Billiards at Half-Past Nine by Heinrich Böll, Patrick Bowles, Jessa Crispin Page B

reflection. I was a slightly built young fellow, almost a shrimp, a cross between a young rabbi and a bohemian, hair black, clothes black, with a vaguely countrified look. I had another laugh, and went in. The waiters were just starting to put vases of white carnations on the tables, to straighten out menus bound in green leather. There they were, the waiters, in green aprons and short black jackets, with white shirts and white ties. Two young girls, one blonde and rosy, the other brunette and pale, were arranging cakes on the buffet, making little piles of biscuits, renewing the cream dressings and polishing the silver cake knives bright. Not a guest in sight, and inside all clean as a hospital before the superintendent makes his rounds. Light as a feather, a solo dancer, I threaded my way through the waiters’ ballet. Here all was training and drill, fine, very fine. I liked the way the waiters flitted from table to table, the way they set down saltcellar and flower vase with an air, gave the menu a nudge to achieve what was obviously a special angle in respect of the saltcellar. The ash trays were snow-white porcelain with gold rims. Good. I liked that. All a delightful surprise. The city, so different from the holes I’d been stuck in up to now.
    I went to the farthest left-hand corner, threw my hat on a chair, put down drawing pad and pencil box beside it, and sat down. The waiters were coming back from the kitchen, soundlessly pushing tea wagons ahead of them, distributing bottles of condiment, hanging up newspaper holders. I opened my drawing pad and read—for the hundredthtime!—the newspaper clipping I’d stuck inside the cover: ‘Open Competition: Construction of a Benedictine Abbey, to be located in the Kissa Valley, between the hamlets of Stehlinger’s Grotto and Goerlinger’s Lodge, at a distance of approximately two kilometers from the village of Kisslingen. All architects who consider themselves competent may participate. Entry forms obtainable from Dr. Kilb, solicitor, 7 Modest Street. Fee, 50 marks. Deadline for delivery of plans: noon, Monday, September 30, 1907.’
    I went climbing about among heaps of mortar, piles of brand-new bricks which I checked to see how well they had been fired in the kiln. I climbed mountains of quarried basalt that I intended to use for framing doors and windows. The cuffs of my pants were muddy, my vest all splattered with lime. I lost my temper in the construction sheds and said violent things. Those mosaic stones I needed for the
Agnus Dei
over the main entrance, why hadn’t they been delivered yet? Terrible arguments, scandal. Credits cut off then granted again. By Thursday afternoon master mechanics already were getting lined up outside my office, though their pay checks weren’t due till Friday. At night, exhausted, I climbed aboard the overheated local in Kisslingen, sank back on the cushioned seats of the second-class compartment and was hauled through the darkness past miserable little beet-villages. Meanwhile the trainman, half asleep on his feet, called out the stations: Denklingen, Doderingen, Kohlbingen, Schaklingen. On the platforms mountains of beets were piled, ready for loading, gray in the dark like mountains of skulls. On we went, past beet-villages, beet-villages. At the station I fell into a cab and then, once I got home, fell again into my wife’s arms, to be kissed, to have my work-strained eyes tenderly stroked, to have her run her fingers over the mortar stains decorating my sleeves. Over coffee, my head in her lap, I smoked the cigar I’d been longing for—a sixty-center—and told her all about the masons and their swearing. Not really bad when you gotto know them. A little rough, maybe, a little on the Red side, but I knew how to get along with them. What you had to do was set them up with a case of beer now and then, kid along a little with them in their own lingo. And never grouse about anything to their face or they’d dump a whole load