Billiards at Half-Past Nine

by Heinrich Böll

  Schrella put a cigarette in his mouth, straightened his spectacles, turned up his shirt collar and put on his tie. He gave a start as Nettlinger suddenly held a cigarette lighter in front of his nose.

  “Yes,” said Nettlinger, “it’s that way with every prisoner, high or low, guilty or innocent, poor or rich, political or criminal. First of all a cigarette.”

  Schrella inhaled the cigarette smoke deeply, and looked over his glasses at Nettlinger, while he tied his tie and turned his collar down again.

  “You’ve had a lot of experience in such things, have you?”

  “Haven’t you?” asked Nettlinger. “Come on, I’m afraid I can’t spare you the Superintendent’s farewell.”

  Schrella put his hat on, took the cigarette out of his mouth and followed Nettlinger, who was holding open the courtyard door for him. The Superintendent was standing at the head of the line by the counter window, whence notes of permission for Sunday visits were issued. The Superintendent was big, not smartly but very respectably dressed. The way he walked and gestured as he came toward Nettlinger and Schrella unmistakably bespoke a civilian.

  “I hope,” he said to Nettlinger, “that it all went off to your satisfaction—quickly and efficiently.”

  “Thank you,” Nettlinger said, “it was really fast.”

  “Fine,” said the Superintendent. He turned to face Schrella: “You will forgive me if I say a few words to you in farewell, even though you belonged to my”—he laughed—“my protégés for only one day, and even though you were put by mistake in the punishment-instead of the detention-block. Look,” he said, pointing to the inner prison door, “beyond that door a second door awaits you, and beyond that second door, something wonderful, the thing we value the most—freedom. Whether it was right or not right to have you tabbed a suspicious character, within my hospitable walls”—he laughed again—“you’ve had a taste of the opposite of freedom. All of us, of course, are nothing but prisoners, prisoners of the body, and will be till the day when our soul is freed and rises up to its Creator. Just the same, within my hospitable walls, imprisonment is not just symbolical. I leave you to your freedom, Herr Schrella.…”

  Schrella, embarrassed, put out his hand, then quickly withdrew it as he saw from the Superintendent’s face that handshaking was clearly not included in the formalities. Schrella remained silent in his embarrassment, transferring his cigarette from his right to his left hand, and blinked at Nettlinger.

  Those courtyard walls and the sky above them were the last things on this earth which Ferdi’s eyes had seen, and perhaps the last human voice he had heard had been the Superintendent’s voice, in that same courtyard, a space sufficiently confined to be quite filled by the aroma from Nettlinger’s cigar, concerning which the Superintendent’s sniffing nose said: By God, you’ve always known a good cigar, I’ll give you credit for that.

  Nettlinger left the cigar in his mouth. “You might have spared yourself the farewell spiel. Well, thanks and so long.”

  He took Schrella by his shoulders, shoved him toward the inner door, which opened in front of them, Nettlinger always slowly shoving Schrella in the direction of the outer door. Schrella stopped, gave his papers to the official, who compared them minutely, nodded and opened the door.

  “So there you are,” said Nettlinger. “Freedom. My car’s over there. Where can I give you a lift?”

  Schrella crossed the street beside Nettlinger, and hesitated as the chauffeur held the car door open for him.

  “Go on,” said Nettlinger, “get in.”

  Schrella took off his hat, got into the car, sat down, leaned back and watched Nettlinger get in and sit down beside him.

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “To the station,” said Schrella.

  “Do you have any baggage there?”

  “No.”

  “Are you thinking of leaving this hospitable city already?” asked Nettlinger. He bent forward and called to the chauffeur, “To Central Station.”

  “No,” said Schrella, “I wasn’t thinking of leaving this hospitable city yet. Were you able to get in touch with Robert?”

  “No,” said Nettlinger, “he is keeping out of sight. I’ve been trying to contact him all day, but he’s very elusive. I nearly caught him in the Prince Heinrich Hotel, but he vanished through a side exit. I’ve had some highly embarrassing experiences because of him.”

  “You’ve never run into him before either?”

  “No,” said Nettlinger, “not once. He stays strictly by himself.”

  The car stopped at a traffic signal. Schrella took off his spectacles, wiped them with his handkerchief and leaned over toward the window.

