Billiards At Half-Past Nine Part 10

"Is that all?"

"Yes," said Schrella, "that's all."

The young clerk set his adding machine in motion, and peevishly cranked the handle-even the small number of cranks he had to make expressed contempt-jotted a few figures on a form and pushed a five-mark note, four groschen and three pfennigs across the counter.

"Next, please."

"Blessenfeld," asked Schrella quietly, "can you tell me if No. 11 still goes there?"

"Does No. 11 still go to Blessenfeld? This isn't the streetcar information office," said the young clerk, "and in any case I really don't know."

"Thank you," said Schrella, sliding the money into his pocket. He made way at the window for a man who pushed a bundle of Swiss francs across the counter. And heard the handle of the adding machine respectfully begin to make a large number of respectful turns.

'Politeness is really the most effective form of contempt,' he thought.

The railroad station. Summer. Sun. Gaiety. Weekend. Hotel bellboys lugging suitcases toward the platforms. A young woman was holding up a sign: "Travelers to Lourdes a.s.semble here." Newspaper vendors, flower stalls, youngsters with brightly colored beach towels under their arms.

Schrella walked across the square, stood on the traffic island and studied the streetcar schedule. No. 11 still did go to Blessenfeld. There it was, waiting at the red traffic light between the Prince Heinrich Hotel and the chancel of St. Severin's. Then it moved along, stopped, emptied and Schrella joined the line of people waiting to pay at the conductor's box. He sat down, took off his hat, wiped the sweat from his eyebrows, dried the lenses of his spectacles and waited in vain, as the car began to move, for feelings to come to him. Nothing. As a schoolboy, he'd gone back and forth on No. 11 four thousand times, his fingers stained with ink, listening to the other children's silly chatter which had always been a source of appalling embarra.s.sment to him; conic sections, the pluperfect, Barbarossa's beard which went on growing and growing through the table, Love and Intrigue, Livy, Ovid bound in gray-green cardboard, and the farther from the city the streetcar went, on its way to Blessenfeld, the quieter grew the chatter. At the edge of the old town, those with the most educated voices had got off, splitting up amid the wide, gloomy streets of substantial houses. Those with the next-best-educated voices got off at the edge of the new town, splitting up amid narrower streets of less substantial houses. Only two or three remained who went all the way to Blessenfeld, which had the least substantial buildings of all. And as the streetcar rocked on past allotment gardens and gravel pits to Blessenfeld, conversation returned to normal. 'Is your father on strike too? They're giving four and a half per cent discount at Gressigmann's. Margarine is five pfennigs cheaper.' There was the park, with the green of summer long since trampled flat, and the sandy strip around the wading pool stirred up by thousands of children's feet and covered with litter, paper and bottle tops. And there Gruffel Street, where the junk dealers' lots were continually filled to overflowing with sc.r.a.p metal, rags, paper and bottles; where a lemonade stall had been opened up in the midst of wretched poverty, an attempt by a skinny unemployed laborer to set up as a trader. And, before long, he'd got fat and his stall was decked out with chrome and plate gla.s.s, and glittering automats had been installed. Getting hog-fat on pfennigs, getting bossy though only a few months before he'd been forced to obsequiously lower the price of a lemonade by two pfennigs, meanwhile whispering anxiously, 'But don't tell anyone else.'

No feelings would come to him as he went rocking on in No. 11 through the old town, the new town, past allotment gardens and gravel pits to Blessenfeld. He had heard the names of the stops four thousand times: Boisseree Street, North Park, Blessischer Station, Inner Ring. They sounded strange, the names, as if out of dreams which others had dreamed and vainly tried to let him share; they sounded like calls for help in a heavy fog, while the almost empty streetcar went on toward the end of the line in the afternoon summer sun.

There on the corner of Park Line and the Inner Ring had stood the stall in which his mother had attempted to set up a fish-fry business, but had been undone by her compa.s.sionate heart. 'How can I refuse those hungry kids a bit of fried fish when they see me frying it? How can I?' And Father said, 'Of course you can't, but we must close down the stall, there's no more credit, the dealers won't deliver any more.' Mother had dipped the fillets of fish in egg and breadcrumbs, then let them fry in hot oil while she heaped one, two or three spoonfuls of potato salad on the paper plates. Mother's heart had not remained firm against compa.s.sion. Tears had welled out of her blue eyes and the neighbors whispered, 'She's crying her heart out.' She ate no more, drank no more, and her plump, full-blooded body changed into a thin, anemic one and nothing remained of the pretty barmaid everyone had loved at the station bar. Now she did nothing but whisper Lord, Lord, paging through dog-eared sectarian prayer books that foretold the end of the world, while out on the streets the red flags fluttered in the dusty wind and other people bore Hindenburg's head on placards through the streets. Screaming and violence and shooting, and piping and drumming. When she died, Mother had looked like a girl, anemic and thin. Asters on the grave and a thin wooden cross: Edith Schrella, 1896a1932. Her soul had been sobbed out, and her body mingled with the earth in the Northern Cemetery.

