Billiards at Half-Past Nine (36 page)

“Come on, son, we’re leaving.”

“Yes, Father, I’m coming.”

“You have no other bags or things?”

“No.”

“Come on.”

Hugo picked up his suitcase and was glad his father’s back hid her face. He could still hear her sobbing on his way down the service stairs.

“Now stop your sobbing, children,” said the old man. “She’ll be coming back to stay with us. She’d be very upset to know we were letting the party spoil. After all, he wasn’t fatally wounded, and I hope that look of great wonder will never leave his face again—a brittle, short noise like that can work wonders. Will you young women please see to all the presents and flowers. Leonore, you take over the flowers, Ruth the greeting cards, Marianne the presents. Order is half of life—I wonder what’s the other half? I can’t help it, children, I can’t be sad. It’s a great day, it gave me back my wife and presented me with a
son—may I call you that, Schrella? Edith’s brother—I’ve even acquired a grandson, eh, Hugo? I’m still not quite sure about calling you grandson; it’s true you’re my son’s son, but somehow not my grandson, and what voice or feeling orders me not to call you grandson I’m unable to explain.

“Sit down, the girls will make us all sandwiches; children, help yourselves from the gift baskets, and don’t disturb Leonore’s orderly files. Each of you had better sit on a year’s pile. Schrella, you take pile A, it’s the highest, and, Robert, allow me to offer you 1910, it’s the next highest. You’d better pick out one for yourself, Joseph, 1912 isn’t bad. That’s right, settle down, all of you. Let’s drink first to Mr. M., may the wonder never go from his face—the second toast to my wife, God bless her. Schrella, would you be kind enough to see who’s knocking at the door?

“A certain Mr. Gretz come to pay his respects? I do hope he isn’t lugging the wild boar on his back. No? Thank God for that. My dear Schrella, would you please tell him I’m busy? Or do you consider this the time and place, Robert, to receive a certain Mr. Gretz? No? Thank you, Schrella. It’s the time and place to forgo false neighborly feelings. One word out of the way can cost a life—old Mrs. Gretz had said, ‘It’s a sin and a shame.’ Lifting your hand can cost a life, and a misconstrued wink of the eye. Yes, please, Hugo, pour out the wine—I hope you won’t be offended if we appreciate your hard-earned professional skills, and make good use of them here among the family.

“Good, yes, put the large bouquets in front of the bird’s-eye view of St. Anthony’s, and the smaller ones beside them on the left and right, on the shelf for the rolls of drawings—you can take those off and throw them away, they’re only there for decoration, they’re empty—or does anyone here still intend to use that precious paper? Maybe you, Joseph! Why are you sitting on such an uncomfortable seat, you’ve picked 1941, that was a meager year, boy. 1945 would have been better, it rained
assignments then, almost like 1909, except that I gave it up, the ‘Sorry’ part spoiled my desire for building. Ruth, stack the greeting card addresses on my drawing board; I’ll have some thank-you notes printed and you must help me address them, then I’ll get you something pretty at Hermine Horuschka’s. How should they read? ‘My most sincere thanks for your kind courtesy on the occasion of my eightieth birthday.’ Perhaps I shall enclose an original drawing with each acknowledgment, what do you think, Joseph? A pelican or a serpent, a buffalo or a beast—Joseph, would you please go to the door this time, and see who else it is so late?

“Four of the staff at the Cafe Kroner? Bringing a present you think I shouldn’t refuse? Right, then have them come in.”

They came in, two waiters and the two girls from the cake counter, carrying it carefully through the door, the rectangular board, far longer than wide and covered with a snow-white tablecloth. It startled the old man; were they bringing in a corpse? Was that point there, tautening the white cloth like a post, the nose? They were carrying it carefully, as if the corpse were a precious one. Absolute silence reigned. Leonore’s hands froze around a bouquet, Ruth stood holding a gold-rimmed greeting card, and Marianne did not put her empty hamper down.

“No, no,” said the old man softly, “please don’t put it on the floor; children, bring those two drawing trestles.”

