Billiards at Half-Past Nine

This morning, for the first time ever, Faehmel was curt with her, almost rude. He called about half-past eleven and the very sound of his voice over the phone spelt trouble. The tone was new to her, and frightening, precisely because everything he said was, in fact, as irreproachable as always. But in this new voice all courtesy had been reduced to mere formula, as if he were suddenly offering her a glass of H
₂
O instead of water.

“If you please,” he said, “look in your desk and get that little red card I gave you four years ago.” She pulled out the drawer, pushed aside a chocolate bar, some cleaning cloths, the metal polish and took out the red card. “Now, be so kind as to read what it says on the card.”

Voice trembling, she read: “Available at any time to my mother, my father, my daughter, my son or Mr. Schrella. Otherwise to no one.”

“Repeat the last sentence, please.” She did—“Otherwise to no one.” “And by the way, how did you find out that phone number I gave you was the Prince Heinrich Hotel?” She said
not a word. “I want to stress the fact you’re to follow my instructions even when they date back four years … if you please.”

Not a peep out of her.

“Stupid thing …!” The inevitable “if you please,” had he forgotten it?

She heard muttering, then a voice calling, “Taxi, taxi,” after which the connection was cut off. She laid down the receiver, shoved the little red card into the center of the desk and felt a kind of relief. His rudeness, the first in four years, was almost like a caress.

When she was at sixes and sevens, or fed up with the extremely routine nature of her work, she would go out of doors and polish the brass nameplate: “Dr. Robert Faehmel. Architectural Estimates. Closed Afternoons.” Train smoke, street dust, smog gave her a daily excuse to use the cloths and metal polish, and she liked to stretch out the chore to a quarter, a half-hour. Now, across the way, she could see the printing presses stamping away, tirelessly impressing edification on white paper. She felt their vibration, imagined herself on a ship about to get under way, or already out at sea. Trucks, apprentices, nuns. Life in the streets, crates in front of the grocer’s, oranges, tomatoes, cabbages. Next door, in front of Gretz’ shop, two butcherboys were hanging up the wild boar, as they did every day. Dark boar’s blood was dripping onto the asphalt. Defiance welled up in her. She thought what it would be like to give notice and go to work in some grimy, backyard hole-in-the-wall where electric cable or spices or onions were sold, where sloppily suspendered middle-aged foremen had ideas, thus providing the satisfaction of giving them the brush-off. Places where you had to put up a battle to get that extra hour to spend waiting at the dentist’s. Where a collection was taken up when one of the girls got engaged, or had a stork shower. Or to buy a book on love. Where your fellow-workers’ dirty jokes kept you alive to the fact that you, yourself, were
a virgin. Life. Quite different from this perfect order, this flawlessly dressed and unfailingly polite employer who gave you the creeps. There was contempt, you could sense, behind the politeness he handed out to everyone he came in contact with. Yet who, actually, who outside herself did he have anything to do with? As far back as she could remember, she’d never seen him talking to anyone, except his father, son or daughter. His mother she’d never laid eyes on. She was off in a mental hospital somewhere. Nor had that Mr. Schrella, also on the red card, ever set foot in the office. Faehmel meanwhile held no office consultations. Clients who phoned for an appointment were asked to state their business in writing.

When he caught her making a mistake, he merely passed it off with a wave of his hand, and said, “All right, now do it over, please.” As a matter of fact this seldom happened; the few errors that crept in she usually discovered first herself. In all events, that “please” of his he never forgot. When she asked him for time off, he gave it to her, hours, days. The time her mother died, he said, “We’ll close the office for four days. Or would you rather have a week?” But she hadn’t wanted a week, not even four days. Only three, and even that was too long in the empty apartment. Needless to say, he showed up for the funeral and graveside services, and his father, his son and daughter also put in an appearance, all of them bringing enormous wreaths which they laid on the grave themselves. They listened closely to the liturgy, and the old father, whom she liked, whispered to her, “We Faehmels know death very well. We’re on a solid footing with that fellow, my dear child.”

Every favor she wanted was granted without demur and as a result she found it harder and harder, as the years slipped by, to make any requests at all. He had progressively cut down her working hours. During the first year she had worked from eight till four. But for the past two years her work had become so organized she could easily get it done between eight and
one. Even so she had time to be bored, to drag out the cleaning chore to a half-hour. And now not as much as a single cloudy spot left on the brass sign! She screwed the cap of the metal polish back on, folded the rags and heaved a sigh. The printing presses were still pounding away, tirelessly impressing edification on white paper, the boar carcass was still dripping blood. Apprentices, trucks, nuns. Life in the streets.