"End of the line, sir," announced the conductor. He climbed out of his box, lit a cigarette b.u.t.t and walked up front. "Sorry, we don't go any further."

"Thank you." He'd climbed in and climbed out at the No. 11 terminus four thousand times. The rusty rails went on and lost themselves among barracks and old excavations. Thirty years before, there had once been a projected extension of the tram service there. Now, lemonade stalls: chromium, plate gla.s.s, glittering automats and orderly rows of chocolate bars.

"A lemonade, please."

The green concoction in a spotless gla.s.s tasted of sweet woodruff.

"If you don't mind, sir, put the paper in the basket, please. Taste all right?"

"Yes, thank you." The two chicken legs were still warm, and the tender breast was crispy, baked in the very best quality fat, all preserved in the cellophane pack clipped tight with Special Picnic Insulating Clips.

"That smells pretty good. Want another lemonade with it?"

"No, thank you. But I'll have six cigarettes, please."

He could still recognize, in the plump proprietress, the gentle, pretty girl she once had been. Those blue, childlike eyes, during their First Communion lessons, had moved the romantic chaplain to adjectives such as "angelic" and "innocent," and now they had grown hard and businesslike.

"That'll be ninety pfennigs, please."

"Thank you."

The No. 11 in which he had arrived was ringing its bell for departure. But he hesitated too long, and found himself imprisoned in Blessenfeld for another twelve minutes. He smoked and slowly drank the rest of his lemonade, trying to recall, through that pink and stony face, the name of the young girl she once had been-a blonde, flying through the park with windblown hair, shouting and singing, and enticing boys into dark doorways, after the resemblance to an angel had become a thing of the past; teasing hoa.r.s.e declarations of love from them, while her brother, no less blond, no less angelic, made vain attempts to summon the street boys to n.o.ble deeds; a carpenter's apprentice and a hundred-meter runner, beheaded at dawn for a piece of folly.

"Please," said Schrella, "I'll have another lemonade after all." He stared at the immaculate parting in the plump woman's hair as she bent to hold the gla.s.s below the tap of the balloon. Her brother had been the angelic Ferdi. Her own name later on had been hoa.r.s.ely whispered from youth to youth, from mouth to mouth like a certain pa.s.sword to Paradise. Erika Progulske would help you get rid of your need and she won't take a thing for it, because she likes it.

"Do we know each other?" She smiled and set the gla.s.s of lemonade on the counter.

"No," he said, smiling back, "I don't think so."

Don't encourage the frozen memory to thaw; such frost-flowers would only turn into dull dirty water and run down the pane. Evoke nothing, never expect to bring back childhood's austerity of feeling in adult souls grown soft; you'll just find out that now she takes something for it. Careful, just don't start talking.

"Yes. Thirty pfennigs. Thank you." Ferdi Progulske's sister looked at him with professional friendliness. You gave me relief, too, and took nothing for it, not even the bar of chocolate gone soft in my pocket, although it wasn't meant as payment, only as a present, but you wouldn't take it. And you set me free with the compa.s.sion of your mouth and hands. I hope you didn't tell Ferdi; part of compa.s.sion is discretion, and secrets once turned into words may become deadly. I hope he didn't know, when he saw the sky for the last time, that morning in July. I was the only one he found in Gruffel Street, prepared for n.o.ble deeds; Edith didn't yet count, she'd only turned twelve and the wisdom in her heart wasn't apparent as yet.

"Don't we really know each other?"

"No, I'm sure we don't."

You'd accept my present today; your heart has stayed firm, but not in compa.s.sion. Already, a few weeks later, you had lost the innocence of childish sin; you'd already made up your mind it was better to get rid of pity, decided you weren't going to be a weeping blonde s.l.u.t and sob your soul away. No, we don't know each other, we really don't. We won't be thawing out any icicles. Thank you, Goodbye.