Hugo and Joseph brought two trestles from the corner and set them up in the middle of the studio, on the years 1936 to 1939. Silence again as the two waiters and the two girls set the board on the trestles, went each to one corner, grasped each the edge of the tablecloth and, when the eldest waiter uttered a short, sharp “Up!” they raised the cloth.

The old man flushed deeply, sprang toward the cake model, raised his fists, like a drummer gathering strength for a furious beat, and it seemed for an instant as if he would smash the sugared edifice to smithereens, but he let his fists sink slowly, till
his hands hung loose at his sides. With a soft laugh, he bowed first to the two girls, then to the two waiters, straightened, took out his wallet and tipped each of the four with a bill. “Would you,” he said, “kindly thank Mrs. Kroner for me most sincerely, and tell her that unfortunately important events oblige me to cancel my breakfast—important events, as of tomorrow, no more breakfasts.”

He waited till the waiters and the girls had gone, then cried, “Come on, children, get me a big knife and a cake plate.”

He cut off the spire of the Abbey first, and passed the plate to Robert.

As I was reading
Billiards at Half-Past Nine
, news was breaking about World War II. It happens over here in Germany still, nasty things surfacing like the 60-year-old unexploded artillery that is recovered by the metric tons every year. There were new revelations about the role of German women during the War. The previous icon—unknowing, unquestioning, uninvolved—was being replaced with something with sharper teeth. Women knew about the mass executions. They participated, despite not being under direct orders to do so. Even that symbol of naivete and the stupidity of true love, Eva Braun, sat in on high level meetings and had a place in the planned post-war architecture.

It’s an uncomfortable revelation in any culture. Men are supposed to be the warmongers. Women are supposed to be nurturers. Women are not supposed to pick up guns and shoot unarmed prisoners in the back of the head. Particularly in
Germany, where the idea of the Mother is so distinct, and so deeply entrenched in the ideals of virtue, sacrifice, and honesty that even today working mothers run the risk of the pejorative label
Rabenmutter
(Raven Mother). The Aryan mother holding her Aryan children is still the image of life. The woman who refuses to sacrifice her entire being to her children is the death-bringer, the black-eyed carrion-eater, Raven.

1933 offers a wonderful scapegoat, an imaginary point of origin of every bad thing that happened in Germany. We could blame the propaganda posters from Nazi Germany for drilling this image of the German mother watching over her brood into women’s brains. But it’s not true. Post World War I, the nation faced a scarily low birth rate, brought on by years of war and turmoil. The new government decided the best way to rectify this was to outlaw abortion and prohibit the sale or display of contraceptives in the Weimar constitution of 1919. During a time of unimaginable scarcity and fear, women were forced into motherhood. They were forced to make do, and the pressure to repopulate the nation, to birth and raise a new generation of mothers and soldiers, was enormous. It was the most important thing a woman could possibly do: Be the Good Mother.

Good mothers in the real world—even ravens, who are fiercely protective of their young, yet, like most birds, will eat their own eggs if resources are scarce—know that sometimes the most motherly thing you can do is not to give birth. German women weren’t just forced to be mothers, their option of being a good mother was taken from them.

We can go back further, if you like. To when the Grimm Brothers heard all the nasty fairy tales of mothers leading their children into the woods to die, and decided to add a “step-” to the maternal villain’s role. Mothers could not possibly.… A mother’s love is eternal and all-powerful.… Things get cleaned up in print, so easy to hit the backspace.

Then the terror of war descended and the mother’s role
was purified and sanctified even more. The motherly thing to do is to give up your sons to the war effort, have more children to replace those lost in France, in Budapest, in Kiev. Don’t ask questions. Don’t even think about what is going on around you. Because if you open your mouth, it’s all over.

Resistance gets you killed. It gets your loved ones killed. Resistance is the luxury of those with no ties, no children, no dependents. But then where is the line? Where is the line between neutrality and resistance, resistance and survival? Where is the line between survival and participation? Where is the line between participation and evil?

