Billiards At Half-Past Nine Part 1

Billiards at half-past nine.

Heinrich Boll.

1.

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 gla.s.s of H2O 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 bra.s.s 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 ch.o.r.e 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 s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 ch.o.r.e to a half-hour. And now not as much as a single cloudy spot left on the bra.s.s 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 carca.s.s 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, blus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.signment. 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 a.s.sociates, 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 b.u.t.t 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 tyc.o.o.ns 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 Ma.s.s every morning at seven, was with his daughter from half-past seven till eight, from eight till half-past eight breakfasted alone.

She never got over being surprised by the pleasure he showed when his son came to pay him a visit. Again and again, at the office, he would open the window and look down the street as far as the Modest Gate. He had flowers sent to the house, engaged a housekeeper for the length of the visit. The little scar on the bridge of his nose turned red with excitement, the gloomy back part of the house teemed with cleaning women as daily they brought out empty wine bottles and left them in the hall for the rubbish man. More and more bottles acc.u.mulated, first in rows of five, then of ten, until the whole length of the back entry was taken up by a stiff, dark green forest stockade of bottles, the tips of which she counted, blus.h.i.+ng at her nosiness. Two hundred and ten bottles emptied between the beginning of May and the last of August. More than one bottle a day.

Yet he never smelled of alcohol, his hands never shook. The stiff, dark green forest became unreal. Had she actually seen it? Or was it only a dream? Schrit, Hochbret or Kanders certainly she had never seen, each being buried as he was in his own little hideout far away from the others.

Only twice had any one of them caught another making a mistake. Once was when Schrit had miscalculated the foundation for the munic.i.p.al swimming pool-this detected by Hochbret. It had been all very upsetting, but Faehmel had merely asked her to identify the notes penciled in red on the margin of the drawing as belonging respectively to Schrit and Hochbret. For the first time it dawned on her that Faehmel really knew his business. Half an hour he sat at his desk with slide rule, reference tables and sharpened pencils, then said, "Hochbret is right. The swimming pool would have caved in after three months." Meanwhile not a word of blame for Schrit, of praise for Hochbret. Just this once-as he signed the revised estimate-he laughed, and his laugh was as eerie as his politeness.

The second mistake had been made by Hochbret, when he worked out a statics a.n.a.lysis for the Wilhelmskuhle railway overpa.s.s. That time the error was discovered by Kanders. Once again she watched Faehmel-for the second time in four years-sit down at his desk and calculate. Once again she had to identify Hochbret's and Kanders' red-penciled notes. It was this incident that gave him the idea of prescribing different colored pencils for his different a.s.sociates: Kanders red, Hochbret green, Schrit yellow.

Slowly, a piece of chocolate melting in her mouth, she wrote, "Weekend house for film actress," then, "Annex for Co-operative Welfare Society" as a second piece dissolved. At least clients did have names and addresses to tell them apart by, and the enclosed drawings likewise made her feel she was involved in something real. Building stone and sheets of plastic, iron girders, gla.s.s bricks and bags of cement, all of these could be visualized, whereas Kanders, Schrit and Hochbret, though she wrote their addresses every day, could not. They sent in their totals and estimates without comment. "Why letters?" Faehmel had said. "We're not in the business here of collecting confessions, are we?"

Sometimes she took down the encyclopedia from the bookshelf and looked up the places to which her daily envelopes were addressed. "Schilgenauel, pop. 87, of which 83 Rom. Cath., famous 12th cent. parish church w. Schilgenauel altar." Kanders lived there. And his insurance card revealed the following information: "Age 37, bachelor, Rom. Cath." Schrit lived way up north, in "Gludum, pop. 1988, of which 1812 Prot., 176 Rom. Cath., pickle factories, mission school." Schrit was "48, married, Prot., 2 children, of which 1 over 18." She didn't need to look up Hochbret's home town. He lived in Blessenfeld, out in the suburbs, only a thirty-five-minute bus ride away. The crazy idea often popped into her head of looking up Hochbret, of making sure he was real by hearing his voice, seeing him in the flesh, feeling his handshake. But his youth-he was just thirty-two-and the fact he was a bachelor held her back. Although the encyclopedia described Kanders' and Schrit's home towns with the exactness of an identification card, and although she knew Blessenfeld very well, still all three of them remained beyond her power to visualize, even when she made out their monthly insurance premiums, filled in postal orders for them, sent them schedules and periodicals. They remained as unreal as that Mr. Schrella, named on the red card, to whom Faehmel was always available, though in four years not once had Schrella ever asked to see him.

She let the red card, cause of his first rudeness to her, lie on the desk. What was the name of that gentleman, the one who had come into the office about ten and urgently, urgently, very urgently asked to speak with Faehmel? A big, gray-haired man with a rather ruddy face, he smelled of exquisite expense-account meals and wore a suit reeking of cla.s.s. He had combined power, dignity and masterful charm in an utterly irresistible way. His t.i.tle, vaguely, smilingly murmured, had something to do with minister-ministerial councillor, director, manager-something like that. When she'd said she hadn't any idea where Faehmel was at the moment, suddenly, shooting out a hand, laying it on her shoulder, he said, "Come on now, sweetie, out with it. Where can I find him?" And she had given in to him, not knowing just how it happened. She gave away the deep-down secret, the scent of which had so keenly led her on: "Prince Heinrich Hotel." Whereupon he had murmured something about being an old school friend, about an urgent, a very pressing matter, something about defense, weapons. Behind him he left the aroma of a cigar which, when he smelled it an hour later, set Faehmel's father excitedly sniffing.

