Billiards at Half-Past Nine Read Online Free PDF

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, Inever 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 wayfor 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