  “You must find it strange,” said Nettlinger, “to be back in Germany again after such a long time and under such circumstances. You won’t recognize it.”

  “I recognize it,” said Schrella, “more or less the way you recognize a woman you loved when she was a girl, and see again twenty years later. Grown rather fat. Glands working overtime. Obviously married to not only a rich but a hard-working man. Villa on the edge of town, a car, rings on her fingers. Under such circumstances early love unavoidably leads to irony.”

  “Pictures like that are somewhat distorted, of course,” said Nettlinger.

  “They’re pictures,” said Schrella, “and maybe if you had three thousand of them you’d see a scintilla of the truth.”

  “I doubt whether you’ve got things in focus. Twenty-four hours in the country, of which twenty-three in prison.”

  “You wouldn’t believe how much you can learn in prison about a country. In your prisons the most common offense is fraud. But self-deception is unfortunately not regarded as a crime. Perhaps you didn’t know I’ve spent four of the past twenty-four years in prison?”

  The car inched forward in the long line of cars which had piled up behind the traffic signals.

  “No,” said Nettlinger, “I wasn’t aware of that. In Holland?”

  “Yes,” said Schrella, “and in England.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Emotionally disturbed conduct due to disappointed love. But nothing idealistic in it. I was battling something real.”

  “Care to go into it?” asked Nettlinger.

  “No,” said Schrella, “you wouldn’t understand and you’d take it for a compliment.

  “I threatened a Dutch politician because he said all Germans should be killed—a highly popular politician. Then the Germans freed me when they occupied Holland, thinking I was some kind of a martyr for Germany. However, they found my name on their list of wanted persons, and I fled from their love to England. There I threatened an English politician because he said all Germans should be killed and only their works of art saved—a highly popular politician. But soon they let me out on probation, thinking my feelings should be respected, feelings I hadn’t felt at all when threatening the politician—thus one gets locked up because of a misunderstanding, and because of a misunderstanding one is set free.”

  Nettlinger laughed. “If you collect pictures, let me contribute one. How about this one? Ruthless political hatred among schoolmates. Persecution, interrogation, flight and hate enough to kill. But twenty-two years later, the returning refugee rescued from jail by, of all people, the persecutor, the monster. Doesn’t that picture deserve a place in your collection, too?”

  “It isn’t a picture,” said Schrella, “it’s an anecdote, one which has the drawback of being true—but if I translated it into abstract image and interpreted it for you, you’d hardly be flattered.”

  “It certainly is strange,” Nettlinger said softly, taking the cigar out of his mouth, “that I should be pleading for understanding, but believe me, when I read your name on the Wanted List and checked the report and learned they really had arrested you at the frontier, I didn’t hesitate an instant to get everything going for your release.”

  “I’d be sorry if you thought I doubted the sincerity of your motives and feelings,” Sch
rella said. “I don’t even doubt your remorse, but pictures—since you asked me to put the anecdote in my collection—involve an abstract idea, namely the part you played then, and the part you play today. The parts—forgive me—are the same, because then the way to keep me harmless was to lock me up, whereas today the way to keep me harmless is to set me free. I’m afraid that’s why Robert, who has more of an abstract mind than I have, doesn’t care to meet you. I hope you understand me—even at that time I never doubted the sincerity of your personal motives and feelings; you can’t understand, don’t even try; you didn’t play your part knowingly—you’d be a cynic or a criminal—and you’re neither.”

  “Now I really don’t know if you’re paying me compliments, or the opposite.”

  “Something of both,” Schrella said, laughing.

  “Perhaps you don’t know what I did for your sister.”

  “Did you protect Edith?”

  “Yes. Vacano wanted to have her arrested. He put her name on the list again and again, and again and again I took it off.”

  “Your good deeds,” said Schrella, “are almost more terrible than your bad ones.”

  “And you’re more merciless than God. He forgives the sins of the repentant.”

  “We’re not God and can’t any more measure up to His mercy than to His omniscience.”

  Nettlinger leaned back, shaking his head. Schrella took a cigarette from his pocket, put it in his mouth and again was startled as Nettlinger’s lighter suddenly clicked in front of his nose and the clean light-blue flame nearly singed his lashes. ‘And your politeness,’ he thought, ‘is worse than your rudeness ever was. Your always wanting to be Johnny-on-the-spot is the same now as it always was. It was that way when you threw the ball in my face. It’s the same now when you offer me a light for my cigarette in an annoying way.’