"Good heavens, good heavens, what a weed that must have been, what a weed!" The old man snuffed along the walls, poked his nose down close to the desk, put on his hat and a couple of minutes later was back with the tobacconist whose customer he'd been for the past fifty years. The two of them stood for a bit in the doorway sniffing, then dashed about the office like agitated dogs. The tobacconist crawled under the desk where a whole cloud of cigar smoke had lingered intact. He clapped his hands, gave a triumphant laugh and said, "Yes, Your Excellency, it was a Partagas Eminentes."

"And you can get them for me?"

"Absolutely. I keep them in stock."

"G.o.d help you if the aroma isn't exactly the same!"

Once more the tobacconist sniffed and said, "Partagas Eminentes, I'll bet my neck on it, Excellency. Four marks apiece. Would you like some?"

"One, my dear Kolbe, just one. My grandfather earned four marks a week, and I respect the dead. I have my sentimentalities, as you know. Good Lord, my son has smoked twenty thousand cigarettes in here, and that weed knocks them all for a loop!"

She felt highly honored, having the old fellow smoke his cigar in her company, leaning back in his son's easy chair. The chair was too big for him, and so she eased a cus.h.i.+on behind his back, then listened, while she went on with that most impeccable of occupations, sticking on stamps. Slowly she drew the backs of a green, red, blue Heuss across the sponge, and stuck them neatly on at the upper right-hand corner of envelopes that would travel to Schilgenauel, Gludum and Blessenfeld. Just so, while the old boy gave himself up to a pleasure it seemed he must have been vainly seeking for the past fifty years.

"Good heavens," he said, "at last I know what a good cigar is. Had to wait all this time for it, dear child, until my eightieth birthday. No, no, don't make any fuss, don't get excited. Of course I'm eighty today! Wasn't it you who ordered flowers for me from my son? Beautiful, thank you. We'll get to my birthday later, all right? You have a cordial invitation to my party tonight at the Cafe Kroner. But tell me something, my dear Leonore, why in all the fifty years-fifty-one, to be precise-I've been a customer there didn't anyone try to sell me a cigar like this? Am I stingy, perhaps? Never have been. You know I haven't. Used to smoke ten-cent cigars when I was young, then twenty-centers when I was earning a little more money, and then sixty-centers, year after year. Tell me, dear girl, what do you suppose they're like, people who walk around with a dollar corona stuck in their mouth? Fellows who pop in and out of offices with it as if it were a nickel stogey? I wonder what they're like, people who smoke up three times my grandfather's weekly wage between breakfast and lunch. Mmm, making an old codger like me go dry in the mouth and crawl round his son's office like a beagle in a hedge. How's that? One of Robert's schoolmates? Ministerial councillor, you say, director, manager? Even a cabinet minister! Then I must certainly know the chap. Defense department? Weapons?"

Suddenly mist came into his eyes. A trap door slammed shut. The old man was drifting back in time, sinking back into the first, the third, the sixth decade of his life. He was burying one of his children again. Which one could it be? Johanna? Heinrich? Over whose white coffin was he scattering a handful of earth, strewing flowers? Were the tears in his eyes the tears of 1942, when he got the news of Otto's death? Was he weeping at the asylum door behind which his wife had vanished? The tears, while his cigar, forgotten on the ash tray, went up in delicate wreaths of smoke, were from 1902. He was burying his sister Charlotte, for whom he had saved and saved, gold coin by coin, so that things might go better for her. The coffin slid down, held by creaking ropes, while the school-children sang, 'Watchman, whither has the swallow flown?' Chirpy children's voices intruded into the perfectly appointed office; the aged voice sang back over half a century. Now only that October morning in 1902 was real. Fog on the Lower Rhine. Damp fog, coiling in sarabande across the wet beet-fields, the crows in the willow trees scrawking like Mardi Gras noisemakers. While Leonore drew a red Heuss over the damp sponge. Thirty years before she was born peasant children had sung, 'Watchman, whither has the swallow flown?' Now a green Heuss, drawn across the little sponge. Careful. Letters to Hochbret went at local rates.

When this mood came over him, the old man had a blind look. She would have liked then and there to rush off to the florist's and buy him a lovely bouquet. But she was afraid to leave him alone. He stretched out his hands; cautiously she pushed the ash tray toward him. He took up his cigar, put it in his mouth, looked at Leonore, and gently said, "You mustn't think I'm crazy, child."

