Billiards at Half-Past Nine (29 page)

Imagining Nettlinger produced a more exact picture than the meeting with him, than his way of conveying slices of sirloin to his mouth and drinking the best, the best, the very best wine with it, lost already in meditation on whether cheese or ice cream or cake or an omelette would most fittingly top the meal. ‘One thing, gentlemen,’ the former legation secretary who gave the course on
How to Become a Gourmet
, had said ‘you must add one thing to what you have learned, a breath, just a breath of originality.’

He had written it on the blackboard in England: ‘He should have been killed.’ Had played the xylophone of language for fifteen years: I live, I lived, I have lived, I had lived, I shall live. Shall I live? He had never understood how there were people who were bored with grammar. He is killed, he was killed, he has been killed, he will be killed. Who will kill him?
Mine is the vengeance
, said the Lord.

“End of the line, sir, Central Station.”

The crowd was as big as ever. Which ones were coming, which going? Why didn’t they all stay home? When did the train for Ostend leave? Or perhaps to Italy or France. There would have to be someone in those places, too, who would want to learn about I live, I lived, I have lived; he will be killed. And who will kill him?

A room? What price did he have in mind? A cheap one? The young woman’s friendliness perceptibly declined, as she ran her pretty finger down the list. Obviously a sin in this country to ask the price.
Always the best—the dearest is the cheapest:
an error, pretty child, the cheapest’s the cheapest, in point of fact; just let your pretty finger slide down to the bottom row on that list. ‘Pension Moderne.’ Seven marks. Without breakfast. “No thank you, I know the way to Modest Street, really, I know No. 16, it’s right by the Modest Gate.”

As he turned the corner he nearly walked into the wild boar, stepped startled back from the dark-gray animal’s massive
form and almost went past Robert’s house. Memory, here, was in no danger. He had been here only once. Modest Street, No. 8. He stopped in front of the shiny brass nameplate and read: “Dr. Robert Faehmel. Architectural Estimates. Closed Afternoons,” and as he pressed the bell, trembled. That which he had not personally witnessed, which had been played with props other than those he knew, had always hit him harder. Edith had died behind this door, and in this house her children had been born, and Robert lived there now. He realized from the sound of the bell ringing inside that no one would open, and heard the ringing of the bell mingling with that of the telephone. The bellboy in the Prince Heinrich Hotel had kept his word. I’ll tip him well when we play billiards there.

The Pension Moderne was only four buildings farther on. Home at last. No cooking smells in the tiny hall, happily. Fresh bed linen for a tired body. “Yes, thank you, I’ll find it.” “Second floor, third door on the left, careful on the stairs, sir, the carpet rods are loose in a few places; some guests have such bad manners. You don’t want to be waked in the morning? One more thing, please. Would you pay in advance, or is there more luggage on the way? No? Then eight marks five pfennigs, if you please, service included. Sorry I have to take such precautions, sir, you’d never believe how many bums there are in the world; it makes you distrust respectable people, that’s the way it is, and some of them even manage to take out the sheets wound round them, and cut up the pillowcases into handkerchiefs. If you only knew some of the things we see. No receipt? So much the better; they tax me to death as it is. You’re probably expecting a visit from your wife, aren’t you, I’ll send her up, don’t you worry.…”

His fear had been unfounded: memory did not become feeling, remained formula. It did not disintegrate into bliss or grief and did not strike fear in the heart. The heart was not involved. There he had stood, in the evening twilight, between the guest house and the Abbey, where now stood the heap of violet, hard-fired bricks. And beside him had stood General Otto Kösters, whose feeble-mindedness had been coined into a single formula: field of fire. Captain Faehmel, First Lieutenant Schrit, and the two cadet officers, Kanders and Hochbret. Their faces deadly serious, they had convinced Field-of-Fire Otto that it was imperative not to be inconsistent, even when confronted by such venerable buildings; and when other officers lodged a protest, when tearful murderers spoke soulfully up in defense of cultural heritage which had to be saved, when one of them would utter the evil phrase ‘high treason’—no one could argue so sharply, so fluently or logically as Schrit, who put the case for demolition to the General in these persuasive words: ‘And if undertaken only as an example, to show we still believe in
victory, General, such painful sacrifice would make quite clear to the people and the army that we still do believe in victory,’ and back came the old, proverbial answer: ‘I have made my decision; blow it up, gentlemen. With victory at stake, we may spare not even our own sacred cultural monuments. Go to it, then, gentlemen.’ All saluted and clicked their heels.

