Billiards at Half-Past Nine Read online

  He had been afraid, going to the dressing room, afraid of Schrella and of what Schrella would say to him. The air had suddenly grown cool. Evening mist was rising from the fields, coming from the river and flowing, like layered wadding, around the building where the dressing room was located. Why, why had they done that to Schrella, and why did they trip him up on the steps during recess? He had struck his head on the steel edge of the steps, driving the steel bow of his spectacles into an ear lobe. Old Wobbly had come out of the classroom with the first-aid kit far too leisurely. Nettlinger, scorn on his face, had held the adhesive plaster taut so Wobbly could snip a piece off. On the way home they ganged up on Schrella, dragged him from one doorway to the next, beat him up among ash cans and parked baby carriages, and finally pushed him down some steps leading to a dark cellar, where he had lain a long while with his arm broken, amid the smell of cabbages and sprouting potatoes, staring at dusty preserving jars, until a boy sent down to get apples had discovered him and alerted the occupants of the house. Only a few hadn’t joined in—Enders, Drischka, Schweugel and Holten.

  He had once been friends with Schrella, years before this. They’d always gone to visit Trischler together, who lived down at the Lower Harbor. Trischler’s father ran a bar and Schrella’s father worked for him as a waiter. They played on the old barges and abandoned pontoons, and fished off the boats.

  Now he stopped in front of the dressing room, listening to the medley of voices within, hoarse with the excitement of youthful myth-making as they talked about his already-legendary home run. As if the ball had gone right out of sight onto Olympian heights.

  ‘I saw it go. How it traveled! Why, it went like a bullet!’

  I saw it, the ball Robert hit.

  I heard it, the ball Robert hit.

  They’ll never find it, the ball Robert hit.

  Talk stopped when he came in. Fear lay in the sudden silence, for they were in almost deadly awe of him, he had done what no one would have believed possible, something out of this world unless you’d seen it. Who would have the honor of bearing witness to a home run of such magnitude?

  Quickly, barefoot, towels slung around their shoulders, they went into the showers. Only Schrella stayed behind. He had put his clothes on without taking a shower. For the first time it struck Robert that Schrella never took a shower after a game, never took off his jersey in front of the rest. He was sitting there on a stool, blue and yellow contusions on his face and still wet around the mouth where he had washed away dried blood. The skin on his upper arms was discolored where he had been struck by the ball, the one the Ottonians were still looking for. He sat there, rolled down the sleeves of his faded shirt, put on his jacket, took a book out of his pocket and read: At evening when the bells ring peace.

  It was awkward to be alone with Schrella, to be thanked by the cool eyes, too cool even to hate. A barely perceptible flicker of the lashes, no more, a fleeting smile of thanks to the savior who had hit the ball. He smiled back at Schrella, an equally small smile, as he turned to the metal locker and took out his clothes, himself wanting to get out of there as quickly as he could without bothering with a shower. On the wall over his locker someone had scratched: ‘Faehmel’s Home Run, July 14, 1935.’

  The place smelled strong of leather gear, of dried earth crumbled from soccer balls, handballs, footballs, and caught in the cracks of the concrete floor. Dirty little green and white marker flags were stacked in the corner, soccer nets were hanging up to dry. There was a splintered oar and, framed behind cracked glass, a yellowed certificate, ‘Awarded to the Pioneers of Soccer, Ludwig College, Lower Sixth Form, 1903, by the Regional Chairman.’ A laurel wreath was printed around the group photo. Hard-muscled eighteen-year-olds of the 1885 military class, wearing little mustaches, stared out of the picture at him, looking with animal optimism toward the fate which the future held in store for them. To rot at Verdun, to bleed to death in the quagmires of the Somme. Or, fifty years later, in a military cemetery at Chateau Thierry, to provide occasion for tourists, en route to Paris and overcome by the mood of the place, in the rain-spattered visitors’ book to inscribe conciliatory sentiments. The dressing room smelled of iron, of incipient manhood. A damp mist was coming in from outdoors, drifting in mild clouds across the river meadows. Out of the tavern upstairs in the same building came the sonorous rumble of men off work for the weekend and hoisting a few, the giggling of barmaids, clinking of beer glasses. At the end of the hall upstairs skittle players were already at work, making the skittles tumble. Whereupon a triumphant or a disappointed ‘ah’ echoed down the stairs and into the dressing room.