Yes, she was fond of him. Regularly, on her afternoons off, he came to the office to pick her up, so she could take pity on his carelessly kept books, over there on the other side of the street, high above the printing works, where he lived in a "studio" dating back to his salad days. There he kept doc.u.ments checked and approved by income tax officials whose modest gravestones had already toppled over before she had learned to write. Credits in English pounds, dollar holdings, plantation shares in El Salvador. Up there she rummaged through account settlements, deciphered handwritten statements from banks long since failed, read old wills bequeathing legacies to children by now outlived forty years. 'And to my son Heinrich exclusively I leave the two estates of Stehlinger's Grotto and Goerlinger's Lodge, having noted in his nature that air of repose, I may even say that delight in seeing things grow, which I take to be the prerequisite of a farmer's life....'

"Here," the old man cried, brandis.h.i.+ng his cigar, "right here in this very office, I dictated a will to my father-in-law the night before I had to leave for the army. While I was dictating it the youngster was sleeping up there. Next morning he came with me to the station, kissed me on the cheek with his soft child's lips. He was only seven then. But none of them, Leonore, not one ever got what I gave. It all came back to me, properties and bank accounts, dividends and rents. I was never able to give anything away. It took my wife to do that. People actually got what she gave away. And nights, when I lay beside her, I often used to hear her muttering-long and soft, hours on end, like water purling from her mouth-'whywhywhy?' "

Again the old man wept. He was in uniform this time, a captain in the Engineer Reserves, Privy Councillor Heinrich Faehmel, home on compa.s.sionate leave to bury his son, age seven. The Kilbian vault closed round the white coffin. Damp, gloomy masonry, yet bright as the sun's rays the golden figures marking the year of his death. 1917. Robert, dressed in black velvet, waited out in the carriage.

Leonore let the stamp fall, a violet one, not trusting herself to stick it on Schrit's letter. The carriage horses were snorting outside the cemetery gate, while Robert Faehmel, age two, was allowed to hold the reins. Black leather cracked at the edges and the figures, 1917, freshly gilt, s.h.i.+ning brighter than suns.h.i.+ne....

"What's he up to? What does he do with himself, my son, the only one I have left, Leonore? What does he do in the Prince Heinrich Hotel every morning from nine-thirty to eleven? I remember how we used to let him watch the way they tied the nosebags onto the horses. What's he up to? Can you tell me that, Leonore?"

Hesitantly she picked up the violet stamp and softly said, "I don't know what he does there, I really don't."

The old fellow put the cigar in his mouth and leaned back in the armchair, smiling-as if nothing at all had pa.s.sed between them. "What do you say, Leonore, to working for me regularly afternoons? I'll come and pick you up. We can have lunch together at noon, then from two to four or five, if you want, you can help get me straightened out up there. What do you say to that, my dear?"

She nodded, said "Yes." She still didn't trust herself to draw the violet Heuss across the sponge and stick it on Schrit's letter. Someone in the post office would take the letter out of the box and the machine would stamp "Sept. 6, 1958, 1 P.M." on it. And there sat the old man, come to the end of his seventies, starting his eighties.

"Yes, yes," she said.

"Then it's a date?"

"Yes."

She looked into his thin face, the face in which for years she had vainly sought a likeness to his son. Politeness, it seemed, was the only trait common to the Faehmels. But with the old man it was more ceremonious, decorative, the courtesy of the old school, almost a grandezza. Nothing mathematical in it like the politeness of his son, who made a point of dryness and only by the glimmer in his gray eyes indicated he might be capable of more warmth.

The old man, now, he actually blew his nose, chewed his cigar and sometimes complimented her on her hairdo, her complexion. His suit at least showed some sign of wear and tear, his tie was always a little crooked, on his fingers ink stains, on his lapels eraser rubbings. He carried pencils soft and hard in his vest pocket and occasionally he would take a sheet of paper from his son's desk, sketch an angel on it, an Agnus Dei, a tree, the portrait of one of his contemporaries, hurrying by outside. And sometimes he gave her money to go and buy cake, asked her to make a second cup of coffee, making her happy that for once she could plug in the electric percolator for someone beside herself. That was the kind of office life she was used to, making coffee, buying cakes and being told stories with a proper beginning and end. Stories about the life lived back there in the apartment wing of the building, about the dead who had died there. Back there for centuries the Kilbs had tried their hand at vice and virtue, sin and salvation, had been city treasurers, notaries, mayors and cathedral canons. Back there in the air still lingered some intimation of the acrid prayers of would-be prelates, of the melancholy sins of Kilbian spinsters and the penances of pious Kilbian youths. All in that gloomy part of the house back there, where now, on quiet afternoons, a pale, dark-haired girl did her homework and waited for her father to come home. Or was he at home afternoons? Two hundred and ten bottles of wine emptied between the beginning of May and the last of August. Did he drink them all by himself? With his daughter? With ghosts? All of it unreal, less real than the ash-blond hair of the office girl who fifty years ago had sat there in her place, keeping watch over legal secrets.

"Yes, she sat right there, my dear Leonore, on exactly the same spot where you're sitting now. Her name was Josephine." Had the old man said nice things about her hair, too, and her complexion?

