Billiards at Half-Past Nine

  She took the comb from her handbag and passed it over her shoulder to him; he held her hand for an instant.

  “I’ve always noticed how in the evenings after the workmen have gone you walk along by the big heaps of brand-new stone, and just touch some of them—and I’ve noticed that yesterday and the day before you didn’t do so; I know your hands well. And you left so early this morning.”

  “I went to get a present for Grandfather.”

  “You didn’t leave early because of the present. Where did you go?”

  “I was in town,” he said, “the picture frame still wasn’t ready, and I had to wait for it. You know the photo, don’t you, the one with Mother holding my hand, Ruth in her arms and Grandfather standing behind us? I had it enlarged; I know he’s going to like it.”

  And then I went to Modest Street and waited till Father came out of his office. Tall and straight, and I followed him to the hotel. I waited half an hour in front of the hotel, but he didn’t come out and I didn’t want to go in and ask for him. I only wanted to see him, and I did see him. A well-groomed gentleman in the prime of life.

  He let Marianne go, put the comb in his trouser pocket, laid his hand on her shoulder and said, “Please, don’t turn round, one can talk better this way.”

  “Lie better, you mean,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “or better still, keep back some things.” Looking past her ear he could look over the parapet of the cafe terrace and into the river, and he envied the workman hanging in a basket from the pylon, more than a hundred feet high, branding blue flashes on the air with his welder’s torch. Sirens howled and an ice cream vendor went along by the hedge below the cafe, calling, “Ice cream, ice cream,” then stopped and smoothed ice cream into crumbly wafers. In the background, St. Severin’s gray silhouette.

  “It must be something very bad,” said Marianne.

  “Yes,” he said, “it’s fairly bad—but maybe not. It’s not certain yet.”

  “Bad inside or outside?”

  “Inside,” he said. “Anyway I gave Klubringer my notice this afternoon. Don’t turn round or I won’t say another word.”

  He moved his hands from her shoulders to her head and held it firmly facing the bridge.

  “What will your grandfather say about your giving notice? He was so proud of you, he lapped up every nice thing Klubringer said about you like honey. And the Abbey means so much to him. You shouldn’t tell him today.”

  “They’ll have told him already, before he meets us. You know he’s coming to St. Anthony’s with Father; afternoon coffee before the big birthday party.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’m sorry about Grandfather. You know that I like him. He’ll certainly be coming out this afternoon, after he’s visited Grandmother; anyway, for the time being I can’t look at another brick or smell any more mortar.”

  “Only for the time being?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what will your father say?”

  “Oh,” he said quickly, “he’ll only regret it for Grandfather’s sake. He’s never been interested in the creative side of architecture, only in the formulas. Wait, don’t turn round.”

  “So it’s something to do with your father, I feel it. I’m so excited about seeing him at last; I’ve already talked to him a few times on the phone. I think I’m going to like him.”

  “You’ll like him. You’ll see him this evening at the latest.”

  “Do I have to go with you to the birthday party?”

  “Absolutely. You can’t imagine how glad Grandfather will be—and he particularly invited you.”

  She tried to free her head, but he laughed, held her fast and said, “Stop, we can talk much better this way.”

  “And lie.”

  “No—leave unspoken,” he said.

  “Do you love your father?”

  “Yes. Especially since I learned how young he still is.”

  “You didn’t know how old he was?”

  “No. I always thought he was fifty or fifty-five—funny, isn’t it, I was never interested in his exact age, and I was really shocked when I received my birth certificate yesterday and found out that Father is only just forty-three. It’s young, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said, “and you’re twenty-two.”

  “Yes, and until I was two years old I wasn’t called Faehmel, but Schrella. Funny name, isn’t it?”

  “Are you angry with him because of that?”

  “I’m not angry with him.”

  “Then what has he done, for you suddenly to lose all desire to go on building?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “All right—but why didn’t he ever visit you at St. Anthony’s?”

  “He’s obviously not interested in building jobs, and perhaps they went out to St. Anthony’s too much as children, you see? Sunday walks you go on with your parents—when you’re grown up you only do them again when you definitely feel a need to take a repeat course in Melancholy I.”