  Blinking in the twilight, shivering shoulders hunched, Schrella crouched there. The moment of departure could be held off no longer. One last time he straightened his tie and smoothed out the last fold in the collar of his sports shirt—oh yes, just so, always just right—once again adjusted his shoelaces and counted the money in his wallet for the journey home. The others were starting back from the showers, still talking about ‘the ball Robert hit.’

  ‘Want to go together?’

  ‘Why not.’

  They ascended worn concrete steps, still strewn with springtime litter, candy wrappings and empty cigarette packages. Then they went up onto the overpass, where sweating oarsmen were heaving a boat up the long ramp. Side by side, not saying a word, they crossed the viaduct, running away across lowlying layers of mist as over a river. Ships’ hooters, red lights and green on deckhouses. In the shipyard red sparks were shooting up, describing figures in the grayness. Silently they went as far as the bridge, climbed the dark stairs, where, scratched in red sandstone, youths on the way back from a swim had eternalized their longings. A freight train rumbling over the bridge, carrying slaggy waste to the western bank, for further minutes relieved them of the need to speak. A shunting engine’s lights swung about, warbly whistles directed the train as it was shoved backward onto the right-hand track. Down below in the fog, boats were gliding northward. Ships’ horns wailed warnings of mortal danger, bellowed mournfully over the water, a tumult providentially making talk impossible.

  “I came to a stop, Hugo, leaned over the parapet facing the river, took cigarettes from my pocket, offered them to Schrella, who struck a light for me. We smoked quietly while the train rumbled away and off the bridge. A line of barges moved along below us, we could just hear their gliding underneath the blanket of mist. All we could see were a few sparks coming up every once in a while from a galley stovepipe. It was quiet for minutes at a time, until the next string of barges came sliding quietly under the bridge, moving north, northwards to North Sea fogs. And I was scared, Hugo, for now I had to ask him, and if once I did, I would be involved, there would be no turning back. It must have been a terrible secret, if Nettlinger gambled on losing the game for it, and the Ottonians were willing to take Old Wobbly as umpire. Now it was almost dead still, and that gave a great weight to my impending question. It burdened it with eternity, you might say. I was cutting loose, Hugo, although I did not as yet know from what or wherefore, I was saying goodbye to St. Severin’s dark tower, rising up out of flatly layered mist, to my parents’ house not far from the tower, where my mother, right at the moment, was putting the finishing touches on the supper table, straightening the knives and forks, arranging flowers in little vases, tasting the wine. Was the white wine cool enough, the red not too cool? It was Saturday night, a religious time with us. Had she opened her missal yet, from which she would read the Sunday responses in her gentle voice? My room at the back looked out over the garden, where the old, old trees were in full leaf, where I used to lose myself passionately in mathematical formulas, in the severe curves of geometric figures, in the stark, wintry-clear branches of spheric arcs sprung from my drafting compass and pen. Up there I used to draw the churches I planned to build some day. Well, Schrella flicked his cigarette butt down into the sheet of fog; the glowing tip made airy spirals as it fell. Schrella turned to me, smiling, waiting for the question I s
till hadn’t asked, shaking his head.

  The chain of lamps running all the way to the other shore stood out sharply in the murk.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Schrella. ‘There they are, can’t you hear them?’ I could hear them. The bridge stairs had already begun to resound under their tread. They were talking about the summer places they’d soon be going off to, Allgäu, Westerwald, Bad Gastein, the North Sea. And about the ball Robert hit. It was easier to ask my question walking.

  ‘Why did they do it?’ I asked. ‘I don’t get it. Are you Jewish?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘What are you, then?’

  ‘We’re Lambs,’ said Schrella. ‘We’ve sworn never to put the Host of the Beast to our lips.’

