MOZART PLAYS BILLIARDS /// Katharine Gregg

MOZART PLAYS BILLIARDS

///Katharine Gregg

A great composer he told me never spends all he’s got on his first shot. He must be a master of spinning out implications, spilling them into extensions of oblique angles so instead of dropping into the first cadence the ball dances off on a tangent of perilous runs and arpeggios till it drops down to rest. Outside

and above, the Vienna spires are cream and gold against the perfect blue of Heaven. Below the rectangle of street and façade insists on its rightness while inside all is oval, curving the straight line till the gilt vines bind walls to ceiling. Even in the narrow room in the Schulerstrasse arched cherubs peer down on the green baize table placed in the light from the window. For the piano candles are sufficient. Notebook

and pencil he keeps balanced on the table’s rails, and always humming he bends, sighting the line— the turn and extensions, the whole exposition in his ear as he draws back the cue, as he taps the ball on its trajectory. The tune hums, unrolling back and forth across the felt, and now stepping back, he follows the web of notes, the counterpoint of colored balls, his face radiant watching them spin across and across, weaving a fantastic trompe l’oeil onto the table’s predictable rectangle, and when the last drops into its appointed spot, doesn’t he throw back his head and burst into godlike laughter!