There at the corner was still the Blesseneck where Father had been a waiter. Beer, schnapps, meat b.a.l.l.s, beer, schnapps, meat b.a.l.l.s, all served with an expression in which mildness and doggedness mingled in a kind of unity, the face of a dreamer to whom it was a matter of indifference whether he served beer, schnapps and meat b.a.l.l.s in the Blesseneck or lobsters and champagne in the Prince Heinrich or the kind of breakfasts of beer and chops or chocolate and cherry brandy which the wh.o.r.es ate after a night at the Upper Harbor. Father had brought home traces of those sticky breakfasts on his cuffs, brought good tips home, but had not brought home what other fathers brought, after-work good spirits, which could be translated into shouting and teasing, into protestations of love or tears of reconciliation. Always that dogged mildness in his face, a lost angel who hid Ferdi under the taproom table, where the police found him, between the beer pipes. And who, when he knew he was going to die, kept his smile; the sticky stuff was washed out of his cuffs and the waiter's white shirt starched so it was stiff and shining; they came for him only the next morning, as he was going off to work with his sandwiches and his patent leather shoes under his arm. He got into their car and was not seen again. No white cross, no flowers for the waiter Alfred Schrella. Not even shot while attempting to escape-was simply not seen again.

Edith had ironed and starched, polished the extra pair of black shoes, cleaned the white ties, while I studied, playfully studied-Ovid and conic sections, the thoughts and deeds of Henry the First and Henry the Second and Tacitus, and William the First's and William the Second's thoughts and deeds. Kleist, and spherical trigonometry. Talented, talented, quite unusually talented, a worker's child who had to learn exactly what the others had to learn, in face of four thousand times more obstacles, and dedicated furthermore to n.o.ble deeds. I even allowed myself one additional, personal pleasure: Holderlin.

Seven more minutes till the next No. 11 leaves. Here's No. 17 Gruffel Street, redecorated; a car parked in front, green, and a bicycle, red, and two scooters, dirty. He had pressed that bell eighteen thousand times, on the pale, yellowish bra.s.s b.u.t.ton which his thumb could still feel. Where Schrella once had been, there now was Tressel. Where Schmitz had been, was Humann now. New names. One alone had remained-Fruhl, lending cups of sugar, cups of flour, cups of vinegar and eggcupsful of salad oil, how many cups, how many egg cups, and at what high interest. Mrs. Fruhl would always fill the cups and egg cups half full only, making a mark at the door frame, where she had written in S, F, V, O, only rubbing out that mark with her thumb when she had received full cups and full egg cups in return. Then she'd whispered, 'My G.o.d, what fatheads!'-whispered it through the doorways, in shops and to her friends when they gathered to air their old-wives' gynecology, over eggnogs and potato salad. She'd taken the Host of the Beast very early and had forced her husband and her daughter to swallow it as well, and in the hall she sang, How weary, weary these old bones. Nothing, not a bit of feeling, only the skin of his thumb touching that pale yellow bra.s.s b.u.t.ton felt something resembling emotion.

"Are you looking for someone?"

"Yes," he said, "the Schrellas; don't they live here any more?"

"No," the girl said, "I'd know if they lived here."

She was rosy-cheeked and delightful, balancing on her little swaying scooter and propping herself up against the wall of the building.

"No, they never lived here." Off she went, scampering wildly across the sidewalk, and across the gutter, shouting, "Anyone here know the Schrellas?" He trembled for fear someone would call out yes, and he should have to go over and greet them, and exchange memories: Yes, Ferdi, they got him ... your father, they got him ... and Edith, what a fine marriage ... but the little red-cheeked girl was racing round without success, swerving boldly on her dirty scooter and shouting, from group to group, into open windows, "Anyone here know the Schrellas?" She came back, her face flushed, turned smartly and stopped in front of him. "No sir, no one here knows them."

"Thank you," he said, smiling. "Would you like a groschen?"

"Yes"; she rushed gaily away to the lemonade stall.

"I've sinned, I've sinned greatly," he softly muttered to himself as he walked back to the terminus; "I've had wood-rufflemonade from Gruffel Street with chicken from the Prince Heinrich. I've left undisturbed the memories and not thawed out the frost-flowers. I didn't want to see recognition light up in Erika Progulske's eyes, or hear Ferdi's name from her lips. The only memory celebrated was in the skin at the end of my thumb, when it recognized the pale, yellow, bra.s.s bell-push."

It was like running the gauntlet, the eyes so clearly watching him, from the edge of the street, from windows and doorways, while they took the summer sun after the day's work. Would anybody recognize his spectacles or his walk, or the close set of his eyes; would anyone recognize the much-mocked student of Holderlin, beneath his foreign overcoat, he at whom they had shouted their song of derision, 'Schrella, Schrella, Schrella, he's a poem-reading fella.'