Had he ever been twenty-nine, ever been a captain, ever stood on that spot with Field-of-Fire Otto? Where now the new Abbot was smiling and welcoming his father:

“We’re so glad, Your Excellency, it’s such a pleasure to have you visit us again; I’m very happy to meet your son. And Joseph is almost an old friend of ours already, aren’t you, Joseph? The fortunes of our Abbey have always been linked with the fortunes of the Faehmel family—and Joseph has even, if I may inject a personal note—Joseph has even been struck by Cupid’s arrow in these precincts. Look, Doctor Faehmel, nowadays young people don’t even blush when you talk about such things; Miss Ruth and Miss Marianne, I’m sorry, I have to exclude you from the tour.”

The young girls giggled. Hadn’t Mother and Josephine and even Edith giggled on that same spot when they were excluded from the tour? All you had to do in the snapshot albums was replace the heads and change the styles.

“Yes, we’ve already moved into the cloister,” said the Abbot. “This is the apple of our eye, the library—round here, please, the infirmary, unoccupied at present, I’m glad to say.…”

Never had he here gone from point to point with his chalk, writing his secret combinations of XYZ on the walls, the code for nothingness which only Schrit, Hochbret and Kanders knew how to decipher. Smell of mortar, smell of fresh paint, freshly planed wood.

“Yes, this here was saved from destruction thanks to your grandson’s—your son’s alertness. The picture of the Last Supper, here in the Refectory. We know perfectly well it’s no great work of art—you’ll forgive me that observation, Your
Excellency—but even the work of this school of painters is beginning to be rare, and we’ve always felt a responsibility to tradition. I must admit that even today I’m delighted by these painters’ fidelity to detail—look here, how lovingly and carefully he has painted the feet of St. John and St. Peter, here the feet of an old man, there the feet of a young man. Accuracy of detail.”

No, no one had sung
How weary, weary these old bones
in this place. No solstitial fire. Only a dream. A distinguished gentleman in his early forties, the son of a distinguished father, the father of a vigorous, very intelligent son who was smilingly making the rounds with the rest even though the whole undertaking seemed to bore him very much. Whenever he turned to Joseph he saw only a friendly, somewhat tired smile on his face.

“As you know, not even the farm buildings were spared. We rebuilt them first since it seemed they were the practical requisites for a successful new start. Here’s the cow barn. We milk with electricity, of course. You’re smiling—I’m quite sure our Holy Father Benedict would have had no objections to electrical milking. May I offer you some refreshment? A token of welcome—our celebrated bread and butter and honey. You may not be aware that every Abbot, when he dies or retires, leaves this word with his successor: Don’t forget the Faehmel family. You really do belong to our cloister family—oh, there are the young ladies again. Of course, here they’re allowed again.”

Bread and butter, wine and honey on simple wooden boards; Joseph had one arm round his sister, and the other round Marianne. A blond head between the two dark heads.

“You’ll do us the honor of coming to the consecration? The Chancellor and the Cabinet have accepted, a few foreign dignitaries will be there, and it would be a great pleasure for us to be able to welcome all the Faehmel family as our guests. My official speech will be made not in the spirit of indictment but of reconciliation; of reconciliation also with those powers who, in their blind passion, destroyed our home. But not, of course,
reconciliation with those destructive powers which once again are threatening our culture. May I, then, extend our invitation to you, here and now, with our sincere hope that you will do us this honor?”

‘I won’t come to the consecration,’ thought Robert, ‘for I’m not reconciled. Not reconciled with the powers guilty of Ferdi’s death, or with the ones that caused Edith to die and St. Severin’s to be spared. I’m not reconciled, not reconciled either to myself or to the spirit of reconciliation which you in your official speech will proclaim. Blind passion did not destroy your home, hatred destroyed it, which was not blind and does not as yet repent. Should I confess it was I who did it? I’d have to inflict pain on my father, although he is not guilty, and perhaps on my son, although he is not guilty either, and on you, Reverend Father, although you, too, are not guilty; just who is guilty, then? I am not reconciled to a world in which a gesture or a word misunderstood can cost a life.’ And aloud he said, “Thank you very much, Reverend Father, it will give me great pleasure to attend your ceremony.”

