Billiards at Half-Past Nine Read online

  Delivered twenty minutes ago, against receipt: one design, with detailed drawings and a complete breakdown of costs. The numbers and positions had been marked in with a fine pen. I gazed at the plan as if the buildings were really there, as if I were seeing them through a window. There they were, the brothers, bent in toil, and the pilgrims, drinking cider. Meanwhile, down below, the women sang their dirge, longing for the time to quit work, voices bright and voices dark. I shut my eyes and sensed the cold that would close in around me fifty years later, by then a man of established position, surrounded by the swarm of life.

  These four and a half weeks had been endlessly long. What I had done during that time had been like so much dreamwork foreordained. Now only the morning Mass remained, and the hours between ten-thirty and five. I longed for something unexpected, the kind of break that had come my way in the form of a brief smile and a ‘Good luck, Herr Faehmel.’ When I closed my eyes again time divided into bands like a spectrum: past, present, future. In fifty years my oldest grandson would be twenty-five and my sons as old as the solid citizens into whose hands I just delivered myself together with my design. I felt for the receipt. I had it, it was truly there. Tomorrow morning the jury would assemble, and realize the situation had changed. Now there was a fourth plan to take into account. Already factions had been formed. Two for Grumpeter, two for Brehmockel and one, the youngest, smallest and yet most important of the five, the Abbot, for Wollersein. The Abbot liked Romanesque. The going would get hot, since the two most corruptible jury members would bear down hardest on the artistic angle. Adjournment. That young upstart has sabotaged our scheme. Now it had dawned on them, to their dismay, that the Abbot obviously liked my design. Again and again he had stood in front of the drawing, sipping at his wine. It was a total organic unity, fitted to the landscape, and the utilitarian quality of the farm-building close stood out clearly in contrast to the severe quadrangle of cloister and cloister garth. Fountain, pilgrim’s hostel, he liked all of it. He smiled. In such a place he would feel first among equals. He was already seeing himself moving about in the plan, as if it were his own property, presiding in the refectory, sitting in the chancel, visiting the sick brothers, going over to the steward’s to taste the wine, to let the grain trickle through his fingers. Bread for his religious and for the poor, from grain harvested in his own fields. Yes, there, as an afterthought, the young architect had added a little room for the beggars, right by the door, with benches outside for summer, inside for winter a table and stove. ‘Gentlemen, there’s no doubt in my mind. I vote without reservation for the what’s his name? … for the Faehmel design. And look at the cost, three hundred thousand marks less than the least expensive of the other three.’ Dried sealing wax scattered in bits on the table, whereon the experts now banged their fists, initiating a great palaver. ‘You’ve got to believe us, Father, they underestimate all the time. What will you do when he comes to us four weeks before the dedication and says he’s run out of green stuff. In a project like this it’s common to run over the estimate by half a million marks. Take our word on it, we’ve had plenty of experience. And what bank will go hock for a young man like him, absolutely unknown, no experience? What collateral has he got to show?’ A great burst of laughter now beat on the young Abbot. ‘Resources, according to his own declaration: eight thousand marks.’ More palaver. The gentlemen took angry leave of each other. Not one had come to the Abbot’s support. The hearing was adjourned for four weeks. Who had given the benefit of the deciding vote, per the statute, to this young country fellow with the close-cropped head? So that if a decision was made on the spot, rather than postponed for further reflection, it would have to be for him? And could not be against him?

  Now the phones began to ring, perspiring messengers raced with special-delivery letters from Prime Minister to Archbishop, from Archbishop to the Theological Seminary, where the trusted consultant of the archiepiscopal see was all for Neo-Gothic. This gentleman, face lobster red, rushed to his waiting coach. Hooves clattered away over the cobblestones, wheels screeched around sharp curves. Now, tell me what’s up? Faehmel? Never heard of him. His plan? Technically brilliant. And his estimates, Excellency, you’ve got to admit, convincing as far as we can see. But the style! Horrible! Over my dead body. Dead body? The Archbishop smiled. Artistic temperament, the professor, fiery fellow, too much feeling, too many flowing white locks. Dead body? Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far.