  “When can Robert be reached?” he asked.

  “Probably not until Monday; I couldn’t find out where he’s spending the weekend. And his father and daughter are away, too. You might try his apartment this evening, or tomorrow morning at nine-thirty in the Prince Heinrich Hotel. He always plays billiards there between nine-thirty and eleven. I hope they weren’t too rough on you in prison?”

  “No,” said Schrella. “Everything according to Hoyle.”

  “Let me know if you need money. You won’t get far with what you’ve got.”

  “I think it’ll last till Monday. I’ll get some then.”

  The line of cars grew longer and wider on the way to the station. Schrella tried to open the window; after an unsuccessful struggle with the handle Nettlinger leaned across him and wound the window down.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “the air coming in is no better than the air in here already.”

  “Thank you,” said Schrella. He looked at Nettlinger, transferred his cigarette from left hand to right, and right to left again. “Tell me,” he said, “the ball Robert hit that time—was it ever found? Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” said Nettlinger, “of course I do; I remember very well, there was so much talk about it afterwards. They never found the ball. They looked for it that evening till late into the night and even the following day, in spite of its being a Sunday. They couldn’t get over it. Later on someone claimed it had only been a trick of Robert’s and he hadn’t hit the ball at all, only faked the noise of the strike and hidden the ball somehow.”

  “But they all saw the ball go in the air, though—or didn’t they?”

  “Of course, no one believed the business about hiding the ball. Others said it must have landed in the brewery yard in a beer truck standing there. You may remember a truck came out soon after.”

  “That was before, long before Robert hit the ball,” said Schrella.

  “I think you’re mistaken,” said Nettlinger.

  “No, no,” said Schrella, “I was standing there waiting and watching everything carefully; the truck came out before Robert hit the ball.”

  “All right, then,” said Nettlinger. “In any case, they never found the ball. Here’s the station. Won’t you really let me help you?”

  “No, thank you, I don’t need anything.”

  “May I at least invite you to have a meal with me?”

  “Fine,” said Schrella, “let’s go and have a meal.”

  The chauffeur held the door open and Schrella got out first, waiting, hands in pockets, for Nettlinger, who took his brief case from the seat, buttoned his overcoat and said to the chauffeur, “Call for me at the Prince Heinrich Hotel towards half-past five, please.” The chauffeur touched his cap, and got back into the driver’s seat.

  Schrella, with his spectacles, sloping shoulders, strange, smiling mouth, blond hair not yet grown thin, with only a light silver sheen and still combed straight back. The same gesture, when he wiped sweat off his face and put his handkerchief back in his pocket. Schrella seemed unchanged, hardly grown older at all, a couple of years or so.

  “Why did you come back?” asked Nettlinger quietly.

  Schrella looked at him, blinking, the way he had always done, teeth biting into his lower lip; cigarette in his right hand, hat in his left. He looked long at Nettlinger, and waited, waited still in vain for what, during more than twenty years, he had longed for: hatred. For the tangible thing he had always wanted, striking someone in the face or kicking them in the arse, and shouting, ‘Bastard, you miserable bastard.’ He had always envied people who were capable of such simple feelings, yet he could not strike the round, self-consciously smiling face, or give the man’s backside a kick. A leg stuck out on the school’s step so he would go crashing down and drive the bow of his glasses into his ear lobe; waylaid on the way home, dragged into doorways and beaten up; he and Robert beaten with barbed whips; given the third degree. There he was, guilty of Ferdi’s death—and of protecting Edith and setting Robert free.

  He looked away from Nettlinger to the station square, teeming with people. Sun, weekend, taxis waiting and ice cream vendors, hotel boys in violet uniforms lugging suitcases this way behind guests. St. Severin’s majestic gray façade, the Prince Heinrich Hotel, the Cafe Kroner. He gave a start, as Nettlinger suddenly ran off and plunged into the crowd, waving and calling, “Hello, there, Miss Ruth!” then came back, shaking his head.

  “Did you see that girl?” he asked, “the one with the green beret and the pink pullover? She’s strikingly pretty—Robert’s daughter. I couldn’t catch her. She could have told us where to find him. Pity—did you see her?”