The lines are different for the woman than for the man. The rules change when you are a mother. If you inform on a Jewish neighbor in order to raid their belongings, that is evil. If you do so because your son has no shoes or winter coat, that is survival. If you trade secrets for milk and eggs, it is because you have mouths to feed.

Unless participation is simply participation, no matter what justifications or boundaries or atonement you may use.

In Heinrich Böll’s Faehmel family, Johanna, the mother, refuses to participate. She loses her first son during WWI. He is seven, sick with fever, and too young to understand the patriotic songs and poems he recites, and the last word on his dying lips is “Hindenburg.” Her next son Otto she loses to the true belief in the Nazi party. He terrifies his family, bringing the horror into their home, transforming himself into a creature they can’t recognize.

She’s left with one son, Robert, but she is forced out of her role as mother entirely when she decides to be a human instead. She will not barter secrets for bread. She will not pick through the belongings of recently disappeared neighbors. She will not go to the black market and enrich those who are doing evil. When she attempts to board a train packed with Jews heading to the camps, she is taken to be insane and institutionalized. Only an insane woman would watch her children suffer
from hunger and alienation, rather than allowing them to sully themselves in the war effort. Only an insane woman would identify with the vermin being shipped out of view.

At the heart of
Billiards at Half-Past Nine
lies Joanna’s manic confessions. She is biding her time in Denklingen, estranged from her family, but plotting her revenge. She needs to explain to her visiting son the choices she made.

“They brought me here because I let your children go hungry … [D]on’t lose patience and don’t accept any favors. We aren’t going to eat a crumb more than we get on the ration cards. Edith is agreeable to that. Eat what everybody eats, wear what everybody wears, read what everybody reads. Don’t take the extra butter, the extra clothes, the extra poem which dishes up the Beast in a more elegant fashion.
Their right hand is full of bribes
, bribe money in a variety of coins. I didn’t want to have your children take any favors, either, so they might have the taste of truth on their lips, but they took me away from them. It’s called a sanatorium; you’re allowed to be crazy here without being beaten.”

Böll took the images of the German
Mutter
, easily confused with Virgin Mary iconography, and twisted and contorted them. From her insane asylum, she sits with perhaps the most sanity. The entire family must account for what they did with themselves during the war—except for her. Her actions and her motivations are the clearest of them all, and yet she runs through them again and again like the rosary while the others hide in billiards rooms, in cafes, behind their blueprints. She is the only character utterly dedicated to her decisions, who refused to compromise, and Böll leaves it open as to whether that makes her a good mother or a bad one.

After all, she could not save her children from becoming complicit. Her monologues come at the reader like dream-speak: heavily loaded with meaning, obscure, and dense. When she turns to the subject of Otto, the true believer, her bewilderment and pain leak out before she quickly switches to another
train of thought. He is her true lost child, the changeling she does not recognize as her own, and now taken from her in battle before his soul could be restored.

Böll would return to the character of the German mother again and again in his books. The men in his novels, and in the world, are forced into action with a million compromises a day. Even Johanna’s one surviving son Robert is drafted onto the battlefield. But the women are not allowed to act, reduced to the passive role of Mother and yet still forced to navigate the boundaries of resistance and participation. After the war they are not called to account for their decisions, leaving the torment internal. If there is no airing out, the accusations, judgments and punishments can only happen inside of your head.

Johanna is the dark heart of
Billiards at Half-Past Nine
. It is her grief—for her lost sons, for her dead brothers—that creates the book’s momentum. She is the true
Rabenmutter:
clever (“I know there’s one way to give the murderers the slip—be certified insane”), fierce (“I have to have revenge for the mouth of my seven-year-old son, Robert, don’t you understand?… Are you now going to get me a gun?”), and watching from above (“I’m just living in inner emigration”).

Böll’s Johanna is the reminder that after the drama of the battles, it’s the long recovery that is the important act. The battles don’t end at the signing of the treaty. There are still things to resist, even years after the war.

—Jessa Crispin
   Berlin, October 1, 2010