  “Did you ever go on Sunday walks with your parents?”

  “Not often, mostly with Mother and my grandparents, but when Father came home on leave he went along with us.”

  “To St. Anthony’s?”

  “There too.”

  “Well, I still don’t understand why he never came out to see you.”

  “He simply doesn’t like construction jobs. He’s a little strange, maybe. Sometimes when I come home unexpectedly, he’s sitting at the desk in the living room, scribbling formulas on the margins of blueprints—he has a large collection of them—but I think you’ll like him.”

  “You’ve never shown me a picture of him.”

  “I haven’t any recent ones. There’s something touchingly old-fashioned about him, in his clothes and his manners. Correct, charming—much more old-fashioned than Grandfather!”

  “I’m so curious about him. Can I turn round now?”

  “Yes.”

  He let go of her head and tried to laugh as she suddenly turned, but his forced smile faded before her round, light gray eyes.

  “Why won’t you tell me?”

  “Because I don’t yet understand it myself. As soon as I’ve understood it I’ll tell you. But that could be a long time. Shall we go?”

  “Yes,” she said, “let’s go. Your grandfather will soon be there, don’t keep him waiting. If they tell him before he sees you, it would be bad for him—and please promise me you won’t drive up to that frightful signboard and stop at the last moment.”

  “As it happens,” he said, “I’d thought of driving through it and crashing down the workers’ huts and over the open ramp as if from the deck of a ship and plunging away into the water with the car.…”

  “Then you don’t like me.”

  “Goodness,” he said, “it’s only a game.”

  He helped Marianne up and they went down the steps leading to the riverbank.

  “I’m really sorry,” Joseph said on the steps, “that Grandfather has to find out today of all days, on his eightieth birthday.”

  “Can’t you spare him?”

  “The facts, no—but notification of them, yes, if they haven’t already told him.”

  He unlocked the car, got in, opened the door for Marianne from inside, and put his arm round her shoulders as she sat down beside him.

  “Now listen,” he said, “it’s really quite simple; this stretch is exactly two and eight tenths miles. I need one thousand feet to get up to seventy-five miles an hour—another one thousand to brake, and that’s allowing for a generous margin. That leaves just a little over two and four tenths miles, and for that I need exactly two minutes. All you have to do is look at the watch and tell me when the two minutes are up and I have to start braking. Understand? I’d like to see just once what this car can really do.”

  “It’s awfully dangerous,” she said.

  “If I could actually get up to a hundred ten I’d only need twenty seconds—but the
n the braking distance would be greater too.”

  “Please don’t,” she said.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, I’ll let it go. But can I at least get her up to fifty?”

  “All right, if it means so much to you.”

  “At that speed you don’t need to look at the watch, I can drive by sight and go over the braking distance afterwards, you see? I’d simply like to know whether the speedometer is accurate.”

  He started up, drove slowly through the narrow streets of the resort town, quickly past the golf-course hedge and stopped where the road led onto the autobahn.

  “Listen,” he said, “at fifty I need exactly three minutes; it’s really quite safe, but if you’re scared get out here and wait for me.”

  “No, I’m certainly not going to let you drive alone.”

  “It’s really the last time,” he said, “perhaps by tomorrow I won’t be around here any more and I won’t have an opportunity like this anywhere else.”

  “But you could try it out much better on an open stretch.”

  “No, it’s precisely the necessity of stopping at the signboard which fascinates me.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Do you know what I’m going to do?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to drive at twenty-five.”

  She smiled as he started off, but nonetheless she watched the speedometer.

  “Now,” he said, as they went by the five-mile marker, “keep an eye on your watch and take the time we use to get to the seven-mile marker. I’m driving at exactly twenty-five.”

  Far ahead, like bars slid in front of the huge gates, she could see the signboards. At first only the size of hurdles, they grew larger and larger, continually and oppressively. What had looked like a black spider materialized into a pair of crossbones, and what had appeared to be a curious knob became a skull, rising up as the word rose up, and rushing down on her, seeming nearly to touch the radiator. DEATH, and the speedometer needle flickering between 70 and 80, children on roller skates, men and women, no longer relaxed, went flying past, their arms raised in warning, their voices shrill; they looked like vultures flapping their wings.