  ‘Lambs?’ The word chilled me, I was afraid of it. ‘A religious sect?’ I asked.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Not a political party?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not for me,’ I said. ‘I can’t be a lamb!’

  ‘You want to make Communion with the Host of the Beast?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I said.

  ‘Shepherds,’ he said, ‘there are some shepherds who don’t forsake the flock.’

  ‘Quick,’ I said. ‘Hurry up, they’re catching up with us.’

  We went down the dark bridge steps at the western end, and as we reached the street I hesitated an instant. My way home was to the right, Schrella’s to the left. But I did it. I followed him to the left, where the road wound toward the town, through lumber yards, coal bunkers and allotment gardens. Once beyond the first bend, now deep in the low mist, we stopped and watched the shadowy forms of the other students moving across the bridge. We could see them silhouetted above the parapet, we listened to the sound of their footsteps and their voices as they came down the flight of steps; we heard the echoing ring of their heavy hobnailed boots. We heard a voice calling, ‘Nettlinger … Nettlinger … wait, wait!’ And Nettlinger’s own loud voice came wildly bouncing back from across the river, broken by the columns of the bridge, to lose itself behind us among the garden plots and warehouses. Nettlinger, crying out, ‘Where’s our lamby-boy and his shepherd?’ Splintered fragments of laughter fell about us.

  ‘You heard that?’ Schrella asked.

  ‘I heard it. Lamb and shepherd.’

  We looked up at stragglers’ shadows coming across the footpath of the bridge. Their voices, which had been muffled as they crossed, grew clearer as they came down into the street, then were broken by the arches of the bridge. ‘The ball Robert hit,’ we heard them say.

  ‘Tell me more,’ I said to Schrella. ‘I’ve got to know the details.’

  ‘I’ll show you the details,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’ We groped our way through the murk along barbed-wire fences, and came to a wooden fence still smelling of fresh yellow paint that glowed in the dark. Over a locked door was an enamelled sign lit up by a naked electric bulb. The sign said: ‘Michaelis, Coal, Coke, Briquettes.’

  ‘You still know the way?’ Schrella asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We came this way together many a time, seven years ago, when we used to play down at Trischler’s. What’s happened to Alois?’

  ‘He’s a bargeman, like his father.’

  ‘And is your father still a waiter down there in the tavern where the rivermen go?’

  ‘No, he’s at the Upper Harbor now.’

  ‘What about those details?’

  Schrella took the cigarette out of his mouth, pulled off his jacket, pushed his suspenders off his shoulders, pulled up his shirt and turned his back toward the dim electric light. His back was covered—peppered, more like it, I thought—with small, reddish-blue scars, the size of peas.

  ‘My God,’ I said. ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘Nettlinger,’ he said. ‘They do it to you down there in the old barracks near Williams’ Pit. Old Wobbly and Nettlinger. They call themselves auxiliary police. They grabbed me in a raid they were making on beggars down by the docks. They arrested thirty-eight beggars in one day, and I was one of them. They questioned us, using barbed-wire whips. They said, “Admit you’re a beggar.” And I said, “That’s right, I’m a beggar.” ’

  Some of the guests were still eating a late breakfast, imbibing poisonous-looking orange juice. The pale young man was leaning against the door like a statue; the violet-colored velvet of his uniform made his face appear almost green.

  “Hugo, are you listening to what I’m saying … Hugo?”

  “Certainly, Doctor, I’m listening to every word.”

  “Get me a cognac, please … a double.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  Time glared at Hugo as he started down the stairs to the dining room, the great calendar he had to set mornings, turning the big pasteboard number under month and year. Today: September 6, 1958. It made his head swim, all that had happened long before he was born. Decades, half-centuries ago, 1935, 1903, 1885—yet it was all there, hidden far back in time. The echo of the past had been in Faehmel’s voice when he was leaning against the billiard table and looking down into the square in front of St. Severin’s. Hugo took a firm grip on the banister, drew in a deep breath like someone coming up for air, then opened his eyes and promptly ducked behind the great pillar.