The old man laughed and pointed to the proverb hanging up on the wall above his son's desk, solitary relic from times past, painted in white letters on mahogany. "Their right hand is full of bribes," it said. A motto of Kilbian as well as Faehmel incorruptibility.

"My two brothers-in-law, point of fact, didn't go much for the law. Last male descendants of the line. One chose the Uhlans, with their lances and fancy uniforms, the other just liked to kill time. But both of them, the officer and the loafer, were in the same regiment, and fell in the same attack on the same day. They rode into machine-gun fire at Erby-le-Huette, and there went the name of Kilb. And took their vices with them into the grave, the void. Like so many scarlet flowers, at Erby-le-Huette."

The old man was happy when he got white mason's mortar on his pants and could ask her to brush him off. Often he carried fat rolls of drawings under his arm, and whether he had taken them from the files or was actually working on an a.s.signment, she never knew.

He sipped at his coffee, said how nice it was, pushed the cake dish over to her, dragged on his cigar. The reverential look came back on his face. "One of Robert's schoolmates? I really should know him. You're sure his name wasn't Schrella? Positive? No, no, ridiculous, he'd never smoke cigars like this. Never. And you sent him to the Prince Heinrich? That'll make trouble, my dear Leonore, there'll be a row. He doesn't like it, my son Robert, when people upset his routine. He was like that even as a boy. Perfectly nice, intelligent, polite, everything just so. But if you overstepped a certain mark, he blew up. Quite capable of committing murder. I was always a little scared of him. You, too? Oh, he won't do anything to you, girl, not for what you did. Be sensible. Come on, now, let's go and eat. We'll celebrate your new job and my birthday. Don't do anything foolish. If he's already raised the deuce over the phone, then it's over and done with. Pity you can't remember that fellow's name. I had no idea he still kept up with his old school chums. Let's go. Come on. Today's Sat.u.r.day, and he won't mind if you close a bit early. Leave that to me."

St. Severin's was striking twelve. She counted the envelopes quickly, twenty-three, gathered them up, got a good hold on them. Had the old man really been there only half an hour? The tenth chime of the twelve was ringing.

"No, thank you," she said. "I won't bother to put on my coat. And please, not to The Lion."

Only half an hour. The presses had stopped their stamping. But the wild boar bled on.

2.

By now it had become a habit with the desk clerk, almost a ritual, second nature, every morning at half-past nine sharp to take down the key from the board, to feel the light touch of the dry, well-kept hand as it took the key from his, to glance at the pale, severe face with the red scar on the bridge of the nose. And then, with a hint of a smile only his own wife might have noticed, to look thoughtfully after Faehmel as he ignored the elevator boy's beckoned invitation, walked upstairs, lightly running the billiard room key across the bra.s.s bal.u.s.ters. Five, six, seven times the key made a ringing sound like a xylophone with only one tone. Then, half a minute later, Hugo, older of the two bellboys, came along and asked, "The usual?" Where-upon the desk clerk nodded, knowing that Hugo would now go to the restaurant, get a double cognac and a carafe of water, and disappear into the billiard room upstairs until eleven o'clock.

The desk clerk sensed something ominous in this habit of playing billiards every morning from half-past nine till eleven, always in the same bellhop's company. Disaster or vice. Against vice there was a safeguard. Discretion. Discretion went with the room when you hired it. Discretion and money went together, abscissa and ordinate. Eyes that looked yet did not see, ears that heard yet did not hearken. Against disaster, however, no protection existed. Not all potential suicides could be spotted at the door. Indeed, were they not all potential suicides? It came, disaster, in with the suntanned actor and his seven pieces of luggage. Took the room key with a laugh. As soon as the bags were stacked, slid the pistol from his overcoat pocket, safety catch already off, and blew his brains out. Disaster came sneaking in like something from the grave, in golden shoes, with golden hair and golden teeth, grinning like a skeleton. With ghosts in vain pursuit of pleasure, who left an order for breakfast in their room at half-past ten, hung a 'Please Do Not Disturb' card on the outer k.n.o.b, inside piled suitcases high against the door, swallowed poison pills. And long before the shocked room-service girl dropped the breakfast tray, already it was rumored through the hotel that 'There's a body up in Room 12.' Rumors even spread at night, when late drinkers were slinking from the bar to their rooms and at Room 12 sensed foreboding behind the door. There were even some who could tell the silence of sleep from death's silence. Disaster. He felt it in the air when he saw Hugo going up to the billiard room at a minute after half-past nine with a double cognac and the water carafe.

Around this time of day, too, he could ill spare the boy. A tangle of hands formed at his desk, demanding bills, grabbing an a.s.sortment of travel folders. At this time of day again and again he caught himself-a few minutes after half-past nine-getting impolite. Right now, to this schoolteacher, of all people, the ninth or tenth person to ask him how to get to the graves of the Roman children. The teacher's reddish complexion disclosed the fact that she came from the country, her coat and gloves that she lacked the income presumptive in Prince Heinrich guests. He wondered how she happened to be regimented along with these other agitated old biddies, not one of whom felt obliged to inquire after the price of her room. Would she, now tugging self-consciously at her gloves, would she consummate the all-German miracle, against which old Jochen had bet ten marks? 'Show me a German who ever asks how much anything costs before he buys and I'll give you ten marks.' No, even she wasn't going to win him the prize. He calmed himself with an effort, pleasantly explained how to get to the graves of the Roman children.