He anxiously wiped the sweat away, took his hat off and stopped, looking back from the corner down Gruffel Street. No one had followed him. A couple of young fellows were sitting on their motorcycles, bending slightly forward and whispering love-talk to the girls standing beside them. Here and there on a window ledge beer bottles caught the afternoon sun. There, across the street, was the house where the angel had been born and raised. The bra.s.s doorbell might still be there, where Ferdi's thumb had pressed it fifteen thousand times. The front of the building was green, and there was a gleaming array in the chemist's shop window, with toothpaste advertis.e.m.e.nts, exactly underneath the window from which Ferdi had so often leaned down.

There was the path through the park, the path from which Robert had drawn Edith into the bushes one evening in July, twenty-three years before. Now there were retired men sitting bent over on the benches, swapping jokes and sniffing different brands of tobacco, peevishly observing that the children playing round them were being badly brought up. And shorttempered mothers were calling a bitter fate down upon their disobedient brood, invoking a terrible future: The atom'll come and get you. And young people were coming back from confession, as yet undecided whether to abandon their state of grace on the spot or wait until the next morning.

One more minute still remained before the next No. 11 left. The rusty tracks had been running for thirty years now toward an empty future. Now Ferdi's sister was pouring green lemonade into a clean gla.s.s. The motorman was ringing for his pa.s.sengers. The weary conductor stubbed out his cigarette, straightened his leather satchel, got in behind his cabin and rang the bell, and far back where the rusty rails ended an old woman began breaking into a run.

"To Central Station," said Schrella, "with a Harbor transfer."

"Forty-five pfennigs."

Less substantial buildings, more substantial houses, very substantial houses. Transfer, yes, it was No. 16 that still went to the harbor.

Building material, coal dumps, loading ramps. And from the ramp of the old weighhouse he could read it: "Michaelis, Coal, c.o.ke, Briquettes."

A couple more minutes, around a corner, and he'd be able to complete his remembering. Mrs. Trischler's hands would have withstood time, like the old man's eyes and Alois' photo on the wall. Beer bottles, bundles of onions, tomatoes, bread and tobacco; ships at anchor, swaying gangways down which rolls of sailcloth were carried; giant pupa-shaped vessels would be ready to sail on down the Rhine to the North Sea fog.

Silence lay on the place. Fresh piles of coal were heaped up behind Michaelis' fence, and there were mountains of bright red bricks in the construction-materials yard; night.w.a.tchmen's shuffling feet behind fences and sheds only made the silence greater.

Schrella smiled, leaned over the rusty railing, turned, and got a start. He had not known about the new bridge, nor had Nettlinger told him about it. It swung out, wide, over the old harbor basin, and the dark green pillars stood exactly where Trischler's house had been. Shadows from the bridge were cast out in front where the old tughouse had stood, and the huge, open steel gates rising up out of the water framed blue nothingness.

Father had preferred most of all working in Trischler's tavern, serving the seamen and their wives in the beer garden during the long summer evenings, while Alois, Edith and he went fishing in the old harbor basin. Eternity of a child's timescale, infinity otherwise encountered only in verse. On the other side of the river the bells of St. Severin's had chimed, chiming peace and confidence into the evening, while Edith traced the bobfly's jerky motion in the air, her hips, her arms and her entire body dancing to the bobbing rhythm; and the fish had not even bitten once.

Father had served yellow beer with white foam, radiating more mildness than doggedness in his face, smilingly refusing every tip because all men are brothers. He called it out in the summer evening: brother, brother. Smiles appeared on the seamen's thoughtful faces, and pretty women with confidence in their eyes shook their heads at so much childlike pathos, but clapped their applause nonetheless, brothers and sisters.

Schrella came slowly down from the bal.u.s.trade and walked along by the harbor basin, where rusty boats and pontoons awaited the junk dealer. He plunged deep into the greenish shadow under the bridge and saw, in the middle of the water, industrious cranes loading bits of the old bridge onto barges, where the groaning sc.r.a.p iron was crushed beneath the weight of more sc.r.a.p iron descending on it. He came on the pretentious stairs going up onto the bridge, and felt, walking up them, how the wide steps enforced a solemn pace. With ghostly confidence the neat and empty autobahn rose up toward the river and the bridge, where the signboards stopped confidence short with their giant skull and crossbones, black on white. The way west was barred by signboards reading DEATH, DEATH, while across the endless expanse of shining beet leaves an empty road led out to the east.

