’t even given his wife time to close the door behind her.
    â€œDon’t let that whippersnapper come here unannounced again!” he barked. She said something I couldn’t hear. Then
his penetrating tones again. “Nonsense! And kindly don’t open the front door in that get-up. To a total stranger at that!”
    The door of his room closed. Cilly Klofft reappeared. She smiled, closed the studio door behind her. “The tea will be ready in a minute. Shall we sit down?”
    â€œThank you.”
    She had put the tea things and a plate of butter cookies on a small round table under one of the windows. The silence as we sat down and she poured me tea lasted too long for me. She could have supposed I thought it was her fault that I had heard a marital quarrel, and I didn’t comment because I felt she and her problems were a nuisance. I said, “I’ve only just realized that the portrait in Herr Hochkeppel’s office is by you.”
    â€œYes.” She smiled. “His mother. Did he never tell you?”
    â€œNo.” I hesitated, but then I added, “But I have to confess that I never asked him who painted the picture.”
    â€œWhy should you?”
    I said, “Wouldn’t any… well, any reasonably perceptive person have asked him? Except for a philistine like me. You see… until now I’ve always walked past pictures like a blind man.”
    â€œYou’re not a philistine.”
    I looked at her. She was smiling. “At least you noticed that the portrait in Hochkeppel’s office comes from my studio.”
    â€œWell, yes. And it was… well, a kind of revelation suddenly finding myself here surrounded by all… all this abundance.” I glanced around the room. Once again I noticed the screen standing at one of the windows, and the top of a large easel showing above it. I could also see the picture holder and the top strip of the canvas fixed into it, but I couldn’t see how far advanced the painting that seemed to be in progress was, or what it showed.

    She suddenly said, “Can you tell me why you and my husband were angry? Or does that count as a legal secret?”
    â€œWell…” I hesitated, but then I said, “He kept a piece of information from me. Maybe unintentionally, maybe not. I don’t know. In any case, I told him that if I didn’t know about it, that could do no one but the other party any good.”
    She looked hard at me. “Was it information putting him in the wrong?”
    After another hesitation I said, “You could say so. Yes.”
    She nodded. “Then you can assume that he concealed it on purpose. He can’t bear not to be in the right. And when that happens he’ll tell downright lies, trying to make his way out of a tight spot on any and every pretext until nothing works any more.” She snorted, a contemptuous sound. “But then there’s never any question of an apology. He turns abusive instead.”
    She stopped. I said, “Like with you just now?”
    â€œYou heard all that?”
    â€œYes. And I have to say…”
    She waved that away. “Oh, I could have answered him back, but I didn’t want to put you in that position.” She laughed. “He was lying again. Silly thing to do. He knew very well that you hadn’t turned up unannounced, he listened to your call. The recorded message. I could tell from his phone. The little light for new messages wasn’t blinking, it was steady. He listened to your message, but he hadn’t got around to deleting it.”
    I nodded. “If he’d admitted that, he wouldn’t