Most of them asked straight off for the boy now slated to be in the billiard room for an hour and a half. It was he all of them wanted, to bring their luggage to the foyer, to take it to the airlines coach, to the taxi, to the railroad station. Ill-tempered globetrotters waiting in the foyer for their bills, discussing plane arrivals and departures, all of them wanted ice for their whiskey from Hugo, him alone to strike a match for the cigarette dangling unlit in their mouth, just to see how well trained he was. Hugo alone they wished to thank with a wave of languid hand. Only when Hugo was on the scene did their faces quiver in mysterious spasms, impatient faces, whose owners could hardly wait to rush, carrying their nasty tempers with them, to distant corners of the earth. They were champing at the bit, longing to ascertain in the mirrors of Persian or Upper Bavarian hotels the exact shade of their tan. Shrill female voices were calling for lost articles. It was 'Hugo, my ring,' 'Hugo, my handbag,' 'Hugo, my lipstick.' All of them expected Hugo to dash to the elevator, noiselessly ascend to Room 19, Room 32, Room 46 to search for ring, handbag and lipstick. And there was old Madame Musch, leading in her mongrel, which, after lapping up milk, gorging on honey and turning up his nose at fried eggs, would have to be taken out for a walk, so he might relieve his doggy needs, and revive his fading sense of smell, on kiosks, parked cars and waiting buses. Obviously only Hugo could cater to this dog's spiritual needs. Then there was Oma Blessieck, who spent a month every year at the Prince Heinrich, while she visited her children and evermore-numerous grandchildren. Though she had hardly set foot in the place, already she was after Hugo. "Is he still here, that nice little young one who looks like an altar boy? The thin one with the auburn hair who's so pale and always looks so serious?" The idea was to have Hugo read the local newspaper to her while she ate her breakfast, while she licked honey, drank her milk and did not turn up her nose at fried eggs. As he read, the old girl, hearing the names of streets familiar from her childhood, would look up ecstatically. Accident near Memorial Field. Robbery on Frisian Street. "I had pigtails this long when I used to go roller-skating there-this long, Hugo." The old girl was frail, but tough. Was it for Hugo's sake she had flown across the great ocean? "What?" she said, disappointed. "Hugo won't be free till eleven?"

The driver of the airlines coach was standing at the revolving door, hand lifted in warning, even while complicated breakfast bills were still being added up. There sat the man who had ordered half a fried egg, indignantly rejecting the bill on which he'd been charged for a whole one. And even more indignantly rejecting the manager's offer to cross off the item altogether, instead demanding a new bill, on which he was charged for only half a one. "I insist on it." No doubt he traveled the world round just to collect restaurant bills charging him for half a fried egg.

"Yes, Madam," the desk clerk said, "first left, second right, then third left again, and you'll see the sign: 'To the Roman Children's Graves.' "

At last the driver for the bus crowd had a.s.sembled all his pa.s.sengers, all the teachers had been given the right directions, all the fat pet dogs taken out to pee. But the gentleman in Room 11 was still fast asleep, had been for the past sixteen hours with a 'Please Do Not Disturb' card hanging outside his door. Disaster, either in Room 11 or in the billiard room. It stuck in your mind, that ceremony right in the middle of the foolish bustle of departure, key taken down from the board, faint brus.h.i.+ng of hands, glance at the pale face, the red scar on the bridge of the nose, Hugo's "The usual?", your nod. Billiards from half-past nine till eleven. But the hotel underground as yet had reported nothing out of the way, either disastrous or corrupt. That fellow up there actually did play billiards from half-past nine till eleven. No partner, just himself, sipping at his cognac, at his gla.s.s of water, telling Hugo stories from way back, having Hugo tell him stories about when he was a kid. Not saying a word when the chambermaids or cleaning women stopped at the open door on their way to the laundry elevator to watch him, looking up at them from his game with a smile. No, no, that guy's harmless.

Jochen hobbled out of the elevator with a letter in his hand, held it up, shaking his head. Jochen lived high up, under the pigeon loft, near feathered friends who brought messages from Paris and Rome, Warsaw and Copenhagen. Jochen in his made-up uniform, something between a crown prince and a noncommissioned officer, defied cla.s.sification. A bit of a factotum, a bit of a gray eminence, everybody's confidant, not a room clerk, not a waiter, but a little of all these, and something of a cook to boot. It was he who was responsible for the saying around the hotel always used to counter moral aspersions on the guests: "What would be the point in having a reputation for discretion, if everybody's morals were above suspicion? What good is discretion when there is nothing left to be discreet about?" Something of a father-confessor, of a confidential secretary, of a pimp. Jochen, with twisted arthritic fingers opened the letter and grinned.