Schrella walked on, slipping through between DEATH and the skull and crossbones, past the construction workers' huts, and pacified a night.w.a.tchman who had raised his arms angrily, only to drop them again, appeased by Schrella's smile. Schrella walked on farther, to the edge of the old bridge where rusty reinforcement rods, with lumps of concrete still dangling from them, testified by their fifteen years of unbroken survival to the quality of German steel. Behind the empty steel gates, over on the other side of the water, the autobahn resumed its way again, past the golf course and into the endless expanse of glimmering beet leaves.

The Cafe Bellevue. The promenade. On the right, the playing fields, rounders, rounders. The ball that Robert hit, and then the b.a.l.l.s they had struck with their cues in Dutch drinking places, red-green, white-green, the monotonous music of the b.a.l.l.s sounded almost Gregorian, and the figures formed by the b.a.l.l.s were like some strict poetry, endlessly conjured up to the power of three on the green felt. Never a taste of the Host of the Beast, always blindly putting up with the injury inflicted; Feed my lambs on suburban fields, where rounders was played, in streets like Gruffel Street and Modest Street, in English suburban streets and behind prison walls. Feed my lambs wherever you can find them, even when they haven't anything better to do than read Holderlin or Trakl, nothing better for fifteen years than write on blackboards 'I bind, I bound, I have bound, I shall bind, I had bound, I shall have bound,' while Nettlinger's children played badminton on well-kept lawns-'The English are really best at that'-while his pretty wife, well-groomed, well-groomed, very well-groomed, called to him from the terrace, where he reclined in his pretty deck chair, 'Would you like a drop of gin in your lemonade?' and he called back, 'Yes, a good, big one!' and his wife, letting out a little giggle of delight at such a witty man, poured him a good big drop of gin in his lemonade and went outside and sat down beside him, in the second deck chair, no less pretty than the first, and pa.s.sed expert judgment on her oldest daughter's movement at play. Just a shade too thin perhaps, a shade too bony, the pretty face a shade too serious. And now she laid the racket down, exhausted, and went to sit at Daddy's feet, at Mummy's feet, by the edge of the lawn-'Now don't go and catch cold, darling'-and asked, oh so seriously, 'Daddy, tell me, what does it mean, exactly, democracy?' And that was the perfect moment for Daddy to grow solemn, and set down his gla.s.s of lemonade, and take the cigar out of his mouth-'Ernst-Rudolf, that makes five today'-and explain to her, 'Democracy....' No, no, I'll not be asking you officially or privately to clarify my legal status. I don't take anything for it, I swore the childish oath in the Cafe Zons; I swore to uphold the n.o.bility of defenselessness. Let my legal position remain unclear. Perhaps Robert has clarified it already with dynamite. Wonder whether Robert's learned to laugh in the meanwhile, or at least to smile. Always serious, never got over Ferdi's death. He froze his thoughts of vengeance into formulas and carried them about, lightest of luggage, in his brain, carried them with him for six years, exact formulas, through the sergeants' mess and the officers' mess, without laughing once, whereas Ferdi when they arrested him smiled, that angel from the suburbs, from the hovels of a Gruffel Street. And only a square inch or so of skin on the tip of his thumb had consecrated his memory. A gym teacher's scorched feet. The last lamb killed by a piece of shrapnel. Father was not seen again, not even shot while attempting to escape. And never again a trace of the ball that Robert hit.

Schrella flicked his cigarette b.u.t.t into the river, stood up and began sauntering back, slipped through once more between DEATH and the crossbones, nodded to the apprehensive night.w.a.tchman, and then with a last glance back at the Cafe Bellevue went down along the neat and empty autobahn toward the horizon where the beet leaves were glimmering in the summer light. Streetcar No. 16 ought to cross the highway somewhere. One ticket to the station, forty-five pfennigs, including one transfer. He thought longingly of a room in a hotel. He loved the casual aspect of being "at home" in that way, the anonymity of shabby rooms, interchangeable one with another. The icicles of memory would never thaw in rooms like that. Stateless and homeless and in the morning an indifferent breakfast served by a sleepy waiter, his cuffs not quite clean, his shirt front showing no sign of the ardor which Mother had bestowed on such articles. And if the waiter were over sixty, might one not dare ask: 'Did you once have a colleague called Schrella?'