  Now inquiries in code flew from Grumpeter to Brehmockel, from Brehmockel to Wollersein. For a few days the celebrities, ordinarily sworn enemies, were as one. In cipher and cryptic phone calls they asked each other: ‘Can cauliflower be had?’ Which meant: ‘Are abbots venal?’ The crushing answer: ‘Cauliflower cannot be had.’

  For four and a half weeks I had buried myself from sight. How peaceful my grave. Slowly the earth slid down, fitted itself nicely round and over me. Bemused by the chant of the women at work, it was better simply to do nothing. But now, when they opened my grave, lifted my coffin lid, I would act, I would have to act. I would be flung back into time, where every day would have a name and every hour a duty. Then the game would be played for keeps. No more getting my pea soup in my little kitchen at two o’clock. Even now I had quit bothering to warm it and was eating it cold. I had never cared much about food, or money or fame for that matter. I loved the game. I liked my cigar and longed for a wife, my wife. Would it be the one I saw over there in the roof garden, dark-haired, slender, pretty? Johanna Kilb? Tomorrow she would know my name. Was I longing for just anyone, or just for her? I had had my fill and more of nothing but men’s company. They had all come to seem absurd to me, the good fellows and the bad, the ones who told the dirty jokes and the ones who listened to them. Billiard players, reserve lieutenants, singers, doormen and waiters—I was sick of them all. And when, around five or six in late afternoon, I had a chance to look into the women’s faces as they streamed out past me from work through the print-shop door, I was glad. I loved the sensuousness in their faces, ever putting them into debt to their mortality. I would have liked to take one of them out dancing and have lain with her in fragrant autumn grass by the cemetery wall, my receipt torn up, the great game abandoned. These girls laughed and sang, liked to eat and drink. They could weep real tears, unlike the false she-goats who had tried to entice me, when I’d been a gentleman-lodger, into intimacies they fancied were daring. But on this last day the routines and the properties of the play still belonged to me, the supporting actors were still subject to my command. I had no hankering for cold pea soup and was too lazy to warm it. I wanted to play it out to the very end, the game I’d planned on dull afternoons in provincial towns, after I’d had my fill of examining mortar, passing expert judgment on stone, trueing up walls. Choosing the boredom of gloomy taverns in preference to the boredom of the office, there I began to sketch the Abbey on odd slips of paper.

  From then on I was never free of the game. The drawings became bigger, my ideas more precise. Then, almost without noticing it, I suddenly found myself in the midst of the estimates. Calculation learned, drawing learned. If you please. I sent thirty gold marks to Kilb and the terms of the competition in due course were sent to me. One Sunday afternoon I paid a visit to Kisslingen. Flourishing fields of wheat, dark green beetfields and a forest where, one day, the Abbey would stand. I persisted in the game, studied my competitors, Brehmockel, Grumpeter, Wollersein, whose names were mentioned by their fellow-architects with respectful hatred. I inspected their buildings, churches, hospitals, chapels, Wollersein’s cathedral, and I sensed, I could smell it in those cheerless structures, that the future was mine for the taking, like a country waiting to be conquered. Terra incognita where gold lay buried, ready to be dug up by anyone who took the trouble to work out a little strategy. I held the future in the palm of my hand. All I had to do was close my fist around it. I suddenly saw time as a force that was being allowed to go by the board by default, while for a pittance I was letting bunglers and hypocrites
exploit the skill in my hands and the mathematics in my brain. I bought paper, pencils, tables, handbooks. It was all a game, and it would cost me nothing but time. Meanwhile time was there for the asking. Sundays were days to reconnoitre, to look over the terrain, explore the streets. Modest Street: in No. 7, there was a studio for rent; across the street, in No. 8, there was the office of the attorney who’d keep the competition entries in his safe. The frontiers were wide open. All I had to do was march in. And not until now, when I was already deep inside the country and half in possession of it with the enemy still asleep, had I made my declaration of war. I looked for the receipt again. Still there.

