When his father walked into the bar, Robert flushed, went up to the old man, took the heavy hat out of his hand and said, “I forgot to congratulate you on your birthday, Father. Forgive me. I’ve ordered a beer for you. I hope it’s still fresh enough, if not.…”
“Thank you,” said his father, “thanks for the birthday wishes, and the beer will do; I don’t like it too cold.” The old man put his hand on Robert’s arm, and Robert, blushing, remembered the intimate gesture they had exchanged on the street in front of the sanatorium. There, he had suddenly felt a need to put his arm round his father’s shoulders, and his father had returned the gesture while they made their arrangement to meet at Denklingen station.
“Come on,” said Robert, “let’s sit down; we still have twenty-five minutes.”
They raised their glasses, nodded to each other, and drank.
“Cigar, Father?”
“No thank you. By the way, did you know the train schedules have hardly changed in fifty years? Even the announcement board with its enamel plates is still the same. On some of them the enamel is only chipped a little bit.”
“The chairs and tables and the pictures on the wall,” said Robert, “are all the same as they used to be, when we used to walk over here from Kisslingen on summer evenings and wait for the train.”
“Yes,” said his father, “nothing has changed. Did you call up Ruth? Will she be coming? It’s so long since I’ve seen her.”
“Yes, she’s coming. I expect she’s already sitting in the train.”
“We can be in Kisslingen shortly after half-past four, have some coffee and cake, and easily get back home by seven. You are coming to the party?”
“Of course, Father, did you think we wouldn’t?”
“No, but I was wondering whether to let it go, cancel it—but perhaps it’s better not to, for the children’s sake; and I’ve made so many preparations for today.”
The old man lowered his eyes to the red-and-white check tablecloth, and drew circles on it with his beer glass; Robert marveled at the smooth skin on his hands, child’s hands which had kept their innocence. His father raised his eyes again and looked Robert in the face.
“I was thinking of Ruth and Joseph. You know Joseph has a girl, don’t you?”
“No.”
The old man looked down again and let the beer glass go on circling.
“I’d always hoped my two properties out here might be something like a second home to you, but you all always preferred living in the city, even Edith—it seems Joseph is the first who might fulfill my dream. Strange you all still think he takes after Edith and not after us. And yet he looks so like Heinrich it sometimes scares me, when I see your son; Heinrich, as he might have been—do you remember him?”
Our dog was called Brom; and I held the coach-horse reins, made of black leather. All cracked. Got to get a gun, get a gun. Hindenburg.
“Yes, I remember him.”
“He gave me back the farmhouse I made him a present of. Whom am I going to give it to now? Joseph or Ruth? You? Would you like it? Own cows and meadows, milk separators and beet-cutting machines? Tractors and hay tedders? Shall I deed it to the monastery? I bought both properties with my first fee; I was twenty-nine when I built the Abbey, and you can’t imagine what it means to a young man to get such an assignment. A sensation. That’s not only why I travel out there so often, to remember the future which meanwhile has long since become the past. I always thought of becoming sort of a farmer in my old age. But I haven’t, only an old fool playing blind man’s buff with his wife. We take turns closing our eyes, changing old times like the slides in that apparatus that throws pictures on the wall. If you please, let’s have 1928. Two fine sons holding mother’s hand, one thirteen, the other eleven. Father close by, cigar in mouth, smiling. In the background, the Eiffel Tower—or is it the Engelsburg or the Brandenburg Gate perhaps—pick your own backdrop; maybe the breakers at Ostend, or St. Severin’s tower, or the lemonade stalls in Blessenfeld Park? No, of course it’s St. Anthony’s Abbey, you’ll find it in the snapshot album, at all seasons, only the fashions change. Your mother in a large hat or a small one, with short or long hair, in a full skirt or a tight one, and her children three and five, five and seven years old; then there appears a stranger young and blonde, with one child in her arms and another held by the hand, the children one and three years old. Do you know, I loved Edith more than I could have loved a daughter. I could never believe she’d ever really had a mother and father—and a brother. She was an emissary of the Lord and while she lived with us I could think and pray His name again without blushing—what message did she bring you? Revenge for the lambs? I hope you carried out the mission loyally, without the false considerations I always had, without keeping your superiority feelings fresh in a refrigerator of irony, as I always did. Did she really have that brother? Is he alive? Does he exist?”
