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

closing in on the one to the right. Pushed forward by the sun, time drew closer like a threat, filling up the great clock which would soon spew it out in terrible chimes. The billiard balls rolled on, white-green, red-green. Years were cut into pieces, seconds, seconds drawn out into eternities by the clock’s calm voice. If only he wouldn’t have to fetch more cognac, anticipate calendar and clock, put up with the sheep-lady and
a thing like that should never have been born
. Better just to hear the
Feed my lambs
saying again, hear about the woman who had lain in the grass in the summer rain, about the boats coming to anchor, the women walking up gangways, the ball that Robert hit, Robert who had never taken the
Host of the Beast
, who played on wordlessly, always making new patterns with cue and ball on two square meters of green table.
    “How about you, Hugo?” he quietly said. “Aren’t you going to tell me any stories today?”
    “I don’t know how long it went on, but it seemed forever to me. Every day, after school, they beat me up. Sometimes I stayed put until I was sure they’d all gone home to eat, until the cleaning woman arrived, down in the hallway where I was waiting, and asked me, ‘Why are you still hanging around, boy? Your mother must be looking for you.’
    But I was afraid, I even used to wait until the cleaning woman had gone, and get myself locked in the school. I didn’talways get away with it; most of the time the cleaning woman threw me out before she locked up. But when I managed to get locked in, I was glad. Then I scrounged food in the desks and garbage pails which the cleaning woman had put out in the hall for the collector, plenty of sandwiches, apples and leftover cake. That way I was all alone in the school and they couldn’t do anything to me. I hid in the teachers’ clothes closet behind the cellar stairwell, because I was afraid they might look in through the window and find me. But it was a long time before they found out how I used to hide out in the school. I squatted there often for hours, waiting until it was nighttime and I could open a window and get out. Lots of times I would just stare and stare at the empty schoolyard. Can anything be emptier than a schoolyard, late in the afternoon? It was fun, until they discovered how I was getting myself locked in the school. I scrunched up there in the teachers’ closet or underneath the window ledge and waited to see if I could feel something I only knew by name—hatred. I wanted to hate them real bad, Doctor, but I couldn’t. I was just plain afraid. Some days I waited only till three or four o’clock, thinking they’d be all gone by then and I might run across the street quick, past Meid’s stable, round the churchyard and then home, where I could lock myself in. But they took turns going home to eat—that was one thing they couldn’t do, go without food—and when they jumped me I could smell what they’d been eating, even before they got real close, potatoes and gravy, roast meat, ham and cabbage. And while they were working me over I used to think, why did Christ die, anyway? What good did it ever do me? What do I care if they pray every morning, take Communion every Sunday and hang a big crucifix in the kitchen, over the tables where they eat their potatoes and gravy, roast meat, ham and cabbage? Nothing, that’s how much I care. What’s it all amount to, if they lie in wait every day and beat me up? It’s been going on like this for five or six hundred years. Yet they’re always shooting off about how old their church is, and they’vebeen burying their ancestors in the churchyard for a thousand years, for a thousand years they’ve been praying and then eating potatoes and gravy, and ham and cabbage with the Crucifix on the wall. So what? You know what they used to holler at me when they were beating me up?
God’s little lamb
. That was my nickname.”
    Red-green, white-green, from the billiard balls new