Billiards at Half-Past Nine

by Heinrich Böll

  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 assembled all his passengers, 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 brushing 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 glass 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 classification. 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 assests: 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. Class. 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 butter, 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 ’41–’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-class, 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 ambassador, 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 bastard’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 class. 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 pushing 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 arse 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 God into bags of crap 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 Mass, 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. Damn 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 butter. 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 document 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.