Billiards at Half-Past Nine (9 page)

“Do they beat you?”

“No, never. But what I’d like to know is what that war was like. I had to leave school before they could tell me about it. Do you know about the war?”

“Yes.”

“Were you in it?”

“I was.”

“What did you do?”

“I was a demolition expert, Hugo. That mean anything to you?”

“Demolition?”

“Blowing things up.”

“Yes, I’ve seen them blowing up rocks in the quarry behind Denklingen.”

“That’s exactly what I did, Hugo, only I didn’t blow up rocks, I blew up houses and churches. You’re the first one I ever mentioned it to, except my wife, but she died a long time ago, so no one knows but you, not even my parents or my children. I’m an architect, as you know, and by rights I should be putting houses up. But I’ve never put any up, only blown them down. And the same goes for churches, too, which I used to draw on nice soft drawing paper when I was a boy, always dreaming that some day I’d build real ones like them. But I never did
build any. When I went into the army, in my record they found a reference to a doctoral thesis I’d written on a problem in statics. Statics, Hugo, is the study of the equilibrium of forces, of stress and strain in supporting structures. Without statics you can’t even build an African hut. And the opposite of statics is dynamics. Sounds like dynamite, the way it’s used in demolition, and matter of fact it is tied in with dynamite. For the rest of the war I was all dynamite. I know a little something about statics, Hugo, and something about dynamics, too. But about dynamite I know a whole lot. I’ve read every book on it in existence from cover to cover. If you want to smash something, all you need is know where to place the charge and how strong it has to be. I happened to know that, boy, so I demolished. I blew up bridges and apartment blocks, churches and railroad bridges, villas and crossroads. They gave me medals for doing it. I was promoted from second lieutenant to first, from that to captain, and they gave me special leave and citations because I knew how to destroy things so well. By the end of the war I was attached to a general who had only one thought in his head: ‘Field of fire.’ Do you know what a field of fire is? You don’t?”

Faehmel put the billiard cue to his shoulder like a rifle and aimed out through the window at St. Severin’s tower.

“Look,” he said. “If I wanted to fire at the bridge, over there behind St. Severin’s, the church would be lying in my field of fire. So, St. Severin’s would have to be demolished, here, now, right off the bat. And, believe me, Hugo, I’d have blown St. Severin’s to smithereens, even though I knew my general was crazy as a two-cent watch, even though I knew that ‘field of fire’ was complete nonsense. Why was it nonsense? If you’re up in the air, you understand, you don’t need a field of fire. And even the simplest general must have realized somewhere along the line that the airplane had been invented. But my general was off his rocker and the only idea in his one-track mind was ‘field of fire.’ Therefore, I gave him a field of fire. I had a good team working with me, physicists and architects,
and whatever stood in our way we demolished. Our last job was something really big, something colossal, an entire system of huge and very solid buildings. A church, stables, monks’ cells, an administration block, a whole farmstead. An entire abbey, Hugo. It lay exactly between two armies, one German, the other American. I provided the German army with a field of fire, even though to tell the truth it needed one like a hole in the head. Out there ahead of me the walls went toppling down. The animals bellowed in the stables and the barns, the monks cursed me out. But nothing would stop me. I blew up the whole of St. Anthony’s Abbey in Kissa Valley, just three days before the war ended. Very carefully and correctly. You know me, my boy—always just so!”

He lowered his cue, which he had been holding all along zeroed in on an imaginary target, returned it to a crooked finger and struck the cue ball. Whitely it rolled over green, and bounced in a wild zigzag from one green cushion to another.

St. Severin’s muffled bells gave out the time. But when,
when
did eleven strike?

“Boy, go and see what all that commotion is at the door.”

He played another ball. Red-green. Letting the balls come to rest, he put his cue down.

“The manager would like to know if you’d be so kind as to speak with a Dr. Nettlinger?”

“How about you? Would
you
speak with a Dr. Nettlinger?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Show me how to get out of here without using that door.”

“You can go through the dining room, Doctor, then you’ll come out onto Modest Street.”

“Goodbye, Hugo. See you tomorrow.”

“Goodbye, Doctor.”

They were setting the tables for lunch, a ballet of waiters, a ballet of busboys, pushing tea wagons from table to table in a precisely determined order, laying out silver, changing vases of flowers. White carnations in slender vases were replaced by
modest violets in round ones, marmalade dishes by wine glasses, round for red wine, slender for white. Only exception was the sheep-lady’s milk, which in the crystal carafe looked gray.

