Billiards at Half-Past Nine (21 page)

Now the young girl was sitting in the American officer’s place, eating her meat ball, sipping her beer and giggling. On the horizon he could see the slender, dark gray tower of St. Severin’s, undamaged.

Ought he to have said he found the respect for artistic and historical monuments no less touching than the mistake of expecting beasts, instead of nice, understanding people? A monument for Edith and Ferdi, for Schrella and his father, for Groll and the boy who’d pushed his bits of paper into the letter box, for Anton the Pole who had raised his hand against Vacano and been murdered as a result, and for the many others who had sung
How weary, weary these old bones
, and never been taught any better. A monument for the lambs no one had fed.

If she were going to catch the train, his daughter should now be walking past the portals of St. Severin’s to the station, with her green beret on her dark hair, in her pink sweater, flushed
and happy at meeting father, brother and grandfather for afternoon coffee at St. Anthony’s, before the great birthday party that evening.

Father was standing outside in the shade, in front of the board, studying the times of departure. His narrow face was ruddy, an amiable old man, kind and generous, one who had never tasted the
Host of the Beast
, who had not grown bitter with age. Did he know who had blown up the Abbey? Would he ever find out? And how could he ever explain it to his son Joseph? Better to be silent than to put these thoughts and feelings on record, for analysis by the psychologists.

He had not been able to explain it to the friendly young man either who had looked at him, shaking his head, pushing the opened pack of cigarettes across the table. He took the pack, said thank you and stuck it in his pocket, then plucked the Iron Cross from his chest, and pushed it across the table to the young man. The red-and-white check tablecloth crimped up, and he smoothed it as the young man flushed.

‘No, no,’ said Robert, ‘forgive my clumsiness; I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I feel I should offer you this as a souvenir, a souvenir of the man who blew up St. Anthony’s Abbey and got this medal for it. Who blew it up in spite of knowing the general was mad, and in spite of knowing its demolition had no tactical or strategical importance whatsoever. I shall be glad to keep these cigarettes—may I ask you to consider that we have, as contemporaries, merely exchanged gifts?’

Perhaps he had done it because he remembered the half-dozen monks who had celebrated the solstice by riding up Cossack’s Hill and, as the fire raged up, started intoning
How weary, weary these old bones
. Otto had lit the fire and he himself had stood nearby, with his little blond curly-headed son Joseph in his arms, the child clapping his little hands with joy at the flames. And Edith beside him had pressed his right hand. Perhaps because he had not even found Otto a stranger, in
this world where a lift of a hand might cost a life. The village youths from Doderingen, Schlackringen, Kisslingen and Denklingen had gathered round the solstice fire; the heated faces of the young men and women had shone wildly in the flames that Otto had been allowed to light, and all of them had sung, the pious monks, digging their spurs into the flanks of their pious farm horses, intoning along with the rest:
How weary, weary these old bones
. They had gone back down the hill with torches in their hands, chanting. Should he tell the young man he’d done it because they hadn’t obeyed the injunction,
Shepherd my Lambs
, and that he felt no trace of regret. Aloud, he said, ‘Perhaps it was for the fun of it, just a game.’

‘Funny kind of fun you have here, funny kind of game. After all, you’re an architect.’

‘No. I do stress and strain estimates.’

‘Well, there’s hardly any difference.’

‘Demolition,’ he said, ‘is merely stress and strain in reverse. They’re complementary, so to speak.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the young man, ‘I was always weak in math.’

‘And I always found it a pure delight.’

‘I’m beginning to take a personal interest in your case. When you refer to your love of mathematics, do you mean you took a certain professional interest in the demolition?’

‘Perhaps. Naturally an analyst is highly interested in knowing which forces are required to undo the laws of statics. You must admit it was a perfect demolition.’

‘But do you seriously maintain that this so-to-speak abstract interest played some part in it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think I can avoid a political investigation after all. I must point out to you it will be senseless to make false statements. We have all the documents needed to check on what you say.’

It had been only then that it occurred to him that his
own father had built the Abbey thirty-five years before; they had been told it and had it confirmed for them so often that it seemed no longer true. And he had feared the young man would discover this fact, and then believe he had hit on the explanation: Oedipus complex. Perhaps it was better to say he had done it because they had not shepherded the lambs, thus providing tangible reasons to judge him crazy. But he had merely gazed through the window at St. Severin’s slender tower, as at a prey which had got away, while the young man asked him questions, all of which he was able to answer without hesitation with a no.