Drawing circles with his beer glass, he stared at the red-and-white check tablecloth, very slightly raised his head.
“Tell me, does he really exist? He was your friend, wasn’t he. I saw him once. I was standing at the bedroom window and I saw him walk across the courtyard to your room. I’ve never forgotten him, and often thought about him, even though I can hardly have seen him for more than ten or twenty seconds. He scared me, like a dark angel. Does he really exist?”
“Yes.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes. You are afraid of him?”
“Yes. Of you too. Didn’t you know? I don’t want to know what mission Edith gave you, only, did you carry it out?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You’re surprised I was scared of you—and still am, a little. I laughed at your childish plots, but the laughter stuck in my throat when I read they had killed that boy. He might have been Edith’s brother, but later on I knew it had been almost human to kill a boy who after all had thrown a bomb and scorched a gym teacher’s feet—but the boy who pushed your slips of paper through our letter box, the Pole who raised his hand against the gym teacher, even an uncalled-for glance, certain kind of hair, certain shape of nose were enough, and the time came when it took even less. The father’s or grandmother’s birth certificate was enough. I’d lived on my laughter through the years, but that nourishment ran out, no new batch available, Robert. So I opened the refrigerator door and let my irony turn sour, then threw it out like the disgusting left-overs of something which once might have been worth something. I had thought I loved and understood your mother, but really it wasn’t till then that I really understood and loved her, and understood you others, too, and loved you. Later only I quite saw it all; I was well set up when the war ended, building commissioner for the entire district. Peace, I thought, all over, a new life—when one day the British commanding officer came to apologize to me, so to speak, for having bombed the Honorius Church and destroyed the twelfth-century crucifixion group. He didn’t apologize for Edith, only for a twelfth-century crucifixion panel. ‘Sorry.’ I laughed again for the first time in ten years, but it wasn’t good laughter, Robert—and I resigned my office. Building commissioner? What for? When I would have given all the crucifixions down the centuries to see Edith’s smile once again and feel her hand on my arm? What did the Lord’s pictures mean to me, compared to His emissary’s real smile? As for the boy who brought your scraps of paper—I never saw his face or learned his name—I would have given St. Severin’s and known it would have been a ridiculous price to pay, like giving a medal to someone who’s saved a life. Have you ever seen Edith’s smile again, or the smile of that carpenter’s apprentice? Just a hint of it? Robert, Robert!”
He let go of the beer glass and set his arms on the table.
“Have you ever seen it?” He murmured the question, head bent low.
“I’ve seen it,” said Robert, “on the face of a hotel boy called Hugo—I’ll show him to you.”
“I’ll give that boy the farm Heinrich couldn’t take. Write me his name and address on the coast
er. All the most important messages are sent on beer mats. And let me know as soon as you hear anything of Edith’s brother. Is he alive?”
“Yes. Are you still afraid of him?”
“I am. Terrible thing was, there was nothing at all touching about him. I knew when I saw him crossing the courtyard that he was strong, and that everything he did wasn’t being done for reasons that would carry weight with other people. Because he was poor or rich, ugly or handsome, because his mother had or hadn’t beaten him. All the reasons why anyone does anything, either building churches or murdering women, being a good teacher or a bad organist. With him I knew that none of these reasons would explain anything. At that time I could still laugh, but I couldn’t find a single crack in him where my laughter might have got through. It scared me, as if a dark angel had come walking across our courtyard, God’s deputy sheriff come to take you into custody. That’s what he did to you, seized your person. But there was nothing moving about him. Even when I heard they’d beaten him and intended to kill him, I wasn’t moved.…”
“Your Excellency! I’ve only now recognized you; I’m so glad to see you well. It must be years since you were here.”