There it lay on the desk, the red card with “Otherwise to no one” in the flawless architect’s writing. There, too, was the phone number which, having time on her hands, blushing at her own curiosity, she had identified as the Prince Heinrich Hotel’s. The name had provided fresh scent for her nose to follow. What did he do in the Prince Heinrich Hotel every morning between half-past nine and eleven? That icy voice on the phone, saying, “Stupid thing.” And without any “please” after it! The departure from style cheered her up, reconciled her with a job any automaton could manage.

Among the carbon copies left behind by her predecessor she had found two form letters, both of which had continued in use unchanged during the years of her regime. One was for clients who had placed a commission: “Thank you for your confidence, which we shall try to justify by speedy and accurate fulfillment of your assignment. Respectfully yours.…” The other was used when stress and strain data and the like were delivered to clients: “Herewith the desired information concerning construction project X. Kindly credit the fee, in the amount of Y, to our bank account. Respectfully yours.…” Certain variations, of course, were left to her. For X she might insert “Publisher’s house at the edge of the forest,” “Teacher’s house on riverbank,” “Holleben Street railway bridge.” The fee entered at Y, too, she figured out herself, according to a simple scale.

Beyond this there was the correspondence with his three associates, Kanders, Schrit and Hochbret, to whom she had to
forward the commissions in turn as they came in. “This way,” Faehmel had said, “justice automatically runs its course and the odds are even for a lucky break.” When the data came back, Schrit had to go over Kanders’ figures, Kanders over Hochbret’s, Hochbret over Schrit’s. There were also card indexes to be kept, bills for expenses to be entered in a ledger, drawings to photocopy and double postcard-size extra photocopies to be made for his private records. But mostly her work consisted of getting letters ready to mail, again and again drawing the sticky side of green, red or blue stamps with President Heuss’ picture on them across the little sponge and pasting them on neatly at the upper right-hand corner of the yellow envelopes. From time to time the Heusses needed were brown, violet or yellow, and even that much was a welcome change.

Faehmel had made it a rule never to spend more than an hour a day in the office. He wrote his name under “Respectfully yours,” under itemized billings. If more commissions came in than he could handle in an hour a day, he turned them down. For such cases there was a mimeographed form letter, the text of which read: “We regret to inform you that owing to the pressure of work we must forego the privilege of handling your esteemed commission. Signed, F.”

Not once, while sitting opposite him mornings between half-past eight and half-past nine, had she ever seen him doing anything that was human and intimate, such as eating or drinking. She’d never even seen him have a head cold. She blushed, thinking of things more intimate than these. The fact that he smoked didn’t make up for all the other things she missed. The snow-white cigarette was too perfect, only ashes and butt in the ash tray for consolation. Still, that much at least was waste, evidence that something had been used up. She had worked for mighty bosses before, men whose desks were like a captain’s bridge, whose physiognomy inspired dread. Yet even these big shots had drunk a cup of tea or coffee now and then, or eaten a sandwich, and the sight of tycoons eating and drinking
had always been a source of excitement. Bread crumbled, sausage skins and fatty ham rind were left over. Hands had to be washed, handkerchiefs taken out. Mouths were wiped on granite visages that, one day, would be cast in bronze, from pedestaled monuments to give notice of their greatness to future generations. But Faehmel, when he arrived from the rear premises at half-past eight, brought no whiff of breakfast with him. Nor, as you might expect of a boss, was he ever either nervous or carefully poised for action. Even when he had to write his name forty times under “Respectfully yours,” his signature stayed fine and readable. He smoked, he signed, once in a great while gave a drawing a glance, at half-past nine took his hat and coat, said, “See you tomorrow,” and vanished. From half-past nine till eleven he was at the Prince Heinrich Hotel, from eleven to noon in the Cafe Zons, all this while available only to his “mother, father, daughter, son and Mr. Schrella.” At noon he went out for a walk, then at one o’clock met his daughter for lunch at The Lion. How he spent his afternoons and evenings she had no idea. She only knew that he went to Mass every morning at seven, was with his daughter from half-past seven till eight, from eight till half-past eight breakfasted alone.