  “Joseph,” she said quietly, “are you really all there?”

  “Of course,” he said, smiling, “and I know exactly where I am”; he was looking fixedly at DEATH. “Don’t worry.”

  Shortly before quitting time the foreman of the demolition company had called him into the refectory, where a pile of debris was waiting to be shoveled onto a conveyor belt and thence conveyed to a truck. Damp remnants of brick and cement and indefinable rubble had formed sticky lumps. As the pile grew smaller, damp appeared on the walls, first in a dark and then in a light patch. And behind the patch were shades of red, blue and gold, traces of a fresco which the foreman thought were valuable, a Last Supper, blotched by the mildew: gold of the chalice, white of the Host, the face of Christ, light-skinned with a dark beard, St. John’s brown hair and, “Here, look here, Mr. Faehmel, here’s the dark leather of Judas’ purse.” The foreman carefully wiped away the white patch with a dry cloth, and reverently exposed the picture: a damask tablecloth, the twelve disciples. Feet became visible, edges of the tablecloth, and the tiled floor of the room where the Last Supper had taken place. Joseph smiled and laid his hand on the foreman’s shoulder. “It’s a good thing you called me; of course the fresco has to be saved. Have everything cleared away and dried out before anything’s done with it.” He wanted to go, tea had already been poured, it was on the table with bread, butter and herrings; Friday evening, you could always tell by the fish. Marianne had already left Stehlinger’s farm on her way to meet him for a walk; and there, just before he finally turned away, he saw the XYZX written down in the corner of the picture, had seen it hundreds of times, being helped at his mathematics homework, Father’s X, his Y, his Z; here he saw it again, about the hole that had been blown in the cellar roof, between the feet of St. John and St. Peter. The refectory columns shattered, the supporting vault destroyed, leaving the remains of the wall and the picture of the Last Supper; XYZX. “Anything wrong, Mr. Faehmel?” asked the foreman, touching him on the shoulder. “You look kind of pale—or is it just love?” “Only love,” he said, “only love, nothing to worry about, and thank you very much for calling me.” The tea had lost its flavor, and so had the bread and butter and herrings. Friday, you could tell it by the fish. Even his cigarette had lost its flavor. He went through all the buildings and round the Abbey chapel into the pilgrims’ lodge, looking in all the places where the statically significant points must have been, but he only found one more, one single little X in the guest-house cellar. His handwriting was unmistakable, as unmistakable as his face, his walk, as his smile and the austere grace of his movements when he poured wine or passed bread across the table. His little X. Dr. Robert Faehmel. Architectural Estimates.

  “Please, please,” said Marianne, “wake up!”

  “I am awake,” he said, and let up on the accelerator, put his left foot on the clutch, his right on the brake and pressed down. Screeching and skidding, the car slid right up to the great DEATH, raising dust as the brakes squealed and excited strollers hurried toward them with arms raised, gesticulating, and a tired night watchman appeared with his coffeepot in his hand, between DEATH and the crossbones.

  “Oh God,” said Marianne, “why do you have to scare me like that!”

  “Forgive me,” he said gently, “please forgive me, I simply got carried away.” He turned the car rapidly and drove off before anyone could gather round, and did the couple of miles or so at a leisurely pace, steering with one hand and holding the other round Marianne’s shoulders, past the golf course where wiry women beside their wiry men struggled toward the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth hole.

  “Forgive me,” he said, “I really won’t do it again,” and he turned off the autobahn and drove along between pleasant fields, by the edge of the quiet woods.

  XYZ, they were the same letters he had detected on the neat blueprints of postcard size which his father played with in the evenings, like playing cards. Publisher’s House at edge of forest—XxX; Annex for Co-operative Welfare Society—YxY; Teacher’s house on riverbank—just Y. Between the feet of St. John and St. Peter.

