Billiards at Half-Past Nine (22 page)

“Your Excellency! I’ve only now recognized you; I’m so glad to see you well. It must be years since you were here.”

“Ah, it’s you, Mull? And your mother, is she still living?”

“No, Your Excellency, we had to lay her to rest. It was a huge funeral. She’d had a full life; seven children, thirty-six grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren, a full life. Will you gentlemen do me the honor of drinking to my mother’s memory?”

“But gladly, my dear Mull—she was a wonderful woman.”

The old man got to his feet, and Robert stood up too as the proprietor went to the bar and ran the glasses full of beer. The station clock said ten past four. Two farmers were waiting at the counter, wearily pushing meat balls smeared with mustard into their mouths, drinking copious gulps of beer. The proprietor came back to the table, with red face and moist eyes, transferred the glasses of beer from tray to table and picked his own glass up.

“To your mother’s memory, Mull,” said old Faehmel.

They raised their glasses, nodded to each other, drank and put them down again.

“Did you know,” the old man said, “that your mother gave me credit fifty years ago, when I came over here hungry and thirsty from Kisslingen. The railway tracks were being repaired at the time, and it was nothing for me to walk four kilometers. To your health, Mull, and to your mother. This is my son; haven’t you ever met him?”

“Faehmel—how do you do.”

“Mull—a pleasure.”

“Every child here knows
you
, Excellency, everyone knows you built our Abbey, and many a grandmother can still tell stories about you; about the times you ordered whole truck-loads of beer for the bricklayers, and danced a solo at the builders’ party. Here’s to you, your Excellency.”

They emptied their glasses standing. Robert, his empty glass in his hand, stared after the proprietor as he went back to his bar, pushed the young couple’s plates through the hatch, then worked out the bill with the young man. His father was tugging him by the coat.

“Come on,” the old man said, “sit down, we’ve still got another ten minutes. They’re splendid people, their hearts are in the right place.”

“And you’re not afraid of them, are you, Father?”

The old man looked his son full in the eyes, his narrow, still-smooth face unsmiling.

Robert continued: “These were the people who tormented Hugo—perhaps one of them was even Ferdi’s hangman!”

“While you were away and we were waiting for news of you I was scared of everyone—but scared of Mull? Now? Are
you
scared of him?”

“Whenever I meet anyone I ask myself whether I’d want to be handed over to him, and there aren’t many I’d say yes to.”

“And were you handed over to Edith’s brother?”

“No. We shared a room in Holland, shared everything we had. Half the day we played billiards, the other half we studied; he German, I mathematics. I wasn’t handed over to him, but I would hand myself over to him any time—to you, too, Father.” Robert took the cigarette out of his mouth. “I’d like to give you something for your eightieth birthday, Father—to prove, well, perhaps you know what I’d like to prove to you?”

“I know,” said the old man, laying his hand on his son’s arm, “you needn’t tell me.”

Some tears of remorse I’d like to give you, but I can’t force them out, I still look at St. Severin’s tower as at a quarry which got away from me. It was a shame it had to be your early work, the great prize, the first great gamble. And so well built, solid masonry, its statics irreproachable; had to requisition two truckloads of high explosive, and went round chalking my figures and formulas on the walls, on the columns and buttresses, on the great picture of the Last Supper, between the feet of St. John and St. Peter. I knew the Abbey so well, you’d explained it to me so often as a child, as a boy, as a young man. I chalked my figures on the wall, while the Abbot, the only one who’d stayed there, dogged me wherever I went, appealing to my reason, to my religion. Lucky he was a new abbot who didn’t know me. He appealed to my conscience—in vain. He didn’t know me as a weekend visitor eating trout, as the master builder’s son, as the nature-pure-honey-eating, butter-on-country-bread-spreading master builder’s son, and while he was staring at me as if I were crazy, I whispered to him,
How weary, weary these old bones
. I was twenty-nine, exactly the age you were when you built the Abbey, and now I am stalking the prey sticking up against the far horizon, gray, slender St. Severin’s. But I was taken prisoner and the young man interrogated me, here in Denklingen station, over at the table that’s empty now.

“What are you thinking about?” asked the old man.

“About St. Anthony’s; it’s been such a long time since I was there.”