Farther on, along the empty, tidy road, through the glimmering beet-leaf sea, for luggage only his hands in his pockets and his small change strewn along the way, for Hansel and Gretel. Postcards formed the only bearable contact with that life which still went on, after Edith and Father and Ferdi had died. 'Dear Robert, I am well, hoping you are the same. Regards to the niece I have never met, to my nephew and your father.' Twenty-four words, too many words. Compress the text: 'Am well, hope you are too, regards to Ruth, Joseph, your father.' Twelve words. Say the same using half as many. Why now come back, shake hands and go a whole week without conjugating: I bind, I bound, I have bound; and find Nettlinger unchanged and Gruffel Street unchanged? Mrs. Trischler's hands were missing.

A sky of beet leaves, as if grown over with silvery-green plumage. Down below, the No. 16 was rocking through an underpa.s.s. Forty-five pfennigs. Everything more expensive. Nettlinger would doubtless not yet have reached the end of his elucidation of democracy, his voice grown mellow in the late afternoon light, when his daughter would have gone and got the rug from the living-room couch-Yugoslav, or Danish or Finnish, lovely colors, in any case-and laid it over her father's shoulders and kneeled down again, to listen devotedly while in the kitchen her mother ... 'Yes, please do stay out there, my dears, it's such a lovely afternoon and so quiet and peaceful ...' was preparing tasty finger sandwiches and mixing a colorful salad.

Imagining Nettlinger produced a more exact picture than the meeting with him, than his way of conveying slices of sirloin to his mouth and drinking the best, the best, the very best wine with it, lost already in meditation on whether cheese or ice cream or cake or an omelette would most fittingly top the meal. 'One thing, gentlemen,' the former legation secretary who gave the course on How to Become a Gourmet, had said 'you must add one thing to what you have learned, a breath, just a breath of originality.'

He had written it on the blackboard in England: 'He should have been killed.' Had played the xylophone of language for fifteen years: I live, I lived, I have lived, I had lived, I shall live. Shall I live? He had never understood how there were people who were bored with grammar. He is killed, he was killed, he has been killed, he will be killed. Who will kill him? Mine is the vengeance, said the Lord.

"End of the line, sir, Central Station."

The crowd was as big as ever. Which ones were coming, which going? Why didn't they all stay home? When did the train for Ostend leave? Or perhaps to Italy or France. There would have to be someone in those places, too, who would want to learn about I live, I lived, I have lived; he will be killed. And who will kill him?

A room? What price did he have in mind? A cheap one? The young woman's friendliness perceptibly declined, as she ran her pretty finger down the list. Obviously a sin in this country to ask the price. Always the best-the dearest is the cheapest: an error, pretty child, the cheapest's the cheapest, in point of fact; just let your pretty finger slide down to the bottom row on that list. 'Pension Moderne.' Seven marks. Without breakfast. "No thank you, I know the way to Modest Street, really, I know No. 16, it's right by the Modest Gate."

As he turned the corner he nearly walked into the wild boar, stepped startled back from the dark-gray animal's ma.s.sive form and almost went past Robert's house. Memory, here, was in no danger. He had been here only once. Modest Street, No. 8. He stopped in front of the shiny bra.s.s nameplate and read: "Dr. Robert Faehmel. Architectural Estimates. Closed Afternoons," and as he pressed the bell, trembled. That which he had not personally witnessed, which had been played with props other than those he knew, had always. .h.i.t him harder. Edith had died behind this door, and in this house her children had been born, and Robert lived there now. He realized from the sound of the bell ringing inside that no one would open, and heard the ringing of the bell mingling with that of the telephone. The bellboy in the Prince Heinrich Hotel had kept his word. I'll tip him well when we play billiards there.

The Pension Moderne was only four buildings farther on. Home at last. No cooking smells in the tiny hall, happily. Fresh bed linen for a tired body. "Yes, thank you, I'll find it." "Second floor, third door on the left, careful on the stairs, sir, the carpet rods are loose in a few places; some guests have such bad manners. You don't want to be waked in the morning? One more thing, please. Would you pay in advance, or is there more luggage on the way? No? Then eight marks five pfennigs, if you please, service included. Sorry I have to take such precautions, sir, you'd never believe how many b.u.ms there are in the world; it makes you distrust respectable people, that's the way it is, and some of them even manage to take out the sheets wound round them, and cut up the pillowcases into handkerchiefs. If you only knew some of the things we see. No receipt? So much the better; they tax me to death as it is. You're probably expecting a visit from your wife, aren't you, I'll send her up, don't you worry...."

10.