  The day after tomorrow the first visitor was to cross my studio threshold; the Abbot, young, brown-eyed and levelheaded, not yet fully mature, but born to lead. ‘How did you know that our Holy Father Benedict never intended that working brothers and contemplatives should be kept apart in the refectory?’ He walked up and down, looking at the design again and again, and asked, ‘Do you think you’ll hold on to the end? You’re sure you won’t break down and prove those carpers right?’ And, true enough, I was frightened by the challenge of my own design. It threatened to overwhelm me. I’d played the game, but never quite realized I might actually win. The mere reputation of having stood up to Brehmockel, Grumpeter and Wollersein, even if I had never won, would have been good enough for me. But actually to come out on top! I was panicky, but I said, ‘Yes, I’ll stick it out, Your Reverence.’ He nodded, smiled and left.

  About five I joined the throng of printery workers going home through the big gate, and went for my evening stroll, all according to plan. I saw veiled beauties on their way to rendezvous in carriages, lieutenants in the Cafe Fuhl drinking hard liquor to soft music. Every day I walked four kilometers, in one hour, always the same way at the same time. I meant to be seen, and seen at the same place at the same time, always. Shopgirls, bankers and jewelers, whores and cab drivers, store clerks, waiters and housewives, I intended that they should see me, and they did, from five to six, cigar in my mouth. Impudent, I know, but I’m an artist, pledged to nonconformity. A man like me is permitted to stand and listen to the organ-grinder, and make capital of the melancholy of the hours when work lets out. Permitted to frequent dream streets in the city of dreams. My supporting players had well-oiled joints. They were moved about by invisible threads, they opened their mouths when I cued them. Cold melody of billiard balls in the Prince Heinrich, white-green, red-green. Manikins were crooking their arms to stroke with the cue, to guide glasses of beer to their mouths, chalk up points, play runs, and amiably clap me on the shoulder, and say, Oh yes, Oh no, brilliant, bad luck. As the case might be. Meanwhile I could hear the sound of clods of earth falling on my coffin. Already Edith’s dying scream was lying in wait for me, and waiting, too, the blond carpenter’s boy’s last look at the prison walls, in the gray of dawn.

  I drove with my wife and children out to the Kissa Valley, proudly showed them the work of my youth, visited the Abbot, grown older now, in his face detected the wear and tear of the years I could not see in my own. Coffee in the guest room, cakes baked with the brothers’ own flour, plums they had picked themselves, and cream from their own cows. My sons were allowed to walk through the cloister while my wife and her giggling daughters had to wait outside. Four sons, three daughters, seven children who were to present me with seven times seven grandchildren. The Abbot smiled at me: ‘What’s more, we’re more or less neighbors now.’ Yes, I had bought the two farmsteads, Stehlinger’s Grotto and Goerlinger’s Place.

  “What, Leonore, the Cafe Kroner again? No, I explicitly told them, no champagne. I hate champagne. Now, quit for the day, child, please. And will you order me a taxi, for two o’clock? It can wait down there by the big door and perhaps I can take you a little way. No, I’m not going through Blessenfeld. Yes, we can clean up that much more, if you want to.”

  He turned away from the kaleidoscopic window and glanced into the studio, where the great St. Anthony design was still hanging on the wall. The air was full of dust, raised, careful as she was, by the young woman’s busy hands. Assiduously she was cleaning out the steel cabinets, now holding out to him a stack of banknotes which had become valueless thirty years ago, now, shaking her head, bringing out another package of bills grown worthless ten years back, and counting out the unfamiliar things, carefully, onto the drawing board: ten, twenty, eighty, a hundred—all told twelve hundred and twenty marks.