The young girl pushed her empty plate away from her, took the young man’s plate and, holding both forks poised an instant in her right hand, with her left hand put his plate on hers. And then, on the top plate, the two forks. After which she put her right hand, free now, on the young man’s forearm and smiled into his eyes.

‘So you didn’t belong to any organization? You read Hölderlin? Good. I may have to have you brought in once more tomorrow morning.’

Firm in compassion the eternal heart
.

When his father walked into the bar, Robert flushed, went up to the old man, took the heavy hat out of his hand and said, “I forgot to congratulate you on your birthday, Father. Forgive me. I’ve ordered a beer for you. I hope it’s still fresh enough, if not.…”

“Thank you,” said his father, “thanks for the birthday wishes, and the beer will do; I don’t like it too cold.” The old man put his hand on Robert’s arm, and Robert, blushing, remembered the intimate gesture they had exchanged on the street in front of the sanatorium. There, he had suddenly felt a need to put his arm round his father’s shoulders, and his father
had returned the gesture while they made their arrangement to meet at Denklingen station.

“Come on,” said Robert, “let’s sit down; we still have twenty-five minutes.”

They raised their glasses, nodded to each other, and drank.

“Cigar, Father?”

“No thank you. By the way, did you know the train schedules have hardly changed in fifty years? Even the announcement board with its enamel plates is still the same. On some of them the enamel is only chipped a little bit.”

“The chairs and tables and the pictures on the wall,” said Robert, “are all the same as they used to be, when we used to walk over here from Kisslingen on summer evenings and wait for the train.”

“Yes,” said his father, “nothing has changed. Did you call up Ruth? Will she be coming? It’s so long since I’ve seen her.”

“Yes, she’s coming. I expect she’s already sitting in the train.”

“We can be in Kisslingen shortly after half-past four, have some coffee and cake, and easily get back home by seven. You are coming to the party?”

“Of course, Father, did you think we wouldn’t?”

“No, but I was wondering whether to let it go, cancel it—but perhaps it’s better not to, for the children’s sake; and I’ve made so many preparations for today.”

The old man lowered his eyes to the red-and-white check tablecloth, and drew circles on it with his beer glass; Robert marveled at the smooth skin on his hands, child’s hands which had kept their innocence. His father raised his eyes again and looked Robert in the face.

“I was thinking of Ruth and Joseph. You know Joseph has a girl, don’t you?”

“No.”

The old man looked down again and let the beer glass go on circling.

“I’d always hoped my two properties out here might be something like a second home to you, but you all always preferred living in the city, even Edith—it seems Joseph is the first who might fulfill my dream. Strange you all still think he takes after Edith and not after us. And yet he looks so like Heinrich it sometimes scares me, when I see your son; Heinrich, as he might have been—do you remember him?”

Our dog was called Brom; and I held the coach-horse reins, made of black leather. All cracked. Got to get a gun, get a gun. Hindenburg
.

“Yes, I remember him.”

“He gave me back the farmhouse I made him a present of. Whom am I going to give it to now? Joseph or Ruth? You? Would you like it? Own cows and meadows, milk separators and beet-cutting machines? Tractors and hay tedders? Shall I deed it to the monastery? I bought both properties with my first fee; I was twenty-nine when I built the Abbey, and you can’t imagine what it means to a young man to get such an assignment. A sensation. That’s not only why I travel out there so often, to remember the future which meanwhile has long since become the past. I always thought of becoming sort of a farmer in my old age. But I haven’t, only an old fool playing blind man’s buff with his wife. We take turns closing our eyes, changing old times like the slides in that apparatus that throws pictures on the wall. If you please, let’s have 1928. Two fine sons holding mother’s hand, one thirteen, the other eleven. Father close by, cigar in mouth, smiling. In the background, the Eiffel Tower—or is it the Engelsburg or the Brandenburg Gate perhaps—pick your own backdrop; maybe the breakers at Ostend, or St. Severin’s tower, or the lemonade stalls in Blessenfeld Park? No, of course it’s St. Anthony’s Abbey, you’ll find it in the snapshot album, at all seasons, only the fashions change. Your mother in a large hat or a small one, with short or long hair, in a full skirt or a tight one, and her children three and five, five and seven years old; then there appears a stranger
young and blonde, with one child in her arms and another held by the hand, the children one and three years old. Do you know, I loved Edith more than I could have loved a daughter. I could never believe she’d ever really had a mother and father—and a brother. She was an emissary of the Lord and while she lived with us I could think and pray His name again without blushing—what message did she bring you? Revenge for the lambs? I hope you carried out the mission loyally, without the false considerations I always had, without keeping your superiority feelings fresh in a refrigerator of irony, as I always did. Did she really have that brother? Is he alive? Does he exist?”