Faehmel threaded his way among the tables with a light step. Pushing aside the violet curtain, he went down the stairs and presently was standing across the way from the tower of St. Severin’s.

Leonore’s step soothed him. Carefully she went about the studio, opened cupboard doors, lifted lids of chests, untied packages, unrolled drawings. She seldom came to the window where he was to disturb him, only if the document had no date, the plan no name. He had always liked order, but never lived up to it. Leonore, she would take care of that for him. She was laying out piles of plans and papers, letters and old accounts, on the floor of the big studio, according to date. After fifty years the floor, as she worked, still shook from the heavy stamping of the presses below. 1907, ’08, ’09, ’10—the stacks of material were visibly getting bigger with the century’s advance. 1909 was bigger than 1908, 1910 than 1909. Leonore was laying bare the curve of his life’s activities, trained as she was in precision.

“Yes,” he said, “just ask me whenever you want, child. That one? That’s the hospital in Weidenhammer. Built it in 1924, dedicated in September.” In her neat handwriting she wrote “1924–9” on the margin of the plan.

The stacks from the 1914–1918 war years were meager: three, four plans; a country house for the general, a hunting lodge for the lord mayor, a St. Sebastian chapel for the Rifle Club. Furlough assignments, costing precious days. To get to see his children he had built castles for the generals free of charge.

“No, Leonore, that one was in 1935. A Franciscan convent. Modern? Of course I’ve built modern things, too.”

The view framed by the big studio window had always seemed like a kaleidoscope to him. The sky changed color, the trees in the courtyard went from gray to black to green, the flowers in the roof gardens bloomed and turned sere. Children played on the leaded sheet-metal roofs, grew up, had children themselves, whereupon their parents became grandparents. Only the profile of the roofs remained constant, that and the bridge, the mountains visible on the horizon on clear days. That is, remained constant until the second war altered the line of the roofs, tearing out gaps through which on sunny days the silvery Rhine could be seen, on days of overcast the gray Rhine, and beyond, in the Old Harbor, the drawbridge. But now these gaps had long since been filled in, and again children played on the metaled roofs, and his granddaughter crossed the Kilbs’ roof, schoolbooks in her hand, as fifty years before his wife had done. Or had his wife, Johanna, gone there on sunny afternoons to read Schiller’s
Love and Intrigue?

The phone rang and it was pleasant to have Leonore take up the receiver and listen to her voice as she answered the unknown caller. “The Cafe Kroner? I’ll ask His Excellency.”

“Wants to know how many people to expect this evening? Birthday party?” Would the fingers of one hand be enough to count them off? “Let me see. Two grandchildren, one son, myself—and you. May I have that pleasure, Leonore?”

Five of them, then. The fingers of one hand were enough.

“No, no champagne. Everything just the way it was ordered. Thank you, Leonore.”

She probably thinks I’m a little dotty, but if I am, it’s nothing new. I saw everything before it happened, knew exactly what I wanted, knew I’d get it. Only thing I never knew, and still can’t figure out to this day, is why I did it. Was it for money, fame, or simply because it amused me? What was it I was looking for, that Friday morning fifty-one years ago, September sixth, 1907, when I walked out of that railroad station over there? From the moment I set foot in the city I had my moves all figured out, an exact daily routine, the steps of a complicated dance all down to a tee—myself soloist and ballet master all in one. Cast and decor were there for the asking, not costing a penny.

I had only ten minutes left to dance my first routine. That is, walk across the station square, out by the Prince Heinrich Hotel, kitty-corner across Modest Street and into the Cafe Kroner. It was on my twenty-ninth birthday that I came to the city. A September morning. Cab horses were standing guard over their sleeping drivers. Hotel boys in the violet uniform of the Prince. Heinrich were lugging suitcases in the wake of guests on the way to the railroad station. On bank buildings substantial iron gratings were being pushed up for the day, to land with a solid sound in their storage racks. Pigeons, news vendors. Uhlans, a troop of them, riding by the Prince Heinrich, with the captain waving at a woman in a rose-red hat, standing veiled on the balcony. She blew him a kiss. Hooves clattering on the cobbles, pennants and plumes fluttering in the morning wind, organ music coming out of the big open door of St. Severin’s.