  The sheep-lady was coming down the stairs, barefoot and dressed like a shepherdess, the hip-length, capelike garment she had on exuding the odor of sheep dung. She was on her way to eat her millet gruel, with it black bread, a few nuts and sheep’s milk kept fresh for her in the refrigerator. She brought the milk with her in thermos bottles and her sheep turds in little boxes. The turds she used to perfume her coarsely woven underwear of unbleached wool. After breakfast she sat for hours down there in the public room, knitting, knitting, going to the bar now and then to get a glass of water, smoking her short-stemmed pipe, sitting on the couch with her bare legs crossed and showing the dirty callouses on her feet. Mean-while she held audience for disciples of both sexes, dressed like her, legs crossed, knitting, every now and then opening the little boxes of sheep dung supplied them by their mistress to sniff, as if the contents were expensive scent. At regular intervals the sheep-lady cleared her throat and from her perch asked in a girlish voice, “How shall we redeem the world?” To this all her followers, men and women, responded, “Through sheep’s wool, sheep’s leather, sheep’s milk—and through knitting.” Needles clicked away. Then silence. A youthful acolyte leaped up, went to the bar, brought the sheep-lady a glass of water and again the girlish voice threw out a question from the couch: “Where does the world’s salvation lie concealed?” “In the sheep.” Little boxes were opened, turds rapturously sniffed, while flash bulbs exploded and reporters’ pencils raced over pages of stenographic notebooks.

  Slowly Hugo moved farther back as she passed the pillar to the dining room. He was afraid of her. Only too often he had seen her soft eyes go hard, when she was alone with him, or when she caught him on the stairs and had him bring milk to her room, where he would come upon her with a cigarette stuck in her mouth. She would snatch the glass from him, laugh, drain it in a draft, serve herself a cognac, and move, glass in hand, toward him as he slowly retreated backwards to the door. “Has no one ever told you your face is worth a fortune, pure gold, you stupid boy? Why won’t you be the Lamb of God in my new religion? I’ll make you famous, rich. They’ll get down on their knees to you in a lot finer hotels than this. Haven’t you been around long enough to know that only a new religion can cure their boredom? And the more stupid it is, the better. Oh, go away, you’re too stupid.”

  He stared after her as she waited, her face a mask, for the waiter to open the dining room door. His heart was still pounding when he came out from behind the pillar, and went slowly down to the restaurant.

  “A cognac for the Doctor upstairs, a double.”

  “Your doctor’s just caused a hell of a stink.”

  “What do you mean, stink?”

  “I don’t know. I think someone wants to
see him on the double—your doctor. Here, take your cognac and get lost. There must be seventeen women of all ages on your trail. Come on, scram, there’s another one coming down the stairs.”

  She looked as if she had drunk pure gall for breakfast, the one in the golden gown and golden shoes with lion-skin hat and muff. She evoked aversion whenever she appeared. Some superstitious guests screened their faces when they saw her coming in. Chambermaids gave notice because of her, waiters refused to serve her. But he, when she caught him, had to play canasta with her for hours on end. Her fingers were like chicken claws, the only human thing about her was the cigarette in her mouth. “Love, my boy, never known what it is. Not a soul who doesn’t make it clear to me that I disgust him. My mother used to curse me out seven times a day, scream her loathing in my face. My mother was young and pretty, my father young and good-looking, and so were my brothers and sisters. They’d have poisoned me if only they’d had the courage. They said, a thing like that should never have been born. We used to live in a yellow villa above the steel works. Thousands of workers left the mill at night, and women and girls, all of them laughing, were waiting for them. They’d all go down those dirty streets together, laughing. I can see, hear, feel and smell like any other human being. I can read, write, count and taste—yet you’re the first human being to stick it out with me more than half an hour, first one, you hear?”

  She left a trail of dread behind her, the breath of disaster, throwing her room key on the desk, shrieking into the face of the boy replacing Jochen, “Hugo, where’s Hugo?” When the boy shrugged his shoulders, she walked on to the revolving door, and the waiter who started it turning for her looked down at the floor. Then, the moment she was outside, she drew down her veil over her face.

  “I don’t wear it inside, boy. Let them see something for their money, and look at me for mine. But the people outside haven’t earned it.”