“Are you looking forward to going up?”

“I’m looking forward to Joseph, it’s such a long time since I’ve seen him.”

“I’m rather proud of him,” the old man said, “he’s so outgoing and quick, and he’ll be a fine architect one day. A bit too strict with the workmen, a bit impatient, but I don’t expect patience from a twenty-two-year-old. And now he has a deadline to beat—the monks are so eager to sing the Liturgy for Advent in the new church. We’ll all be invited to the consecration, of course.”

“Is the Abbot still there?”

“Which one?”

“Gregor.”

“No. He died in forty-seven. He couldn’t get over the Abbey being destroyed.”

“And you, could you get over it?”

“When I heard it had been destroyed, the news hit me hard, but when I went out there and saw the rubble, with the monks in a state and wanting to set up a commission to find the culprit, I advised them not to. I didn’t want to wreak any revenge for a building, and I was afraid they might in fact find the culprit and he would apologize to me. I still had the frightful echo of the Englishman’s ‘Sorry’ in my ears. And, after all, buildings can be rebuilt. Yes, Robert, I got over it. You won’t believe it, but I had never had too much feeling for buildings I designed and put up. I liked them on paper, I had a certain passion for the work, but I was never an artist, you understand, and I knew I wasn’t. I still had my plans, of course, when they offered me the job of reconstruction. A great opportunity for your boy to get some practical training, learn coordination, take off the rough edges of his impatience—shouldn’t we go to the train?”

“Four minutes to go, Father. We can go out onto the platform.”

Robert stood up, made a sign toward the bar and reached for his wallet, but the proprietor came round from behind, went past Robert, laid his hand smilingly on the old man’s shoulder and said, “No, no, Your Excellency, you’re my guests, I wouldn’t think of anything else, for the sake of my mother’s memory.”

Outside it was still hot. Streamers of smoke from the train were already visible over Doderingen.

“Have you got tickets?” the old man asked.

“Yes,” said Robert, looking toward the train as it came over the rise behind Doderingen, as if down on to them out of the clear blue sky. The train was old, black and picturesque; the station master came out of his office, a weekend smile on his face.

“Here, Father, here,” called Ruth, in her green beret and fluffy pink pullover, waving her arms. She stretched her hands out to her grandfather, helped him up onto the step, embraced him and pushed him carefully through the open carriage door, then pulled her father up and kissed him on the cheek.

“I’m glad,” she said, “really awfully glad about St. Anthony’s and this evening.”

The station master blew his whistle and waved for the train to pull away.

As they walked up to the counter Nettlinger took the cigar out of his mouth and nodded encouragingly to Schrella. The window was slid up from the inside; a guard leaned out with an inventory and asked, “Are you the prisoner Schrella?”

“Yes,” said Schrella.

As the guard took the objects from a box he called them out and laid them on the counter.

“One pocket watch, nickel, without chain.”

“One change purse, black leather, contents: five English shillings, thirty Belgian francs, ten German marks and eighty pfennigs.”

“One tie, color green.”

“One ballpoint pen, no trademark, color gray.”

“Two handkerchiefs, white.”

“One trenchcoat.”

“One hat, color black.”

“One razor, trademark Gillette.”

“Six cigarettes, trademark Belga.”

“You kept your shirt, underwear, soap and toothbrush, didn’t you? Please sign here and confirm with your signature that none of your personal property is missing.”

Schrella put on his coat, stuck his worldly possessions in his pocket, signed and dated the inventory: September 6, 1958, 4:10
P.M.

“All right,” said the guard, and pulled the window down.

Nettlinger reinserted the cigar in his mouth and tapped Schrella’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said, “this way out. Or do you want to go back in the pokey? Perhaps you’d better put your tie on now.”

Schrella put a cigarette in his mouth, straightened his spectacles, turned up his shirt collar and put on his tie. He gave a start as Nettlinger suddenly held a cigarette lighter in front of his nose.

“Yes,” said Nettlinger, “it’s that way with every prisoner, high or low, guilty or innocent, poor or rich, political or criminal. First of all a cigarette.”

Schrella inhaled the cigarette smoke deeply, and looked over his glasses at Nettlinger, while he tied his tie and turned his collar down again.

