Billiards at Half-Past Nine

by Heinrich Böll

  Quiet, old man, don’t talk, don’t open your eyes, don’t show your eighty years. Memento quia pulvis es et in pulverem revertis, as we are quite clearly told. Dust the mortar leaves behind, dust of mortgage papers, of deeds of houses and estates. Then a statue in a peaceful suburb where children as they play will ask, ‘Who was that man?’

  As a young mother, radiant and gay, I walked through Blessenfeld Park, and I knew then that the peevish old pensioners scolding the children for being noisy were only scolding someone who some day would also sit where they were, and in turn scold other noisy children, who in their turn would soon enough be irritable pensioners. I had two children of my own, one for each hand, four and six years old, then six and eight, then eight and ten, while the carefully painted signs were hung out in the garden, 25, 50, 75, 100. The black numbers on the white enameled metal always made me think of the numbers of streetcar stops. In the evening, your head on my lap and the coffee cup within easy reach—we were waiting for happiness. But in vain. And in the railroad cars, the hotels, we never found it either. A stranger went walking about in our house, bearing our name, drinking our milk, eating our bread and using our money, to buy chocolate in kindergarten, later schoolbooks.

  Take me back to the riverbank, so my naked feet can play at the high-tide mark, play to the steamers’ hooting and the smell of smoke, back to the cafe where the woman serves the guests with lovely hands; be quiet, old man, don’t cry, I’m just living in inner emigration, and you’ve got a son and two grandchildren, perhaps they’ll present you with great-grandchildren soon. It is not up to me to come back to you again, and fold myself a new paper boat every day from a diary page, and sail blithely on till midnight—September 6, 1958, that’s the future, the German future; I read it myself in the local paper:

  ‘A View of the German Future, 1958: The twenty-one-year-old Sgt. Morgner has become the thirty-six-year-old Farmer Morgner. He stands on the bank of the Volga. Work done, he smokes a well-earned pipe, one of his blond children in his arms, lost in contemplation of his wife milking the last cow. German milk on the banks of the Volga.…’

  You don’t want to hear any more! Good, then leave me alone with the future. I don’t want to know how it is as the present. Aren’t they standing on the banks of the Volga? Don’t cry, old man, pay the ransom and I’ll come back from the bewitched castle. Got to get a gun, get a gun.

  Careful when you climb up that ladder. Take the cigar out of your mouth, you’re not thirty any more, you might have a dizzy spell. Family party in the Cafe Kroner tonight? I may be there. Happy birthday. Forgive me if I laugh. Johanna would have been forty-eight and Heinrich forty-seven. They took their future with them. Don’t weep, old man, you wanted to play the game. Careful when you climb the ladder.”

  6

  The black and yellow bus stopped at the road leading into the village, swung toward Doderingen from the highway, and Robert saw his father emerge from the cloud of dust left in the wake of the bus. The old man came into the light as if out of a great damp of fog, spry as ever, undaunted by the sweltering afternoon. He turned into the main street and went along by The Swan. At the front steps, young village idlers gathered and stared at him. Fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, probably the very ones who had lain in wait for Hugo when he came out of school, and beaten him up in muffled side streets and dark stable stalls, and called him Holy Lamb.

