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

the
Host of the Beast?
’
    ‘No, I don’t,’ I said.
    ‘Shepherds,’ he said, ‘there are some shepherds who don’t forsake the flock.’
    ‘Quick,’ I said. ‘Hurry up, they’re catching up with us.’
    We went down the dark bridge steps at the western end, and as we reached the street I hesitated an instant. My way home was to the right, Schrella’s to the left. But I did it. I followed him to the left, where the road wound toward the town, through lumber yards, coal bunkers and allotment gardens. Once beyond the first bend, now deep in the low mist, we stopped and watched the shadowy forms of the other students moving across the bridge. We could see them silhouetted above the parapet, we listened to the sound of their footsteps and their voices as they came down the flight of steps; we heard the echoing ring of their heavy hobnailed boots. We heard a voice calling, ‘Nettlinger … Nettlinger … wait, wait!’ And Nettlinger’s own loud voice came wildly bouncing back from across the river, broken by the columns of the bridge, to lose itself behind us among the garden plots and warehouses. Nettlinger, crying out, ‘Where’s our lamby-boy and hisshepherd?’ Splintered fragments of laughter fell about us.
    ‘You heard that?’ Schrella asked.
    ‘I heard it. Lamb and shepherd.’
    We looked up at stragglers’ shadows coming across the footpath of the bridge. Their voices, which had been muffled as they crossed, grew clearer as they came down into the street, then were broken by the arches of the bridge. ‘The ball Robert hit,’ we heard them say.
    ‘Tell me more,’ I said to Schrella. ‘I’ve got to know the details.’
    ‘I’ll show you the details,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’ We groped our way through the murk along barbed-wire fences, and came to a wooden fence still smelling of fresh yellow paint that glowed in the dark. Over a locked door was an enamelled sign lit up by a naked electric bulb. The sign said: ‘Michaelis, Coal, Coke, Briquettes.’
    ‘You still know the way?’ Schrella asked.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We came this way together many a time, seven years ago, when we used to play down at Trischler’s. What’s happened to Alois?’
    ‘He’s a bargeman, like his father.’
    ‘And is your father still a waiter down there in the tavern where the rivermen go?’
    ‘No, he’s at the Upper Harbor now.’
    ‘What about those details?’
    Schrella took the cigarette out of his mouth, pulled off his jacket, pushed his suspenders off his shoulders, pulled up his shirt and turned his back toward the dim electric light. His back was covered—peppered, more like it, I thought—with small, reddish-blue scars, the size of peas.
    ‘My God,’ I said. ‘How did that happen?’
    ‘Nettlinger,’ he said. ‘They do it to you down there in the old barracks near Williams’ Pit. Old Wobbly and Nettlinger. They call themselves auxiliary police. They grabbed me in a raid they were making on beggars down by the docks. They arrestedthirty-eight beggars in one day, and I was one of them. They questioned us, using barbed-wire whips. They said, “Admit you’re a beggar.” And I said, “That’s right, I’m a beggar.” ’
    Some of the guests were still eating a late breakfast, imbibing poisonous-looking orange juice. The pale young man was leaning against the door like a statue; the violet-colored velvet of his uniform made his face appear almost green.
    “Hugo, are you listening to what I’m saying … Hugo?”
    “Certainly, Doctor, I’m listening to every word.”
    “Get me a cognac, please … a double.”
    “Yes, Doctor.”
    Time glared at Hugo as he started down the stairs to the dining room, the great calendar he had to set mornings, turning the big pasteboard number under month and year. Today: September 6, 1958. It made his head swim, all that had happened long before he was born. Decades, half-centuries ago, 1935, 1903, 1885—yet it was all there, hidden far