“Ah, it’s you, Mull? And your mother, is she still living?”
“No, Your Excellency, we had to lay her to rest. It was a huge funeral. She’d had a full life; seven children, thirty-six grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren, a full life. Will you gentlemen do me the honor of drinking to my mother’s memory?”
“But gladly, my dear Mull—she was a wonderful woman.”
The old man got to his feet, and Robert stood up too as the proprietor went to the bar and ran the glasses full of beer. The station clock said ten past four. Two farmers were waiting at the counter, wearily pushing meat balls smeared with mustard into their mouths, drinking copious gulps of beer. The proprietor came back to the table, with red face and moist eyes, transferred the glasses of beer from tray to table and picked his own glass up.
“To your mother’s memory, Mull,” said old Faehmel.
They raised their glasses, nodded to each other, drank and put them down again.
“Did you know,” the old man said, “that your mother gave me credit fifty years ago, when I came over here hungry and thirsty from Kisslingen. The railway tracks were being repaired at the time, and it was nothing for me to walk four kilometers. To your health, Mull, and to your mother. This is my son; haven’t you ever met him?”
“Faehmel—how do you do.”
“Mull—a pleasure.”
“Every child here knows you, Excellency, everyone knows you built our Abbey, and many a grandmother can still tell stories about you; about the times you ordered whole truck-loads of beer for the bricklayers, and danced a solo at the builders’ party. Here’s to you, your Excellency.”
They emptied their glasses standing. Robert, his empty glass in his hand, stared after the proprietor as he went back to his bar, pushed the young couple’s plates through the hatch, then worked out the bill with the young man. His father was tugging him by the coat.
“Come on,” the old man said, “sit down, we’ve still got another ten minutes. They’re splendid people, their hearts are in the right place.”
“And you’re not afraid of them, are you, Father?”
The old man looked his son full in the eyes, his narrow, still-smooth face unsmiling.
Robert continued: “These were the people who tormented Hugo—perhaps one of them was even Ferdi’s hangman!”
“While you were away and we were waiting for news of you I was scared of everyone—but scared of Mull? Now? Are you scared of him?”
“Whenever I meet anyone I ask myself whether I’d want to be handed over to him, and there aren’t many I’d say yes to.”
“And were you handed over to Edith’s brother?”
“No. We shared a room in Holland, shared everything we had. Half the day we played billiards, the other half we studied; he German, I mathematics. I wasn’t handed over to him, but I would hand myself over to him any time—to you, too, Father.” Robert took the cigarette out of his mouth. “I’d like to give you something for your eightieth birthday, Father—to prove, well, perhaps you know what I’d like to prove to you?”
“I know,” said the old man, laying his hand on his son’s arm, “you needn’t tell me.”
Some tears of remorse I’d like to give you, but I can’t force them out, I still look at St. Severin’s tower as at a quarry which got away from me. It was a shame it had to be your early work, the great prize, the first great gamble. And so well built, solid masonry, its statics irreproachable; had to requisition two truckloads of high explosive, and went round chalking my figures and formulas on the walls, on the columns and buttresses, on the great picture of the Last Supper, between the feet of St. John and St. Peter. I knew the Abbey so well, you’d explained it to me so often as a child, as a boy, as a young man. I chalked my figures on the wall, while the Abbot, the only one who’d stayed there, dogged me wherever I went, appealing to my reason, to my religion. Lucky he was a new abbot who didn’t know me. He appealed to my conscience—in vain. He didn’t know me as a weekend visitor eating trout, as the master builder’s son, as the nature-pure-honey-eating, butter-on-country-bread-spreading master builder’s son, and while he was staring at me as if I were crazy, I whispered to him, How weary, weary these old bones. I was twenty-nine, exactly the age you were when you built the Abbey, and now I am stalking the prey sticking up against the far horizon, gray, slender St. Severin’s. But I was taken prisoner and the young man interrogated me, here in Denklingen station, over at the table that’s empty now.