‘I won’t come, Reverend Father,’ thought the old man, ‘for I’d only stand here as a monument to myself, not as what I am: an old man who this very morning gave his secretary the assignment to spit on his monument. Don’t be shocked, Reverend Father; I’m not reconciled with my son Otto who was my son no longer, only my son’s husk, and I can’t celebrate my reconciliation to a building, even if I did build it myself. We shan’t be missed at the solemnities. The Chancellor, the Cabinet members, the foreign dignitaries and the high ecclesiastical dignitaries will undoubtedly fill the gap in worthy style. Was it you, Robert, and were you afraid to tell me? It was your look and the way you acted during the tour that told me so. Well, it doesn’t affect me—perhaps you were thinking of that boy whose name I never learned, the one who pushed your little slips of paper through our letter box—and of the waiter called Groll, and the lambs no one shepherded, not even we.
So let’s not celebrate any reconciliation. Sorry, Reverend Father, you’ll have to make the best of it, you won’t miss us. Hang up a plaque: Built by Heinrich Faehmel in 1908, in his twenty-ninth year; destroyed by Robert Faehmel, in 1945, in his twenty-ninth year—and what will you do, Joseph, when you’re thirty? Will you take over your father’s architectural estimates office? Will you build or destroy—formulas are more effective than mortar. Strengthen your heart with hymns, Reverend Father, and consider carefully whether you are truly reconciled to the spirit which destroyed the monastery.’

“Thank you very much, Reverend Father, it will give us great pleasure to attend your ceremony,” said the old man.

Cool air was already rising from the meadows and lowlands, and the dry beet leaves were becoming damp and dark, promising riches. Behind the steering wheel to the left was Joseph’s blond head, and to the right the dark heads of the two girls. The car glided quietly toward the city; was someone out there singing the song, “We’ve harvested the wheat”? It couldn’t be true, any more than St. Severin’s slender tower on the horizon; Marianne was the first to speak:

“Aren’t you going through Doderingen?”

“No, Grandfather wanted to drive through Denklingen.”

“I thought we were going the shortest way to town?”

“If we get to town at six, it’ll be early enough,” said Ruth. “We don’t need more than an hour to change.”

The young people’s voices sounded muffled, like people buried in underground caverns whispering hopeful words to each other: Look, there’s light. You’re mistaken. No, really, I can see light. Where? But can’t you hear them tapping, it’s the rescue team. I don’t hear a thing.

It’s wrong to get formulas free, put secrets into words, transpose memories into feeling. Feelings can even kill such good hard things as love and hate. Had there really been a captain called Robert Faehmel, who knew the jargon of the casino
so well, did all the right things so perfectly, so dutifully invited the senior officer’s wife to dance, was so good at proposing toasts in his incisive voice: I give you a toast, in honor of our beloved German people. Champagne, ordnance. Billiards. Red-green, white-green. White-green. And one evening someone was standing opposite him, holding the billiard cue in his hand, smiling and saying, ‘Schrit, lieutenant, as you see, a demolition expert like yourself, Captain, defending Western Culture with dynamite.’ Schrit had carried no mixed soul about in his breast; he had been able to wait and save his strength, hadn’t needed again and again to remobilize heart and feeling, was not one to get drunk on tragedy. He had made a vow to blow up
only
German bridges and
only
German buildings, and not destroy so much as a pane of glass in whatever Russian hut. We waited and played billiards and never talked more than we had to—and finally we came upon it lying there in the spring sunshine, the great prey we had waited for so long: St. Anthony’s. And on the horizon the prey that would escape us: St. Severin’s.

“Don’t drive so fast,” Marianne said quietly.

“Sorry,” said Joseph.

“Tell me, what are we doing here in Denklingen?”

“Grandfather wants to come here,” said Joseph.

“No, Joseph,” said Ruth, “don’t drive into the avenue, didn’t you see the signboard: ‘Residents Only’? Or maybe you’re one?”

The grand delegation, husband, son, grandchildren and granddaughter-in-law to be, got out at the bewitched castle.