  “Into the fire with them, Leonore. Or give them to the kids in the street. What good are they. Nothing but jumbo receipts for the swindle that started thirty-five years ago and cropped up again twenty-five years later. Money’s never meant much to me, yet they all thought I was greedy for it. They were way off the mark there. When I started to play the big game it wasn’t money I was after. And it wasn’t until I’d made money and therefore become popular that it dawned on me I’d had the makings of popularity all along. I was efficient, friendly and simple, an artist and a reserve officer. I’d arrived, I was rich and yet was still the ‘young man who’d come up from nothing,’ something which I never denied. Yet it wasn’t for money or fame that I worked out an algebra of the future and turned X, Y and Z into farmhouses, bank accounts, power. Which I gave away again and again, only to have them come back to me twofold. A slight and smiling David, I never lost, never gained a pound. My 1897 lieutenant’s uniform would fit me even today. No matter, the unpredictable that I longed for came to pass, and when it came, it hit me hard: my wife’s love and my daughter Johanna’s death. She was a real Kilb, a year and a half old when she went. I looked into her child’s eyes, as into my silent father’s eyes. I saw age-old wisdom in their dark depths, which already seemed to know death. Scarlet fever blossomed out on her body like a frightful weed, spread to the hips, ran down to the feet. Fever seethed in her and death grew in her, white as snow, grew like a mould beneath the bloom of red, grew, and burst forth black at the nostrils. The unpredictable I’d yearned for came, and came like a curse and lay in wait in that dreadful house. Now dissension arose, fierce arguments with the pastor at St. Severin’s, with my in-laws, my brothersand sisters-in-law, because I forbade all singing at the Requiem Mass. No matter, I wouldn’t give in, I had my way. But I was filled with fear when I heard Johanna whispering ‘Christ’ during the Requiem.”

  I never uttered the name of Christ, and hardly dared think it, even though I knew all the time it had me in its power. Nothing had been able to kill the Word in me, the word ‘Christ’ that Johanna whispered. Not Domgreve’s rosary, nor the sour virtues of husband-hunting landlords’ daughters had been able to do it. Nor the trade in sixteenth-century confessionals, sold at private auctions for exorbitant prices, the profit from which Domgreve spent in Locarno on cheap sins. Nor yet the dismal moral failures of hypocritical priests—I myself had seen how they meanly seduced fallen girls. Not even my father’s unspoken hardness had been able to do it, not even endless passages through wind tunnels of primeval bitterness and futility when, on the future’s icy seas, loneliness around me like a great lifebelt, I drew strength from my laugh. The Word lived on. I was David, the little man with the sling, and Daniel, the little man in the lion’s den, and I was ready to accept the unpredictability I had longed for: Johanna’s death on September 3, 1910. That day, too, the Uhlans rode over the cobbles. Milkmaids, baker boys, clerics with fluttering robes, all was as usual that morning, and the boar hung as usual in front of Gretz’ shop. The shabby melancholy of the family doctor who’d been issuing birth and death certificates to the Kilbs for forty years, all as usual. There it was as always, the scuffed leather bag, in it the instruments he used to disguise his futility. He drew the covers up over the disfigured body, but I drew them down again. I wanted to see how Lazarus had looked, and to see the eyes so like my father’s, eyes which the child had wanted to keep for only a year and a half. In the next bedroom Heinrich was crying. The bells of St. Severin’s shattered time into shards as it tolled for nine o’c
lock Mass. Had she lived, little Johanna would now have been fifty years old.

  “War bonds, Leonore? I didn’t buy them. They were left to me by my father-in-law. Throw them into the fire along with the banknotes. Two medals? Yes, of course, I built siege trenches, I bored tunnels, set up artillery emplacements, faced barrages, dragged the wounded out of the field of fire. Second-class, first-class, bring them here, Leonore, let’s have them. We’ll throw them into the roof gutter. Let the muck in the gutter bury them. Otto found them once when he was rummaging around in the cabinets while I was at my drawing board. I saw the fateful gleam in his eyes too late. He’d seen them, and the respect he felt for me took on added dimension. Too late. But at least let’s get rid of them now, so Joseph won’t find them some day among the things I’ll leave behind.”

  Only a faint tinkle as he let the medals slide down the sloping roof. The medals tipped over as they fell from the roof into the gutter, and lay with their dull side uppermost.