His fear had been unfounded: memory did not become feeling, remained formula. It did not disintegrate into bliss or grief and did not strike fear in the heart. The heart was not involved. There he had stood, in the evening twilight, between the guest house and the Abbey, where now stood the heap of violet, hard-fired bricks. And beside him had stood General Otto Kosters, whose feeble-mindedness had been coined into a single formula: field of fire. Captain Faehmel, First Lieutenant Schrit, and the two cadet officers, Kanders and Hochbret. Their faces deadly serious, they had convinced Field-of-Fire Otto that it was imperative not to be inconsistent, even when confronted by such venerable buildings; and when other officers lodged a protest, when tearful murderers spoke soulfully up in defense of cultural heritage which had to be saved, when one of them would utter the evil phrase 'high treason'-no one could argue so sharply, so fluently or logically as Schrit, who put the case for demolition to the General in these persuasive words: 'And if undertaken only as an example, to show we still believe in victory, General, such painful sacrifice would make quite clear to the people and the army that we still do believe in victory,' and back came the old, proverbial answer: 'I have made my decision; blow it up, gentlemen. With victory at stake, we may spare not even our own sacred cultural monuments. Go to it, then, gentlemen.' All saluted and clicked their heels.

Had he ever been twenty-nine, ever been a captain, ever stood on that spot with Field-of-Fire Otto? Where now the new Abbot was smiling and welcoming his father: "We're so glad, Your Excellency, it's such a pleasure to have you visit us again; I'm very happy to meet your son. And Joseph is almost an old friend of ours already, aren't you, Joseph? The fortunes of our Abbey have always been linked with the fortunes of the Faehmel family-and Joseph has even, if I may inject a personal note-Joseph has even been struck by Cupid's arrow in these precincts. Look, Doctor Faehmel, nowadays young people don't even blush when you talk about such things; Miss Ruth and Miss Marianne, I'm sorry, I have to exclude you from the tour."

The young girls giggled. Hadn't Mother and Josephine and even Edith giggled on that same spot when they were excluded from the tour? All you had to do in the snapshot alb.u.ms was replace the heads and change the styles.

"Yes, we've already moved into the cloister," said the Abbot. "This is the apple of our eye, the library-round here, please, the infirmary, unoccupied at present, I'm glad to say...."

Never had he here gone from point to point with his chalk, writing his secret combinations of XYZ on the walls, the code for nothingness which only Schrit, Hochbret and Kanders knew how to decipher. Smell of mortar, smell of fresh paint, freshly planed wood.

"Yes, this here was saved from destruction thanks to your grandson's-your son's alertness. The picture of the Last Supper, here in the Refectory. We know perfectly well it's no great work of art-you'll forgive me that observation, Your Excellency-but even the work of this school of painters is beginning to be rare, and we've always felt a responsibility to tradition. I must admit that even today I'm delighted by these painters' fidelity to detail-look here, how lovingly and carefully he has painted the feet of St. John and St. Peter, here the feet of an old man, there the feet of a young man. Accuracy of detail."

No, no one had sung How weary, weary these old bones in this place. No solst.i.tial fire. Only a dream. A distinguished gentleman in his early forties, the son of a distinguished father, the father of a vigorous, very intelligent son who was smilingly making the rounds with the rest even though the whole undertaking seemed to bore him very much. Whenever he turned to Joseph he saw only a friendly, somewhat tired smile on his face.

"As you know, not even the farm buildings were spared. We rebuilt them first since it seemed they were the practical requisites for a successful new start. Here's the cow barn. We milk with electricity, of course. You're smiling-I'm quite sure our Holy Father Benedict would have had no objections to electrical milking. May I offer you some refreshment? A token of welcome-our celebrated bread and b.u.t.ter and honey. You may not be aware that every Abbot, when he dies or retires, leaves this word with his successor: Don't forget the Faehmel family. You really do belong to our cloister family-oh, there are the young ladies again. Of course, here they're allowed again."

Bread and b.u.t.ter, wine and honey on simple wooden boards; Joseph had one arm round his sister, and the other round Marianne. A blond head between the two dark heads.

"You'll do us the honor of coming to the consecration? The Chancellor and the Cabinet have accepted, a few foreign dignitaries will be there, and it would be a great pleasure for us to be able to welcome all the Faehmel family as our guests. My official speech will be made not in the spirit of indictment but of reconciliation; of reconciliation also with those powers who, in their blind pa.s.sion, destroyed our home. But not, of course, reconciliation with those destructive powers which once again are threatening our culture. May I, then, extend our invitation to you, here and now, with our sincere hope that you will do us this honor?"