Drawing circles with his beer glass, he stared at the red-and-white check tablecloth, very slightly raised his head.

“Tell me, does he really exist? He was your friend, wasn’t he. I saw him once. I was standing at the bedroom window and I saw him walk across the courtyard to your room. I’ve never forgotten him, and often thought about him, even though I can hardly have seen him for more than ten or twenty seconds. He scared me, like a dark angel. Does he really exist?”

“Yes.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yes. You are afraid of him?”

“Yes. Of you too. Didn’t you know? I don’t want to know what mission Edith gave you, only, did you carry it out?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You’re surprised I was scared of you—and still am, a little. I laughed at your childish plots, but the laughter stuck in my throat when I read they had killed that boy. He might have been Edith’s brother, but later on I knew it had been almost human to kill a boy who after all had thrown a bomb and scorched a gym teacher’s feet—but the boy who pushed your slips of paper through our letter box, the Pole who raised his hand against the gym teacher, even an uncalled-for glance, certain kind of hair, certain shape of nose were enough, and the time came when it took even less. The father’s or grandmother’s
birth certificate was enough. I’d lived on my laughter through the years, but that nourishment ran out, no new batch available, Robert. So I opened the refrigerator door and let my irony turn sour, then threw it out like the disgusting left-overs of something which once might have been worth something. I had thought I loved and understood your mother, but really it wasn’t till then that I really understood and loved her, and understood you others, too, and loved you. Later only I quite saw it all; I was well set up when the war ended, building commissioner for the entire district. Peace, I thought, all over, a new life—when one day the British commanding officer came to apologize to me, so to speak, for having bombed the Honorius Church and destroyed the twelfth-century crucifixion group. He didn’t apologize for Edith, only for a twelfth-century crucifixion panel. ‘Sorry.’ I laughed again for the first time in ten years, but it wasn’t good laughter, Robert—and I resigned my office. Building commissioner? What for? When I would have given all the crucifixions down the centuries to see Edith’s smile once again and feel her hand on my arm? What did the Lord’s pictures mean to me, compared to His emissary’s real smile? As for the boy who brought your scraps of paper—I never saw his face or learned his name—I would have given St. Severin’s and known it would have been a ridiculous price to pay, like giving a medal to someone who’s saved a life. Have you ever seen Edith’s smile again, or the smile of that carpenter’s apprentice? Just a hint of it? Robert, Robert!”

He let go of the beer glass and set his arms on the table.

“Have you ever seen it?” He murmured the question, head bent low.

“I’ve seen it,” said Robert, “on the face of a hotel boy called Hugo—I’ll show him to you.”

“I’ll give that boy the farm Heinrich couldn’t take. Write me his name and address on the coaster. All the most important messages are sent on beer mats. And let me know as soon as you hear anything of Edith’s brother. Is he alive?”

“Yes. Are you still afraid of him?”

“I am. Terrible thing was, there was nothing at all touching about him. I knew when I saw him crossing the courtyard that he was strong, and that everything he did wasn’t being done for reasons that would carry weight with other people. Because he was poor or rich, ugly or handsome, because his mother had or hadn’t beaten him. All the reasons why anyone does anything, either building churches or murdering women, being a good teacher or a bad organist. With him I knew that none of these reasons would explain anything. At that time I could still laugh, but I couldn’t find a single crack in him where my laughter might have got through. It scared me, as if a dark angel had come walking across our courtyard, God’s deputy sheriff come to take you into custody. That’s what he did to you, seized your person. But there was nothing moving about him. Even when I heard they’d beaten him and intended to kill him, I wasn’t moved.…”