“But what motive could Kloster have for-”

“I don’t know. That’s the most exasperating part. Actually, he does have a motive: I sued him when I went back to work for him. But in hindsight it was a minor thing-it didn’t even go to court. I can’t believe he’s still taking revenge: it’s out of all proportion. The more I think about it the less I can believe it’s the real reason.”

“You sued Kloster? But I thought he was the perfect boss. The last time I saw you, you seemed happy to be going back to work for him. What happened?”

The coffee pot on the hob started to hiss. I went to the kitchen, and returned with two cups of coffee. I waited for her to help herself to sugar. She stirred her coffee endlessly, as if she were trying to order her thoughts. Or maybe she was wondering how much to tell me.

“What happened? I’ve spent years asking myself every day what happened exactly. It’s been a nightmare. I could recount each thing separately and it would just seem like a string of misfortunes. It all began when I went back to work for him, when he got back from his retreat. The first day he was in a good mood. During a break, while I was making coffee, he asked what I’d done during the month he was away. I told him, without a second thought, that I’d worked for you. At first he seemed simply intrigued. He asked who you were, and what the novel you were writing was about. I think he knew a little about you, or he pretended to. I told him you’d broken your wrist. It was just a casual conversation but there was something in his voice and his insistent questions that made me think he was jealous-he seemed to assume something had happened between you and me. A couple of times I think he was on the point of asking. And in the days that followed, every so often he’d somehow bring up my free month. He even read one of your books and made fun of it. I’d say nothing but that seemed to annoy him even more. A week later he changed tack. He became unusually silent. He hardly spoke to me and I thought he was going to fire me.”

“So I was right,” I said. “He was in love with you.”

“Those days were the most difficult. He didn’t dictate anything at all, just paced the room, as if he were trying to come to a decision that had nothing to do with his novel. Something about me. And suddenly, one morning, he started dictating again normally, as if nothing had happened. Actually, not quite normally: he seemed to be inspired. Until then he’d dictated at the most one or two paragraphs a day, going over them obsessively, line by line. But that day he dictated a long and rather horrifying scene in one go: a series of murders, throat-slittings by the religious assassins. He seemed transformed. He’d never dictated so fast-I had trouble keeping up. But I thought everything was OK again. I really needed that job so I was terribly worried about him firing me. He continued dictating at that pace for almost two hours and as we went on his mood seemed to get better and better. When I stopped to go and get more coffee, he even made a couple of jokes. I stood up and suddenly realised how stiff my neck was. I had a problem with it in those days,” she said, as if she were trying to prove her innocence with this belated explanation.

“Yes, I remember very well,” I said drily. “Though I was always a bit suspicious of those neck aches of yours.”

“But I really did have a bad neck,” she said. It seemed vital to her that I believe it. There was a silence. She looked out of the window, lost in thought, as if she could still picture the scene, frozen in time. “I had my back to him. I clicked my neck and suddenly felt him put his arm round me. I turned round and he…he tried to kiss me. I struggled to free myself but he was holding me firmly and didn’t seem to notice, as if he just couldn’t understand that I was resisting. So I screamed. Not too loudly: I just wanted him to let go. Actually I was more surprised than shocked. As I told you when you asked: I thought of him as a father. He froze. I think it was only then that he realised what he’d done and what could happen. His wife was upstairs and might have heard.

“There was a knock on the door and he went to open it. He was very pale. It was Pauli, his little girl. She’d heard me scream and asked, looking at me, what had happened. He told her not to worry-I’d seen a cockroach-and to go back to her room and play. We were alone again. As I gathered up my things, I said I’d never set foot in his house again. I was beside myself. I couldn’t help crying and that made me even more furious. He asked if we could just forget the whole thing. He said it had all been a terrible mistake, but that it really hadn’t been all his fault because I’d been sending out signals. And he said something even more insulting: he assumed I’d slept with you. I was incensed. I realised then, with absolute clarity, what had been going through his head. Before his trip he was crazy about me. He’d let me know in that unspoken way men have, but I don’t think it had occurred to him to touch me. Since he’d got back, though, he’d thought of me as no more than a slut, with whom he too could try his luck. I screamed again and this time I didn’t care if his wife heard. He moved closer as if to make me shut up and I said if he touched me again I’d sue him. He apologised and tried to calm me down. He opened the door and offered to pay me for the days I’d worked so far that month. I just wanted to get out of there as soon as I could. Outside I burst into tears again. It was my first job and I’d trusted him completely. I was home early and my mother saw immediately that I’d been crying. I had to tell her what had happened.”

She raised the cup of coffee with a trembling hand and took a sip. She appeared lost in the memory for a moment, staring into the cup.

“And what was her reaction?” I asked.

“She asked if I’d done anything to lead him on. She’d just been fired herself-that’s why I went to work for Kloster-and now we’d both lost our jobs. She’d won some compensation so she thought we should go and see her solicitor. We agreed not to say anything to my father until it was all over. We went to see the solicitor that day. She was a terrifying woman-she scared me. Huge and fat, with tiny eyes, sitting bulging behind her desk. She looked like a union thug. She hated men, she told us; she was on a personal crusade against them and nothing pleased her more than crushing them. She called me ‘dear’. She asked me to tell her the whole story. She said it was a pity he hadn’t been a bit more insistent and that it had only happened that one time. She asked if I had any marks or bruises from the struggle. I had to tell her that there hadn’t really been any physical violence. She said we wouldn’t be able to sue him for sexual harassment but that she’d work something out, and slip the words in at the beginning just to make him nervous. The case, she explained, would ultimately be a claim for the social security and pension contributions he hadn’t paid me. What had happened between us had taken place in a closed room, with no witnesses. It would be his word against mine so we wouldn’t get far down that path. She asked if he was married and when I said yes she was delighted. She said the married ones were the easiest to scare: we could just name a figure and we’d get it out of him. On her calculator she added up the amount he’d have to pay me by law and then added an amount for compensation. It seemed like a fabulous sum, more than I’d ever earned in a whole year. She dictated the text of a letter for me to write. I asked if we couldn’t change the accusation of sexual harassment in the heading to something less serious. She said that from now on I should get used to the idea that he was my enemy, and that he’d deny everything anyway.

“I went to the post office alone. I stood in the queue and felt a foreboding that I was about to set in motion something that would have irreparable consequences, that the letter had a hidden destructive power. I’d never felt like this before, as if I was about to fire a gun. I knew that one way or another I’d be doing him harm, and not just financially. I nearly turned round and came home. I think if I’d waited a day I’d never have sent the letter. But I’d come that far and I still felt humiliated. It seemed unfair that I’d lost my job, when I’d always behaved impeccably with him. In a way it seemed right that he should pay.”