'I won't come to the consecration,' thought Robert, 'for I'm not reconciled. Not reconciled with the powers guilty of Ferdi's death, or with the ones that caused Edith to die and St. Severin's to be spared. I'm not reconciled, not reconciled either to myself or to the spirit of reconciliation which you in your official speech will proclaim. Blind pa.s.sion did not destroy your home, hatred destroyed it, which was not blind and does not as yet repent. Should I confess it was I who did it? I'd have to inflict pain on my father, although he is not guilty, and perhaps on my son, although he is not guilty either, and on you, Reverend Father, although you, too, are not guilty; just who is guilty, then? I am not reconciled to a world in which a gesture or a word misunderstood can cost a life.' And aloud he said, "Thank you very much, Reverend Father, it will give me great pleasure to attend your ceremony."

'I won't come, Reverend Father,' thought the old man, 'for I'd only stand here as a monument to myself, not as what I am: an old man who this very morning gave his secretary the a.s.signment to spit on his monument. Don't be shocked, Reverend Father; I'm not reconciled with my son Otto who was my son no longer, only my son's husk, and I can't celebrate my reconciliation to a building, even if I did build it myself. We shan't be missed at the solemnities. The Chancellor, the Cabinet members, the foreign dignitaries and the high ecclesiastical dignitaries will undoubtedly fill the gap in worthy style. Was it you, Robert, and were you afraid to tell me? It was your look and the way you acted during the tour that told me so. Well, it doesn't affect me-perhaps you were thinking of that boy whose name I never learned, the one who pushed your little slips of paper through our letter box-and of the waiter called Groll, and the lambs no one shepherded, not even we. So let's not celebrate any reconciliation. Sorry, Reverend Father, you'll have to make the best of it, you won't miss us. Hang up a plaque: Built by Heinrich Faehmel in 1908, in his twenty-ninth year; destroyed by Robert Faehmel, in 1945, in his twenty-ninth year-and what will you do, Joseph, when you're thirty? Will you take over your father's architectural estimates office? Will you build or destroy-formulas are more effective than mortar. Strengthen your heart with hymns, Reverend Father, and consider carefully whether you are truly reconciled to the spirit which destroyed the monastery.'

"Thank you very much, Reverend Father, it will give us great pleasure to attend your ceremony," said the old man.

Cool air was already rising from the meadows and lowlands, and the dry beet leaves were becoming damp and dark, promising riches. Behind the steering wheel to the left was Joseph's blond head, and to the right the dark heads of the two girls. The car glided quietly toward the city; was someone out there singing the song, "We've harvested the wheat"? It couldn't be true, any more than St. Severin's slender tower on the horizon; Marianne was the first to speak: "Aren't you going through Doderingen?"

"No, Grandfather wanted to drive through Denklingen."

"I thought we were going the shortest way to town?"

"If we get to town at six, it'll be early enough," said Ruth. "We don't need more than an hour to change."

The young people's voices sounded m.u.f.fled, like people buried in underground caverns whispering hopeful words to each other: Look, there's light. You're mistaken. No, really, I can see light. Where? But can't you hear them tapping, it's the rescue team. I don't hear a thing.

It's wrong to get formulas free, put secrets into words, transpose memories into feeling. Feelings can even kill such good hard things as love and hate. Had there really been a captain called Robert Faehmel, who knew the jargon of the casino so well, did all the right things so perfectly, so dutifully invited the senior officer's wife to dance, was so good at proposing toasts in his incisive voice: I give you a toast, in honor of our beloved German people. Champagne, ordnance. Billiards. Red-green, white-green. White-green. And one evening someone was standing opposite him, holding the billiard cue in his hand, smiling and saying, 'Schrit, lieutenant, as you see, a demolition expert like yourself, Captain, defending Western Culture with dynamite.' Schrit had carried no mixed soul about in his breast; he had been able to wait and save his strength, hadn't needed again and again to remobilize heart and feeling, was not one to get drunk on tragedy. He had made a vow to blow up only German bridges and only German buildings, and not destroy so much as a pane of gla.s.s in whatever Russian hut. We waited and played billiards and never talked more than we had to-and finally we came upon it lying there in the spring sunshine, the great prey we had waited for so long: St. Anthony's. And on the horizon the prey that would escape us: St. Severin's.

"Don't drive so fast," Marianne said quietly.

"Sorry," said Joseph.

"Tell me, what are we doing here in Denklingen?"

"Grandfather wants to come here," said Joseph.

"No, Joseph," said Ruth, "don't drive into the avenue, didn't you see the signboard: 'Residents Only'? Or maybe you're one?"

The grand delegation, husband, son, grandchildren and granddaughter-in-law to be, got out at the bewitched castle.

"No, no," said Ruth, "I'm going to wait out here. Please let me."