Free The Stronger Sex by Hans Werner Kettenbach Page B

have had any reason to attack you.”
    â€œYou’re right. Or that’s to say… he’d have thought of something else.” She laughed, shook her head, looked down at herself. “This smock of mine.” She opened both hands, held them palm up to the right and left of her
thighs as if presenting the painter’s smock she wore. Then she looked up and said, “I mean, would you call this thing sexy?”
    I instinctively stared at the smock, its short grey skirts flecked with colour and leaving her brown knees bare, the narrow shady divide showing between her thighs.
    I said, “I… well, perhaps he…” I wanted to say perhaps Klofft had meant to say she looked slovenly in it, no, not slovenly, maybe a little shabby, no, not that either, for Heaven’s sake, I didn’t know what I could say, and instead of a reasonably plausible comment I just uttered an inarticulate sound. I felt the blood rising to my face.
    â€œWhat a silly question!” she said. “What could you possibly say to that?” She laughed. “ No wouldn’t do because it’s not polite. And yes definitely wouldn’t do either. Do forgive me.” She leaned forward and glanced at my cup. “A little more tea?”
    As she poured it, I caught a hint of her perfume. She asked if I liked the tea. I said yes, very much. Some people, she said, didn’t like drinking it surrounded by the smell of paint. A friend of hers always said that in this studio tea tasted like turpentine, but of course that was nonsense. I said yes, I thought so too.
    When we had both sipped some of our tea, silence fell. I was beginning to wonder how I could continue the conversation, and for a moment I was alarmed by the idea of coming out with a remark to the effect that I hoped she didn’t mind my saying so, but in fact I did think the short, lightweight smock she was wearing was rather sexy. I kept my lips firmly pressed together.
    All at once she said, “Maybe you ought to know that my husband had a relationship with the woman he dismissed without notice. It lasted about ten years. He won’t tell you, but I do think you should know, because otherwise you can’t understand this case properly.” And after a pause she
went on, “She broke it off about a year ago. It looks as if she’d met another man. Younger, probably. Anyway, a man with whom she could have a future.” She breathed out audibly. “She’s something over thirty now. And my husband is nearly eighty.” Another little pause, and she asked, “Can you imagine what effect that had on him?”
    She looked at me with a rather forced smile.
    â€œYes,” I said. “I think so.”
    â€œPerhaps not entirely.” She stopped smiling. “Since then he’s been persecuting her with – well, if it didn’t sound so dramatic, I’d say with positively biblical rancour. He harassed her at work whenever he had a chance. That was while he still went to the works. He would run her down in front of other people. And when he stopped going out of the house, because he was afraid everyone would notice what was wrong with him, he told his business manager Herr Pauly to keep a particularly sharp eye on her. Goodness knows what other ways he found of making life difficult for her! Really, you’d hardly believe it!”
    After a while I asked, “How do you know all this? I mean… he won’t have told you about this… this relationship. Or did he?”
    â€œOf course not.” She laughed. “Maybe you don’t yet know the ritual observed by such comedies – no, tragicomedies. Usually, anyway. The wife finds out that her husband is cheating on her. But she doesn’t do anything about it, maybe because it hurts too much, maybe because she hopes the affair will run its course and come to a natural end. And as long as she lets him keep his girlfriend,