  The old man walked on past the mayor’s office, and past the war memorial, where tired box-trees, out of sour earth, were offering up their leaves in memory of the dead of three wars. He stopped at the cemetery wall, took out his handkerchief, dabbed at his forehead, folded the handkerchief again, smoothed his coat and went on, and Robert saw the modish curve described at every step by his right trouser leg, its dark blue inner lining visible a fleeting instant before his foot landed back on the ground, to rise again in that modish curve. Robert glanced at the station clock—twenty to four; the train wasn’t due till ten past four. Half an hour. As far as he could remember, he had never before been alone with his father that long. He had hoped the visit to the sanatorium would last longer, and relieve him of the necessity for a father-son conversation. The Denklingen station bar was the least appropriate place of all for a meeting for which his father had been hoping perhaps for twenty or thirty years. A conversation with a mature son, no longer a child to be held by the hand, brought along on trips to the seashore, offered cake and ice cream. Good-night kisses, good-morning kisses, questions about homework and words of worldly wisdom, honesty the best policy, trust in the Lord. Recipient of pocket money. Smiling pride in ribbons and medals won, in good report cards. Self-conscious discussions of architecture. Excursions to St. Anthony’s Abbey. Not a word when he had to flee, not a word when he reappeared. Oppressive meals had been eaten, in company with Otto, who made even talk of the weather impossible. Meat carved with silver knives, gravy ladled out with silver spoons. Mother stiff as a rabbit facing a snake and the old man staring out of the window, crumbling bread and vacantly raising a spoon to his mouth, and Edith’s hands trembling, while Otto, only one to do justice to the food, contemptuously took the largest morsels of meat. Father’s one-time favorite, Otto, always ready for trips and excursions and extravagances, a happy child with a happy future. Now and then he had said cheerfully, ‘You can always throw me out.’ No one had said a word. After meals Robert had gone over to the studio with Father, had sat there drawing and playing around with formulas in the great empty room where draughting boards for five architects were still set up. Empty. While the old man wearily put on his smock, rummaged among rolls of drawings and again and again stopped in front of the plan of St. Anthony’s. Later on he had gone out for a walk, to have a coffee and visit old colleagues and old enemies. In houses where he had been a welcome guest for forty years, the Ice Age had broken out, in some houses because of one son, in others because of the other. And yet the old man had a cheerful disposition, born to lead a gay life and drink wine and coffee, and regard every pretty girl he saw in a railway carriage as a prospective daughter-in-law. He would often go out for hours walking with Edith, as she pushed the baby carriage. He had little to do and had been happy when he could inspect a hospital he’d built, plan annexes for it, or ride out to St. Anthony’s and see to the repairs on a wall. He felt Robert resented him, Robert that he was resented.

  But now he had grown up. He himself was the father of grown-up children, a man who had suffered the blows of fate, through the death of his wife. Who had emigrated and come back home; who had been to war, been betrayed and tortured. Independent, with a fully recognizable position: ‘Dr. Robert Faehmel. Architectural Estimates. Closed Afternoons.’ Finally able to play an equal part in conversation.

  “Another beer, sir?” the proprietor asked from the bar; he sponged beer froth off the nickeled dramboard, took two plates with meat balls and mustard from under the refrigerated glass shelf and carried them over to the young couple sitting in the corner, tired and hot after their walk in the country.

  “Yes, please,” said Robert, “another beer.” He pushed the curtain aside. His father turned down to the right, passed by the cemetery gate, crossed the road and stopped at the stationmaster’s garden, glancing at the violet-colored asters, just come into bloom. He was clearly hesitating.

  “No,” Robert said toward the counter, “two beers, please, and ten Virginia cigarettes.”

  The American officer had sat at that table where the young couple was sitting now, his close-cropped blond hair heightening the impression of youth, his blue eyes radiating confidence, confidence in a future wherein everything would be explainable. It was scaled down into squares, whose scale was the only question remaining to be clarified—1 : 1 or 1 : 3,000,000? On the table, beneath the officer’s fingers toying with a slender pencil, had lain an ordinance survey map of the Kisslingen region.

  The table had not changed during these thirteen years. The initials J.D., carved by an idle schoolboy were still there, on the table leg to
the right where now the young man scraped his dusty sandals. Nor had the tablecloths changed, red-and-white check ones, or the chairs of clear beechwood, built to last. They had survived two world wars and accommodated the buttocks of waiting peasants for seventy years. Only new addition was the refrigerated glass shelf on top of the bar, where crisp meat balls, cold cuts and deviled eggs were waiting for the hungry or the bored.

  “Here you are, sir, two beers and ten cigarettes.”

  “Thank you.”