"You might have saved yourself the ten marks, I could have told a thousand times more-and all for free-than that little con man. Argus Information Bureau. 'Herewith the information requested concerning Dr. Robert Faehmel, architect, resident at 7 Modest Street. Dr. Faehmel is 42 years old, a widower, two children: a son, 22, architect, not living here; a daughter, 19, at college. Dr. F,'s a.s.sests: considerable. Related on his mother's side to the Kilbs. Nothing negative to report.' " Jochen chuckled. " 'Nothing negative to report'! As if there ever had been anything out of the way about young Faehmel. And with him there never will be. One of the few people I'd stick my hand in the fire for any time, any old time of the day. Get me? This rotten arthritic old hand, right square in the fire! You don't have to worry about leaving that kid up there alone with him. He's not that kind. And if he was, so what? They allow queers in the government, don't they? But he's not that kind. He already had a child when he was twenty, by the daughter of one of my friends. Maybe you remember the girl's father, Schrella. He worked right here once, for a year. No? You weren't here at the time? Then take my word for it, just let young Faehmel play his billiards in peace. A fine family. Really is. Cla.s.s. I knew his grandmother, his grandfather, his mother and his uncle. They used to play billiards here themselves, fifty years ago. You wouldn't know, of course, but the Kilbs have lived on Modest Street for three hundred years. That is, they always did-there aren't any left any more. His mother went off the beam, lost two brothers and three of her children died. Never got over it. Fine woman. The quiet kind, if you know what I mean. Never ate a crumb more than the ration card allowed her, not an ounce more, and her children didn't get more than was coming to them, either, not from her. Crazy, of course. Whatever she got extra, she'd just give it all away. And she always got plenty: they owned big farms, and the Abbot of St. Anthony's, down there in the Kissa Valley, he sent her tubs of b.u.t.ter, jars of honey, bread and so on. But she never ate any of it, or gave any of it to her children. They had to eat that sawdust bread with artificially colored marmalade, while their mother gave all the other stuff away. She even gave away money. Seen her do it myself. Must have been in '16 or '17-used to see her coming out the front door with the bread and the jars of honey. 1917! Can you imagine what it was like then? But none of you can remember. You can't imagine what it meant, honey in 1917, or in the winter of '41a'42. Or the way she went down to the freight yard and tried to go along in the cars with the Jews. Screwball, they said. They locked her up in the looney bin, but for my money she wasn't crazy at all. She was the kind of woman you only see in the old pictures in the museums. I'd go right down the line for her son, and if he doesn't get first-cla.s.s, number one service, things are going to hum around this joint. I don't care if ninety-nine old women are asking for Hugo. If Herr Faehmel wants the kid with him, then he's going to get him and don't you forget it. Argus Information Bureau! Just imagine paying those fakers ten marks! Now I suppose you're going to tell me you don't know his father, old man Faehmel? Good! You do know him. But I bet you never thought he might be the father of the one playing billiards up there. Sure, everybody and his brother knows old man Faehmel. Came here fifty years ago in one of his uncle's hand-me-down suits with a couple of bucks in his pocket. He used to play billiards right here, too, at that time, here in the Prince Heinrich, before you even knew what a hotel was. Some desk-clerk you are! Leave that one upstairs be, then. He'll never do anything foolish or cause any harm. Worst he might do is get teed off in a nice quiet way. He was the best man at the plate and the best hundred-meter-dash man this old town's ever had. He was tough, and if he had to be hard, he was hard, all right. He just couldn't stand seeing some people giving other people a rough time. And if you can't stand that kind of stuff, first thing you know you're mixed up in politics. He was in politics when he was nineteen years old. They'd have cut his head off or locked him up for twenty years if he hadn't fooled them and taken off. That's right, you don't need to look so surprised. He got away and stayed away for three or four years. I don't know exactly what went wrong, I never heard. All I know is that old Schrella was mixed up in it, and the daughter, too, the one young Faehmel had the baby by later on. Well, he came back and they didn't lay a finger on him. Went into the army, the Engineers. I can see him now, home on leave in his uniform with the black piping on it. Don't gawk at me with that dumb look on your face. Was he a Communist? How should I know whether he was or he wasn't. And supposing he was, every decent man's been one sometime or other. Go on and have breakfast; I'll be able to manage the old hens."

Disaster or vice, they hung in the air, but Jochen had always been too harmless himself to foresense suicide, to believe agitated guests able to tell the difference between the silence of sleep and death's silence behind closed doors. He pretended to be cunning and corrupt, but all the while he believed in people.

"Well, there you are," said the desk clerk. "I'm going to get my breakfast. Just don't let anyone barge in on him, will you, he's very fussy about it." He put the red card on the counter for Jochen. "Available only to my mother, my father, my daughter, my son and Mr. Schrella. Otherwise to no one."

Schrella! Was he still alive? The thought startled Jochen. But surely they must have done away with him. Or did he have a son?