“You’ve had a lot of experience in such things, have you?”

“Haven’t you?” asked Nettlinger. “Come on, I’m afraid I can’t spare you the Superintendent’s farewell.”

Schrella put his hat on, took the cigarette out of his mouth and followed Nettlinger, who was holding open the courtyard door for him. The Superintendent was standing at the head of the line by the counter window, whence notes of permission for Sunday visits were issued. The Superintendent was big, not smartly but very respectably dressed. The way he walked and gestured as he came toward Nettlinger and Schrella unmistakably bespoke a civilian.

“I hope,” he said to Nettlinger, “that it all went off to your satisfaction—quickly and efficiently.”

“Thank you,” Nettlinger said, “it was really fast.”

“Fine,” said the Superintendent. He turned to face Schrella: “You will forgive me if I say a few words to you in farewell, even though you belonged to my”—he laughed—“my protégés for only one day, and even though you were put by mistake in the punishment-instead of the detention-block. Look,” he said, pointing to the inner prison door, “beyond that door a second door awaits you, and beyond that second door, something wonderful, the thing we value the most—freedom. Whether it was right or not right to have you tabbed a suspicious character, within my hospitable walls”—he laughed again—“you’ve had a taste of the opposite of freedom. All of us, of course, are nothing but prisoners, prisoners of the body, and will be till the day when our soul is freed and rises up to its Creator. Just the same, within my hospitable walls, imprisonment is not just symbolical. I leave you to your freedom, Herr Schrella.…”

Schrella, embarrassed, put out his hand, then quickly withdrew it as he saw from the Superintendent’s face that handshaking was clearly not included in the formalities. Schrella remained silent in his embarrassment, transferring his cigarette from his right to his left hand, and blinked at Nettlinger.

Those courtyard walls and the sky above them were the last things on this earth which Ferdi’s eyes had seen, and perhaps the last human voice he had heard had been the Superintendent’s voice, in that same courtyard, a space sufficiently confined to be quite filled by the aroma from Nettlinger’s cigar, concerning which the Superintendent’s sniffing nose said: By God, you’ve always known a good cigar, I’ll give you credit for that.

Nettlinger left the cigar in his mouth. “You might have spared yourself the farewell spiel. Well, thanks and so long.”

He took Schrella by his shoulders, shoved him toward the inner door, which opened in front of them, Nettlinger always slowly shoving Schrella in the direction of the outer door. Schrella stopped, gave his papers to the official, who compared them minutely, nodded and opened the door.

“So there you are,” said Nettlinger. “Freedom. My car’s over there. Where can I give you a lift?”

Schrella crossed the street beside Nettlinger, and hesitated as the chauffeur held the car door open for him.

“Go on,” said Nettlinger, “get in.”

Schrella took off his hat, got into the car, sat down, leaned back and watched Nettlinger get in and sit down beside him.

“Where would you like to go?”

“To the station,” said Schrella.

“Do you have any baggage there?”

“No.”

“Are you thinking of leaving this hospitable city already?” asked Nettlinger. He bent forward and called to the chauffeur, “To Central Station.”

“No,” said Schrella, “I wasn’t thinking of leaving this hospitable city yet. Were you able to get in touch with Robert?”

“No,” said Nettlinger, “he is keeping out of sight. I’ve been trying to contact him all day, but he’s very elusive. I nearly caught him in the Prince Heinrich Hotel, but he vanished through a side exit. I’ve had some highly embarrassing experiences because of him.”

“You’ve never run into him before either?”

“No,” said Nettlinger, “not once. He stays strictly by himself.”

The car stopped at a traffic signal. Schrella took off his spectacles, wiped them with his handkerchief and leaned over toward the window.

“You must find it strange,” said Nettlinger, “to be back in Germany again after such a long time and under such circumstances. You won’t recognize it.”

“I recognize it,” said Schrella, “more or less the way you recognize a woman you loved when she was a girl, and see again twenty years later. Grown rather fat. Glands working overtime. Obviously married to not only a rich but a hard-working man. Villa on the edge of town, a car, rings on her
fingers. Under such circumstances early love unavoidably leads to irony.”

“Pictures like that are somewhat distorted, of course,” said Nettlinger.