  Not even the pictures on the wall had changed. A bird’s-eye view of St. Anthony’s Abbey, evidently taken from Cossack’s Hill, with a trusty plate camera and a black cloth. There they were, the cloister garth and refectory, the mighty church, the farm buildings. Beside it hung a faded color print. Sweethearts at the field’s edge. Ears of grain, cornflowers, a mud-yellow country road dried by the sun. The village beauty had her boy friend’s head in her lap, and was tickling his ear with a blade of grass.

  ‘You misunderstand me, Captain. What we’d all like to know is, why you did it. Are you listening? We know about the scorched-earth policy—leave nothing but rubble and dead bodies behind for the enemy, isn’t that so? But I don’t believe you did it to carry out that order. You are—pardon me—too intelligent for that. But then why, why did you blow up the Abbey? In its way it was an historical and artistic monument of the first rank. Now that the fighting here is over and, as our prisoner, you’ll hardly have an opportunity to tell the other side what our intentions were, I may as well tell you that our commanding officer would have agreed to postpone the advance for two or even three days, rather than harm the Abbey in any way. Why then did you blow the Abbey sky-high, when it so obviously made no sense whatever, either tactically or strategically? You didn’t slow down our advance, you hurried it up. Smoke?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  The cigarette, a Virginia, had tasted strong and spicy.

  ‘I hope you understand what I’m getting at. Please, do say something. I see we’re practically the same age, you’re twenty-nine, I’m twenty-seven. Can’t you understand that I should like to know your motives? Or are you afraid of consequences of letting the truth be known—of what we might do, or your own people?’

  But even if he had said why, it wouldn’t have been why any more. In black and white, on the record, it would have been least true: that he had waited through five years of war for that moment, the moment when the Abbey would be his booty, lying there like a gift of God. He had wanted to erect a monument of dust and rubble for those who had not been historical monuments and whom no one had thought to spare. Edith, killed by a piece of shrapnel; Ferdi, would-be assassin condemned by process of law; the boy who had pushed the tiny slips of paper with his messages into the letter box; Schrella’s father, who had disappeared; Schrella himself, who had to live so far away from the land where Hölderlin had lived; Groll, the waiter in The Anchor; and the many others who had gone marching off, singing How weary, weary these old bones. No one would be called to account for them, no one had taught them any better. Dynamite, a few formulas, that had been his chance to erect monuments. And a demolition squad whose precision work had made it famous: Schrit, Hochbret, Kanders. ‘We know perfectly well you could not take your superior officer seriously—General Otto Kösters; our army psychiatrists have unanimously—and if you only knew how hard it is to achieve unanimity among American army psychiatrists—they have unanimously certified him insane and not responsible for his actions. Therefore, that responsibility falls on you, Captain, since you are quite clearly not insane, and also, let me tell you in confidence, deeply incriminated by your own comrades’ depositions. I don’t want to question you about your political convictions. I’ve already heard too many protestations of innocence and frankly they bore me. I’ve already told my men that in this fair land we’ll find only five or six, or at the outside nine, guilty ones and will have to ask ourselves just against whom we fought this war: against a lot of downright sensible, nice, intelligent, even cultivated people—please answer my question! Why, why did you do it?’

  Now the young girl was sitting in the American officer’s place, eating her meat ball, sipping her beer and giggling. On the horizon he could see the slender, dark gray tower of St. Severin’s, undamaged.

  Ought he to have said he found the respect for artistic and historical monuments no less touching than the mistake of expecting beasts, instead of nice, understanding people? A monument for Edith and Ferdi, for Schrella and his father, for Groll and the boy who’d pushed his bits of paper into the letter box, for Anton the Pole who had raised his hand against Vacano and been murdered as a result, and for the many others who had sung How weary, weary these old bones, and never been taught any better. A monument for the lambs no one had fed.

  If she were going to catch the train, his daughter should now be walking past the portals of St. Severin’s to the station, with her green beret on her dark hair, in her pink sweater, flushed and happy at meeting father, brother and grandfather for afternoon coffee at St. Anthony’s, before the great birthday party that evening.