It knocked for a loop, this aroma, everything that had been smoked in the foyer for the past couple of weeks. It was a fragrance you carried ahead of you like a banner. Here I come, Mr. Big, conquering hero whom none can resist. Six feet two, gray-haired, middle forties, suit of board-chairman quality; salesmen, storekeepers, artists never clad thus. This was official elegance, Jochen could smell it. Here was a minister of state, perhaps an amba.s.sador, exuding importance and fat with signatures of almost law-making dominion, breezing through padded, steely, triple-plated antechamber doors, sweeping aside all opposition with snowplow shoulders, all the while radiating kindly courtesy, which you knew was a veneer, even as he made way for Oma to let her retrieve that repulsive doggy of hers from the second boy, Erich. He even helped the old bag of bones reach for and take hold of the stair railing. "Don't mention it, Madam."

"Nettlinger."

"Can I help you, sir?"

"I have to speak to Dr. Faehmel. It's urgent. At once. Official business."

Shake of the head, soft demur, as he toyed with the red card. Mother, father, son, daughter, Schrella. Nettlinger not wanted.

"But I know he's here."

Nettlinger? Haven't I heard that name somewhere before? It's the kind of face that must have made some sort of impression I wouldn't want to forget. I've heard that name before, many years ago, and I said to myself at the time, make a note of that boy, don't forget him. But now I can't remember what it was about him I wasn't supposed to forget. Anyway-watch out! If I knew all the things he's done, no doubt I'd be sick to my stomach. If I had to sit and watch the film of his life they're going to run off for that b.a.s.t.a.r.d's benefit on Doomsday, I'd puke myself into a puddle. He's the type that has the gold teeth ripped out of corpses, that orders kids' heads shaved. Catastrophe? Vice? No, murder in the air.

And characters like that never know when and when not to tip. That's all you need, to tell cla.s.s. Now, for instance, might be the right moment for a cigar. But not for a tip, and never for such a big one as that twenty-mark bill which he's pus.h.i.+ng across the counter with a grin. How stupid can you get? People like that don't even begin to know how to act, haven't the faintest idea how to handle a hotel clerk. As if secrets were for sale at the Prince Heinrich! As if a guest who paid forty or sixty marks for his room could be had for one green twenty. Twenty marks from a stranger whose only reference was his expensive cigar and his fancy suit. And that was the type, mind you, that got to be a cabinet minister, a diplomat, even, and yet didn't even know how to grease a palm, most ticklish of all arts. Gloomily Jochen shook his head, left the green bill untouched. Their right hand is full of bribes.

Can you beat it! A blue bank note was being added to the green one, raising the bid to thirty; a dense cloud of Partagas Eminentes was puffed into Jochen's face.

Blow away, pal, blow your four-mark cigar smoke in my face, and cough up another bill, a violet one, if you want to. Jochen's not for sale. Not for you and not for three thousand in bills. I haven't cottoned to many people in my life, but I happen to like that young fellow up there. Tough luck, pal, you and your important face and that hand of yours always itching to sign something, tough luck, but you got here a minute and a half too late. You ought to know that folding money isn't down my alley. In case you don't realize it, I've got a notarized contract right in my pocket, which says that the rest of my life I can live in my little room up under the roof and keep pigeons. For breakfast and lunch I have the choice of the menu, on top of that a hundred and fifty marks cash every month, three times more than I really need for my kind of tobacco. I have friends, too, in Copenhagen, Paris, Warsaw and Rome. If you only knew how carrier-pigeon people stick together! But of course you don't. All you think you know is that money is everything. That's what you and your kind tell each other. Naturally, you think, naturally a hotel clerk will do anything for money; he'd sell his grandmother down the river for a fifty-mark note. There's only one thing I'm not allowed to do, my friend, one single curb on my freedom. When I'm down here working the desk I can't smoke my pipe. And this exception I regret for the first time today. But for that I'd show you and your Partagas Eminentes a cloud or two of smoke; I'd turn you into a herring. To make it plain and simple, you can kiss my a.r.s.e a hundred and twenty-seven times. Faehmel's not for sale to you, friend. He'll play billiards up there without being bothered from half-past nine till eleven. Not that I can't think of something better for him to be doing, namely sitting in your place in the ministry. Or, even better, throwing a few bombs the way he did as a young fellow, to put the fear of G.o.d into bags of c.r.a.p like you. If you don't mind, my friend, when he feels like playing billiards from half-past nine till eleven, then billiards he's going to play. You can put your cabbage back in your pocket and call it a day, and if you flash another bill in my face, I won't be responsible for what happens. I've had to swallow tactlessness by the gallon, put up with bad taste by the ton and not say a word. I've written down adulterers and queers by the dozen on the register, guys wearing the horns and wives on the warpath. But don't ever get the idea that was all in the cards when I was born. I was always a good boy, used to serve Ma.s.s, as no doubt you did yourself, and sang the songs of Father Kolping and St. Aloysius in the Kolping Glee Club. Pretty soon I was twenty, with six years' service in this fleabag behind me. And if I haven't lost all faith entirely in humanity since then, it's only because of people like young Faehmel up there and his mother. Put your money in your pocket, take that cigar out of your mouth and bow down, then, before an old man who's wrung more dirty water out of his mittens than you ever knew existed. Then let the boy back there open the door for you, and scram.

"Have I got it right? You want to talk with the manager, sonny?"

