Billiards at half-past nine
Leonore, Robert Faehmel's secretary, describes Robert who is meticulous in everything he does. An old friend of Robert arrives at the office but Leonore sends him to the Prince Heinrich Hotel where Robert is, daily, from 9:30 to 11:00. The man who wants to see Robert is named Nettlinger, but the Hotel bellboy, Jochen, refuses to let the man disturb his patron who is in the billiard room.
Upstairs, Robert is telling Hugo about his life and we discover that Nettlinger was once a Nazi policeman. Robert and his friend Schrella, both of whom were schoolmates with Nettlinger, had opposed the Nazis. Schrella had disappeared after being beaten by Nettlinger and Old Wobbly, their gym teacher, also a Nazi policeman. Nettlinger and Old Wobbly had not only beaten Schrella and Robert, but had corrupted one of Robert's three siblings, Otto, who died in 1942 near Kyiv. His mother, Johanna Kilb, is committed to a mental institution because she tried to save Jews from the cattle cars going to the extermination camps.
It is now Heinrich's 80th birthday. Heinrich and Robert meet in a bar after visiting Johanna, sitting down and talking for the first time in many years.
"I kept giving and I got double back."Heinrich Theodor Böll (21 December 1917 - 16 July 1985) was German writer.
Böll was born in Cologne, Germany.
He was apprenticed to a bookseller before studying German at the University of Cologne.
Böll became a full-time writer at the age of 30. His first novel, Der Zug war pünktlich (The Train Was on Time) was published in 1949.
Many of his novels and stories describe intimate and personal life struggling to sustain itself against the wider background of war, terrorism, political divisions, and profound economic and social transition.
His best-known works are Billard um halb zehn (Billiards at Half-past Nine, 1959), Und sagte kein einziges Wort (And Never Said a Word, 1953), Das Brot der frühen Jahre (The Bread of Those Early Years, 1955), Ansichten eines Clowns (The Clown, 1963), Gruppenbild mit Dame (Group Portrait with Lady, 1971), Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, 1974) and Fürsorgliche Belagerung (The Safety Net, 1979).
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