  Father was standing outside in the shade, in front of the board, studying the times of departure. His narrow face was ruddy, an amiable old man, kind and generous, one who had never tasted the Host of the Beast, who had not grown bitter with age. Did he know who had blown up the Abbey? Would he ever find out? And how could he ever explain it to his son Joseph? Better to be silent than to put these thoughts and feelings on record, for analysis by the psychologists.

  He had not been able to explain it to the friendly young man either who had looked at him, shaking his head, pushing the opened pack of cigarettes across the table. He took the pack, said thank you and stuck it in his pocket, then plucked the Iron Cross from his chest, and pushed it across the table to the young man. The red-and-white check tablecloth crimped up, and he smoothed it as the young man flushed.

  ‘No, no,’ said Robert, ‘forgive my clumsiness; I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I feel I should offer you this as a souvenir, a souvenir of the man who blew up St. Anthony’s Abbey and got this medal for it. Who blew it up in spite of knowing the general was mad, and in spite of knowing its demolition had no tactical or strategical importance whatsoever. I shall be glad to keep these cigarettes—may I ask you to consider that we have, as contemporaries, merely exchanged gifts?’

  Perhaps he had done it because he remembered the half-dozen monks who had celebrated the solstice by riding up Cossack’s Hill and, as the fire raged up, started intoning How weary, weary these old bones. Otto had lit the fire and he himself had stood nearby, with his little blond curly-headed son Joseph in his arms, the child clapping his little hands with joy at the flames. And Edith beside him had pressed his right hand. Perhaps because he had not even found Otto a stranger, in this world where a lift of a hand might cost a life. The village youths from Doderingen, Schlackringen, Kisslingen and Denklingen had gathered round the solstice fire; the heated faces of the young men and women had shone wildly in the flames that Otto had been allowed to light, and all of them had sung, the pious monks, digging their spurs into the flanks of their pious farm horses, intoning along with the rest: How weary, weary these old bones. They had gone back down the hill with torches in their hands, chanting. Should he tell the young man he’d done it because they hadn’t obeyed the injunction, Shepherd my Lambs, and that he felt no trace of regret. Aloud, he said, ‘Perhaps it was for the fun of it, just a game.’

  ‘Funny kind of fun you have here, funny kind of game. After all, you’re an architect.’

  ‘No. I do stress and strain estimates.’

  ‘Well, there’s hardly any difference.’

  ‘Demolition,’ he said, ‘is merely stress and strain in reverse. They’re complementary, so to speak.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the young man, ‘I was always weak in math.’

  ‘And I always found it a pure delight.’

  ‘I’m beginning to take a personal interest i
n your case. When you refer to your love of mathematics, do you mean you took a certain professional interest in the demolition?’

  ‘Perhaps. Naturally an analyst is highly interested in knowing which forces are required to undo the laws of statics. You must admit it was a perfect demolition.’

  ‘But do you seriously maintain that this so-to-speak abstract interest played some part in it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t think I can avoid a political investigation after all. I must point out to you it will be senseless to make false statements. We have all the documents needed to check on what you say.’

  It had been only then that it occurred to him that his own father had built the Abbey thirty-five years before; they had been told it and had it confirmed for them so often that it seemed no longer true. And he had feared the young man would discover this fact, and then believe he had hit on the explanation: Oedipus complex. Perhaps it was better to say he had done it because they had not shepherded the lambs, thus providing tangible reasons to judge him crazy. But he had merely gazed through the window at St. Severin’s slender tower, as at a prey which had got away, while the young man asked him questions, all of which he was able to answer without hesitation with a no.

  The young girl pushed her empty plate away from her, took the young man’s plate and, holding both forks poised an instant in her right hand, with her left hand put his plate on hers. And then, on the top plate, the two forks. After which she put her right hand, free now, on the young man’s forearm and smiled into his eyes.

  ‘So you didn’t belong to any organization? You read Hölderlin? Good. I may have to have you brought in once more tomorrow morning.’

  Firm in compassion the eternal heart.