  “No,” said Schrella softly. “Edith’s daughter.”

  “Of course,” said Nettlinger, “your niece. Hell—let’s go and eat.”

  He walked along over the station square, crossed the street, Schrella following him, to the Prince Heinrich Hotel; a bellboy in a violet uniform held the door open for them. It swung back again in their wake, into its felt-lined frame.

  “By the window?” asked Jochen. “Certainly. Not too much sun? Then the east side. Hugo, make sure the gentlemen are given a place on the east side. Not at all.” Tips gratefully accepted here. One mark is a round and honorable coin, tips the soul of the profession, and I did win after all, my friend, you didn’t get to see him. What’s that, please, does Dr. Faehmel play billiards on Sundays too? Schrella? For heaven’s sake! This time I needn’t look at the red card. “Good God, Mr. Schrella, you’ll forgive an old man a free way of talking at this quiet time of day! I knew your father well, very well; yes, he worked with us for a year, he did; that was the year they held the German Athletics and Sports Festival; do you actually remember it? Of course, you must have been round about ten or eleven by then. Here’s my hand, it’s a privilege to shake hands with you. My God, they’ll forgive me a few feelings which as it were don’t go with my job. I’m old enough to get away with that. He was a serious man, your father, a man of dignity. He never took any back talk from anyone, good God no, but when anybody was nice to him he was like a lamb. I’ve often thought about your father. Forgive me for opening o
ld wounds—I clean forgot, good heavens; what a blessing those pigs have no more say over here. But be careful, Mr. Schrella, watch out; sometimes I think: they did win after all. Careful. Don’t trust this state of affairs—and forgive an old man a few off-the-cuff feelings and remarks. Hugo, the very best table for the gentlemen on the east side, the very best. No, Mr. Schrella, Dr. Faehmel doesn’t play billiards on Sundays, no, never on Sundays. He’ll be very glad, you were childhood friends, weren’t you, had a lot in common? Don’t think everybody forgets. If he should show up here for any reason, I’ll let you know, if you’ll leave your address here with me. I’ll send you a message or a telegram. Or call you up, if you like. We do anything for our customers, you know.”

  Hugo remained expressionless. Guests to be recognized only on their initiative. Shouting in the billiard room? Discretion. A barbed-wire whip? No, uncalled-for intimacies and conjectures should be avoided. Discretion the watchword of the profession. The menu? Here, please, gentlemen. Do the gentlemen like their table? East wall, window seats, not too much sun? Overlooking St. Severin’s and the East Chancel, early Romanesque, eleventh or twelfth century, built by the Holy Duke Heinrich the Fierce. Yes, gentlemen, hot meals all day long. Every dish on the menu served from 12 A.M. to 12 P.M. The best à la carte? You’re celebrating a reunion? A brief confidential smile befitting such confidential information; only don’t think; Schrella, Nettlinger, Faehmel; no conjectures; scars on the back? Yes, the waiter’s coming now and he’ll take your order.

  “Will you have a martini, too?” asked Nettlinger.

  “Yes, please,” said Schrella. He gave the boy his coat and hat, passed his hands through his hair and sat down. There were only a few guests in the room, in the corner at the back, murmuring softly to one another. Gentle laughter, underscored by the clink of glasses. Champagne.

  Schrella took the martini from the tray the waiter proffered him and waited until Nettlinger had taken his, then raised his glass, nodded to Nettlinger and drank. Nettlinger seemed to have aged in an incongruous way. Schrella remembered Nettlinger as a stunning blond youth whose brutal mouth had always retained a hint of good nature. Who had effortlessly been able to do four and a half feet in the high jump and run the hundred meter in 11.5 seconds. A brutal, good-natured winner, but clearly, Schrella thought, winning hasn’t made you happy. Poor education, poor nutrition and no style. Probably eats too much. Already half bald, the sentimentality of age already in the moist eyes. Nettlinger, tightening his mouth professionally, bent over the menu, his white cuffs sliding back to reveal a gold wrist watch, on his third finger a wedding ring. Good God, thought Schrella, even if he hadn’t done all he did, Robert would have little desire to go out drinking beer with him or take his children out to Nettlinger’s suburban villa for family badminton games.