“What are you thinking about?” asked the old man.
“About St. Anthony’s; it’s been such a long time since I was there.”
“Are you looking forward to going up?”
“I’m looking forward to Joseph, it’s such a long time since I’ve seen him.”
“I’m rather proud of him,” the old man said, “he’s so outgoing and quick, and he’ll be a fine architect one day. A bit too strict with the workmen, a bit impatient, but I don’t expect patience from a twenty-two-year-old. And now he has a deadline to beat—the monks are so eager to sing the Liturgy for Advent in the new church. We’ll all be invited to the consecration, of course.”
“Is the Abbot still there?”
“Which one?”
“Gregor.”
“No. He died in forty-seven. He couldn’t get over the Abbey being destroyed.”
“And you, could you get over it?”
“When I heard it had been destroyed, the news hit me hard, but when I went out there and saw the rubble, with the monks in a state and wanting to set up a commission to find the culprit, I advised them not to. I didn’t want to wreak any revenge for a building, and I was afraid they might in fact find the culprit and he would apologize to me. I still had the frightful echo of the Englishman’s ‘Sorry’ in my ears. And, after all, buildings can be rebuilt. Yes, Robert, I got over it. You won’t believe it, but I had never had too much feeling for buildings I designed and put up. I liked them on paper, I had a certain passion for the work, but I was never an artist, you understand, and I knew I wasn’t. I still had my plans, of course, when they offered me the job of reconstruction. A great opportunity for your boy to get some practical training, learn coordination, take off the rough edges of his impatience—shouldn’t we go to the train?”
“Four minutes to go, Father. We can go out onto the platform.”
Robert stood up, made a sign toward the bar and reached for his wallet, but the proprietor came round from behind, went past Robert, laid his hand smilingly on the old man’s shoulder and said, “No, no, Your Excellency, you’re my guests, I wouldn’t think of anything else, for the sake of my mother’s memory.”
Outside it was still hot. Streamers of smoke from the train were already visible over Doderingen.
“Have you got tickets?” the old man asked.
&nb
sp; “Yes,” said Robert, looking toward the train as it came over the rise behind Doderingen, as if down on to them out of the clear blue sky. The train was old, black and picturesque; the station master came out of his office, a weekend smile on his face.
“Here, Father, here,” called Ruth, in her green beret and fluffy pink pullover, waving her arms. She stretched her hands out to her grandfather, helped him up onto the step, embraced him and pushed him carefully through the open carriage door, then pulled her father up and kissed him on the cheek.
“I’m glad,” she said, “really awfully glad about St. Anthony’s and this evening.”
The station master blew his whistle and waved for the train to pull away.
7
As they walked up to the counter Nettlinger took the cigar out of his mouth and nodded encouragingly to Schrella. The window was slid up from the inside; a guard leaned out with an inventory and asked, “Are you the prisoner Schrella?”
“Yes,” said Schrella.
As the guard took the objects from a box he called them out and laid them on the counter.
“One pocket watch, nickel, without chain.”
“One change purse, black leather, contents: five English shillings, thirty Belgian francs, ten German marks and eighty pfennigs.”
“One tie, color green.”
“One ballpoint pen, no trademark, color gray.”
“Two handkerchiefs, white.”
“One trenchcoat.”
“One hat, color black.”
“One razor, trademark Gillette.”
“Six cigarettes, trademark Belga.”
“You kept your shirt, underwear, soap and toothbrush, didn’t you? Please sign here and confirm with your signature that none of your personal property is missing.”
Schrella put on his coat, stuck his worldly possessions in his pocket, signed and dated the inventory: September 6, 1958, 4:10 P.M.
“All right,” said the guard, and pulled the window down.
Nettlinger reinserted the cigar in his mouth and tapped Schrella’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said, “this way out. Or do you want to go back in the pokey? Perhaps you’d better put your tie on now.”
Billiards at Half-Past Nine Page 18