First he went red, then quite blue with rage. d.a.m.n it all, there I go, thinking out loud again. Did I get too palsy with him? Hope not, that would be an awful mistake, never forgive myself for it. For it'll be a long day when I get palsy with the likes of him.

Where do I get my nerve? I'm an old man, nearly seventy, I was thinking out loud. I'm a bit soft in the head, I'm slipping upstairs, a fit subject for protection under the mental incompetence act and social security, such as it is.

Department of Defense and Armament? That's all I need! Round there to the left for the manager, please, then second door to the right, you'll see the complaint book bound in morocco. And if you ever order fried eggs in this place, and if I happen to be in the kitchen when the order comes through, it'll be my pleasure in person to spit a gob into the frying pan for you. A kiss for you, in with the melted b.u.t.ter. And don't mention it, sir.

"I told you once, sir. Left that way, second door on the right, manager's office. Complaint book bound in morocco. You'd like me to tell him you're coming? Certainly. Operator. Manager, please, desk clerk speaking. Yes, sir, a gentleman-what's the name? Nettlinger, excuse me, Doctor Nettlinger wishes to speak to you at once. About what? To complain about me. That's right. Thank you. The manager's waiting for you, sir. Madam? Yes, Madam, parade and fireworks this evening, first street on the left, then second right, third left again, and you see the sign: 'To the Roman Children's Graves.' No trouble at all, don't mention it. Thank you very much." One mark's not to be despised from a good old girl of a school-teacher like that. Yes, just look at me, taking little tips with a smile, and turning down the big ones. Roman children's graves, there you have something clear and simple. You'll never see me turn up my nose at the widow's mite. And tips are a bellhop's very life and soul. "Yes, just around the corner-absolutely right."

I can tell if they're out for a shack job even before they step out of the taxi, I can smell it a mile away. I know all the angles cold. The timid ones, for instance, it's written all over them so plain I feel like telling them, it's not as bad as that, children, it's all happened before, I've spent fifty years in the hotel game, rely on me to make it easy. Fifty-nine marks eighty, tips included, for a double room. You've got a little consideration coming for that kind of money. However, eager as you may be, just don't start doing it in the elevator. Making love in the Prince Heinrich takes place behind double doors. Don't be so bashful, folks, don't be so timid. If you only knew. I mean, how many people have hauled their ashes in these rooms, made sacred by high prices. Religious ones and unreligious, good ones and bad. Double room with bath, bottle of champagne, room service. Cigarettes. Breakfast at half-past ten. Very good, sir. Sign here, please, no here, sir-and I hope you're not so stupid as to sign your right name. This thing really does go to the police, then it's stamped, it becomes a doc.u.ment and can be used as evidence. Don't gamble on the powers that be, young fellow. The more there are of them, the more pinches they need to keep them busy. Maybe you were a Communist once yourself, in which case keep your eye peeled extra sharp. I used to be one. And a Catholic, too. Sort of stuff that doesn't come out in the wash. Even today there are certain people I just can't stand hearing run down. Whoever makes a crack about the Virgin Mary or Father Kolping better watch his step. Boy, Room 42. That way to the elevator, sir.

There they are, just the ones I was expecting, a pair of them on the loose, bold as bra.s.s, nothing to hide, making sure the world knows how free and easy they are. Why do you have to make such a production out of it, why lay on that I've-got-nothing-to-hide stuff with a trowel? If you really haven't got anything to hide, then you don't need to hide it. Sign here, please, sir, no here. With this dumb babe you've got in tow, I certainly wouldn't want to have anything to hide. Not with this one. Love is like tipping. Pure matter of instinct. You can tell by looking at a woman whether it's worthwhile to have something to hide with her. With this one it isn't, believe me, my boy. Sixty marks for the night, plus champagne in the room plus tips plus breakfast plus everything else you have to give her: just not worth it. You could get a better deal from a good honest wh.o.r.e who knows her business. Boy, show the lady and gentleman to Room 43. Dear G.o.d, how stupid can you get! "The manager? Yes sir, coming sir, yes sir."

Of course people like you are practically born to be hotel managers. It's like women having certain organs removed. No more problems then. But what's love without problems? And if a man has his conscience out, not even a cynic is left. Take trouble away, and you're human no longer. I trained you as a bellboy, you spent four years under my wing. Then you took a look around the world, went to different schools, learned languages. In officers' clubs, Allied and un-allied, you sweated out a fearful hosing from conquerors and conquered. Then you came back here on the double, and the first question that crossed your lips when you arrived, so sleek and plump and conscienceless, was, 'Is old Jochen still around?' And here he is, the same old potato, my boy.

"You've insulted this gentleman, Kuhlgamme."

"Not on purpose, sir. In fact, it wasn't an insult at all. I could name you a hundred people who would be proud to have me call them sonny."

The crowning impertinence. Incredible.

"It just slipped out, Dr. Nettlinger, sir. I'm an old man, you might say I'm half covered by Paragraph 51."

"The gentleman demands an apology."

"And right away. It's carrying things pretty far, if I may say so, to be talked to like that by a bellhop."