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

sweating oarsmen were heaving a boat up the long ramp. Side by side, not saying a word, they crossed the viaduct, running away across lowlying layers of mist as over a river. Ships’ hooters, red lights and green on deckhouses. In the shipyard red sparks were shooting up, describing figures in the grayness. Silently they went as far as the bridge, climbed the dark stairs, where, scratched in red sandstone, youths on the way back from a swim had eternalized their longings. A freight train rumbling over the bridge, carrying slaggy waste to the western bank, for further minutes relieved them of the need to speak. A shunting engine’s lights swung about, warbly whistles directed the train as it was shoved backward onto the right-hand track. Down below in the fog, boats were gliding northward. Ships’ horns wailed warnings of mortal danger, bellowed mournfully over the water, a tumult providentially making talk impossible.
    “I came to a stop, Hugo, leaned over the parapet facing the river, took cigarettes from my pocket, offered them to Schrella, who struck a light for me. We smoked quietly while the train rumbled away and off the bridge. A line of barges moved along below us, we could just hear their gliding underneaththe blanket of mist. All we could see were a few sparks coming up every once in a while from a galley stovepipe. It was quiet for minutes at a time, until the next string of barges came sliding quietly under the bridge, moving north, northwards to North Sea fogs. And I was scared, Hugo, for now I had to ask him, and if once I did, I would be involved, there would be no turning back. It must have been a terrible secret, if Nettlinger gambled on losing the game for it, and the Ottonians were willing to take Old Wobbly as umpire. Now it was almost dead still, and that gave a great weight to my impending question. It burdened it with eternity, you might say. I was cutting loose, Hugo, although I did not as yet know from what or wherefore, I was saying goodbye to St. Severin’s dark tower, rising up out of flatly layered mist, to my parents’ house not far from the tower, where my mother, right at the moment, was putting the finishing touches on the supper table, straightening the knives and forks, arranging flowers in little vases, tasting the wine. Was the white wine cool enough, the red not too cool? It was Saturday night, a religious time with us. Had she opened her missal yet, from which she would read the Sunday responses in her gentle voice? My room at the back looked out over the garden, where the old, old trees were in full leaf, where I used to lose myself passionately in mathematical formulas, in the severe curves of geometric figures, in the stark, wintry-clear branches of spheric arcs sprung from my drafting compass and pen. Up there I used to draw the churches I planned to build some day. Well, Schrella flicked his cigarette butt down into the sheet of fog; the glowing tip made airy spirals as it fell. Schrella turned to me, smiling, waiting for the question I still hadn’t asked, shaking his head.
    The chain of lamps running all the way to the other shore stood out sharply in the murk.
    ‘Let’s go,’ said Schrella. ‘There they are, can’t you hear them?’ I could hear them. The bridge stairs had already begun to resound under their tread. They were talking about thesummer places they’d soon be going off to, Allgäu, Westerwald, Bad Gastein, the North Sea. And about the ball Robert hit. It was easier to ask my question walking.
    ‘Why did they do it?’ I asked. ‘I don’t get it. Are you Jewish?’
    ‘No, I’m not.’
    ‘What are you, then?’
    ‘We’re Lambs,’ said Schrella. ‘We’ve sworn never to put the
Host of the Beast
to our lips.’
    ‘Lambs?’ The word chilled me, I was afraid of it. ‘A religious sect?’ I asked.
    ‘Perhaps.’
    ‘Not a political party?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Not for me,’ I said. ‘I can’t be a lamb!’
    ‘You want to make Communion with