  He drove slowly on between fields where the fat beets were already pressing their way up beneath great, green leaves. Behind the stubble fields and meadows they could already see Cossack’s Hill.

  “Why won’t you tell me?” asked Marianne.

  “Because I don’t understand it myself yet, because I can’t yet believe it’s true. Perhaps it’s only a ridiculous dream. Maybe I’ll be able to explain it to you later, but maybe never.”

  “But don’t you want to be an architect?”

  “No.”

  “Is that why you drove up to the signboards like that?”

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  “I’ve always hated people who don’t know what money is,” said Marianne, “people who drive around like crazy in cars, up to signboards with DEATH written on them, who upset people without any reason at all and spoil their well-earned walk after work.”

  “I had a reason for driving like crazy up to the signboard.” He slowed down, stopped at a sandy path on the edge of Cossack’s Hill, and parked the car under low-hanging pine branches.

  “What do you want here?” she asked.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s walk a bit more.”

  “It’ll be too late,” she said, “your grandfather’s sure to come on the four-thirty train. It’s four-twenty already.”

  Joseph got out and walked a few paces up the hill, held one hand in front of his eyes and looked toward Denklingen.

  “Yes,” he called out, “I can see the train coming from Doderingen, the same old puff-puff as when I was a child, and the same time too. Come on, they’ll wait a quarter of an hour, all right.”

  He went back to the car, drew Marianne from her seat and
up the sandy path. They sat down in a clearing. Joseph pointed to the plain, following the train with his finger as it went through beet fields and between meadows and fields of stubble up to Kisslingen.

  “You can’t imagine,” he said, “how well I know those villages. How often we came out on that train. After Mother died we were almost always in Stehlingen or Goerlingen, and I went to school in Kisslingen. In the evening we ran to the train to meet Grandfather coming from the city, to that train there; look, now it’s leaving Denklingen. Funny, I always had the feeling we were poor. While Mother was alive and Grandmother lived with us we had less to eat than the other children we knew, and I was never allowed to wear good clothes, only cut-down things—and we had to look on while she gave away the good things to strangers, and the bread and butter and honey from the Abbey and the estates; we had to eat imitation honey.”

  “Didn’t you hate your grandmother?”

  “No, and I don’t know myself why I didn’t hate her for such foolishness. Perhaps because Grandfather took us to his studio with him, and gave us good things on the sly. He took us to the Cafe Kroner too, and fed us up to the neck. He used to say, ‘It’s a big thing that Mother and Grandmother are doing, very big—but I don’t know whether you’re big enough yet for that kind of bigness.’ ”

  “Did he really say that?”

  “Yes,” Joseph laughed. “When Mother died and Grandmother was taken away we were alone with Grandfather, and then we had enough to eat. We were almost always in Stehlingen during the last years of the war. I heard them blow up the Abbey one night. We were in Stehlingen, crouching in the kitchen, and the farmers from the neighborhood were cursing the German general who had given the demolition order, and they were murmuring to themselves, whywhywhy. Father came to visit me a few days later, in an American car escorted by an American officer, and was allowed to stay with us for three hours. He brought us chocolate, and it scared us, that sticky, dark-brown stuff; we’d never eaten it before and would only eat it then after Mrs. Kloschgrabe, the caretaker’s wife, had tasted it first. Father brought coffee for Mrs. Kloschgrabe, and she said to him, ‘You needn’t worry, Doctor, we are looking after the children as if they were our own,’ and she said, ‘What a shame they blew up the Abbey like that, so near to the end of the war,’ and he said, ‘Yes, it’s a shame, but perhaps it was God’s will,’ and Mrs. Kloschgrabe said, ‘There are some who do the Devil’s will as well,’ and Father laughed, and the American officer laughed, too. Father was kind to us, and for the first time I saw him cry, when he had to leave us again; I hadn’t believed he could cry. He’d never said much or showed his feelings. Even when he had to go back from leave and we went to the station with him, he never cried. We all cried, Mother and Grandmother, Grandfather and us, but he, never—there,” said Joseph, pointing to the streamer of smoke from the train, “they’ve just got to Kisslingen.”