I was excited, took a street map out of my coat pocket, unfolded it and looked at the red semicircle I’d drawn around the railroad station. Five black crosses indicated the cathedral and the four adjacent churches. I looked up and tried to locate the four church spires through the morning haze. The fifth, St. Severin’s, was no trouble. There it was in front of me; its enormous shadow made me shiver a little. I looked down
at the map again. Right. A yellow cross indicated the house where I’d rented a studio and a living room for six months, paid in advance, 7 Modest Street, between St. Severin’s and the Modest Gate. It had to be over there to the right, where a group of priests were just crossing the street. The semicircle I’d drawn around the station had a radius of one kilometer. Somewhere inside that red line lived the woman I would marry. I’d never met her, didn’t know her name. All I knew was that I would take her out of one of those patrician houses my father had told me about. He’d served three years here, in the Uhlans, soaking up hatred, hatred for horses and officers. A sentiment I deferred to, without sharing it. I was always glad my father didn’t live to see me become an officer myself—lieutenant in the Engineer Corps Reserves. I burst out laughing that morning fifty-one years ago. I laughed and laughed. I knew I’d take a wife from one of those houses, that she would be called Brodem or Cusenius, Kilb or Ferve. She would be twenty years old and now, right this very minute, she would be leaving morning Mass on her way home to put her prayerbook back in the hall closet. She would arrive at just the right moment to be kissed on the forehead by her father, on the way, rumbling bass and all, through the hall and out to the office. For breakfast she would eat bread and honey, drink one cup of coffee. ‘No, no, Mother, no egg, please.’ Then she would read off the dates of coming galas to her mother. Might she go to the University Ball? She might.

By the University Ball at the latest, on the sixth of January, I would know the one I wished to make my own, would dance with her. I would be good to her, love her, and she would bear me children, five, six, seven of them. They would marry and present me with grandchildren, five times, six, seven times seven. I saw my troop of grandchildren, and myself, an eighty-year-old patriarch, lording it over the clan I proposed to found. At birthday celebrations, funerals, weddings and silver weddings, christenings. Infants would be handed over to be held
in my old arms. There would be great-grandchildren for me to love as I had loved the pretty young things my sons had married. These, meanwhile, I would invite to breakfast, give candy and flowers, paintings and eau de cologne. I could see it all as I stood there, ready to begin the dance.

I stared at the porter as he wheeled off my luggage in his cart to the house at 7 Modest Street, the padlocked hamper with my linen and my drawings, the little leather valise containing papers, documents and my money. My money—four hundred gold coins, net proceeds of twelve years’ work, spent in country builders’ field offices, working in the draughting rooms of second-rate architects, at workers’ housing developments, industrial plants, churches, schools, clubhouses sketched out, planned, built. Money which represented construction estimates plowed through backwards and forwards, to the very last dry specification—‘and the sacristy paneling shall be made of the best clear walnut, the best-grade hardware used.’

I know I laughed as I stood there, yet to this day for the life of me I don’t really know why or what made me do it. But I can say I wasn’t laughing out of pure joy in being young and alive. There was mockery and derision in it, even malice, yet just how much of each I’ve never been able to tell. I was thinking of the hard benches I’d sat on during evening classes, when I went to learn arithmetic, mathematics, drawing, the manual arts, and how I’d struggled to learn dancing and swimming. I laughed thinking of myself as a lieutenant in the Engineer Reserves, stationed with the 8
^th
Battalion in Coblenz. At how I used to sit, in the city, at the famous Elbow of the Rhine, where two rivers come together, and there found the Mosel just as dirty as the greater stream. I had lived in twenty-three furnished rooms; I’d seduced landlords’ daughters and been seduced by them myself. I saw myself slipping barefoot through moldy-smelling hallways to exchange caresses, including that supreme
tenderness which again and again turned out to be a fraud. Lavender water and hair let down. Horrible living rooms where fruit never intended to be eaten grew old in bowls of greenish glass, where hard words such as brute, honor, innocence came my way and never a whiff of lavender water. Shuddering, I saw what the future had in store for me, saw it, not in the face of the ravished one, but in her mother’s face. Truth of it was, I was not a brute; I had never promised a soul I’d marry her; and I didn’t want to spend my life in living rooms where fruit never intended to be eaten grew old in green glass bowls.